Rui Nunes's thoughts and ideas

I'm the Country Manager of MediaResponse™ Group, responsible for developing our major online marketing brands to evolve at the Portuguese Market.

My primary goal with this blog is to be of value to you with my experience and insights as well to be open to your questions and different approaches. Feel free to ask me anything! ;-)

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2011 (24)
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Why I use Mail.app as my RSS reader of choice?

Mailapp
I'm a big fan of RSS as a great service of content delivery. When I like some blog or content site with interesting articles about a topic that specially interests me, then I try to subscribe through RSS.
Well, why do I prefer this method instead of email or social networks subscribing? Because through RSS I don't miss anything, it's stack in my historical feed, it's in more clean and light version (normally just a few images and content), but specially because I can go check it out when I want, not when it's delivered.

If it's sent by email, is going to be stuffed in thousands of other emails I receive every week, cluttering my inbox and most of the times I wont be having the time to read it with ease. So, it's not very handy for content delivery reading. As I can tell is much more appropriate for special offers or time limited situations that you must act quickly.

Social Networks to follow content sources it's also a big mess. Why? Well, if you follow a lot of people like I do, the timeline is going to be on speed cruise. Which means, it'll be difficult to even see the content, not mentioning having the time to screen it.

So, RSS is always there, when you have some time to feed your brain. And why do I prefer Mail.app to do it?
  • It's simple and fast.
  • Doesn't consume a lot of resources from my Mac.
  • It's seamless to use.
  • Organized.
  • Displays the Unread's in every feed, but still doesn't annoy me with flashy alerts and sounds.
  • Has a little tag for the feeds that I can close or open as I have the time or not to read it.
  • Even with a very large subscribing list of feeds it still feels easy to squatter and choose the reading of the day.
  • It's always there (yes I know I repeat this one).

So, RSS is dead? Long live RSS.

Macbook Pro Rules

Macbookpro
You already know that I'm a Apple fanboy, but in this rainy day while I'm working in some projects, it's impossible not to notice that my Macbook Pro is a great machine indeed. 
It's the previous version, loaded with programs and junk that I've gathered for months, with a smashed chassis on the side from a fall from my car trunk, a de-glued screen on the joints but still working and better than other laptops in the market.

I'm running at the same time, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Toast Titanium, CyberDuck, Skype, Firefox, Mail.app, iCal,  and making Software Updates Downloads from the net and is rocking like a sports car. Yes it's becoming a little sluggish sometimes, but really, it's amazing. In other laptops and even powerful desktops I've seen it crash and burn with just a few of these programs running at the same time.

People talk about price, but I was a PC user for years and it was a pain even with new products. After a few months of hard use and things always turn a nightmare. Re-install everything, buying new hardware to increase capacity and a vicious circle.
With the Macs, I use for years. My first Macbook Pro (a 17") it's still running like a kitten in my wife's hands after almost 5 years of heavy duty.

Talk about price value? This is good value for price.

What Can't I Buy Just What I Want?

Office_2011

I'm really sick of it. Why can't I just be able to buy what I want instead of having to buy the entire suite that I won't be using?
This makes me crazy and I think its the main reason I like App Stores so much.

I give you an example. I want to buy the Outlook from Microsoft Office for Mac, but it's bundled in their suite. And it's even for the Business Suite which i way pricier.
So, their best product in my modest opinion is the main reason for people to buy their business suite. Otherwise, the normal user just needs to buy the Home&Student version, but if it needs a great integrated messaging and scheduling system like Outllook it needs to buy the entire pack.
Ridiculous. Well, I didn't worked for me. I really just need the iWork suite from Apple (which is way cheaper) and the Mail.app do the service.

There's no doubt about it, the Office Suite from Microsoft is way better than iWork from Apple, but for the normal user it doesn't pay. My professional work is based in email messages (a lot), Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and so on.
So, the Office tools need to be user friendly and quite stylish and iWork works just fine (pardon the double speech). 

So, sorry Microsoft, but I won't pay that price just for having the Outlook. Even if it is to a business. To explain better, it won't add so much productivity to justify that price. Now if you imagine that you need to buy to everyone in the office is just crazy. 
The Mac Store from Apple can be a great treat to get interesting apps for a nice price. Hummm... now, I like that!

This is What I Call a Good Peace of an Email

Media_httpwwwflowtown_pjjjn
via flowtown.com

This is an excellent graph on how Apple usually performs well designing their communication emails.

Flowtown makes great content in their blog, and this is just an example.

If there would be a reason to have an iPad this is the one: MARVEL Comics

Media_httpmashablecom_iband
via mashable.com

I've already said before that I would by an iPad as soon as it would be available on 3G. But this news, that I already expected before, about the coming of Marvel Comics to the iPad is fantastic.

Here's What Microsoft And Apple Need To Do To Beat Google In Search

Media_httpstaticbusin_fxbxh
via businessinsider.com

Look at this awesome chart from Goldman Sachs about what people really want on a search engine, specially on a mobile platform. This says a lot.

And my migration to Mac is greater than ever. Now, Exchange services better on Mail.app than Entourage!

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These few days, my company corporate e-mail services have changed their Exchange Services Provider and the new one doesn't have Mac Support. They don't work with Macs and don't have special configurations for Macintosh.
This could demand my re-migraton to Microsoft eco-system all over again, right?
Actually, NO!

Why? Because, the problem was not about Exchange configurations. It was the Microsoft Entourage configurations necessities that didn't worked with what our provider has given us.
So, what did I to solve this thing? I've opened my Mail.app which I already used for personal e-mail accounts and create my business account on the fly.
It was not complex, it even asked few data than the Outlook for Windows version. And it worked perfectly. Now I have my e-mails being handled more effectively by Mail.app, my Contacts synced with AddressBook.app and my Appointments all sync with iCal.app.
It's tremendous, even better and easily work with Exchange Server in a Snow Leopard environment.

Now, I don't use Entourage anymore, reason why I had bought Office for Mac before (they didn't sold it in separately in my country). So, when I need to upgrade or whatever, I just pass to iWork from Mac and that's it.

Microsoft shouldn't be worried. I'm just a single user. Just one person. They still have the OS and Software leadership... don't they?

ATTENTION: The trademarks, logos and other mentions to corporate or other, are propriety of their respective owners. Their mentions were for descriptive example and I can remove them if asked by the respective owners.

The Danger of Being the Company Star

Star
I'm reading the news about the almost certain new Apple's netbook tablet as well as the possible lack of health of Steve Jobs and I can't stop wondering about how can a company's superstar be so directly influential.

Obviously, until today, Steve Jobs is the human face of Apple. Those few keynotes presented by Phillip Schiller was lacking the magic and the brilliant communication of their CEO. He's charismatic and has the status of a superstar in their medium.
So, is this good for the company?
It went very well for Apple so far, but these news about his health made some doubts about the company's future. The investors are trembling every time some news about it is brought up. And people forget the fact that Apple is more than one person. The products are made by several thousands excellent professionals.

Same thing occurred when Bill Gates went absent from Microsoft. And still is connected as Chairman.
When a company or a brand is completely connected to one charismatic and famous person, it can be very good when things go well, but this umbilical string can be very damaging when some misfortune occurs to that particular person. Imagine that instead of Jobs or Gates it was Bernie Madoff, or even more recently Tiger Woods. Their actions can be decisive for their businesses.

Imagine the responsibility. Imagine that Sir Richard Bronson of Virgin International went rogue. So, the question is... the benefits of having a star as a leading commander of a company are more valuable than the potential losses from their actions or misfortunes?

By the way: I enjoy not being a star. ;-)