My iPad mini just got a lot more productive. Federico’s review is right here.

Cleaning up some external hard drives and found this project from my Photoshop course back in college. It comes at a time when I’m really getting into comics.

I’d love it if they would pre-emptively send me that Synology I’ve had my mouse hovering over so many times.

Evernote just released a major update of their web clipper for Chrome. This update is specific to Chrome for the desktop right now but I’m sure it’ll roll out to all the other major browsers soon. Version 6 brings a huge chunk of the toolset typically found in Skitch straight into Chrome with the click of a button. You can now markup any web clip as soon as you’ve made your selection. Another massive change comes in the form of telling the Web Clipper what chunk of content you want and how you want it formatted in a concise manner. This has always been unclear to me in previous versions of the extension.

One of the biggest use cases I see this filling for myself is telling the clipper to grab the whole page and then quickly marking up all of the content (even if it’s not in my current area of view within the browser) and clicking the new Share button to generate a link such as this and easily share any clip from your browser in seconds. Droplr recently added Capture and Draw features for paid users and Evernote just stepped right in front of it for capturing in the browser. The space for quickly capturing and sharing on the desktop seems to be heating up and getting even simpler. Be sure to check out the Evernote blog for the rundown on all of the new features.

I filled in for Frasier Speirs on this week’s episode of Out of School with Bradley Chambers aptly titled “How Do We Get This On A Chromebook?”.

We discussed PowerSchool, the pending upgrade to Casper 9 and the recent deployment of Chromebooks that we implemented at work. It was a good time as always talking with Bradley about IT in education.

Federico Vitticci’s in-depth review of Editorial for iPad is as profound as the application itself so I’m not going to say anything more than go buy the application if you need to write anything on the iPad. It’s really good.

Update: Federico has created an e-book with an expanded write up, 15 demo videos and 50 downloadable workflows for Editorial for iPad. It’s on sale at 50% of the $5.99 full price for a limited time. Go grab a copy and support a great writer.

Earlier today I shared my new iPhone lockscreen online and was asked where it came from.

I realized I’ve kept my favorite desktop/wallpaper site to myself. I think it stemmed from a “first rule of fight club” mentality. I’ve used Simple Desktops for years and it’s absolutely my favorite website for finding fresh, minimal desktop (and mobile) desktops. Today I noticed that they have Mac, iPhone and Android apps.

Mobile

While the iPhone app is $1.99, it is so much better than sifting through other wallpaper apps for the iPhone and the content is incredible. Yes, you can use the website without a problem on your iPhone but the app allows multiple selections to be selected and downloaded all at once. I instantly bought it and would recommend the same if you’re looking for a great wallpaper app for your iPhone. I don’t currently have an Android device to test with but if it’s anything like the iPhone app I’m sure I’d recommend it.

Mac

The Mac version is a little harder to justify at $3.99. This is, of course, unless you like your desktop to change in the background on a schedule with new desktops from the site. You can also flip through the desktops available with a keyboard shortcut which cuts out needing to visit the site and download the desktops you want. I think the app could improve it’s worth if Simple Desktops offered online accounts that let you create collections and use the app to limit the scheduled changing of backgrounds to those collections. I could easily see this being really useful for different computers. I’m not sure I’d want this background showing up when I plugged into a projector for a presentation at work; especially if our scholars were a part of the meeting. Customizing the use of scheduled desktop changes would be great with just a little more control.

Conclusion

It may seem weird to pay anything towards a desktop/wallpaper website this is one that I’m happy to do so for. After all, you have to pay for services that you want to have a prolonged existence.

Sam Spurlin found a fantastic quote and summed up something that crosses my mind from time to time these days. While I’m not rushing through life I really look forward to what’s to come.

Marco posted about this yesterday and wow, this refresh is amazing. BetaWorks is really doing great things with Instapaper.