News

Firefox: 29’s the charm

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Firefox works on everything. When it came out, it made Internet Explorer look embarrassing. (More embarrassing.) Firefox was the darling of every serious technology-minded geezer because it worked better, it worked faster.

I just didn’t like it.

It’s a funny thing. I like Safari and I swear to you that it feels light, that it feels like you just get on with things instead of having chunky buttons and options to slog through. What’s funny is that this is precisely, to the letter, what fans of Firefox say is wrong with Safari.

So, plainly, your choice of browser is surprisingly personal. (As long as it isn’t Internet Explorer. You can go too far.)

I’ve always kept a copy of Firefox around because there is often a site that just doesn’t work in Safari – or doesn’t work in Firefox, I don’t know why I keep finding picky websites. Each time I start up Firefox it irritates me by feeling heavy, kludgy and for CONSTANTLY telling me it is updating itself. I just want to go to a site. I want to go once, I want to go now, I want to get the hell out of Dodge and go back to Safari but, no. UPDATING.

It’s been worse since 2011 when the company announced it was going to update every six weeks or so. I applaud them for not doing the dots: Safari is currently on version 7.0.3. But at first it was wearisome seeing an entirely new version of Firefox coming down the chute: version 6, version 7, version 8… and on and on. I’m sure the developers intend this to seem like they are truly on the ball, at the cutting edge, bringing us the latest technology faster than anyone else. Version 9, version 10, version 11… I just think “Again?” or often “Already?”

My current copy of Firefox is version 26 and it is practically prehistoric: apparently I downloaded it on 14 March, a whole 47 days ago. I don’t even remember using it 47 days ago but I imagine I did and that it updated itself. Hang on.  Yep, I’ve just opened it and it’s just updated itself.

To version 27.

I have no clue why it isn’t 29. I do have a clue that I could, with a wee bit of effort, go off now to already get versions 30 or even 31 in beta.

You can tell I’m not going to. But many will and they have very good reasons to find that version 29 is a great one. It’s very customisable, it’s got oodles of features. Hear what from someone who is far more of a fan than I am:

And then read more plus get a download at the official site.

New: MacBook Airs now from £749

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macbook-air-hero-l-201404

 

[Photo: Apple]

Give Apple credit: anyone else would be doing a big launch presentation about this but they just slipped it out with a press release and an updated website. And I’m kind of with them: there’s nothing new per se in these models. But it’s a lot of years since I gave much of a damn about a 1 pixel improvement or a 1 microhertz speed improvement, I am all for what you can do with computers.

And how much it costs you to do it.

That’s the news today: the new MacBook Airs are starting at £749. If you’re a PC user who has often spent no more than thruppence on a computer, you’ve just winced and I am just about to point out that you spent that thruppence often. Often. And added bits. Whereas I updated my Mac after six years solid, heavy use – and I still use that one for some jobs.

Spend your money wisely, spend it here – and remember when MacBook Airs came sliding out of manilla envelopes and were the most expensive things in the world ever:.

New: Clear To Do app adds Reminders

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This just in from Realmac:

…we’ve just launched a big (and much-requested) feature in Clear for Mac and iOS: reminders. With this great new feature, you’ll never forget a to-do – and as Clear syncs your tasks and reminders via iCloud you’ll be notified on all your Apple devices.

We’ve also got some new sound packs in Clear so you can customise the sounds as you complete tasks.

Clear with Reminders is of course a free update, and available on the App Store and Mac App Store.

Clear has always looked great yet not been powerful enough for me and in part that’s been because of the lack of reminders. Take a look at Realmac’s Clear website for a video of how this latest version works.

10 PRINT “HELLO, WORLD” GOTO 10

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It’s fifty years since the computer language BASIC was invented and probably thirty since I could’ve told you unprompted that it stands for Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. I’m not sure how many years it is since this was the startup screen I saw for most hours of most days:

 

bbcmicrocursor

 

It’s hard to conceive how we got from that to what I now see every day:

macdesktop

But we got there in part, in a very big part, through the impact of BASIC and the generation it sent into programming computers. I was one of them, I just got in trouble for always wanting to add in plot twists.

Read the origins and history of BASIC in Time magazine. Told you Time was good for a read, when it isn’t running royal videos.

 

Distraction-free writing with Noisli

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You may never have seen such a brightly-coloured screen for writing. Wait. You may never have seen such a gently soft and reassuring – no, it’s bright again, hang on, now a kind of brown? Whoa, yellow.

Noisli is a web-based text editor that deliberately throws distracting colour changes at you and optionally adds in noises. Oooh, I like this blue. Cyan now. Not so keen on green.

You’re not supposed to so consciously notice the colour changes, it’s really intended to be a purposeful distraction. Especially with the sounds on, Noisli helps you focus on your writing by slipping background noise into your noggin. Just enough. It appears that we work better when there is something going on, just a little something, than when we work in total silence.

It works, too. I really don’t like the yellow but most of the colours that come by as you type are quite restful or quite sparking, quite energising.

I’ve played with the sound of rain but there is also lightning, waves, lots of things I don’t understand from the icons.

There’s just one thing to note: as the website itself says, this is in beta. Your work should be saved but do yourself a favour for now and copy the text out to somewhere else every now and again. And go have a play with Noisli.

Today’s newsletter comes with chocolate

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You only think I’m kidding. Today saw the release of the second email newsletter from The Blank Screen and if you read this site, you’ve already learnt a lot of it. But not everything. Not about the chocolate.

Specifically, absolute and irrefutable proof that chocolate is good for your productivity. I am continuing to search for evidence about tea and will report back.

But also this week:

  • The buy of the week – which you must run to get now because it’s on sale for the shortest possible time
  • New: productivity tip of the week
  • Real news of new hardware for your phone
  • Fake news about apps from The Onion

Plus:

  • Did I mention chocolate? Sorry, I’m a bit excited about that

Take a look at today’s edition here – and if you fancy getting it shipped straight to your inbox every week, just sign up here and let the good times roll about a bit.

It’d be nice to have you along.

Now out – The Blank Screen email newsletter

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Have you subscribed already? The first weekly newsletter is now out and if you have, it will be in your email inbox. Remember the most productive thing you can do with email is read and enjoy it immediately. In this case, anyway.

If you haven’t got it, what you’re missing out on is:

  • An unmissable video about kids and “ancient” technology
  • The best productivity news of the week
  • The rather unusual Buy of the Week recommendation
  • Details of the Stratford Literary Fair
  • The best technology stories of the week

To subscribe for free, just email me and say you want in.

And in the meantime, take a look at today’s first-ever Blank Screen email newsletter in full right here in your browser.

I hope you like it.  It’s been a lot of fun creating it since the idea popped into my head last Saturday. I was on my way to exhibit The Blank Screen paperback at the Birmingham Independent Book Fair when it occurred to me that I could offer people a free PDF sample of a chapter. If, that is, I got their email address. It was but a short hop from that to thinking I could ask people to sign up for an email list and then it was a much longer hop to thinking what I could do with it for them.

Maybe if the list hadn’t been so successful I’d have thought of something else. Something quicker. Something a lot simpler. But it was simply lovely seeing that list grow on the day and then later over emails and social media.

So I think the email newsletter is good. And I know it’s your fault. Thanks.

Creativity and the time of the month

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Lifehacker has picked up on German studies that suggests firstly that women tend to be creative around their menstruation cycle – and secondly that so do the men nearby.

During the preovulatory phase, creativity was in general improved when serum concentrations of estrogen (E2) and luteinizing hormone (LH) were highest whereas motor perseveration decreased. In control women, there was no preovulatory improvement of divergent thinking and no preovulatory decrease in motor perseveration.

And:

A new study suggests that when young men interact with a woman who is in the fertile period of her menstrual cycle, they pick up on subtle changes in her skin tone, voice, and scent – usually subconsciously – and respond by changing their speech patterns.

Specifically, they become less likely to mimic the woman’s sentence structure. According to the researchers, this unintentional shift in language may serve to telegraph the man’s creativity and nonconformity – qualities that are believed to attract potential mates.

Both quotes reported in How Ovulation Affects Your Creativity (Even if You’re a Guy) – Lifehacker.com

Frankly, any time anyone says anything is down to a woman’s time of the month, I cringe. But if this is true – and do read the whole Lifehacker piece for more – then it’s also a bit depressing.

It suggests that people’s creativity is not theirs, it’s somehow tied to our body chemistry. It also suggests that we are stuffed after menopause.

fsdfsd

Free 1Password video because your heart bleeds

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I use 1Password a minimum of ten times a day on my Mac and a lot, an uncounted lot but still a lot, on my iPad and especially my iPhone. It is for storing passwords, yes, but because of the way it does that, you tap on a site name and takes you there, pops in your username and password, and you're done.

So rather than going to a site and then looking up what my password is, I am already in that site and logged on. It's that speed plus the sheer handiness of having my most important secure sites to hand that means I keep using 1Password and I keep recommending it.

But even though I've had it for years, I am still learning about it and today The Mac Observer spotted that Screencasts Online is giving away a free video tutorial. It's not a coincidence that they're doing this just as we all face schlepping through changing our passwords because of the Heartbleed security problem. But they're doing it like a mensch: yes, of course Screencasts Online would like us to sign up and pay to watch lots of videos but they're giving away this one for free. It's free and it's apparently complete so it's useful and it's good of them to do it.

I say 'apparently' only because I've come straight to you with the news. Guess where I'm going next?

Yep, straight to the free 1Password video on Screencasts Online right here.

Get the Blank Screen newsletter free

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From this coming Friday, April 18, The Blank Screen will also be available as a weekly email newsletter. Each Friday it will bring you the best posts from the last seven days of productivity news, features and reviews.

Plus it will also include Self Distract: not only an antidote to being productive but a money-where-my-mouth is demonstration of my writing. The Blank Screen is about getting you more time to write and I use this stuff every day so it's time I showed you. Self Distract is also about writing but the strapline for it is:

What we write and what we write with, when we get around to writing

You'll see what I mean. But I'm hoping you'll also see a lot of use for the email newsletter. During a typical week here on The Blank Screen, I publish very many pieces that are technical or particularly topical like news of 24-hour sales on particular apps. They're popular and they're useful, but sometimes they mean the longer, more distinctively Blank Screen productivity features get a bit lost.

The Blank Screen email newsletter will pull out the very best of those from the week plus a round up of the best technology pieces too.

The newsletter will be posted here on The Blank Screen site but you can get it early and you can get it delivered right to your email inbox by just signing up here. Click or tap on this link to send me an email saying you want to subscribe and you're in. You can also use that email to tell me anything you want to, but just hitting Send will do the job too.

I hope you sign up for a look and that you enjoy it.