Switching to the Nexus 5?

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12/10/13 UPDATE: The Android 4.2.2 update made a huge difference in the photo quality.  Take a look on my Google+ page if so inclined.

Last year, I got and posted my thoughts on the Neuxs 7. From time to time, I get an itch to see what is going on in the Android world and get my hands on a device to see how things stack up to iOS. I’ve been a fan of Nexus devices mainly because they are quickly updated, generally sold unlocked, and don’t feature the bloatware that HTC and Samsung put on their phones. I’ve owned a Galaxy Nexus, a Nexus 7 (a tablet) and now the Nexus 5. It’s a 5-inch smartphone made by LG but sold by Google and features the latest version of the Android operating system. While I currently own an Apple iPhone 5, I’ve had a desire to try out Android more seriously because of the direction iOS 7 is taking us.

So, without further delay…

First impressions

Out of the gate, I was pretty impressed with the Nexus 5. The packaging was similar to what I’ve seen in the other product offerings from Google – minimal, colorful and easy to get to the product. They’re taking cues from Apple in this area for sure, and it shows.

The phone has the same rubberized back that is on the 7, which feels nice in your hand but you wonder how long it’ll last before falling apart. It also shows fingerprints and smudges quite easily, so I’m not sure how I feel about that. While extremely lightweight, the phone is very thin but wide and tall. I’m coming from an iPhone 5, but the phone is just a bit too big for my tastes. It’s tough to easily hold with one hand sometimes and I’m afraid I might drop it. That being said, the screen is bright and beautiful, but it’s hard to get over how huge it feels in my hands and I’m not able to touch every part of the screen easily. I’m sure over time I’d adjust to this, but it’s definitely something that is always in my mind when using the Nexus – how stinking big it is.

The camera lens protrudes a bit out of the back, and it seems like the sort of thing that could easily get it broken or scratched. Quality wise, the photos are quite good, but actually taking the photos is unbearably slow. Invoking the shutter takes a few seconds at times which makes it nearly impossible to get shots of my son, who I used as a test subject (and I just like taking pictures of the little guy). If you can manage to get a good shot, the colors are rich and the depth of field seems very good as well. However, that slow shutter speed is a killer. Apparently Android 4.4.1 will drastically improve the camera speed and quality, which gives me hope that it’s more of a software issue than a hardware one.

Overall battery life seems on par with my iPhone 5 (keep in mind that’s a phone with over a year of use). Idling, they use about 5% of energy every hour, and can go 12+ hours without a charge with fairly regular use. The Nexus 5 has Qi charging, which is a standard for inductive wireless charging much like the Nexus 7 and others. It’s so nice to be able to simply place it on a pad and have the device charge up.

Hardware wise, I’m quite impressed with this device. It’s light and thin, but the overall screen size and protruding camera do concern me a bit. Further, the camera shutter speed is extremely slow but future software updates will address this.

KitKat

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I think I like the UI of Android better than that of iOS 7. I feel that the recent moves Apple made make the OS less intuitive, more generic-looking (every app is basically an entirely white canvas with text buttons), and the icon styles on the first party apps are particularly horrendous. Not everything is bad about Apple’s newest OS – the background updating feature makes things feel faster but it’s sadly overshadowed by the direction iOS 7 took visually. I think these issues will eventually be remedied by 3rd party developers and Apple alike, but I do wonder if the folks in Cupertino are biting off more than they can chew these days. All that is to say, Android looks and acts the way I’d like a mobile OS to, and I think it’s time to give it a serious shot.

Android’s notifications and background updating run circles around what iOS offers, without sacrificing battery life as Apple bloggers love to talk about. This may have been a problem in the past or I just don’t use apps that hog the battery, but the battery life is comparable. Android’s notification shade makes it so much faster and easier to catch up on everything that you’ve missed since last using your device and you don’t have to play whack-a-mole with badges on every app, either. That sounds trivial but it’s a vastly superior way to use your device and going back to iOS notifications after using Android for a while is painful. KitKat refines a lot of the things under the hood with Android all while putting a fresh coat of paint on the OS, making things look a bit more uniform. Scrolling is snappy, which is a change from previous Android phones I’ve used.

Google Now’s predictive search card interface is easily accessible from the home screen and is a huge improvement over Siri in a lot of ways, but you can also do a lot more with Siri conversationally right now. Setting reminders, texts and emails are a bit easier with Siri still but searching the web and getting answers to basic questions is way easier with Google Now.

The entire OS feels snappy and the good Android software is starting to become easier to find. Things are looking more consistent, and developers are paying attention to the little things. All in all, KitKat’s software update lacks a ton of surface features but nips and tucks in all the right places to offer a very good user experience. Right now, Android works the way I’d like my phone to better than iOS does.

Apps & Exclusives

Android and the apps that are in the Play store have come a long way even in the past year. It’s still a very phone-focused store, with most tablet apps just being blown up versions of the phone app. There are a few things that are going to make it extremely diffiuclt to ditch iOS whole hog, though. An an exercise, here are the apps on my iOS home screen right now along with their alternatives if they exist:

  • OmniFocus (no viable alternative. Wunderlist or Any.DO are cross platform but neither holds a candle to OmniFocus.)
  • Calendars 5 (nothing as polished on Android but stock Calendars app or Calendars by Any.DO will suffice)
  • Evernote (Good Android version available)
  • Check the Weather (nothing quite as good but lots of alternatives)
  • Rdio (Average Android version available. Syncs in background, which is a huge plus)
  • Pocket Casts (Great Android version available)
  • Photos (No Photo Stream alternative available, but the G+ Photos feature is close. Offers some things better but sharing to iOS users won’t be as easy.)
  • Day One (No alternative available. Apparently there is an Android version in the works, but for now I’d have to give up Day One on my phone)
  • Tweetbot (Sadly, nothing even close. Falcon Pro or Tweedle is the best you’ll do)
  • Instapaper (Good Android version available)
  • Reeder (Press is better than Reeder, so no dropoff here)
  • 1Password (Awful Android version available, but v4 for Android is in beta now)
  • Pincase (Nothing close available for Pinboard users on Android)
  • Chrome (Superior Android version available)
  • Instagram (Good Android verison available)
  • Byword (Good dropbox text editor alternatives available, nothing quite at the level of Byword though)
  • Google Drive (Superior Android version available)
  • Drafts (Can’t find anything close, but it’s not as needed given the way Intents work on Android)
  • Mail (Gmail or built in Mail app will do)
  • Messages (Google Hangouts fills this void but I’d be giving up iMessages. This is a huge deal given some of my family don’t text that much but do send messages from their iPads a lot to me).
  • Phone (Android’s phone app is amazing, huge upgrade here)
  • Camera (Downgrade, photo quality and the app itself are a big step down right now)

Writing this all out makes it clear there are alternatives available, but iOS apps are generally so much more polished than their Android alternatives.

A few notes:

  • Rdio kinda stinks on Android. Taps sometimes don’t register, it’s slow, loses connection at times and just feels buggy. However, it syncs tracks in the background and that’s amazing.
  • Chrome for Android is so much faster than anything I’ve ever used on a mobile device.
  • There are just no great calendar apps for Android. Odd how that’s a UI playground on iOS but a wasteland on Android.
  • Swiftkey is magical most of the time. After using it for a few days, I really hate the iOS keyboard.
  • Most apps I use now have great Android versions. There are a few exceptions, but generally you can use both OSes and have everything in sync between the two platforms.

Switching?

So, how to switch. I’m currently on Verizon so I’m considering paying an ETF and switching to Ting. They will pay 25% of that cost and if you use a promo code (by clicking on this link) you can get a $25 off your first device or your service. Since it’s no contract, if the coverage sucks I can switch onto my wife’s AT&T plan or another prepaid plan. I could then sell my iPhone to even further recoup costs.

Is it worth it?

That’s a good question. Android for me has finally crossed into that “good enough” territory where there isn’t a great reason to NOT use either platform. Android does a lot of things way better than iOS and the contrary is definitely true as well. If you’re an Apple loyalist that’s a scary thought I suppose, but in my opinion it just opens the doors for consumers. If Apple has to do more to keep folks from jumping to Android they’re going to have to do one of two things:

  1. Get better at the things that are currently weaknesses (good for consumers)
  2.  Create more vendor lock-in (bad for consumers)

Apple tends to do best when they are an underdog anyway. They’re not the best ‘benevolent dictator’ (nor is any tech company FWIW). In a lot of ways, the fact that both companies offer a product that’s 80% the same and both do 10% better on each side makes a decision even more difficult. As I said though, this is a great time for consumers, as even Apple nerds have a viable alternative finally.

That still doesn’t answer the question, though. What am I going to do? Let’s break it down one last time.

THE DILEMMA:

  • I’m kind of bored with iOS and don’t feel Apple is moving in the right direction with their mobile products. It seems as if they are either out of ideas or have bitten off more than they can chew.
  • Android offers a lot of system level stuff that makes for a better experience and Apple will probably never match it.
  • I can use an unlocked Nexus 5 on any non-Verizon carrier and save a lot of dough.
  • Most of the apps and services I use are platform-agnostic so either platform can serve my needs.
  • I have an iPad and an iPod touch so it’s not like I’m abandoning the iOS ecosystem anyway. Great games and apps can still be used on my other devices.

HOWEVER…

  • There are a lot of great iOS apps and games I’d be giving up by moving to Android.
  • Google does some shady stuff with your data. Do I want to further invest in that ecosystem?
  • A lot of the cool stuff Android allows isn’t even taken advantage of by developers at this time. It’s nothing like the iOS ecosystem, where developers are always using the latest and greatest APIs.
  • The camera on the Nexus 5 isn’t up to par at all.

I’m genuinely torn for the first time. The tradeoff is a drastically cheaper phone bill (to the tune of $500+ a year, on top of $225ish that I can net for an iPhone 5 on Gazelle) along with a more intuitive operating system in exchange for not having access to some of the amazing apps I have grown to love and rely on (at least on my phone). I know there are tons of Android gems out there that I don’t know of right now and it’s possible that if I do switch, I’ll find better alternatives for some of the apps I feel like I’d be giving up. I think I’d be willing to do that as long as I can still use my phone as a camera when out and about or around the house, as I love to take photos and videos of my son. Right now. that’s just not possible.

That’s a really long winded way of saying that I’m going to wait for Android 4.4.1 to see if the camera improves at the level that the Verge writers say it does. If that’s the case, I think that I’m going to sell my iPhone after the holiday season and give the Nexus 5 a go until I either run back screaming to an iPhone or post here again saying I’m an Android user for the foreseeable future.

Bulletin Blog: Week one in the books!Thank you to all of our users for a great first…

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Bulletin Blog: Week one in the books!
Thank you to all of our users for a great first…

getbulletin:

Week one in the books!

Thank you to all of our users for a great first week of Bulletin! We’ve received a lot of great feedback and are working to integrate a lot of it into a future release. We wanted to take a moment to let you know what we’ve been up to since 1.0 released, as well as what’s…

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.