The sto­ry of how a cou­ple of guys used Kick­starter to raise the funds to pro­duce a great prod­uct idea.

On July 11th, 2010, Tom Ger­hardt and I had an idea for an iPhone acces­so­ry: a tri­pod mount that dou­bled as a stand. Five months lat­er, cus­tomers began to receive our prod­uct, the Glif, in the mail. This turn­around, from idea to mar­ket in five months by two guys with no retail or man­u­fac­tur­ing expe­ri­ence, sig­ni­fies a shift in the way prod­ucts are made and sold — a shift only made pos­si­ble in the last cou­ple years.

This is has become a dar­ling exam­ple of how a great idea and some smart exe­cu­tion can lever­age a flat world to make some mon­ey, and right­ly so. (via Gruber)

Happy 1–11-11

It’s yet anoth­er bina­ry day (lot’s of these around this time, it seems). Today, is ÿ Day! Or, if you’re speak­ing bina­ry, it’s 1:11, 1–11–11 (Eleven past One on Jan­u­ary first, 2011).Ref: 11111111

Published
Categorized as General

Hacking the DITA-OT to Print Multiple Pages from a HTML Help File

Here’s one that took a lit­tle pok­ing around to fig­ure out. One of the many (nay, count­less) draw­backs of using HTML Help (.CHM files) is that print­ing from them is awful. Ide­al­ly, a user could print from the Help View­er to get a hard copy — or at least a .PDF copy — of the… Con­tin­ue read­ing Hack­ing the DITA-OT to Print Mul­ti­ple Pages from a HTML Help File

Printing in iOS With Your Old Printer

The fea­ture that I (and I’m sure, many) was most look­ing for­ward to in iOS 4.2 was print­ing. Apple adver­tised this as one of the main fea­tures and, hav­ing used Bon­jour to con­fig­ure many a print­er in the past, I looked for­ward to actu­al­ly being able to use it. Bon­jour is Apple’s near­­ly-zero con­fig­u­ra­tion util­i­ty… Con­tin­ue read­ing Print­ing in iOS With Your Old Printer

Published
Categorized as Apple, Geek

The Hyperion Cantos

Last night, I fin­ished the final book in Dan Sim­mon’s epic sci­ence fic­tion tetral­o­gy1, the Hype­r­i­on Can­tos. My imme­di­ate reac­tion to the series’ con­clu­sion was that I only want to read it again. They are just that great of a read. In fact, if any­one who knows me had read these pre­vi­ous­ly and did­n’t rec­om­mend them… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Hype­r­i­on Cantos

Open Building Codes

Carl Mala­mud’s 5 minute Ignite! pre­sen­ta­tion on mak­ing build­ing codes avail­able for free to the pub­lic once they’ve been adopt­ed as law. I’ve been argu­ing for this ever since I was in college.

Reading Zero History

Watch­ing this video of the Fes­to Air­Pen­guin, I’m remind­ed that every­thing in William Gib­son (@greatdismal )‘s Bigend tril­o­gy has already hap­pened, just not yet in that order.

AutoCAD on the Mac

Autodesk recent­ly announced they will be ship­ping Auto­CAD 2011 for the Mac (and iOS) some­time in the next cou­ple of months. I think this is great move for them. Per­haps this relys a bit much on some old stereo­types of Mac vs Win­dows users, but I see this is Autodesk’s greater push beyond their tra­di­tion­al… Con­tin­ue read­ing Auto­CAD on the Mac

Published
Categorized as Remainder