Finally I switched my main text editor. My choise is Sublime Text 2.

Since I met with Emacs back in 8-10 years ago, I was always using that for most of my work. Definitely it improved my productivity. But now, it’s 2012. We no longer need to stick with CUI.
I decided my mind to use TextMate when I upgraded my Mac OS to Lion because I didn’t want to configure Emacs from scratch again to make it compatible with the latest OS.

Since then, I was using TextMate 2 and it worked well for me. But it was like a dead product at that moment. I couldn’t expect new features. Now it turned into an open source project but not sure how many people like to join the project. That’s why I was thinking to find a better option.

Obviously Sublime Text 2 is better choice for users who want to find a text editor but my concerns were about key binding compatibility with TextMate, and bundles. It were pointless concerns.

So far, Sublime Text 2 is great for me. It’s better than any other text editors I tried before. I strongly recommend you to give it a try.

• Sublime Text: The text editor you’ll fall in love with

Social networks help us to make our relationships stronger and ongoing.

But if you send friend requests to someone who you’ve never met before or don’t know well, your social graph may get noise. I had learned it from my first social network experience back in 2004-2005 with mixi and MySpace.

On Twitter, that kinds of connections work somehow because they invented the follow concept which means one way connection. Path‘s concept was also great. They tried to solve it with the 50 friends limit but I think it doesn’t work so far. There is no clear guideline to define who is a friend and who is not.

I believe we can’t make that kinds of decisions because we don’t do it in our real life. We need an algorithm.

We have too many places to update our status or pictures recently. The latest web innovations made us easy to connect to the world but at a time, it gave us too many options.

We’re in a complicated situation again. But I believe we stepped forward, and got a lot more opportunities with the huge innovations.

So I tried to make 3 steps to make things clear. My goal is to find out how I can use multiple social platforms efficiently without extra effort. I hope this post helps you to find your own way to connect to the new social world.

1. Public or not

The first question is this:

Can I publish it in public?

Most of my posts are for the entire web because I have no reason to put it behind. That’s great if I can speak only things that people like to hear but I’d like to share even boring stuff like what I’m exactly doing or feeling.

You don’t have to care about it if you’re a celebrity but unfortunately I’m not. People don’t wanna disturbed by crappy information.
(Thank you for the latest social networks. People can block or unfollow me if I make annoying information.)

If I wanna share my thoughts only with my friends, I choose Facebook with a privacy control option ‘Friends’ which is my default. Reason why I can do this is I only send a friend request to a person who I know.

2. Blog post or status update

If I can make it public, I care about content format. My question is here:

Is it take more than a minute to publish it?

Move on to the next step if I say No. In case if I need to answer Yes, I start to write a blog post. Then when I make it public, the article will be published automatically via ifttt.

I’ve got these problems with the workflow but put it on the back burner.

• There’s no easy way to publish WordPress posts to Google Plus
• ifttt doesn’t support multiple WordPress blogs

3. Publish it now!

Now I can just publish it. I choose Google Plus as an input platform. This is just because Google plus doesn’t open API for third-party developers. I’m addicted to Twitter, in fact.

All my posts on Google plus are automatically delivered to Twitter via ifttt. I had to do a few extra tricks to implement the workflow though. You can see more detail inside the article below.

• Make Your Own Google Plus Feed

Hurdles

Writing and publishing blog posts are always fun for me but I have some hurdles to overcome. To convert plain text into HTML is one of the hurdles.

WordPress can handle it with a built-in WYSIWYG editor or helper buttons but I need some extra actions to re-format my text. I just wanna focus on writing.

To use Markdown is an option if you’re familiar with it. I’m a big fan of Markdown and I always choose it if I have that option on web apps. So I decided to find a way to handle Markdown even on WordPress.

How to use Markdown on WordPress

Nothing special. I found a really smart plugin called “Markdown on Save”. All you need to do is just install the plugin.

• Markdown on Save « WordPress Plugins

With the plugin, you get a new check box at the top-right corner of the new post page.

You can paste your Markdown formatted text and click the check box. That’s all. Now you can see your post in HTML but you can still edit your post in Markdown format.

How to preview while writing with Markdown format

If you’d like to preview your blog post while you’re writing with Markdown format, Mac OS X app Marked is a great tool to get what you want. The app lets you preview your Markdown formatted text. It means you can see how it looks like on browsers.

Not only that, you can export converted version into HTML or PDF.

• Marked

Try this to write faster!

We’re planning to have a secret event.

On October 15th some of the brightest minds in Osaka will gather for an event like none other.

They will be from all walks of life, drawn to the challenge before them.

The Creatives: Artists, Performers, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, Designers…
The Academics: Teachers, Professors, Developers, Computer Scientists…
The Professionals: Accountants, Lawyers, Engineers…

For this one event they will unite and form teams to complete…

(dun-dun-dunnnnnn)

THE SECRET DESIGN CHALLENGE!!

Event Activity: You will be thrown head first into a team of UNLIKE minded people. Creatives, Professional and Academics will find themselves having to work together to solve a problem that will only be revealed a few minutes after the start of the event.

Cost: 2000 yen but if you fill out the short survey below and confirm your attendance you’ll get 500 yen off! (All profits will be donated to relief efforts in Tohoku Earthquake hit area of Japan)

• Survey

* Everyone is welcome to the event you don’t have to be a designer, developer or Entrepreneur. Bring your friends!
** For those who are asking no it’s not at 5am facebook has a bug in it that takes the US time. It’s at 13:00 Osaka time.

If you have a Facebook account, visit here to get updates!

• The Secret Design Challenge – SDC October – OSAKA Edition!

Today Google announced some updates about Google+. And now they make it public for all users using Google service. And Google put the impressive ad on Google.com. Did you already noticed? I suppose no one can ignore it.

In Japan, Google still can’t dominate access from browsers’ ‘homepage’ because here is a portal website giant, Yahoo! Japan. But Google can reach almost half of Internet users through the ad.
# Yahoo! Japan is using Google’s search engine for their services though.

How many users Google can get today here in Japan? I’m curious.

When the first time I heard about the strange name ifttt (If This Then That) and the concept, I just thought it was an automated backup service with simple UI. But after a while, I signed up and played with it then loved it very much.

On ifttt, you can make your automated tasks for your online activities like Twitter, Facebook, Evernote etc. Take a look at the image above. There are my tasks. For instance, it means this:

• If I stared articles on Google Reader, then it automatically sent to Instapaper.

And you can see another examples in the image. Lots of major apps are supported.

Try it now if you’re an Internet addict like me.

• ifttt

Here is an obvious thing. Foursquare and its clones including Japan made clones have to be happy with the Facebook’s decision about their location service.

• Sole Aim Is Strong | iAm Hiro SHINOHARA

Anyway, they must have ideal strategies to beat their enemies. There’re a lot of clones here in Japan now. A big difference between Foursquare and Japan made clones is mobile clients. Most of Japan made clones support typical Japanese mobile phones unlike iOS/Android devices. It means they’re based on Japanese mobile phone culture. This difference is making some innovative movement right now. They get some ideas from typical Japanese mobile phones.

NFC everywhere

One of the biggest difference between iOS/Android devices and Japanese mobile phones is NFC support. Most of Japanese mobile phones support NFC but only a few models of Android devices support it. And Japanese mobile app developers already have some interests and knowledge about NFC.

OK, why we need to use NFC?

We use it for these kind of things:

• Cashless payment
• Pay for train tickets
• Touch to get/use coupons

Especially cashless payment market is a huge. Now I can live with only Japanese mobile phone to get my foods, coffee, and travel around. So, why not build some apps for this environment?

What’s an interesting strategy Japan made clones have?

Japan made Foursquare clones started to use NFC to check-ins. Japan made SNS giant mixi already launched the app. The app is only for a limited Android device though. The concept may change our life style.

If people can check-in without any effort like “launch an app, click to select current location, then finally check-in”, and if we can get some coupons when we check-in, what’s gonna happen? There is no reason to deny special offers at coffee shops and we will check-in to spread the special offers and the locations via our social media streams. This change may change our local shops advertising strategies.

Imagine if iPhone gets NFC

Apple’s decisions changed our life style and business structure recently. Once if they decide to use NFC, most of local shops will buy NFC devices to use it for their business, and users will start to play with it and love it. Not only iPhone. Google have Google+ as their own made social platform and also have Android devices with NFC support.

Their decision may change our life and business style within a few months.

As you may know, it’s obviously important to focus on single task at a time if you try the GTD way. But it’s not easy to implement the concept in our real life. We now have too many projects, tasks, things need to consider. How can we handle it?

Why it’s better to focus on single task

Human brain is not like a multi tasking processor. We spend costs <energy> to switch our attentions. Once we loose our concentration from a current task, we need to use more energy to get back your concentration. We can work without extra stress if we can forget about extra things for a while and can focus on a current task. We can be more productive, and creative.

Single pocket strategy and my choice

The most important thing is here. Get our tasks done. Imagine if you write down your tasks on a piece of paper and then accidentally throw it away, how you can do the tasks? Same thing is happening in digital tools. If you don’t decide where to put a new task which came up your mind, it’s difficult to do the task because even if you put the task in somewhere, the next thing you need to do it to remember where the task is. It doens’t make sense. All tasks should be at single place all the time.

Some people send tasks to their own inbox as emails. I like it but what’s going to be happen if they don’t check the inbox or get too many emails. Maybe most of people never forget to check their inbox these days and some people organize their inbox with filters to help to find tasks inside the inbox. It’s ok if the strategy work. But for me, it’s not easy to focus on single task when I open my inbox. There’re tons of important emails and they always remind me important things which I can’t do right now. So I prefer a separated place to organize my tasks.

To decide the place to put all tasks, I have some required features.

• On cloud
• Mac/iPhone/iPad support
• Simple to use
• Less noise
• Stable

There’re several tools around us but I choose Workflowy since they launched.

• WorkFlowy – Organize your brain

What is Workflowy?

Worfkflowy is a web application which let us to create a list. It’s a quite simple app. What we can do with the app is to create/edit/move/complete list items. And we can expand/collapse and nest list items to hide another items. My favorite part is UI to focus on nested items. Watch the video below to see how it works.

How I use Workflowy

I’m using it on my Mac/iPhone/iPad as a web app. And on my Mac, I made a Fluid instance for Workflowy to run it as a separated app. And configured the app to make a floating app which mean the app is always on top of my screen.

And I add a task as a nested item. My first task of the day is at the bottom like this:

Then I can see the next task liek this:

And if I complete the task, the next task will appear.

My ‘simple’ rules

To keep my brain clear, I have simple rules.

1. Make a tasklist of the day on Workflowy
2. Follow the list and complete it

And to keep my rules, I do one thing everyday.

• Just open my Mac

That’s it. Workflowy is automatically launched as a fluid instance when I boot my Mac. This workflow is intimately connected with my daily life and difficult to forget or ignore.

My concentration is weak. I need this kind of medicine.

The Space theme is stunning. I can’t stop thinking about better themes for blog sites since I met with the theme. I’m considering to drop sidebars from all sites, and realized how typography is important to improve user experiences.

It’s difficult to make perfect themes like the Space but I updated my own theme a bit. Here are what I did this morning.

• Changed fonts
• Expanded margin around text (2x more)
• Changed indent styles
• Removed most of content from a sidebar
• Changed from full-article style to read-more style on a top page
• Replaced sharing buttons with simple buttons
• Changed location of sharing buttons

This is not enough but just did these things for better looking and better user experiences. Will keep update about this topic.

And if you’re interested in the concept, I definitely recommend the Space theme.