We thought the only way to add a “Add recommendation” button would be to provide a free text form. Paste the URL, paste the quote and press “Recommend”. The problem with that solution was that there is nothing like QUOTE.fm and a free text form would engage people to write whatever they want. Every known social network lets you do something directly there and a place to write text into implies somehow that it’s a new tool to communicate. But it isn’t and it shouldn’t be. The second problem would be the possibility to alter the quote which would be bad for the site the quote is connected with.

Yesterday I eventually came up with a solution. A quite good one, I think, because it solves another problem as well: Recommending on the iPhone. It’s possible on the iPad, because the bookmark toolbar can be always visible, but there is no way to do it on the Phone. So, let’s take a look:

It’s going to be a three step procedure. Step 1: Insert the URL of the story you’d like to recommend and share. You don’t have to hit the button, it’s more of a placebo. The icon will change to a loading animation as soon as an URL is pasted in the form. The nice thing is that you have to take a look at the URL so the possibility of wrong URLs (e.g. http://uarrr.org instead of http://uarrr.org/2012/05/24/whats-next/) is reduced. Step 2:

We present the text in its pure form. The user selects the passage he or she likes and clicks on the button in the upper right corner. What follows is nothing new:

Add a comment, choose a topic, done. Everything without a bookmarklet, an extension or an app. And as I said, it even works on the iPhone (an optimized version is planned).

This should remove the confusion some people have when they first visit and try out QUOTE.fm. A lot of users never recommended a single story. I hope we’ll change that with this new way of recommending stories.

Of course this is just our offer for beginners. The bookmarklet and upcoming plugins for the major browsers are still the best way to recommend stories on QUOTE.fm.

This is just an image dump of marvel approved stills and screenshots of my work on the film. I’ll do a proper post soon – this is a fraction of the work – But I had the distinct pleasure of working with Cantina Creative, leading the design of the glass screens for the Helicarier in the Avengers. I also led the design and animation of the all new and upgraded Mark VII Hud.

All work was done in Illustrator, After Effects and Cinema 4d.

Whoa, impressive work. I love those little scribbles and the result is amazing.

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Considering Facebook’s recent Instagram acquisition, the launch of Facebook Camera seems kind of strange — but really, this kind of thing happens a lot. The Facebook Camera team, composed of people from acqui-hired Gowalla and MadeBySofa, as well as people from Facebook’s Photos team. They’ve been working on the app for months (perhaps even a year?), and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly kept his desire to purchase Instagram close to the vest – as if he almost impulse-bought it. Had the Instagram deal never occurred, Facebook Camera wouldn’t really be much of an Instagram competitor anyway, lacking any mobile-only social circles, hashtagged sharing around specific topics, tilt-shift, and interesting filters, for that matter.

Worth reading for all those who are freaking out because Facebook seems to compete with itself. I’m happy that they have another photo sharing app out there. That reduces the possibility of messing up Instagram.

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It’s kind of funny how that turned out. Back then I couldn’t even define my idea in five sentences, now it’s possible in one: Find and share great stories. Stuff happened and now we’re four guys, sitting in an office and working on something that could become better and greater than I’d have ever imagined.

We have so many new ideas on what QUOTE.fm is about and what it’s going to be. “Read” — for example — will change entirely how we (and you) think about QUOTE.fm. We know that we’re entering a market that’s already full of great apps. Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Evernote Clearly, Apples own reading list. But all these apps are following the concept of just being a place for content that has been found mainly somewhere else. Currently you are using Instapaper more because of QUOTE.fm. Find stories on QUOTE.fm, save them for later, read them in Instapaper/Pocket/whatever.

But soon we’re going to launch something we’ve working on for quite a while. “Read” will add a new layer to QUOTE.fm. It’s going to be our biggest launch since the first days. Read will launch as a new part of the site and we’re going to release it at the same time as the iPad app. So we’ve basically built a whole new QUOTE.fm for the iPad and added the lost second half to the website. Suddendly you’ll be able to save texts to read later on QUOTE.fm.

And, that’s the whole reason for this entry, I finally understood how this will change QUOTE.fm as a product. We’ll not longer be a website, we’ll be an app. An app with a website in the back, sure. You may have heard that mobile is where we – as a society – are heading to, reading has been mobile forever, so it’s pretty obvious that QUOTE.fm won’t be primarily a website for much longer.

(Just a quick mockup, nothing in this image is final.)

It’s even easier to describe QUOTE.fm as an app. It’s an app to discover, share and read great stories. Sure, you could do that on your iMac at your desk, but why bother if you could sit in a comfy chair while doing all that?

I’m not saying that QUOTE.fm as a site will go away. It rather will get better. It’s just that I’ve realized how we have to play our cards regarding QUOTE.fm, how it should be seen by others and how we’re demonstrating the value of having recommendations and a distraction free reading environment with social aspects in one place.

All this is so much fun. Nothing has changed, we’re four guys, no one of us has ever done something like this, never built a product on our own, never thought about marketing and the bigger picture for a thing we’ve been working on the whole day for months. And despite all that, we’re doing it just now. And it feels great. I’m so happy to see the whole thing finally come together. “Read” has been planned for such a long time and we’re still not there yet, but when it’s done, we’ve made it. No matter if QUOTE.fm will be around in five years or sold to Facebook for 34 billion dollars, but we can say we’ve done something we’ve dreamed of.

Just now I’m researching places to shoot the pictures of the app at. And I’ve written Laura if she wants to be the person holding the iPad on those pictures. And maybe Steffen will shoot the pictures. That’ll be fun.

I’ve no idea what my point is. I guess I’m just happy to experience all of this. A big thank you to all of you using QUOTE.fm. And if you’re not: I’ve been told that it’s a neat place to find stories worth your time.

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Feel free to correct any grammar or spelling mistakes in the comments. I’m not a native speaker and trying to get better. Thank you. <3

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and Automattic (see disclosure) says that the service is preparing for a significant change of direction — by releasing a much simpler version designed to work on mobile.

Sounds promising and it’s about time.

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Last week I spoke with Andreas Pihlström, the creator of Scriptogr.am, he seems like a nice guy with big plans for his service. Our small chat got me thinking. What is it I like about tumblr? The fact that I don’t have to think about the software behind it. What I don’t like? The fact that I don’t own my posts. There is no access to the database, no weekly backup, nothing. Also I’m done with WordPress. Yes, it’s able to solve all problem anyone could ever have but the only thing I really want is to post stuff on my blog.

Alex Cican:

Scriptogr.am is an app that connects to your Dropbox account and allows you to host a blog or dynamic website. The blog posts, or pages, are simple Markdown2 files located inside Dropbox>Apps>scriptogram>posts.

The awesome thing about Scriptogram is that I have a folder containing all of my posts, every one of it lays there, editable, printable and removable. I don’t need a bulky backend anymore, my  new-post-window would look like this:

Yep, that’s nothing else than iA Writer. Saved to my Dropbox this would result in a new post on my blog. Looks nice and feels unfamiliar uncluttered. And it gets even better. Scriptogram offers a bookmarklet that’s designed to write linked list posts like I often do:

I’m ready to switch. Philipp helped me to export all of my posts to .md files. I’m sitting on 3200 posts, waiting to move to their new home. The only problem: Scriptogram currently does not offer a feature for custom link structures. So there is no way for me to move UARRR.org to Dropbox and Scriptogram because every link that points to a post on this blog would result in a 404 error. But Andreas is working on it and I’m looking forward to switch.

I miss the feeling of owning this blog, everything is burried in databases I don’t understand. I could invest some time and learn a bit MySQL database nonsense, or I’m just cool with the fact that I don’t want to screw around with a big CMS and nerd stuff instead of writing posts.

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Some of you may have noticed: This post is written in English. And I plan to write all the upcoming posts in English too. I’m not a native speaker and I’m sure this piece has mistakes all over it. Feel free to write a comment to inform me about flaws. Please explain why something is wrong, I’m trying to get better here.

In previous versions of Photoshop all you had to do was to select the right anchor points and use the arrow keys and different levels of zoom to move them in the right direction until they where aligned with the pixel grid.

The new behavior makes sure that this is not so easy anymore. Instead of eliminating half pixels, it will move the anchor points by one pixel, regardless of your actual level of zoom, so you’ve got the same mess, but one pixel in another direction. I’ve solved that problem by disabling the right checkbox everytime I needed it, but that felt just not right.

Mr. Idiot here built something that’s quite amazing. These two Photoshop actions allow to toggle above mentioned setting by hitting F6 and Shift+F6. It’s different compared to CS5, but you’ll get used to it. Thanks, Idiot!

@UARRR Es war eine Aktion, die ich auf Twitter geteilt. cl.ly/GWxF

— Visual Idiot (@idiot) May 11, 2012

Die Pressemitteilung verkündet Folgendes für AXE Anarchy for him:

Die betörend fruchtige Frische vermählt die Essenz reifer Granatäpfel und knackiger Brombeeren mit Noten von Sandelholz. Der männliche Duft von edlem Zedernholz und feinem Lavendel umschließt Mädchen sanft und zieht sie in den Bann.

Aber im Ernst: Es wird wärmer, man nennt die folgende Jahreszeit Sommer und vertraut mir, ich fahre oft genug U-Bahn um zu wissen, dass die meisten von euch zwar denken, dass sie nicht nach Schweiß riechen, damit aber Unrecht haben. Probiert’s hiermit, ehrlich. Ihr Stinker.

Mädels, die Pressemitteilung blubbert dies über Axe Anarchy for her:

Blühende Blumen und cremige Vanille verleihen dem Duft eine anziehende Samtigkeit. Der verführerisch fruchtige Duft balanciert Noten saftige Brombeeren, Birnen und Honigmelonen mit einem zarten Sandelholz-Aroma. Verspielt florale Noten von Alpenveilchen, Orchideen und chinesischen Magnolien bringen Jungs um den Verstand.

Klingt zwar etwas nach Obstkorb, aber auch gar nicht schlecht. Außerdem, gleiche Regeln wie für Jungs: Niemand, wirklich niemand will etwas anderes als künstlich erzeugte Gerüche an euch riechen. So schön die Natürlichkeit des Körpers auch ist, bitte riecht nicht natürlich, sondern nach Sandelholz und Brombeeren mit Birnen. Und ein bisschen Sahne. Mhhh.

Wie auch immer, den Anarchy for him ist in allen erdenklichen Variationen zu haben, als Bodyspray, Shower Gel, Eau de Toilette und auch als AXE ANARCHY Shampoo und Cream-Gel nämlich. Für die Mädels gibt es vorerst nur das Bodyspray in limitierter Auflage. Probiert’s!

Verlosung

Aber UARRR.org wird nicht ohne grund als philanthropischster Blog des Landes bezeichnet, darum können vier von euch etwas gewinnen. Nämlich zwei Mal 12 Dosen von Anarchy for Men und zwei Mal zwölf Dosen Anarchy for Women. Dazu bekommt jeder der Gewinner ein Handtuch von AXE. Das klingt doch gut, oder? Eine frische Dose für jeden Monat des Jahres!

Was ihr dafür tun müsst? Einen Kommentar schreiben. Das wars. Einsendeschluss ist Freitag, der 18. Mai. Viel Glück!

You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP privilege.  We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege.

This means we’ll have to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly subscription into Sparrow’s future update.

I’d give Sparrow for iPhone a chance to be my primary e-mail app on iOS and push notifications are obviously on their way but that’s not going to change the fact that it will never be as deeply implemented in iOS as Mail.app is. I don’t think it’ll work for me.

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