Bulletin – A Google Reader Replacement

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Trying to do anything while raising an infant isn’t easy.  Trying to launch a new product, in your spare time, while raising an infant and holding down a full-time job is even tougher.  I say this because I hope it puts some further focus on how proud I am of what Michael and I have put together in the past 3+ months.

For a while now, I’ve been pretty unhappy with Google Reader and RSS readers like it.  There was a lack of dedication from their team to really push forward what keeping up with site feeds could be.  The entire concept of RSS readers has really stagnated since the mid 2000s, and the lack of innovation can be traced back to the ‘good enough’ Google Reader’s dominance keeping other developers and companies at bay.  Products like Fever have tried and done a pretty good job on some level but ultimately fell victim to infrequent updates, nagging bugs, or lack of clear vision.  

My partner in crime, Michael, felt similarly and we decided to give things a shot.  This was back in March, when my son was a month old.  At the time, Google Reader was not yet going away, so we thought we had (relatively) all the time in the world.  I distinctly remember, when we committed to take this on, saying that I’d not be much good to anyone until my son was a bit older but we should get started as much as we can now.  A few days later, Google announced they were shutting down Reader.  

Fight or flight time.

We dove in head first, building an infrastructure, API, and prototyping the front end while asking for feedback from friends, colleagues and family along the way.  I was stealing 30 minutes here and there, any way I could, but we started making really solid progress.  Within about 6 weeks, we had a viable beta ready for testing and continued to iterate as we got feedback and fleshed out a roadmap to 1.0.  We had to be live before July 1, so we tailored and refined our feature list as we went.  We said no a lot, keeping our eyes on the prize of shipping something.

So what is it?  Well, Bulletin is a modern, fast RSS reading service, backed by its users that allows readers to quickly skim, save and share the news they care about.  Further, we have built the service to work with app developers who so choose by making available our own API as well as a ‘Google Reader lookalike’ API endpoint as well.  We’re hoping that users will see the value in a service that relies on a simple, symbiotic relationship between them and the product – they pay us money and we listen to them and build the best service possible.  Novel, eh?

I’m really excited and proud of what we’ve built in a really short time, both juggling jobs and vacations and whatnot along the way.  It’s trite in this day and age of startup culture, but the fact that we built something and it’s out there is fulfilling regardless of the success of the product.  We’re going to continue to pour ourselves into making this the best RSS service we can, as we work with iOS and Android developers to integrate with their apps as well as build one of our own to showcase all the service has to offer.  1.0 really is, for us, an arbitrary deadline set by circumstance – we have a ton more to build, but are really excited about the possibilities.

So please sign up, give the 10 day trial a spin and let me know what you think.

Finding time to plan my day

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I’ve made a small change in my daily schedule and it’s already reaping huge rewards for me.

Lately, I’ve been struggling a lot with just keeping the basics of my life in order as my job is gotten crazier and crazier.  Before this week, I would wake up around 7 AM, take the dog out, hit the shower, and head to work after getting quickly dressed. From alarm to starting the engine, it was roughly a 30 minute process.  By the nature of the industry I’m in (there’s always someone at my work doing something), when I arrive at work, I already am facing a dozen emails to respond to – some important, others not so much but still requiring some sort of reply. Any time I thought I would have to do administrative tasks at the office would already be gone by just playing catch-up from the new fires that just popped up during my commute or overnight.

Given this, I think that the only way that I can really feel like I have control my day is to spend a little bit of time planning my day.  I’ll never to have control over my day 100% and I’m never going to be able to spend eight hours doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing. It’s just not the nature of my job anymore. However, I do think that it is important to at least start the day with an idea what you can realistically get done and not get done and push the lesser items off until tomorrow.  I’m now getting up an hour earlier than I used to, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and spending some time in OmniFocus & reading through my email – really sorting through what I’m going to be doing that day. Once I know what I need to do (and what I actually can do), I block that time off in my work calendar for each task, ensuring that things get done.  And it’s working.

It’s only been about two weeks but I’m much more relaxed and feel like I’m ‘in control’ of my day a bit more.  Funny how spending just a half hour thinking about how you are going to spend each hour of your day, blocking it out on your calendar, and prioritizing tasks (for the inevitable moment where something gets pushed back because of a fire or emergency meeting) helps you feel in control of anything that comes your way, because you’ve done the extra legwork to make sure the demands of the day line up with the reality of time & attention available.

Google’s Nexus 7

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Every year or so, usually around Google I/O, I like to see what’s new in the Android world. As a big fan of Apple stuff, sometimes it’s easy to get the blinders on and not see what the competition is doing well or differently. With that said, I think that iOS is losing ground as an OS in some ways to Android, and it might actually be a result of focusing too much on Google. Little geeky things like UI customization and control over notifications and intents make the experience in Android land better than that of an iDevice when you pick one up for the first time. The app war still skews heavily towards Apple and will for some time, so it’s not like I’m looking to switch teams or anything, but I am always intrigued by advances in the mobile space. Obviously, there’s a downside to ‘fiddly’, over-customizable systems as well, but I really like what Google is doing with their ‘Google Now’ product, newfound focus on consistent UI, and bringing the Android Market under the ‘Play’ umbrella.

If you’re a tech nerd you’ve no doubt heard about the new Google tablet, the Nexus 7. It’s the same form factor as the Kindle Fire and other 7″ tablets, but this model is straight from Google. Most notable about that is that the latest and greatest software version (‘Jelly Bean’, v4.1) is loaded up and it’s a pretty impressive compared to older versions of the Android software (even 4.0). The other item that is making waves is the price point, a relatively affordable $199 with a $25 Google Play store credit for the 8gb version. Nobody in their right mind is comparing this against an iPad straight up, but this is obviously intended to kneecap the Kindle Fire momentum and get folks thinking about buying a cheaper iPad 2 to take pause. This is a good thing. Competition will force Google, Apple, and anyone else trying to make inroads in the phone/tablet market to push harder to bring consumers what they want.

So, being the gadget geek that I am, I got my hands on a Nexus 7.

I’ve had a little bit of time to mess around with the Nexus and I left intrigued. It’s a fairly well known fact that I’m a bit of an Apple enthusiast – owning an iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, iMac and a few iPods amongst other things will do that – but I’m also not going to blindly bash another product based on that. Admittedly, the pre-4.0 Android phones have, for the most part, been inferior to iPhones for my needs. The OS was slow and jittery, battery life was generally sub par, and build quality was (depending on vendor) cheap. There were exceptions to be sure, but most of the Android-based phones and tablets I used were comically bad. Things have changed a bit since then, however. Google partnered with ASUS to build this tablet and I’ve been pretty impressed with the speed, build quality, and overall look and feel of the device. I really dig the way it feels in your hand – it’s perfect for reading, browsing the web, or checking up on a calendar. There is a rubber backing that is grippy but doesn’t feel cheap.

After a weekend of use, here’s what I can report about not only the Nexus, but also Android 4.1 from the perspective of an iOS user:

Pro

First, the pros. There are a lot of things I really like about the Nexus 7 – it’s fast, the OS is a bit of a change from what I’m used to but overall I like it a lot.

  • The system wide sharing. Any app can opt into this, and it’s really awesome.
  • Background updates for apps like Evernote, Instapaper, etc. Less time manually updating, more time just using.
  • Widgets are kind of gimmicky but a nice option.
  • Obviously the system wide google integration is fantastic.
  • If you are a tinkerer and enjoy tweaking settings, this is the device for you.
  • Google Now seems like a neat idea but I’m yet to see it show up much.
  • $25 Google Play gift cert!
  • Auto updating apps. You don’t need to wait to be told updates are available, the updates just work.
  • I absolutely love the form factor of the device. It’s a fantastic weight and fits in your hand perfectly.
  • In a lot of ways you feel very ‘in control’ of an Android device in ways you don’t an iOS device. This isn’t completely a pro, but it does help with things like downloads, seeing what is killing your battery, etc.
  • Side loading of apps is a really neat feature. I’m still waiting and hoping that Apple implements a feature similar to what we see in Mountain Lion (but I’m not counting on it)

Con

However, it’s not all fun and games. There are a lot of little quality issues and they add up to make a great experience just ‘good’.

  • Keyboard auto complete not as good. The suggestions above the keyboard are nice, however.
  • Text selection in general is fussy and slow. Copying and pasting is a chore.
  • The entire OS isn’t as smooth as iOS is (even with generally beefy specs) and generally feels “cheaper” than an iOS device. ‘Project Butter’ was a big step forward for Android, it scrolling is still not quite there.
  • The lack of good system fonts really shows through. In general, the user is dealing with either serif or sans serif fonts, and that’s all.
  • Back button. I never quite understand where I am going to go when I press the system-wide back button. Maybe this gets easier to understand over time.
  • Speakers are average at best on the device.
  • While Google Music has a web based interface, which I do like, it forces the user to upload ALL of their music to the cloud – there is no “matching” like iTunes Match can do. Took 4 days.
  • This will be addressed soon I’m sure, but most Nexus apps are scaled up versions of phone apps.
  • This is a generalization, but the attention to detail in most Android apps just isn’t the same as you’ll see in iOS.  When you’re dealing with a glass rectangle, software generally trumps hardware.  I feel like iOS software currently trumps it’s Android counterpart.
  • It’s nearly impossible to type in in landscape. This is a portrait device.
  • Holy cow, the iPad seems huge now.
  • In the same vein about being ‘in control’, in other ways you quickly get overwhelmed with preferences, auto-updating settings and other issues that end up killing your battery.
  • Apple got it right with push notifications. Setting each app to auto-update on it’s own schedule is tedious and can slowly kill your battery before you know what happened.
  • Build quality of the Nexus just isn’t up to par of the iPad but considering it’s more than half the cost, this shouldn’t’ be a surprise.  I actually had to return mine due to some ‘ghosting’ issues on the screen.
  • Overall, I admire the open source nature of Android but the bottom line is most of the services that make Android great are not open at all, and could be taken away at any moment (google music, gmail, google calendar, etc). I’m always dealing with a tiny bit of anxiety when working with Google products for this reason. The best apps for Android appear to be the ones bundled with the OS, and for iOS it’s quite the contrary.

Conclusion

It’s going to be hard for anyone to beat what Google has put together at this price point. The device is high quality, fast, and is a fantastic form factor. Using it for a week or so has been a very nice experience, but ultimately one that makes me appreciate iOS even more. There are definitely features and paradigms in the Android world i would love to see in iOS but ultimately things still just feel a little ‘cheap’. I will say this, however: with Android 4.1, it’s the first time I’d be ok with using an android phone if need be. That alone is a huge endorsement of a product that felt like a really, really bad copy of iOS as recently as a year ago.

Things are generally fast and beginning to show a level of polish you’d expect the giant that is Google could produce. I would definitely recommend this device to anyone looking for a nice, affordable tablet.

Sublime Text 2

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I’ve come to realize that I’m no longer a tinkerer. As I said in a recent post, I’m done fiddling with software and hardware. What I didn’t mention was that there was one exception – text editors. Being in the industry that I’m in, I spend a ton of my time writing and formatting text. In the search for the perfect environment to perform these tasks, I’ve spend a considerable amount of money trying to track down the perfect piece of software to help me quickly and easily move through my day. A great text editor helps you do so many little things that, on their surface, don’t really seem like much. But all of those little automated tasks and nifty shortcuts add up real fast.

This actually started out as a review of Coda 2. However, somewhere between the time where I got excited about the upcoming editor from Panic (announced last fall) and today, I started trying out a little editor called Sublime Text 2. While I purchased and really do think that Coda 2 is a fine editor, it’s going to be difficult to pull me away from all of the little things that make Sublime Text such an amazing editor.

Coda 2.0 is, in nearly every measurable way, a huge upgrade over Coda 1.x. However, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a text editor designed for people who currently use Dreamweaver and are looking for something better. There’s no way else to say it without sounding like ‘that guy’, but it feels like a text editor with training wheels. Advanced web developers need more customizability, more keyboard shortcuts, more speed, and better syntax highlighting/checking/coloring for the $99 price tag that Coda retails for.  Further, the app’s major feature is an inline preview feature that sounds great but is fiddly due to the fact that most developers are working in enviornments that  aren’t really suited to one static file that you can just tab over to and preview.  I know you can tweak the Coda preferences to allow for this to work a bit better, but it’s not quite as elegant once you get into even slightly advanced workflows.

So then, what makes Sublime Text 2 so great? In a lot of ways, ST2 is a spiritual successor to TextMate – it’s a lightweight, extensible, fast text editor with an amazing community.  Nearly the entire UI can be customized, from the ‘chrome’ colors (you can make the UI light or dark or nearly anything in between), to the tab behavior, to the editor colors, error alert delays, etc.  It’s really as simple or as powerful as you’d like it to be.  Of course, it’s a fantastic text editor too.  The document overview feature allows you to quickly scroll and find that one function or bit of code you’re looking for.  Code completion, hinting and formatting work very similarly to how TextMate operates, and is highly customizable.

Being the dork that I am, the great text editor features only scratch the surface. Not only does it work the way I expect it to in nearly every way, it also has all of the little automatic features that I absolutely love. For example, you can drag your support folder to Dropbox and have a synced environment, preferences and all, between multiple machines. ST2 also has a package manager that is github-powered, keyboard activated, and has auto-updating technology so you’re always up to date.

Everything is powered by a command pallette that allows you to issue commands like svn updates, search for file names to open/preview, search css selectors or function names, and so much more. Not having to take your hands off of the keyboard is a huge productivity gain, and makes the interface very extensible. For example, I have added a handful of great extensions to the editor that do inline syntax checking/coloring, bracket highlighting, svn status updates, allow for sftp support, automatically add all vendor prefixes to css3 properties, and much more. Editors like Coda allow for plugins but it’s a process that never sees updates and generally doesn’t feel integrated into the editor.

Initially, I hated one feature of Sublime Text but have grown to love it. Instead of a standard preferences dialog with checkboxes, ST2 keeps all of its preferences in JSON arrays that are specific to each plugin, theme, or for the general app. While it does take a bit to get used to it, it makes it really easy to back up prefs or tweak things exactly the way you want to. The only things I can really say against ST2 is that a lot of preference changes require a restart, which can be disruptive to your workflow. Otherwise, any missing feature from Coda, BBEdit or TextMate is generally a quick search away.

There’s not a ton of great documentation from the developer (yet?) but there are some great blog posts with more info if Sublime Text is your sort of thing. The app costs $59 but has an ‘unlimited’ trial while you’re evaluating. It’s a per-user license so you can use it on Windows, Mac or PC.  I’ve used a ton of editors over the years and this is the first one that doesn’t have a glaring weakness in my mind.  As I mentioned above, this started out as me listing the pros and cons of Coda 2, but I quickly realized that in this increasingly complicated web development world, we don’t often have a single static page open that allows us to take advantage of most of the features that the Panic guys have included in their flagship editor.  If you spend your days in a text editor on the PC, Mac or Linux, I highly recommend checking this little beauty out.

How good is UGA’s defense?

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I respect what UGA has been able to do defensively this year, but it’s an understatement to say the SEC has been down this year, and UGA has had the fortune of not having to play any of the good teams in the West.  So, how good is the UGA defense, really?  I went through their games and threw out the Coastal Carolina game.  I listed the yards the Bulldogs gave up vs the opponent’s yearly average.

  1. Boise 390yds / (475 avg) -85yds
  2. USCe 395yds / (361 avg) +34yds
  3. Coastal Carolina (FCS) 112yds / (305 avg)
  4. Ole Miss 183yds / (296 avg) -113yds
  5. Miss St 213yds / (372 avg) -159yds
  6. Tennessee 270yds / (342 avg) -72yds
  7. Vandy 349yds / (334 avg) +5yds
  8. Florida 226yds / (337 avg) -111yds
  9. New Mexico St 402yds / (424 avg) -20yds
  10. Auburn 195yds / (338 avg) -143yds
  11. Kentucky 165yds / (263 avg) -98yds

Total: 83 few yards per game on defense, which translates to roughly a 1.20 yard per play differential over the course of the season given the average number of plays being run by their opponents (more if you count Coastal Carolina, but I don’t think it’s relevant).

That’s a pretty impressive differential.  If UGA can keep Tech’s rushing average under 4.5 yards per rush (the Jackets currently average 5.85 yards per rush and 11 yards per pass attempt), they will be in position to force the Jackets into 3rd and medium situations that the Jackets do not excel at.  I think that if you’re Tech, you have to be mindful of how sound the UGA defense has been this year and focus on getting yards on first down – don’t get too cute early, build momentum and get into 3rd and short situations that are manageable.

More to come Wednesday regarding position battles.

Hokie Time

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The key to this game is going to be the interior run game of both teams.

Tech has a history of getting gashed (although, the past 2 games they have done a remarkable job against 2 teams that run the ball quite well), and David WIlson is one of the top backs in the ACC, if not the country.  If the Jackets can keep the Hokies less than 4.0 ypp on the ground, that means GT is in good shape.  This means that not only must Tech contain Wilson and force predictable 3rd down situations, they must also keep QB Logan Thomas in the pocket and not allow him to pick up yards on the ground.  He’s a big, physical guy who can move the chains if things break down and it’ll be up to the linemen to keep him in the pocket and make him throw the ball.

Offensively for Tech, a few bread and butter plays should help them exploit the (alleged) changes being made by VT for this game of putting in smaller, athletic linemen to counter Tech’s option game.  This is a rare game where the Jackets will have a size advantage up front and they should try to exploit it by running multiple variants of the inverted veer, midline option, and the QB draw.

This play has been used increasingly by Tech as the season has gone on, and I love the simplicity of it.  It does a few things well – it gives GT flexibility in passing situations to run or pass, it forces linebackers to respect the possibility of a run/pass as the A-backs streak towards them, and it tends to get the Jackets a fairly easy 5+ yards per play.  When run correctly, both A-backs run break up field on the snap as if it were a pass play, and the B-back stays in the block the backside.  Once the QB has dropped back to a 3 step drop to throw the ball, a Tackle peels off and blocks either the middle or outside linebacker (depends on if the defense is in an over or under look, assuming we’re talking a base 4-3).  The A-backs cut the other 2 linebackers and the QB runs upfield into the void created.  In the past month, this play has been used more and more by the Jackets and going against an aggressive and undersized VT defense will be a good opportunity to exploit this again in potential pass situations.

The other benefit is the tendency to have linebackers always thinking about the draw out of pass looks; this should allow an A-back to sneak behind one of the Hokie LBs for a big gain.  When used properly, it sets up Run & Shoot concepts like the switch and the go.

I certainly feel more confident about this game than I did 2 weeks ago, but I’m still not sure that the Jackets can do enough on offense to win this game.  It’s going to take another near flawless effort like they had against Clemson to pull this one out.  The numbers certainly appear to be one of those “something has to give” contests:

GT offensive ypp: 7.0, 5.89 on the ground

VT defense: 4.8ypp, 2.9 on the ground

Splitting the difference, that’s still in the 4ypp average for GT, which is enough to win.  If the Jackets can stay above that number and keep the Hokies below that number on the ground, I think it’ll be enough to win another huge contest.  A small note, since Attaochu returned, the run defense has been much better, averaging 3.4 ypp instead of roughly 5.6 ypp. It’ll be interesting to see if Tech can do enough to mix it up on offense and control the clock.

I think the Jackets win the battle of the Techs, 31-24.

Falling into place

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If you read this blog, you surely know that Georgia Tech played their most complete game of the year, and in the process beat #5 Clemson 31-17 on Saturday night.  Nobody thought that Clemson was unbeatable, but most thought that the speed and playmaking ability that the Tigers possessed would simply be too much.  For Tech to come out on top, they’d have to execute well and not put themselves in a hole like they did the previous 2 weeks, starting out down 14 in both games.

The game plan against Clemson was fairly simple:

  1. Limit Clemson’s plays.  Clemson lead the nation is number of plays per game, and every time the ball is in their explosive playmakers’ hands, it spells possible trouble.  Eating the clock and forcing the Tigers to earn every yard was key.  This meant that offensively GT needed to control the clock and defensively they had to wrap up and tackle well.  They did both extremely well.  Clemson was held to 65 plays, nearly 14 plays less than their season average (78.25).
  2. Make the Tigers fairly one-dimensional by taking away the run game.  Most of Clemson’s offense is predicated on motion before the snap, causing confusion.  By shutting down the running options, GT was able to negate a lot of that misdirection and keep Boyd in situations he’s still not 100% comfortable in.  Tech held the Tigers to 95 yards, well off of their average for the season.
  3. Big plays.  Coming into this game, Tech was not making splash plays on either side of the ball.  Forcing 4 turnovers and breaking off huge runs and a few bombs certainly helped in that area.

Those were the 3 ‘keys’ to the game in my mind going into Saturday night’s contest.

Full disclosure: I haven’t watched the replay of the game yet so I haven’t really analyzed everything I’d like to, but from the stands a few things really stood out to me.

  • For the first time since early in the Maryland game, Tevin Washington looked confident in what he was doing.  He didn’t look afraid to make mistakes, he appeared to be decisive with his pitches (and obviously did a great job not pitching as well), and put the team in positions where they could convert manageable third downs.  This offense doesn’t require a QB to be superman, but it does require him to be competent and decisive.
  • Jemea Thomas is going to be a star for this team.  They have to find a way to get the young fella on the field more.
  • From what I could tell, Nick McRae did a fantastic job filling in at center.  I saw numerous plays where he absolutely dominated up front.  The line did a solid job in general, but I was really worried about how McRae would perform.
  • Sims and Lyons both had really solid games.  Combined, the B-Back position ran 24 times for 110 yards.  Nothing to get too excited about, but that commitment to the interior game opened up a lot of things on the outside down near the goal line and allowed Washington to sell the dive then pull/run for big gains.
  • One thing I noticed was that the Clemson DEs both had trouble committing when they were being optioned.  Instead of committing to either attacking the B-back or the Quarterback, they were content to play wait-and-see.  That didn’t work out.
  • I have no idea how the refs blew the potential game-changing offisides/forced fumble when Tech was poised to go up big.  Instead, Clemson recovers and marches down for a score.
  • It’s absolutely shameful how many Georgia Tech fans sold their tickets on StubHub and the like to Clemson fans.  My friends and I are in section 121 and it was 20% Clemson fans.  Some sections were better than others, but it was still awful.  Guess folks just figure they can buy the good seats and make money off of them?

I’m planning on re-watching the game and I’ll have more detailed insight in a few days.

The big win puts GT back into the top 25 and sets the stage for a big showdown against Virginia Tech in a little less than 2 weeks.  The Jackets can rest up and hopefully not read too many press clippings about their win before the Thursday night showdown.

See you at the crossroads

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As Tech enters the toughest stretch of the season, the team is at a bit of a crossroads.  A team that was steamrolling opponents and scoring nearly 50 points per game, completing over 60% of its passes and playing overall average defense has regressed into a team that has scored 21 points each of the past 2 weeks, have completed 30% of their passes, and are giving up huge running averages to opponents.  If the Jackets can’t get back to near where they were earlier this season, things could start to fall apart real quick.

Miami is always a challenge, and I fully expect the Canes to get their yards running the ball against the Jackets, but what Tech has to excel at today is keeping the pass game in check.  Jacory Harris is having a remarkable stretch right now and if GT lets Miami play balanced football, I fear this game could turn ugly.  Tech has been getting gashed week in and week out by ACC backs, giving up over 250 last week to Virginia.  Forcing Miami into predictable situations can help at least slow down the run game.

On Tech’s side, I hope to see more creativity on offense – Miami is not good against the run this year, and GT needs to use a lot of misdirection to break some big plays to take advantage of Miami’s overall ineptitude against the run & hopefully break a few big plays in the process.  While there is no excuse for a lot of the dropped passes that GT A-backs and WRs have had recently, Tevin Washington also needs to stop just chunking the ball up and allowing teams to pick the ball off.  Tech’s defense is average as it is and allowing teams extra possessions only makes matters worse.  If the Jackets can keep Miami off balance and control the clock, that should give their defense enough to hold on to win this one.

Most experts are picking this game to be close, but I get the feeling that one team is going to lay an egg this week.  Based on Paul Johnson’s statements this week, they’ve had some good practices and this team seems to play like it practices.  Tech should be able to milk the clock – that’s a given.  However, they’re also going to need to get back to their big-play ways, getting some quick game changing scores to put more pressure on Miami to get away from their running game.

I can see this being a back and forth affair until one team pulls away in the 3rd/4th quarter and wins by about 14-17 points.  This game means a lot of both teams but I think GT out coaches Miami and gets a huge win on the road, setting up a titanic showdown with Clemson next week.  Further, it means that Tech ‘simply’ needs to be VT and Duke and they’re in the ACC title game.

Tech wins, 38-24.