I’ve taken quite a liking to writing in iA Writer for Mac. Although the app has been out for quite a while — and despite the fact that I was a big fan of the iPad version — I never picked it up because I really didn’t think I had a use for it. I’ve been an enthusiastic user of Google Docs for years now, and there are many aspects of using that service that I quite like that iA Writer doesn’t do (sharing documents, having a good search engine for all my archived documents, etc.)

But with the recent sale on the iA Writer app — in preparation for the upcoming update that will add iCloud support (the sale may be over as you read this) — I decided to give it a try just for kicks, and I must say I’ve really fallen in love with it.

The reason for this love affair is a mix of a few things, including simplicity (functionality is barebone, just what you need), focusing (both because of the a full-screen view that hides everything else, and the app’s “focus mode”), and strangely enough, its support of Markdown.

I must say I’ve never used Markdown in the past, but I’ve taken quite a liking to the way iA Writer formats the text when I use the various elements. As an added bonus, the app I use to write blog posts (the ScribeFire extension on Chrome) supports it, so I’ve taken to writing new posts in iA Writer, in Markdown, and then copy/pasting it in ScribeFire.

Now, it’s not necessarily for everyone, especially if you need to format text for printing, but all I’ve ever needed in a text editor is a blank slate and a word count, and so it works for me. I would like it to support some sort of auto-syncing with Google Docs though, so that I can easily save all of my documents there, especially if it’s something that I need to share with others (for now, I copy/paste it in Google Docs, once I’m finished writing it in Writer).

Oliver from Information Architects has been teasing his company’s writing app for iPad for a while now, but the wait is over, and you can head straight to the iTunes App Store now and download it. It’s called Writer, and I had the great pleasure of pitching in on the beta testing phase, and can assure you that it’s a terrific writing app. Those of you who already follow Oliver’s writings about typography on the iPad (on the iA blog and on Twitter) know that he’s quite passionate on the subject, and that concern is in full evidence in Writer. And if you’re still not convinced, then Oliver lays it all out on the table for you.

I’ve finally done something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now: Remove the comments section on posts. Now let me start by saying I’ve got absolutely nothing against feedback, and quite the opposite, I’ve always enjoyed receiving it — there have been 14,500 comments posted to this site since its launch back in 2002 (and far too much spam to mention) — and that goes for feedback that comes through Twitter as well. It just somehow feels like a vestige of another era, and to be honest, the number of comments that are posted here has definitely gone down over the past year or so, especially following the launch of SNOW Magazine.

The thing that inspired me to make the change was seeing how Information Architects deals with comments on its site. It doesn’t. iA only adds a link to its Twitter account, and for those who followed the passionate discussion that followed Oliver’s first impressions of WIRED Magazine on the iPad, you’re well aware that it certainly didn’t hurt any, and in fact it was quite interesting to see where those discussions ended up taking place (on Twitter and on Flickr, as well as on other blogs).

So I’ve pretty much done the same, and now at the bottom of every post you’ll simply find an invitation to offer feedback through Twitter or Facebook. I’m really interested to see how it’ll all work, and welcome you to get in touch that way — and active as I am on Twitter, you’re bound to hear from me faster than you would here on the site. Of course, another bonus to this is that I won’t have to deal with comment spam anymore — YES!

I’m still unsure if it’s something I want to do for SNOW Magazine, but I am considering it. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this, let’s just take it elsewhere.

If you followed the link in my last post about next year’s Web Trend Map Atlas, you’ll find Oliver mention that the project will be done in collaboration with “Books We Make.” Visiting the website, I see that it’s a new project by Craig Mod, and I’m quite upset that I don’t know anything about it.

GaijinPot.com interviews Information Architect’s Oliver Reichenstein, in which he talks about the Web Trend Map, and reveals that for next year they are planning on releasing a book — a Web Trend Map Atlas — to be published just in time for Christmas 2010.

Information Architects (iA) has begun selling the template for its site as a proper WordPress theme, and is using a “dynamic pricing” strategy to determine the selling price — they talk more about the strategy here. It’s currently selling for $33, but that will be for the first 100 purchases only, which will be followed by a price adjustment.

If you’re into the web and design, there’s a very good chance that you already know about Information Architect‘s annual Web Trend Map poster. Going one step further this year, iA teamed up with Craig Mod to create an online web app version of the map. The way it works is that when you populate a map with Twitter feeds, the system looks at all the links that are posted, and creates a “Trending Links” list, which appears in the sidebar on the left. It’s an awesome way to get a quick heads-up on what people — or “micro curators,” as iA and Craig describe them — are linking to and talking about. You need to have an account in order to create a map (and to do that, you need to purchase the original Web Trend Map poster), but anyone can access the maps already created.

My contribution comes in the form of my “Gamingsphere” map, which I describe thusly: “Tweeting games by people who play them, write about them, talk about them, and just plain love them.”