Skycons and HTML 5

Sam Harrelson on March 29, 2013

Pretty awesome…

Forecast: “Eventually, it dawned on us that, given the animations we had elsewhere in the app, the Climacons simply felt too flat, too static; we therefore set about making our own set of animated weather icons that felt more alive—but not so much so that they distract—which are the icons you now see on Forecast.

We are calling them Skycons, and they are now open source on GitHub.”

Nifty to see HTML 5 implementations really gaining traction in all sorts of ways that wasn’t possible just a few years ago. This and things like WebRTC, the future is bright for the web outside walled gardens of Facebook et al.

BTW, if you haven’t checked out Forecast.io you really should.

Forecast for the Web

Sam Harrelson on March 27, 2013

Dark Sky is one of my favorite iOS apps and a recommendation I always make for people to check out when they ask what to put on their iPhone.

However, now that I’ve made the move over to Android, I’ve been missing the beauty and simplicity of the great weather app. So, I was excited to see that the makers of Dark Sky went to the web and developed Forecast.

It’s pretty stunning and best of all it works on the web. Which means it works fine on my Nexus 4, my Nexus 7, my Chromebook or my Macbook.

Between that and sites like Feedbin for RSS reading (currently testing out), I’m excited to see developers moving back to platform-agnostic development of great platforms on the web.

Rush’s Favorite Apple RSS Feeds

Sam Harrelson on March 24, 2013

Sounds like someone likes their RSS reader. Based on his RSS subscriptions, it looks like Limbaugh and I are at least reading a number of the same Apple-related feeds.

Never thought I’d have more in common with Rush than Google.

El Rushbo’s Favorite Apple Tech Blogs – The Rush Limbaugh Show: “Rosie in Lake Havasu, I went to my RSS reader and this is really tough because I’ve never mentioned any of these before. I can’t mention them all, but since you said Apple, that helps narrow it down. In no particular order, here they are: iMore.com. That’s run by a guy named Rene Ritchie. I think he’s out of Canada, but this site, in addition to keeping you up-to-speed on everything happening with Apple, will offer you excellent tips on using Apple products, both the mobile and desktop. MacDailyNews.com is also fabulous. AppleInsider.com is great. World of Apple is okay. There are a couple of others that are not specifically Apple, but they are Apple centric. They cover a lot more than that. One of them is called loopinsight.com and the other’s daringfireball.com. We’ll link to all of these at RushLimbaugh.com on our website. Rosie, if you weren’t able to write them all down, they will be on our website. You’ll be able to find them all. But there are tons of them. I mean, they’re all over the place out there. One of them, cultofmac.com, they’ve got people on that one, very snarky who rip Apple to shreds at the same time. So if you’re interested in that, if you want people who do that too, then that’s a site that you might want to check out now and then.”

Spoken like a true web geek.

Moving On From Carolina Day

Sam Harrelson on March 21, 2013

In early June I’ll wish my 7th graders godspeed and wrap up my time at Carolina Day School. It will be a bittersweet day (and next few months) but I’m excited about the remaining time I have with my students and colleagues to learn and grow in the halls (and on the many stairs) of Stephens.

I have so much love for my two years of students there. Both my current 7th graders and the now 8th grade group have taught me more than they’ll ever know about life and I’ll be eternally thankful to have spent a couple of rotations around our closest star learning about the universe with them.

Similarly, my colleagues are amazing people and teachers. I love our Middle School team and am so thankful to have been in their presence the last two years (smelly “workhole” and all). Our 7th grade team is the best group of folks I’ve ever worked with and their daily inspiration and talent is beyond words. It’s hard to think of leaving at this point because we’re firing on all cylinders and really hitting harmonies and resonant frequencies as a team. I’ll never forget the real excitement that they make me feel for teaching and especially learning.

However, it is the time for me to move on professionally. As I told Peggy Daniels, our Middle School Head, today, “I’m really good at working with people but not so good at working for people”.

My views and philosophy on education necessitate that I follow a different path. I’m not exactly sure what that looks like (“the woods are lovely dark and deep”). Yet I know that drive will take me and my career down a road that is still covered in snow because I have miles to go before I sleep (beg pardon of Robert Frost there).

So what’s next? I have a couple of interviews at exciting local schools but I also have the nagging persistence of StudiesLab.

It’s a business plan and educational model I’ve had written for years in my head (and on paper) of decentralized, cooperative and authentic education based not on 19th century content delivery for Victorian factory workers but on current research aimed at producing world changers. A place for round pegs in a world of square holes. A prayer for hope and humility and learning.

Or something like that.

Regardless, it’s time to plant sequoias.

Chrome Over Android

Sam Harrelson on March 21, 2013

This is the main impetus of Google’s recent moves with Android and Chrome… it’s not about user experience or trying to slim down.

It’s about control. Google has lost control of Android to Samsung, Amazon etc and knows its future is with ChromeOS (especially given that Windows 8 is a flop and Apple is stumbling in the cloud region):

Is Android Vs. Chrome A Metaphor For Apps Vs. Mobile Web?: “If Wilcox is right, and Chrome is a stand-in for the browser and Internet, while Android represents an app-centric mobile experience, then it makes sense Google would favor and promote Chrome over Android in the longer term. That’s their bias.”

Changing Platforms Like Socks

Sam Harrelson on March 21, 2013

Sounds like something I would write…

Change platforms: “Windows Phone 8 is my personal favourite smartphone operating system, as it fits my usage patterns and visual preferences perfectly. Yet, I will still move to an entirely new, unproven, and untested platform later this year (if Sailfish is out by then). The reason is simple: always try to broaden your horizon. Never get stuck in one place. Never become lazy. Never settle. Never let the same set of neurons fire. Never come to rely on any one company.”

Better yet, I try to be platform agnostic and focus as much as I can on using web-based utilities that work on any platform. It’s not always easy or pretty but it works.

Google Reader Sharing Replaced by Feedly

Sam Harrelson on March 20, 2013

It’s insanely interesting to me how quickly people are replacing the “sharing cred” feature that once made Google Reader very valuable with Feedly…

Tips for Google Reader users migrating to feedly | Building Feedly: “When you hover on an article or inline it, you should see a bookmark icon. We call it the save for later icon. It functions similarly to the Google Reader star mechanism.”

When Google Reader was in its prime, one of the most fascinating features was seeing how many times an article had been shared or favorited etc… now Feedly is picking up that slack and it’s really going to take off as a result.

Google missed a huge opportunity by shutting down Reader.