I love Google’s version numbers for its Google+ client for iPhone. And by love, I mean the company genuinely puts a smile on my face whenever I see this in iTunes:

I don’t know what criteria Google uses to determine changes and the numeric representation of them in the App Store – maybe it’s about originality?

Looking forward to 1.0.15.5174.

It took 9 hours, but at least I was right.

Joost van der Ree has an interview with Andrew S. Allen, the interaction designer of Paper. This quote from the article made me further reflect about the tension between simplicity vs. obviousness & discovery vs. frustration:

My partner Georg Petschnigg and I have a passion for this nebulous phase in creation that happens before you get into productivity. What is the film before you get to Final Cut? What’s the presentation before you get to PowerPoint? Where do those ideas go? You write them down on napkins, you write them down on post-it notes, things are kind off all over the place. It just didn’t seem right, we all have those great ideas that we’ve written down and lost. That’s what kicked off the idea.

While I do believe the first version of Paper has a lot of issues, as Macdrifter neatly summarized, I also think it’s been an eye-opener under many aspects. Perhaps it’s because of...

I know I’m late to the party with this, but episode 4 of the “Everything is a Remix” web series was published in mid-February, and I never had the chance to truly express how much I appreciate Kirby Ferguson’s work. If for some reason you missed Everything is a Remix, to use Kirby’s own words:

You don’t need expensive tools, you don’t need a distributor, you don’t even need skills. Remixing is a folk art — anybody can do it. Yet these techniques — collecting material, combining it, transforming it — are the same ones used at any level of creation. You could even say that everything is a remix.

The art of remixing rings particularly true to me because I can see its results every day. Apps, music – even bundles from Storify could be considered, in fact, remixes.

When not encumbered by patents, many of today’s innovations can flourish because of their very own nature of remixes of...

Today, Google announced its new futuristic project from the internal Google[X] team - Project Glass. You can read more over at Google’s official Google+ page, where they company is also sharing a video. The Verge and The New York Times are breaking down the interesting bits from today’s news.

As I said, I’m not sure how I feel about Project Glass yet. Specifically, I’ve been reading about the augmented reality glasses, asking myself some questions.

• The concept video looks cool. How much of this, though, is real, and will end up in a final product? You know the problem with concept videos, they look cool, but sometimes they never ship.

• How long until we see the obvious headline “Apple needs to respond to Google’s Project Glass”?

• The hardware looks like something from Star Trek, but then again revolutionary technologies always look unfamiliar at first. Two years ago, using an iPad in...

Back in January, when I published my first post for Ticci.org, I wrote that the site was meant to be an experiment to see how a more “personal blog” would fit in my workflow, which is largely based on writing all day for MacStories. With a mix of writing from the iPad, Markdown, Dropbox, and the excellent Calepin service, the first months of Ticci.org have been a success.

In fact, in spite of the very few posts I’ve put out on Ticci.org (16 to date, not including this one), I’ve learnt that I enjoy having a personal space separate from MacStories quite a bit. And so I’m happy to announce that starting today, Ticci.org joins the Svbtle network by Dustin Curtis.

You can read more about Svbtle in Dustin’s original post. I have decided to move Ticci.org to Svbtle for a number of reasons: it looks great, I am confident Dustin is the right person to evolve this idea into a solid, innovative...

My friends at The Apple Lounge, an Italian weblog about Apple news, published a fake story about Apple acquiring Starbucks on April 1st. Clearly meant to be a hoax – they even linked to Wikipedia’s “Pesce d'Aprile” (April Fool’s) webpage in the via footer – the story gained some traction and, unsurprisingly, some Italian blogs and publications ran with it.

Here comes the comically tragic part. Not only did some renowned outlets like Il Sole 24 Ore run with it, they also didn’t credit The Apple Lounge’s fake story as if the rumor came out of nowhere on April Fool’s. The list of worst offenders includes Leggo.it and AffariItaliani (I’m not giving them pageviews, but make sure to hit The Apple Lounge’s documented series of screenshots and links).

The Italian Apple news scene is in a coma. There are too few good guys, and they are easily forgotten because people prefer to get their news...

If you’re subscribed to the Read & Trust newsletter, my piece about “The Future of Technology” went live this morning. I discuss the issues with ensuring technology and information can advance and evolve at the same pace.

If you’re not subscribed, make sure you don’t miss future Read & Trust articles and subscribe today.

I was interviewed by Macdrifter about my writer workflow for his site’s regular series. I’m honored to be included among such talented, smart folks.

Check it out here.

Today, March 21, my girlfriend and I celebrate our fifth anniversary. She is the love of my life, and I couldn’t be happier. She encouraged me when I was only getting started with MacStories, and she’s still here to listen to my crazy ideas about the site that I constantly try to explain to her. Some of them are good. Others suck and she is not afraid to tell me. That’s why I’m with her today. Happy anniversary.

As I am here typing this in Writing Kit, she is looking at an email I sent her with my attempt at drawing an anniversary card with Adobe Ideas. The app is good, my card is just plain awful. She smiled, appreciated the thought, and promptly made fun of my poor drawing skills. I have always been terrible at drawing. No iPad can change that.

But five years ago, could I have ever imagined a piece of glass with just one button would someday become the device to get my work done? A...