Thord D. Hedengren

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Month: September 2015

  • En hel hög med Apple Watch-ställ

    Då och då frilansar jag, som bekant, och ibland kommer jag rentav ihåg att länka till vad jag skrivit. På sistone har det blivit en hel del listor på Apple Watch-ställ, som den här sammanställningen, eller varför inte laddningsdockorna här? Trevlig läsning, och kom ihåg att hålla lite i plånboken – det skenar lätt iväg med den här typen av prylar…

  • Twitter to go beyond 140 characters

    Recode reports that Twitter are planning to go beyond the 140 character limit, with a longform product. Also, this, which I think it’s a no-brainer:

    In addition to the long-form product, execs have been openly discussing the idea of tweaking how Twitter measures its 140-character limit by removing things like links and user handles from the count, multiple sources say. In the past, Twitter has tinkered with the limit in other ways. Twitter Cards are still beholden to the 140-character limit but are intended to help people (and advertisers) share lots of information, and Twitter added a “retweet with comment” option in April to give people more room to comment on tweets they share. The company also lifted the 140-character rule on private messages back in June.

    This following Facebook’s revamped Notes, a snipe at Medium and other similar platforms, no doubt. Blogging isn’t dead, but it might very well be owned by social networks in the future. Let’s hope not.

    Also, hi. Sorry for the silence, it’s been a bumpy few weeks. More on that later.

  • Apple's September 9 event

    Speaking of Apple’s event and their new products, here are my takeaway thoughts.

    • I will buy an iPad Pro. The iPad is, alongside the iPhone, my favorite device to work on. It’ll be interesting to see what the larger form factor will do to that.
    • The Smart Keyboard looks alright, I’ll pick one up since I’m a sucker for things like that, but I don’t expect to use it much. As I wrote in The Writer’s iPad, one of the strengths of writing on an iPad is that it’s not connected to the keyboard, and you can position it any way you like.
    • I doubt the Apple Pencil will make me use a stylus more, but it does look promising. I’m having a hard time fitting Paper’s and Wacom’s alternatives into my workflow, so I’m skeptical.
    • The Apple TV could be huge. It could change home gaming completely, especially if the games carry across all iOS devices. It’s too early to tell, but I must say I’m excited about the new Apple TV.
    • And I’ll get a new iPhone 6S Plus, I think. 3D Touch looks really promising. I haven’t regretted switching to a new iPhone model yet, and I doubt that’ll change.

    All in all, a pretty nice Apple event. They’re all doing their thing, selling their brand, so well now. I’m happy to not only see white men on stage as well, although there’s still ample room for improvement. You can watch it all for yourself on Apple’s site, which is preferable from reading these posts.

  • Clickbait and quality

    Gizmodo (and Kotaku) really likes to take a negative spin on all things Apple. These are some of their recent headlines, coming off tonight’s/this morning’s Apple event: Apple’s New Smart Keyboard Turns the iPad Pro Into a Surface Clone, Apple Pencil: The Stylus Steve Jobs Warned Us About, Apple’s So-Called Gaming Console Is A Major Bust. These posts, aside from the last one which is whiny and ridiculous, aren’t even that negative. They’re reports, they’re noise to drive in the links (sorry about that) and the pageviews. It’s soulless reporting, rehashing what anyone could find out from Apple’s site. The soul purpose of these headlines is to drive more eyeballs, nevermind the fact that they fit poorly with the content.

    This is the thing I don’t get with Gizmodo. They sometimes produce great content, break stories and run with them in true new journalistic fashion, but then you get this crap. It’s not just Apple either, although that’s clearly a favorite topic of writers and readers alike, it’s all over the place. The strategy probably works, pissing some people off, and give others what they like. It’s just weak and, frankly, boring. For some reason it continues to amaze me, these things, when they come from outlets that can produce great content. Luckily I don’t have to read it, and neither do you. In the end, quality and analysis will prevail.

  • Så väljer du rätt WordPress-tema

    Ibland skriver jag artiklar åt publikationer jag inte själv driver eller äger. En av dessa publikationer är Internetworld, där det går att läsa lite om hur du väljer rätt WordPress-tema. Det är förstås något av en het potatis, för dina behov styr valet mer än något annat, men är du villrådig hoppas jag att artikeln kan ge dig några handfasta tips.