→ Phil Wickham’s Profitable Free Album

Christian musician Phil Wickham recorded a live album and released it as a free download on his website as a gift to his fans. The result? Sales for his other 2 studio release albums have skyrocketed, causing his album Cannons (released almost a year ago) to rise up to #12, just shy of the Top 10 Christian Albums in iTunes.

Great example of the change in media and culture and how those that get it are rewarded.

→ Google Redesigned

Sweet looking Firefox plugin from Globex Designs which adds a new, sharply designed look and feel to Google services such as GMail and Google Calendars. I only wish it supported Safari so that I could actually use it - hopefully an update with Safari support is coming soon.

Windows Mojave - A Lesson In Marketing

Microsoft sure knows how to turn some bad press around. This is the audio heard in the first 30 seconds of the new Windows Mojave Experiment website:

So it’s just an informal discussion I’ll be asking some questions, and just answer them as honestly as, as you can.

So why haven’t you upgraded to Vista yet?

Just the bad things I’ve heard about it.

I’ve just heard negative things, I’ve never tried it myself.

I won’t touch the thing.

It’s horrible, we have so many problems.

It crashes.

I’ve heard nothing but bad things about Vista really.

I’d like you to rate your overall favorability of Vista…

...Ok so, you gave Windows Vista a zero.

Bravo, Microsoft… way to confirm what everyone’s thinking in the first 30 seconds. I wonder what the percentage of people that leave your little flash video website before that 30 seconds has passed.

Wait, did I say Flash website? Do you mean to say, even Microsoft doesn’t want to use their Flash Killer™ product - Silverlight?

I wonder how many interviews they did before get those “favorable” responses. Was this guy one of Mojave Rejects?

Comments Disabled

That’s right, until further notice comments have been disabled on Echo Faith. All previous comments will be left in tact so as to preserve the history of the evolution of this blog but all posts (and future posts) will no longer have comments enabled.

Why the sudden change? Well, I’m going to let some other sans-comments-bloggers do the talking for me.

Reason 1: Ego

aka Read, Don’t Skim

John Gruber (daringfireball.net):

I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read. I want him to like this website so much that he reads it from the top to the bottom, and he reads everything. Every single word. The copyright statement, what software I use, he’s read it all.

If I turn comments on, that goes away. It’s not that I don’t like sites with comments on, but when you read a site with comments it automatically puts you, the reader, in a defensive mode where you’re saying, “what’s good in this comment thread? What can I skim?”

Reason 2: Time/Maintenance

aka Click, Done

Shawn Blanc (shawnblanc.net):

Since launching shawnblanc.net I have not once regretted my decision to disable comments.

It has opened the door for stress-free site maintenance and publishing in a way I didn’t understand until experiencing it. When I hit publish - I’m done. The article has now been completed. It’s off to print. That’s all she I wrote.

Those are 2 big reasons that have led me to the decision to disable comments. The main reason, however is contained within this quote from Shawn Blanc:

Comments are like cash—they make a horrible master but a wonderful slave.
— Blog Comments Are Like Cash

If you’ve ever had a blog you know how true this is… it doesn’t matter how many people have read your post, seeing that little 0 Comments is the most depressing thing in the world. I would pour hours into writing and researching a good post and when no one comments on it, I think “did I just waste all that time for nothing?” The disappointment would often cause me to steer away from writing more, fearing another zero comment rejection.

This is not why I started Echo Faith.

Hopefully, communication will stay open through other channels such as Twitter, Email, and such.

Thanks for reading, things are happening soon.

Stay tuned…

→ Share iPhone Apps With Your Wife

Great how-to article by Melvin Rivera on how to share purchased iPhone apps between 2 or more iPhones. Now I can put all my cool little games on my wife’s iPhone without having to pay double price. Very helpful article for any household with more than one iPhone.

→ Spitting Preacher

Scott Hodge tells it like it is. Hilarious.

Quick Tip: Unsaved Documents In OS X

Just discovered this nice little tip the other day while working with multiple documents in Coda. Whenever you are editing a document using a program such as TextEdit, Photoshop or Coda, if the document has changes that have not been saved you will notice a small dark dot in the middle of the red document close button / bubble in the upper left of the window. As soon as you save that document the dot vanishes.

After noticing this it quickly becomes part of your sub-conscious workflow - yet another one of those tiny little visual reminder clues that you never really notice until that split second where you wonder if you’ve saved the latest version or not.

I’m not sure if this feature is new to Leopard or has always been a part of OS X, but I’ve been using macs for years and just noticed it for the first time.

Another quick tip from Sean Sperte, for a quick new tab in Safari:

To create a new, blank tab: Double-click in the tab area.