Linked List: October 30, 2009

Friday, 30 October 2009

Ulysses 2.0 

My thanks to The Soulmen for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Ulysses 2.0, their Mac OS X semantic text editor for writers. It uses a plain text syntax that borrows from LaTeX, Setext, and Markdown, separating content from presentation. It uses a project metaphor that lets you group all related documents, and their notes, together in a single window — think of it as an IDE for writers. It also has several options for full-screen editing, a big boon for concentrating. Check out their screencasts for a tour of Ulysses’s interface and features.

Ulysses has a generous 60-day fully-featured demo period, and DF readers can save 25 percent off the regular price with coupon code “DARING”, good through the end of November (which, not coincidentally, is National Novel Writing Month).

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers 

Speaking of Halloween, Colin Nissan has a festive piece at McSweeney’s.

To Sweet Hereafter 

More good writing from another good friend — a Halloween poem by Jim Coudal.

Thoughtful Piece From Brent Simmons 

Good writing from a good friend.

Jason Snell on Apple TV 3.0 

Jason Snell:

Steve Jobs said, “The reason I call [Apple TV] a hobby is, a lot of people have tried and failed to make it a business. And it’s a hard problem. So we’re trying. I think if we work on it and improve things over the next year, 18 months, we can crack that.”

That was 29 months ago. Apple still hasn’t cracked it. Apple TV 3.0 is a nice, mild update to an outdated piece of hardware that’s still not nearly as capable as it should be.

I’m with Snell. The good news is that the 3.0 software is a nice update for the existing hardware. The bad news is, the hardware is outdated, and isn’t really capable of the sort of killer features people are really hoping for in Apple TV.

Sprint: No Internet Tethering for Smartphones 

That’s a shame. Not sure though if he means no tether at all, or no tethering for “free” without an extra tethering charge.

Sprint Loses $478M, 135,000 Subscribers in Quarter 

Guess the Pre isn’t helping.