Jeff Carlson (.Thought)

My Seattle Times Review of the iPhone 3GS

My review of the iPhone 3GS is now live on the Seattle Times Web site, a day ahead of when it's scheduled to appear in print. I like the new iPhone quite a bit; Apple sent me a review unit, but I had also ordered one the day it was announced.

I skipped the iPhone 3G last year because the iPhone OS 2.0 software provided all the improvement I needed; I did buy one for my wife (see my TidBITS article "iPhone 3G: On the Line in Seattle"). But partially due to the fact that I write about Apple and technology for a living, and due to new features like the compass (which many people will tell you I need) and the improved speed overall, I decided it was time to move up.

Here's a link to some of the photos and videos I took to demonstrate the camera: iPhone 3GS Review Seattle Times. (I also discovered a bug: when uploading a photo or video to MobileMe, the first album it lists can't be deselected; so in my case, anything I upload goes into a password-protected album I set up for a photo client, which I then have to move to the album I want using the MobileMe Gallery interface on my computer.)

How Not to Write Article Leads

Macworld Editor Jason Snell (@jsnell) posted a quick series of "Editor's laments" today on Twitter that are a great reference for how not to start articles. If you've had any journalistic training, you should know these and avoid them, but I still see them all the time. (And as Jason posted them, I tried to think if I'd broken any of them. I'm sure have at one point or another, especially #3.)

I have more trouble writing leads (or "ledes" if you prefer that spelling) than any other part of an article; I trip up on writing conclusions, too. I'll typically run through a dozen or more leads when I write, sometimes rewriting the same ones over just to get my brain into gear. This always frustrating process is part of what inspired me to come up with TextRedactor for this year's TidBITS April Fools issue (see "FrownOnMyMac Fills New Mac Niches," 2009-04-01).

So, as you're struggling to compose that first paragraph of your next article, keep these "don'ts" in mind:

Editor's Lament #1: The dictionary definition lede. "Webster's defines baseball as a sport played with four bases and a ball..."

Editor's Lament #2: The "under a rock" lede. "Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the French Open final is Sunday."

Editor's Lament #3: The ol' if-then. "If you're a fan of pencils, then you'll love Virtual Pencil from the app store!"

Editor's Lament #4: The common thing that isn't. "We all know that when you're trapped in a bathysphere, you'll need to kill some time!"

Recover Erased Photos from a Memory Card

Have you done the bone-headed thing I did recently? I erased a memory card in my camera, and then realized I hadn't transferred the latest photos to my computer. Fortunately, they're easy to recover as I write about in an article at TidBITS: Recover Erased Photos from a Memory Card (2009-06-03).

I look at four programs that can get the job done, each with their pluses and minuses: Data Rescue II, Klix, Photo Recovery for Mac, and Image Rescue.