I won’t Read It Later

May 2, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Ineffectual bookmarking

I’m sure you’re familiar with an expression that is used more and more frequently — email bankruptcy. If you don’t know the meaning, as usual the Wikipedia is your friend, although I like the more direct definition in the Urban Dictionary: When you are so inundated with email, both genuine email and spam, that you have to delete everything and start over again.

Well, I’m about to declare bookmark bankruptcy. The other day I was browsing all the bookmarks I saved in Safari since day one and, despite my repeated attempts at organising them, the whole picture is just a big, sad mess. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and the next move is indeed a bold one: I will erase my Bookmarks file and start anew. Of course, I won’t just throw everything into oblivion’s whirlpool and get rid of more than 6 years of accumulated links. I’m willing to carry out a preliminary step that is probably going to be painful and somewhat time-consuming, but I hope it’ll be worthwhile: sifting.

Then, after isolating a core base of links (mostly shortcuts to places I frequently visit on the Web), I’ll start again with a different approach to prevent this kind of almost uncontrollable growth. The goal is to use Safari’s Bookmarks Bar basically for bookmarklets, and to have there just a couple of bookmark folders: one for the aforementioned core base of links, another as a temporary parking space for bits and pieces I’ll use in future articles.

This different approach is actually something I’ve been refining these past months, and not entirely consciously. One day I simply started noticing a shift in the way I handle interesting material I encounter in my daily Web surfing. Instead of hoarding and filing things indiscriminately into Safari, I was doing two things:

  1. ‘Outsourcing’ (for lack of a better term): which means I used some other application or service to save useful stuff or interesting links. Examples: 
    • An important quote inside a blog article went in a specific note inside Notational Velocity called Ideas for morrick.me (or one of my other blogs/projects, depending on the material);
    • If one of the people I already follow made me discover an interesting blog written by someone I did not previously know, I would add it in my feed reader (NetNewsWire on the Cube, Google Reader + Reeder for Mac on my MacBook Pro);
    • Everything I’ve liked on Tumblr is on Tumblr. Whenever I read something worth citing, I’d reblog it. If I encountered some picture I really really wanted to save, I’d save it on my Mac (or in Dropbox directly, so it’s available on all of my devices)…

    and so on and so forth. I think you get the idea.

  2. Not Reading It Later: this, I think, is the heart of the matter. I’ll expand on this in a moment.

Nodes of interest, Decentralisation

This is what Point 1 is about. By letting other applications and services handle some of the things I’m interested in reading or responding to in some way, I have noticed that I manage to find that stuff again more quickly and efficiently. If browsers had better bookmark management tools (something I’ve already complained about time ago), then it would be easier to have a centralised management of bookmarks/favourites where everything is in one and only place. But since browsers start to show their limits when you have thousands of items in your archive, filing things in different places (mind you: a limited number of very selected different places — see examples above) in my experience actually leads to a better organisation, not to more confusion. In the end, all the various pieces of information are of different kinds, so it’s just logical that they be managed using different tools. I call these places nodes of interest. If I want to read tech news from trusted sources, I’ll go to Reeder or NetNewsWire and I’ll save the occasional good link there, not in the browser. If I’m writing an article and need to insert a quick link to a well-known Mac product or service or developer website, I’ll go to Notational Velocity in a specific note where I store a bunch of frequently used links. And so on.

Defusing the Read It Later routine

I’m probably one of the few geeks around who doesn’t really use Instapaper. I have nothing against it, it’s just that it has never really found a place in my workflow, and it’s unlikely it’ll find one after I start my ‘bookmark reboot’. You see, come to think of it, the main factor that led to my bookmark bankruptcy is the ‘Read It Later’ routine: a lot of stuff I’ve bookmarked over the years was filed away for the purpose of reading it later. Let’s save this bit, it might come handy, it might be useful. What really happened is that 90% of the time I’ve never gone back to that bookmarked stuff. It’s been the same as if I filed it in a ‘Read It Never’ folder.

So, what have I been progressively doing? Reading things now. If I stumble on something interesting, chances are I’ll read it at once; as I said, the only things I really save for later are bits and pieces for reference in future articles. If what I find distracts me from the work or activity I’m currently doing, I’ll keep it open in a browser tab. Sometimes stuff remains in browser tabs for a few days. This, for me, creates a subtle urgency to handle the unread discoveries as soon as possible and get rid of the open browser tab. After I’ve read something, I deal with it either by dismissal or by sending it to the appropriate node of interest. Generally, my list of ‘stuff I really cannot read right now but I’ll deal with it soon’ never exceeds five items. The rule is that if a sixth item gets in the queue, I have to handle one in the current list, so that there’s always a maximum of five unread items.

Conclusion

This is roughly the method I’ve been applying recently in an effort to improve my bookmark management. I know it may look convoluted or counter-intuitive, but that’s because it’s really easier done than explained. As I said, after handling the multitude of links accumulated in Safari, I will refine and systematise this approach to avoid ending up with hundreds and hundreds of links to sites I’ll never visit again, or articles/essays I’ll never have time to read later.

Parliamo di nulla

April 18, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Mele e appunti

Di tanto in tanto mi è capitato di non avere tempo materiale per aggiornare questo blog, specie negli ultimi mesi. Ho la testa in pochi progetti selezionati, a parte il lavoro, e sono progetti che richiedono molte energie. Quest’ultima mancanza di aggiornamenti, però, non ha niente a che vedere con il poco tempo. Si tratta più che altro di quella che, per usare una terminologia ormai abusata, potremmo chiamare una ‘pausa di riflessione’.

La pausa è voluta, e il blocco dello scrittore non c’entra nulla; l’oggetto della riflessione è questo mondo di opinionismo tecnico sul Web, le cui dinamiche, i cui ritmi, i cui ‘giochi di società’ mi stanno oltremodo stancando. L’epifania è avvenuta una decina di giorni fa. A seguito della solita galoppata lavorativa, stavo facendo passare il migliaio di articoli accumulati nel lettore di feed. Per ogni articolo per cui valeva la pena soffermarsi, ne marcavo una decina come ‘già letti’, ma soprattutto un’impressione si è presto fatta strada dentro di me: quella di star facendo qualcosa di assai simile allo zapping televisivo. Qualcosa, insomma, di scarso impatto sui neuroni. La somiglianza con lo zapping non era limitata all’atto di passare da un articolo all’altro, da un blog all’altro, da un sito di notizie all’altro, ma si estendeva al contenuto che stavo scremando. Notizie di prodotti appena annunciati e nemmeno presentati; rumour presentati come notizie, con interminabili discussioni destinate a finire nel nulla quando a breve quei rumour saranno dissipati; articoletti di tre paragrafi stiracchiati e diluiti il più possibile per dare sostanza a un tema, notizia, suggerimento, che potrebbero essere esauriti in due frasi; interventi pubblicati tanto per pubblicare qualcosa perché il tal sito deve sempre dare l’impressione di essere aggiornato 24 ore su 24; rifritture di articoli scritti da altri giusto per aggiungere il commentino (a tal proposito proporrei il termine ruminanti per coloro i cui blog sono costituiti per il 99% da contenuti riciclati da altre fonti); eccetera eccetera.

Insomma, ho sperimentato un momento di saturazione. E pensare che nel mio lettore di feed (come presumo anche nel vostro) le sottoscrizioni sono già il frutto di un lavoro di scrematura. Intendiamoci, non sto dicendo che tutti blog e siti di natura tecnico-informatica e geek in generale mi facciano schifo. Ve ne sono diversi a cui ritorno sempre con grande piacere per l’elevata qualità dei contenuti. Però la sensazione che mi sta assalendo ultimamente è quella di un rumore sempre più crescente, che affoga sempre più il segnale. Il problema è che la qualità generale ne risente, e questo lo noto sempre più spesso nelle raccomandazioni di articoli altrui, il classico passaparola che sul Web si fa con il link o con il reblog. Materiali e riflessioni caldamente consigliati e definiti come brillanti e informativi si rivelano essere colossali scoperte dell’acqua calda. Eppure c’è gente che riesce ad avere successo (e anche un rientro economico) con simili contenuti.

Un altro elemento che mi capita di notare con sempre maggiore frequenza è quella tendenza ad avere sempre e comunque un’opinione su tutto, a giocare a fare il CEO dalla poltrona (o l’analista finanziario, o qualsiasi altra professione del settore). Spesso e volentieri le opinioni si fondano su poca o nessuna base di informazioni valide, ma visto che i ritmi di produzione di fuffa sono sempre altissimi, si può avere la certezza che gran parte di quelle opinioni finiranno nel dimenticatoio. O peggio, verranno soppiantate da altre opinioni del tutto contraddittorie ma ugualmente snocciolate per seguire la corrente del momento. Con buona pace della credibilità e dell’onestà intellettuale. 

Ridicolo, per esempio, il dibattito sulla notizia della chiusura della produzione delle videocamere portatili Flip da parte di Cisco. Due ore dopo l’annuncio, il Web e Twitter brulicavano di gente che scriveva osservazioni del tipo “Beh, ma è ovvio che le Flip hanno fallito, non potevano competere con smartphone come iPhone e affini”. Insomma, tutti a dire “si sapeva” e “niente di nuovo sotto il sole”. Poi il giorno dopo qualcun altro scrive che forse a uccidere le Flip è stata più che altro l’incompetenza di Cisco nel gestire un prodotto consumer così lontano dalla sua identità aziendale. E tutti a rigirare la frittata: “Beh, come dice Tizio, è stata più colpa di Cisco che della concorrenza degli smartphone, ecc. ecc.”

Ma ci rendiamo conto?

Ora, io sono intenzionato a continuare a scrivere e a gestire i miei spazi online (presto finalmente avrò un dominio e uno spazio tutti miei, tra l’altro), così come è mia intenzione arrivare ad avere un piccolo rientro economico da questa attività. Probabilmente in futuro scriverò con maggiore frequenza, lavorando sulla sintesi e tutto quanto, ma mai e poi mai mi allineerò con certe dinamiche e certi modi di parlare della tecnologia. Mai e poi mai scriverò tanto per scrivere qualcosa. Mai e poi mai avrò un’opinione su tutto.

Three reasons to use Transmit 4

April 9, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Software

Inspired by Dave Caolo’s “Three reasons” series on his blog 52Tiger, this isn’t a full review of Panic’s Transmit 4, but just a quick, personal summary of why you should get Transmit 4 (or upgrade, if you’re an already happy user of Transmit 3).

1. Speed. Yes, when I read Panic’s page for Transmit, I admit I raised an eyebrow: “Speed?” — I thought — “It’s an FTP application, and connection speed is what it is. How can I perceive any improvement?”. I was so wrong in doubting Panic’s fine developers. If you’re skeptical, I suggest a little yet emblematic experiment: use Transmit to navigate and interact with your iDisk (if you have a MobileMe account). Another planet, believe me.I’ve never used the Finder to access my iDisk. Too slow, not only with file transfers, but simply navigating the folders’ hierarchy was a pain. Up to now, I’ve always resorted to the good old Goliath which, despite not being updated since 2004, was surprisingly good for iDisk use. Now I’ve definitely, happily switched to Transmit 4.

2. Quick Look. Again, it sounds like a minor feature, but it’s so unbelievably handy. For work, I often have to download a lot of documents from remote servers. Sometimes the lists of files I’m given aren’t 100% accurate, and it’s quite annoying having to download a hundred files blindly, check them in the Finder, and open a new FTP session to download more files blindly and check later if they’re the good ones, etc. With Quick Look, I can preview them all before downloading and make sure they’re really the documents I have to work on.

3. But my absolute favourite feature is Disks. Quoting from Panic’s Transmit page:

With the new Transmit Disk feature, you can now mount any of your favorites in the Finder itself, even if Transmit’s not running. These volumes are real: drag files to your SFTP server, save a small graphic to your Amazon S3 bucket directly from Photoshop, or roll your own iDisk-like backup volume. It’s all possible in Transmit 4.

This feature has positively removed one step in my workflow, making it faster. Before, I used to create an “In/Out” folder inside my Home folder as a temporary parking lot for files to be uploaded to the client’s server. When a document was ready for upload, I would make a copy of it inside the In/Out folder, open Transmit 3, upload it to the remote server, close Transmit, go back to work, repeat the process. Now I just keep the client’s remote volume mounted on my desktop, with a Finder window of the destination folder always open, and when I finish a translation, I just drag and drop the document on that folder and voilà. Quick and easy, and I don’t have to bother with making duplicate copies of the files, etc.

As the fine folks at Panic say, I really think you will like this app. It’s really worth what little it costs. If these reasons aren’t enough, please go to Panic’s website, and check all the new features of Transmit 4. Then buy it!

Localisation is important

March 31, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Et Cetera

As a professional translator + technical writer + power user, I have occasionally had the chance to combine these skills in the too often neglected art of localisation. I know my position must sound biased, but I think that having your website or application interface translated can only be beneficial to your business as it is to mine. 

If you are a company, especially if you sell products or services at an international level (who doesn’t, now?), having a multilingual website will undoubtedly increase your audience and make life easier for visitors and potential customers who stumble upon your site, like it, and want to explore it — and do some shopping if you offer an e‑store as well.

If you create/develop software, supporting multiple languages — both for the application interface and related documentation — means expanding your user base and perhaps having fewer support-related headaches when customers write you asking for help because they don’t understand how certain features work or because they made mistakes due to not understanding English very well. An application with multilingual support has better accessibility and usability.

I know that English is one of the most studied languages in the world. I know that, especially in the technology sector, people are supposed to know some basic English to find their way around your English-only website or application. But don’t take things too much for granted. Now, thanks to the iOS platform and devices and their ease of use, more people who never touched a computer before are starting to get familiar with these gadgets and these ‘tech things’. Among these people there are a lot of users of a certain age, who are less likely to have studied a foreign language in their life, or if they have, it might not necessarily be English, or they only studied it at a very young age and aren’t proficient in it. They could certainly benefit from a localised application and from a website that could talk to them in their native language, without resorting to automated tools such as Google Translate.

When I see Mac or iOS applications I love, and realise they only come in English, I usually try to contact the author and propose an Italian and/or Spanish localisation. So far, however, the interest from the other part has been depressingly low or lacking entirely. The most polite response I’ve received was along the lines of We’re not currently exploring this possibility, but we will contact you when we do. Most of the time the answer is either monosyllabic or my email isn’t even acknowledged.

I understand that having someone who takes care of such task means more expenses for the company or developer, and that it may not seem worthwhile at first because of the risk that the audience gained through a localised version of the application or service might not be enough to warrant the added cost for the localisation work, but if your product is already well known outside of English-speaking countries, I believe the risk of failure is fairly low. In my view, localisation is always added value. And in my case — when I directly address you with a proposal — you could at least talk to me and ask for a free estimate. If the localisation work is easy and doesn’t take too much of my time, the compensation I may ask could very well be just a licence for your application and to be added in the credits.

But apart from my services, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of localisation in a world that’s getting more and more interconnected. It’s ironic that in an age where Information and Communication are two of the most abused words, many people still can’t have a decent user experience because a website or, more importantly, an application isn’t available in their language.