Miklb's Mindless Ramblings

First off, this isn’t meant as a review of Freshbooks. Suffice to say, I’ve tested many of the online services for billing and time tracking; Freshbooks provides me the best solution for my needs. Often though i’ts the intangibles that allow a business to rise above the rest. For Freshbooks, their customer service certainly is the case.

Some time during this past fall my Paypal credit card number changed, probably due to losing it, I’m not exactly sure of the circumstances. Subsequently, many of the services that I use for business, (hosting, domain registration, etc) were effected. In the case of Freshbooks, I was in an arrangement where I was sub contracting with an individual, getting paid flat rates for the work I was doing, so I didn’t have an immediate need to update the account, unlike say, hosting. Plus, I tend to be lazy and procrastinate, so it was easy for me to put it off. Each month, I’d get an email saying that the card had been declined, and I’d say to myself, “I really need to update that,” and then forget to, blow off logging in and updating.

I ended the previous arrangement earlier this month, around the time I got another one of the reminder emails. They really are reminders, not nagging or harsh in the least. I went to log in, and was redirected to a page where I could change/update the contact info, as well the CC#. However, I didn’t know exactly how much I owed, and since I’m trying to stick to a budget for my web development endeavors, I wanted to know exactly what I owed and plan accordingly—pay it all off or make a couple installment payments. Never did I entertain the idea of just starting a new account or moving.

First thing the next morning (I sent the email to support around 9pm EST, which they are on also) I received an email from Laleh informing me that she had removed the suspended status from my account, rolled me back to their free account in which I could upgrade to a paid plan, and deleted my client list. Mind you, clients and projects are never really deleted, rather it’s like a super-archived status. At any time, you can undelete the client/project, and all of the information remains intact.

They could have easily charged me for the months since the last payment or some portion there of, after all, they were storing my data and settings. I was fully prepared to pay for this, as my time is valuable, and re-entering client information and setting up the payment gateway again would take a fair amount of time. Needless to say, I am extremely pleased with the outcome, and an even bigger fan of Freshbooks.

Ironically, Sunir, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Barcamp Orlando (which Freshbooks was a sponsor of, yet another reason to be a fan) posted an article on their blog today about the difficulty of Saas.

SaaS is not just a new distribution method for software with a lovely revenue stream. It’s a new social contract with the customer that we all have to live up to, whether we’re companies big or small.

Freshbooks more than lived up to their contract, and continue to set the bar for how companies do business on the web.

Prior to my discovery that you can post to a Habari blog with Safari on the iPhone, I purchased iBlogger for the iPhone. It’s from the same developers of ecto, a desktop blogging client. It’s currently only priced at $0.99, which for me is a price I’m willing to pay to test an app. It supports all of the popular blogging platforms, as well as the generic metaweblog API, for which Habari has a plugin available.

Connecting the app to my Habari install was very easy, if I recall it even auto discovered the endpoint (example.com/xmlrpc).

As far as functionality, I do not know if because the generic metaweblog API is being used, and sites using engines like Moveable Type or WordPress, but the options are currently pretty sparse (as of v 1.0.7). Habari’s plugin doesn’t support posting images, so the only options really are:

• adding your location - the app inserts a link which opens to a Google map
• adding links - an easy UI for adding a hyperlink.
• tagging - this “feature” seems very weak. It doesn’t pull the existing tags from the site, a common feature in desktop blogging clients, and in my testing, keeps the previous post’s tags on subsequent posts. Might be handy if you expect to tag all of your on-the-go posts the same thing, but I don’t see it that way.

iBlogger does support multiple blogs, otherwise, I have not found any additional elements. For $0.99, I suppose one can’t complain. Since all of my personal sites are on Habari, I haven’t had cause to look at any of the other iPhone blogging clients. I understand the WordPress app is free and open-sourced, I’m sure at some point, most likely out of boredom, I will look at it. Ultimately, as many people have pointed out, typing on the iPhone doesn’t lend itself to the phone being a real blogging device.

However to get that in the moment feel, having a stable option with with a decent feature set would be nice to have. Thank goodness with Habari and in iPhone, you don’t need a secondary app.

Kottke points out that Amazon has free music for download, and checking out the list, I see that the title track from my favorite album of 2008, Gaslight Anthem’s ‘59 Sound is among the tracks available for free. Also on the list is a track from another of my top albums of the year, David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Strange Overtones.

All in all, there are over 500 free tracks, though at quick glance, the bulk of the list are lesser known artists.

So I was looking at mobile blogging apps, assuming I couldn’t post directly from Safari on the iPhone, but alas, it seems I can!

Holy cow, I can even post from the Flickr silo!

This kinds blows my mind. Certainly not a primary mode of blogging, but to be able to take a photo with the camera, upload to Flickr, then write a blog post is kinda amazing.

Edit (not via iPhone) To be clear, my amazement isn’t in the iPhone, rather, in the quality of design and code of Habari that it just works, even in the mobile Safari browser.

For my second installment of Tunesday, I thought I’d do a little reminiscing and highlight my single most favorite band of the ’90s, Pavement. Certainly it’s always difficult to say “favorite band”, or “favorite song”. Heck, its often difficult for me to say “top ten…”, but I can honestly say that Pavement is my favorite band from that time, and is still a band that gets heavy rotation.

I discovered Pavement in the fall of ‘92. Discovered probably isn’t the best characterization, as I didn’t know who they were when I saw their name as the opening act for the incredible lineup of Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and Primus (it’s amazing what you can find with a Google search. The ticket stub, complete with the relatively cheap price of $17.60 is from that show). The show was at the legendary open air amphitheater Red Rocks. I had moved to Denver that spring, and this was my first visit to the venue. I was only familiar with Red Rocks from the classic U2 concert video, Under a Blood Red Sky, but all of my friends in Denver spoke of it with reverence. I was a huge fan of both Mudhoney and Sonic Youth (still am), and though not a zealot in regards to Primus like some, I had seen them earlier that year in a small club in Tampa and knew they’d be a nice way to end the evening and was really looking forward to the show.

Anyway, Pavement were setting up to open the show, and they really looked like a bunch of roadies who were a pick up band to just warm up the crowd. A bunch of young guys, with this considerably older drummer who came out, stood on his stool, and in one fell swoop, dropped to a seated position and kicked off the first song. It was love at first note.

Pavement is now considered one of the trailblazers of the lo-fi sound, along with bands like Sebadoh and the lesser known outfit Slint. Often coming across as dissonant and harmonic at the same time, with intelligent, sometimes cryptic lyrics, their dynamic sound is infectious. (And that’s where I stop trying to sound like a music writer. )

Pavement broke up somewhere around the fall of ‘99, but not before putting out 5 albums, and a slew of EPs, including my favorite of all their recordings, Watery, Domestic. As far as must haves, their first two full length albums, Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain should be in every fan of ’90s, American indie rock library. Of the last 3, it’s decidedly split amongst fans which were better, with me being in the Brighten the Corners camp.

Steve Malkmus continues to record and perform with his band the Jicks, and fellow guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg has recorded a couple of albums with the band Preston School of Industry. I quite enjoy Monsoon, particularly the track Caught in the Rain.

I stumbled onto an interview recently with Malkmus in which he was asked about the possibility of a Pavement reunion, and he seemed to imply the door was open. I’m not sure they’d be able to recapture the magic, or if it would just be a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but either way, I’d be one of the first in line to see it.

Pavement recorded all of their albums with the label Matador Records, and are all available, along with expanded re-releases of several of their albums at emusic.com. If you’d like an invite to emusic for a trial membership and 50 free downloads (you’ll have to give a CC#, but they don’t charge until after the first month), leave a comment with the email address you’d like it sent to, and I”ll send one your way. Shameless confession - you can do a trial membership without the invite from me, but if you were to sign up with emusic after the trial via invite, I’d get a 50 song credit.