ADN user @po has compiled a list of tips and tools to get new users of the network up and running. The list covers threads, messaging, blogging, widgets, media, search and discovery, notifications, RSS feeds, and more. I particularly like Longposts. Forget 140 characters, forget even ADN’s 256-character limit, how...

If the designers of ebook tools followed the lead of web designers instead of book designers, maybe ebook design wouldn’t be the mess it is today. In the days of scrolls, entire stories were contained in single continuous sheets of papyrus. But as I mentioned … they were unwieldy. Now that passages of content can...

When I’m setting minor headings, I often use small-caps on the font-variant property. And while I’m at it I add 1px of letter-spacing to improve legibility. It came as a surprise then that the first minor heading I set on this site looked almost acceptable (below), despite the fact I’d forgotten to apply...

First, please humour me. Eight years ago my mum was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). She has dry macular, the untreatable type, and today only a glimmer of peripheral vision remains in her right eye. Mum can still get around her house unaided, because she knows where everything is. Almost...

This morning I enabled two-step verification on my Apple ID. It didn’t go as smoothly as I’d expected. The following is not a tutorial on how to set up two-step authentication for your Apple ID. If you want one of those, read ‘Protecting your Apple ID with two-step verification’ on MacTuts+. Instead, this describes...

Among the many things I discovered this morning was that my default browser, Safari, doesn’t allow direct access to OS X’s Color Picker. A quick search also revealed a surprising lack of colour-picker extensions for Safari. What’s more, Color Picker doesn’t do hex colours. The following solution is a bit of a...

When I upgraded to Alfred 2, there were a number of things that didn’t transfer well from Alfred 1. My dictionary search was one of them. This morning I had a trawl around the web to find which online dictionary gave the best results. Top, by a long shot, was Merriam-Webster (available from Amazon UK or Indiebound...

When I left the UK for the French Alps last week, I went prepared: passports, EHIC cards, travel plugs… you name it … and maps – more maps than I imagine Alexander the Great used in his quest for world domination. I created and printed them from Google Maps, with directions; I had a European road map atlas – years...

Love this sign-off on blogger David Sparks’ (@MacSparky) about page: I enjoy hearing from readers and listeners. Indeed, it warms the cockles of my heart. However, I am a lousy correspondent and for that I am sorry. I do sometimes reply, but not always. For instance, if I write and say “Thanks”, then you reply and...

In the 14 years I’ve been skiing, there are two questions to which I’ve always wanted to know the answers: How fast? How far? Now I know. Ski Tracks’ app track screen During a week of skiing in France’s Le Grand Massif, iPhone app Ski Tracks (available on iPhone) provided the answers, along with a lot of other stuff...

When I posted ‘Harbingers of editorial change’ earlier this week, I hadn’t come across Nathan Kontny’s Draft. Draft, by Nathan Kontny Draft is a Markdown writing tool with the ability to share with an editor built into the interface. Your editor can suggest changes, but you decide whether to accept or reject those...

The week is only half baked and already we’ve seen announcements for two new tools that promise long-term benefits for editors and writers. The creators of Editorially and CriticMarkup are attempting to untether editors and writers from their old-school tools (mostly Word) and extend the capabilities of new tools...