There’s an app on my mac called Notational Velocity. It’s a simple note taking app, that has two critical features. It’s searchable in a “that’s how you use it” kinda way. the second is that it stores your notes on Simplenote. So what’s the big deal?

I started using Simplenote because I wanted a dead simple way to share a food shopping list with my wife. And it was good. Then I got an iPhone and there was an app, so now I could add something on the fly and vice versa. And then I looked for a Mac app because it seemed like that would be an easy to capture thoughts as well. Other “To do” lists worked well in the past, but this felt different and better. Somehow less pressured and achievement oriented. There are some things that require rumination not action, and “to do” by nature is an action.

And so like that the circle was complete. Web access, device access, desktop access to all my notes. And that is the promise of iCloud. No, Simplenote doesn’t rely on iCloud. But iCloud is a system(s) service and it will become more and more common to live in the cloud in all things. Apple hit the basics for now. Music, mail, photos, calendars, contacts… these are things we desire to have on all our devices minus the bother of syncing. And it feels right. Just as right as it does for my notes.

Franklin Veaux’s Journal – Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright:

People who hold these ideas can not, I think, be persuaded otherwise. A person who feels entitled to something will construct rationalizations about why his entitlement is justified, whether it’s by imagining creativity as some inborn thing like race or sex, or inventing a moral system whereby anyone who does something that could make another person’s life better like create a painting or, I don’t know, haul away garbage is ethically obligated to do so for free. Such people will often spout platitudes like “True artists do it for the love of art, not for money,” setting up a false dichotomy that ignores the fact that creative people also have to eat. This argument also creates a system whereby an artist’s merits are judged not on her technical proficiency or her ability to illuminate the human condition, but rather on how much stuff she gives the speaker for free.