(Source: Thinly Sliced, Generously Served)

As a brief aside to the Specialized vs. Volagi matter, figured I would toss up this photo of a Volagi in motion (taken from a brief interview, click the link and look around to see another interview with the other co-founder). What is funny (to me) is how infrequently I see pictures of road bikes with disc brakes actually being ridden! The front-end integration and simplicity here is quite pleasing. Imagine some Di2 shifting and minimalist cabling and it’s already a whole lot better.

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If Specialized were smart about this, they would just start from the fantastic looking (and riding as well, according to bikeradar) Crux disc cross bike and build up a line of disc-equipped road bike themselves. Hell, they could market it as a new addition to the Roubaix line (which is kind of what this whole lawsuit is about anyway).

The Crux, by the way:

(Source: Bike Rumor’s review of the Crux)

And, if they had just ignored Volagi (rather than draw attention to a pretty small fish), most customers out there would have given Specialized credit for “inventing” a disc-equipped fondo/sportive/comfort bike! Volagi seems to have a lot going for them…but, let’s face it, the primary advantage they will have is that of being “first mover” in this area. If/when SRAM/Shimano pops out an hydraulic road disc, the market will explode and pretty soon, for better or worse, we’ll have the option for a rebranded Asian carbon road frameset with disc brakes, BB30/whatever standard and tapered headtube/steerer offered at $499 from the Sette line at Pricepoint (or some equivalent). Too bad for Volagi that they have likely wasted a year of that precious time dealing with the a-holes at Big S. But I guess that’s the point of the lawsuit in the first place.

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This is a really cool use of cheap and standard materials (standard lumber) for a great effect. I should do this for my basement stairs…

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via OFIS architects.

Yowza – two of BB’s favorite obsessions, wrapped into big tasty package! Bike Rumor has some shots of this white Volagi, built up with Ultegra Di2 and a white TRP Parabox (more links to the Parabox to come, btw) with hydraulic discs. Can’t wait to see the ride reports on these Volagis (built with hydro discs and the Parabox) to start popping up – clearly there are a number of them out there being tested.

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via Bike Rumor.

But how many apps do people actually use? According to Flurry, the average consumer uses only 15 apps per week.

Now, this is much more in the realm of how I use the iPhone….and brings up a question I’ve had in the back of my mind for some time now: apart from games, how do developers break out in the iPhone app market, now that all of the most obvious utilities and applications have already been written? For someone like me, I barely even bother thinking about apps any longer; I’ve got what I need, it works, and I don’t need to waste more time/screen space looking for something I don’t need. What is funny from this article, though, is that the whole thing is motivated by their advocacy for smarter search functions that would put people in contact with more relevant, but undiscovered, apps. In my view (really, my “experience” is more like it), though, people aren’t using only 15 apps in a week because they can’t find any better ones. Rather, they are using 15 apps or under a week because they don’t have any need for anything else! No real point here, just some thoughts off the top of my head.

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via App-ocalypse | TechCrunch.

Are you getting this? I hit one button, and magical and interesting things just…happen.

Things I want to read magically appear on the Instapaper web site.

They also magically appear on my Instapaper iPhone app.

And, because my bookmarked Instapaper items are also available as an RSS feed, they magically appear in Google Reader…

Which now also magically syncs with NetNewsWire on my desktop and…

My preferred iPhone reader, Byline.

And — this one’s the killer — because I’m one of those nerds who bought (and adores) the Kindle, once a week, Instapaper dutifully, magically, shuttles a single file with all of the week’s bookmarked stories directly to my reader.

Boom.

All of this happens with zero intervention from me. Which means substantial, challenging prose that used to get skipped in the rush of the day now becomes available anyplace it suits me. In the line at the ATM. On a plane. Wherever.

And, that all happened because I clicked one button. If that’s not blowing your mind right now, go read all that again. Because that shit is sick.

via kung fu grippe • Three things about Marco Arment.

This was pretty compelling, and definitely pushed me over the edge with respect to the “can I justify getting an iPhone?” debate. And, almost to the detail, this is still the exact same “workflow” for reading I follow every single day (at least every single day in which I’ve got internet connectivity). I have found myself describing parts of this workflow to a few different people over the past few weeks. So, might was well write it down in one place and tell future people who are subjected to my opinions/advice to come right here and have a look.

It doesn’t take too long to explain “how I read” because, for all intents and purposes, it’s the same flow outlined by Mann. Although I never actually “see” Google, the whole thing centers on Google Reader. Reader is, of course, an RSS syncing and management system. You find internet sources with “content” you like, you subscribe to their RSS syndication feed. This drops the content into your feed reader, notifying you when something new has been published, and (usually) delivering the content directly to your reader.

The key with Google Reader is that it also syncs these feeds from multiple devices. In simple terms, this means you can check your aggregated content from anywhere on the web (a browser, a feed-reading program on your computer, your iPhone, your iPad, whatever) and things that you mark as starred, as read, as unread will show up as such on other devices. While plenty of people just use Google Reader directly through a browser, I use one of the many options for feed reading on both my Macs and my iPhone: an app called Reeder. Reeder grabs your content being synced by Google Reader and displays it for you in a nice, simple and clean interface on both the Mac and the iPhone (or iPad). Reeder isn’t actually doing the syncing of the feeds, for you – it’s just the way that you interface with the Google “guts”/engine underneath. The nice thing with Reeder (like many other apps, I should add) is that it interfaces with the next step in the reading process: Instapaper.

What is Instapaper? You should check out the site. Instapaper is a service that “harvests” (my way of understanding it) content for later reading, keeping it synced and organized. One way of using Instapaper is to use an RSS reader (like Reeder) that integrates with your Instapaper account; if you find entries from your RSS feeds that you think you’ll read later you just hit the Instapaper button and the full text is sent to Instapaper. Additionally, you can install a little “bookmarklet” for Instapaper in any browser so that, once you navigate to some content you want to harvest (e.g. an NY Times article, as is most often the case for me) you can grab it simply by clicking the bookmarklet.

Once your content is in Instapaper, it can be read any number of ways: on the iPhone/iPad through the Instapaper app, through the Instapaper website on any browser, or, more recently, through a Mac app that downloads the Instapaper files so you’ve got them even without internet access. This last option became much more appealing with the recent (massive) revision to the excellent Read Now application.

So, this gets you to Mann’s basic point from above: you now have easily harvested, completely synced, ad-free and stripped down reading material that you can access just about anywhere, any time. You can fairly easily manage the flow of massive amounts of information from many, many sources (via RSS), shunt it into Instapaper, read it, discard it or save it. This is the core of my reading workflow.

Two final points:

1. What about managing items that I’ve read in Instapaper, but want to save for later reference? I’ve got a shit ton of these; after all, most of what I’m reading connects to various lines of scholarly research/writing/thinking or to issues raised by my teaching. Bookmarking and tagging are imperative – the only way to get back to these needles in an ever-growing haystack. For bookmarking, I use the absolutely excellent service, Pinboard. Like Delicious  (and Diigo, which I used before and which has some compelling features) and any number of other services that have come and, too often, gone over the years, Pinboard is a bookmarking service. However, the model is totally transparent and minimal – you own your data, you pay (minimally) for the service and your information/attention is not sold back to you. Another great plus for Pinboard is that these other apps/services all tie in directly, in the background via password. So, read in Reeder, Instapaper or Read Now, like an article and want to save it….now you just hit the Pinboard button, enter your keyword tags and the link is saved. Or, you can pay Pinboard an additional $20 or less each year and they save the full text of each article! Your own personal archive, in case the link breaks, the website dies, whatever.

2. The most exciting thing about How I Read currently is the possible integration of an e-reader – in my case, the cheapest (and, non-”touch”) Kindle. All this reading and access is great…except for doing all this reading on a little 4″ (or whatever it is) screen on my iPhone. It’s killing my shoulders, neck and elbows. Really, it is. The laptop is a bit better, but still far from ideal for reading. I actually own a Nook Touch and really like the e-ink display. But, what I realize these days is that most of what I read is content that first appeared on the web in some fashion and has now ended up in my Instapaper “files”. Instapaper has some options here: with a single click, you can tell Instapaper to take your most recent 10 (maybe it’s 20, I can’t remember off the top of my head) articles, format and download them as an e-pub file (essentially a little book/magazine file, as far as your reader is concerned). You can then manually transfer this to any e-reader. But that right there is the problem: you must manually transfer the file. Yes, that means, plugging it in to your machine, moving the new e-pub over (and possibly deleting an older one, to keep things clean), ejecting the e-reader and then reading it on the e-reader. That doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s not the sort of thing I find myself wanting to do any more often than once a day. In truth, I barely do it at all.

This is where the Kindle advantage comes in: any Kindle you register gets its own dedicated email address. If you have a non-3G Kindle, this email will be delivered, free of charge, when the Kindle is on wi-fi (like, at home). So, you can set Instapaper up to send this e-pub file to your Kindle’s email address. And then you can read your Instapaper content on a proper e-ink screen, from a super simple, super cheap device. The non-touch Kindle, with ads, is now only $79. As a dedicated reading device this seems like a crazy deal. Of course, I don’t own one yet, but I’m really looking forward to getting one and giving it a try.

A last random bit here: you might be wondering why I’m not interested in the Kindle Touch. What I’ve realized with the Nook Touch is that I really dig having an e-reader that I can treat like a book. I want to be able to wrap my hands around the thing, move around with it, etc. without worrying about whether I touch the screen or not. The “advantages” of the touch screen are pretty much moot for me – I don’t mind using small side buttons to advance pages, and the menu system on these readers is simple enough that using a little directional arrow/tiny joystick/whatever input device to control the thing is perfectly fine by me. Plus, the cheaper the better, as far as I am concerned. I want, in essence, a “dumb screen” for reading – I want to dump content onto a small, cheap device with a good screen. If it breaks I will be sad, but I won’t be bankrupt – which is the problem with using an iPad primarily as a reading device (e.g. it starts at $500…which is a lot of money for something my kids might pick up, or I might leave on the couch).

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PS – If you want a great review of various e-ink readers, from this particular reading perspective, check out Marco Arment’s detailed comparison. You could even click through on his links, if you choose to buy one, so Instapaper gets a little bit of affiliate credit.

Without the availability of a hydraulic road disc, this is all conjecture. There are far more hurdles to be overcome, too many for this space.

That said, with every innovation comes the inevitable “my gear is just fine” argument. Friction shifting was satisfactory, as were six-speed indexed downtube shifters. Single-pivot brakes were great in their time. Eight-speed Shimano STI was phenomenal.

We never realize what we have is inferior until its (superior) replacement becomes commonplace. Mountain bikers will never go back to rim brakes, roadies will never go back to downtube shifters. Ten years from now, perhaps we’ll be wondering how anyone rode with those old dual-pivot rim brakes.

Yup, pretty much the BB party line.

Here is a little bit of a link roundup, highlighting a few of the fairly recent contributions to the ongoing discussion:

• Cyclingnews did a review of Van Dessel’s revamped Gin & Trombones disc-ready cross bike. While they didn’t love the ride of the fork overall, it makes for a nice demonstration of the maxi/mini style to come:

• CX Magazine just now put up a little piece on Tim Johnson’s disc-ready Cannondale cross bike. The Cannondale fork is quite nice as well:

• Last, but most intriguing, is this update to the Volagi from Procyclingnews’ Interbike coverage. I mentioned Volagi quite a while ago as I somewhat randomly came across their site very early on (in the life of the company) – you may recall that they are building a brand entirely around a platform of disc-only, full carbon sportive/gran fondo/”comfort” frames with all mod cons (BB30, tapered steerer maybe?). If anyone had incentive to grab one of these Macgyver-ish cable-to-hydraulic converters (that we’ve linked to here on BB in the past), string it together with some high-end gear and roll out a pro-style hydraulic disc’d road bike, it was Volagi. Looks like they’ve done so, and looks like Pezcyclingnews has it on test. I’ll keep an eye out for the review. In the meantime, here is a pic:

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The actuator button:

The rear derailleur (which was powered by the motion of the chain through the pulleys, I believe):

via cycleexif.

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They note:

Indexing control will supposedly be moved to a front-derailleur-mounted microprocessor, turning the levers into ‘dumb’ switches that merely send binary signals – just like on the recently introduced Ultegra Di2.

What is interesting here is that this clearly sets the stage for a “controller” paradigm that we’ve been talking about here on BB: with the “brains” moved to the derailleur units themselves, the actuators on the bars (or elsewhere) do become “dumb” switches. As we’ve also been saying on BB, this frees up space in the levers and it appears Shimano will be using that space to integrate a disc brake option as well.

Sounds like the disc option would be mechanical in the 2012 year, but maybe hydraulic by 2013. Can’t wait to see what Shimano would do with a high-end road hydraulic caliper, though it sounds like another year or two before we see that.

The bad news in all of this, though, is what will become of Bliggity Blog once I can no longer pontificate about hydraulic disc brakes on a road bike. Maybe then I will move into advocating for internally-geared hubs on road bikes. Or, I could actually write more about the state of the world, the collapse of global capitalism and the future of market-based socialism. Time will tell….

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via BikeRadar.

Yes, it’s the stuff of potential nightmares: a wireless disc brake setup. As noted here on BB before (and many other places), we’ve kind of been down this road before in cycling, with the Mavic Mektronic shifting setup. Which was kind of a disaster/joke. And, no, it wasn’t a disaster because of the wireless shifting alone….but the wireless deal always seemed like a solution to a problem we never had. Shimano seems to agree, given that they have now released two, big dollar (even for Ultegra Di2) electronic shifting setups that use wires for shift “actuation” (and little motors to actually move the derailleurs; which may well be the “real” actuation, now that I think about it).

Electronic shifting seems fairly simple compared to braking. For one thing, the total force and energy needed to complete a shift (which is actually just the force needed to move a derailleur a couple of millimeters at a time) must be lower than pushing the disc pistons with sufficient force, right? So, if the biggest manufacturer of components in the world – with a massive R&D budget and all that – decides to not even bother with wireless shifting, why would anyone bother with wireless braking??

If it did work, though, what are the possible advantages of a wireless braking setup? I think there are two fundamental (and obvious) ones:

• The simplest (potential) advantage: lack of cables/hoses (and needing to accommodate cabling in/around the frame). With wireless braking, the set-up work would be almost completely centered on the caliper. You would bolt on the caliper, do the adjustments and attach whatever pneumatic source is required for the actuation of the caliper. But, this is probably going to be a hydraulic setup, right? If so, you are not actually removing the hydraulic actuation process from the bike, you are simply moving it from the brake levers on the bars to the caliper area itself. So, running a hydraulic cable from the levers is only really adding the marginal increase in hosing (a couple of feet) and whatever amount of extra hydraulic fluid is in that hose. I can say, having just installed new caliper and levers on my MTB, that there really isn’t much fluid in those hoses (the inside diameter of hydraulic hoses, in other words, is quite small). Thus, I don’t see much advantage to removing the hoses, apart from freeing up one more (albeit fairly minor) parameter for frame designer, who would no longer need to think about internal routing, external hose mounts, etc.

• The other potential advantage is reducing the complexity of the brake lever/actuator on the bars. If you only really need some kind of electronic device that measures how much a lever is being moved and translates that into an electronic signal sent to the caliper/receiver (which would translate the movement of the actuator into an analogous movement of the “real” brake), you don’t need much up there on the bars. This could very easily (I would assume) fit into the body of even an old-school, simple brake lever. I suppose you could even have multiple actuators (think brake levers on the bar tops of cross bikes, as currently used), allowing the rider to brake from almost any position. This last option is a bit more compelling…but, then again, it’s hard to imagine many more places on the bars from where I’d rather actuate the brakes.

As I think this through here, the wireless braking idea still seems like a big loser. Or, maybe just another ridiculously complicated fix to a non-problem that we didn’t really have. Given that we still don’t have a real road hydraulic disc option yet, let’s hope for the development of one over the next year or two. Once the “traditional” hose/line-actuated hydraulic setup has been refined, then maybe – maybe - the idea of a wireless braking setup would be worth considering.