I really enjoyed reading Shawn Blanc’s analysis of RSS and Twitter usage. Very insightful and some interesting stats to boot.

Shawn’s findings and thoughts are generally in agreement with mine. I don’t see Twitter as a real inbox, though. Semantics? Yeah, probably.

But Twitter’s anti-inbox nature is what makes it such a beautiful-on-the-inside, obligation-free source of information. I’ll try to explain.

But first, what is an inbox?

To me, an inbox has two key characteristics:

1. It has a bottom (end)
2. I intend (with varying degrees of regularity) to process it to zero

Email and RSS both fit my definition of an inbox, though the information sources are very different: I get to decide who puts things in my RSS inbox.

My Twitter usage increases every year, but RSS remains the most effective catcher of information I really want to see. I’m okay seeing unread counts in RSS because those numbers represent pieces of information that could be useful and interesting.

RSS is indeed an additional inbox I’ve created in my life, though. And I don’t take inboxes lightly—as my questionably pedantic inbox jibberjabbering here highlights. But seriously: inboxes can be one of the lowest (negative?) ROI time investments you can make. So it’s important—I think—to limit and manage inboxes well. Especially don’t abuse them.

RSS inbox abuse

How might one abuse an RSS inbox? One way is by inviting too much in.

Personally, I don’t see how any normal person could follow high-volume sites like Lifehacker, Mashable, or any major news organization using RSS—unless maybe you are a professional RSS app beta tester or something. I’m not saying those sites and writers aren’t worth following. I’m just saying it’s too much for the average, productive-intentioned individual to take in.

I can’t explain the psychology of it, but when I see 30 new RSS items from the same site, it’s way more unsettling than seeing 30 items spread across, say, 15 sites. It also feels more “worth my time” to browse 30 items from a diverse group of sources. Too much from too few is a cognitive, guilt-laden nuclear warhead I’d rather not tango with day to day.

Rational or not, that’s how my brain works. And I try to structure my inboxes in a way that keeps my brain as happy as possible.

Twitter: a less-sticky fly paper

Twitter is far more useful for keeping up with the shovel sites.

Instead of following high-volume feeds in RSS, I subscribe to their Twitter feed. This lets me glance at what’s happening every so often without seeing any unread counts.

I also know that if any of those big sites publish an article I really want to read, it’ll likely bounce around in my Twitter feed because I follow folks with similar interests. Everything else is blissfully ignored.

When it comes to gathering information, I think Twitter is best used as a tool for outsourcing curation. Twitter lets me filter high-volume information through the eyes of people whose interests parallel my own.

My practically general rule

If a site has high value and low frequency, I subscribe by RSS. If it has moderate to high value but high frequency, I use Twitter lists.

There are exceptions. And no, I’m not telling.

A note on dedicated Twitter feeds

Shawn also compared the follower counts for dedicated and personal Twitter feeds. Without a doubt, personal Twitter accounts attract more followers than dedicated feeds, often by a large margin.

This site is no exception. I have four to five times more followers on my personal Twitter account than PE’s dedicated Twitter feed, @PractEff. Moreover, PE’s RSS subscribers are more than 12 times the following on Twitter.

I think this says a lot about my favorite “social network.” People place far more value on the human element in Twitter. Dedicated feeds are robotic and RSS-like. They typically don’t respond to mentions, and they typically don’t make impromptu remarks.

It makes sense to me that most people go to Twitter primarily for conversation and curation and less for static information. That’s what I do.

I appreciate companies that not only focus on the development of their product but also embrace the entire concept around their product through education.

AgileBits, maker of 1Password, recently posted a great tutorial on making better master passwords. One of the many cool tidbits:

For those of us of a certain age and steeped in American culture, once we begin a list of names with ‘Larry…’ following it with ‘Moe and Curly’ is very predictable. So even though the ‘Moe & Curly’ add 11 characters to the password, those 11 characters are so predictable that they add very little actual strength. Even though it is shorter, using ‘I have 35 bats: Larry & Amy’ is actually stronger than ‘I have 35 bats: Larry, Moe & Curly’.

By the way, did you know your 1Password master password can contain spaces?

We live in an age when we can’t get enough education on password and data security. Maybe one day they’ll teach this stuff in schools. It wouldn’t be hard to free up some time: start by dropping useless curricula like cursive handwriting.1

I’ve been captivated by the first two episodes of The Critical Path, a new 5by5 podcast featuring Horace Dediu, founder and managing director of Asymco, and of course the highest of high fidelity podcasters, Dan Benjamin.

The second episode of The Critical Path covers two areas I’m very much interested in: the very innovative and fast-paced mobile tech sector and the business of risk management. For me, it’s an tasty cocktail of personal and professional interests all in one spot.

After listening to Horace’s well-articulated thoughts on the rapid disruption caused by the iPhone when it jumped out of an iPod-shaped trojan horse in 2007, it’s clear to me that all technology companies who are vulnerable to change need to employ really good risk managers.

It’s just not enough to make great things. You have to make them at the right time, in the right climate. And if you’re really good, you can favorably affect the climate ahead of your product release, as Apple has. If you are fortunate and clever enough to be successful, there's not much time to celebrate either; disruptive change is always just around the corner. Spot it before others, and you keep winning.

I spend a good bit of my day trying to assess risk in the insurance sector. To me, good risk management is not about trying to predict the future. It’s about understanding a possible range of outcomes that might occur and using that information to stay in an agile and opportunity-seeking position.

The number of opportunities for enterprise risk management pros in the mobile tech sector are likely to be huge. Products will come and go, but change is staying put.

To select multiple files with LaunchBar, select the first file by pressing Command-C, then select additional files by pressing Command-C-C for each one (more).

See all one-line tips.

The next time your kids ask you what purpose math has beyond school, tell them they could cure an insidious disease. WSJ:

Scientists using a powerful mathematical tool previously applied to the stock market have identified an Achilles heel in HIV that could be a prime target for AIDS vaccines or drugs.

Recently I gave up on Intuit for good and moved from Quicken Essentials to iBank for my personal finance needs. Charles Jade sums up iBank well:

It’s like Quicken, except it has features.

iBank impressions

Investments: pretty good

My main reason for trying iBank initially was the fact that, unlike Quicken Essentials, it offers a respectable level of support for investment accounts.

You won’t find any super sophisticated investment features in iBank, but you’ll find the basics: decent reporting, cost basis tracking, and the ability to enter transactions like buy, sell, dividends, etc. You know, stuff you’d expect to find in a personal finance application—and stuff you won’t find in Quicken Essentials.

Account organization: great

As I moved more accounts into iBank, I came to really appreciate the interface. My favorite feature is the way you can group any combination of accounts into folders (and subfolders). The total account balance for the folder group is shown in the side bar. You can mix credit cards, checking, investment accounts, etc.—any combination that’s meaningful to you.

I really appreciate software that naturally molds itself to the unique needs of its users.

Reporting: all the basic needs are met

You’ll find the usual types of reports in iBank: income and spending through time, portfolio summary, net worth, and more.

One nice surprise was a cash flow forecast graph that takes into account scheduled transactions. Very useful for ensuring you aren’t going to overdraw your checking account in the future.

There are a number of options for report customization. You can even create custom reports based the folder groups I mentioned earlier. I’m using a custom net worth report to track my non-retirement savings (a mix of bank and investment accounts) through time. Works great.

Scheduled transactions: easy to use

I never liked how Intuit implemented scheduled transactions in Quicken Essentials because editing them required several steps, and it was a tedium I had to endure at least twice a month. In iBank, updating a scheduled transaction amount is as simple as pasting a value into the transaction. No popup windows or anything.

The iBank mobile app: icing on the cake

The iBank mobile app ($5) syncs with the desktop software. So far, it's worked flawlessly for me, but I haven't used it much.  The biggest advantage of having a companion mobile app is being able to enter bank transactions (e.g. written checks) on the go. Sync options include Wi-Fi, MobileMe and WebDAV. I've only used Wi-Fi so far. (It'll be interesting to see if iCloud can be used in the future.)

How I moved

No sugar coating: Any time you move your financial household to different software, it’s a giant pain in the ass. And Intuit has done their best to make moving out of Quicken Essentials even more difficult than usual. That’s because you can’t export to a QIF file—the format every other personal finance application supports.

Quicken Essentials only supports two formats for export: QXF (a proprietary format) and CSV. Some people have successfully moved out of Quicken Essentials by jumping through a lot of hoops to convert CSV to QIF.

Me? I decided to keep it simple (though rote) and export my Quicken Essentials accounts one at a time in a CSV format. Importing CSV into iBank was very straight forward.

Dear Intuit: I don’t love you

I wanted to believe that Intuit was serious about developing a new native personal finance application in Quicken Essentials, so I bought in when it first came out in February 2010.

Almost a year and a half later, Quicken Essentials is essentially the same: a toy product marketed to a demographic of adults. If all you need is a check register than can talk to the internet, Quicken Essentials is for you.

But if you want even the most basic reporting, you’ll be disappointed. Instead of conventionally useful reports like a running income statement, you’ll get useless and inelegantly designed “reports” like the “Spending Cloud,” a haphazard cluster fuck of textual tags that convey about as much actionable information as a Windows registry error.

If you have any investments at all and you use Quicken Essentials, hopefully all you care about is today’s value. Because that’s all you’ll get. Even though Quicken Essentials supports direct download (OFX), it doesn’t capture any transaction history in those files. No cost basis reporting either.

I’m no marketing guy, but I highly suspect that people who care enough to track their finances in the first place want better reporting and basic investment support. If you don’t want those things, why not just go to your financial institution’s web site directly?

A good personal finance application tells you where you’ve been so you can take control of where you’re going. Quicken Essentials is all about today, and it’s going nowhere.

The future of personal finance software

Intuit is clearly not invested in the Mac platform, despite the eye-popping growth rates in recent Mac sales. I believe, based on Intuit’s actions, that they’re more interested in the cloud (Mint.com).

Intuit is even reporting that Quicken for Mac 2007 (the aging and more feature-rich predecessor to Quicken Essentials) won’t even work in Lion. Their instructions for how to deal with the problem may actually be some kind of off-April Fool’s Day joke since it’s hard to believe they’re serious:

• Downgrade (my word) to Quicken Essentials
• Dual boot between Lion and an older version of OS X
• Move to Windows
• Move to Mint.com. “…ideal if maintaining your transaction history is not important to you,” they say.

Mint.com is the most viable of all those options, but I think that people who use native or desktop personal finance software do so because it allows them to maintain transaction history, not sporadically trash it.

I did give Mint.com a chance last year, but I just couldn’t make it work for me. It was very inconsistent in the way it updated my credit card accounts, and there was no way to add accounts for assets and liabilities that couldn’t be screen-scraped from a web site. In other words, it only offered me part of my financial picture. I want the whole thing, and desktop personal finance software remains the only means to that end.

My advice

If you’re a slave to a Quicken desktop application and you’re a Mac user, it’s time to start planning an emancipation strategy. Either figure out how to make the cloud work for you, or try an app like iBank that’s developed by people that seem interested in supporting the platform their customers use.

Update 3/5/2013: iBank 4.7 has added the ability to import data from Quicken Essentials and also the ability to get automatic downloads from vanguard accounts.

A few snapshots of how some smart people are using my favorite digital notebook / word processor / thought capturing app.

Dave Caolo:

Several months ago I started using nvALT and Simplenote as a portable electronic notebook. Both apps are easy to use and offer near ubiquitous access to my stuff. Today, that combo is my Great Database of Everything, from reference emails to post ideas and driving directions.

Justin Blanton:

I too throw everything into nvALT these days. I love it. The main differences between my workflow and Dave’s are that I don’t use Simplenote for syncing—I use Dropbox (why rope into my setup yet another third-party service?)—and I use Notesy on my iOS devices. (If there’s a better Dropbox-aware note-taking app for iOS, then I haven’t come across it.)

Fletcher Penney:

When I tag something in DEVONThink, the relevant file’s OpenMeta is updated. If it’s a text document synchronized via nvAlt, then that OpenMeta is used to update the tags inside of Simplenote. Which means that the tags on my iPhone are updated. Automagically.

 

For better or worse, your lifetime is occurring in a transitional period when relics like credit scores and social security numbers are still with us. Though they make less and less sense in the internet (post-privacy) age and are routinely abused by companies, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Companies are going to continue

• asking for social security numbers on forms when it’s really not that necessary,
• storing paperwork with social security numbers using less than secure means, and
• using social security numbers as a lazy way to create passwords and usernames.

And social security numbers are going to be intercepted and shared all over the world within seconds on a more and more frequent basis.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if credit scores weren’t used for everything from evaluating one’s ability to pay back a loan to screening employees to setting prices for products that seemingly have no relationship to credit—like auto insurance.

And getting your credit wrecked by a bad guy wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if it wasn't such a multi-month project to undo the damage. Or if debt collectors didn’t unlawfully harass innocent people as a business practice.

But that’s our world. Today. And we have to deal with it.

Credit monitoring? I'll pass.

I think credit monitoring services and identity theft insurance are both a waste of money for at least two good reasons.

First of all, and most importantly, monitoring and insurance are reactive measures. They do nothing to stop someone from using your identity illegally in the first place.

Second, most of these services don’t really help you that much once your identity has been stolen. It’s still on you to clean up the mess and make countless phone calls. And it's still your problem when the damage resurfaces months or years later.

The least bad solution

A few years ago, I took some sage advice and put a freeze on my credit. In my mind, there is no better identity theft protection available. If your credit is frozen, your social security number and identity are useless to anyone trying to open an account in your name. That’s because the financial institution won’t be able to look at your credit file. No credit check, no loan.

If you want to open an account yourself, you'll need to thaw (unfreeze) your credit. It's not nearly as hard as you might think either. For each of the three major credit agencies, you’ll need to provide a PIN if you want to thaw. I keep mine in 1Password so they’re easy to retrieve wherever I am. Be sure to keep them somewhere secure, though.

Since I first froze my credit, I’ve opened new credit cards, refinanced my home, and done several other things that required credit checks. In each case, I simply went to the appropriate credit agency’s web site (e.g. Transunion) filled out a short form, and within a few minutes, my credit was thawed.

You can even specify how long you want your credit to remain thawed (e.g. one week). After that period, your credit will re-freeze with no additional action on your part.

Unlike credit monitoring services that charge you a recurring monthly fee, freezing your credit only costs something when you want to freeze or thaw. Often, it’s as little as $3-$5. In some states, it’s totally free.

If you want a cheap and highly effective way to prevent someone from whomping your precious credit score, check out the credit freeze rules for your state.

Do microscopes make keyboards filthy? Does satellite imagery deplete ozone? Do CT scans cause brain cancer?

Science reveals secrets about the universe, and the revelations of science only create problems to the extent that knowing about problems causes emotional discomfort.

Technology is a means to science and therefore a means to revealing secrets. As technology becomes ever more advanced, it inevitably exposes secrets that hurt. And as we’ve seen already this century, technology increasingly reveals secrets about our own personal lives.

But who are we to suppose our own secrets are more precious than any other in the universe? Can technology somehow overlook character flaws on its way to explaining the rest of the cosmos?

If not, how will we ultimately judge character when everyone’s skeletons are behind glass doors?

Perhaps the concept of good character will be recast to describe those who keep secrets best. Let’s hope we don’t run out of secrets.

Being consistent is WAY less interesting than being yourself. And if you're not interesting? Good luck with your Big Consistency Project.

(permatoot)

Patrick Rhone wrote an excellent take on data security not that long ago. His recommended approach for eliminating all risk of data theft was simple:

Don’t have data.

Obviously life in the 21st century is impossible without data, and it seems like every week, there’s another reason to store more data on machines you’ll never see or control.

If a company has invited you to store your data with them, I think it is completely reasonable to expect them to keep your data secure. That’s their job. And if they don’t do their job, may the media have mercy on their soul.

But I think it is totally unreasonable to expect that your data will never be exposed at some point in your lifetime (and beyond). The numbers are way, way against you.

Avoiding “the cloud” isn’t the right answer. Protecting what you put there is.

For every file I store online, whether it’s mass storage or Dropbox, I think about the risks of those files being exposed. If it’s something I definitely don’t want someone else to get their hands on, I encrypt it.

I may not be able to control whether someone gets my data, but I can at least make life hard for them if they do.

There are three main ways I do it:

• Secure disk images
• Encrypted PDF using PDFpenPro
• Arq’s encrypted Amazon S3 backup

Classic MacSparky: Create a keyboard shortcut (⌘PP) to save anything in OS X as PDF without touching your mouse (full instructions).

See all one-line tips.

I wanted to respond to some of the feedback I got on my App over file post, particularly for anyone who thought I was unconditionally endorsing the banishment of the file system. I'm not.

I think that computers should be as usable as possible for everyone. One usage problem I’ve witnessed (in agony) for years is the way most people spend their day staring and mousing through a pinhole, the ‘file open’ dialog box.  It's especially bad in Windows because there’s not even a built-in search field like there is in OS X.

A typical scenario

If the average person needs a spreadsheet, they think:

1. Need a spreadsheet
2. Therefore, need Excel
3. Open Excel
4. Browse for spreadsheet

Even though it’s much faster to:

1. Need a spreadsheet
2. Find spreadsheet
3. Open spreadsheet

The second approach is far superior in terms of efficiency because the “find spreadsheet” step happens in an interface that’s better for finding things—a file browser of some kind or perhaps a search utility.

Yet most people take the first approach—not you of course—but most people. And they do it perhaps 100 times a week, 52 weeks a year.

Making finding faster, easier

I think it makes more sense to design software that fits itself to the natural inclinations of its users than it does to train those people to use the software "correctly." If iOS proves anything it's that software doesn't necessarily require instruction.

We’re a long way from the day it makes sense to banish the file system from all computer user interfaces, but it’s high time that mainstream applications were built with better file browsing UIs for the masses of people that think app, then file.

If “desktop”1 apps can be designed to make finding files from within apps even a little bit easier, just imagine the accumulated efficiency across organizations where people are looking for files every minute of the day.

The little coffee stains near the track pad; the food crumbs among the keys; the dent in the aluminum lid. . . the signs of me.

All of the pictures I see of beautifully arranged desktops and computer setups have one thing in common. They’re all missing the most important ingredient in any workflow.

They don’t include people.

Walk around any art museum, and you’re likely to see beautiful paintings of the human body in its most minimal state, totally nude. At work, though, people wear clothes.

And they sit in front of computers.

Naked people and naked computers ultimately need each other as peripherals for life to matter much in the 21st century.

And people need messes

People spill soft drinks. People leave trails of sticky notes. People leave wires exposed. People go home at 8 PM with ring binders splayed across their desk. People dent aluminum unibodies and crack screens.

The human experience, so far, has been one of teasing art out of chaos. Workflows are a means to art. Creating art requires productivity, and productivity leaves a trail of unartistic excrement in its path.

Minimalism as a productivity aid

I believe minimalism should precede complexity.

I also think that many people can get more done by simplifying and taking a more minimal approach, especially in the face of external chaos.

I don’t, however, think productivity should be sacrificed for the sake of minimalism.

On an ongoing basis, the only way you can know how much sophistication you need is by first developing a list of needs, and the only way you can do that is to first forgo complexity. It’s better to start out needing more, not needing less.

Start simple, and build around a core. Just as importantly, be ready to burn it all down when it stops working. Be doggedly adaptive, not stubbornly simple.

Look but do touch

I believe minimalist tools can be artistically beautiful. And I believe they can have practical benefits.

Taking artistic pictures of a singular piece of computer equipment is no more wrong or right than taking artistic pictures of a hammer. And I’m no more wrong or right in saying one is more beautiful than the other.

Funny thing, though: I’ve never met a building contractor that photographs hammers. Nor have I ever met a maid that scrapbooks vacuum cleaners. Or a dentist that ogles stills of floss.

But, I believe that it’s okay for tools—any tools—to double as art, and I especially believe that it’s okay for art to, in turn, inspire you to create more.

Some of the most intangible, but important, “tools” in my workflows arise from art. For example, listening to music usually inspires me to do more and take the long way home. Elegantly designed software focuses my mind.

I think my most effective workflows—as judged by what they produce—are made up of an optimal mix of utilitarian and artistic elements.

You’re more than your tools

At the end of the work day, I think you should make sure you’re able to celebrate your own human abilities. To the degree that your tools extend your own abilities, celebrate them too.

But if you only celebrate your tools, then you really have no tools at all. You only have art. And if you only have art, you have nothing left to create. What sort of world is that?

Endnote: Yes, that’s my practically dent-free “sweet Mac setup” up there. It's still beautiful on the inside.

Dr. Drang has some great thoughts on Apple’s strategy to vanquish file systems in user interfaces.

Like most “power users,” I tend to think file first and app second, but I completely agree that people who spend more time using computers as opposed to thinking about using computers do the exact opposite.

The fact that most people don’t question the absence of the file system on their app phone might suggest that “app over file” is indeed the natural order.