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  Books Ngram Viewer is addictive. I can't stop looking up words and phrases.

This new tool allows users to trace the usage of a word or phrase for printed works over the past five centuries. It searches (frighteningly fast) through five million books, or around four percent of all books ever published. That apparently equates to some 500 billion or so unique words. 

I looked up 'cyberspace' on a whim. As expected, usage climbed following the release of William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' in 1984 (although Wikipedia notes that the first reference came from a Gibson short story in 1982). Curiously, however, the graph showed a little bump around 1900. A short bit of Googling later, and I found a reference to the word in the 'Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society' from 1888. Hmm.

I'm sure we'll be seeing many such interesting finds in the coming weeks and months, but I suspect most will be due to OCR errors or misinterprations (akin to 'discoveries' of the lost city of Atlantis in Google Earth).

For more on the Ngram Viewer, check out this new study from Science (free access!) or this New York Times article.

The best online file synching service is now out of Beta. Dropbox 1.0 offers selective folder synchronization (hooray!), an easier installation process, improved performance, and a slew of bug fixes.  If you're not on Dropbox, why not? The first 250MB of storage space is free. And if you get new people to sign up to the service, you get an additional 250MB of free space per person. Speaking of which, if you're new to Dropbox ... why not use this referral link to sign up. He he.

Huffduffer. It's a creation of web developer Jeremy Keith, who says he originally invented this tool for himself to fill a simple need.

Like many online tools with staying power, 'filling a simple need' is often the first litmus test for success. The second is filling a simple need well. And this site does the job very well. Huffduffer is an easy-to-use, elegant, friendly way to create your own personal podcast stream from found audio on the web. The part that makes Huffduffer so useful is RSS feed creation. It's easy to bookmark audio, but not so easy to create an iTunes-compatible RSS feed. I think of it this way: Huffduffer is to audio what Instapaper is to text.

I must admit, though, that I have only just started using this tool as intended. So far, I've primarily been using it as a discovery tool to find audio content I otherwise would not have known existed by subscribing to Huffduffer's 'Popular' feed. As you may surmise, this feed delivers a steady stream of what other people are 'Huffduffing.' The downside to this stream is that there are often many duplicate posts, so you'll find yourself often deleting entries that you've seen before. The upside is that the content is usually interesting and there's plenty of new content every day. For my long daily train commute, this feed is most welcome.

You'll find that much of the 'popular content' tends to be in the vein of tech, design, web design/development, science fiction, speculative science, and hard science. This surely says a lot about the core users of the site. And this makes sense given who created it: I surmise that site usage has spread mainly by word-of-mouth and via conferences. I, for instance, discovered it a web design conference where Jeremy Keith was speaking. So if you are particularly interested in this type of content, you'll get a lot out of this feed. As a secondary benefit, the popular feed has helped me find many a new podcast to subscribe to via iTunes. Now I need to start huffduffing some of my own 'found audio.' 

Here are a few recent items from the 'popular' feed that I really enjoyed:

Conversation with William Gibson — A discussion with William Gibson about where we are headed in the post-internet age.

Arthur C. Clarke, Alvin Toffler, Margaret Mead —  A talk recorded in 1970 about the future. From the show notes on Huffduffer: "At the time of this recording Arthur C. Clarke had recently collaborated on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick. Alvin Toffler’s mega-influential book, Future Shock, is about to be published. And Margaret Mead is the world’s foremost cultural anthropologist."

Kevin Kelly interview — An interview with Kelly about his new book, "What Technology Wants." Fascinating stuff.

The Value of Ruins — James Bridle from dConstruct 2010 (a design & creativity conference) asks "as we design our future, should we be concerned with the value of our ruins?" 

If you'd like some more background, check out this interview with Jeremy Keith on Huffduffer. And if you're curious about the meaning behind the word 'Huffduffer,' here's an explanation.

If you've ever left a comment on Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, or Fleshbot ... it's time to change your passwords.

launched a beautiful online guidebook. It's a fantastic primer that seeks to answer basic questions about the web while showcasing the capabilities of modern browsers.

Aside from the lovely illustrations and easy-to-understand prose, what's most intriguing is that this site is entirely built with HTML5.  Amazing.

Cool Tools (a crowdsourced review blog that’s part of Kevin Kelly's network of sites), I thought I’d share a solution I found that worked quite well.

It’s a workbench kit from 2x4basics that currently costs about $65. What you get is a box of sturdy plastic joints. What you add is your own lumber (2x4s and three panels of plywood or OSB). All told, I spent about $130. It only took about an hour to put together. What it is: a sturdy workbench that’s easy to customize to a size that fits in any workspace. It gives you a rock-steady three-tiered storage system, a shelf and a big flat work space. What it’s not: a carpentry bench. While it comes with some plastic clamps and hooks, they are not very useful. And the plastic corner pieces of the workbench prevent the installation of a fixed corner wood clamp because they aren't flush with the 2x4 frame. Still, it's an exceptional multipurpose surface with plenty of storage for wood and other odds and ends. Now I just need to build a carpentry bench to compliment it.

Speaking of woodworking, I've been spending a lot of time and energy lately building up a solid collection of hand tools. There's an impulse to head to a big box store and buy new stuff. But I submit the best place to start is with antique stores. You know the old yarn about how 'things were made better then?' I've found that this is generally true for hand tools, provided you find ones that were well cared for. I picked up a level and sliding square made in the 1930s for a grand total of around $60. Sure, it's more than I'd pay for an aluminum level and cheap sliding square, but these are beautiful. They're built to last. They are made of heavy gauge stainless steel. As an added benefit, these old tools have character.

Now that I have a fairly capable workshop in place, I'm ready to start building some shelves, cabinets, and furniture. While I have some experience, I would still classify myself as a noob. So I naturally headed to my Mac to seek out online and app solutions. No books for me. I'm happy to report that there's a lot available out there.

Sketchup design application. While I had installed this app a year or so ago to check it out, I didn't have a compelling use for it. Now I do. Carpentry. Here's an example of a detailed Trundle Bed design that gives you a sense of some of the amazing free plans that are out there. This tool rocks. I plan to use it to sketch out all of my larger projects in the future, ranging from wood projects to garden plans to landscaping to interior designs. First, though, I have to learn how to use it through Google's extensive documentation. As an aside, Sketchup would make a great iPad app. While I doubt we'll see that any time soon, wouldn't it be nice to see a company like OmniGroups create an iOS Sketchup-like tool ... perhaps an extension of OmniGraffle?

So Sketchup promises to be a very helpful design and planning tool, but what I really need to get going in terms of woodworking is a dose of regimented instruction paired with a community of fellow woodworking enthusiasts (for motivation and to share experiences). I first checked out what was available around my neighborhood. While there are some courses at my local community college, the costs for these courses are steep.

So I was happy to find a couple of really good sites to sign up for a low-cost online education. I haven't decided what I'm going to sign up for yet, but I've narrowed it down to two choices.

Guild hosted by 'The Wood Whisperer.' Membership is $149 a year (with lower cost options for six and three months). That's ridiculously affordable. I found this in a roundabout way by looking for woodworking podcasts, which lead me to an excellent series of instructional Wood Whisperer iOS videos. Based on what I've seen in these videos coupled with Guild user reviews, I'm pretty sure I'm going to try this out. Here's a sampling of what Guild membership entails: the opportunity to participate in three projects a year, videos and live demos to help you through said projects, access to all the archive projects (videos) should you want to try a former project, live interviews with leading industry pros to get answers to your questions, individual assistance with your projects, and a members-only forum to ask questions and share experiences with other Guild members. Sounds fantastic.

The Renaissance Woodworker,' hosted by a professional who specializes in hand tools. This site is offering the Hand Tool School, a series of classes that's a self-described 'new approach to the traditional apprenticeship system.' I like the idea of learning the fundamentals of woodworking with hand tools. It's similar to the idea behind learning how to hand code a website before using a WYSIWYG editor. This looks like a winner.

Of course, now that I'm diving into this head-first, I also checked for iOS apps that compliment the craft. Here's a round-up.

1. The Woodshop Widget. A two dollar app affiliated with the Wood Whisperer brand. Very helpful utilities including shellac mixing ratios, board foot calculations, tips, squareness testing, decimal to fraction conversions, and movement estimates for more than 230 wood types.

2. Woodworking with the Wood Whisperer. A free app that provides access to archived episodes, social integration, and access to the live Wood Talk Online Radio podcast from the Wood Whisperer.

3. I.D. Wood. A five dollar pocket guide to nearly 160 different types of wood with information ranging from origins to common uses to durability to hardness.

So I think I'm off to a good start. If you're interesting in this sort of thing, I hope this helps you get started as well.

Scrivener, the popular Mac writing tool, is now at 2.0. It seems that all who use this program sing its praises, and you can count me in on that. It’s a well-designed tool. It looks like there’s a lot of refinery and plenty of new features to be had in the new point upgrade.

If you're curious about Scrivener or want to see what's new in version 2.0, Don McCallister of ScreenCastsOnline is now serving up a free 35-minute episode just for you.

P.S. If you're on a PC, take heart. Scrivener for Windows is now in Beta.

Oh, for a distraction-free environment. Wouldn't we get so much done?

I was combing through a backlog of unread feed items the other day, when I came across a parody from Merlin Mann in which he pokes fun at the current glut of non-distracting writing tools on the market. He serves up a fictitious new tool called ū—, a writing environment that's so minimalistic that it displays only the top-half of your typed words. Funny stuff, but what's the message here?

We know his intent, thanks to a follow-up in which he elaborates at great length on the original parody. It's an interesting read, albeit a long-winded rant (his self-diagnosis, with which I agree). While I found it a bit hard to get through this post, I was intrigued by the subject matter.

The essential point that Mann makes is that distraction-free tools can be distractions in themselves. They will not make you a prolific, competent, energized person churning out chapters of engaging prose, nor will they make you a productivity guru. If you find yourself seeking out tool after tool with which to make yourself a more productive and focused writer, perhaps the problem is that you're expecting the tool to do the work for you. In contrast, if you're really motivated to write, you'll write on tree bark if necessary. The same principle applies to any other endeavor, digital or analog.

So on one hand, Mann is criticizing the overblown language and suspect promises that sometimes accompany these types of tools. On the other, he serves up disdain for the type of person who collects such tools in a flailing attempt to fix an underlying concentration problem.

What I'm interested in is this: why does the 'distraction-free' tool genre exist in the first place. Perhaps it's a reaction to how we're choosing to live our lives. Most of us feel the drag of information overload, the weight of too much clutter, the barrage of too many activities. Much of this is self-inflicted. When we work on a task, we too often monitor e-mails, Twitter and Facebook accounts, phone calls, and text messages. These distractions hamper our ability to concentrate on single tasks for extended periods of time. We think we can multitask, but we most of us really can't.

Now, we all know that the only way to write in a concentrated manner is to muster the willpower to focus on one task to the exclusion of all others. That's what concentration is all about. It requires no special tools. It does not require a full-screen mode, nor pleasant imagery, nor ambient sound. True enough. But we like this stuff. As a society, we seem to have a tendency to look for tools or plans or guides to help us muster the self-control we seek. While we know that a tool cannot solve our concentration problem, that doesn't stop us from seeking tools that do just that. So here's one view on this current fad: the genre exists because there is a growing demand for environments that simulate concentration. We're seeking a concentration prosthetic.

Another view is that the 'distraction-free' tool genre is a reaction to the bloated, overpowered software that most of us have used for years. What do we need to write, after all? Not very much. What is most like a blank piece of paper? A blank piece of paper. What about a blank piece of paper with subtle background imagery and gentle sound effects? Why not. Distraction-reducing writing tools provide an uncrowded, narrowly-focused experience that just may spur us to concentrate a bit more. There's nothing wrong with that. If this alternate view seems like a slightly different take on the first, that's because it is. As I said, it's all about degrees of expectation.

The point is that distraction-reducing writing tools can only do so much, but that's not to say that they are useless. Why not try a writing tool that is pleasant, simple, and relatively inexpensive? We routinely choose analog tools based on preferences that balance form and functionality. We create our living spaces in much the same way. And so we are now offered a wide range of tools in the digital space for the task of writing.

So I say embrace this trend. Experiment. But try to do so with minimal expectations. And always remember that the 'map is not the territory.' Personally, I enjoy so-called 'distraction-reducing' writing tools. I use a few for specific tasks. I find that WriteRoom, for instance, is a wonderful tool for writing long documents. I like the looks of it. It reminds me of writing on WordPerfect on the first computer I ever used back in the 80s. OmmWriter? It's a bit over-the-top, but I can customize it to suit me. At times I find it to be a very pleasant environment in which to write poetry or short stories. What I enjoy about these tools is less about reducing distractions and more about aesthetics.

I didn't take Mann's parody or his meta-post about the parody as a condemnation of such tools. His broader message has little to do with software. It's about how we work, or should. The best part is at the end:

"Learn your real math, and any slide rule will suffice. Try, make, and do until you quit noticing the tools, and if you still think you need new tools, go try, make, and do more."

I like the 'quit noticing the tools' part the best. That's what we're striving for.

It's been a while. I've been living in a hotel since the last post (yes, since the end of April). During that time, I discovered that hotel life renders me apathetic and extremely unmotivated. What little energy I could muster was spent trying to find a new home and trying to be productive at work. As is surely obvious, I was not at all motivated to maintain this blog. This lack of motivation was bolstered by shoddy hotel bandwidth, which rendered any web-based activities quite painful.

That said, it's now over. We're now in a new home with a decent broadband connection. While I've studiously ignored this blog for months, I have thought about it quite a lot. Do I still enjoy it? Do I want to keep it going? My conclusion: I do want to keep it alive, but I'm going to shift the focus a bit. I'm no longer going to focus my writing on Mac-related tech. The volume of Mac-related content on the web has exploded since I started this project. There's a glut of Apple-focused review-commentary-ramblings out there. So this blog is going to turn into something a little different. There will still be Apple-related posts, surely. But I'm going to shift to a wider range of topics. It'll be an experiment, as it's always been. Expect to see a lot of tech-related posts. But also expect to see other topics that stray into other areas of that interest me. While a general rule of thumb is to keep one's blog focused on a narrow niche to build readership, I'm choosing to ignore that. We'll see what happens.

In other news, I've just migrated from a self-hosted Wordpress site to Squarespace. Why? I'll save the full details on what I like (and don't like) about this new service for a later post. The main reason for the switch, though, is that it will allow me to focus more on content. When I started this blog, web development was something I only did through this venue and through some for-hire work. Now, my current job fully scratches this itch. I'm knee-deep in it most of the day. So my Squarespace migration is a move towards letting others worry about the details. This is not to say that the free Wordpress.org solution isn't a great choice. It is. But it takes more time and vigilance than I care to invest at this point.

The site will remain named 'View from the Dock.' When I started this blog, I chose this name because of the obvious reference to the Apple Dock. But I also liked the name because it could mean a view from a dock. As in a dock in the water, overlooking a lake. That's more of where I'm at now.

Since I’m moving into a hotel for a couple of months at the end of this week, I’ve been shopping around for a Virtual Private Network.

The type of VPN I’m talking about is not the kind that one uses to connect securely to an office network. What I’m talking about is a VPN that provides encryption from a PC to a remote VPN service. This type of VPN protects data while the bits are ‘in the air’ over a public WiFi connection. Once it reaches the VPN company, it’s decrypted and sent along to intended destinations via a wired connection. What you get out of this kind of service is, essentially, a greater level of insurance that your internet activity over public WiFi will remain safe and secure.

When I first started looking into this, I found that there’s a question of whether or not this is really necessary. I found two categories of opinions in my research. Some people feel that it’s generally OK to forego the use of a VPN while engaged in general browsing at a public WiFi hotspot, but it’s best to wait until you get home to do anything sensitive involving passwords. Mail is a particular concern here. This camp notes that it’s generally safe to engage in password-protected activities provided you ensure you’re on a secure connection (i.e. https). However, this is generally not the safest option. Most of the comments I came across suggest that it’s a best practice to use a VPN connection whenever you tap into a public WiFi hotspot (even if you’re on a wired hotel connection), and doubly so if you are going to be on said public network for an extended period of time.

I’m opting for the more secure solution. It’s a low-cost security measure. It’ll give me peace of mind. But which trusted service should I use?

I started out by trying two free options. The first is the popular HotSpot Shield. This service works as advertised, but I found that it notably decreased my connection speed. It also requires the installation of an application that resides in the menu bar. When it’s launched, it fires up an ad-based browser page that is a bit obtrusive, but not too bad. All considered, I concluded that it’s a good option if you’re looking for an occasional-use VPN while, say, at a coffee shop for a few hours. Hotspot Shield also offers a free iPhone VPN option. While the iPhone service was very simple to set up, I could not get it to work on my iPhone after trying for several days.

The second free VPN option I tried is called ItsHidden. The caveat with this free service is that you’re booted off of your connection every 20 minutes. If you don’t want to be disconnected after a set period of time, the service offer a pay option for $12.99 a month. There are two things I liked about ItsHidden. First, it requires no software installation. Second, it was a lot speedier than Hotspot Shield. However, I felt uneasy about entrusting my longterm online activity to the service. Their website offers no clues about who they are, where they’re located, or how long they’ve been in business. And, frankly, it looks like the site was put together in someone’s basement. It doesn’t inspire confidence. I read in one forum that the main reason this service was set up is to accommodate BitTorrent traffic. I’m sure there’s a lot of legit BitTorrent traffic taking advantage of this service, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was, well, kind of shady. So I moved on.

I narrowed down my options to two popular pay options from long-established VPN companies. One is called WiTopia. The other is called HotSpotVPN. Both appear to be great options. The deciding factor in my case was that WiTopia only offered a year subscription, while HotSpotVPN offered month-to-month (and even daily) rates. If you are looking for a long-term relationship, WiTopia is substantially cheaper. They offer one year of 256-bit encrypted SSL service for $60 (in comparison, HotSpotVPN would cost about $138 for a year of 256-bit SSL).

The nice thing about HotSpotVPN—in addition to short-term rates—is that the SSL option offered by the company comes with an additional free PPTP connection, ideal for setting up VPN on an iPhone or iPod Touch. I opted for the cheaper $10.88 month Blowfish 128-bit encryption option after reading in several forums that this amount of encryption, while on the low end of the spectrum of what’s available, is more than adequate.

So there you have it. I signed up yesterday. It works great on my Mac and my iPhone. Significantly, I’ve found no noticeable speed difference while using it. Setup is quite easy: HotSpotVPN e-mailed me a zipped file with my encryption keys and certification files with easy-to-follow instructions about how to install them in my user Library. They also offered up the option to install Tunnelblick, an open source GUI for OpenVPN on the Mac (OpenVPN, I’ve learned, is used by most consumer VPN services).

I can’t comment on Tunnelblick, however, because I didn’t install it. I use an alternative paid VPN client called Shimo for my VPN connections, which I highly recommend. If you’re curious as to why I use Shimo, the main reason is that it seamlessly imports Cisco VPN settings (which is what I use for work). If you’ve ever used the abysmal Cisco VPN client, you’ll understand. Shimo allows me to easily switch between Cisco and, now, my new HotSpotVPN service. I can connect and disconnect from each VPN service in seconds.

One final note: I learned during this process that SSL is generally the best option if you’re looking for the fastest solution that will work anywhere. If you decide to use a VPN service whenever you access a public network, SSL is the way to go.