Month: October 2013

As you might have noticed from the little branded buttons at the top of the page, my blog runs on Tumblr.¹ I’ve been using Byword and the official Tumblr iOS app to publish new posts, which has been working great.

Last night, though, I noticed a small hiccup. A post I made through the Tumblr iPad app didn’t auto-tweet the headline to my blog’s Twitter account. That’s a small problem, but my brain wouldn’t let it go.

So, after a bit of fiddling, I can now post to Tumblr directly from Editorial, and my headlines get syndicated properly to Twitter.²

Setting this up isn’t trivial, so if you want to use it, you’ll need to be comfortable with downloading scripts, working with the command line, screwing with API keys, and more. Also, this is only for creating text posts. Tumblr supports several other post types (photo, link, quote, etc.), but supporting those is outside the scope of this post.

Getting Tumblr API Access

First, you’ll need an OAuth key, which you can get by registering an application with Tumblr. Fill out the form and click Register. Here’s how I filled out mine; you can do something similar:

Now that you have an OAuth consumer key and secret, you’ll need an access token. To get that, download this script (here’s a link to the raw text). Copy the text, and save it in a plain text file somewhere. Name it something like tumblr.py. Add your consumer key and consumer secret by replacing the values on lines 4 and 5.

consumer_key = 'consumer_key'
consumer_secret = 'consumer_secret'

Launch Terminal.app.³ Navigate to the directory where you saved the tumblr.py script. If you dropped it into your Downloads folder, then you would enter cd ~/Downloads and press Return. Now, type python tumblr.py and press Return. Follow the prompts on the screen; it will ask you to paste a URL into your browser. When you do, you’ll see a screen asking for access to your account. It will look like this:

Click Allow. If you’re using Safari, you’ll see an error page. Don’t panic; that’s expected.

Go back to Terminal, type y, and press Return. You’ll be asked for the OAuth Verifier. Go back to Safari, and look at the URL. You’ll see a section that mentions oauth_verifier.

Select everything between the = and the # and copy it. Go back to Terminal, paste it in, and press Return. If you’ve completed these steps successfully, the script will spit out your access token and access secret. Huzzah!

Setting Up Editorial

Before you can use the Tumblr API through Editorial, you’ll need to install the official Tumblr Python client, PyTumblr. You can do so using this workflow, which I adapted from Ole Zorn’s workflow for installing Rackspace’s Cloudfiles client. Install the workflow and run it; you can delete the workflow after it runs.

Install the Post to Tumblr workflow in Editorial, then edit it. Tap the action titled Post it, and scroll the source code to line 7. Change the value of BLOG_NAME to your Tumblr blog’s address (if you’re using a custom domain, use the original .tumblr.com domain, not the domain you registered).

Replace the values on lines 17 through 20 with the consumer key, consumer secret, access key, and access secret you generated above.

Tap Done to save your changes.

Using the Workflow

When you run the workflow, you’ll be presented with a pop-up that asks for a title. It defaults to the file name of the current document. After entering a title, it’ll ask you for tags. You can leave this blank, or you can enter a comma-separated list.

Now go write something and stop fiddling with your text editor!

covered the awkwardness of Apple’s most recent keynote. Specifically, John zeroed in on the lack of enthusiasm shown by the presenters during software demonstrations.

One thing that I noticed about it–you say it went slow–I felt a lot of the demos, especially the software demos…seemed rushed….

If you’re used to the Steve Jobs era, he would have done the same presentation, but he would have picked either one application or a couple of features of two applications and spent what seems like way too long if you were to look at a stopwatch. Remember when Steve Jobs would get obsessed? Imagine if he had picked the slow motion feature in iMovie or the drums or something. He would do these in-depth demo of some obscure feature that tickles his fancy, but if you look at the clock, he’s going to sit there and play with the slow motion feature for five minutes? Are you kidding me?

But he was obviously so jazzed about this feature that he was showing. It was almost like watching a kid who was really excited. “I’ve gotta show you my toy! Look, check this thing out.” That enthusiasm, as corny as it might be, you could connect with it.

…Even the one [the presenters on Monday] tried to go in-depth for, “Look, you can use drummers and do this and isn’t this cool?” But when he says, “Isn’t that cool,” Steve Jobs would have been closing his eyes and getting into it…he would really get into it. You may not be into it, but you were convinced that Steve Jobs was really into whatever it was even if it was like, “Look at the wood on these amp cases in this UI.”

That was missing because these people were going through the features, showing them one after the other, maybe going a little bit in depth for one, but none of them…have been able to convince me that they are obsessively in-love with any aspect of these programs.

It’s a good discussion, and I recommend listening to the whole thing.

Steve loved making customers happy, especially Customer Number One: himself. His enthusiasm may have been “corny” at times, but he never looked like his delight was feigned or forced.¹ He genuinely enjoyed these products because, for most of them, he was there every step of the way, ensuring they behaved exactly how he wanted because they were for him first.

I believe Tim Cook and the rest of the presenters seemed off last week because, unlike Jobs, they lack passion. Not passion for Apple–they’ve got that in spades. But they lack the all-consuming enthusiasm of an exacting perfectionist with a powerful love of technology who realizes he has a multi-billion dollar company building his dreams out of whole cloth. That can’t be scripted or manufactured or taught.

I have faith in the executives at Apple. They’ll keep the train rolling. But anyone who’s expecting future presentations to match those done by Jobs should put that idea to rest. The reality distortion field has a formula, and Apple is now missing a key element that can’t be replicated.