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From Dave Gray, a call for visual literacy:

…we have, over time, become more sophisticated in our reading of visual information. In a world where information is digital, where photos can be altered in Photoshop and where films can show impossible things like dinosaurs and talking animals with a high degree of realism, we understand that seeing is no longer believing.

But this kind of visual sophistication is not literacy. Literacy is the ability to both read and write. If a child could read written language but not write it – if he could read a mathematical equation but not perform such operations himself – then we would not consider him prepared for success in the world.

In our school systems we teach our children the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic, because we believe them to be fundamental skills for successful integration in society. But the three R’s are no longer enough. Our world is changing fast – faster than we can keep up with our historical modes of thinking and communicating. Visual literacy – the ability to both read and write visual information; the ability to learn visually; to think and solve problems in the visual domain – will, as the information revolution evolves, become a requirement for success in business and in life.

Chuck Frey sees mind mapping as an answer to this call. This may be a place to start, although the need is much broader than simply thinking visually. Data presentation and interpretation are even more important. (I, for one, don’t remember ever encountering a histogram in high school.)

Should Tufte (or the like) become required reading in secondary education? What would be the actual result of implementing “visual literacy education” in our schools?

John Gruber:

I think the old knock against Apple in the ’80s and ’90s from people who didn’t like them or didn’t get them was that they’re this company and they sell overpriced computer equipment to fans. And people would even say ‘Look, they sell keyboards for 160 bucks, what a rip-off…’ But here’s the thing: they were worth 160 bucks.

What if you said ‘Let’s make that’s top-of-the-line: better casing, better technology under the keys, something that’s built to last; this is what you would get. So no wonder the computers were more expensive – everything was built that way. The one I used in college, I used for 14 years consecutively through a bunch of computers, and then finally in November 2006, the E key got a little flaky.

Dan Benjamin:

I made the mistake when I sold old computers… in my mind, I just assumed we would continue to have keyboards that were great, that would continue to last. I never thought these would be relics of a bygone era and impossible to find.

From The Talk Show

Double-click empty space in the tabbed document title bar (where your document titles are shown) to hide all the extraneous panels around your document. A second double-click restores the panels.

See it in action here.

It’s the best of all possible worlds! Now you can brainstorm in XMind and import directly into OmniFocus via Udo Gaetke’s clever AppleScript. The script creates a project from your map’s root node and actions (or subactions) from the other nodes.

Thus, this:

Becomes this:

Via Skitch

Get the script here (forums.omnigroup.com)

Notes:

• Although XMind isn’t scriptable, the XML file format is open; his script digs into the XML structure to pull relevant data

• The script contains a property called import_folder. You’ll need to create a folder in OmniFocus with this name before running

• The script contains a “rm -f” operation. This deletes a temporary XML file created by the script. You may want to peruse the script yourself before running

XMind 2008 v2.2 includes MindManager export, improved printing, and more.

Printing

Printing is vastly improved, to the point at which XMind can be trusted to print what you expect it to. XMind seems intent on printing in landscape mode, but this is a small price to pay for printing that works as expected.

The Print workflow has been streamlined as well, and the process feels more native, although printing is still a 3-step operation (Preview screen, Page Setup screen, Print screen).

MindManager Export

MindManager Export is a very welcome addition and works fairly well, even with non-basic map structures. For example, using this document in XMind:

Via Skitch

In MindManager 7 (Mac), this document came out as:

MindManager for Mac does not support nested tables, so this is an acceptable rendition of the table.

In MindManager Pro 6 on Windows, I was unable to open the file due to an XML processing error. I’ve submitted feedback to XMind and I’m sure this will be sorted out soon enough. Update: Stephen Zhu informed me that the MindManager export is compatible with MindManager 7 only, not 6 – I don’t have MM 7 installed on my PC but assume it works as it does on Mac. Thanks for the quick response, Stephen.

In the meantime, it’s nice to see the XMind team moving in the direction of interoperability.

Well done, XMind Team. Press release here

Tracking job opportunities can be tedious, particularly when companies use static pages to list their vacancies. The following methods can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your online search.

Tracking jobs with RSS feeds

The best option for tracking jobs, of course, is through the company’s own RSS feeds. Many companies provide said feeds, and in this case it’s simple: visit the site, subscribe with your newsreader, and wait for new opportunities to roll in.

Nice - but what about the (vast majority) of companies that don’t provide feeds?

Tracking jobs with OmniWeb

With its ability to periodically check your bookmarked sites for changes, OmniWeb (Mac only) can be an invaluable tool in the job hunt. Simply set your bookmarks and let it do the legwork for you.

Workflow:

• Find an organization of interest

• Bookmark the organization’s HR page, setting OmniWeb to check for changes daily
  

• Monitor your Dock for OmniWeb bookmark updates
  

This is, incidentally, the method by which I found my first job in D.C. It works with the majority of companies I’ve looked at.

Creating custom job feeds

A third option is to create your own RSS feed for a company or organization. Feedity and Dapper allow you to create custom feeds from web pages. Dapper is a more powerful service, but Feedity is simpler to set up and doesn’t require an account, so I’ll use Feedity in this example.

Suppose you’re looking for a job with the Omni Group. (In reality, they already provide a job feed; we’ll just pretend they don’t for the sake of example.)

• Find the HR page and copy the URL.
  
  
  

• Go to Feedity.com and paste the URL in the main field. (If you have the Feedity bookmarklet installed, a single click from the HR page will do this for you.) Select a category for the feed and choose “Preview”:
  
  
  
  Feedity will show you the links it has extracted; this represents the content that will show up in its RSS feed. If you’re not satisfied with the results, select “Try refining…” to hone in on the results you want to appear in your subscription.
  
  
  

• When you’re ready, you can subscribe by clicking on the RSS icon, or select from their other subscription options:
  
  

Limitations

Some job sites are more interested in tracking you than letting you track them. This can be a problem if each visit results in unique page URLs being generated for the job pages. In this case, Feedity will think each job is new every time it crawls the site — so you’ll get duplicates.

In cases like this, try using OmniWeb, or see if you can get results out of Monster, LinkedIn, etc.

Purchasing filters for our Chemex coffee maker turned into a bigger ordeal than it should have been. Although there are numerous online outlets that sell Chemex filters, I couldn’t find any with free shipping.

The Chemex web site recommends you email or call them to find local retailers in your region. I called them, so — on the remote chance this information is useful to someone — here are the Chemex retailers in the Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia area:

• Dean & Deluca
  3276 M Street NW,
  Washington, D.C.
  (202) 342-2500‎

• Coffee in the Works
  1627 Connecticut Avenue,
  Washington, D.C.
  (202) 483-3050

• So’s Your Mom
  1831 Columbia Ave NW,
  Washington, D.C.
  (202) 462-3666‎

• Le Grand Cafe
  1327 Chain Bridge Rd
  McLean, VA
  (703) 734-9082

• M. E. Swing (Downtown)
  1702 G Street NW
  Washington, D.C.
  (202) 628.7601‎

• M. E. Swing (Alexandria)
  612-D S. Pickett St
  Alexandria, VA
  (703) 370-5050‎

Most of these retailers have limited evening/weekend hours, and on my first trip to Dean & Deluca, the filters were sold out, so an advance phone call is recommended.

NetNewsWire often does a good job finding the newsfeed of a site — but it does sometimes choke.

The updated script will still attempt to get the newsfeed straight from NNW. If NNW has instant success, the script will display the feed and offer to copy it to your clipboard:

After one second, if NNW was unsuccessful, the script will direct Safari search for the feed. The searches initiated (in new tabs, of course) include Google (”site:x rss OR subscribe”) and RSS Micro.

Quick note about RSS Micro: unlike most blog search engines (Google blog search included), it provides direct links to the relevant feeds. Just click on the RSS icon:

Finally: the download includes a script that initiates these searches from Safari without invoking NetNewsWire. Useful if you don’t use NNW or don’t want to open it.

Download here.

For a browser-agnostic method of finding a site’s RSS feed, try this bookmarklet:

g:RSS

Drag it to your menu bar and name it what you will (”g:RSS” works for me).

When clicked, it will initiate a Google search of “rss OR subscribe”, restricted to the site you’re in. A little sloppier than the NNW script below.

Guy Kawasaki asked for quick ways to find the RSS feed of a web site. NetNewsWire does a fine job subscribing to sites so I thought it might be up to the task. It is.

Run this to pull the current website from Safari, subscribe in NetNewsWire, and return the RSS feed URL, optionally copying it to the clipboard.

tell application “Safari”

        set thisPage to do JavaScript “document.URL” in document 1

end tell

tell application “NetNewsWire”

        activate

        set subcount to (count of subscriptions)

        set theresult to subscribe to thisPage

        delay 2  –gives NNW time to retrieve the RSS feed

        set thefeed to RSS URL of subscription (subcount + 1)

        if thefeed is equal to thisPage then

                display dialog “No feed found”

                return

        end if

        display dialog thefeed buttons {“Clipboard”, “OK”} default button 1

        if the button returned of the result is “Clipboard” then

                set the clipboard to thefeed

        end if

end tell

Click here to open the script and give it a whirl.

Update: Renamed “NetNewsWire 3″ to “NetNewsWire” since that’s what the app is called when you download it.

Also, NetNewsWire takes a split second to work its magic. If the script isn’t working for a site, try increasing the “delay 2″ line to “delay 5″ or something.