Reflection on a Hackathon

This past ​past weekend I participated in my first hackathon. I was a little apprehensive, but experience has told me that that feeling most often times leads to good things so I figured "what the hell?" and cannonballed into the deep end. This hackathon was put together by the folks at Code Academy which is where I'm in the middle of some design classes. So the apprehension was eased some as it was within the bubble with a group of people that were also new to these things. 

For those who aren't aware what a hackathon actually is, you're probably thinking we locked ourselves inside a room in the basement and began hacking into government systems. While that does sound pretty cool this had nothing to do with that sort of thing. This weekend was all about building web applications. We met as a large group Friday evening to discuss ideas and formulate teams around those ideas. It was a fairly social start and before long we had grouped ourselves together with the single focus of building a web application by 3pm Sunday. At that time we'd have to present what we made to the group. ​

My group seemed to form quite easily with a great mash-up of talents and expertises. We wanted to focus on something that felt attainable in this short amount. We also wanted to be able to apply techniques and things learned on future projects. And amazingly we were all on the same page with this stuff.

Our application wasn't the sexiest idea of the weekend, but we felt comfortable with it and dug right in. We wanted to build an online (and mobile) version of ​our student directory (currently produced in PDF form) so that it would be more useful for the students as they were making their way through Code Academy. A basic idea, but as we found out there is a fair amount going on in the background with something like this.

Friday evening we received a crash course on Github from Kevin Musiorski ​(a Code Academy alum himself) and created and cloned the initial Rails install (yep, we're using Ruby on Rails). I was the lone designer in my group so I let the others take control over the initial set up and configuration of the database and the core aspects of the Rails application. I decided that I wanted to dig into Twitter Bootstrap for this project and see how quickly I could get it figured out and make this thing look cool. This is really a perfect scenario for something like Bootstap so I dug in and started tearing it apart.  

We continued working on our application the entire next day. Our team ended up being very focused and even though we were working on separate things a lot of the time we communicated really well for being such a new group. It was very cool to feel how building an application in a team environment would work. We worked closely with Github to manage our code. This alone was insanely useful to see happening in a real life scenario. ​Github was always a little hazy to me and some things definitely clicked while we were pushing and pulling our code around during the weekend.

By Sunday morning I had worked up a responsive front-end for our application and it was time to start bringing things together. Now, we learned a ton of lessons during the weekend and one of them was to work on the front-end right within the application itself from the beginning. So after fighting ​through some issues on that front we we had a functioning and pretty decent looking application. 

By the time we were to shut down and congregate into t​he presentation space we were pretty much ready to go. We had a working (for the most part anyway) online/mobile Code Academy directory actually functioning and essentially usable. It was pretty freaking cool to see what we novices were able to complete in such a short amount of focused time. We presented and got some great feedback. This hackathon wasn't a contest as some are so the feedback was more constructive and two-way. We talked about what we had learned in general and got some great responses back from the panel.

We were successful in creating an MVP (minmum viable product) and because of the reception we received and how well we worked together we've decided to continue on with the project. We'll be rewriting things and have some great ideas for expanded functionality so keep your eyes peeled for the launch of a completed actual web application in the coming month or so (don't worry, I'll definitely be writing about it again once we're ready to go live). ​

Few of us knew what we were getting into with it being the first hackathon for most of us, but I can say that those three days were the most insightful three days of the Code Academy experience so far and probably from a learning perspective three of the most insightful days I've experienced in this field. It was an incredibly valuable learning experience and I can't encourage people trying to learn about web design and development to participate in things like this enough. ​The best way to learn this stuff is to do it and by having a group to work with and a set project and deadline in mind it is so much easier to get over that hump. I'll even go so far as to say that I'm way less apprehensive now about starting a project outside of a hackathon as well. It's proved a perfect jumpstart for the rest of this course and beyond.

Build a Simple Responsive Website Résumé Using Skeleton

Responsiveness is all the rage in web design these days and for good reason. Mobile device usage is skyrocketing and being able to customize your content presentation based on where it is viewed is a really powerful thing. Not to mention super beneficial to the actual end-user. ​

The cool thing is that in this awesome design community that we have there are frameworks and boilerplates popping up to help us accomplish this responsiveness much quicker. I came upon Skeleton a while back and finally got around to actually spending some time with it. This boilerplate includes some very basic styles and a solid responsive layout. It enables you to create a responsive site that looks great ridiculously fast. To show you just how quick this can work, let's build a solid looking, responsive résumé. It always helps to have one of those updated and live to the world on the Web right?

The first thing we need to do is download the latest version of Skeleton. ​

What we get is the workings of a basic site all ready for us to start cutting apart. ​You'll see the breakdown of exactly what you'll find on the download page above, but essentially you'll have a basic starting point with some example markup. For further explanation on all the pieces (and there really aren't that many) you can just check out the Skeleton website and see how all the components actually work.

We're going for a one page, barebones style here so we won't have any need for any Javascript so we can delete that folder. You can also then remove the Javascript file references at the bottom of the index.html page. 

    <!-- JS
    ================================================== -->
    <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
    <script src="javascripts/tabs.js"></script>

I'm not planning on using an images here so I'm going to remove the images folder too. Once we've removed the files and folders that we don't need we're left with a very lean looking directory structure. That's perfect. Exactly what we're going for.​

The file structure we're left with from the original Skeleton download.

Like I said, I'm planning something super basic here so I'll remove everything from the current container in the index.html document and build my résumé using some very basic semantic elements. See my source below.​

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if lt IE 7 ]><html class="ie ie6" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7 ]><html class="ie ie7" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8 ]><html class="ie ie8" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if (gte IE 9)|!(IE)]><!--><html lang="en"> <!--<![endif]-->
<head>

    <!-- Basic Page Needs
  ================================================== -->
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Matt Reich - Designer/Writer</title>
    <meta name="description" content="The online resume of Matt Reich">
    <meta name="author" content="Matt Reich">

    <!-- Mobile Specific Metas
  ================================================== -->
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

    <!-- CSS
  ================================================== -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheets/base.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheets/skeleton.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheets/layout.css">

    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
        <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script>
    <![endif]-->

</head>
<body>

    <div class="container">
        <header class="four columns">
            <div>
            <h1>Matt Reich</h1>
            <h5>Designer/Writer</h5>
            <hr />
            </div>  

            <p>tel: 312-725-0019 <br />
            email: <a href="mailto:reich.matt@gmail.com?Subject=Hello%20again">reich.matt@gmail.com</a><br />
            website: <a href="http://mattreich.net">mattreich.net</a></p>
            <hr />  
                <ul>
                    <li><a href="http://mac.appstorm.net/author/mattreich/">Mac.Appstorm</a></li>
                    <li><a href="http://ipad.appstorm.net/author/mattreich/">iPad.Appstorm</a></li> 
                    <li><a href="http://iphone.appstorm.net/author/mattreich/">iPhone.Appstorm</li>
                    <li><a href="http://theindustry.cc/author/matt/">The Industry</a></li>
                    <li><a href="http://www.technori.com/author/mattreich/">Technori</a></li>
                </ul>
            
        </header>

        <article class="twelve columns">
            <h3>Profile</h3>
            <p>I had been employed as Network/Communications Technician at a mid-sized regional financial institution since completing my college degree in 2005 up until December 31st, 2011. Though this position and company were good to me, the further I got in that profession the more I realized I needed to make a substantial change.</p>

            <p>Always technologically savvy (hence the IT degree and job), I began to grow an interest in the Web and graphic arts fields a few years ago. A few classes later and a ton of self study, the interest has really grown into a full-on passion and through freelance projects and just a general curiosity I’ve expanded my knowledge greatly and continue down that path further each day. The Web world in general is incredibly interesting to me. There are so many different, continually evolving facets, so many possibilities, so many things undiscovered and unexplored. I think it is truly a fascinating space in which to work and study.</p>

            <p>Writing is a passion of mine. I try to write everyday, whether it be working on a new article, blog post, or just in a personal journal. I find it easier to work through thoughts and ideas via the written word and I also enjoy conveying ideas to others. I feel like I have a way with technical writing that is easily understandable, but not undermining all the while being as entertaining as technical writing can be. No matter my path, writing will always be a big part of my life.</p>

            <p>Above all, I love learning and doing things that stretch my mental, creative, and physical capacities.</p>
        
            <h3>Experience</h3>
            <h5>Communications/Network Technician, <a href="http://www.dacotahbank.com">Dacotah Bank</a> - Aberdeen, SD, 2003 - 2011</h5>
            <p>Dacotah Bank is a regional bank with locations across North and South Dakota. I began my employment as an intern while still going to school. That internship developed into a new position at the growing financial institution. My core responsibilities were supporting and maintaining IP phone and video conferencing systems for the entire company encompassing 30+ locations and 500+ employees. This included hardware and software maintenance and troubleshooting along with much daily customer interaction. Customer service was a large part of the daily workload. Writing documentation for the systems and applications which I supported was also a big aspect of the position. Documenting and organizing processes and procedures for all of our systems was a constant part of the job. As part of my position I was also in a rotation on our internal Service Desk working on and documenting any number of issues with our employees.</p>

            <p>As is evident, this position was quite broad and along with these things I also was regularly tasked with training internal staff on how to use our deployed software most effectively. This included everything from live classes to individual sessions to screencasts and written tutorials. This was a steady “additional task” throughout my time at Dacotah Bank and something I was always very comfortable taking on.</p>
        
            <h5>Freelance Writer - 2010 - present</h5>
            <p>I regularly write for the <a href="http://appstorm.net/">AppStorm</a> network on a variety of Mac, iPhone, and iPad software and related topics. These are most often technical reviews of applications on the OS X and iOS platforms. I enjoy technical writing very much and feel comfortable explaining complicated processes to those less technologically comfortable. I’ve also written feature articles for The Post SD which is an online magazine focused on the great stories of South Dakota. The site is currently on hiatus, but these pieces can be found on my website. I also have recently joined the writing teams at Technori (<a href"http://technori.com">technori.com</a>) and The Industry (<a href="http://theindustry.cc">theindustry.cc</a>) and will post for both online publications regularly. I also spend some time writing pieces for my <a href="http://mattreich.net">personal website</a> covering a variety of topics.</p>

            <h3>Education</h3>
            <p><h6><a href="http://northern.edu/Pages/index.aspx">Northern State University</a>, Aberdeen, SD - B.S. Management Information Systems</h6>
            <h6>Aberdeen Central HS, Aberdeen, SD - 2001</h6></p>

            <h3>Skills</h3>
            <h5>HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript</h5>
            <p>A working, ever growing knowledge of HTML and CSS. I’m not an expert nor am I a newbie. Coding a basic blog from scratch and implementing ExpressionEngine would take me half a day. I have at least working knowledge and I am expanding almost constantly. I would also point out that I also have a general, and ever expanding knowledge of PHP and Javascript as well. In this area I’ve just taken on and learned things as I needed for any given project. I spend a lot of time exploring and educating myself in these technologies as well. In general, I love to learn and I’m devoted to a constant improvement in these and related technologies.</p>

            <h5>Technical Writing</h5>
            <p>I’ve written proposals and technical training documentation for web projects and in several other areas through my work with freelance web work and also my employment at Dacotah Bank. I’ve also written many software reviews along with technology-related articles on various topics. I feel comfortable writing about technical subjects in an interesting and entertaining prose that everyone can understand.</p>

            <h5>Writing</h5>
            <p>Writing in a general sense. I’ve written many articles covering many different topics. From reviews to essays to interviews. I’m the type of person that writes an essay to myself when I’m trying to think through something in my life. I just flat out enjoy writing and I find it an enormously beneficial skill and make an effort to write essentially every day.</p>

            <h5>Project Management</h5>
            <p>Some project management experience through my employment at Dacotah Bank with various projects large and small. Also, some experience with freelance web projects through 605 Media.</p>

            <h3>Other</h3>
            <p><h6>Aberdeen Area Chamber of Commerce Diplomat Committee 2007 - 2011</h6>
            <h6>Safe Harbor Foundation Board Member 2009 - 2012</h6></p>

        </article>

    </div><!-- container -->

<!-- End Document
================================================== -->
</body>
</html>

I essentially just translated the information on my current PDF version résumé to HTML form. It's basic, but it gets the job done. You'll notice that I'm using a simple two-column layout. This is super easy to achieve and requires a couple classes. ​First, we'll apply the classes .four and .columns to our <header> element. This simply assigns a width of four of the sixteen available columns for this element.

Next, we apply the .twelve and .columns class to the <article>. Same story. We're using the remaining twelve columns of the sixteen available to display the <article> content. The cool thing about all of this is that we don't even have to mess with any of the layout elements. We achieved a two column layout simply by using the pre-built classes of Skeleton. And on top of that I didn't even touch the CSS. 

And here's what we're left with. First, the standard desktop browser width.

And here's what it looks like with the browser sized down. There is just one breakpoint built right in and as you're resizing the window you'll notice all the content shift into one column with the most important stuff at the top. 

There you have it. A little dabbling in the CSS can give you a completely customized look should you choose to go so far. And being that this first part was so easy I think you really should take a little time to make some customizations yourself. Make it your own. The Skeleton boilerplate is pretty darn easy to use so just play around and see what you can come up with. Now go pick up a domain name and some hosting space and load this project to your sever. Then you'll be all ready to show off how tech savvy you really are. 

An Easy Method to Clearing a Float

Floating is a way for us to use CSS to move elements on a page either to the far left or the far right. This capability comes in really handy when laying out a page. There are a couple things that are easy to get tripped up on (at least for me) so I'll see if I can help you to slide right by those so you don't endure as much pain as I did.

We'll make up a little problem that applies to many different situations. Here's the markup for our example. You'll see some empty divs that we're going to be using for sized boxes.

<article class="container">
            <div class="blue"></div>

            <div class="green"></div>

            <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
            tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
            quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
            consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
            cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
            proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>

            <section>
                <div class="orange">
                    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.</p>
                </div> <!-- end orange -->

                <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
                tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
                quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
                consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
                cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
                proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>
            </section>

        </article>

And here's some basic CSS.​ Nothing too fancy here. We're giving our Div boxes defined widths (they can't be floated otherwise) and then floating them. We're also coloring our boxes so that we can more easily tell what we're looking at in this example.

body {
    background: gray;
}

p {
    padding: 0 20px 10px 20px;
}

.container {
    width: 880px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    background: white;
}

.blue {
    background: blue;
    height: 200px;
    width: 400px;
    margin: 20px;
    float: left;
}

.green {
    background: green;
    height: 200px;
    width: 400px;
    margin: 20px;
    float: left;
}

.orange {
    height: 200px;
    width: 200px;
    margin: 20px;
    border: 5px solid orange;
    float: right;
}

And here is what we'll see when the page is rendered in a browser (Chrome in this case):

​So the problem that we're dealing with is that the white background of our container Div is not encompassing all the elements on the page as you would expect given the markup. This is a textbook example of a float not clearing all the elements it needs to.  

Adding a clear: both element to a class is one method to accomplish a clear, but in this situation it won't work as the element we're trying to clear is a <p>. The easiest method to clearing this float (and a pretty solid option in a lot of situations) is to create a .clear class in your CSS and apply the property of clear: both to it.

.clear {
    clear: both;
}

Then add in an empty Div after the <p> we want to clear.

            .
            .
            .
            <section>
                <aside class="orange">
                    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
                    tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
                    quis nostrud exercitation ullamco.</p>
                </aside>

                <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
                tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
                quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
                consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
                cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
                proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>

                <div class="clear"></div>
                
            </section>
            .
            .
            .

And that's all there is to it. Now the page returns to normal flow after the <p> and we're left with the result we wanted.

This is probably not the world's greatest example and I'm certainly not the world's creates frontend developer, but this was one area where I got hung up steadily and this was the specific example that I was able to figure this whole clearing of floats thing out. Copy the code and create your own testing environment and just play with the boxes and floating and clearing. Actually messing with the code is by far the best way to figure these things out.​

And for further reading I would highly recommend Shay Howe's Beginner's Guide to HTML & CSS.​

Code Academy: Adding to the Knowledge

We're through week three here at Code Academy and so far it's been a great experience. The last week or so, I will say, it feels like things are really starting to cook. The HTML/CSS class is very beginner and overlaps on a lot of the things I already understand, but as I was expecting I'm starting to pickup better ways to do things or even one step back, even better ways to understand things.​

The first real hit of this came this week when we were discussing the box model and positioning. It's a tricky concept and I'm guessing even seasoned veterans still get tripped up once in a while. While I do understand layouts and positioning using the box model and floats it was extremely beneficial to hear it come from another person. And even better than that, I found it incredibly beneficial to actually play around in class where I could ask specific questions of our instructor, Shay. Overall, this class session was by far the most beneficial to me thus far and I'd say that my comfort level with these concepts is in a much better place. 

At one point in the discussion when Shay was discussing floats and the concept of clearing a float he used the term "reseting the flow". I have no idea why, but for some reason that resonated with me. I felt gears catching in my head. He most definitely is not the first person to refer to clearing a float in that manner, but for whatever reason the timing was right for it to connect all sorts of loose ends in my head. ​I know it's been published all over the place already, but I'll do a post here about clearing floats later this week. 

The first couple weeks of the HTML/CSS course did have me worried a bit in that we were covering very basic stuff which I didn't have any trouble with, but this week reassured me that there are still things to learn even with concepts I think I already understand. ​

I Don't Think I'm Full of Enough Shit

I've been in Chicago for about four months now (wow, I didn't realize it had been that long until I wrote it) and I've been steadily working on a few things. I've been working on my writing by just doing more of it in more places. I've been working on getting more connected with the Chicago web development and design community. Combined with that I've been constantly working on my web development and design skills​ and found myself feeling the need for some additional instruction and mentorship and ended up at Code Academy. As part of these last two items I've been attending some Meetups in Chicago focused on the various skills I'm trying to better myself at and areas in which I'd like to meet some people.

Two days ago I attended a Meetup of the group called Refresh Chicago​ which is a group that essentially encompasses all of my current interests and aspirations. And as an added bonus one of my instructors at Code Academy, Shay Howe, is a co-organizer. The topic for this month was UX and Russ Unger presented. Russ is an expert in the field and spoke about the field of UX in general and the current state of it. 

A point came up during his talk that really struck a cord and got me thinking. He talked about the need for a "fake it till you make it" mentality. This is no new idea, but one that I've realized I'm no good at. The reality is, as I'm coming to see,  that I am way more capable and knowledgeable than I give myself credit for. I end up getting hung up on some of the things I'm shaky on and letting that dictate how I present myself and even the type of work I try to go after. "Well, that description is asking for some .Net experience and I have none therefore I need to be smarter for that job." That's my mentality and that as it turns out, isn't all that helpful. By going down this path the feelings of inadequacy will never end.   

In this field being full of shit to some extent appears to be more than common. It's really a necessity. I think a lot of the people that are hiring in this category aren't completely sure what the hell they're even after (just look at some job descriptions for a web developer). Folks that are working in the web world are by and large capable in multiple areas, and more importantly, very interested in learning new things. Being a web designer or web developer or UX designer can be really broad titles will all sorts of varying expertises. It's just impossible to know everything that seems like is required. I'm realizing I'm not the only one seeing this and it would have been really nice if one of you would have told me about this sooner (jerks...actually, you're all pretty nice). 

The professions in the web industry are all so young and are still being figured out by everyone. Roles just aren't clearly defined and a lot of the time different skill sets blend together or separate depending on the job. Being at least a little full of shit is just part of the current state of affairs. Or maybe it's just part of life in general. Ok, that's a little too deep. We'll leave that one for another day. ​

Code Academy Spring 2012

​Hey everybody! Guess what?!?! I've been accepted to the Code Academy and will be attending the Spring UX and Web Design course  beginning today! Yep, that's a lot of explanation points and it's totally warranted. This is a completely awesome thing so if you're not jealous yet, let me see if I can get you there.​

The start-up scene in Chicago is buzzing. I'm new here and it is completely obvious to even me. People are interested and excited about nurturing this entrepreneurial culture and the energy and enthusiasm is evident.  The talent to drive these startups, as in any entrepreneurial hub, is a continual area of focus. Code Academy aims to give folks a crash course to develop such skills in a high energy, collaborative, professionally directed, mentored environment. Yeah, sounds wonderful doesn't it? It's taking people that are motivated and interested and giving them tools necessary to become those people. 

Code Academy is not trying to make expert coders and designers. It's there to provide the kick in the ass to become an expert designer or coder. Some will be starting from complete scratch and others will be at that certain tipping point where there is a need for mentorship to take things to the next level. I fall into the latter group. I know quite a bit, but have realized a sort of speed bump in furthering my craft right now. I need some professional guidance in a space that welcomes learning and discovery and that's the exact void Code Academy fills.  

I do want to better my skill set and absolutely expect that to happen through this course, but an equally attractive feature to Code Academy is the environment in which it resides. This Spring session's classes and the rest going forward will be hosted at the  newly opened 1871 co-working space in downtown Chicago. The space is 50,000 square feet of start-up heaven. It is specifically built to provide startups with the resources they need to begin their companies. As students of Code Academy not only are our classes taught there we also have access to the space during the time we're students. I've toured the space and I'm incredibly excited to be a part of the community that will reside there. ​

Are you jealous yet? No?? Ok, well, I'll be documenting my experiences at Code Academy here so if you're at all interested please follow along. I'm fairly certain you will be by the end of this thing. ​

​

A To-Do Dilema

I've been living a more freelance lifestyle the last few months and I've become increasingly reliant on a to-do type application to help keep me organized. I spent quite a lot of time searching and trying apps. There's definitely no shortage in this area so there are a pile to choose from. ​

I settled on The Hit List and was really confident about that decision. I found it to be a nice fit for what I was looking for. Maybe somewhere in between Omnifocus and  Wunderlist. I'm not going to push you to my choice or to another. This category of applications is pretty personal to a lot of people. We all have our own set of needs, likes and dislikes. That's not the point of this article. 

I've been using The Hit List for some time now and just the other day decided to check to see if there were any updates available. Just a random thought. Nope, ​nothing new. Then I went to the App Store to check the date of the last release. Version 1.0.6 on August 11, 2011. I  started doing a little research around the Web and saw some mentions of version 1.1, but for the most part hardly any activity anywhere regarding my trusted to-do app. I'm fairly certain that The Hit List is maintained by one developer so I can understand this to a certain extent. Doing major releases every two months just isn't realistic. But I'll be honest, I was hoping for something. ​

Because I've become so heavily reliant on this application I started to question whether I should be devoting that much to it. What if it just withers and dies? The application in its current state is pretty solid and fits my needs quite well, but at the same time I am certainly not opposed to tuning things up and releasing new features and functionality either. I'd just feel better knowing that there was some force behind it.

Worked up in this tizzy I started to re-examine to-do apps again with an added criteria that they appear to be regularly updated. I started trying other applications out again and soon enough I realized why I ended up where I did. ​I suppose I'll keep my eyes open for new players, but I'll be sticking with The Hit List for the foreseeable future.

So, my conclusion: if it's working for you right now there should be nothing to bitch about. Right? Yeah, I don't know about that either. Ok, so that's really not a conclusion at all. We've just circled around.  

While I am "ok" with the current iteration I still want to know there's some activity going on behind the scenes. I want to know that my trusted application is being taken care of and maintained. I think we can all agree on this. A simple blog post or even a tweet to let loyal users know you're working on things would be enough to quell my uneasiness. The silence sucks.  ​

Documentation Artist

I saw a recent job posting for a Documentation Artist on Authentic Jobs and my interest was immediately piqued. What is a Documentation Artist you ask? I asked the same question and after reading an entertaining job description it became clear that this was a position for a Technical Writer to write technical documentation for the lister's product Temboo.

What caught my attention past the title of the position was the way in which the position listing was crafted. The tone is such that it conveys the understanding of good technical writing and how important it really can be.

You could argue that your product should just be good enough that documentation isn't required. That is certainly true for an application like Draw Something, but there are a lot of situations and a lot of products where documentation is an absolute requirement. Some products or services essentially depend upon their technical documentation. Temboo is a good example. It's a different product by almost everyone's standards that deals with some pretty technical stuff. Documentation is crucial to at a minimum give people a kick down the right direction.

Writing the how-to step-by-step guide for anything is a pretty straightforward task. Just start with step one and write what you do until the task has been completed.  The thing is, we've all had to wade through some impossible to understand, unbearably dry documentation to only end up exactly where we started. It's frustrating and will definitely turn people off from using your product or service. So maybe it really isn't that easy. Maybe there is actually an art to writing technical documentation.

Technical documentation has a reputation for being flat out challenging to get through. That doesn't need to be the case and it shouldn't be this way. No matter the subject why can't reading through your documentation be at least mildly entertaining? The subject nature of a lot of the things technical writers write about are inherently dry, but I think there still can be things done to improve the experience of using the documentation. And a side benefit from some delightfully useful documentation is that you enable your customers to better use your product. When people are able to easily take full advantage of your product or service and have actually enjoyed learning about it you've created some advocates of your product. It may seem like time wasted when you'd rather be concentrating on building your product, but if people aren't able to take full advantage of it you're missing out on a lot potential business.

It's cool to see a company make such a big deal about a role that in a lot of situations either gets totally overlooked or at a minimum ends up getting pushed aside. Technical writing is tricky and the real great writers are able to communicate complicated things in delightful ways to truly enable end-users. This is most certainly an art and deserves to be thought of in that light.

Here's to the Documentation Artists.​

Ideas of March

I stumbled on a blog post ​written by Meagan Fisher entitled Ideas of March. Aside from it being a great read it also raised this thought of the Ideas of March. I explored further and discovered that it was in fact a call to arms. A call to revive blogging and it was now in it's second iteration this year. It got me excited and made me think about some things. Blogging has seen a growing importance in my life so I'm jumping on board this train.

I think this is really a good thing to both the community and blog writers and I'll throw a couple thoughts out there as to why.

Writing is a newer thing in my life, but it has quickly become a large part of it. In fact, it is now an income stream that I depend on from month to month. More than that a majority of the writing that I'm doing is for blogs. So to me, blogs are directly important. I used to sort of sluff off that idea of professional bloggers and now I'm straying into that territory and realizing its legitimacy. ​As I do more writing on this site, my personal blog, it turns into essentially a portfolio and can help me to get more work and allow me to practice my skills to become a better writer.

Blogs have given way to other forms of self expression on the Web in recent years. This call to revive blogging is a direct result of this cultural shift. Things move so fast in Internet time so it's hard to necessarily grade the level of this issue, but I think bringing it to light and getting people to think about it can only help us all out.

We're sharing more and more and we're writing original things less and less. ​The whole Curator Code thing that cropped up in recent weeks is evidence of this. Some folks want simple sharing of content (not their own) to be considered curation and they want credit for finding that content. I won't go into that any further right now, but you can see my thoughts here. I think it's fighting the wrong problem.

Sharing has over-taken creating original things. I'll throw myself right into that mix as well. I've spent plenty of time on Tumblr sharing random things I've found over the last couple years. It's a blast and I'm not going to stop doing it, but what I am going to do is make more of an effort to create much more original content both here and elsewhere. 

I'm not looking at this as a March project (obviously, March is almost over). I'm looking at this as a wakeup call to start paying more attention to creating original content however difficult it may be. I plan to be more open about things and sharing my thoughts and options here even if no one is listening. There's still a chance someone could stumble upon something I've written and take some value from it down the line. And writing in general is an amazingly beneficial skill in just about any profession or walk of life so more writing will only enable me to better myself. ​

So here's to the Ideas of March (and beyond). ​

Now Using Squarespace 6 Beta

I've been using Squarespace to power this blog for some time. The latest version of Squarespace (version 6) is now in its private beta and I received an invite to try it out. So, I did the logical thing and rather than "try it out" I dove right in and moved right on over. So with that in mind you can expect some tweaks and bugs for a while going forward.

I've been messing with the service for about a week and my first perceptions are pretty positive. It's pretty darn cool, but I'll admit there are some bugs that will no doubt be taken care of before the final release. 

I'll do a more thorough review after a few more features get rolled out. Oh and it's also mobile ready right now so check that out. 

Curator's Code: Fixing a Problem That Doesn't Exist

Curator's Code was released recently to solve a problem that I'm not sure even existed in the first place.

Attributing someone for what they created should absolutely happen, but Curator's Code isn't necessarily helping to fight that battle. It aims to help us attribute our sources or rather standardize the process for attribution.

Sounds good so far but here's where it gets hairy. We're looking to standardize the "via" or "hat tip" type shares which is an extra level or possible thousands of levels deep.

Here's a situation.

I find something great way down in the bowls of the Interweb and I'd like to share that with everyone. I grab the link to said thing and share it on my blog or Tumblr or Twitter or whatever. Now, I'm 100% sure that the thing wasn't created by the person I discovered it from so do I need to credit that person for finding it before I did?

This is where I don't get the Curator's Code. The Internet and World Wide Web were developed with the core functionality being the sharing of information. Granted we've come a long way since the early days and instead of sharing important medical information we're sharing kitten photos, but the core idea is still there. We're sharing things. We're linking to things. We're liking to links of things. It's endless and that's the way it should be and what makes it so awesome.

So in my scenario above, should I credit the person who I discovered that awesome thing through? Out of common Internet courtesy (it's a thing) I probably would. That said I don't think it is completely necessary. Where there would be more of an obligation is when the original creator is known. In that situation you should definitely give credit where credit is due. But to give someone credit for simply finding something out in the wild before I did seems stupid.

Rather than creating some odd standard with symbols why don't we all just agree to do our best to credit the original creator and past that you're just being nice by crediting the intermediary source. Curating cool things isn't super easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than creating the content.

Marco Arment wrote about this as well and makes a few killer points when he talks about those "via" type links and what purpose they really serve. Most uses are superficial at best (see Maro's The Verge example). Links are placed in the article itself. That's arguably a decent attribution (I'm doing it here), but it's not perfect.

When a full piece is written essentially with the information from the source the likelihood of anyone actually clicking the link to the original piece is pretty unlikely. I'd encourage you to read Maro's post as he poses a lot of great arguments, but I realize you probably won't and I think he's fine with that. I'm continuing the discussion not stealing his thoughts.

Here's where we can draw some differences I think. In many situations (like Marco's The Verge example) a new piece is written using that source information to create new content. That's partially what I'm doing here and really what much of the content floating around the Web is. The content is original on its own and for someone that would like to dig a little deeper into the subject the option is there. I think that's pretty much in line with the nature of the Internet.

A true link type blog that does this is wandering off into sketching territory I would say. When you're regurgitating enough of the original information to remove the need for the viewer to click through you're bordering on stealing the content.

I think I've wandered into a conclusion. In leu of using some symbols (which I will guarantee get almost no adoption) let's just agree on some things.

If you're using some information from somewhere else to further an idea or as inspiration to create a totally different one then a simple in-line link is great. You've opened up a connection and it's up to the reader to go down that avenue. As I mentioned, you should read Marco's post, but the reality is that his post was inspiration for this post and the ideas in it can stand on their own.

If you have a link blog, then your sole purpose should be to entice the viewer to click on the link and go to the source of what you're sharing. If you want to add a "via" attribution in there, fine, but it isn't necessary as the link itself isn't useful. To get the value you need to click the link to see the content. Attributing is funneling viewers to the source.

Really, we're back to where we started. Just don't be an ass and steal other people's stuff and try pawn it off as your own. Don't hide your sources and give credit where credit is due. Simple as that.

iMessage Beta: My Thoughts

Today Apple dropped a bomb and announced a new update coming to OS X this summer called Mountain Lion. Mountain Lions are both cool and a bit scary so I'm thinking that's where this update may stand, but we'll see.

We've all been expecting tighter integration between OS X and iOS and this appears to be a huge step in that direction. One of the applications that I've always thought would make the most sense in that connected state was iMessage. iChat is really a pretty awful application and the fact that it has remained essentially untouched for years is a good indicator that Apple has thought the same thing.

Today you are able to download the beta of iMessage for your Mac if you want to give it a try. Of course I grabbed it right away. I've been messing with it today and here are my initial day one thoughts. They're a bit mixed, but this is a beta version so a lot of these things could certainly change before final release so keep that in mind.

It's All Blurry

The line between texting, chatting, video calling, etc. is blurring. This is good, I think. It's a little strange and is taking some getting used to, but essentially iMessage appears to have the ability to sync message with all your devices.

If someone sends you an iMessage to an email address you have connected to iMessage (your Apple ID perhaps) that message will go to your Mac if you have iMessage open and it will also go to your iPhone. If you retrieve the message on either device the new message notification is gone on the other.

Nice, but sitting at a coffee shop with my phone on the table next to me and iMessage open on my Mac I get double notification for each message. It's kind of annoying actually. I'm sure the people sitting around me are super impressed that my phone keeps vibrating and I just keep ignoring it. A little notification customization may fix this, but I haven't found a way to pull it off just yet.

Also, if someone sends an iMessage to your iPhone number then you'll only receive that on your phone. Is that bad you ask? I don't know. Probably not, but that sort of un-blurs the line a bit.

A big positive to this is the ability to continue conversations through multiple devices. If I'm using iMessage on my Mac and need to leave the computer I can seamlessly continue the conversation on my iPhone without anyone knowing the difference.

Only Apple-ites

Now being able to text from the Mac is a big selling point for iMessage. That's awesome, but it only works with other Apple users. Specifically iMessage users. This isn't a major deal to me as a majority of the people I text heavily are iPhone users, but it puts some heavy restriction on its functionality and still forces me to use different services and methods for communicating with different people. That's a pain in the ass.

Video and No Voice, I think

iChat was able to do voice calls, which believe it or not I used from time to time. I'm not seeing a method for conducting a voice call with iMessage which bums me out a bit.

Video calls can be made via FaceTime which makes sense I think. Again, these are restricted to Apple users.

It seems like Apple is viewing FaceTime as the future of phone calls and that is probably a valid prediction.

Final Thoughts of iMessage Beta

So far I think it's pretty great, but for some reason it still doesn't feel quite right to me. It's not connecting the dots for me like I was hoping it would.

I've been thinking about this and to be honest I can't really figure out exactly what would be the ideal situation for me. I like some of the things that iMessage does and then others I don't. This is probably a good indicator that Apple is wandering off into uncharted territories once again. I don't even know what I want. Maybe I'll realize it if/when I get it. For now I guess it's cool to see something in a completely different direction (or multiple directions).

The restriction to only Apple users does kind of suck. If iMessage could be more open on some level it would immediately become at least twice as cool. FaceTime was built on open video standards but Apple still restricts its usage. Maybe there's hope of that service as well as iMessage opening up a bit the future.

Overall, it's fun to see some of the drastic things that Apple has in mind. They've got a pretty good track record of changing the way we do things. We'll see if they can pull it off again. For now, color me cautiously skeptical.

I Like Demos

I'm not a huge gamer, but I own an Xbox 360. I'll dabble from time to time, but it's turned into my primary Netflix watching device. A huge interface update was released a couple months ago and recently I decided I should probably expand beyond my Netflix watching and scope out what else this streaming video machine can do.

I went into the games area and did some wandering. The one thing that I thought was so great was the demo or trial feature available on most of the games. I've always had that problem with Xbox games. They're so damn expensive that it's hard to swallow a $50 purchase to just try one out. So after losing my Blockbuster card I just quit paying attention (yeah, that's a joke...I still have it...ok, that's a joke too). Reviews are great, but I like to try stuff out and I don't like to pay a large sum to try something out either. I end up just avoiding something I could potentially love.

I really wish the iOS App Store, and even more so, Mac App Store would figure out a way to easily allow for demos like my Xbox does. There's a lot to be said about a demo. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the $9.99 purchase button on the App Store entry of an application you think you'd love, but just aren't completely sure, trying to figure out if it would be worth it, bouncing back and forth between reviews, only to end up deciding it probably isn't worth it? Or is it? No, probably isn't. But what if it is? It could save you 30 seconds a day. Ok, probably not worth it.

Yeah, me neither.

Developers offer demos of their applications outside of the Mac App Store all the time. It's nearly standard practice. The Mac App Store seems like a perfect way to manage demos. It handles new installs and re-installs and updates just fine. Why not demos?

I do a lot of application reviewing and as the App Store takes a bigger hold it's getting more and more difficult to find demos of the applications I want to try out. No, "lite" version on the App Store don't count. That's cheating.

I was going to say I think I'd end up with a lot more applications, but the reality is that I'd probably have about the same amount, but they'd be ones that I actually used. I've purchased several apps over the years where I can say had there been a demo for me to try I wouldn't have purchased. So maybe bad developers wouldn't make as much money?

Well, this is going nowhere. I can't really find much of a point in here other than I think there should be demo capability built in the Mac App Store so this is essentially just a bitch session. Sorry. Thanks for listening though.

Oh, and if you know someone that works at Apple see what you can do. Also, an OS X bluetooth update would be nice too. That thing really pissed me off the other day too. Thanks.

Journaling with Chronories

I wrote a bit ago about my searching for a journaling application. I've found a lot of benefit from writing every day and wanted to combine this with also documenting my days. There are lots of application options with varying feature sets, but I ended up settling on Chronories.

A big reason I ended there was because the application does all sorts of behind the scenes data collection. So even if I didn't actually sit down and write every day the app would still compile some data. So I've been using Chronories for a little better than a month now. My results have been a bit mixed.

First off, my change in lifestyle has thrown me out of a regular routine and I'm still working on settling into a less structured day. It's pretty obvious that this has resulted into less personal writing as I haven't written in Chronories nearly as regularly as I was planning to (hopefully I can change that in the days ahead).

Today for the first time since I started using the app, I took a quick spin through the automatically generated reports. Even though I haven't written much there is still some pretty cool data in there. Even a just month of data was pretty interesting to look back on. I'm really looking forward to seeing what it looks like in six months or a year.

So, I guess it seems like my choice of app is doing what I hoped it would. I could neglect the whole idea of "journaling" and it would still grab some interesting data about my days that I could analyze later. That said, I am missing the benefits of writing each day so I do plan to do that more often going forward.

Chronories probably isn't for everyone, but it's working pretty damn well for me so far. Hopefully I'll be able to do a bit more manual entry into it in the coming months and I think that will add even more interestingness to the reports. We'll see. Maybe I'll post some examples of these reports down the road where I've got a few months of data to look at.

At this point it's safe to say the app is doing what it's supposed to, but I am not.