SoundiPad as Reason controller

1. Buy TouchOSC on your iPad
2. Download and unzip: 2010-04-29-ReasonOSCkit-nr
3. Load the .touchosc file to your iPad (using touchOSC editor; follow the instructions in the programs)
4. Buy and start OSCulator, open Reason.oscd, keep it running
5. Fire up Reason, select Reason > Preferences…, goto Keyboards and Control surfaces, Add an <other> controller and hook it up to MIDI input “OSCulator out”.
6. Select Options > Remote Override Edit Mode, then one by one, doubleclick the control you want to connect (e.g., record button), then press/turn/slide the corresponding control on the iPad.
7. Save your reason song (if you have the full version of Reason) to save your overrides along with the contents of the rack.

(small print – I won’t be held liable for any damage you do your equipment by use of any of this, or by throwing foresaid equipment around in a fit, etc)

DesignInstapaper psychology

All the cool kids are talking about it. Or, as a friend of mine said, “man, if I had a nickel for everyone who’s raved at me about it… I’d have 25 cents”. Oh well. Anyway, it’s Instapaper. And I totally love it.

What it says on the tin: “A simple tool to save web pages for reading later.”

Here’s how I, and I surmise most people, use it. As you discover long-ish articles, too long to read in your RSS-twitter-ADD-content-firehose frenzy moments, but interesting or highly recommended somehow, you hit ‘Read Later’. You repeat this over time. Doesn’t matter how long. Then at some point, you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands. Being on an airplane is a good example. Before boarding, you hit ‘update’ in the iPhone Instapaper app, which downloads the articles, nicely formatted for your phone. On the plane, you read all of the articles you saved — without the need for a network.

So why do people react to this thing like it’s crack cocaine? I’ve used it for a good time now and I think I know why. It’s not the app itself — though very well executed, it’s not revolutionary. It’s what you happens over time as you save articles and then consume them all in one fell swoop. Without actively realizing it:

1. You’re saving up. Saving up as in setting money aside for a vacation or for something you covet — it feels good because saving up money is wired in your head as a Good Thing, like eating vegetables and exercising, and because one day soon you will able to enjoy it.
2. You’re the editor of your own magazine. The BEST magazine in the world, with riveting content that you cannot WAIT to read. A magazine that leaves you giddy with inspiration and energy.

Now that’s an immensely powerful psychological reward system. And it’s why I think the future for Instapaper (and competitors that will manage to rise to the occasion) is super bright.

Here’s an idea: in Instapaper (for iPad especially), add a free open-content magazine app store, in which you subscribe to regularly published magazines that contain open web articles and lightweight editorial notes, put together by users like you, using Instapaper.

Meta2010: year of the ebook

Last week, in a conversation in an airport lounge I asserted that 2010 will be year of the ebook. I thought it to be hardly a controversial statement, but my conversation partner, the ever-sharp überdeveloper Anne Veling, challenged me to make it explicit: how would he call claim chowder on me in January 2011?

I never make predictions because I don’t like people who believe they can predict the future (I like people who believe they can shape it though), but then again, I like a challenge, so for this once:

• ebook reader sales will grow by 500% at least. Number of brands and models will explode.
• ebook sales will grow by more than 300%. (yep: less than the reader hardware: the very early innovators are voracious readers)
• In a significant number of segments, ebook sales will systematically beat paper book sales (i.e., not just a momentary burst such as the one caused by Christmas Kindle sales)
• Apple will redefine ‘reading a book’ (or magazine) into something that fits in the iTunes universe. They’ll use the rumored tablet and the associated experience that they’ll launch in January to do it.
• ebook self-publishing will become big: we’ll see the cut that publisher channels take drop (more like iTunes app store’s 30% than Amazon’s 70%)
• A new set of tools for authoring ebooks and eMagazines will rise up: tools like InDesign are useless for fluid, multi-device, interactive books. If HTML5 will be the format of choice, they might look like offspring of the Flash IDE or Dreamweaver (*cringes*), but I hope they bring decent UIs and typographic sensitivity.
• The mainstream eBook format wars will either be implicitly settled (if Apple choses ePub) or at least the number of competitors will decrease to a few (epub, azw, pdf). However:
• Mainstream usage of e-reading will greatly accelerate the use of interactivity, multimedia and therefore introduce a slew of new formats, at least some of which based around HTML5
• Finally, if you don’t live under a rock, you’ll just know. Mainstream media will tell you about it all the time.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Amazon introduces a 70/30 split. (January 20, 2010)