Ashes, the Fever client for iOS, has updated to 1.1. The update addresses many of the issues I mentioned in my review. It also added an interesting new feature called Share Anywhere.

Share Anywhere allows users to create URLs that can be opened in Ashes to create custom sharing options that utilize URL schemes of other apps. Want to share to Tumblr? Add it’s URL scheme and you’re good to go.

This is a neat feature and allows users to add sharing options without having to wait for the developer to update the app. Cool.

Federico’s wish list for iOS 7 is my wish list for iOS 7.

Nick Wynja has some fantastic words on the systems we use to organize our lives, and how they should be managed:

Taking a scaffold-like approach is about creating the right levels of structure around the work you do to let it properly flow. You neither want to constrain your creativity by following weighty methods nor do you want to become overwhelmed by the work you have to do by alleviating yourself from process.

I very much like the idea of a modular system that can grow and shrink to handle my needs. Finding a balance between not enough and too much can be difficult because it does not exist. The way we work is fluid and dynamic. We have to adapt to what life throws at us because our lives are constantly changing.

I have struggled finding a system that I trust to handle my life, but I am overcoming that by approaching the problem with a similar mindset that Nick outlines in his post.

Marco Arment, developer of the beloved read-later app Instapaper:

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people. But I wouldn’t be very good at hiring and leading a staff, and after more than five years, I’d like an opportunity to try other apps and creative projects. Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six months.

I am a huge fan of Marco and Instapaper, and while I was surprised at this acquisition, I am happy for Marco and the amazing product he has created. I am glad to hear that Instapaper will live on better than ever, and that Marco will be involved as an adviser.

I am sure that whatever Marco decides to put his newly acquired time and effort into will be as great as Instapaper is.

Several weeks ago I wrote about Fever, a self-hosted RSS reader, as an alternative to Google Reader. One of my biggest complaints about Fever was that it lacked strong third-party app support. For a lot of developers, there just weren’t enough people using Fever to make it worth their time to build apps for it.

That is beginning to change. After Google decided to shut Reader down, many people switched to Fever. As a result, many developers began working on apps for it. One of those apps, Ashes, launches today.

Ashes is the work of James Finley, and it is not a new idea. Ashes existed as an iPad app a couple of years ago, but was discontinued. Today the app is returning in a much better form.

Ashes works with Fever, so you will need to have a server running Fever in order to use this app. When you launch the app, you are asked for the URL of your Fever installation, your email address, and your password. When you log in the app begins its initial sync, pulling down all of your feeds.

Syncing Ashes with Fever does not perform as well as Sunstroke. Ashes takes some time to sync if you have not refreshed it in a while. The app seems to take longer syncing because it downloads Sparks as well. For instance, when the app syncs it sometimes tells me that it is downloading over 1,000 items. I know that almost all of these must be Sparks, but the app seems to treat them like any other item. Sunstroke doesn’t seem to do this when syncing.

It should be noted that Ashes doesn’t have the option to refresh your server upon sync, so you will want to set up a cron job to refresh Fever. However, the option to refresh your server has bee teased by the developer as a feature in version 1.1 of Ashes.

The app has a manual refresh button in the menu, but if you come back to Ashes at least five minutes after the last sync, it will automatically start synchronizing. This is a handy feature, but I wish it could be toggled off.

Hot Pixels

The first thing you notice about Ashes is that it was designed to impress. The app’s icon is a stunning combination of orange, blue, and black1. The icon stands out amongst others, which is rare in iOS apps today.

Once you open Ashes, you are once again greeted by that familiar orange color. The title bar of the app is bright red-orange, but it is not ugly like a traffic cone. The use of dark grays and off-white for the content of the app is accented nicely by the orange.

Ashes uses a navigation system that is being heavily adopted by many different iOS apps. The content you are viewing occupies the screen, and you can then swipe that screen to the right in order to access the menu. As more and more apps begin to use this method of navigation, I find myself beginning to dislike it. It has begun to feel stale to me in most apps. However, I don’t mind it as much in Ashes. The app makes good use of the gesture to access the menu, and also uses it to go back to a list view from an article. I think the idea just makes more sense in an RSS reader than it does in something like Foursquare.

The one gripe I have with Ashes about its navigation is that once the menu is opened, you cannot slide the content panel back over to the left to close it. You either have to choose a menu item or click on the panel. This just seems unintuitive to me.

The design of the app is as nice as the icon. Once you have swiped to access the menu, it features everything you could expect in a Fever app (Hot, Kindling, Sparks, etc.). Clean typography and bright icons make it very easy to navigate.

Reading and Sharing

Ashes opens to your Hot list, where you can see the temperature of every item and all of the sources for that item. I like how Ashes makes good use of site favicons. It makes recognizing sources quick and easy.

One of the most frustrating things about Reeder is that it does not allow you to set the offset and range of your Hot list. Ashes allows you to do this in the settings.

The most important part of a Fever app is viewing your Kindling. Ashes lists your Kindling groups in the menu. Clicking on a group will take you to the list of unread items for that group. You can also click the arrow to the right to see a list of feeds inside that group.

Getting around in Ashes works exactly like you would expect. The app makes it very easy to quickly access your unread items. There is a setting to show read items within the settings menu of the app. I know some people would prefer having quicker access to that, but for me it is fine where it’s at.

The app has the option to sort your unread items by newest or oldest. I would appreciate the option to sort by feed as well, but for now chronologically is your only choice.

In the list of articles, you can swipe left to mark an item as read or unread. I would love the ability to swipe right to send the item to Instapaper, but Ashes cannot support that gesture because swiping right opens the menu panel.

For me, the most important part of an RSS app is the reading experience. The interface of the app doesn’t matter when I am in the app doing what I’m there to do: read. Fortunately, Ashes’ article view looks great. The colors are subtle and it is very easy to read.

The article view features a toolbar that allows you to mark as read/unread, save, go to previous and next article, read later, and share.

One quibble I have with this toolbar is that the “read later” and “share” buttons are separate. It makes sense for the “Send to Instapaper”2 option to be in the share menu, but it is not. I feel that if they were combined it would save valuable screen real estate.

The share menu plays host to a variety of services and apps. The one service it does not support is Pinboard, which disappoints me. Hopefully the developer will add this in the future.

Ashes does not use iOS 6’s share sheets. I have grown quite accustomed to seeing them in most apps. I wish Ashes would support the new share sheets because they look much better than the old, standard list of grey buttons.

+ + +

Ashes is a nice app that exists in a sorely undersaturated market. The app looks great and gets the job done with style and grace. However, I did encounter some performance issues.

The app does not feel as buttery smooth as some other apps. Swiping the panels and opening articles weren’t necessarily laggy, but they did feel rusty. Scrolling can also have a slight lag, especially when the app is syncing. This is definitely not a deal breaker, and I can’t speak for the performance of the app on a newer device like the iPhone 5. However, I know that performance enhancements are coming in the next update that will release soon after the initial launch.

If you use Fever, you absolutely should download Ashes. I am still going to use Sunstroke as my primary RSS app because of its superb performance, but Ashes wins hands-down when it comes to good looks.

Ashes is a universal app, and is available in the App Store today.

Federico Viticci and the team at MacStories has the best coverage of Apple’s Q2 2013 earnings call.

A beautiful new weather service from the creators of Dark Sky. The things that these guys do with weather data is insane. And their web app, which works on any device, feels extremely well polished.

David Ogilvy was The Father of Advertising. He also had some great advice on writing:

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well.

Read his ten tips, think about them, and then go write something.

Gabe Weatherhead:

The world is not a clean place. It’s made of dirt, puke and scars. We are all made of dirt, puke and scars. In some way, I’m trying to be a real human at the other end of a web browser. I’m not a URL or IP address. I exist beyond an avatar or Twitter handle. Behind every snarky article and questionable rumor there is a deeply flawed person pretending to be a writer or artist. There are charlatans among us.

This struck home for me. When we write something, we put a bit of ourselves out there. It’s important to make sure that whatever we put out there is honest and exactly what we want to represent us.

The Mailbox blog:

Rather than grow Mailbox on our own, we’ve decided to join forces with Dropbox and build it out together. To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox…

When I first saw the headline, I immediately laughed. I thought that Mailbox was shutting down, and it was going to be the same situation as Sparrow.

Fortunately though, the Mailbox team will remain separate and continue building the app with support from Dropbox.

Have you ever been talking to someone or reading something on the web and realized after the fact that you have no idea what you just heard or read? Or perhaps you leave a room and try to remember some detail about it, only to come to no conclusion because you did not observe the room. The dictionary defines ‘observe’ as “notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant”. The latter part of that definition is really what is important here.

You may have looked at that room you were in. You may have noticed it, or even perceived it. But did it register for you? Often times it is hard to find the significance of the things we see and experience.

I believe that by learning to observe and register the things in out life in a more concrete manner, we could increase our thoughtfulness and our ability in creative matters. Inspiration is all around us if we just take the time to register the significance and dedicate our time and attention to it. This can take great patience, but the mental energy sacrificed will be rewarded.

There is a law of physics that says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change forms. Why couldn’t we also apply this to mental and creative energy?

We may feel as though our inspiration has been destroyed at times, but by observing our thoughts and surroundings we can discover that it has merely changed forms into something completely unexpected.

The guys at Digg:

We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, but as daily (hourly) users of Google Reader, we’re convinced that it’s a product worth saving. So we’re going to give it our best shot. We’ve been planning to build a reader in the second half of 2013, one that, like Digg, makes the Internet a more approachable and digestible place. After Google’s announcement, we’re moving the project to the top of our priority list. We’re going to build a reader, starting today.

Ever since Digg relaunched, it has become a really great product. I am very interested to see how the guys at Betaworks pull this off. I have mo doubt it will be great.

Also of note is that the new API will be based off the current one. That will make it easier for developers to implement the new syncing service.

A big part of many a nerd’s day is reading the news. Especially when it comes to news in the realm of technology and the Internet, RSS is the center of many people’s reading workflow. RSS is a method of subscribing to websites and receiving their updates in a central location for reading. Most people who use RSS do so with Google Reader or an app that syncs with it.

Google has announced that they are going to retire Google Reader. On July 1, 2013, it will be gone. And all of the apps that sync with it will no longer work. This wouldn’t so bad if there were plenty of alternatives, but unfortunately they are not very abundant.

While Google Reader shutting down has it’s benefits, a lot of us have to find an alternative. Fever is one of those alternatives. It is an excellent application developed by Shaun Inman, the creator of Mint.

I set up and tried out Fever a few months ago, and though I eventually moved back to Google Reader, Fever is a great choice for some people.

Roll Your Own RSS

Fever is unique in that it is not a hosted solution. Fever is an application that runs on your own web server. This makes the barrier of entry to Fever a little higher that most other solutions, but it also opens it up to some really cool features.

I am not going to go in-depth on how to set up Fever on your server, but it is relatively simple. Cody Fink wrote a great piece at MacStories on how to set up fever in ten minutes. It is a simple process, and it’s even simpler if you already have a web server that you can upload the files to.

After you install Fever, you will want to set up the cron job. This script will refresh Fever every so often to make sure it has checked for new feed items. Unfortunately, my host did not allow Fever’s cron job to run. This severely hampered my use of Fever because I had to wait for it to refresh every time that I wanted to read my feeds. This process can sometimes take a while. Be wary of this.

Be sure to also grab the Feedlet. This is a bookmarklet that easily let’s you subscribe to feeds. Definitely a must-have.

Hot Features

What makes Fever really interesting is that it has some unique features that set it apart from just a standard RSS reader. The most obvious of these is the Hot list.

The Hot list is a list of the most linked-to feed items sorted by their temperature. The more the item is linked to, the higher its temperature. The Hot list is a great way to keep up on what had happened over a period of time. Even after I switched back to Google Reader, I found myself checking Fever’s Hot list every once in a while to see the big picture of major news stories. This is especially helpful if you are catching up on the news after being gone for a few days.

I really love the playfulness of Fever, and this is mostly apparent in the Hot list. It’s a very fun approach to rating interest. I like that you can change the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Nice touch.

In order for the Hot list to work its magic, you need to be subscribed to as many feeds as possible in order to gauge temperature. However, most people don’t want to have hundreds of unread items to read through. Fever solves this with Kindling and Sparks.

Kindling are the feeds that are essential. Kindling feeds will show every new item as unread until you, ya know, read it.

Sparks are the high-volume feeds that you don’t necessarily want to see every update of. These feeds are updated, but they are only used to measure the amount of links that an item has received. These help to ensure accurate and interesting items show up in your Hot list.

Having Sparks that fit your interests is key to getting a useful Hot list.

Great, But Not Perfect

As good as Fever is, it is not without issues.

My biggest concern is the lack of development. Fever is very sparsely updated, and not many developers are building apps with its API. Sunstroke is a great app for iPhone, but there are no really good apps for the iPad or Mac. And even though Sunstroke is good, I can’t enjoy it as much because of the slow syncing speeds I mentioned earlier.

Fever also feels dated. The app hasn’t received much love in a long time. It has good keyboard shortcut support, but using the web app feels slow as compared to a native app like Reeder for Mac.

A New Hope

I sincerely hope that Google Reader’s demise will encourage developers to create new, better solutions to our RSS problems. Fever is a good alternative, but there is definitely room for something better.

RSS hasn’t really seen any innovation in recent history. It has remained quite simple, but maybe it is time to rethink it from the ground up. I have hope that a good developer out there will take the time and attention to solve this problem by July 1. I just hope that they charge good money for it and that it sticks around for a long time.

A I going to switch back to Fever? If I have to, I will. However, I am confident that a better, more supported alternative will appear.

I use Alfred more than any other application on my Mac. Today, it was updated to version two and it brings along some really cool new features.

One thing I noticed was that Alfred themes do not import into Alfred 2. I recreated my old theme for Alfred 2. You can download it here.

Myke Hurley and his podcast network, 70Decibles, is joining the 5by5 network.

Our shows deserve a solid platform to continue to grow. In my mind, there is no better place for this than 5by5 and no better person than Dan Benjamin to help us continue moving forward. When he first reached out to gauge our interest in joining his network, I was floored. As I said, Dan is a hero of mine, and I was honoured to have our network considered to join 5by5. As we continued to talk, and as I spoke with the other hosts, it was clear that this was the right opportunity for us.

I absolutely love 70Decibles. They have so many hosts that I admire, and they all make awesome podcasts. I am so glad that they are merging with the equally talented people at 5by5. Great things will come of this.

The videos from the OmniFocus Setup talks that were held at Macworld this year are really great. If you use OmniFocus religiously, there will surely be something of value for you in these videos.

There has been a lot of talk about this article, which outlines Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling. They are all great tips, but a few of them in particular stand out as all-purpose rules that not only apply to animation, but also writing.

You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

When first deciding what I should write, I first ask myself what I would enjoy reading. If you write about something that you are interested in, your writing will benefit. Truly caring about your subject matter is the first step to making great stuff.

Sometimes writers are tempted to write what would be easier. Instead, they should write about what they would want to read. Because whoever reads your stuff does so because they are interested in the same things as you are. Writing about your interests will benefit your writing and your readers.

Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

The most important part of writing is to have a message. Deciding what you want to say before you say it is essential to making a clear point. Using as few words as possible to convey the meaning of your words is almost always the way to go. I hate reading writers who beat around the bush before they finally make their point. Be clear and concise and your message will come across much stronger.

Also, be sure that you have an ending to write. Have a point to make. Have an end goal to accomplish. That will make writing everything before the ending a lot easier.

Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

Although having something to write about is important, it’s also important to understand why you want to write about your topic in the first place. Why is this something you need to tell people? Why would they even care? Motivated writing is good writing. Don’t just have something to say, have the reason and desire to say it.

No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

If you write something and decide to scrap it because you think it is terrible, do not feel as though you have wasted your time. Writing is hard. And the only way to become good at writing is to write. No matter what you are writing, good or bad, it is practice in expressing your thoughts and ideas. It is all worth it.

A good way to practice writing without worrying about quality is to keep a journal. I like to use Day One.

Writing is essentially storytelling, and the people at Pixar are some of the best storytellers I know. Therefore, it would be very wise to apply their principles to our work.

There is a quote that says "The man who can read and chooses not to is no better than the man who cannot read at all." If we don’t seek to better ourselves and our work we can never hope to set ourselves apart from not only others in our respective fields, but anyone at all. If you write, you have to make an effort to get better. Learning from others is the best way I can think of to do that.

Brett Terpstra, the creator of the most excellent Markdown Service Tools has come together with Tobias O’Leary to add a new action: convert Markdown to RTF.

This will make composing RTF emails so much easier. It can also be used to transform Markdown formatted Evernote notes to RTF. Lets all thank Brett and Tobias for making such cool stuff.

The Verge takes a look at Google Glass. The Glass project is a risky experiment, but I really like it. It feels like the future.

I just have one question, will it work with prescription glasses?

Today I stumbled upon an interesting web service when Marco Arment tweeted a link to the new Buckcherry album. The link was to a discreet web app called Preview.fm. It basically allows you to search the iTunes store for albums and preview the songs in the albums. And boy is it fast.

I asked Marco if Preview.fm was new, but he said that he has been quietly running it for several years. Nevertheless, it is quite a useful little tool. You should check it out.

Shawn Blanc is kicking off his membership drive, and I can personally vouch for the awesomeness of being a member of his site.

If you like great writing, great coffee, or just have a few bucks to spare, consider joining Shawn’s site. It’s a great way to support him and the really cool things that he does.

Chris Gonzales replaced his computer with an iPad, and his life did not fall apart:

Now that I’ve finally made a decision after months of consideration, what do I think about the end result? Well, I’ve been spending the better part of 72 hours toying with this thing and it already feels like I made the correct choice.

Harry Marks has some good thoughts about balancing the time we spend “doing” versus the time we spend “tweaking”.

There is nothing wrong with seeking out the best things or the best ways to make those things. Some people truly enjoy the thrill of the hunt and to them I say, “Good on ya’,” but when does the hunt stop being worth it?

I am constantly getting on to myself about this very issue. It has been a real problem for me because I enjoy being a nerd and tweaking how I do things and what I do them with. I struggle to learn that my focus would be better spent using my mental energy actually getting things done.

Harry’s post addresses a real issue for many of us. It is not always bad to spend our time tweaking with various parts of our lives. Good things can come from that. But in the end we need to put all of that tweaking to good use and get to work.

Mailbox is out. And there is a waiting list. And you may or may not have access to the app yet. You might be upset that you don’t have access to it yet. I am not here to talk about the launch of the app; I am here to talk about the app itself.

Mailbox’s tagline is "Put email in its place." It is an iPhone app that works with Gmail.

The basic premise is that emails should not clutter your inbox, they should be "snoozed" to a later time, archived, or sent to a list. Pretty simple.

I really like the app. It looks great, works well, and it has some useful functions. I like that I can have an email show back up in my inbox after a set amount of time. I also like that the total amount of email in your inbox shows up on the app icon badge. It helps to remind me that I have emails waiting to be acted upon.

My favorite part about Mailbox is that it works with any email client. When you defer an email until a later time, it just gets sent to a Gmail folder. None of your email is locked into an iPhone app, and that is crucial.

Also, Mailbox’s push notifications work flawlessly. You can tell that the developers put a lot of work into this app because it works extremely flawlessly for a 1.0 release.

Mailbox will not "reinvent your workflow" or any crazy talk like that. But it is useful. It works and I enjoy using it. What more is there to think about?

I am not a heavy email using guy. I just don’t get that much important email. But for some people, email is a big deal. It represents a lot of stress for them. I like what Pat Dryburgh says:

I’ve never understood why some people let email have such a strong effect on their mental and emotional well-being. I strive for Inbox Zero as much as the next guy, but the 12 emails sitting there now that I’ve yet to deal with aren’t causing me stress. Why? Because I don’t let them.

I feel the same way. Email doesn’t stress me out, but it does stress some people out. Those people should try Mailbox.

I use Evernote a lot. I consider myself to be pretty good at using it and getting a lot of value out of it, but that’s only because I have read Evernote Essentials. This ebook, written by Brett Kelly, is a fantastic resource if you would like to get started with Evernote.

I first purchased Evernote Essentials long after becoming an Evernote power user, but Brett’s book taught me a lot of new things. Version 3 came out today, and you should totally go buy it.