Can anyone find a position for in-app message designer here?

Somehow, Garrett Murray managed to write up the same thoughts I had been discussing with my girlfriend about “Paul Miller Leaving The Internet”.

Read his post. I agree with every point. Particularly this one:

The reality is, the internet is one of the best tools for being alive.

Which echoes what I wrote in my interview with Matt Alexander:

Personally, I think we should embrace the fact that technology and “real life” are so deeply intertwined now. It’s too late to start pulling the single strings of this complex fabric now. I believe we can be free from the burden of technology only if we realize we don’t “have to” be free from it: we should let technology and real life be independent and help each other at the same time. That’s what I call progress.

With self control, the Internet becomes the modern mankind’s most powerful tool: it creates memories.

Great take by Ben Brooks on the latest “App Store controversy” in regards to the Dropbox SDK:

Apple is a known quantity, third-party app developers (for the most part) are not known. Consumers don’t know who is behind Instapaper, LLC, App Cubby, Sky Balloon and others. As bloggers we know the people behind the companies, as developers you know or know how to check, as Apple you know, but consumers? They probably don’t even look at who the app is from, they just trust that everything they do within the realm of that app has been OK’d by Apple.

This is the heart of the issue. Consumers don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t have to know the people and motives behind purchases in apps — all consumers should need to do is trust that Apple has done their job vetting all of this.

Aside from political and economical reasons, I do believe Apple also wants to prevent confusion in some areas of the apps...

In testing a new iOS app with iCloud integration, I noticed a feature to create public links for files hosted on iCloud.com.

I didn’t know it was possible for developers to enable such functionality with the existing iCloud API. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to publicly share iWork files through iCloud.com, and the closest example I can think of is iPhoto for iOS’ Journal feature.

Right now, these files don’t end up on any section on iCloud.com; they are only visible in the “Manage Storage” settings panel of iOS and OS X (where, however, there is no option to copy the public link).

I would love for Apple to consider deeper file management options for iCloud. Dropbox recently overhauled its sharing features, and, with Mountain Lion getting a new file saving UI directly plugged into iCloud, I don’t think it’d be absurd to think of this API finding its way to desktop. I’m just...

Last night, Apple launched iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud in a number of countries, including Italy. Here’s my coverage at MacStories about the launch.

I was really looking forward to trying iTunes Match, so I hit Subscribe the moment I saw the option available on the Italian store. These days, I only use Rdio to listen to my library or just about anything I want, but I was eager to finally try Apple’s service to convert and “cloudify” my old music library.

I should have remembered that, unlike the iMessage and FaceTime setting panels on iOS, you can’t set up a separate Apple ID specifically for iTunes Match. On iOS, the “Store” and “Music” panels inside the Settings.app use the same Store account, with no option to use a different Apple ID for, say, iTunes Match.

For me, this is a problem, as the Apple ID I’ve been using in the past four years – the one with all my App Store...

Shawn Blanc explains how (and why) he’s using the iPad as his “laptop”:

I once again find myself using two computers. Except this time it’s my MacBook Air that serves as my “desktop” while my iPad is now my “laptop.”

And I’m not the only one. Within my circle of friends, I know several people who are also using their iPad as their portable computer. I even have a handful friends who have an iPad as their only computer.

It is not a sacrifice to use the iPad as a primary device.

He’s definitely not the only one. My writing workflow now mainly revolves around Dropbox and the iPad; smart folks like Harry McCracken and David Chartier have been documenting and sharing their experiences with a post-PC setup for months now.

Maybe we won’t have to wait 20 years to resolve the dispute about “the iPad as a PC”.

Ellis Hamburger’s comparison of various online sync/storage services at The Verge will most definitely take you through the best options you can pick today.

Personally, I’d like Dropbox and Evernote to meet halfway: I’d like to have a better file management UI in Evernote, or some lightweight document editing in the Dropbox iOS apps.

If I had to pick one, I’d say better file management options in Evernote (currently, I have 7440 “notes” – but many of them are actually screenshots and PDFs).

It looks like Birdhouse, the “notepad for Twitter”, is coming back with an update. The app, previously developed by Adam Lisagor & Cameron Hunt (as iTunes still reports with “Sandwich Dynamics” as developer), was last updated in August 2010. Check out the original promo video.

I look forward to seeing Birdhouse again on my iPhone (and maybe iPad too?). Right now, I’m using Drafts to save short bits of text for later. Also interesting: one of the new Birdhouse developers works at twtmore, a service to post tweets longer than 140 characters.

In the meantime, the app can authenticate with Twitter.com again.

Genius idea: a time machine for Billboard Top 100 songs from 1960 to today. Powered by Rdio, so that logged in users will get full streams.

Yet another example of the power of APIs and data conservation.

Matt Alexander:

We no longer live in a world in which commerce is characterized by the simplistic exchange of currency for a product or service. Instead, the Internet has given rise to utterly new forms of revenue generation. Although, arguably, many of these methods are inherently flawed, I have faith that such problems are merely indicative of the Internet’s continued growing pains.

Some people are criticizing Pocket for “pivoting” to a free service in spite of their clear intentions on planning to stick around to build a great platform that makes revenue.

I’ve said many times that this is uncharted territory for developers, investors, and the users. I don’t think “taking time to figure things out” is inherently flawed as a business-building process.

Should we give Twitter, Flipboard, Zite, and others crap because they needed/need time to figure out the business?

My problem is...