Markdown Adventures

Fresh content is the new marketing currency and we need ways to produce content without recreating it every time. Legacy approaches have left room for new tools to create, publish, and maintain content, both online and offline. Enter Markdown.

Our changing content consumption habits

We used to read on laptops or monitors but now we read on tablets, mobile screens and everything in between. Simple, legible, attractive content fits these needs.

Print is not dead, but should serve and service online content

We will have print for a while but the core content should be the same as online. Layouts may need to differ, but if I publish a web page, an attractive printout should be a built-in option. Markdown helps make this happen.

Markdown Basics

Markdown was launched by John Gruber in 2004. In his words,

Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Using Markdown across content creation, presentation, and publication applications gets us closer to a write once, publish everywhere content system.

Markdown also has “just enough formatting” with simple heading styles, ordered lists, quote call outs, links, and pictures that it can be portable and flexible for re-use with existing web pages, publication styles, and layouts.

For the most basic Markdown syntax, see the bottom of this post.

Markdown Friendly Applications

Markdown Editors

There are almost as many Markdown editors are there are note taking applications. But there were plenty of those too until Evernote came along.

StackEdit.io

StackEdit is my go-to editor. Browser-based and able to sync with Dropbox, it does almost everything I need and nothing more.

StackEdit also has a long list of “Publish On…” options including Blogger, Dropbox, Github/Gist, Google Drive, Tumblr, and Wordpress.

However, there are a few cases where I’ve needed capabilities beyond StackEdit, hence the following additions to my list.

Mou

Mou bills itself as the web developers’ Markdown editor for Mac OS X.

When using multiple client-side Markdown applications, a desktop-based editor is helpful. As an example, the DeckSet presentation application can easily call the Mou desktop editor, but I have not found a way for it to call the online StackEdit editor.

iA Writer for Mac

For Markdown conversion, iA Writer for Mac filled a great spot for me in converting to Microsoft Word. iA Writer also has dedicated iPad and iPhone applications.

Collaborative Editors

Quip

Most of the focus for Quip is on collaborative editing and messaging for documents. However, they have always allowed a simple cut and paste of Markdown from the web view, and now specifically callout Markdown in the “Export To…” options.

Markdown Presentations

Deckset for Mac

Deckset is a Mac desktop application for Markdown presentations. The lightweight structure makes it super speedy. And while it is definitely a different experience than creating in PowerPoint, the flexibility is powerful.

Slides

While not necessarily Markdown specific, Slides is a fantastic online presentation tool that supports Markdown. I have only started exploring the possibilities here.

GO’s Take

Markdown has been around for 10 years yet is still unknown outside of technical and developer circles. However with content consumption patterns changing, and the need for fresh content rising, perhaps we’ll see a surge in Markdown’s adoption.

---

Markdown Examples

Markdown supports basics headings,

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

And emphasis like bold or italic or both.

• Bulleted Lists like this
• And this

• And this

  1. Numbered Lists like
  2. This, and
  3. This

And quotation call outs,

This is the most important thing ever said :)

Image insertion,

And much, much more.

If you are curious to see the Markdown behind the prior section, I can use the code insertion features of Markdown here

# Markdown Examples
Markdown supports basics headings,
# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

And emphasis like **BOLD** or *Italic* or ***Both***.

- Bulleted Lists like this
- And this
- And this

1. Numbered Lists like
2. This, and
3. This

And quotation call outs,
> This is the most important thing every said :)

Image insertion,

![Manresa](https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/go12a/manresa.jpg "Manresa")

And much, much more.

[end of post]

The Telling Future of Infrastructure Apps

Years ago with clouds materializing and mobile dominating, a set of companies emerged to tackle the infrastructure challenges behind this new application wave. Services such as communications, application performance management, notifications, and security became available to developers through application programming interfaces (APIs). Several options to integrate rich functionality without recreating basic infrastructure appeared in a Gigaom piece I wrote titled, The New World of Infrastructure Apps, including companies like Twilio, New Relic, Urban Airship, and Dasient.

Early Leaders in Infrastructure Apps

Twilio was an early infrastructure app and now powers the biggest communication and connectivity apps in the world including Uber and Airbnb. Collectively Uber and Airbnb have been privately valued at as much as $27 billion.

New Relic has forged ahead in cloud-based application performance management touting large media and web companies like Microsoft, Nike Digital, NBC, Walmart, AT&T, and Comcast as customers. New Relic’s ability to deliver developer visibility to build and faster applications also powers recently minted public companies like Tableau and Zendesk.

Urban Airship powers notifications for top companies focused on end customer engagement like Walgreens, Michaels, Nascar, ESPN.

Dasient, an early security-centric infrastructure app was acquired by Twitter in January 2012.

Infrastructure Outlook Stronger Than Ever

Cloud capabilities, mobile adoption, and new application development combine to fuel needs in software infrastructure across categories.

Application and Operations Management

This sector includes up and comers and more established players alike.

• Boundary focuses on unified monitoring for web scale IT.
• Big Panda helps administrators manage and respond to operations incidents faster.
• More established AppDynamics recently raised $120 million to continue to grow. AppDynamics added self-service SaaS and management approximately one year ago.

Databases as a Service

• Newly renamed Compose, formerly MongoHQ, just expanded from offering MongoDB as a service to adding Elastic Search, a fully-managed search engine..
• ObjectRocket started with MongoDB and was recently acquired by Rackspace. They have since added Reddis as a Service to their portfolio.
• Cloudant similarly addressed the database as a service segment with Apache CouchDB. Cloudant was acquired by IBM in early 2014.

Communications

Of course with success of companies like Twilio, new players are emerging in this space including Layer, founded by an executive from GrandCentral, which was acquired by Google and became Google Voice. Layer promotes a communications layer for the Internet and is in early access mode.

Infrastructure Apps Going Forward

There are dozens of additional Infrastructure App categories to consider such as delivery, payments, email, messaging, and storage to name a few.

With application development shifting to rapid assembly of services, expect the landscape to evolve quickly and foster new entrants. If you have a few favorite Infrastructure Apps of your own, let us know in the comments.