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Chrome lets you create new CSS rules right inside the DOM inspector. I used to be able to then view all those rules in the Resources pane, but now that view instead shows the document source. This could have been a conscious decision – perhaps people want to see their changes to the HTML in addition to the CSS – but it’s clearly favoring one output over another. Perhaps what I’m looking for was moved, or deemed irrelevant? I wish I knew.

I used to use RSS as a one-stop way to cut down on my endless cycle of refreshing a million different blogs for news. Now, the opposite has happened: a couple of news sources are so much better in quality than the rest. I get my general news through the New York Times, and my tech news comes through The Verge or Ars Technica. These guys are beating everyone else at news depth and analysis, making most other blogs in their field redundant.

There’s a lot I risk missing online by doing this. But instead of drowning in an endless feed of RSS updates, I’ve curated a couple of social sharing tools to give me a pulse for the rest of the Web: Reddit (I unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits and subscribe to quality niche ones) and Twitter (again, being picky about quality sources.) I’d like to see Google+ take off in this role, but Google still needs to improve their API enough for killer apps to take advantage of it.

This new way of consuming content online is an unexpected one for me. I usually prefer more open, decentralized stuff, and RSS is the poster-child for such a thing. But as a constant news stream, it just doesn’t do enough to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. It’s still very useful and necessary, since it can syndicate a lot more useful information than just the news articles I’m talking about. Even though I sacrifice some openness, I find crowdsourced social aggregators far more useful, especially when I have some curation controls to personalize what I’m getting.

Sorry, RSS. You have a lot to offer as a technology, but my life is easier having left you.

Despite the fact that the Android operating system is by far the best fit for my needs, I can’t say I’d recommend any of the current high-end Android phones over an iPhone. Even the best Android phones seem to be unbalanced attempts to serve the various agendas of the OS vendor (Google), the designer/manufacturer, and the wireless carrier. It feels like these organizations are too focused on their own priorities to harmoniously collaborate in the design of a product which is great for the user. Google seems happy to focus on doing the bare minimum to get their Nexus “proof-of-concept” phones shipped, and leave innovative hardware design to other folks (who install crappy software.)

This disconcerted effort of unaligned agendas recreates the market conditions which allowed Apple to disrupt the smartphone market in 2007 by refusing to cede any control of the customer experience or business relationship to another company. Apple’s integration of software and hardware, coupled with their power to keep carriers subservient, allows them to focus on their own goals, a large part of which is the user’s experience. They also support their old devices better and longer.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying the iPhone is better than Android. Everyone has different priorities in picking the best fit for their smartphone. I am saying that on average, the iPhone is usually the best match for someone who wants equally good software, hardware, and customer support. But doesn’t mean much in reality, as buyer’s desires are as diverse as the selection of phones available to them. Personally, I care a whole lot less about build quality than I do about software stability, reliability, and geek-friendliness, so I’d probably still buy a phone with “pure Google” software if it were installed on a hardened turd with an LTE antenna.

Overall, I think the reinvented smartphone industry is now quite mature, and every device out there basically does the same thing. There are so many choices out there, but I’d really like to see more folks than just Apple focusing on delivering excellent products and service to the end user. I feel like HTC is almost doing that with its Android phones, but needs to release fewer devices and support them better, and that Google needs to give manufacturers better access to prerelease builds so non-Nexus phones don’t lag the rest of the industry by 6-12 months.

Galaxy Nexus (designed by Google in collaboration with Samsung)

Pro:

• It’s a “pure Google” device. This means it’s the first to get updates, and Google controls them. This means it will probably be more stable, secure, and up-to-date than any other Android phone (until Google releases another one.)
• The camera’s shutter and between-shot delay is FAST. So fast that what I thought was a delay for focusing was actually the picture being taken.
• The Galaxy Nexus recreates the Nexus S’s beautiful “blank black” face, and improves upon it by moving menu buttons onto the screen in a dynamic fashion.

Con:

• The quality of materials and industrial design is nowhere near competitive with phones even half its price. Google says it’s got a metal frame inside which many phones lack, but the plastic is cheaper feeling than everything sold for $199 since the iPhone 3G/3GS. I don’t know what happened here, since Samsung did a pretty great job with the previous Nexus S.
• The speaker really sucks, which is a shame since the screen could be really great for multimedia.
• Matters of my own personal preference: I don’t like the headphone jack’s location on the bottom, the not-quite-gigantic 4.65″ screen (though nice for typing), or the exposed dock connection pins.
• For some reason, the AMOLED screen is worse than the one Samsung uses on its own Galaxy S II phones, and its PenTile layout reduces the effective pixels-per-inch relative to the competition. At this price point, I don’t understand the cost cutting. (The screen still looked pretty darn good, but the bar is set high.)

HTC Rezound:

Pro:

• As always for HTC, this phone has excellent industrial design. Despite my dislike of phone screens above 4 inches, the fit in my hand was nice, the soft touch of the back casing eliminates any “slippery” feeling, and overall it felt solid.
• This phone has an LCD display, unlike the Nexus and RAZR’s AMOLED variants. I thought this display was by far the best in the group.
• HTC’s Sense UI is “love-it-or-hate-it,” but I’ve always fallen in the “love it” category. Sense 3.5 is smooth and takes awesome advantage of the high-specced hardware. I particularly liked how functional and usable HTC’s camera UI is in Sense 3.5.

Con:

• This phone adds “Beats by Dre” branding to the already packed company of Sense, HTC, Verizon, and Google. Other reviews say the first-party music app uses audio “enhancement” which doesn’t extend to the rest of the OS.
• The phone is great right now, but its software is already old. HTC releases quality software updates, but it takes them 6-9 months after Google’s release to prepare them.
• This phone’s bootloader is locked (by Verizon’s choice), making it much harder to install custom Android distributions like Cyanogenmod, which have been instrumental to me in compensating for HTC’s slowness to update their operating systems. Since I want Ice Cream Sandwich, this is a potential deal breaker for me.
• HTC pretty much doesn’t update Sense features after a phone’s release. They’re a selling point, not a supported and modernized part.

Motorola DROID RAZR

Pro

• Design and build quality. I didn’t expect this (I returned two original Droids which couldn’t stand the test of basic wear and tear), but I was quite impressed by the fit and finish on this thing. The expensive Kevlar backing is kind of a confusing touch, but it’s good for RF transparency.
• The super AMOLED display looked great and fared quite well in bright sunlight.

Con

• Verizon is quite clearly using its DROID brand to aggressively assert its own campaigns. I had really weird stuff going on, like Verizon logos in the camera app with a “You don’t have geolocation turned on, go turn it on, there’s no reason you wouldn’t want that!” nag.
• Motorola’s custom UI isn’t intrusive, but it is butt-ugly. I have no clue what these folks are thinking, and Verizon’s locked bootloader makes installation of a vanilla Android less attractive. Hopefully Google’s acquisition of Motorola will stop this.

So what am I gonna do?

I don’t know. These phones all feel like they’ve been designed as the best solution to one of the companies’ goals, instead of the best fit for me. The Galaxy Nexus realizes Google’s vision for Android 4.0, but fails to make an attractive consumer product. The HTC phone is excellent for right now, but will feel really outdated in just a year. The DROID product line just feels like Verizon’s attempt to bake in as many upsells and in-house branding spots as possible. I really wish I could take the HTC Rezound, but get the support of a “pure Google” phone. (That was the excellent Nexus One of two generations ago, before Google switched to Samsung as a launch partner.)

Who knows, I might decide once again that “It’s the software, stupid!” and just buy the Galaxy Nexus. At this point, it feels like I’d be happiest either doing that or going back to the iPhone.

In the morning:

1. Fight the snooze button on my smartphone – for the last 17 months: an HTC Droid Incredible in an OtterBox Commuter Series case. I’ll probably be upgrading to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus soon.
2. Commute (hopefully by bike, weather permitting) with my Rocketfish RF-MAB2 Bluetooth Headphones. I’ll listen to music on Rdio or Google Music, a podcast from TWiT.tv, or an Audible.com audiobook. If I’m listening to some embarrassing pop star on Rdio, I’ll make a bet with myself about how many people will have made fun of me on Facebook when they see those songs posted live to the Ticker.

At work:

(Notable as of last year’s “Day in Technology” post, I’ve been working as a Web Developer at One Tribe Creative.)

• In general, my productivity is fueled by two things: Evernote for basically everything I need to keep track of that isn’t bound to communications, and Google Apps on our company domain for everything that is.
• In meetings, I like to use my iPad 3G (1st-gen) because it’s a more social computer: it doesn’t obstruct the view across the table, doesn’t make distracting clicky noises, and lets me pass around examples for others to hold and interact with. I take a lot of notes using the Evernote for iPad app.
• My main workstation hardware consists of:
• 2011 Apple MacBook Pro (13″) – I sized down to a 13″ this year and feel like it’s the ultimate portable that packs a serious multithreaded punch. I love the unibody, tolerate the glossy 1280×800 display.
• 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7
• 8GB RAM (aftermarket)
• Crucial C300 128GB Solid-State Drive (root filesystem) – solid state drives are, hands-down, the best way to improve computer performance.
• MCE OptiBay replacing the DVD drive (a waste of space) with the original Apple 500GB HDD (holding symlinked directories for ~/Pictures, ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media, and GarageBand’s big library. )
• 1993 IBM Model M Keyboard via PS/2-to-USB converter (my favorite “new” toy.)
• Apple Magic Trackpad – Initially an experiment, I’m surprised by just how much I love it. I’ve gone completely mouseless now and use multi-touch gestures all the time. (It also rocks drawing selections and slices with my fingers.)
• A good, employer-supplied Dell 24″ Widescreen Monitor that serves as the main external monitor. I put my OS X dock on the left side of this screen, and the notebook display sits to the right atop an aluminum Griffin Elevator stand.
• My most-used software consists of:
• OS X Lion. I love developing on OS X because it’s my favorite Unix-based desktop workstation.
• A web browser. Most days I use all of them for testing, and one for development. I switch my defaults every few months not out of intention, but necessity, as either Firefox or Chrome is bound to have some little bug in their released-every-6-weeks “stable” version that drives me nuts.
  I make heavy use of the WebKit inspector for most of my CSS work.
• Coda for code editing and file management. I’m tempted to try a more command line-based workflow with bash and Vim.
• WordPress is the basis for most of my development projects. I’ve been on it since 2005 and love making cool stuff with it for my clients. For the last year I’ve been developing child themes on the Genesis Framework, which adds a bit of power for site administrators, and an awesome hooks and filters API for theme developers.
• Hosting totally depends on the need:
• Linode hosts my own virtual private server, which runs Debian 6 and services I administer myself.
• I have my important work stuff on a managed Media Temple (dv), which basically serves the same purpose as my Linode, but has smarter people responsible for its uptime.
• I usually host smaller clients on Media Temple (gs), and larger ones on either (dv) or a Liquid Web VPS. If someone has tech skills and a low budget, I highly recommend NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, and if you don’t have tech skills and still need to host a site for $5 a month, I’ll tell you, “You get what you pay for,” and then smirk when you ask me why your site is down and who can help restore your stuff.
• Git with gitosis for version control. Currently on a private git installation, but I’m looking into BitBucket now that it offers free unlimited private repositories. (GitHub is neat, but not cost efficient for small businesses who need a lot of private repos.)
• Rdio to stream my jams, and Facebook to publicly shame myself for referring to them as “my jams.” I wonder how I’d like Spotify instead.
• Sparrow for my email: this is an awesome native email client that is purpose-built for Gmail, instead of just a weak IMAP interface. It unifies my personal and work email (which for some reason I think is a good idea) and lets me reduce the window down to one narrow column like my Twitter and RSS feed apps.
• 1Password for all the passwords I can’t keep in my brain (Mac client, Browser client, iOS client, Android client… It’s everywhere I am.)
• Dropbox for my “Documents” folder (on all my devices.)
• Reeder for my Google Reader RSS feeds.
• iChat for Instant Messaging – I hated iChat until the updated Lion version.
• VMware Fusion 3 for my web test environments of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows XP, and a sundry of fun new Linux distributions.

Out and about on the smartphone:

Since so much of my work and play is tech-related, usually any place outside work and home is a return to the “real world,” so I accordingly dial the tech down to just my smartphone. (Just a smartphone?) I even don’t walk around with earphones in very often any more. (But when I do, they’re V-Moda Remix Remotes, which are hands-down the favorite of 50+ kinds of earbuds I’ve tried over the years, a search which I hated the need to do.)

I do all my communication through Google Voice and don’t even give out my real cell number. Google Voice rocks, and support for it is the one thing that has dedicated me to the Android platform (though Sprint’s network-level GV integration makes the iPhone an option again.)

If I’m at a café alone, I might bring along my Amazon Kindle (Third generation, WiFi + 3G, no ads).

At home:

I finally got back to a setup I’ve had once before and really see as necessary: separate spaces for sleep, work, and play. Having different rooms for each is such a psychological help for me to focus on working – or relaxing. The kind of things I do with tech at home are a bit more casual and passive – I’ll watch Netflix on my PlayStation 3, and do my various Web feed or Readability reading on either my MacBook, my iPad, or my smartphone. I find that I still prefer the MacBook for any task that isn’t just reading books or feeds- it’s just the most flexible and fast way for me to get to what I want. I think tablet devices like the iPad have already bested PCs for normal folks’ home computer use needs, and might eventually be so for me as well.

For audio work or extended listening, I use Sony MDR-V6 over-the-ear headphones. They’re comfortable and have excellent sound. They were purchased last year with birthday money from my grandparents, one of whom passed away a couple of months later, and thus I’m reminded of her every time I put them on.

Trends and reflections

The transition from university to professional web development definitely created a need to separate work and play. The iPad came along and helped a lot with that; I consider it to be a “lean-back laptop,” or a device which makes leisure activities a lot less “computer-y” or absorbing.

At the same time, the way I get work done has, by necessity, gotten a lot more intense and multitasked. Developing web front ends means testing everything in multiple browser and OS combinations. Caring about fonts means triple-checking rendering everywhere. But as this stuff has gotten a lot more broad, support for web standards has also grown immensely, so I find myself needing to fix far fewer browser rendering glitches.

Apple took mobile apps to stratospheric heights in 2008; now Android is a major player, and the struggle between native and web-based apps has matured but not resolved itself. I find that I actually use only a couple of third-party apps on my smartphone, since almost everything is done through either a browser or an app bundled with the device.

The only hope for competitors to make a better phone is to concentrate on niche markets: Geeks who want full control of their phones have the Google Nexus line. Some will swear by their physical keyboards, integration with proprietary cloud apps, or their enterprise-secured OS.

But if your needs are like those of most of us, no matter your budget, there is nothing out there that, on a whole, beats an iPhone.

(Before anyone accuses me of fanboy bias: this post was written from an Android phone, and I have no idea what I will buy next. I’m in that geek niche where there is still a heated competition.)

“There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.”

– Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com

I just turned on the new Facebook Timeline as per this howto guide.

I don’t know how much people will use it, but wow, they’ve made memory lane a whole lot richer of an experience. There’s tons of stuff to look back on that I wouldn’t have had thought to document myself.

Also, I was worried that some of the new ways you can share with friends in realtime wouldn’t be implemented effectively. But as soon as I clicked a Spotify “play” action, I was presented with this simple menu:

I was cautious because of Facebook’s previous missteps when sharing data from other services, but it looks like they really understand that people want to make decisions about what to share with whom, and they especially don’t want that decision made for them.

Third party sites and apps that posted things to the Facebook news feed before now were usually limited to just links, or if you had some serious savvy, perhaps some slightly richer media. But there were always rumors and anecdotal experiments which implied that Facebook treated data from third parties like second class citizens, not to be shown as prominently as content posted through Facebook’s own apps. This will clearly change with the new Open Graph and timeline – developers have way more control over how to import their media into Facebook, and can publish third party content to Facebook in a much richer way as well.

It’s kind of hard to explain, but here’s an example that comes to mind: I have a presence on several social networks, but I don’t entrust any of them with the stuff that’s most important to me: my blog and photos. That stuff is so important to me that I host it myself, even when some other companies’ services might provide me a nicer experience or a bigger network of my friends. To compensate for the interaction I lose by putting this stuff on my domain, I use RSS-based tools to post content from ZekeWeeks.com to Twitter, Facebook, and hopefully Google+ soon. But it’s always just a dumb link, perhaps with a thumbnail and an excerpt, whereas my Facebook subscribers would see a rich photo gallery or video if I had decided to put it all in Facebook instead.

Well, no more. With Open Graph, I can choose to exist outside Facebook without sacrificing the rich sharing inside Facebook. I can’t wait to see individuals and groups start taking advantage of this in a way that opens new possibilities to them, instead of locking them into a proprietary platform.

That said, I have no idea how this stuff is going to play out in reality. There are tons of question marks about it still. And Facebook has a huge amount of existing users who may have a trouble with a paradigm shift on an existing network that they’ve already conceptualized in a fixed way.

My personal productivity strategy.

After leaving their customers’ personal information wide open to attack on unsecured servers running ancient software, Sony’s lawyers decided to simply make their customers sign away the right to make claims for damage done by Sony’s negligence. If you don’t want to do so, you must send a “clear statement” about it via postal mail.

So that’s what I’m doing.

September 16, 2011
Sony Network Entertainment, Inc.
6080 Center Drive, 10th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90045
ATTN: Legal Department/Arbitration

To those who protect themselves far more than they do their customers:

I do not yield, capitulate, surrender, or otherwise stupidly waive my legal right to resolve disputes with any Sony entity through individual or class action litigation. I make no agreement or commitment to needlessly subject myself to the inferior system of arbitration.

Earlier this year, your failure to protect your customers’ personally identifiable information through the most basic of information technology security processes resulted in direct harm to us. You should be working to make sure this never happens again, rather than avoiding legal accountability to your customers for future misdeeds.

Keep your incompetent practices off my fucking legal rights,

Zeke Weeks

• Apple releases iPhone, tells the market that third parties should make web apps
• The market isn’t ready for web apps, pressures Apple into releasing a native app SDK and distribution channel
• The market can’t tolerate Apple’s control over the app store, circumvents it with web apps (Kindle and Readability moved to web apps because they couldn’t generate revenue in the app store; Facebook is even rumored to be working on a whole mobile web app platform)