I’d like to humbly announce that the first beta invites for a project I’m incredibly excited about are out the door. The project is called ifttt, shorthand for “if this then that”. With this blog I hope to begin fleshing out some of the initial inspirations that led to the inception of ifttt…
Recently ordered print postcards from 3 iphone apps: @postagram, Postcard Star, @POSTCARDing - here’s a quick comparison of what I got:
Postagram (top) - slick app with easy hooks to your photos Instagram & Facebook. The photo format is square, and can be resized and moved within the app. Maximum 140 characters of text for personal message and optional thumbnail picture of sender. You can send to multiple recipients, with direct credit card payment (vs. apple app store) of $.99 each. Delivery was three business days. The card is glossy black, front and back, with a pop-out square image and the personal message on both sides.
While the service and end product are high quality, this was not my favorite. It seems tailored specifically to Instagram (with matched square format - and similar name) and looks and feels less like a traditional postcard than I, personally, was hoping. Also not a fan of the black background and limit of 140 characters (I understand the constraint for Twitter, but why not allow the physical postcard to determine character count??). Overall score: B
Postcard Star (middle) - this app was the least intuitive of the bunch, and feels amateur by comparison. You can take a photo, or choose from your library (no hooks to social photos), and can choose horizontal or vertical orientation. As far as I can tell, there is a white border automatically formatted with the card. Text limit of 330 characters is a good approximation of what will fit on the printed card. You can enter recipient address, or select from contacts. The price is $1.00, but fulfillment is complicated because, aside from the automatic credit (for one postcard) when you purchase the app, you need to buy credits in advance (through paypal or credit card) and then use credits to purchase card. Not a particularly user-friendly experience. The postcard looked decent, glossy on both sides, though the colors were over-saturated (which could have been due to my original). Delivery was in three business days.
The service was difficult to use, and the end product was the least satisfying of the bunch. The color saturation was unfortunate, and the white border was unnecessary (at least make it an option). Kudos for the longer character count, but my overal score is B-.
Postcard on the Run (or @POSTCARDing, bottom) - simple, engaging app with a number of thoughtful features, PCOTR showed a lot of promise - but almost blew it. The social hooks are there (you can select photos from Facebook), formatting is easy (drag to position in rectangular frame), ten font choices available for the message (though limited to 200 characters), you can sign your name at the end of the message (VERY nice touch), and it can even auto-request address info for the recipient(s) (just provide email). You can also insert a GPS map above the recipient address (though we can reasonably hope the mailman already knows how to get there). Enter credit card info and you’re done ($1.49). Overall, the flow is intuitive, engaging, and drop-dead easy.
HOWEVER, I clicked ‘Send your postcard’ but the postcard never came. After 11 days, I emailed PCOTR, and the founder, Josh Brooks said that according to the system, the card printed and mailed, but he was happy to send another. But again - no card. So after 3+ weeks I wrote again to say the card still hadn’t come. Josh apologized and said he’d look into it. They he wrote back to said there was a bug, and they would fix it. Three days later, my card, finally, arrived.
And it was worth it: a classic looking postcard with rich color and nice finish. You might say the late delivery requires a downgrade, but I see the outcome as good customer service (and having worked in startups, I appreciate the attention from the founder). My only complaint with Postcard on the Run? Text constraint. Increase it from the 200 character limit, and I’d be willing to offer a perfect score. As it is now, PCOTR gets a respectable A-, and designation as my favorite iPhone postcard app.
The raw power of bacon.
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Stevie Wonder & Bob Marley
The Great Divergence is over, folks.Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Some people interpreted the Geotaggers’ World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in piaces that tourists don’t visit.
Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).
Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).
Yellow points are pictures where it can’t be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven’t taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all.
The maps are ordered by the number of pictures taken by locals.
Base map © OpenStreetMap, CC-BY-SA
mischief on the streets of Rome
The Irresistible Rise of Apple’s iPhone
In preparation for the festival, we’ll be posting photos, videos, and translation-related tidbits here on Wave’s tumblr. Send us your own photos or videos of poetry in translation, and if we post them, you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a complimentary pass to the festival, and a festival welcome packet (which includes, among other delights: a handmade book, pamphlets, and festival ephemera). Submit to: wavetumblr@gmail.com.
“If the objective of the White House and Speaker Boehner was to demonstrate to the American people that they have gotten the message from the markets and from voters that our economic straits are so dire that it is time to set petty politics aside, they have failed before they started,” said David Rothkopf, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “This childish gamesmanship regarding timing reconfirms to the world that Washington is a sandbox full of petulant children who don’t play well together.” He called Wednesday’s antics “late-summer silliness.”
New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/us/politics/01obama.html
(Source: The New York Times)
Bittman nails the Obama administration today in this surprising (to me) piece on the current trend of profits over environment. He connects a lot of dots, but brings it together in the end. (I’d counter by saying that Obama was in a fix - he has had to choose jobs and stimulus over the environment).
I think this section is worth quoting in full:
Sacrificing the environment for profits didn’t stop with Bush, and it doesn’t stop with genetically modified organisms. Take, for example, the Keystone XL pipeline extension. XL is right: the 36-inch-wide pipeline, which will stretch from the Alberta tar sands across the Great Plains to the Gulf Coast, will cost $7 billion and run for 1,711 miles — more than twice as long as the Alaska pipeline. It will cross nearly 2,000 rivers, the huge wetlands ecosystem called the Nebraska Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer, the country’s biggest underground freshwater supply.
If Keystone is built, we’ll see rising greenhouse gas emissions right away (tar sands production creates three times as many greenhouse gases as does conventional oil), and our increased dependence on fossil fuels will further the likelihood of climate-change disaster. Then there is the disastrous potential of leaks of the non-Wiki-variety. (It’s happened before.)
Proponents say the pipeline will ease gas prices and oil “insecurity.” But domestic drilling has raised, not lowered, oil prices, and as for the insecurity — what we need is to develop wiser ways to use the oil we have.
They say, too, that the pipeline could create 100,000 new jobs. But even the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union oppose the pipeline, saying, “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil.”
Sounds as if union officials have been reading the writer and activist Bill McKibben, who calls the pipeline “a fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent,” and NASA scientist Jim Hansen, who says the oil Keystone will deliver “is essentially game over” for the planet.
Game over? No problem, says the State Department (read the rest below:
Source: NYTimes
Quick cameos of my uncle, Arthur Hynes, prior to arrest at White House protesting #KeystoneXL (one glimpse of him at ~3:18, on his knees shooting video). For some reason, more focus in this clip on Daryl Hanna than my Uncle Arthur.
Saw John Prine at WolfTrap Saturday night. He’s lost a bit of his swagger, but still sounds great! (That’s the Way that the World Goes Round - 1978)
.@wholefoods bait & switch: pre-cut fish sold at significant premium to unsuspecting shoppers. I’m a whole foodie, but this practice is deceptive - tricked my wife, and tricked my mother-in-law, who returned from the store yesterday so pleased about the great price for halibut: $7.99 a pound.
No, actually — the price was $7.99 per *6 oz. piece*. The five pieces they wrapped up when she asked for “about two pounds” totaled $40. The actual price per pound was $22, or about 20% more than the non-pre-cut halibut they display non-adjacently.
So, for the hurried, unsuspecting Whole Foods shopper seeking fish counter bargains, not only are they not getting the rock bottom price as ‘advertised’ (90%+ of the product on display is sold by the pound), they are actually paying MORE to have fish cut into little pieces. The grift is quite successful, using our small family as a test case. I almost fell for it a few months ago (I had a “let me get this straight” moment with the fish monger) but my wife was duped by ‘cheap’ salmon a few weeks later, and my mother-in-law took the bait yesterday.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Observations and interests of Kit Cody
kitcody [at] gmail [dot] com
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
~John Lennon
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