• room temperature water
• a Sodastream soda maker and some way to make a double espresso.
• some nice, rich coffee (I like Illy and Counter Culture, myself)

Once you’ve got the necessary supplies on hand, here’s your workflow:

1. Fill Soda Stream bottle with room temperature water (to the “fill line”).
2. Attach bottle to the Soda Stream soda maker
3. Press the “fizzer” button until the machine buzzes, then let go
4. Press the button again until it buzzes once more, then let go
5. “Burp” the bottle by unscrewing it until it releases its inbuilt pressure (you’ll hear a satisfying hiss), but do not remove the bottle
6. Screw the bottle back onto the the Soda Maker to create your seal again
7. Press the “fizzer” button once more, once again until it makes a buzzing sound, then release
8. Remove the bottle from the Soda Maker and cap it. Do not refrigerate; leave at room temperature.
9. Make your coffee (I recommend a double espresso).
10. For each 1.5 oz of liquid in your coffee, add a tablespoon of the over-fizzed water you made earlier.

And that’s about it. Just remember, though, that if you add more hot water (for an Americano) or milk (for a latte, cappuccino, etc), you’ll need to add some more of that fizzy water – one tablespoon per 1.5 ounces of pre-fizzed drink.

Enjoy.

I’ve typically seen these breakpoints chosen with iOS devices in mind: 320px and up for handheld, 786px and up for tablets, and then 1280px and up for laptops and desktops.

But there are loads of devices being shipped by a variety of manufacturers, whose phones are larger, and whose tablets are smaller. And let’s not overlook the possibility that the number of devices will only continue to grow into the future, even if all you might claim to care about is Apple’s iOS mobile devices (which, IMO, isn’t any smarter than slapping a “Best Viewed in Netscape 4″ badge on your website).

So, how better to think of these breakpoints?

One might suggest that a “theoretically pure” approach would be do consider the physical size of the display and to offer up a design and assets that would be experienced well, given that space.

The trouble is that devices have different pixel densities. And before we get all excited about the fact that CSS also supports real-world sizing units, like inches and millimeters, I regret to have to report that these aren’t reliable, either. Even iOS devices, whose screen sizes are extraordinarily well-defined, render real-world measurement units at 3/4 size of the desired sizing (i.e., a 2-inch wide <div> rendered on an iPad measures 1.5 inches with a ruler).

In case you want to check this claim out for yourself:

Purity, as you can see, is rarely practical.

Still, the general goal of matching up layout styling rules appropriately for a given display size is a sound one. And so I’m thinking a more pragmatic approach with similar goals is in order.

Devices and Their Imperfect Pixels

For better or worse, the digital design world uses pixels as the de facto measurement unit. Now, anyone with a lick of experience with digital design (whether it’s creation, implementation, or troubleshooting) will immediately realize that there’s loads of pixel size variety between devices. Very roughly, PC screens have an average pixel resolution of 100ppi, while mobile devices have a resolution of about 160ppi.

This is in no small part thanks to the fact that the original iPhone was a 160ppi device, and to Google’s “device independent pixel” work (also called “dp” or “dip”), which notes:

The density-independent pixel is equivalent to one physical pixel on a 160 dpi screen, which is the baseline density assumed by the system for a “medium” density screen.

So, given this loose “pixel-standard” sizing practice, I hunted around for some reference that outlined the screen sizes of some common mobile devices, and found this handy already-year-old matrix from UX Booth, reproduced here for convenience:

Starting with this survey of device screen sizes, let’s loop back to the idea of using layout capabilities afforded by the display area as the central concern in identifying our breakpoints: which display width offers “enough room” for a image floats, and which for multiple columns of content?

Next, let’s keep the number of breakpoints practical, for each one introduces some amount of development and maintenance overhead. We’ll need to balance “enough to be useful” vs. “too many to manage”.

Here are my recommendations:

Last Thoughts

It’s worth mentioning that the above breakpoints were defined considering layout capabilities, and do not apply to other facets of potential experience “enhancement” considerations, like whether a sequence of images is best presented as a list or a horizontal carousel, which is much more a consideration left to device capabilities such as JavaScript and/or support for swipe gestures.

And don’t forget the idea of 2x image assets for high-pixel density devices (like the new iPad, with its Retina Display™), which starts to open the bandwidth measurement can of worms.

What do you folks think of these breakpoints?

Materials

Here are some related materials that inspired this exploration:

• Considerations for Mobile Design (Part 2): Dimensions
• Responsive Web Design Default Breakpoints Are Dead
• State of the Web: of Apps, Devices, and Breakpoints
• Mozilla Developer Network: Using the viewport meta tag to control layout on mobile browsers

And some tools I had in mind:

• Riloadr
• 960gs (and CSS “grids” in general)
• Responsive PX

When I got the first one, in 2010, I wasn’t sure what sort of mileage I’d give it. While I was excited to get my hands on one, I didn’t really know how much I’d wind up using it after the “honey moon” was over, and it was no longer that shiny new thing. So I decided to exercise some fiscal restraint and pick just one of the available options for “upgrade” from the base model, between the storage bump (32G instead of 16G), or the mobile data option. Since I had already been happily using my iPhone heavily for on-the-go data access, I decided the extra storage space would give my buck the biggest bang.

Turns out I used the shit out that iPad over the two years that followed, but definitely come to missing the data connection option that I had eschewed on several occasions.

I skipped on the iPad 2, in part for fiscal discipline, but also because I had used the iPhone 4 and knew a Retina Display would be the irresistible iPad upgrade lure. Thank goodness that the 2012 iPad had delivered on that display, too, because the newer versions of all my apps had already started putting a noticeable strain on the CPU and RAM on my two-years-old iPad.

I put my order in for this iPad the day it was announced.

This time, I knew I’d use this thing heavily for the next few years, so I opted to max out the storage at 64G, and — being sick of AT&T’s shitty signal coverage on my iPhone — I opted for the model that supported Verizon’s LTE mobile data option.

Everything about this new iPad is brilliant, and I’m really enjoying having on-the-go data.

I won’t belabor the points about the smooth performance and the dazzling screen you’ll already have learned from other sources. They are indeed that good.

If you’re wondering whether I recommend you get one, the answer is almost certainly “yes”. If you’re similarly struggling, as I had previously been, between the getting additional storage or mobile data, I’m going to say most people would be better served by the mobile data option.

I do have two points of mild warning, however, both regarding the mobile data option:

1. My high hopes for Verizon’s data coverage have been tempered by actual usage. Neither my iPhone’s AT&T 3G connection, nor my iPad’s Verizon LTE coverage gives me a lick of actually-usable mobile data throughput in my Time Square office. Both devices show many bars of “signal strength”, but trying to actually load content over the mobile data network gets me nothing but quality time with “Loading” spinners. While one can simply write off Time Square as a dead zone for data (as well as the prospect of finding any good food, or much else of particular value, frankly), I’ve also had data timeouts in other places in NYC’s boroughs. Perhaps I’d set my hopes too high, or maybe Verizon just had a surge in the load of new iPad-owner LTE traffic that they’ll adjust to over time. Time will tell.

2. When data throughput is available on the Verizon LTE connection, it is very (very) fast. When coverage is available, my iPad’s Verizon LTE service is faster, in many cases, than the WiFi connection at my house which has a Verizon DSL Internet connection. So here’s the “warning” part of this point: be very wary of streaming any video content. Most video delivery services are designed to deliver lower-quality video to lower-bandwidth connections, and higher-quality video to higher-bandwidth ones. The trouble here is that the LTE connections are so fast that video streaming services deliver the highest bit-rate renditions of videos to your iPad. This will tear through the allotted data quota of whatever data package you’ve subscribed to far faster than you’d expect.

In any case, I’m delighted to be able to pull the latest posts from my RSS subscriptions into Mr. Reader while waiting for my coffee and eggs at brunch, or to review the tasks I’ve got in OmniFocus and ensure I’m working the latest sync of my data.

This computer replaced a five year-old Mac Pro; the very first tower Mac that Apple shipped with Intel CPUs.

In a nut, the Mac Pro had been a trusty computer, and actually still works splendidly. The only trouble is that it takes up a bunch of floor space, guzzles electricity, and – most painfully, during a NYC summer – kicks off a ton of heat. I was looking to lower all three profiles.

As part of my intention to use less electricity, I also picked up a Digital POWERCENTER 650G “GreenPower” surge protector, by Monster. It looks like this:

For anyone unfamiliar with Monster’s “GreenPower” products, they describe the line as follows:

Monster GreenPower™ is a revolutionary new way to automatically reduce energy waste and save you money. Simply plug your computer into the GreenPower Control socket. When it’s turned off or goes to sleep, the other GreenPower sockets switch off, automatically eliminating energy wasted by peripherals, like your monitor and scanner, when you’re not using them. When your computer turns back on, the GreenPower sockets automatically power up again.

The gist is that the surge protector has one “master” socket (labeled above as “computer”), into which you’re meant to plug the “primary device”, and a number of “subordinate” sockets (for the various accessories attached to the computer), which only get juice when the device on the “master” socket is consuming 17 Watts or more of power. The surge protector also has a single “independent” socket (labeled “modem” in the photo above), into which you can plug a device that isn’t part of the “master / subordinate” equation.

So, following the direction suggested by the labeling, I plugged the Mac Mini into the “master” socket, and plugged the monitor, printer, speakers, and USB hub into the “subordinate” sockets. The “independent” socket remained unused.

Then I turned the computer on. The “subordinate” devices remained off for a few seconds. But once the startup process was in full swing, the monitor came to life, I heard the printer begin to do its “wakeup dance”, and the speakers popped as power flowed to them!

Then the login screen came up, and the monitor, et al lost power.

I figured that I just needed to get past the login and start using the computer, and that this would keep everything juiced up. So I typed my password and hit the ENTER key. Immediately the monitor came back to life, the printer did it’s initialization dance, and the speakers popped to life again, while the Finder launched, my “startup items” got spawned, and Lion restored my application state from before I had shut the computer down in order to replace the old surge protector.

As I reached to the trackpad, however, the monitor and the rest of the devices plugged into the “subordinate” sockets all shut off again; the Mini simply did not consistently draw enough power to meet the 17 Watt minimum required from the “master” socket in order to activate its subordinates.

Remember when I mentioned that i5 Intel CPU back at the top? Apparently they are particularly energy efficient.

No wonder Apple put ‘em in the Air.

I started to wonder, however, if I’d just bought some new but utterly useless thing, destined to merely collect dust.

So I plugged the monitor into the still-free “independent” socket, and managed to safely shut the computer down again. While was clear to me that the Mini couldn’t be the device plugged into the “master” socket, it simply wasn’t safe to plug it into the “subordinate” sockets. So it had to take the “independent” socket, while some other device was to be used to drive the “master” socket.

At first, I tried plugging the monitor into the “master”. It seemed like a reasonable selection, given that putting the computer to sleep would cut the video signal, hence putting the monitor into standby mode.

Switching it on, I learn the monitor had no trouble driving the master socket. At all.

But now I had two devices (the Mini and the Monitor) which would be sipping power 24 hours a day, even in standby mode. My savings were diminishing. I also keep a clamp light next to my desk, which I always turn on when I’m using the computer. I’ve presently got a 60W bulb in it; which uses far more than the 17W minimum required to drive the “subordinate” accessories. And it draws ZERO Watts when switched off.

And so I’d found the winner.

So, in the end, the device powering setup on the surge protector looks like this:

There is also no longer a Mac Pro on the floor, claiming 6″ of space between the wall and my desk; and the corner remains much cooler, letting me run the AC at lower levels.

The pic in which I’m smoking a Davidoff cigar is the one Google seems to consider my profile photo, as it’s the one I see in all the settings management screens, and yet that silly cactus shows up all throughout my activity streams.

If anyone has any sort of clue on this one, please do advise.

I’m noticing a significant difference in the angle of elevation that the Android adoption curve is showing, amongst the different carriers. Specifically, I’m looking at how it’s showing the flattest rate of growth on AT&T, the only carrier on that list that’s also offering the iPhone.

Clark writes [emphasis mine]:

Email has grown gnarly in the decades past, as we’ve started receiving dozens or hundreds of spam and bacn messages a day. I have multiple server side rules and filters just to keep it in check, and an inbox policy of flagging anything I care about before running a slightly-modified version of John Gruber’s Inbox Sweeper to keep things tidy.

Reply-all gaffes, top-posting etiquette, plaintext versus HTML, attachment limits, inbox limits… everybody hits them. By comparison the simplicity and clarity of Facebook mail is impressive. A Facebook message requires (privacy controls pending) a symmetrically-acknowledged relationship between parties, and on top of that spam-murdering convenience it’s self-threading, low friction, and lightweight.

In a nutshell, Facebook is better than email unless you’re some kind of email expert. And for email’s successor to support all the expert features of email, none of its myriad problems would be solved.

It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users. These are the people who are still using slotted screwdrivers and Edison light fixtures and manual transmission cars.

I would specifically add that I find Clark’s argument that Facebook messaging improves upon e-mail only within the context of social communication; I find their messaging model incapable of replacing e-mail as a tool for work (email’s ability to run filters and rules, organize, and archive information comes a big workflow helper for email).

That having been said, however, maybe e-mail as a personal communications tool is for power users now (or, perhaps more aptly, once again).

My parting thought here isn’t to close your e-mail accounts and move to Facebook. Rather that – as we enter a new year, reminding ourselves to take fresh perspectives – is that it’s terribly easy to over-value past investments in our efforts build today what will stand tomorrow.

[Via Daring Fireball].

1. Achieve maximum supply volume,
2. Place large enough bulk orders to minimize its component costs, and
3. Sap the global 10″ LCD market of supply so that their competitors in the tablet market are forced into constrained supply situations, preventing them from competing with Apple at the iPad’s price points.

On a personal note, I’d be bummed to be right on this one; while FaceTime is quite spiffy, that Retina Display really is the killer iPhone 4 feature for me.

While iPhone OS 4.0 — due out this summer — will finally deliver the long-requested ability to allow users to listen to their Pandora or Last.fm radio streams in the “background” by virtue of its new “multi-tasking” capabilities, the solution I’ve stumbled upon works (in slight variations) today with any device running iPhone OS 3.x.

Although this little trick won’t work with Pandora, since you must be using a Pandora client to stream their music, you can use it with any radio station which exposes its MP3 or AAC music stream via a multimedia playlist file URL (which will typically end in .pls); basically any radio station you’ll find on Live 365, Soma FM, and more.

I’m a fan of Soma FM’s Secret Agent radio station, so we’ll use that for our example; feel free to try this out for any station you like.

The process is super easy, but slightly different between the handheld iPhone OS devices (eg, iPhone and iPod Touch) and iPads (for which it’s actually a bit spiffier), so I’ll take you through the steps for doing it on each one.

iPhone / iPod Touch

Launch Mobile Safari, and head to the following URL:

http://somafm.com/secretagent48.pls

You’ll see the following:

Safari fetches the PLS file URL

Once the playlist file is loaded, Safari will find the URL of the music stream, and start playing the music, and you’ll see this:

Safari has started playing the audio stream

Now — click the Home button and, say, check in on your email. Note that the music continues to play.

Isn’t that fantastic?

Just one caveat, though: you won’t be able to browse other websites in Safari until you click the “Done” button (top left), which — as you might expect — causes the music to stop playing.

One workaround is to use an alternative browser, like iCab, Opera Mini, or any of a number of other web browsers (some paid, some free) available in the App Store.

iPad

Things get a little cooler on the iPad. The steps to get you listening to the music stream are the same, but we can do a few more things once the music starts playing on the iPad.

Once the music starts to play, you’ll see this:

Safari playing the audio stream

Note one key difference to note, however: unlike the iPhone’s Mobile Safari app, the iPad’s Mobile Safari continues to show you the browser chrome up top.

For starters, this means that you may continue browsing other websites in Safari on the iPad by simply tapping the tabs icon at the top:

Change tabs or create new ones.

What’s more you can actually create a bookmark for the radio station, so you can quickly listen any time:

Create bookmarks for your favorite stations

But — and this is where I started to get a little verklempt — it gets just slightly more fantastic: you can bookmark it to your Home Screen.

Now I can fire up Secret Agent FM from my Home Screen, just like Pandora or Last.fm.

Looks like the folks at Soma FM went the extra mile to specify a Home Screen icon for their website. Your mileage will vary with the availability of your favorite station’s dedicated icon for your Home Screen, however, depending on the site publisher.

Meanwhile, go forth and enjoy streaming some music while you’re sending those texts or reading the Times.

So one of the thoughts that naturally occurred to me is that there’s at least some small chance that Cylon.local won’t be coming back; perhaps the resurrection ship was simply too far away when the dreadful moment arrived.

I’d just bought a Mac Mini for my parents this past Christmas, so I already know the value proposition of replacing it with the latest model.

But, while I’m entertaining the notion of replacement hardware, it occurs to me that Dell rolled out a competitor a few months ago, called the Inspiron Zino HD. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m quite happy with the Mini’s performance over the last four years, and I’d be happy to keep it for as long as it’ll stick around with me, but any sensible man would think to check in on his options.

So I Google mac mini dell and learn the product’s name. Another query with its name serves up a link that takes me directly to the Zino’s product page on Dell’s website.

I’m checking out the product description, the product porn (the photos gallery), the product video, and their convincingly-constructed selling points — everything’s looking pretty swell. “Not bad-looking,” I find myself thinking, “It’s got native support for HDMI… it’ll run Boxee and iTunes… what’s it cost?”

And then it hits me like a brick between the eyes:

There’s no way to buy this computer from this page. While many manufacturers have individual “catalog” and “shop” pages for any given product, it’s astounding just what a pain it is to actually get from the Zino’s “catalog” page, to its “shop” page in Dell’s online store — there wasn’t a single link on that page to take me straight to a purchase opportunity.

Here’s a screenshot of the full page, so you can hunt around for yourself:

Salesmanship fail

And what makes this perhaps most embarrassing of all is the fact that Dell’s primary sales model has been direct-to-consumer, from the day they opened their doors for business.