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After spending so many hours trying to understand the requirements to set up my online presence to support the IndieWeb movement… I’m close to just giving up. I fail to get the whole picture and none of the sites that I look at has a complete explanation that corresponds to my use case. Gosh. I’ll put this aside for a while and eventually come back to this. Maybe.
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I often read the word āQuillā in here but never really paid too much attention, until now. Quill allows for posting content to your blog from a simple web page. You knew that, already, right? Not me. Sorry for the interruption, normal programming to return in 3, 2, 1. Thank you.
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Bye Bye Weather Line (#weather #weatherapps #iOS #iosdev)
Breaking news from 9To5Mac, but official announcement here:
In recent months, we were approached by a buyer. They saw the uniqueness of Weather Line and the strong foundation weāve built. While we arenāt able to provide further details on their future plans for the app, we hope you can understand, and will look forward to it.
Iām kind of in shock right now. I recently posted an article about my āgo-toā weather applications. Weather Line wasnāt part of the line up, but I did have it installed on my iPhone, and Iām currently a paying subscriber. Too bad to see the application go. But, why? The same happened to Spend Stack recently.
Whatās going on? How many developers invoked paid subscription model as being the only road to sustainability? Does it work or not? Is this the start of a new trend? There is something going on here.
When, as users, invest money and time in using applications or service, the last thing we want is to see our beloved apps go like this. Iām currently heavily investing in Craft (coming from Notion). What if the same happens to Craft?
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Dear Google, this time you win (#google #YouTube)
This shouldnāt be this way. Thanks to the numerous ads, my YouTube experience was a calculated nightmare. As my usage grew in the last few weeks because of my daytime job, my time on YouTube felt light a nightmare with no end. I decided to put an end to all this by subscribing to YouTube Premium. I feel in full contradiction to my values.
YouTube Premium so much better. But it shouldnāt be this way. Yet, it is. I feel that Iām sleeping with the enemy. Tell me that it is ok, will you?
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The state of non-optimized apps on my M1-Mac mini (#m1chip #applesilicon #universal)
Here is the current state of yet to be updated apps to fully support Apple Silicon Macs. Itās been close to six months now and yet, those apps arenāt yet universal. Surprising to see things like 1Password 7 still not there yet. Notion, an Electron-based app, not surprising. The Mac client for HEY hasnāt been updated for a while. Many of those apps are subscription-based, a model toward development sustainability. Can we say they are failing to meet their obligations, now?
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Appleās impressive traction (#apple #ios14 #ipados14)
Two very telling graphs from Appleās development portal:
A few takeouts. First, iOS 13 is close to become a bad souvenir. Second, people keeping their iPad longer, it is reflected in the percentage of people still using devices with iPadOS prior to version 13.
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Quick Poll on Writing During the Pandemic (#blogger #writer #poll)
Today, I would like to do a quick poll among my blogger / writer friends here on Micro.blog. How did the pandemic influence your writing habits? Do you write more? Less? What could be the reasons behind the change of habit?
To help you out and start the thread, Iāll answer to my own poll. The pandemic brought me closer to be what we call āa writerā. I write a lot more. I do put more efforts into each piece. I use more tools to help me. My research goes deeper. I have many pieces in the works, all the time. I spend around 5-10 hours for writing each week.
Now, why do I write more? Because there is less noise in my life in general, thanks to the restrictions (no travels, curfew, work from home: no commute). This āsilenceā created a pool of free time. My creativity took over. So, I write. And I love it.
Tell me your story? Letās discuss.
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This is what I call a VERY productive Saturday.: three articles published (on Medium, on Numeric Citizen I/O, and on my Numeric Citizen Blog) and a monthly newsletter went out! š Time for a break. šOh, and thank you for reading my stuff! šš»
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For those who likes newsletters, I’ve got one too! It’a about Apple, photography, privacy and climate change, in that order! https://numericcitizen.substack.com/p/2021-02
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Here is a great way to put Mailbrew to work and help us create free time in our busy schedules.[@Gaby](https://micro.blog/Gaby) I get a morning email digest from Mailbrew with my Twitter timeline and funnel YouTube and Reddit into RSS. The social apps are filled with recommendations and features designed to keep you āengagedā. But thereās always an actual bottom to my unread emails and RSS feeds.
Throughout the day, the only types of apps I ājust checkā are email, RSS, and my Micro.blog client. Micro.blog gets a pass because it seems to be filled with genuinely good people that post things that make me happy ā at least thatās what I see in my timeline. :)
This setup gives me more time to read my read later items, to write, and work on other projects that actually accomplish something.
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I Tested HEY World! (#hey #heyworld)
Today, I tested HEY World. This is my non-review. It could have worked great, but itās not ready yet. One could say āNice try, buddyā.
I love their response to my test message. One thing stands out from their response, though:
āFor now, HEY World is just an experiment. ā¦
āAssuming thereās demand, weāll begin opening it up for more people soon. And then, hopefully, for all HEY for You customers. Personal blogs will finally be as easy as sending an email.ā
It seems to me that they are on the fence. They already have their tag line. They keep the door wide open. Could it be closer than we think or want to say it?
Now, what Iād like to see is how many emails like mine they get each day and what are they saying?
If they actually turn the switch on, count me in. Iāll find a use of it. For sure.
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The beginning of the end for me and Twitter?Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets
More shit like this and I guess Twitter will be my next one to quit.
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Ghostās Killer Feature (#ghost #blogging)
After reading āGhost on the iPad, a Reviewā from Tablet Habit, I tried to remember my experience when I tried the service myself. It wasnāt a good one for the thing I wanted to do with it: create a photography-oriented blog.
In recent days, it seems that the āGhostā name is gaining traction in the blogging arena. I have to wonder if Ghost is better at this than what I experienced for photography. I donāt think Iāll try it again, but I think they do have one killer feature that other platforms donāt have: the combination of a blogging platform and a newsletter publishing tool. They really look to be well integrated.
One could argue that the difference between blogging or sending a newsletter is small (Think of HEY, World). I could easily agree. But sometimes, the actual implementation of the integration between those two features can make a real difference.
Iām currently using Substack for my monthly newsletter (Numeric Citizen Introspection Newsletter) and WordPress as well as Micro.blog more my blogging needs. Sometimes, I do wish there would be less friction when Iām publishing my work. A single platform doing all of this in a basic manner would be certainly very enticing.
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On paper, yes, but how do you cope in a "streaming-only" world?Owning media > streaming services
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How many websites can a blogger have? (#blogger #blogging #bloggerlife)
How many websites a blogger can have? Good question. I do have (too?) many, each filling their own niche. On that subject, something caught my attention yesterday in the public announcement of HEYās experiment: āHello, World!ā. Jason Fried explaining why he never had a blog:
āIt was primarily because setting up a personal blog was just too much of a hassle. It felt formal, it required yet another tool, yet another place to write, yet another platform to pay for just one feature. I had to pick a template, I had to think up a name, I had to make the relationship official.ā
Sure, setting up a blog can be a hassle. For me, it is some kind of challenge and an exercise in creativity. This brings me to something I want to share with you. Iāve been working on something new in the last few days. Iām very excited about it. I started a āmetablogā. Yes, another place to publish content. What is it? Well, it is a blog about blogging.
Letās see what Wikipedia has to say about the word āmetaā:
Any subject can be said to have a metatheory, a theoretical consideration of its properties, such as its foundations, methods, form and utility, on a higher level of abstraction. In linguistics, a grammar is considered as being expressed in a metalanguage, language operating on a higher level to describe properties of the plain language (and not itself).
Why do I feel the need to create yet another numeric space? Well, I believe in focused channels in general. I wanted a dedicated space for writing about being a blogger, using tools and services to put things together and out to the world. In other words, it is more about the āhowā than anything else. I believe people like to get a look behind the curtain. I certainly do. So, I created this space where Iāll post my updates to my blogger workflow, in more detail.
So, there you have it: Numeric Citizen I/O. Youāll be able to comment on each individual post (Iām using Commento, a privacy-friendly commenting service.). I dearly encourage you to engage in discussion, ask questions or leave your comments. Thanks for visiting!
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Indeed.
Writing is fun.
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Happy birthday, Steve. (#apple #stevejobs #remembering)
Steve would have been 66 years old today. Even if I love what Apple has become over the years since he died, I miss him dearly. What a great picture of him. It is nice to see Apple and Tim Cook paying a small tribute each year.
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Hey, World (#hey #newsletters)
Each day, it seems there is always something new happening in the world of newsletters. When itās not someone famous who joins Substack, a company out of nowhere offers a brilliant idea built around supporting newsletters in one way or the other. Iām thinking of Hey in particular.
āEmail is the internet’s oldest instant self-publishing platform. Except you have to define a small audience every time you write. But what if you didn’t? What if you could just email the web to reach the world? Introducing the HEY World experimentā - Jason Fried from HEY
Yesterday, the company behind the popular HEY email client tentatively announced a new service for their customers. The idea behind is to allow any HEY users to create newsletters and publish them just by sending them to world@hey.com. The service would then post these newsletters on the web, complete with the authorās name. A simple static page, no tracking, no nothing more. I call this: simply brilliant.
The service is not currently available, only in some form of alpha-stage for internal use only. They announced it to read the room and see if there is some interest in something like this that could become some soft of hyper-distributed publishing platform.
Iām personally interested in this kind of service simply because it removes friction in the publishing process. What could be simpler than just writing the newsletter like we do with emails and then hit āsendā!? Simply brilliant. For the reader, they can subscribe by email or by using the available RSS feed.
You can read the announcement here. I like the simplicity of this implementation. Very clean. Very lean. Iām in love. Too bad this isnāt available ā yet.
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Whatās next for the iPad Pro? (#apple #ipadpro)
9to5Mac published a nice comparison between the iPad Air and the 2020 iPad Pro. The latter still hold the crown with its 120Hz ProMotion display and LiDAR. Rumours are pointing to an update for the Pro line in March. The question that comes to my mind is: whatās missing from the iPad Pro, from the hardware point of view? I mean, speed, screen, form factor are just close to āperfectā. The main challenge for the iPad line is on the software side. To me, iPadOS 15 and Apple willingness to cross boundaries canāt come soon enough. Better multitasking and external screen support would really help fix long standing issues with the iPad.
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HEY, Hey just got updated (#hey)
My go-to email client got an update today. Hey version 1.2 brings a few tweaks in the compose mode. In recent weeks, updates are more frequent as they finally delivered support for corporate email. Now, the other thing Iād like to see is a collapsible view in the feed view. I donāt see how pinch-to-zoom can be added without implementing the opposite to bring a collapsed view.
