I'm a storyteller. I tell stories at 
Just write it down →
Jon Hoyt:
Keep a small notebook with you at all times, record important points from conversations, ideas you have in the middle of doing other things, any little piece of information that might actually be useful in the future.
Great advice. The sooner one can start this habit the better.
For me, this often ends up being in Evernote, but when I’m using actual paper, I love Field Notes.
Incompatible, slow and downright unusable →
Jacob Wilson isn’t thrilled with the HTC Thunderbolt:
Even though half this page has been about the failure of Verizon’s first 4G LTE device, it also shows how bad companies have become at making a phone with Google’s development kit. In addition to those issues, I’ve had countless lockups, crashing apps, lagging, and slow loading times on almost everything I do. The network speed doesn’t determine the speed of the device, sadly.
I’ve experienced a lot of these problems with my phone as well. I just can’t recommend Android to anyone anymore.
The "tablet market" →
Marco Arment, on the Kindle Fire:
A “tablet market” suggests that people first decide they want a tablet, then they comparison-shop and choose the one that best fits their needs and budget, like buying a dishwasher. I don’t think we’ve seen any plausible evidence that a meaningful number of customers think of tablets generically like that.
But if anything’s going to prove me wrong, it’s the Kindle Fire.
I guess Donald Trump is good for something →
Our afformentioned photo shoot with Lauren and Adam on Saturday.
Speaker Deck Wordpress Plugin →
This plugin talks to Speaker Deck’s oEmbed provider and transparently embeds your slideshow.
Speaker Deck →
A gorgeous and powerful web app for sharing presentations. From the fabulous team at Ordered List.
Our focus at Ordered List is simplicity and beauty. We asked ourselves, what is the most simple way to share a presentation? The answer we kept coming back to was a collection of images. This is exactly what Speaker Deck is.
Responsible storytelling
This afternoon, Karina and I will go downtown to meet Adam and Lauren, two clients of ours, for an engagement shoot. We’ll be shooting their wedding in November.
We include an engagement shoot with every wedding because it gives us a chance to get to know the couple. We can learn about what’s important to them. We get a chance to hear about their wedding plan. They can tell us their story.
As any decent journalist will tell you, it’s necessary to understand the story before you tell it. You don’t start by publishing a story about something, then going around and interviewing people to see what they think.
Obviously, you start with the interview.
A good storyteller is invisible. The spotlight is never meant to be on the photographer. It’s meant to be on the couple.
The task at hand
Disconnecting from work is important, when work is over. However, when I’m at work, it’s vital to use my time wisely.
At my day job, we have an unconventional employment model. Of the eight people on our team, only two live and work at the headquarters in Indianapolis. The rest of us are spread throughout the Midwest, working remotely.
This model has inherent challenges, and our director has worked hard to give us tips to use time effectively.
A lot of these tips have to do with communication. As the communications team for a denomination, we’re in close contact with the people we’re serving, especially through email.
Michael Hyatt describes one of the common problems with email:
Does this sound familiar? You are working on an important project and you get a notice that you have received an e-mail message. What do you do? You stop what you are doing to read the message, despite the fact that this can totally derail you from your current task.
Hyatt recommends setting aside certain times of the day to deal with email. Just turn off your email client when you’re not working with it.
Another big influence on our team has been ReWork, by the founders of 37signals. One big idea we’ve taken away from that book is the idea of setting quiet hours on our team for creative work.
Creative work takes time and concentration. Breaking the work up into small moments really kills the ability to create. Two mornings per week, we set aside time for creating and try to keep communication and meetings out of these times.
I’ve also cleaned house. Being in front of a computer all day, I’ll want to read RSS feeds and check on twitter. The problem has been, however, that I follow too many people and read too many RSS feeds. These tools aren’t going to help me at all if they’re unfocussed.
I brought the number of people I was following on Twitter down from over 300 to 123. I also unsubscribed from over half of my RSS feeds. The result has been that when I want to take a short break to check in on these things, it takes less time and is more beneficial.
How about you? What work habits have you started to help you focus?
Micro 4/3 is the Big Kahuna →
Mike Johnston, on Nikon’s entry into the mirrorless camera market:
Yesterday seemed like a milestone to me. It was a couple of Nikons that arrived, I know that. But somehow it seemed like what really arrived was Micro 4/3.
He really nails it.
Nikon’s announcement yesterday shows a total misunderstanding of what makes these cameras so desired. Sure, there are some interesting things about it, but it really just solidifies micro four thirds as the best option for anyone looking for a camera like this.
Adaptive images →
Why? Because your site is being increasingly viewed on smaller, slower, low bandwidth devices. Your desktop-centric images load slowly, cause UI lag, and cost you and your visitors un-necessary bandwidth and money.