A New Canvas

Fever pitch would best describe the current rumor and excitement level going on right now about the new Apple Tablet/Slate/flat-thing-a-ma-bob that’s set to be announced on January 27th. I’m excited about it sure, a touch skeptical that it’ll be a huge game changer, but a big part of me really hopes it is.

I’m sure the hardware is going to be sexy, I’m confident Apple is going to come up with a way to do some sort of text entry, maybe not for your next novel, but it’ll work. If this sucker is wildly successful and sells like hotcakes, what gets me excited is that there’s going to be a new way to design digital content.

This new Apple device, in addition to whatever else they may be planning, could create a new ecosystem that gives people a reason to purchase periodical type content again. To spend a little extra for something exclusive, for the video and the audio additions, but also because it’s designed better.

Why would people want this?

It’s two simple words—premium content. Think HBO or Showtime. The Wall Street Journal has been able to carve out a nice little niche on the web too. The problem is people think of that content as free, and it works well that way.

That said, I miss reading the newspaper and beautifully laid out magazines, something a bit more researched and without that feel that I need to click the next item in my feed reader. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of an actual paper or the environmental impact of all that waste.

I want the best of both worlds. Beautifully laid out content, complete with audio and video, but delivered to me automatically on a device that’s designed to read on. Not something that’s already has too many alerts and notifications to pull me away from reading, watching or listening.

What makes this different then just a fancy website?

First, just go check out this Mag+ concept by Bonnier R&D. Still not convinced?

With a device like this, the content would be designed to be consumed on that specific device size (whatever it is) and not have to worry about fixed vs. fluid layouts and IE6 like designers have to do on the web. It could have full CSS3 support, no cross browser javascript woes and a much larger set of native type to choose from pre-loaded on the device.

Best of all, all the web designers out there would already know how to build for it because the content that will be produced for this new device will use HTML/CSS/Javascript and wouldn’t require them to learn Objective-C. Sure, it’ll probably offer the ability for developers to write apps in that too, but I’m talking about the designers formatting the content to be consumed on the device.

And then, the big one, getting paid for your content directly instead of relying on advertising with some sort of subscription model that’s built right into iTunes where Apple is already storing credit cards.

Why would content producers want this?

Clearly the big newspapers are struggling, hell they whole media industry is struggling to sustain themselves on the internet. If Apple is able to change the game, this might help give them a revenue model they’ve been searching for since they haven’t been able to come up with something better than drowning their sites with ads. Of course, Apple wouldn’t be opposed to taking a cut to provide a new model they haven’t been able to come up with yet.

In the end, I’m less concerned about all the specifications of the new device and more excited about the potential it can offer designers. Better tools and a canvas for richer experiences, a revenue model that gives content producers a better way to create and consumers higher quality, beautiful content.

Application Keyboard Shortcuts for Mail.app

I like to archive mail instead of deleting it. Gmail brought this into vogue a few years back and with their unlimited storage it’s almost silly to delete anything but a few spam messages and the most mundane emails. The problem is I also like to use Mail.app as my email client. So in order for me to archive email I’ve had to drag every message into Gmail’s All Mail folder.

It’s a surprisingly slow process and I don’t even want to think about how much time I’ve wasted doing it. It’s also prone to error. I often find messages accidentally moved to the wrong folder.

So, in an attempt to fix this, I spent a few minutes yesterday trying to figure out how to setup a few quick keyboard shortcuts. I remembered reading that 10.6 made this whole process a lot easier and figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve heard of third party applications, or hacks that could do something like this but those things aren’t for me, if it’s not simple and built into the operating system I’m just likely not going to bother. Luckily it’s dead simple, and I’ve been loving it ever since.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Open up System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts

2. Select Application Shortcuts in the left hand menu

3. Click the + button and choose the application you want, which in this case is Mail

4. Type the exact name of the folder you want to move the selected message to when you invoke the keyboard command. For archiving messages in in your Gmail account you’ll want to type All Mail.

5. Choose the keyboard combination you like I went with command-return but it’s up to you.

It’s just that simple. You can setup these shortcuts for any other menu items and across as many different applications as you want. I’ve always liked the idea of keyboard shortcuts, but until now they’ve always been too much work to setup or learn. With this new preference pane you can choose whatever key combination want them to be and they’re incredibly simple to create. Kudos to Apple for getting this right.