On the road - 2012

Making a movie out of Kerouac’s masterpiece is a risky business. “I decided I wasn’t the right man for it” said Coppola 30 years ago when he tried to do so. Maybe Salles wasn't either.

I didn't have high expectations of this movie when I watched the trailer back in March. It turned out to be fine but far from exceptional. It is hard to point out what is missing from this movie adaptation by Walter Salles but it is definitely not capturing the spirit of the Beats. The desire to travel in the U.S is still there but the emotional connection I felt in the book with the characters vanished from the screen. Kristen Stewart and Garret Hedlung are both doing a great performance but the movie flow is too slow and linear. Their endless crisscrossing of the United States feels pointless as it happens too fast to let the story develop. In the novel Sal's journey is depicted as a self discovery experience, something a bit more profound than just hitting the road with a few friends and a lot of drugs.

The film opened in France on Wednesday and is due for a fall release in the U.S.

3 out of 5 stars.

Mobile Megatrends 2012

VisionMobile just released their Mobile Megatrends 2012 analysis. Check it out, as with most of their reports it's a gold mine of information about the mobile phone industry. Everything is not always breaking news but they are very talented at putting things into perspective (this comparison of Apple and Amazon value propositions for exemple).

Writing workflow '12

We live in a great time of technology improvements that affect how we work. By posting regularly my workflow and its evolution to this website I intend to see how technology affects the way I do things, for better or worse.

Writing using text files as opposed to files created with Microsoft Word (or any other heavy/proprietary text editor for that matter) is incredibly powerful, especially today with the possibilities offered by the cloud and our smartphones. Most students around me are still using Word for tasks from taking notes quickly to writing a 20 pages paper. I hate doing so as it restricts my thought process to a software that is slow, mostly unavailable (I tend to have ideas at awkward places and strange moments). Word is a great software to apply formatting before printing but that’s about it.

My tools on the Mac

• nvAlt

My Macbook is the main hub for my writing workflow: text files are stored in a folder backed up on Dropbox that I access with nvAlt (a slightly modified version of the open source app Notational Velocity compatible with Markdown). nvAlt is a free app with an incredibly simple UI and a great way to display your files. Paul Miller from the Verge who uses it every day to write articles describes it as an «instant document generation» tool. In fact, all it takes to create a new document is to type its name in the search bar and press Enter.

• Byword

Some apps provide a better writing environment that nvAlt and allow me to focus on what I am writing about. You have a choice between two good apps here: IA Writer or Byword. With Shift + Cmd + E Nvalt allows you to open directly your txt file in Byword (this can be changed in the preferences of the application and replaced by any text editor you’d like to use). I personally prefer Byword to IA Writer as it is able to preview Markdown files and allows you to change fonts.

Tools on the iPhone

• Byword

I use the iPhone version of Byword on my iPhone to quickly jot down ideas, correct or read previous text files. I think that Byword is better than IA Writer on iOS as well (after some time without using IA Writer, tapping the previous folder will redirect you to iCould instead of the main folder that contains the text file you were working on, something that Byword always gets right).

• Dropbox

The Dropbox app for the iPhone is also part of my writing workflow when it comes to sharing these text files. The app has a built in feature that adds a public link generation to your finder right click options. Doing so only takes a few seconds whereas sending the actual file (that sometimes contains pictures) would take much longer otherwise.

What about iCloud?

I have tried iCloud and I haven’t found it as good as Dropbox. Mainly because it doesn’t work offline (I spend a lot of time in Germany and can’t afford the roaming fees) and requires the use of the same application on each device. Dropbox’s open API is much better :)

L.A. Riots start 20 years ago today

Photograph by: KEN LUBAS / LOS ANGELES TIMES

Six months with a Kindle

It has been 6 months since I bought a Kindle (the Touch version has just been released in Europe). When I got it delivered I thought I would never get used to reading books on such a small/grayish device. Little did I know, it's actually a great invention and I always stop noticing that it's not a physical book after a few pages. The Kindle is a perfect piece of technology, it does one thing and does it so well that you forget you are using it.

The greatest thing about the Kindle is the size of the Amazon Bookstore. Just like Apple and its Appstore the entire point of this device comes from the large selection of its digital store. I particularly enjoy the possibility of sending a book with one click to my Kindle directly form the Amazon website. Newspapers subscriptions are also available at a decent price (I subscribed to the HBR review) and it's more comfortable to read news on a Kindle than on the iPhone's Newsstand. Two other advantages: the battery lasts more than 3 weeks and reading using a single hand is easy (that's very convenient, especially when commuting).

Besides its price (99 euros here in Europe) and the unavailability of some french books I only have positive thoughts about my Kindle. Based on the many other ones I see flourishing on the train each morning, I am probably not the only one.