My friend Jonas Salling has started blogging again, and that's always a good thing.

He's got some recent posts up there as he tests the WiFi support for Clicker, and the results may surprise you!

Jonas is one of the hardest working developers out there, and he never settles for less than absolute excellence when releasing new stuff.

The long-in-development Clicker 3.5 is no exception, and it looks like it's getting really close to release. That's good news for all the fans of Clicker, since a great product is getting a lot better. And I'm sure he has many cool things in store moving forward as well.

Welcome back, Jonas -- looking forward to more posts!

Some time ago, I switched from MarsEdit to ecto. Mostly, I did this because I liked writing posts with "real" formatting -- that is, using the RTF editing view that ecto offered.

At the time, I was only allowing myself 15 minutes per post, and the HTML I was using in MarsEdit simply got in the way of quickly reading the post for content. Too much translation, the Preview didn't really do it for me... and it didn't look like Brent was going to find much time to work on the program (understandable, given his success with NetNewsWire).

Given that set of issues, I switched. Not all upside (the HTML generated by the RTF translator was rather sub-optimal), but overall it worked for me.

With Daniel Jalkut's recent acquisition of MarsEdit (congratulations, Daniel!), and his flurry of activity improving the core and fixing bugs, I've decided to give it another shot. And to get around the readability problem, I'm giving Markdown a try.

I don't know why I didn't use Markdown before -- probably, I didn't want to learn yet another thing. Maybe I just wasn't aware of it. But I'm glad I've finally found it and taken the time to figure it out. Markdown's pretty easy: natural to read and write once you grasp the basics. JG and Aaron Swartz did a good job with the syntax: it's regular, logical, functional, readable.

And it's supported by Expression Engine, too.

So, three posts later, I'm sticking with it. Hopefully with these few changes I'll be able to find a bit more time to blog!

It’s hard to believe another year’s gone by, but dates rarely lie, and there it is - the 31st, soon to flip.

Rather than turn inward and reflect on events here, I’d like to turn outward and thank each and every reader; all those who took the time to send me mail - those who needed support, needed to vent, to compliment or complain; the kind people who provided comfort as we lost our dog Ketzl and who cheered the arrival of Taiko; the editors at Macworld who honored us again; the users who honor us every time they use or recommend a Shirt Pocket product; all friends, old and new.

To all of you: thank you, and a very Happy New Year to you and yours.

Looks like Rich Siegel, of BBEdit fame, has started blogging. And he’s ragging on bad drivers! Go Rich!

(And don’t miss the great Oktoberfest Special they’ve announced over at Bare Bones. $99 is an incredible bargain for the exceptionally well regarded editor… if you’re even remotely thinking about snagging a copy of BBEdit, now’s the time!)

Brent Simmons has just blogged a bit about the design of one feature in NetNewsWire 2.0on his blog. If you’ve been enjoying my posts about this, you’ll probably enjoy Brent’s, too!

Brent classifies himself as an Experimenter/Gatherer, which I usually am too, when actually doing the coding. When I’m doing the design, I try to experiment as much as possible on paper and roll in feedback, but get close to final and keep the tweakable elements to a minimum so as not to waste Bruce’s time.

That doesn’t always work out, as my Scheduling posts show…

So, what should you expect from this blog?

My plan is to write about a relatively eclectic set of topics. I’ve sketched out my first 30 posts or so, and they seem to be falling into the following broad catagories:

• News about Shirt Pocket
• Software design and development
• Computing from a user’s perspective
• Occasional stories about small company development, marketing and support
• Consumer electronics and usability
• Dogs and Degenerative Myelopathy
• Gadgets I like
• Movies & Music
• The occasional random rant

No huge surprises there. I’m sure other things will creep in now and again, but for now, there you go.

So, I’ve been avoiding blogging. More than that: I’ve been avoiding making eye contact with blogging.

But it keeps jumping up and down, waving its arms frantically, desperately trying to get my attention, insisting that it won’t be so bad.

I’m not so sure.

I mean, I’ve had some sort of online presence for a long time. We even announced our first product, BRIEF, on Usenet way back when. I was on FidoNet, Compuserve, BIX, Usenet, lots of forums—including my own at Shirt Pocket. So why is getting started here so difficult?

I think it’s the “What’s the sound of one blogger yapping?” issue. There’s something about this that feels less like a conversation, and more like a lecture. A post gets written. That post gets read. Sometimes, there’s a comment, trackback, link… but it feels more newspaper than café.

But—maybe that’s because of the way I’ve been using blogs. I’ve been reading, but not writing. I’m the lurker on the forum, the guy alone at the café sipping a coffee, reading the paper and listening—but never joining in.

Well, no longer.

This place is abuzz with ideas, and there seems to be lots of room at the table.

Mind if I join you?