Podcasts about marsedit

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun dive into the latest iOS 18.4 update and put Apple's much-hyped Visual Intelligence feature to the test—and let's just say, it didn't go quite as expected. They discuss real-world accessibility challenges with this new tool, especially when compared to apps like Be My Eyes. Plus, they explore the new ambient playlists in Apple Music and debate their actual usefulness.The conversation soon shifts into a broader Apple critique: from Siri's unreliability to ongoing accessibility issues in iCloud for Windows, and the frustrating UI in Apple's Voice Memos app. Listener Brian introduces the accessible Tape It app, prompting a larger discussion about mobile vs. desktop recording and editing for blind users. Meanwhile, Steven shares his workflow for using VoiceOver with Final Cut and reveals how he's mastering drag-and-drop with a screen reader.We also hear thoughtful feedback from listeners about Braille literacy, the challenges of light sensitivity, and the emotional impact of losing sight—especially when thinking about past visual experiences like video games or driving. The episode wraps with an email segment touching on the confusing new AI categorization in Apple Mail and audio clarity issues in podcasting.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction and Tech Rush02:53 iOS 18.4 Features and Visual Intelligence06:09 Apple Music's Ambient Playlists08:59 iCloud for Windows Accessibility Issues12:14 VoiceOver Command Customization15:12 Mouse Control with VoiceOver17:57 Exploring Drag and Drop Functionality20:50 Light Sensitivity and Personal Experiences23:47 Conclusion and Future Topics28:59 Nostalgia and Gaming Experience32:18 The Importance of Open Conversations33:48 Listener Feedback and Community Engagement35:44 Accessibility in Audio Recording Apps39:03 Desktop vs Mobile for Audio Editing42:20 Clarity in Communication for Accessibility52:44 Braille Literacy and Employment PerspectivesGet in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant LinksTape It App – Audio recorder with dual-mic support and accessible trimmingAppleVis iOS 18.4 Review – Deep dive into the update and accessibility featuresEcho Vision Glasses by Agiga – AI-powered smart glasses for blind usersFerrite Recording Studio – Mobile audio editor for iOSMarsEdit – Mac-based WordPress editorNon-24 Awareness – Learn more about circadian rhythm disorders affecting blind individuals Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

Manton ships a new Micro.blog feature for photo collections. Daniel and Manton talk about the virtue of providing third-party APIs to support the same kinds of features as you add them to the platform as first-party features. How to decide when to release a major, paid upgrade? Daniel weighs the possibility of subscription pricing for MarsEdit. And finally, teasing Micro.one and developing features and products in secret so that people can't talk you out of them before they ship. The post Episode 623: Talking Myself Out of It appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton is working on a new feature for Micro.blog, with particular attention to the Mac app. Daniel is refactoring MarsEdit and taking advantage of Swift 6 concurrency. Manton and Daniel talk about the latest announcements from OpenAI and the potential impact to software developers of the AI era. The post Episode 622: What Am I Here For? appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton and Daniel discuss closed platforms vs. more open platforms, Apple's new EU rules around linking for external purchases, and Patreon's option to pass Apple's fee on to creators or patrons. Then, a coding update on Manton's work on a new text editor for Micro.blog, comparing and contrasting with MarsEdit's text editor. The post Episode 609: Accidentally Opt-In appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel and Manton talk about Micro.blog's audio features and the uniqueness of “audio narration” for blog posts. They discuss the value of human narration as a counterforce to AI, and how we can use overt feature differences to attract attention. Then, Daniel shares what's new in the MarsEdit 5.2 update. Daniel describes his workflow for informing customers about updates they requested, a way to make both them and yourself feel good. Finally, Manton is about to start a road trip to WWDC, and they speculate about whether Apple will add a live component to WWDC when Apple's competitors now have a live audience again — the competitive advantage of being human in a robotic era. The post Episode 601: Here Comes Apple appeared first on Core Intuition.

Welcome to Hemispheric Views, Episode 001! Wait, no, that's wrong.. Episode 100!

Daniel and Manton talk about the MarsEdit 5.1 release and some things that affected it, such as the range of Mastodon instances and forks with different behaviors. They talk about the increasing sentiment towards locking down access to data on the web, in Mastodon specifically and more generally the public's reaction to AI bots. How will AI empower data collectors to “imitate” styles of other expressions, and how does using copyrighted visual art to train AI differ from using copyrighted binary code to train code? Daniel answers why MarsEdit 5.1 isn't called 6.0, plus some closing thoughts about the waning viability of one-time purchases for desktop software. The post Episode 578: Snarfing Up The Data appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel finally ships a MarsEdit beta for Mastodon, and Manton and Daniel discuss the value of the beta feedback loop, with Daniel keeping focus on shipping the final 5.1 release. They reflect on the various ways that blogging and microblogging services treat photos. Finally, they talk about how shipping a new version often means cutting what you think are vital features. Ship often to increase your odds of success. The post Episode 568: Just Ship The Damn Thing! appeared first on Core Intuition.

Science centers rule! There is or is not an elephant in the room, which is it? A new corner brought to you by Andrew! Arcadia June 2023 results are in! Don't forget the important random facts about business and basketball! Science Centers 00:00:00 Discovery Space at the Uni (https://www.earlystartdiscoveryspace.edu.au/visit/)

Manton and Daniel recap Micro Camp 2023 and look forward to WWDC, including events from John Gruber and Try Swift. Then they wrap up with how Daniel's 50%-off sale for MarsEdit went. The post Episode 559: I’m A Little Jealous appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton asks Daniel about MarsEdit 5.1's progress, particular about the forthcoming ability to post to Mastodon. They talk about some shortcomings of Mastodon's API, and Daniel's effort to submit a pull request that remedies one such shortcoming. Finally, they talk about Manton's resistance to considering Mastodon a “real blogging platform”, itemize the features that prevent it from being one, and wonder about how it might evolve in the future. The post Episode 554: Get Yourself Into a Pickle appeared first on Core Intuition.

For the first show of the new year, Daniel and Manton talk about themes vs. resolutions, follow up bug fix updates to the MarsEdit 5 release, and book goals in Micro.blog. They reflect on the virtue of making things rather than merely consuming them, and Daniel's lack of an enthusiastic desire to work on “just one app”. What is the likelihood of MarsEdit becoming “the thing”? The post Episode 543: A Meandering Path appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel and Manton talk about Micro.blog trying to get more serious about marketing. How do we actually measure the success of advertising campaigns, and should we aim to attract more “influencers” to our products? Manton tries to be conscious of wrapping up high-pressure work in time to take it easy for the holidays. Finally, Daniel gives an update on his continuing efforts to get MarsEdit 5 approved in the Mac App Store. The post Episode 541: No Whammies, Big Money appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton talks to Daniel about releasing MarsEdit 5, his excitement aboutthe positive reactions, and his frustration about it not being approved by Mac App Store Review. They grapple with the uncertainty that app review opaqueness creates, and Daniel wonders if he could have done anything differently to make things go more smoothly. They talk about the mind-blowing impact of OpenAI's ChatGPT, and about the implications of machine learning on human creativity. Finally, they weigh the pluses of minuses of AI in general, and Daniel wonders whether he could fake virtually any job with the help of the technology. The post Episode 540: Moderately Blown Away appeared first on Core Intuition.

Uppvärmning Ett tråkigt hörn Årets julkalender - ett trevligt hörn Ämnen Tangentbord, möss, och arbetsplatser Skärmäventyr - Fredrik har mer plats på skrivbordet En bra kundupplevelse - Fredrik blev portad Appar för grupper och Microsofts önskan att bygga en allt-i-ett-app. Vi är milt skeptiska Film & TV Rams - dokumentär om Dieter 4/5 BMÅ (F) Länkar Pixelbelysning - Twinkly squares Marsedit 5 Red sweater software Fredriks 40%-tangentbord Ett billigt HP-tangentbord Fredriks 4K-skärm Magnet - fönsterhanteringsapp för Mac Zencastr Torget Freja e-ID Rams - dokumentären om Dieter Rams Gary Hustwit - dokumentärfilmaren som gjort Rams med flera fina dokumentärer Apple-design som liknar Dieter Rams-design String-systemet Vimeo App: the human story Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-335-riktigt-viktigt.html

John Gruber joins Jason on Upgrade for the first time. Topics include eWorld, Apple's iPhone production problems in China, FIFA and Qatar and the World Cup, the reasons behind Apple's sports ambitions, BBEdit, regular expressions, Perl and Python, MarsEdit, nanotexture displays, webcams, and the state of the art in ADB-to-USB adapters. Happy Cyber Monday to all those who celebrate!

John Gruber joins Jason on Upgrade for the first time. Topics include eWorld, Apple's iPhone production problems in China, FIFA and Qatar and the World Cup, the reasons behind Apple's sports ambitions, BBEdit, regular expressions, Perl and Python, MarsEdit, nanotexture displays, webcams, and the state of the art in ADB-to-USB adapters. Happy Cyber Monday to all those who celebrate!

Manton and Daniel catch up on the latest news from Twitter, including the fact that Twitter is allegedly hiring. They talk about whether Manton would accept the far-fetched opportunity to be CEO of Twitter, and what he would do in that scenario. They acknowledge the mass exodus from Twitter and the potentially golden opportunity for both Daniel and Manton with respect to Micro.blog and MarsEdit. Finally, Daniel stares down the last two week of MarsEdit 5 development before his promised ship date. The post Episode 538: The Last Employee At Twitter appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton returns from the road while Twitter continues going off the rails. What is the company's viability as they bewilder users and advertisers, and how much should Manton react to the opportunities that might exist? Daniel and Manton discuss Twitter, whether Jack Dorsey stands to gain even if Twitter fails, and the nihilistic tendencies of certain leaders. Finally, Manton checks in with Daniel on progress toward MarsEdit 5. The post Episode 537: With Public Squares Like These appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton checks in with Daniel from his west coast road trip. They talk about Elon Musk's first, chaotic week at Twitter. Daniel talks about his commitment to shipping MarsEdit 5 on Dec 5, and how sometimes we have to ship software for own sake first, and for customers' sake second. The post Episode 536: Worse Than I Thought It Would Be appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel and Manton review Manton's latest progress with the Indie Microblogging book. They talk about the need to get into a groove when working on a long-running project, and not to promise too much when setting goals for yourself or others. Finally, Daniel shares plans for a new “micro posting” UI for MarsEdit. The post Episode 533: A Moment Of Insight appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton and Daniel talk about Daniel's progress on MarsEdit 5. They weigh the pros and cons of releasing major upgrades vs. a steady stream of "regular updates." They talk about the changing landscape of PR and marketing for Mac software, and icky feelings associated with trying to “reach influencers.” Finally, they talk about the value of sticking to one's own ideals an indie developer, and powering through feelings of hopelessness when you run into challenges. The post Episode 532: Swing for the Fences appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton and Daniel catch up on their respectively busy vacation plans over recent weeks, and start looking forward to a more structured September schedule. Daniel shares his early progress on MarsEdit 5 development, while Manton talks about his experience converting a private blog from WordPress to Micro.blog, after first going all-in on the WordPress Block Editor, to understand how it works. The post Episode 526: Home Alone appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton tells Daniel more about his experience with Blinksale, how they raised his monthly fee to account for features that he didn't receive. They talk about our collective tendency as customers to lose track of the amount we are paying for subscription services that raise their prices regularly over time. Daniel explains that he shipped MarsEdit 4.6 but that it doesn't include all the updates he hoped for, and they elaborate on the challenge of continuing to ship updates while perpetually having to put off certain changes. The post Episode 524: It Did Start To Bug Me appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel and Manton talk about plans for MarsEdit 5, requiring a later version of macOS, and even employing SwiftUI in the new version. When is it the right time to drop support for older OSes because of the lure of newer features? Then they talk about when a major upgrade is “paid upgrade-worthy” and which platforms Daniel should invest in for MarsEdit's future. The post Episode 523: A Secret Futurist appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel talks to Manton about his continuing work to transition MarsEdit away from legacy WebView, the difficulty of doing so, and the thrill of becoming a "tangential expert" in web development. They react to a small rift in the WordPress community involving Matt Mullenweg and Go Daddy, and compare thoughts on what obligations, if any, consumers of open source software have to the creators. The post Episode 519: It’s A Gift appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton asks Daniel about hints he's dropped regarding an upcoming MarsEdit 5 release. Daniel talks about how another 5 years has crept up on him and that he now feels another update is overdue. They talk about embracing relatively old Apple frameworks that are nonetheless new to us, and focusing on shipping updates with features that add value, even if they don't fulfill every “magical” nuance you hoped they might. The post Episode 518: Rubbing Salt In The Wound appeared first on Core Intuition.

In this episode, Rosemary and David are joined by Daniel Jalkut, the man in the red sweater behind FastScripts, MarsEdit, and the Core Intuition podcast. Together they ponder the future of AppleScript, the restaurant at the end of the universe, and just how fast is a script?

In this episode, Rosemary and David are joined by Daniel Jalkut, the man in the red sweater behind FastScripts, MarsEdit, and the Core Intuition podcast. Together they ponder the future of AppleScript, the restaurant at the end of the universe, and just how fast is a script?

Jason takes us on a wonderful tour of tech history and critique, covering the home row, mobile devices and ringtones (yes, ringtones). Meanwhile, Andrew completes his media-consumption homework and for part of it (hint: The Matrix franchise) Martin sighs a lot. WARNING: Media Corner contains spoilers for The Matrix films, so skip this chapter in your podcast player if you wish to avoid these. Hello Feld Family! 00:00:00 Hi, Jodie and Mum!

Daniel ships MarsEdit 4.5, and talks with Manton about the moderate success of aiming for a specific goal with "the index card directive." Discussion of the various legal settlements and policy clarifications Apple has been sharing with respect to the App Store. Speculation about Apple's strategy for controlling the user experience when allowing links to external subscription info. Manton talks briefly about his plan to incorporate Apple's accommodation of an external link into Micro.blog. The post Episode 478: I Think It's Gonna Be A Mess appeared first on Core Intuition.

Daniel and Manton talk about 1Password's decision to use Electron for it's next major update, and what that says about Apple's confusing and conflicting platform frameworks. They talk about the continuing role of AppKit as a the only way to achieve many expected macOS behaviors, and wonder if the next-generation standard for desktop apps might actually be a "web technology." Finally, Manton presses Daniel about his alleged ambition to “focus on shipping MarsEdit 4.5.” The post Episode 477: AppKit Is The Only Way appeared first on Core Intuition.

Manton and Daniel review how Micro Camp went, and how Manton might refine the format in the future. Manton asks Daniel why he decided to ship an update to Touché when he's allegedly focused on MarsEdit 4.5. Finally, they talk about Manton's update to Micro.blog to support the new Glass photo-sharing service. The post Episode 476: It Was A Lot Of Work appeared first on Core Intuition.

Fettisdagen. Hur många semlor har inmundigats? Fredrik kommer ut som hetväggare Christian har bloggat om sin Covid Vad är grejen med Clubhouse? Disruption för ljud, typ. Öppet alternativ finns redan. Fredrik tror sig ha fattat hur det skulle kunna bli något. Jocke är stundtals skeptisk Microsoft’s autofill solution for passwords - och andra lösenordstjänster Engångsköp ersättas med prenumeration för allt fler appar. Vad tycker vi om det? Christian har inte köpt skrivare utan har istället börjat fundera på mekaniskt tangentbord. Viss entusiasm utbryter Film och TV For All Mankind. Säsong 2 börjar på fredag. Dessutom släpper Apple podden For All Mankind: The official podcast. Länkar Hetvägg Christians Covidblogg Clubhouse M vs M Stratechery om Clubhouse Jam - öppet alternativ Icloud keychain Microsofts lösenordstjänst Microsoft authenticator Enpass Things App som håller ordning på prenumerationsappar Drafts Byword IA writer Desk Marsedit BBedit Transmit Coda Nova Playdate Das keyboard Bruna MX-brytare Tangentbordet Christian är sugen på Varmilo For all mankind säsong 2 For all mankind - podden Fredrik Björeman, Joacim Melin och Christian Åhs. Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-246-ditt-losenord-ar-fult-copy.html.

Daniel ships MarsEdit 4.4, and talks with Mantonb about taking stock of bugs and examining the anxiety around shipping updates. They look forward to MarsEdit 5, Black Ink for iOS, and the potential business models Daniel might adopt. They talk about learning to disregard unhelpful criticism, and prioritizing survival as an indie over trying to please everybody.

Manton and Daniel talk about Twitter's massive security breach, and scrutinize CEO Jack Dorsey’s public image in the wake of it. Daniel wonders whether Twitter’s idealistic employees could be more empowered by another leader, while Manton points out that in any case they are not. Finally, they catch each other up with progress reports on MarsEdit and Micro.blog feature enhancements.

Daniel and Manton talk about Apple's Developer Transition Kit ... without really talking about it. They weigh the possibility of apps breaking on ARM based Macs even if frameworks aren't technically removed. Manton shares his renewed enthusiasm about developing for Big Sur, and Daniel tries to get back on track with releasing MarsEdit 4.4.

Daniel and Manton react to Apple’s statement against racism, and also talk a bit about the Accidental Tech Podcast's statements. They talk about trying to figure out what we can all do as individuals in the wake of this. Daniel talks about getting a Black Ink update out the door while continuing to struggle with finishing up MarsEdit 4.4. Manton shares an update on Micro.blog progress, and shares his new “stop keeping track of things” methodology for getting things done.

Manton checks in with Daniel about progress with MarsEdit 4.4, and Daniel explains his lack of focus has led him down a new crossword obsession. Manton talks about Shutting down Micro.blog's Slack, and they discuss whether a comparable decision for Core Intuition would make sense. Finally, they talk more generally about the value of cutting out distractions and less important projects, in order to focus on the most important goals.

Manton and Daniel talk about iA Writer's new support for publishing directly to Micro.blog, and segue in to a conversation about the pragmatism of trying to improve SEO for pertinent terms such as "Micropub" and "WordPress." They talk about the forthcoming support for Micro.blog in MarsEdit, and the effects of the pandemic on focus and motivation. Finally, they celebrate the value of the written word in business collaboration, and the many ways that meetings, virtual or otherwise, fall short.

Manton and Daniel talk about their collaboration on updates to the XML-RPC based API that MarsEdit uses to communicate with Micro.blog. They talk about the long history of blogging APIs, about the merit of focusing on adding one new supported system at a time to MarsEdit for maximal PR benefit, and how much MarsEdit should adapt to some of the more unique features of Micro.blog.

Daniel and Manton check in about the state of the Covid-19 crisis, celebrate Powell's bookstore rehiring many employees, and take stock of the massive changes going on all over the world. Daniel talks about his efforts to add support for the Ghost publishing system to MarsEdit. They react to Apple's acquisition of Dark Sky, and wonder about the prospects of a future "WeatherKit" framework.

Manton and Daniel talk about the FBI's renewed demand that Apple provide iPhone-cracking services. They discuss when it would be acceptable, if ever, for Apple to provide such assistance, and the slippery slope of saying yes even once. Daniel follows up on his growing sureness that he will drop support for Blogger from MarsEdit, and Manton talks a little more about his upcoming book on Microblogging.

Daniel talks to Manton about his ongoing struggle to support Google's Blogger platform in MarsEdit, and his inclination to drop support for it. They talk about weighing the merits of supporting one platform or another, and the virtue in general of latching onto growing platforms instead dying platforms.

Daniel and Manton try to take stock of long-term personal goals, thinking of how they align with and overlap with money-making goals. Manton reports back after watching Matt Mullenweg's "State of the Word" talk at WordCamp US. Manton reflects on the important of simplicity for Micro.blog in contrast to WordPress, while Daniel considers that MarsEdit also serves as a more complex interface to Micro.blog. Finally, they digest the latest Apple announcements, focusing on the merits of the new AirPods Pro, and whether AppleTV+ is a justifiable pursuit for the company.

Indie developer Daniel Jalkut writes some apps you might use: MarsEdit, ...

Maxwell Ivey is a master of many, having been involved with carnivals in his earlier years, where he both operated and sold equipment. Later, he started a blog in carnival operations before eventually starting his incredibly successful blog The Blind Blogger, Since that, he has gone on to become a speaker and author. To read more about Max, visit The Blind Blogger.  Books by Max: Leading You Out of Darkness Into the Light The Blind Blogger’s NYC Adventures It’s Not the Cookie, It’s the Bag Top recommendations by Max: MarsEdit by Red Sweater – Tool to edit blogs  Mad Mimi – Email sender, tracker, and newsletter tool  Max’s Podcast: What’s Your Excuse? Find Max on the following socials: Twitter:  @maxwellivey Youtube: Maxwellivey If you liked this episode, please let me know on Twitter.  Thank you for listening to the Traction Growth & Income podcast. If you haven’t done so already, I would sincerely appreciate a quick rating and review on the iTunes! It really helps grow awareness for the show.  If you’re a creative wanting to make money from your craft, be sure to check out Stagepass today in order to let your audience support you by creating experiences for auction.

Danel talks to Manton about his reflections on the merit of seeking to "revolutionize" something with a software product, vs. simply trying to "make a nice thing." They discuss the relatively revolutionary ambition of Micro.blog, and the sometimes non-revolutionary game of catch-up that Daniel plays with MarsEdit. Manton catches us up on his analysis of Tumblr in the wake of the Automattic acquisition, talks about some new features he's building in the wake of that, and takes Daniel mildly to task for comments he made about Micro.blog's viability as an Instagram alternative.

Manton and Daniel react to news that Automattic is acquiring Tumblr. They talk about the potential pros and cons for Tumblr and Automattic, as well as for Micro.blog and MarsEdit. They talk about Matt Mullenweg's optimism about the future of the open web, and the turning tide back towards blogging. Finally, they wonder whether Tumblr will have as much of an impact on Automattic as Automattic has on it.

Manton talks with Daniel about Micro.blog's mention in The New Yorker, which leads into a discussion about being on the lookout for PR opportunities, and "answering every call" even if you don't particularly feel like talking to the press. Daniel reviews his experiences with Setapp, one week into listing MarsEdit on the subscription service, and the two reflect on the virtue of investing in multiple sales channels as a way of diversifying the opportunity for lucky breaks.

Daniel talks to Manton about his experience adding MarsEdit to the Setapp subscription software service, and connects it to a general thrust of trying new things to expand his indie business revenues. They talk through a number of issues relating to Setapp, and delve again into questions about balancing efforts invested into development vs. other activities such as marketing.

We hope you'll join us during Apple's March 25th event in our chat room at podfeet.com/chat. My latest ScreenCastsOnline tutorial is on the awesome blogging tool MarsEdit. We attended CSUN’s Assistive Technology Conference and I've got an overview of what we learned along with interviews with Assistivewear about Proloquo2Go, their AAC App, and Ocutech low vision aids, and I'll tell you about QD Laser's retinal projection eyewear called Retissa. Mixed in with all the CSUN talk we've got a review by Allister Jenks about SleepPhones (he calls them pajamas for your ears)) and I've got a review of the Ampere Unravel and Qi charing case for AirPods. It's a fun-filled, action packed show!

We've got more interviews from CES, starting with one with Omnicharge about their portable power banks that allow us to charge USB-C-enabled laptops directly. Then I'll tell you the tale of the rabbit hole I fell down when trying to use Markdown in a locally-hosted WordPress installation on my Mac so that I could show it in a video tutorial about MarsEdit for ScreenCasts Online. We'll hear about Targus's up and coming video docking stations that will provide more video out than you may have seen before. We'll hear about how Bitdefender BOX 2 might help to secure your network from within your house. Then Bart Busschots is back with another installment of Security Bits.

On this week’s episode, Jean chats with Daniel Jalkut, the developer of MarsEdit, the blogging editor for Mac. As co-host with Manton on the Core Intuition podcast for 10 years (

Som traditionen bjuder har pojkarna spelat in årets julavsnitt, det tredje i ordningen. Detta är ett actionpackat äventyr för hela familjen där lyssnarna bjuds på spänning, glädje och inspiration om hur deras liv kan bli ännu rikare, roligare och mer meningsfulla. Eller så handlar det om Star Wars, IP-telefoni, lite länktips, ytterligare funderingar runt Android, en “ny” jobbdator, BBS:er och Fidonet och något nytt som redaktionen är en aning skeptisk till: glöbbel. Tidigare julavsnitt 2016: Julafton på dödsstjärnan 2015: Saker min far lärt mig 01:48: Glöbbel - årets julfikatrend 04:40: App: the human story 08:25: The last jedi - spoilerfritt 11:29: Iphone och batteritid 14:07: Jocke har jobb-Mac igen 15:02: Lyssnarpost - bra Androidlurar? 20:29: Nätneutralitet - the BM story 25:28: Disney köper Fox 28:09: Fredriks bild 28:24: Filmtips: Baby driver 31:04: Poddtips: två avsnitt av Vector 34:11: Veckans URL:er 37:38: Jockes julafton har … eskalerat 39:44: BBS-nytt Länkar Länkar Webbplatsen Glöbbel Årets Blossa Frontdoor App: the human story Nätneutralitet Disney köper det mesta av Fox Baby driver - Fredriks filmtips The driver Vector - avsnitten om Marsedit och Drafts Marsedit Drafts wtfismyip.com Kodsnack om Swift Cenny fuckingblocksyntax.com 0fg.se Taylors & Jones TPCS Nikom Tosser Delta city SynergyClient - fjärrstyr en Amiga! Retrodatorer - håll utkik efter matnyttiga BBS-artiklar! Teletek Joaquim Homrighausen Binkp Binklyterm Binkd Turbo Pascal Free Pascal RTFM EMSI/IEMSI som det beskrevs i FSC-056 av Joaquim Homrighausen i maj 1991. Zmodem Hasselbacken Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-106-amiga-as-a-service.html.

Rene speaks with MarsEdit developer, Daniel Jalkut, and John Gruber of Daring Fireball about the history and release of MarsEdit 4, blogging tools, the Mac App Store, and more. Links: MarsEdit 4 first look on iMore Red Sweater Software Daring Fireball Daniel Jalkut on Twitter John Gruber on Twitter Sponsors: MintSIM: Voice, data, and text for less. Get free first-class shipping with code VTFREESHIP. Thrifter.com: All the best deals from Amazon, Best Buy, and more, fussily curated and constantly updated. Subscribe via: ⁃Apple Podcasts ⁃Overcast ⁃Pocket Casts ⁃Castro ⁃RSS Follow on: ⁃Web ⁃Twitter ⁃Instagram ⁃Facebook  

MarsEdit 4 ships! I talk about why apps should be compatible, and the challenge in reaching a new audience.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he's learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he's gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience. Start selling products as early as possible. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. Be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. Show up consistently to earn people's trust and create an anticipation of future value. Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience. Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Show Notes Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He's been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now. His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that's knowing who you're creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become. I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that's going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out. If you're listening to this in your podcast player, it's starting today, I think. I'll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you're creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work. A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output. Shawn, that's one of the longer intros I've ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here. Shawn Blanc Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You're so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you're at right now. Shawn: Absolutely. I'm in Kansas City. Originally, I'm from Denver. I'm a Colorado guy at heart. I've been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It's insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago. Aaron: Congrats! Shawn: It's awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think. Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums. Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It's a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running. 25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don't want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it's a very demanding spot. Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There's no way. I don't want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I'm doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought. I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there. Aaron: How old were you at this point? Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I'm quitting. I'm going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I'm doing, I'll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership. Aaron: You aren't still doing that, are you? Shawn: It's on hiatus at the moment. We'll see. I'm going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It's fun. Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing? Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that's $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That's not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit. I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger. Aaron: I bet that was exciting. Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I'm here. I'm making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we're going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It's for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you're doing. Let's keep the relationship going,” it's like having a DTR with your audience. There's something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It's like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there's going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever. Aaron: Some of the haters that come later? Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on. Aaron: That's awesome. Asking for Money Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life? Shawn: There were so many. It's hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'” Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing. Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it's called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews. I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite. It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I'm going to charge for it.” Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money? Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can't believe how much I'm asking for this.” Aaron: What did you think was going to happen? Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something. Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right? Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.” Since then, in the last four or five years that I've sold it, I want to say that it's sold $50,000 over the years. That's awesome. There's something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot. Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience. Now I'm creating products for them to buy. That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I'm providing people and to price it correctly. That's just hard. I think that's why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn't a formula for how much value you're providing and how much you should charge for it. You can't just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you're providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It's hard to do it when you're starting. The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products. Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you're doing. I'm sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I've done this once before already. Now it's like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.” Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it's there. I'm done. It's out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book. Product Launch Hiccups Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it's not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.” I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I'm listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I'm reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing. The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What's worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified. Aaron: Nobody said anything?? Shawn: They didn't. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don't even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren't going to consider valuable. Here's this huge, huge mistake. What a goof! Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details. Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it's a case study in sweating the details itself. You'll see all the areas where I've sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified. Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it's almost humanizing. It's like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they're not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it's kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You're like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That's really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully. Shawn: That's why it's so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it. Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you're thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it's so much better to say, “What's the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let's do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.” If you don't ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly. Before you know it, it's been a year and a half, and you've got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you're still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened. Start Moving Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They're these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way. Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.” Action brings clarity. You're waiting for clarity before taking action, and it's not going to happen—you have to start moving. You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn't. Aaron: That's an incredible analogy. I'm totally going to use that in the future now. It's perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That's where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they're at the end, so you're like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can't make any mistakes. I can't take a wrong turn, because that's where all my friends are, and that's where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That's really incredible. Creating a Customer Avatar Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go! Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn't have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it's very similar. Who's your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who's name was Shawn Spurdee. He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he's going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball. He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I'm interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.” It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing. You know who you're trying to target. I'm still the writer for sure, but we've switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don't have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they're huge, these giant sticky notes. Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon? Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I'm sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It's weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself. Aaron: It seems like a waste of time. Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You're trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever. Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.” Shawn: Exactly. It's not just business, it's just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they're feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. We talked about, “Here's Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he's got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That's not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he's making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He's also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit. He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he's really tired, so the evenings don't feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he's not a morning person either, so he doesn't know when he's going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel? When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there's a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base. Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting. When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience. Creating an Empathy Map Shawn: There's this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what's your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down. Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can't focus. I'm distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I'm trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I'm trying to grow it. I'm working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I've only got about an hour left in the day. I'm so tired, and I don't want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don't know where to get started.” The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they're really in touch with their pain point. There's a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.” You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You'll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer. If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they're hungry for a solution. That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they're going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That's what we did. That's how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It's time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what's important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that's already happening in life. Or, they look at the thing that they're trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don't even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we're going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution. Use Your Audience's Language Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you're also even speaking their language. A) it's going to be cool because hopefully you'll do more sales, but B) you'll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That's the whole point. That's why we're here. That's one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you're trying to talk to and what it is you're trying to talk about, to help them. Aaron: That's mindblowing. That's fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction. How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It's always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. That's where listeners come from. So many people think that they'll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won't have any idea of who these people are. They're nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you're talking about. By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you're doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that's how you're going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships? Shawn: I think that's a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience: Consistency Honesty and transparency Relationships. 1. Consistency Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it's a phrase I like to use, and that's this: show up every day. That's consistency. We're just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you're in people's regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Show up on a regular basis. Also, that's how people know you're going to be there. There's something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you're showing up consistently. When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people's trust, but you create an anticipation of future value. You want to have that. That's huge. People are like, “I want to know what's next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge. 2. Honesty & Transparency Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there's a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don't want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you're also a person. You've got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that. Aaron: Stuff you cared about. Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff. Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. You're a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time. 3. Relationships Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I'm trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here's a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to link to it. I'm going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That's a way for you to grow your audience, but it's also a way for me to grow my audience. Your listeners, a lot of people, don't know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There's a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are. Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience. I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It's a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him. I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I'm going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that's awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that's worth talking about. Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we're doing, the Focus Summit. I'm punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it's a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we're doing and visa versa. I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they'll find some incredible resources. It's just fun. We're all just folks trying to do our best work, right? Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That's one of the best answers for building an audience that I've ever heard. The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners Aaron: The thing that I'm working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It's hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I'm sure you know, Shawn. I'm sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I've wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do. Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I'll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that. I'm trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I'm at the point now where I've started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you'd be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads. It's the building of community that will eventually attract people to you. When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net. You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too. Shawn: Yeah, exactly. Focus Summit & Products Aaron: That's fantastic. We're getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you've got coming up. What's the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that. Shawn: The summit! I'm so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It's about email distractions and stuff like that. We've got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain. Aaron: So much good advice. Shawn: It's like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here's the link: The Creative Focus Summit. After the summit wraps up, we're opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course. I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn't a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that's really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact. For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we've had close to 1,300 people go through it. It's basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It's way, way more than that. It's not tips and tricks. It's what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time? This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It's hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you. Aaron: That's me! You have to have a healthy life to do your best work. Shawn: You can't sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I'm super excited about it. We're going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We're doing a winter class for it. We've got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously. Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won't take it seriously. Shawn: It's so true. Aaron: You have to invest. Shawn: That's something else. We didn't get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that's another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They're going to find value for it. Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.” Shawn: Exactly. Very true. Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions? Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I'm @shawnblanc on Twitter.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he’s learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he’s gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires.Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience.Start selling products as early as possible.Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.Be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.Show up consistently to earn people’s trust and create an anticipation of future value.Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience.Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.Show NotesAaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He’s been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now.His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that’s knowing who you’re creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become.I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that’s going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out.If you’re listening to this in your podcast player, it’s starting today, I think. I’ll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you’re creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work.A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output.Shawn, that’s one of the longer intros I’ve ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here.Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here.Shawn BlancAaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You’re so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you’re at right now.Shawn: Absolutely. I’m in Kansas City. Originally, I’m from Denver. I’m a Colorado guy at heart. I’ve been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It’s insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago.Aaron: Congrats!Shawn: It’s awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think.Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums.Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It’s a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running.25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don’t want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it’s a very demanding spot.Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There’s no way. I don’t want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I’m doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought.I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there.Aaron: How old were you at this point?Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I’m quitting. I’m going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I’m doing, I’ll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership.Aaron: You aren’t still doing that, are you?Shawn: It’s on hiatus at the moment. We’ll see. I’m going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It’s fun.Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing?Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that’s $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That’s not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit.I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger.Aaron: I bet that was exciting.Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I’m here. I’m making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we’re going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It’s for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you’re doing. Let’s keep the relationship going,” it’s like having a DTR with your audience.There’s something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It’s like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there’s going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever.Aaron: Some of the haters that come later?Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on.Aaron: That’s awesome.Asking for MoneyAaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life?Shawn: There were so many. It’s hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'”Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing.Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it’s called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews.I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite.It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I’m going to charge for it.”Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money?Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can’t believe how much I’m asking for this.”Aaron: What did you think was going to happen?Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something.Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right?Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.”Since then, in the last four or five years that I’ve sold it, I want to say that it’s sold $50,000 over the years. That’s awesome. There’s something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot.Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience.Now I’m creating products for them to buy.That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I’m providing people and to price it correctly. That’s just hard. I think that’s why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn’t a formula for how much value you’re providing and how much you should charge for it.You can’t just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you’re providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It’s hard to do it when you’re starting.The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products.Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you’re doing. I’m sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I’ve done this once before already. Now it’s like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.”Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it’s there. I’m done. It’s out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book.Product Launch HiccupsShawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it’s not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.”I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I’m listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I’m reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing.The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What’s worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified.Aaron: Nobody said anything??Shawn: They didn’t. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don’t even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren’t going to consider valuable. Here’s this huge, huge mistake. What a goof!Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details.Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it’s a case study in sweating the details itself. You’ll see all the areas where I’ve sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified.Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it’s almost humanizing. It’s like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they’re not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it’s kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You’re like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That’s really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully.Shawn: That’s why it’s so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it.Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you’re thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it’s so much better to say, “What’s the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let’s do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.”If you don’t ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly.Before you know it, it’s been a year and a half, and you’ve got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you’re still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened.Start MovingShawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They’re these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way.Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.”Action brings clarity.You’re waiting for clarity before taking action, and it’s not going to happen—you have to start moving.You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn’t.Aaron: That’s an incredible analogy. I’m totally going to use that in the future now. It’s perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That’s where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they’re at the end, so you’re like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can’t make any mistakes. I can’t take a wrong turn, because that’s where all my friends are, and that’s where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That’s really incredible.Creating a Customer AvatarAaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go!Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn’t have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it’s very similar. Who’s your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who’s name was Shawn Spurdee.He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he’s going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball.He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I’m interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.”It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing.You know who you’re trying to target. I’m still the writer for sure, but we’ve switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don’t have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they’re huge, these giant sticky notes.Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon?Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I’m sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It’s weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself.Aaron: It seems like a waste of time.Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You’re trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever.Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.”Shawn: Exactly. It’s not just business, it’s just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they’re feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person.Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.We talked about, “Here’s Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he’s got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That’s not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he’s making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He’s also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit.He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he’s really tired, so the evenings don’t feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he’s not a morning person either, so he doesn’t know when he’s going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel?When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there’s a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base.Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting.When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience.Creating an Empathy MapShawn: There’s this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what’s your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down.Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can’t focus. I’m distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I’m trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I’m trying to grow it. I’m working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I’ve only got about an hour left in the day. I’m so tired, and I don’t want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don’t know where to get started.”The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they’re really in touch with their pain point. There’s a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.”You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You’ll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer.If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they’re hungry for a solution.That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they’re going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That’s what we did. That’s how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It’s time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what’s important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that’s already happening in life.Or, they look at the thing that they’re trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don’t even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we’re going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution.Use Your Audience’s LanguageShawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you’re also even speaking their language.A) it’s going to be cool because hopefully you’ll do more sales, but B) you’ll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here.That’s one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you’re trying to talk to and what it is you’re trying to talk about, to help them.Aaron: That’s mindblowing. That’s fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction.How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper ConnectionsAaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It’s always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here.Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.That’s where listeners come from. So many people think that they’ll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won’t have any idea of who these people are. They’re nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you’re talking about.By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you’re doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that’s how you’re going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships?Shawn: I think that’s a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience:ConsistencyHonesty and transparencyRelationships.1. ConsistencyShawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it’s a phrase I like to use, and that’s this: show up every day. That’s consistency. We’re just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you’re in people’s regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.Show up on a regular basis. Also, that’s how people know you’re going to be there. There’s something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you’re showing up consistently.When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people’s trust, but you create an anticipation of future value.You want to have that. That’s huge. People are like, “I want to know what’s next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge.2. Honesty & TransparencyShawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there’s a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don’t want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you’re also a person.You’ve got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that.Aaron: Stuff you cared about.Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff.Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.You’re a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time.3. RelationshipsShawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I’m trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here’s a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I’m going to tweet about it. I’m going to link to it. I’m going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That’s a way for you to grow your audience, but it’s also a way for me to grow my audience.Your listeners, a lot of people, don’t know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There’s a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are.Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience.I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It’s a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him.I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I’m going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that’s awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that’s worth talking about.Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we’re doing, the Focus Summit. I’m punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it’s a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we’re doing and visa versa.I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they’ll find some incredible resources. It’s just fun. We’re all just folks trying to do our best work, right?Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That’s one of the best answers for building an audience that I’ve ever heard.The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your ListenersAaron: The thing that I’m working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It’s hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I’m sure you know, Shawn. I’m sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I’ve wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do.Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I’ll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that.I’m trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I’m at the point now where I’ve started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you’d be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads.It’s the building of community that will eventually attract people to you.When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net.You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too.Shawn: Yeah, exactly.Focus Summit & ProductsAaron: That’s fantastic. We’re getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you’ve got coming up. What’s the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that.Shawn: The summit! I’m so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It’s about email distractions and stuff like that. We’ve got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain.Aaron: So much good advice.Shawn: It’s like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here’s the link: The Creative Focus Summit.After the summit wraps up, we’re opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course.I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn’t a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that’s really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact.For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we’ve had close to 1,300 people go through it. It’s basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It’s way, way more than that. It’s not tips and tricks. It’s what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time?This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It’s hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you.Aaron: That’s me!You have to have a healthy life to do your best work.Shawn: You can’t sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I’m super excited about it. We’re going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We’re doing a winter class for it. We’ve got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It’s going to be a blast. I’m really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously.Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won’t take it seriously.Shawn: It’s so true.Aaron: You have to invest.Shawn: That’s something else. We didn’t get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that’s another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They’re going to find value for it.Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.”Shawn: Exactly. Very true.Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions?Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I’m @shawnblanc on Twitter.

Our special guest this week, Daniel Jalkut, discusses MarsEdit, developing apps for Mac and iOS, and the difficult choices that independent app developers all face over the course of their careers.

New media pioneer and entrepreneur Darren Rowse — creator of both Digital Photography School and ProBlogger — joined me to chat about the opportunities that 13 years of blogging have provided, his new podcast, and the importance of having the right mindset as a writer.   Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By   Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! This sage blogging veteran and educator has blazed an inspiring path for enterprising online publishers. His step-by-step blog series — 31 Days to Build a Better Blog — went from zero to viable business in no time, and now it’s a podcast every content creator can listen to … for free. In this file Darren Rowse and I discuss: Why You Should Write Like You Talk How a Book Deal Was Born from a Blog Series How Writing Offline Can Boost Your Word Count The 3 Types of Writer’s Block All Bloggers Eventually Face How Public Accountability Can Light a Fire Under Your Ass Why You Need a Balance Between Dreaming and Doing How to Get the Maximum Impact From Your Writing Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes ProBlogger.com Digital Photography School Darren Rowse Speaking at WDS Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Problogger Podcast Problogger on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How ProBlogger s Darren Rowse Writes Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are the Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer s block. New media pioneer and entrepreneur Darren Rowse, creator of both Digital Photography School and ProBlogger joined me to chat about the opportunities that 13 years of blogging have provided, his new podcast, and the importance of having the right mindset as a writer. The sage blogging veteran and educator has blazed an inspiring path for enterprising online publishers. His step-by-step series, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, went from zero to viable business in no time, and now it’s a podcast every content creator can listen to for free. In this File, Darren Rowse and I discuss why you should write like you talk, how a book deal was born from a blog series, how writing offline can boost your word count, the three types of writer’s block all bloggers eventually face, and why you need a balance between dreaming and doing. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please do us a favor and leave a rating or a review in iTunes to help other writers find us. Thanks for listening. Darren, thank you so much for joining me on The Writer Files. I really appreciate you stopping by. Darren Rowse: You’re welcome. Kelton Reid: For listeners who may not be familiar with your incredibly inspiring story, who are you, and what is your area of expertise as a writer? Darren Rowse: Yes. I’m Darren. I live in Melbourne, Australia. I’m a dad — that’s probably the number-one thing in my life at the moment. That’s one of my major defining parts of me, I guess. In terms of the writing side of things, 13 years ago, I wasn’t a writer at all. I would have said I was a communicator. I did some public speaking, but had never really written before. I stumbled upon blogging after a friend shot me a link to a blog and just fell in love with the medium. That was November 2002, and within 10 minutes, I knew I needed to have a blog even though I had no idea what one really was. I muddled my way through setting one up, and so that became my journey of writing. I discovered that my love of communication extended into that written field. Why You Should Write Like You Talk Darren Rowse: But I came to it with no experience and no real expertise in anything, I would say. That first blog was a personal blog. I wrote about anything and everything and just gradually over time found my voice. I don’t really know what my voice is, but I found it and began to realize that people were responding to me writing like I talked — in a very conversational tone — and I also discovered that I love to teach people and help people to learn and to find their potential in different areas. That personal blog began to transition into me writing tutorials on anything and everything and on a whole heap of different niches. Gradually, over time, I grew an audience. For one reason or another, people seemed to connect with what I was doing and began to break out those topics onto separate blogs. I’ve been blogging for about 13 years, but it transitioned into a number of blogs, two of which remain today. One’s ProBlogger, which is a blog about blogging, which is sad, but it turns out a lot of people wanted to learn about that. Then the other one’s on photography, so Digital Photography School. It really started out as me teaching my friends how to take better photos with these great cameras that they had that they never switched out of automatic mode. I just began writing really simple tips and tutorials on how to hold cameras and what aperture is and what shutter speed is. I’ve really focused my writing on how-to content and in those two fields. Although, I’ve transitioned those two blogs into me really being more of a publisher than a writer because I feature a lot of writers now on those blogs, too. Kelton Reid: Yes, as well-known as those sites are — and I’ll point, obviously, to both in the show notes — I’ve heard you speak at Authority Intensive with Copyblogger, and just your starting, as a mindset, it’s truly inspiring I think for writers. Writers should always seek out those sites. ProBlogger, obviously, has been a pioneering voice clearly. It speaks for itself. But also, I think your speaking should be sought out as well. I found some of your replays, which I will also post in the show notes, from some of your speaking engagements, and I think for writers, those are also a true inspiration. I’ll skip on as I’m hoarding the mic here. Where else can we find your writing in addition to ProBlogger and Digital Photography? How a Book Deal Was Born from a Blog Series Darren Rowse: Yeah, so they’re kind of my home bases, but out of those two blogging experiences, other opportunities have come to write, and I never would have expected some of the things that came along. The biggest one, and one of the earliest ones, was an opportunity to write a book. I got an email one day from a guy who claimed to be at Wiley in the US, and he said, We’d love to publish a book with you. I really thought it was a joke, because I’d never had book writing on my radar at all, but that was true, and it was real. It felt a little bit big and hard for me to write a book, so I coerced Chris Garrett, who is now at Copyblogger as well, to write it with me, and so we co-authored the ProBlogger book. That’s probably where you’d find the biggest chunk of my writing in one place, although Chris wrote half of it as well. I didn’t really enjoy writing it, but it was a great experience, and it’s now had three editions, so it seems to have connected well. Then the other places that I’ve written would be in ebooks, and this is the other opportunity that came out of both sites was to initially update and collate a lot of the content that I’d created into one volume in an ebook on ProBlogger called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which really emerged out of a series of blog posts. Then on Digital Photography School, I also wrote a portrait ebook, which is no longer on the market. I got actual photographers to write our new portrait books, but that was I guess my first foray into ebooks on that site. To this day, we’ve published about 30 ebooks as well, but most of them have been written by other authors who have expertise in particular topics. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. I know that the story behind 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a pretty amazing one, which will kind of dovetail into the next question, which is what are you presently working on? Darren Rowse: It did emerge from a series of posts that I wrote in 2007, and it really led to a lot of life for the blog. I repeated it in 2009, I think it was. My readers started to basically say, We want you to put it into a book for us, because we love this series of posts, but we want to keep going over it again and again. I designed it as a very practical here’s something to learn, but here’s something you can do today, and it was really about developing habits of blogging and good blogging. I put it into that ebook, and I was really dubious about whether anyone would buy it because it was all on the blog for free. I updated it a little and added a little content, but it sold thousands of copies every day for the first week that I launched it. It really opened my eyes to this new way of communicating through ebooks. That was back in 2010, I think. So that ebook, we updated it in 2012. And more recently, I’ve turned it into a podcast series, so that’s probably the main thing that I’m working on this month. There’s a whole heap of other things that are always on the go for us. We run an event here in Australia as well, so that’s six weeks away now, for 700 bloggers this year. That’s kind of on my mind as well. I’ve always got these little preliminary stages of thinking for books and other projects as well, so I’m not writing a whole heap this month, but there’s dreams and thoughts there to write again on a larger scale. Kelton Reid: Very cool, and the podcast itself is fantastic, I will say. Congrats on the early success of that. I have checked out the first week or so of it, and it’s inspiring, so writers should also seek that out. Darren Rowse: There’s some good writing challenges in there for people. Kelton Reid: Absolutely, and anyone who wants to take their blogging game to the next level. Let’s talk a little bit about your productivity. As a truly prolific blogger and online publisher, how much time per day would you say you are reading or doing research? Darren Rowse: I would say at the start of this year, that was an area that had been suffering. For me, I’d become so busy that I wasn’t really filling my cup and staying in touch with the industries that I was kind of working in because I was producing so much, and it started to impact my output, and also my health as well. I was so busy. So I made a concerted effort to change the daily structure that I had, and that included putting a walk right into the middle of my day for at least half an hour, sometimes as much as an hour. That’s an area where I’ve filled up with listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and that’s really new for me. I hadn’t listened to a book ever before those walks, and podcasts, I’d only ever listened to a few. That’s probably where I’m getting most of my research and input at the moment. I do read quite a bit during the day of blogs, but not so much in terms of books. If I’m doing a new project, or if I’m preparing for a presentation or a new ebook, that’s when I do a lot of my research. I tend to batch my research. I don’t tend to be someone who’s just researching for the sake of keeping up with things. I tend to be someone who needs a purpose for that research. I need a problem that I’m trying to solve, and that’s where I go into research mode. I quite enjoy it, but not just for the sake of doing it. There needs to be a reason. Kelton Reid: Before you actually sit down to write, do you have any pregame rituals or practices that help you get into the flow? Darren Rowse: Coffee is a big part of that, but that’s just to do anything, really. I don’t have a whole heap. I would say I probably like to have a clean desk, so that’s one thing that I tend to … It’s not clean at the moment, so I obviously don’t have a big project. But a clean desk, a clean white board, and a new notebook probably are the three things that I like to have. I do tend to procrastinate until those things are done. I have also been known to faff around a little bit and look at what tools and apps are out there and chop and change those a bit before I start writing. But I don’t really have any rituals as such. Kelton Reid: I think I know the answer to this next question, but I’m going to ask anyway. Do you write every day? Darren Rowse: I would say I probably don’t write every day anymore, and that’s something I have some regrets around. I tend to be someone who writes, most days, something, whether it be short blog posts or articles. I do tend to batch my writing. So Monday mornings are a time where I write quite a bit, and I try and write multiple blog posts for the week. If I’m writing a larger, like a book or an ebook, I tend to put aside a week to write it and clear everything else out, and that’s what I do with the podcasts. I set aside a week to record 31 episodes. I have a fairly short attention span, so I find if I’m writing for a year, I lose interest too quick. So I need to really chunk out a lot of stuff quickly. I do write something every day — emails — but yeah, it’s not on those projects. I tend to chunk it a bit more. Kelton Reid: I see. So do you commit to a certain amount of time, then, excluding that social media stuff, which I know you’re in kind of constant contact with that stuff, but … ? How Writing Offline Can Boost Your Word Count Darren Rowse: Yeah. I tend to write offline when I can. So I do go to a café quite a bit to write if I need to do that, and they don’t have Wi-Fi. I could get on with my phone, but I tend to avoid doing that unless I have to. I find that once I get in the zone of writing, I can go anywhere from an hour to four hours without any problem and almost get lost in it. I love that space. I love being in that zone and just firing. It does get a little awkward when you’re not drinking coffee in the café. Typically during the day, I’ll work in 50- to 60-minute bursts, but I go with the flow if it’s firing. Kelton Reid: Nice. Are you a morning person, or do you like to write at night? Darren Rowse: Creativity-wise, I’m very much a writing in the morning person. However, I have noticed around 4:30 in the afternoon, about half an hour before I’m supposed to get back with the family and stop working, that’s often a time that I get inspiration bombs. I don’t whether it’s because there’s that looming deadline — and I do work well with deadlines — but that’s often another time that I just need to put aside a little time to just vomit out anything that’s in my head that I need to get out. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Do you like to listen to music at all while you’re writing, or do you prefer the silence? Darren Rowse: I enjoy music, but not while I’m writing. I love white noise, so the cafe’s a place that it just flows for me a bit more. They do have music there, but I don’t notice it at all. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Darren Rowse: It’s just in the background. It’s just there. Kelton Reid: There’s something about that coffee shop noise that seems to work very well for writers. Darren Rowse: Yeah. I think it’s also being around people — and I’m not looking at the people — but just being aware that there are other people, for me, makes me aware that there are people that are going to read what I’m writing as well. There s something about that social environment without actually talking to anyone. As an introvert, I kind of enjoy that connection without being intensely connected, and I think that infects my writing in some ways as well. A lot of people reflect back that they feel like I’m talking to them, and sometimes I do look at the people around me and pretend that they’re the person I’m writing to. There s something about that I haven’t quite defined yet, but it’s really important for my writing I think. Kelton Reid: Do you believe in writer’s block, Darren? The 3 Types of Writer s Block All Bloggers Eventually Face Darren Rowse: I would say that I’ve suffered from something maybe like writer’s block, but as I’ve thought about it over the years, I’d say there’s three types for me. I’d say I get ideas block, which is where I can’t work out what to write about. I think many bloggers who’ve been blogging for a year or two feel, one, I’ve written it all before, I’ve got nothing left to say, What could I write fresh today? or Everyone else has already written about it. I haven’t got anything unique to say. So that blockage of finding a unique angle and a freshness to your topic, I think, is one thing I’ve suffered. The second type for me is writing block, and that’s where the words just aren’t flowing. You’ve got the idea, and you know the topic you want to write about, but you just can’t make it come out in a sensible way. Then, for me, the third one is completion block, and that’s where the first draft’s done, but I’m just so distracted or on the next thing that I’m really into, or I’m too tired, or I’ve lost the passion or interest for what I’m writing about to complete it. That’s probably the area I’ve struggled with the most over the years is that lack of revision and editing, so that’s why I hired an editor to basically oversee that and crack the whip for me in that. I think for me — writer’s block — I don’t know what that is, but for me there’s those three things. For me, the key is to work at which one of those three things I’m suffering right now and then to make appointments with myself to put extra time and energy and to get help in those areas. Ideas block I had probably two years into my blogging, so I just built into my week time to brainstorm ahead of time when I wasn’t supposed to be writing. So I have now got a bank of ideas sitting there, and I also involve my team in that brainstorming time. I haven’t had ideas block for quite some time because I’ve built that into my week. The writing block, again, regularity of writing helps with that as well. Making appointments on Monday mornings when I do a lot of my blog post writing, that sort of helped to unlock that. Then the completion block, I have times in my week, usually in the afternoons, where I set aside time to edit and revise because I don’t need to be quite so creative there, but I need to be a little bit more analytical. Kelton Reid: Wow. Let’s talk about your workflow a little bit. What hardware or typewriter model are you presently using? Darren Rowse: There’s not been a typewriter in my life for many years, but I just use a MacBook Pro when I’m out and about and an iMac on my desktop. I just love the fact that they talk to each other now with iCloud and Dropbox and all those wonderful tools that connect them. Kelton Reid: Yeah. I’m a huge fan myself. Do you have some favorite software that you use for writing? Darren Rowse: I try to keep things pretty simple. I’ve tried a lot of the writing tools. I can’t even remember the names of most of them, but these days I tend to write a lot of my stuff in Evernote. If it’s a larger project, I’ll set up a notebook for that and then break it down into sections or chapters in different notes and then have other notes for outlines and to-do lists and all that kind of stuff. I find it’s pretty simple to use, and a lot of the other tools, it got too complicated for me. Evernote seems to work quite well, and I like that I can share it with my team as well to be involved in that process. For blogging I use a little tool called MarsEdit as well, which is kind of like a document creator that you can put your images into and format everything in the app, and then you can upload it to your blog and don’t have to edit it in the blog. Kelton Reid: Interesting. I’ll have to get that link from you. Do you have any organizational hacks? Darren Rowse: Evernote has kind of changed things for me on that front. I tend to whiteboard in the early stages of a project. I like to be able to visualize it. I occasionally will mind-map using a little tool called MindNode. I also have been known to use Post-It notes spread out all over my floor, so whatever it takes to visualize how things fit together. I think in terms of the organization of my writing, I had some training 20 years ago in public speaking, and it was all based around breaking your talk down into two-minute modules and to really creating modules that chop and change and take people through different phases of what you want to present. I think that’s flowed into my writing. I tend to write in very small, short, sharp sections, and a module might be a metaphor or a story or a teaching point and then sort of chopping and changing those. I tend to visualize my writing in that sort of style. They’re probably the tools I use the most. I would say I also use Wunderlist as an organizational tool as well, so I’m very big on lists and setting myself to-do lists to check off during the day. Kelton Reid: Procrastination, the beast of procrastination — do you find yourself leaning into that or do you have some other kind of best practices? How Public Accountability Can Light a Fire under Your Ass Darren Rowse: I find I do procrastinate, but it’s not just a lazy kind of, Eh, I ll get it done. It s more of a prioritization and listening to my energy levels as well. I tend to work best when I’m excited about something, so I tend to listen to that more than I used to and go to the places where I’ve got energy. But I also work very well to deadlines. It stresses me out when something’s looming, but I know that that’s when I’ll do my best work, so that’s important. The other thing I’d say with procrastination, for me, and getting things done, is that accountability is a big thing. I respond really well when other people have an expectation of me. It’s not just an internal expectation of myself. I don’t really respond well to that at all. I respond if other people are waiting for something. So if I really need to get something done, I publicly announce when it will be ready, and I’ve done that quite a few times. I Tweeted with the podcast that I just launched. I publicly announced that it was coming on the first of July before I had recorded an episode, and that motivates me a lot, because I don’t like to be seen missing a deadline. Kelton Reid: That’s right. How do you unplug at the end of a long day there? Darren Rowse: I have to stop working at 5pm. That’s just a family rule, and so that helps as well, and I find the shenanigans of family life pretty much force me out of work mode at that time. I do work once the kids go back to bed, and our kids are fairly young, so I can get back to work at sort of 7:30. But I tend not to do creative stuff at that time because I find if I allow myself to try and get creative at night, I don’t sleep. If I do more admin logistical stuff in the evenings, social media scheduling and all that kind of stuff, I find that almost puts me to sleep. I also always try and give myself at least half an hour between the last work I do and bed just to decompress a little, and that usually involves TV. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/platform. Let’s talk about creativity some. I know you just mentioned creativity, inspiration, finding your passion and your energy. How do you define creativity? Why You Need a Balance Between Dreaming and Doing Darren Rowse: I think creativity for me is the process of turning a new, imaginative idea into reality, so for me, it’s got two parts. It’s about thinking and doing. The problem I see many people falling into the trap of is that they focus on one or the other. I think we all probably have a tendency to focus on one or the other, but we need to work on the other one. So for me, creative thinking and idea generation is what I love to do. I could sit there all day brainstorming, coming up with ideas, and dreaming of what could be, but for a while there, it didn’t really translate into doing a whole heap. So that’s the area that I have to work on. For me, it’s about completion. Again, that theme that came up earlier. I can think of ideas all day. I can start them, but not complete them, so that’s the area that I need to work on. For other people, I think they’re doers, and they don’t give enough time to the thinking and the dreaming and the imagining of what could be, so they end up doing and creating things that perhaps aren’t as imaginative as they could be. For me, creativity’s about finding the sweet spot between creative thinking and actual implementation and doing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s interesting. You brought up before that you have a team that helps you get to that completion phase, but not everybody has both spheres, do they? Darren Rowse: No, and for me, until three years ago, I didn’t really have a team at all. One or two people I occasionally outsourced stuff to, but that was a big tension. Now I guess the tensions are that I ve got to manage people, and that’s not a skill that I really have and I need to grow as well. It really came down to just forcing myself to be organized and making appointments with myself to do those things I needed to do, which didn’t come naturally for me as a creative, airy-fairy kind of guy. Kelton Reid: We may have covered this already, but when do you feel most creative? Darren Rowse: I think there’s a number of things. Conversations with people often stimulate a creative moment for me, whether that be me having conversation with a friend, but also online, I find any sort of social media discussion stimulates ideas and creativity. Often when I do a webinar or even a podcast like this, I find, even preparing for this podcast. I had ideas and that creative thinking. I found myself going off on tangents in my thinking, so I think conversations are a big part of it for me. Getting input from podcasts and blogs and that type of thing. I also find that it’s when I’m not thinking about my work that I’m getting the creative ideas as well. So the shower — I know a lot of people say they get their best ideas in the shower. That’s me, but what I found is I was having my showers sandwiched by kid time. My kids would be there, and then I’d have a shower, and I’d get an idea, and the kids would be there. So I’ve started having showers later in the day so that I can then go and take those ideas that I have and implement them straightaway. I think the other part for me is just being healthy. This year I’ve really worked on my health a lot, and I’ve found myself being much more productive, but also much more creative. So I think all those factors play into when I’m most creative. Kelton Reid: Would you say that’s your creative muse at the moment? How to Get the Maximum Impact from Your Writing Darren Rowse: Yeah, I think so. I tend to get into little obsessions with things. So at times it’s photography, and at times, it’s health and walking, or those types of things. I think I need to keep mixing up that thing that I’m into, and when I do have a thing that I’m obsessed by, that often sparks and brings … I guess it just makes me feel alive. And when I feel alive, I’m more creative. It’s not that I do those things to make creativity come. It just is a byproduct. Kelton Reid: Just going back to the procrastination piece, Austin Kleon talks about productive procrastination and having multiple projects going all at once so that when you’re procrastinating on one project, you’re really being productive on another project. It kind of melds in with that thinking. You’ve seen so much writing, so much online writing and online publishing. What, in your mind, makes a truly great writer? Darren Rowse: I guess it depends on the medium and the style, but for me, I really respond to writers who are taking me on a journey, and I feel like they have thoughtfully taken me from one place to another. In my writing, what I am always trying to think about as I sit down to write is, What change am I trying to bring about in my reader? Whether that be a change in the way they feel, they think, whether it be giving them a new skill, giving them a sense of not feeling like they’re the only one, or a sense of belonging, or some new insight. I don’t want my readers to come away from the things that I write in the same state that they were when they started reading it, because that’s just wasting their time and mine. But if they go from point A to point B, that, to me, is success for my writing. I guess I’d translate that into most formats of writing, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. If I’ve changed as a result of reading a great book, then that’s great. That’s success. The same goes to how-to content that I focus on or other mediums. You want to be changing people, take them on a journey. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Do you have some favorite authors right now? Darren Rowse: To be honest, at the moment, I’ve not been doing as much reading as I should because I’ve been focusing more on podcasts. But I guess those audio books that I ve started to listen to, it’s been an interesting journey. I’m still not sure whether I enjoy the audio format or not, but I’ve reading — or listening to — Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and I’m enjoying that. I’m still towards the beginning, so I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Another book that I’ve been listening to is Tom Rath’s Fully Charged, which is all about having a full charge for your life, and that’s been interesting. This year I’ve also gone back. I’ve tried to make this year a year where I go back to books I’ve read before that have had some impact upon me. So I’ve gone back to Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which started the journey for me, I guess, in some of my thinking. Then also, a book by an Aussie author, Gregory David Roberts, called Shantaram, which is sort of a fictional biography of his journeys as an escapee from a prison and went to India and had all these adventures, and no one really knows how much of the story’s true and how much of it’s not. It’s a whopping, massive book. It’s huge, but I just can’t wait for him to bring out a sequel. Although it’s been 20 years now, so maybe it’s not coming. Kelton Reid: You pull some really, really great quotes for your speaking engagements. Do you have a best-loved quote at the moment? Darren Rowse: Yeah, probably the one from the last year for me that I just keep coming back to and do use quite a bit in my speaking is John Schaar’s, The future is not someplace we’re going, but one we’re creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. The activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination. I’ve been using that quite a bit to encourage people to not just let their future happen to them, but to chase their dreams and take steps towards making their dreams and their futures a reality — the futures that they want rather than just falling into a future that maybe isn’t what they want. Kelton Reid: All right. Let’s do a couple fun ones. You may have already answered this. Do you have a favorite literary character? Darren Rowse: I’m not sure I would call my favorite literary character’s great works literature, but the ones that came to mind were all children’s characters. I don’t know if you ever came across the series called Biggles. It was a series of books that I read when I was probably eight or nine, and he was a pilot flying Sopwith Camels in World War I and World War II. There must have been heaps of these books, but he was always on an adventure. For me, that was probably my first experience of reading that just fired my imagination. Tintin — I don’t know if you ever came across Tintin? Kelton Reid: Oh yeah. Darren Rowse: Those were sort of graphic novels, I guess, in some ways, those comics are. My son has just started reading Tintin, and he is obsessed with it. I think Spielberg made the movie. So they’re probably two characters that come to mind because they bring out memories in me, but I can now also see the same thing happening in my children as they begin to read those books. Kelton Reid: If you could choose one author from any era for an all-expense-paid dinner to your favorite restaurant, who would you choose? Darren Rowse: Gosh. This is the third time this week I’ve been asked to have dinner with someone that I’ve wanted to meet. I always struggled with this question, but probably the one that comes to mind is one that I suspect you’ve not heard of, but another Aussie called Anh Do who wrote a great book called The Happiest Refugee. He’s a comedian, an Aussie comedian, one of the best-known Australian comedians. He comes from Vietnam originally and came to Australia as a refugee. I think he’d be pretty funny to have dinner with. He’s also just written this powerful story of overcoming challenges and doing some really amazing things. He’s also written a children’s book of the same topic, and my kids have really been impacted by that book. I’d love to sit with him and spend some time with him and hear his story from his mouth, and I guess, more so feedback the impact that he’s had on my kids learning about some really important lessons of life. Kelton Reid: Nice. Where would you take him? Darren Rowse: He’s got a Vietnamese background, so I do enjoy that food, so I’d let him choose some nice Vietnamese restaurant. Kelton Reid: Let me ask you, who or what has been your greatest teacher? Darren Rowse: I’d say my dad, probably. Dad was a pastor of a church, and so he spoke every week, and I saw him get up in front of people and communicate. He really didn’t have any agenda in self-promotion or anything other than really trying to serve people and make their lives better. I think that’s probably come across. I’ve picked that up in a lot of what I do. I’m perhaps not quite as humble as him, at times, and it’s hard to be in the social media environment where it’s me, me, me and promote yourself, promote yourself. I certainly didn’t see any of that in my father at all, and so that is a nice reminder to be a bit more grounded, perhaps. I try to live that. His heart for trying to help people and make people better through his communication is something that I try and live out as well in both my speaking but also writing. Kelton Reid: Nice. I skipped a question, which I’ll circle back to. Do you have a writer’s fetish at all? Darren Rowse: I don’t know that I really do. Most of my fetishes are probably more camera-related than writing. I like the look of all those typewriters that people have, but for me, I don’t have room on my shelves because I’ve got cameras everywhere. Kelton Reid: Got you. Can you offer any advice to fellow scribes on how to keep the ink flowing and the cursor moving? Darren Rowse: Yeah. I think for me, it’s about practice. You improve so much when you do. The rhythm of writing regularly — as much as I’m not in a daily rhythm at the moment, I think having certain times in the week where I write and edit and come up with ideas certainly is important for my writing and output. Write something meaningful to you that you know has the potential to change someone’s life. For me, that’s as much about being an effective communicator, but also it comes into the writing process as well. If I know that what I’m writing has the potential to really help someone, then I’m bringing much more energy and creativity to that process. Then fill your cup. If you’ve just got to keep giving input if you want to produce and so don’t let yourself get dry. Find the inspiration that you need in all areas of your life. I think the better your life is going, the better your output. Unless you want to be a poet or write angsty stuff. Maybe you need a bad life to do that. I don’t know. Kelton Reid: Where can fellow writers connect with you out there? Darren Rowse: I think probably the best place is ProBlogger, on Twitter @ProBlogger and then ProBlogger.com has all the different aspects of the ProBlogger brand, so it’s kind of a portal into the rest of the podcast and the blog and the ebooks and the different aspects of what I do. Kelton Reid: I do encourage writers to find the podcast, and it is available on iTunes and other reputable podcast publishing platforms. Darren Rowse: That’s right. Kelton Reid: Very good. Darren, thank you so much. You’re a huge inspiration to me and I know to lots of other writers both online and off, so thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and do your Writer File. Darren Rowse: Thanks. Nice to chat with you. Kelton Reid: Thanks for tuning into The Writer Files. Now, go turn some of those crazy dreams into something that we can read. For more episodes of The Writer Files and all of the show notes, or to leave us a comment or a question, drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. See you out there.

This week we discuss our impressions of Google I/O 2015 in contrast to next week's WWDC 2015. We discuss Tim Cook's criticism of Google & Facebook's potential misuse of people's privacy. We discuss the importance of focus in the light of Brent Simmons withdrawal from Q Branch. Even more important the need for developers to focus on the new products and frameworks introduced at WWDC. Picks: Google Photos for iOS and Re:quest improved audio Episode 42 Show Notes: developers.google.com/ios Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech On Encryption, Privacy Write a poem for free tweet Brent Simmons resigns from Q Branch Net News Wire Vesper Black Pixel OmniGraffle 6 Omnifocus 2 MarsEdit John Gruber Dave Wiskus Georgia Dow - Fear is the Killer WatchKit By Tutorials iOS Animations By Tutorials Lighthouse Labs photos.google.com Photos for OS X Dropbox Magpie Pinpoint MartianCraft Rob Rhyne Episode 42 Picks: Google Photos For iOS Re:Quest  

Unsere Flugmaschine nähert sich dem Polar um einen Zwischenstopp beim dort ansässigen Rauschebart und Liebhaber des roten Samts zu stoppen. Dem Guten gehen nämlich die Ideen aus und deshalb müssen die Piloten ihm wahnsinnig gute Geschenkideen ins Diktiergerät husten. Unsere Flugmaschine nähert sich dem Polar um einen Zwischenstopp beim dort ansässigen Rauschebart und Liebhaber des roten Samts zu stoppen. Dem Guten gehen nämlich die Ideen aus und deshalb müssen die Piloten ihm wahnsinnig gute Geschenkideen ins Diktiergerät husten. Nun, eigentlich hatten sie keine Wahl… denn sonst hätte es die Rute gegeben. Doch wie dem auch sei, daraus ist dann die Über-Mega-Pick-Show entstanden, welcher ihr heute andächtig lauschen dürft. Lieber Fluggast, wenn dir das Gehörte gefällt oder dir Sorgenfalten auf die edle Stirn fabriziert, dann haben wir etwas für dich: iTunes Bewertungen. Übersicht Die folgende Tabelle ist nicht chronologisch sortiert, sondern… so wie’s da drunten steht… nach Picker. Die Mega-Pick Übersichtstabelle inklusive Timecodes Gadgets Mac Apps iOS Apps Web Services oder Skripte Verschiedenes Sven Logitech Keys-To-Go (00:17:00) SuperDuper (00:37:40) Newsify (01:01:10) Trello (01:23:20) Trove (01:36:15) Quadcopter Blade Nano QX (00:24:40) Mailbox (00:46:40) Space Age (01:08:15) Kirby 2.0 (01:26:00) Stelton Pure Black Messer (01:40:40) Jawbone UP3 (00:31:20) Desk (00:56:30) das Referenz (01:18:18) Slack (01:30:20) Soulra FRX3 Kurbelradio mit USB-Ladeausgang (01:44:00) Patrick Sennheiser MM-550 (00:19:15) Airfoil (00:42:20) Voice Dream Reader (01:03:20) FileBot (01:20:00) Reosmods Reo Grand (01:32:00) Tom Bihn Ristretto (00:26:45) iTerm 2 (00:48:25) Due (01:10:00) BitTorrent Sync (01:24:50) Walter Moers - Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (01:38:00) Maglus Stylus (00:32:30) Asepsis (00:54:30) Nuzzle (01:14:40) Pow/Anvil (01:28:40) Sunflex snakebyte power:cub (01:44:00) Andreas Merkur Progress (00:28:45) Highland (00:40:00) Pinnacle Studio (01:08:15) Appbot (01:21:40) Fully Present, The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness (01:34:30) Türreck (00:34:00) Minecraft & Feed The Beast (00:44:40) Decim8 (01:11:15) Subtle Patterns (01:27:20) The War of Art - Steven Pressfield (01:42:30) Amadeus Pro (00:51:00) Outread (01:16:10) Neckar (01:49:30) ffmpeg (00:58:18) Link zum Bild: Aluhut Überbleibsel BEKANT Stehtisch Die elektrisch verstellbare Variante des von Patrick gepriesenen BEKANT sucht man leider — wie letzte Woche in den Show Notes schon angekündigt — auf der IKEA Website vergebens. Die Kommentare unter diesem Engadget Review sind da ganz aufschlussreich. Sieht so aus, als wenn ihr dieses Jahr keinen Weihnachtsbaum mehr auf den BEKANT Tisch stellen könnt. No notifications setup Andreas berichtet von seinem Zero notifications Experiment. Die Kurzfassung des Verlaufs: Er hat alle Notifications gelöscht, es dann doch nicht ganz ohne das geliebte Gebimmel ausgehalten und ist jetzt mit einer abgespeckten Variante Unterwegs. Die lange Version gibt es hier auf MOSX Tumblelog. Patrick hat nach dem Neuerwerb des letzten iPhones auch einmal ganz von vorne angefangen… aber mit der Minimalausstattung von 19 Notifications von Andreas kommt er bei weitem nicht mit. Omelette-Challenge Der amtierende und neue Omelette King sagt: … blubb, blubb, wabbel, wabbel, DANKE für euren Support. Omelette King Link zum Bild: Eierkopf Hier ist das stolze und durchaus eindeutige Ergebnis, welches gewisse Piloten in der Nacht immer noch schweißgebadet aufschrecken lässt. Nein Sven, es war kein Traum, das ist die bittere Realität. Link zum Bild: Wer ist der Omelette King? Nachspann: Da Andreas es nicht kennt mit der gewonnen Lebenszeit durch eingedampfte Benachrichtigungen 11 Minuten über hat ↓ Überschallneuigkeiten ScreenFlow 5 Ich kann ein bisschen über ScreenFlow 5 klagen. Das 5er ist schon gar nicht mal so gut. Andreas Zeitler Das ist die Quintessenz. Andreas als Profi-Bildschirm-Verdigitalisierer sieht die Bug-Tötungsliste und Wunschliste nicht erfüllt mit SF5. Sven findets’ trotzdem gut für den Hobbyhandwerker und Patrick stimmt da im Prinzip zu, auch wenn er sich mit den 10% Studentenrabatt schwer tut beim Erwerb… dürften gerne auch 20% sein von seinem Geldbeutel aus gesehen. Gadgets Hier gibt’s was zum anfassen. Logitech Keys-To-Go (Timecode 00:17:00) Klein, handlich, Spritzwasser-geschützt und in mehreren Farben erhältlich: Logitech’s Keys-To-Go. In Kürze für knapp 70€ im Handel. Link zum Bild: Keys-To-Go Alternative: myType™ Pocketable Bluetooth Keyboard for Phones & Tablets by myType™ Keyboard Sennheiser MM-550-X (Timecode 00:19:15) Sennheiser MM 550-X TRAVEL Nicht erschrecken da das Ding 350 € neu kostet. Denn ab 180 € gibt’s den schon gebraucht. Im übrigen hat sich kaum was zum Vorgänger Modell, dem MM-550 (ohne X), geändert. Hier noch einmal eine formschöne Tabelle mit den Hard-facts von Patrick: Der hat Klang! Selbst bei Bluetooth = Das Kaufargument schlechthin, wenn’s Bluetooth sein soll. ca 7m Reichweite Der ist komfortabel zu tragen – getestet gegen unzählige andere Kopfhörer. Patrick selbst hat daheim 3 Modelle und existiert quasi nur mit Kopfhörern auf dem Schädel (… auch Daheim). weich gepolsterten Kopfbügel + extra große Ohrmuscheln einen angenehmen Tragekomfort (trotz) geschlossene Bauweise Laufzeit: bis zu 20 Stunden Angegeben ein paar Jahre auf dem Buckel Hörbücher/Podcast ca. 12 Stunden Ersatzakku würde 40 € kosten hochwertige Haptik wireless oder Kabel widerstandsfähig, faltbar Spielereien: SRS WOW HDTechnologie - Räumliches Klangbild… bei Hörspielen ganz nett Aufgeladen wird über USB Nachteile Kann nicht parallel mehrere Bluetooth Verbindungen aufbauen. Mac abmelden, iPhone anmelden Noise Canceling gut, aber nicht top. Bose ist da der Chef. Quadcopter Blade Nano QX (Timecode 00:24:40) Die perfekte Einsteiger Drone: Quadcopter Blade Nano QX für ca. 80€ bei Amazon. Link zum Bild: Drone Im großen Wirecutter Review als Übungsgerät empfohlen, bevor man dann eine 800€ Drone auf das Kirchendach oder in den Teich setzt. Fast alle Einzelteile einzeln und günstig nachzubestellen (Rotoren, Motoren, Gestell). Sehr robust und gut zu steuern. Kommt als Ready-to-Fly (RTF) mit Fernsteuerung. Für alle Dronen-Einsteiger oder Interessierten empfiehlt sich noch dringend die Lektüre von Paul Stamatiou’s “Getting Started with Drones”. Tom Bihn Ristretto (Timecode 00:26:45) Eigentlich kann man alles von Tom Bihn bestellen – qualitätstechnisch sind die echt super. Nur die Liefergebühren und der Zoll bereiten einem Bauchscherzen. Sein 11″ MacBook Air hat Patrick nicht mehr, aber die passende Ristretto Messenger Tasche (ab $110) leistet ihm noch treue Dienste. Egal was man jedoch bestellt, das wichtigste Upgrade ist der “Absolute Shoulder Strap”. Und für Fahrradfahrer ist das superhelle Guardian DF Light eine echte Empfehlung von Patrick. Die Batterie hält übrigens eine gefühlte Ewigkeit. Link zum Bild: Licht Review für Leser: Tom Bihn Ristretto MacBook Air bag Mark II Review für Glotzer: Merkur Progress (Timecode 00:28:45) Link zum Bild: Merkur Andreas schwört auf den Merkur Rasierhobel Progress 500. Das Ding sieht zwar antik aus, kann aber leicht verstellt werden und die Stufen sind somit anpassbar an eure derzeitigen Vorlieben und Hautbegebenheiten. Die passende Slideshare hat Andreas dazu schon gehalten auf einem Barcamp, deshalb gibt’s hier für euch nun “Die perfekte Rasur”: Die perfekte Rasur from Andreas Zeitler … inklusive dem passenden Gist. Jawbone UP3 (Timecode 00:31:20) Der Puls wird einbezogen und dadurch gibt’s wohl auch sowas wie eine flexible Weckzeit, welche Sven be-geist-teeeeeert. Vorbestellt werden kann der Spaß für 180 €. Link zum Bild: Up Applydea Maglus Stylus (Timecode 00:32:30) Nach der Studie von The Verge entschied sich Patrick damals dazu seiner Freundin den Maglus zu schenken. Heute belegt er dort immer noch den Platz 1 unter den Allroundern. Das Ding ist so gut, das er es sich dann 2 Jahre später selbst einen eigenen gekauft hat. Highlights: Magnetisch auswechselbare Spitze Die Spitze ist übrigens das Beste an dem Stylus. Wie er in der Hand liegt das Zweitbeste. Adonit’s Jot Pro hat es bei Patrick keine 2 Wochen ausgehalten, dann ging das Ding “return to sender”. Die anderen Stifte die Patrick ausprobiert hat sind nicht der Rede wert. Der Pencil ist jedoch immer noch sein Backup-Stylus. Dieser hat aber einige gravierende Schwachstellen, so findet der Verbindungsaufbau oft einfach nicht statt und frustriert wird dann zum Lieblingsgerät gegriffen, was halt nicht die neuen Features des Pencil’s hat. Das andere Problem, wenn er denn mal Verbunden ist, ist die Wisch-und-Schmier Funktion. Die wird nämlich immer dann spontan ausgelöst, wenn man sie gar nicht braucht. Hier noch mehr Meckerei, aber von jemand Anderem: The prices are truly insane for such a shitty product, for that kind of money I’d say it’s worth to buy a Wacom bamboo and get a ton better performance on your coffeshop creative session. Serious cash for a stylish pen with quite a few quirks and a best case bulky-crayon sketch feeling. Either a Wacom bamboo digitizer or the Adobe ink kit. CRKT Türreck (Timecode 00:34:00) Link zum Bild: Türreck Ob @Zettt’s Kettler Türreck Multi oder Patrick’s Powerbar 2… dieser Pick sollte euch wieder hochziehen, wenn ihr gerade down seid. Powerbar 2 Demonstration from Innovation Fitness on Vimeo. Doch genug der schlechten Wortspiele, jetzt geht’s zu den… Mac OS X App Picks … und die sind einfach… SuperDuper (Timecode 00:37:40) Die kostenfreie Version von SuperDuper! ist echt gut… kann zum Beispiel auch bootbare Backups erstellen. Das wusste Patrick noch nicht. Der kennt nur 24,68 €, welche auch steuerbare Backups erlaubt. Highland (Timecode 00:40:00) “Distraction-free screenwriting” gibt’s mit Highland für 26,99 €. Andreas will damit eure kreative Ader fördern. Dazu passend ein 1½ Minuten langer Stummfilm: Highland Promo from Quote Unquote Apps on Vimeo. Airfoil von Rogue Amoeba (Timecode 00:42:20) Die Streaming-Wahl von Patrick, wenn es darum geht Sound vom Mac ans iPhone zu schicken oder umgedreht. Das ganze kostet $25 für den Mac, bzw. Airfoil Remote für iOS gibt’s schon ab $5. Warum das so cool ist für Podcasts hat Patrick hier beschrieben. Mittlerweile haben Pocket Casts und Overcast auch web player – weshalb Patrick’s Methode tendenziell weniger zum Einsatz kommt. Trotzdem, nur so kann er Smart Speed von Overcast auch am Mac nutzen ohne Kopfhörerwechsel. Minecraft bzw. Feed The Beast (Timecode 00:44:40) Von Puzzlern, bis überleben, bis… was weiß die Redaktion. Andreas spielt’s und sein Zockerherz lacht freudestrahlend. Minecraft Modpacks: Direwolf20 | Feed the Beast Mailbox for Mac (beta) (Timecode 00:46:40) Zur Zeit nur GoogleMail und iCloud. Mehr Protokolle und Provider sollen folgen. http://www.mailboxapp.com iTerm 2 (Timecode 00:48:25) Der Terminal-Ersatz names iTerm2 kann… 256 colors for vim slide-out shell Split views shortcuts für SSH Verbindungen suche (in der aktuellen session), selbst mit Regex hochgradig konfigurierbar themes für verschiedene Verbindungen iTerm2 supports user-defined triggers keybindings, regex-Magie ↓ iTerm2 supports user-defined triggers, which are actions that run when text matching a regular expression is received. You can use it to highlight words, automatically respond to prompts, notify you when something important happens, and more. PS: Über das Uberspace-Drama hat Nils K. hier was geschrieben. Amadeus Pro (Timecode 00:51:00) Das Urgestein schlechthin in Sachen Audio-Editing für $60. Vor- und Nachteile direkt im Podcast. Asepsis (Timecode 00:54:30) Asepsis (von Binary Age) ist ein System Helferlein, welches die Erstellung von .DS_Store Dateien unterbindet Funktionsweise: Installiert einen daemon und legt die .DS_Store in /usr/local/.dscage an. Ergebnis: Sauberer Finder (gerade als Path Finder Nutzer sehr angenehm. Auflistung: Was alles in .DS_Store Dateien gesammelt wird. Metadaten halt… Position der Icons, Ansichtseinstellungen vom Finder Fenster und noch ein paar Schmankerl aus dem Inspektor. Wollt ihr wissen warum .DS_Store ein Kacklösung ist, dann hier weiterlesen. Tipps: Löscht alle .DS_Store in einem Ordner (auch global auf die Root Partition anwendbar, einfach statt ./ nur / schreiben). sudo find ./ -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} ; Aber… wir installieren ja so ein Tool, damit wir es einfacher haben. Statt löschen heißt es umziehe: asepsisctl migratein Danach könnt ihr per find . -iname .ds_store ob das auch gefruchtet hat. Übrigens könnt ihr das erstellen dieser Dateien auf Netzwerk Datenträgern (z.B. alles was per USB angeschlossen wird) komplett unterbinden: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true Klar gibt’s auch ne’ Warnung: 1x bei Binary Age 1x bei Apple: “Get Info Comments May Not Appear for Remote Volumes” Desk (Timecode 00:56:30) Für 26,99 € gibt’s Desk, einen minimalisitschen Blogging Client, von Sven empfohlen. Eine veritable Konkurrenz zu MarsEdit. Minimalistischer Desktop Writing und Blogging Client. Unterstützt folgende Plattformen: Wordpress (selbst gehosted und Wordpress.com) Blogger Tumblr Squarespace Movable Type Typepad Facebook Notes ffmpeg (Timecode 00:58:18) Nach dem Urgestein für Audio-Editing gibt es jetzt von Andreas das Gegenstück zum Video konvertieren auf der Kommandozeile. Ein echtes Schmuckstück, welches im übrigen fast jeder Video-Konverter nutzt. iOS App Picks Newsify (Timecode 01:01:10) Sven ist begeistert vom Zeitungslayout dieses RSS readers. Co-Pilot Patrick spamt derweil seine Meinung in den Chat. Link zum Bild: Newsify Fan Wer mehr Drama will, muss reinhören. Voice Dream Reader (Timecode 01:03:20) Quelle: Voice Dream für 8,99 € (eine Lite Version zum Testen gibt’s umsonst). Gute Stimmchen ((im Podcast auch live)): Deutsch: Julia (Acapela) 1,79 €/Hans (Ivona) 4,49 € UK Englisch: Emma (Ivona) 4,49 €/Brian (Ivona) 4,49 € Alternative die nicht wirklich Alternativen sind: NaturalReader for Mac $69.50 NaturalReader Cloud $99/Jahr für Web App, iOS & Android Apps naltatis/instapaper2podcast Pinnacle Studio (Timecode 01:06:45) Video Editing auf iOS. 8,99 € für’s iPhone und 11,99 € für das iPad vom Avid Ableger Pinnacle. Andreas’ Empfehlung für um schnell Mal Live-Dokumentationen zusammenzuschrauben. Space Age (Timecode 01:08:15) Patrick’ jauchzt-heult im Hintergrund als Sven seinen hervorragenden 3,59 € Pick vorstellt. Die Vorfreude ist groß bei ihm, denn Sven redet allen den Mund wässrig. Due.app (01:10:00) Der beste Timer unter iOS ist für 4,49 € erhältlich. Das Hammerfeature schlechthin - neben einem exzellenten Support von URL schemes: Die nervigen Erinnerungen die erst aufhören sich zu wiederholen, wenn man sich drum kümmert. Decim8 (Timecode 01:11:15) Decim8 kann für 1,79 € professionell eure Bilder zerstören. Wenn das kein Pick ist, dann weiß die Redaktion es auch nicht. Ein artverwandter Nachtrag von Patrick findet sich hier bei den Münchnern von Spektrum 44 (in Form von Wallpapers für’s iPhone 6). Nuzzle (Timecode 01:14:40) Nuzzle gibt euch ein personalisiertes Best of Retweets für euer Twitter. Kostenlos für iOS und im Web. Alternative web app: Vellum Outread (Timecode 01:16:10) Bei Outread sagt Andreas “Finally a Speed Reading App That Understands Speed Reading””. das Referenz (Timecode 01:18:18) Das Referenz: Wikipedia für 4,49 € für Sven die Wikipedia app. Web Apps oder Skripte FileBot (Timecode 01:20:00) FileBot - The ultimate TV and Movie Renamer / Subtitle Downloader. Der Name ist Programm, es gibt keine Gott, außer Bela, Farin, Rod FileBot. Appbot (Timecode 01:21:40) https://appbot.co Trello (Timecode 01:23:20) Super Listen-Organisierer mit dem nach noch suparara kollaborieren kann. Sven bevorzugt Trello gegenüber Asana und Co. Patrick findet die Touchsteuerung auf iOS sehr gelungen. BitTorrent Sync (Timecode 01:24:50) Sync ist Patrick’s neuster Held auf allen Plattformen: überall verfügbar schnell Ordern frei wählbar und ultra-konfigurierbar Kirby 2.0 (Timecode 01:26:00) PHP-Programmierer Sven F. nutzt Kirby um seine Blog rauszuhauen. Deshalb gibt’s das datenbanklose CMS auf Ordnerbasis empfohlen. Kostenlos testen, privat nutzen für 15 € oder geschäftlich für 79 €. Subtle Patterns (Timecode 01:27:20) http://subtlepatterns.com Dort gibt’s Hintergrundmuster für euch. Schlicht und einfach schön. Ein Photoshop-Plugin gibt’s auch gegen bare Münze. Pow (und/oder Anvil für den Mac) (Timecode 01:28:40) Zero-configuration Rack server for Mac OS X Kommandozeile: Pow GUI Version: Anvil for Mac - Run your sites locally Andreas wirft noch Vagrant mit rein, von dem er letztens gehört hat. Das kann allerdings noch viel viel mehr. Slack (Timecode 01:30:20) Slack ist der Hammer, wenn es um Anbindungen von anderen Web Apps und Co. geht. Das ganze ist unglaublich gut beim kollaborieren. Klare Pilotenempfehlung. Viel zu gut für kostenlos laut Patrick. Aber weil mehr Zahlen will hat folgende Optionen: Link zum Bild: Slack … über die er sich auf der offiziellen Webseite weiter informieren kann. Verschiedenes So… jetzt geht’s in zeitlerische Gefilde. Reosmods (Timecode 01:32:00) Dampfen ist teuer, weil man viel zu viel ausprobiert. Jeden Tag kommt was neues von irgendeinem Tüftler und wird gehypt ohne Ende. Zudem gibt’s noch jede Menge schlechter Tips. Damit will Patrick jetzt eine Ende machen, denn Reosmods ist der heilige Gral. Punkt. Satzende. Link zu größerem Bild: Reos Die Webseite ist ein Graus, aber ihr packt das schon: reosmods.com Den Mod gibt’s ab $146 … oder um die 80 € gebraucht. Anleitung zum bestellen: Auf “Shop > Mods” klicken Eine Low profile Reo grand und/oder eine Low profile Reo Mini raussuchen Auf “Shop > Rebuildable atomizer & supplies > Rebuildable atomizer & supplies” klicken Dort einen low profile Reomizer (2.0) nehmen und wohl fühlen. Kanthal A1 32 gauge mitbestellen und es glühen lassen. Vielleicht noch Ersatzmagneten für die Tür mitbestellen und ein paar Dichtungsringe. Bei Akkuteile eine VTC5 ordern. Warten auf die Post. Dampfen. Wer geduldig ist warten noch ein, zwei Monate, den dann gibt’s ein revolutionäres neues 510er Gewinde mit oben drauf vom Modvater Rob. Informationsbedürftige schauen bei Germanvapers im REO Talk vorbei. Hier Patrick’s Dampfer-Werdegang: Im Jahre 2010 war ich bereits 5 Jahre Nichtraucher. Aber habe so einiges vermisst: Rituale und Wolken pusten. Im Oktober 2010 stolperte ich über “Vaping”. Natürlich habe ich vorher schon einmal von der E-Zigarette gehört, aber die richtige Informationsflut habe ich erst dann auf mich einstürmen lassen, da mich Alternativen zu gängigen, super-teuren Vaporizern interessiert haben – ja, die Dinger die meistens zum Gras rauchen benutzt werden. Die Entscheidung viel positiv für’s Dampfen aus und ich ging von einer Totally Wicked Ego zur europäischen Ego, und dann immer weiter von Ego zu Ego. Vier Stück an der Zahl sollten es werden. Irgendwann kamen die ersten Tanks und ich habe eine Menge durchprobiert. Da die Ego’s nach einer Weile ziemlich ermüdend sind, wenn man viel dampft, bestellte ich mir rund ein Jahr später eine schwarze ProVari, welche mittlerweile - dank eines Defekts - auch einen V2 Chip drinnen hat und mich mit grünen LED’s anleuchtet immer wenn ich auf “FEUER” drücke. … okay nicht ganz die Wahrheit. Kurz nach der Ego hatte ich noch eine schwarze Silver Bullet die mir 6 Monate vor der ProVari treue Dienste leistete. Es folgten noch mehr Tanks, ein Versuch mit dem Bulli A1 und dann wieder Tanks. Letzten Endes war ich nie zufrieden mit Tanks…. Entweder der Geschmack ließ zu wünschen übrig (z.B. mag ich Carto’s überhaupt nicht) oder die Dinger sifften nach einer Weile. Frei nach dem Motto “Back To The Roots” wurde ich zum überzeugten Tröpfler und auf die ProVari kam ein eBaron The Dripper. Bis vor ein paar Monaten fand ich dieses 1-2-3 Setup relativ entspannt und gut. Doch dann… … dann entdeckte ich die Bottom-Feeder. Ich bestellte mir einen goldigen VV Reo Grand. Von der Benutzerfreundlichkeit und der Akkulaufzeit eine wahre Erleuchtung. Geschmacklich ebenfalls Oberliga. Auf das schmucke Stück kam dann ein eBaron The Spiral und gut ist…. Der Reo gefiel mir so gut, dass ich vor 2 Wochen überlegte, mir noch einen zu ordern, um nicht immer warten zu müssen, bis die 6 ml Flasche leer ist, bevor ich mal den Geschmack wechsele. Bevor ich aber noch einen in die Jahre gekommenen Mod bestellte, dachte ich bei mir: Informiere dich vorher noch einmal. Gesagt, getan. 2 Wochen Recherche und viele Rip Trippers Videos auf YouTube später viel die Entscheidung es noch einmal mit einem RDA zu probieren. Rip Trippers hat mir das schmackhaft gemacht und die Vorteile (in kurz: mehr Geschmack, mehr Dampf, mehr Rituale, mehr Optionen) aufgezeigt. Zudem ist mir die Nerdigkeit von dem Kerl sehr sympathisch - ich bin da genauso, wenn auch mit Computern und Skripten. Fully Present, The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness (Timecode 01:34:30) Von Ω zu Ommm. Was für Körper und Geist gibt’s hier von Andreas empfohlen: http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=60 Trove (Timecode 01:36:15) Minimalisten Geldbörse. So fern man nur mit Karten im klassischen Kreditkartenformat und ein paar gefalteten Geldscheinen klarkommt ist Trove nicht nur ein sehr kleines, sondern auch sehr cleveres “Geldbörs’chen”. Sven schwört jeweils darauf und hat sich mittels Kickstarter-Kampagne gleich eines der ersten Exemplare gesichert. Hergestellt von einer der letzten britischen Lederfabriken gibt es Trove ab 30 GBP/ca. 38 EUR. Walter Moers - Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (Timecode 01:38:00) Walter Moers - Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (Hildegunst von Mythenmetz) Genre: Fantasy Autor: Walter Moers Denkt sich allerlei Figuren und Charaktere fernab von Humanoiden aus, welche alle im Mikrokosmos Zamonien zu Hause sind. Gerade für Kenner der klassischen Literatur auch auf der Metaebene sehr geil. Vergleich: Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Serie wo in die Welt der Bücher hineingegangen wird. Hier genauso nur ganz anders. Protagonist: Hildegunst von Mythenmetz, ein fetter, arroganter, in sich selbst verliebter Autor, der keinerlei Kritik an seinem Werk duldet (Dinosaurier). Anbei ein Gedicht von einem anderen Schriftsteller in Roman selbst… als Meta… keine Angst… das Buch ist normal geschrieben. Bin schwarz, aus Holz und stets verschlossen Seitdem mit Stein sie mich beschossen In mir ruh’n tausend trübe Linsen Seitdem mein Haupt ging in die Binsen Dagegen helfen keine Pillen: Ich bin ein Schrank voll ungeputzter Brillen Danzelot von Silbendrechsler Stelton Pure Black Messer (Timecode 01:40:40) Sven schwört auf sein Stelton aus schwarzem Stahl. Die gibt’s zwischen 80 und 90 Euros. The War of Art (Timecode 01:42:30) Steven Pressfield’s Buch kämpft mit euch um Kunst und das Schreiben von Büchern gegen kreative Blockaden und Co. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. Steven Pressfield, The War of Art Soulra FRX3 Kurbelradio mit USB-Ladeausgang (Timecode 01:44:00) So… es ist soweit… nach nur 17 Folgen kommt nun der erste Zeitler-Pick in Reinkultur… dieses Mal aber von SVEN. Mein Gott… es färbt ab. “K-U-R-B-E-L-R-A-D-I-O”. Das muss man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen. Sven’s Überleitung ist “BLACKOUT - Morgen ist es zu spät” von Marc Eisberg lesen. Danach ist nämlich ein Kurbelradio mit Solarpanel und der Möglichkeit der autonomen Geräteaufladung ein “Minimalinvestment”. Patrick zieht bei so viel Fnords direkt mal den Aluhut auf, um auf der sicheren Seite zu sein. Link zum Bild: ALU-SCHUTZ Währenddessen kramt Andreas sein Minimalinvestment aus dem Keller und sorgt für kurbelnde Erleuchtung. Link zum Bild: Kurbellicht Egal. Sven hat nach nächtelanger Recherche das Soulra FRX3 Kurbelradio als eines der Besten Minimalinvestements (dieses mal franz. betont lesen) herausgefiltert. Für schlappe 70€ gibt’s das bei Amazon und der nächste Blackout wird zur Gaudi… fehlt nur noch Dosenwurstsuppe im Zwölferpack… aber die pickt er bestimmt nächste Woche. Sven hat auch noch eine authentische Top-Bewertungen bei Amazon ausgegraben die ihn restlos vor dem Kauf überzeugt hat: ★★★★★ Tolles gäret Ich habe das gäret gekuaft uber shop hat super klang mit diesem gäret können sie handy aufladen mit aux ausgang können sie ihe mp3 oder handy verbinden und music horen und kann 3 fach aufladen mit usb uber strom mit solar und…. ja bei mir ein super gäret Patrick als alter Linguist sieht da eher seine nächste Mission. Und zwar den Bildungsauftrag seinem Co-Pilot einen der schönsten deutschen Dialekte näher zu bringen: .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } Kiezdeutsch - “Isch geh Prinzenbad” Sunflex snakebyte power:cub (Timecode 01:48:00) Ein schicker Verteiler in Würfelform. Sunflex snakebyte power:cube Extender Universal. Konkurrenz allocacoc PowerCube wurde von Patrick zurückgeschickt: 0,5 Ampere = zu wenig Most, der snakebyte liefert 2.1 Ampere. Alternative: Nur USB? Billig muss es sein? Anker® 40W 5V / 8A 5-Port USB Ladegerät mit PowerIQ Neckar (Timecode 01:49:30) So wie es sich anhört freut sich Sven mit seinem JAWOHL!! mehr über den Pick von Andreas als dieser selbst. Die Nachricht ist jedoch simpel: Geh’ mal an die frische Luft, oh Hörer. In Spenderlaune? Wir haben Flattr und PayPal am Start und würden uns freuen.

This episode was recorded 26 May 2014 live and in person at Brent's office in sunny, lovely Ballard. You can download the m4a file or subscribe in iTunes. (Or subscribe to the podcast feed.) Brent has worked at UserLand Software and NewsGator and as an indie at his company Ranchero Software. These days he's one-third of Q Branch, where he writes Vesper. He is also the co-host of this podcast. This episode is sponsored by Tagcaster. Tagcaster is not just another podcast client — it solves the age-old problem of linking to specific parts of a podcast. You can make clips — short audio excerpts — and share them and link to them. After all these years, that problem is finally solved. This episode is also sponsored by Igloo. Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like, with shared calendars, microblogs, file-sharing, social networking, and more. It's free for up 10 users — give it a try for your company or your team today. This episode is also sponsored by Hover. Hover makes domain name management easy. And it's a snap to transfer domains from other registrars using their valet service. Get 10% off your first purchase with the promotional code MANILA. (Manila was the name of the blogging system worked on at UserLand.) Take a look. Things we mention, more or less in order of appearance: NetNewsWire MarsEdit Glassboard Vesper Manila The University of Chicago DuPont Punched cards University of Delaware Newark, Delaware Fortran 1980 Apple II Plus PLATO Brent's Mom 6502 Assembly 80 column card ALF II Music Construction Set Beatles Rolling Stones Pil Ochs Judy Collins Boby Dylan West Side Story Hair Broadway Soundtrack Delicious Library Epson MX-80 Columbia House Records Cindy Lauper Born in the USA The Clash London Calling Pascal Evergreen State College 1992 1989 Seattle Central Community College City Collegian QuarkXpress LaserWriter Mac IIcx Radius monitor Silo Goodwill Symantec C Grenoble, France Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Seattle Boeing Photovoltaics University of Washington Institut de Biologie Structurale CEA CNRS Alps (the mountains) Gopher Pine International Herald Tribune Kronenbourg Killian's Red Isère River Chinook's Eskimo dial-up account Zterm Lynx AltaVista Seanet MacTCP MacPPP AppleTalk Yahoo Info-Mac Archive Kagi Maelstrom Performa 604 After Dark Bungie Andrew Welch Usenet fuckingblocksyntax.com Dave Winer UserLand Frontier Aretha release UserLand Software AppleScript HyperCard WebSTAR MacPerl MySQL Spotlight Filemaker Pro Indianapolis Star News Woodside, CA Jake Savin San Francisco Robert Scoble Millbrae Palo Alto Windows Visual Studio CodeWarrior PowerPlant MacApp Toolbox Xcode Project Builder Carbon QuickDraw Open Transport Manila EditThisPage.com Daily Kos joel.editthispage.com Aaron Hillegass's Book on Cocoa Radio UserLand Python MacNewsWire RSS WebKit Safari MSIE for Mac Camino NetNewsWire 1.0 screen shot RealBasic BBEdit Lite TextWrangler Carmen's Headline Viewer Syndirella AmphetaDesk My.Netscape.Com Safari/RSS Ecto Movable Type Mac OS X Server NewsGator Palm Treo FeedDemon Nick Bradbury Greg Reinacker Outlook TapLynx Push IO Sepia Labs Cultured Code and Things Black Pixel Red Sweater Oracle Justin Wiliams NetNewsWire Lite 4.0 for Macintosh Vesper Sync Diary WWDC Parc 55

This week Myke is joined by Brent Simmons. They talk about the many apps he has made over the years—including NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Glassboard and Vesper.

Ben Orenstein is joined this week by Daniel Jalkut, the developer of MarsEdit and other fine software. Ben and Daniel discuss the origin of Daniel's twitter username, his history at Apple and his work there, and how it influences what he builds today. They also discuss the challenges of running your own company, and how Daniel's priorities and rule systems help him get things done, how the success of MarsEdit takes up his attention at the exclusion of other ideas, and how he thinks about failure. Then then go on to talk about App Store versus direct sales, why Daniel still sells his software outside the app store as well as in it, and what the breakdown of sales are like there, as well as Daniel's thoughts on App Store pricing and the benefits of being in the app store. Finally, Daniel tells us why he thinks git is like a PC and Mercurial is like a Mac, why he dislikes git, what he thinks makes a good podcast, how his podcast has changed, and much more. Red Sweater Software MarsEdit CVS RCS SVN git Bazaar Mercurial Core Intuition Real Artists Ship. Eventually. Çingleton Symposium Red Sweater Software Blog Bitsplitting.org Follow @thoughtbot, @r00k, and @danielpunkass on twitter.

With Marco on paternity leave this week, Dan is joined by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. They discuss the origins of Daniel's flagship product, MarsEdit, the long hours often required of independent developers, and more.

Neuigkeiten zum iPhone: Erste Anwendung wurde gecrackt, neue Werbung erschienen, Sicherheitslecks, iPhone in den Niederlanden; Money 3; MarsEdit 2.2

In der heutigen Sendung dreht sich alles um die anstehende MacBook Pro Aktualisierung, den immer weiter steigenden Marktanteil von iTunes und einige Tipps & Tricks zur Mighty Mouse. Des Weiteren sind einige Updates erschienen, die den einen oder anderen sicher mal dazu bewegen könnten sich die Software mal anzuschauen. MarsEdit wurde auf Version 2.1 aktualisiert und bietet nun Funktionalitäten, wie Tagging oder das Speichern von Entwürfen auf dem Server. Equinux, die Entwickler von iSale und Konkurrenten von GarageSale haben nun mit dem Update auf Version 5 die Integration in Mac OS X 10.5 deutlich verbessert und bieten einige spannende Funktionen, wenn es um das Handeln auf eBay geht. PDF Shrink ist vielleicht nicht jedermanns Sache, wenn man aber oft mit PDFs arbeitet, diese auf seinem Webspace veröffentlicht oder per Mail verschickt, so bringen Größenreduzierung meistens beachtlich viel. Den Podcast kann man als Feed abonnieren, oder aber in iTunes abrufen. Über Anregungen, Kommentare, Kritik und alles andere würde ich mich sehr freuen (z.B. in iTunes, als E-Mail oder als direkten Kommentar zu diesem Beitrag). Macinme Daily #17 Download