Until recently, the Pictionary-like game had only run spammy banner ads in its free mobile app that, including the paid no-ads version, has amassed a staggering 50 million downloads in five months. Now, with a direct-sales force that’s been on the ground for a whole eight weeks, Draw Something is inserting advertisers’ paid terms into the game for players to literally draw brands.
Here’s how the game works: Pick a word from a list of three, then create a drawing so a Facebook friend can guess that word and you can win points. For the ad product, imagine inserting words like "Doritos" or "Coca-Cola" in among "golfer," "bikini" or "fireworks."1
I played Draw Something quite intensely for a few days some time ago, but it’s been lying dormant on the springboard since then. Now this news definitely makes me feel that me and Draw Something is not a suitable match.
The only question is whether I should just delete the app or launch it one last time to attempt to remove my account.
Coincidentally, Macworld published two screencasts titled ”Be More Productive with LaunchBar” while I was writing my post on what Alfred is and why you should use it. So if my post got your attention, but you want to check out alternatives to Alfred. you should definitely spend a couple of minutes watching these.
For a long time I questioned the purpose and need of dedicated application launchers1 in Mac OS X. ”The dock is fine”, I always thought. Especially after the release of Leopard which allowed me to put folders in the dock. Using this technique I put the entire Applications Folder in the dock and used it to launch all my applications.
However, some time ago I actually started using an application launcher. I think it was Lion and ”Launchpad” that brought it on. Launchpad seemed like such a great idea, but I quickly realized that as part of my workflow, it simple sucked. The fact that I have way to many applications, combined with me sometimes using my laptop as a stand alone machine, sometimes connected to a 1920×1080 display and sometimes to a slightly less high res display made it impossible to actually launch things without getting super frustrated.
Launchpad
The good thing about Launchpad was that it made question whether the dock was good enough or not. The bad was that Launchpad itself was no better than the dock.
So I tried out Alfred. I’m not quite sure how I ended up on Running With Crayons website, but I really liked the look of Alfred so I gave it a shot. I replaced the default key binding with Alt (Option) + ESC, disabled it from searching for anything but applications and forced myself to use it for a while. After just a couple of days I realized that I’d never turn back to using the dock as my app launcher.
That sounds great and all, but what is an application launcher?
That’s a very valid question. An application launcher is in itself an app, but its sole purpose is to launch other applications in an as frictionless way as possible.
The dock works fairly okay for this task if you have five to ten apps that you use. If the number grows you’ll quickly start losing control of where to find the various apps and you will spend a lot of time looking for them, instead of doing the task that you actually wanted to do. Another disadvantage of the dock is that it’s a mouse/trackpad driven utility. You need to take one hand of the keyboard to use it.
Dedicated application launchers helps you launch your apps without having to look through this long horizontal list that is cluttered by open and non-open apps. Let’s take Alfred for example:
First, bind Alfred to a hotkey. (In my case Alt + ESC.) Then whenever you press that, the Alfred window appears on top of whatever you currently have as your frontmost window.
Alfred
Then start typing the name of the app you want to launch. Alfred will immediately start matching the characters you type to the name of apps on your system.
Alfred searching
As soon as the desired app appears on top of the list, hit return and it will launch.
It may not seem like much, in fact I thought it seemed really unnecessary the first time I saw an application launcher, but give it a try. Chances are you’ll love it!
For me, using a launcher has changed my workflow quite a lot. It enables me to keep my fingers on the keyboard more, instead of reaching for a mouse or trackpad. It also means I don’t have to keep re-organizing my dock to keep the most relevant apps easily accessible. As a matter of fact, I’ve completely emptied the dock of programs. The only visible app icons in my dock is the ones currently launched and in use.
My clutter free Dock
That sounds great, now how about that workflow?
The web is full of places to learn more about coding and improving your skills. Among all these great places, the one site that has meant the most for my coding lately – and maybe for the developing community as a whole – is StackOverflow. When I code I search StackOverflow very frequently to learn more about all sorts of things and since my main programming language is php2 I constantly search php.net to remind myself of correct argument order for functions, function names etc.
These to things, StackOverflow and php.net, both means Google searches. The other day when I checked out the preferences of Alfred I realized that its ”Custom Searches” function can be used to streamline my programming workflow. By creating a new custom search and using the following query:
I was able to create quick way to search StackOverflow. Now I just hit my hotkeys and write ”so my search query”3 and hit return. The next thing I now, I’m in my browser seeing search results from Google for a StackOverflow search. This technique can then be easily adapted to search php.net be changing the query string to
So far I haven’t had the time to use these shortcuts so much, but I’m pretty sure they will increase my programming productivity quite a lot.
Summary
If you are a frequent user of a computer and use more than five applications, I defiantly think that you should try a launcher. It may seem silly and unnecessary, but give it a try. Both Alfred and Quicksilver is free and Alfred can be obtained from its website as well as from the Mac App Store.
Once you have a launcher installed, try to make some sort of custom search settings for websites that you search frequently. If you choose Alfred, feel free to use my custom searching. Simply click the links after you’ve installed Alfred.
[…] screencasts titled ”Be More Productive with LaunchBar” while I was writing my post on what Alfred is and why you should use it. So if my post got your attention, but you want to check out alternatives to Alfred. you should […]
RubyMotion is a revolutionary toolchain for iOS. It lets you quickly develop and test native iOS applications for iPhone or iPad, all using the awesome Ruby language you know and love.1
This seems really interesting. The idea of learning Ruby suddenly became a whole lot more appealing.2
Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond. 1
I wonder if this will give Dropbox serious competition or not? Too me it’s a no brainer to not trust Google with my entire digital self, but I not sure everyone else thinks that way.
UPDATE: It’s worth quoting Google’s own ToS: (my emphasize)
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.2
So the question remains, is Google really, really a company that you would trust with all your computer files?
Imagine Facebook already trading on the Nasdaq; how would the market react? Would analysts and pundits send the stock upward, praising Zuckerberg’s swiftness at securing FB’s position? Or, to the contrary, would someone loudly complain: What? Did Facebook just burn the entire 2011 free cash-flow to buy an app with no revenue in sight, and manned by a dozen of geeks? Is this a red-flag symptom of Zuckerberg’s mental state?1
An interesting read. Monday Note currently seems to be the most interesting commentator on Facebook’s future and its acquisition of Instagram.
The very worst thing you can do with frequently asked questions is make a list of them on your web site. Frequently asked questions are bugs, and the only satisfactory answer to them is to fix the problem so the questions don’t get asked again.1
One of the great things about the month of december is the wide array of awesome advent calendars for geeks. This year I added PHP Advent to my list of essential reading. However december was one of those months where I barely had time to sleep, let alone actually read, so a lot of articles were left in my Instapaper cue. A few days ago I read through one of them and found this great quote from Drew McLellan. The whole article is very well worth a read.
I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.1
Is it just me or is that last part really scary? Looks like I’ll have to re-evaluate my use of Instagram.
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Macworld demonstrates some workflows with Launchbar :: Henrik Carlsson's Blog
4 maj, 2012 11:54[…] screencasts titled ”Be More Productive with LaunchBar” while I was writing my post on what Alfred is and why you should use it. So if my post got your attention, but you want to check out alternatives to Alfred. you should […]