Publish – a new feature for Day One

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

Day One imageFor a journaling app (or any app for the matter), Day One already had an unsurpassed feature set. Now it is even better. Developer Bloom has now added an additional feature called Publish, which provides a way to share individual diary entries with a select few, or the whole world.

I have written previously about one way I have used Day One, however the use case possibilities are endless. Along with a very clean, distraction free writing environment, Day One will also automatically add temperature, weather, location information, time and date, activity data (iPhone 5s) and even what music you have playing. A key feature for me has been the ability to tag entries, allowing use of the app for specific holidays, events, or themes running through the various unique individual entries.

Now, with Publish, users are able to do just that – publish individual entries to the Day One webpage, where those who have the unique URL, can view the shared entry. Social media accounts can be linked should you wish to share beyond a simple few, with data such as views, likes and total shares available to you in relation to each published entry. Or if you prefer to share entriesmore privately, the usual iOS share sheet options of messaging, mail, or copying the unique URL can be used.

Although most will likely use this feature as a means to share entries to social media, I cannot help but think this type of service would also be useful in sharing (read – sending) things such as health data with medical practitioners (e.g. home blood pressure monitoring, blood sugar levels, food intake); tracking and sending exercise data to your personal trainer (particularly for iPhone 5s users to track overall activity also); recording moods and feelings shared with a psychologist; or even time tracking / job details completed and sent to an employer. There really are endless possibilities with this type of service, however understandably many may be nervous about sharing such information in this way from a security point of view[1]. In any event, there are certainly emerging possibilities here.

Personally, I plan on using this on my next holiday, to share some of the craziness we get up to with other family members. For example a three day trip last year generated 43 Day One entries, most with photos. Given our family sharing occurs privately on Path, rather than posting entries to two services (or even a third in Twitter), a copied and shared URL via Publish is looking increasingly attractive as a simple, elegant means of sharing these experiences at whatever level I choose.

Day One is available through the respective App Stores for Mac and iOS, with the sharing feature currently available only on iPhone, though iPad support is coming soon.

Other reviews of Publish can be found on The Sweet Setup and Macstories, and was discussed recently on Episode 39 of The Prompt podcast.

  1. Comment from the developer around security can be found in The Sweet Setup post linked above.  ↩

Pen Innovation – All Done?

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

IMG_4386A recent episode of The Pen Addict podcast touched on innovation, with host Brad Dowdy questioning whether certain categories of the pen market had been “solved”. That is, whether innovation on particular market segments had ceased (namely your ballpoint/gel ink end of the market). As far as my thoughts are concerned on this particular topic, I think it is probably a fair question. The answer? Probably yes. Is this a bad thing? Probably no.

A knowledge base

At it’s core, the pen industry is probably no different to any other. At some level, there are “standards”, which provide an overall frame of reference (to both experts and those less so). For example, when recommending a pen better than the average 99c bulk buy office stick, many might suggest a Uni-ball Jetstream, Pilot G2 or Uni-ball Signo 207. (We could debate all day about precisely which is better, and I have previously given my thoughts on this). Another example might be the popularity of the Lamy Safari as an entry level fountain pen.

Without a certain amount of stability (some may read – lack of innovation) in these “go-to” recommendations, the pen landscape in this particular segment would be constantly shifting, and recommendations moderated: “well, you could try a Jetstream however they have recently changed the …….. so I’m not quite sure if they write the way they used to”. The “standard” or well-known frame of reference would no longer exist.

Innovation or simply variation?

How you define innovation will go a long way towards answering this question for you anyway. According to the Oxford Dictionary, to innovate, is to:

Make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products

If we are talking about better versions of the same product, new and exciting products, or simply variety in a typical segment of the market, then your answer on the innovation question will likely be different. The many variations in design, materials, nib sizes and inks available to fountain pen enthusiasts (along with after market possibilities such as converters and nib grinding) typically provide an endless array of choice for the consumer. To me, this is not necessarily innovation, simply variation, customisation, and choice, with many pen lovers going down the road of fountain pen experimentation (and often obsession), even if the starting point was gel inks and rollerballs.

Also, innovation generally occurs at the “pointy end” of an industry, and much of what is considered innovation at a manufacturing level is often concerned with better production techniques, efficiencies and overall productivity. Do these changes necessarily mean anything different for the consumer? Sometimes in the form of price point, possibly a better product, however often there may be no real discernible difference.

Conclusion

Essentially, in many ways, I don’t necessarily believe there is a great deal of innovation occurring in pens, regardless of the market segment we are talking about. However, I equally believe this is not detrimental to either the market itself nor the consumer. What we do have is endless variety in the marketplace, from a few dollars for a consistent, good quality gel ink pen, up to a few hundred dollars (plus) for a fountain pen – with many variations in between.

The good old gel ink standby or the customised fountain pen? Entirely up to you, however I guess if you prefer gel inks and rollerballs, that will be where your searches take you. Or perhaps an early foray into fountain pens. Regardless of which, many discoveries will be made on the back of reviews or blog posts on pens, with many of those pens compared to those that have remained unchanged for some time, and are therefore familiar to you (which is exactly why we need them).

At the end of the day we are after a consistent and familiar writing experience with a little bit of choice as to how we achieve this. If products are created simply to “make something new” without this philosophy at the core, I’m not sure that is the way to go. After all, surely no-one here wants to write with a “multi” fountain pen.

Dept4 – Yesterday and Tomorrow

/ Pete Denison / 1 Comment

Over the past few weeks I have been looking back on posts I’ve written on since commencing dept4 in May 2013, and more specifically, thinking about what I plan to spend my time writing about moving forward.

Reflection

For the most part, I have written about coffee, my favourite technology, and miscellaneous pieces about various things on my mind at any given time. A couple of posts hint at a slight obsession with pens, and this is an area certainly in need of more attention. I had initially planned to write more on productivity, workflows and self-improvement – however the productivity and workflow topics remind me a little too much of my office job. Perhaps that makes me well qualified to write on such matters, however to be honest, they are topics I feel least like writing about in my spare time. Self improvement? Perhaps that lies somewhere in between.

Granted, many of my posts touching on technology do indeed have some crossover into the productivity and workflows realm, however most of these have a personal productivity bent, rather than a specific office based one.

Future Plans

IMG_1922As I mentioned above, an area that has only seen a couple of posts to date, though is an area of intense interest for me relates to pens and paper (well actually, think anything in a stationery cupboard). This has been further compounded by embarking recently onInCoWriMo, or International Correspondence Writing Month, to the tune of sending a letter a day for the entire month of February. I have written more about my InCoWriMo experience here.

In this age of Twitter and Instagram, what would possess me to hand-write a letter a day until number 28 is posted? Pen and paper, plain and simple. My decision to participate in InCoWriMo is a point reached along a journey that has come a little way, though has many more miles left to run. A journey to be punctuated (quite literally) by many combinations of fountain pens, inks, rollerballs and even ballpoints, on a varied terrain of notebooks, pads and whatever paper I can reasonably lay my hands on – this I am sure of.

I have always been interested in pens. I distinctly remember the few basic Parker Jotter and Sheaffer pens from high school. My foray into Artline 200 fineliners, and the decision as to whether the 0.4 or 0.2mm version better suited my writing style (neither by the way, we are talking teenage boy penmanship here!). Then, onto the decision of whether I preferred blue or black ink. Throughout my university days the experimentation continued, though at a slower pace, until I received my first fountain pen in 1997 as a wedding gift from my wife. Seemingly that was pretty much it, the be all and end all of pens for me – until about 18 months ago. Don’t get me wrong, there was still much experimentation going on in the sub $10 office supply store pen category, simply not much beyond that.

I’m not exactly sure what piqued my interest again, however I began doing a few internet searches one day and stumbled across some sites recommending Rhodia and Moleskine notebooks (I think through researching the GTD method of productivity, and discovering a few Moleskine pocket notebook “hacks” for analogue versions of this system). One thing led to another and I soon found Brad Dowdy’s The Pen Addict, both blog and podcast, and from there it was all over. A similar fate has befallen many who stumble across Brad and his now infamous “penabler” influence to many followers around the world.

Through listening to the podcast and a little self experimentation, I have since purchased a few pens and notebooks, and am currently researching my next mid priced fountain pen to add to my collection. My Montblanc Meisterstuck will always remain my most valuable pen, both sentimentally, and likely monetary, however I am planning on starting again from the bottom and building a more varied collection. My own “beyond the office supply store” stationery cupboard if you will.

So, what does this mean for this blog moving forward? I would say a continuation of what you have already seen on the coffee and technology fronts, and an increasing amount of pen and paper related articles as my journey continues down this road. Where will these all fit in my current post categories of Thoughts, Improvement, Coffee and Tools? That I am not sure, though some of the categories could become a little more specific, and I will be giving this some more thought as things progress.

Let’s get to it then

Although I have broken and continue to break the cardinal rule of blogging, by writing about a variety of topics rather than focusing on one, I plan to continue, simply because I do not see dept4 as solely a Coffee, Pen or Tech blog, nor do I have any immediate plans to make it such. I have a keen interest in, however am not an expert in any of these topics.

Although there will be common themes running through those areas of interest, I do enjoy the freedom of writing on pretty much anything if the mood strikes me. Who knows, perhaps these topics may become more defined and specialised, spinning off into their own blogs in the future. Whilst I am loathe to rule out anything completely, I have no plans to undertake this in the near future.

As I write this, post number 84, I am pretty happy with most of what I have published over the past 10 months or so, and believe things have come a long way from my initial plans for the site. If being a “jack of all trades and master of none” limits my readership, (which has grown beyond what I could have ever imagined anyway, for which I am eternally grateful), then you may as well start calling me Jack.

Pens Down – InCoWriMo Reflections

/ Pete Denison / 5 Comments

photo

No doubt many are saying “well that’s InCoWriMo done for another year”. Not I, given it is the first year I have participated. For those unfamiliar with this February activity, from the organisers:

InCoWriMo challenges you to hand-write and mail/deliver one letter, card, note or postcard every day during the month of February.

Although my decision to commit to the InCoWriMo (International Correspondence Writing Month) challenge was decidedly last-minute, I’m very pleased I did. There is a lot to be said for the written word, even more so for the hand written word. The extra thought, planning and overall contemplation relating to words committed to the page by hand, seem to make them somehow different than those tapped out in an email, tweet or blog post. There is no select all and delete if the first couple of sentences are wrong (yes, I did restart more than one letter), nor is there backspace for the misspelt or improperly formed letters or words. Having set myself the challenge of no strike-out out corrections, I managed to keep this to only two for the entire month, far better than I expected.

Beyond the enjoyment of writing to those who were on my list, of course the main attraction was putting pen to paper numerous times (well 56 to be precise – see an explanation of this below) over the course of the month. Who knows, perhaps with more notice I may have stocked up on a few new pens, rather than merely new inks.[1]

I can’t help but think in my ideal world, a letter held in the hand of the recipient would somehow mean more than a hastily sent email (likely with typo’s), sitting in a cluttered inbox along with spam, bills and random newsletters, likely to be missed or accidentally deleted. The act of turning the envelope over to check the identity of the sender, tearing it open (perhaps with an exquisite silver letter opener), unfolding the Rhodia[2] paper and smiling at the ink colour and contents on the page. Hopefully an appreciation of the time taken by the sender to think about, and physically craft what is now in the hands of the reader.

The recipients themselves? Hopefully each enjoyed the surprise in their mailbox, and also the words inside those envelopes. Words of thanks, appreciation, love, encouragement, support and idle chatter. Letters went out to friends, family, pen company CEO’s (courtesy of the contact details on the InCoWriMo homepage), a couple of my favourite pen podcasters, fellow bloggers, and Eric Schneider of InCoWriMo, who will receive letter number 28. My initial joke to family members advising they may receive more than one letter because I would run out of friends did indeed eventuate, however lets just say I wanted to write them another one (yes, let’s go with that).

Apart from that spoken of above, by far the most rewarding aspect was my commitment to also write a letter a day to my lovely wife, bringing my tally for the month to 56 letters in all (pleased it wasn’t a leap year). A feat I am very proud to have completed. Obviously I will not go into any details here, though writing to someone you are very close to on a daily basis is quite an enriching experience, and one I highly recommend if you have ever considered anything similar. Daily for a month a little much? My suggestion would be to sit down and write just one letter, and be amazed at what comes to mind – just try it.

So, in summary, the whole InCoWriMo experience was an extremely positive and rewarding experience for me. Will I be doing it again? Absolutely. Will I be embarking on it’s “sister event” NaNoWriMo come November? That, I am not sure of. Do I have a fifty thousand word novel in me? Don’t we all think we do? The question is whether anything worthwhile will come out over the course of the month. Perhaps I should simply put together thirty 1700 word letters with a somewhat cohesive plot!

Contemplating InCoWriMo next year? Do it. You certainly won’t be sorry you did.

  1. For those interested, J. Herbin Indien Orange, Montblanc Irish Green, and Montblanc Burgundy Red.  ↩
  2. Rhodia No 16 Dot Pad  ↩

iTunes Radio – Finer Things in Tech

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

In a recent post I outlined my first impressions of iTunes Radio, given it has now entered the music streaming market in Australia. Since that time I have been slowly building a few stations of my own, as well as sampling Apple’s curated stations.

As is often the case, David Chartier at Finer Things in Tech looks a little deeper at some of the other features of the service, which demonstrate those finer things that make the experience a little more elegant and to your personal taste.

Be sure read David’s article for more information on “tuning” your stations, having shared stations updated by all with access, using Siri or your syncing play history.

Four tips to rock, tune and sync iTunes Radio – Finer Things in Tech