Apps & Services
I love apps and enjoy testing new services to improve my workflows. These posts discuss my experiences with them.
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Digg is finally in public beta. They also introduced a refreshed design (compared to what was available during the private beta), and I think it’s way better. Also introduced are user-defined communities. It’s currently limited to two per user, which I think is fair. This is my profile. I was looking to create a community, only to realize I was about to dilute myself again. My community is here.
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Apple Creator Studio - A Few Comments
On today’s announcement by Apple: Now we know why it took so long for Apple to update Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Where is iWork? Why no iWork subscription without the pro stuff? I don’t understand this bundling of pro apps with consumer-generalistic apps. Is Apple trying to upsell Pro Apps to consumers via a new subscription? They might be. I don’t think pros want to get Numbers or Pages, though. Icons are utterly un-Apple, or Apple has become something I no longer relate to software-design-wise. Continue reading →
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It appears that Photomator in MIA in today’s announcements which doesn’t bode well for its fate. 😔
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I just discovered that Raindrop.io offers many integrations, including n8n! I might need to reconsider my bookmarking strategies, yet again. I’m currently using Anybox. 🤔 I’m exploring ways to move the data around. If you made a similar move, I’ll be more than happy to learn about your experience. For now, I’ll prompt ChatGPT for strategies.
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My Defaults as of 2026-01-10
Changes from the last edition are in bold. ✉️ Mail Client: Fastmail 📨 Mail Server: Fastmail 📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes ✅ To-Do: Things 3 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Photomator 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader 📇 Contacts: Contacts 🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac + ChatGPT Atlas 🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Claude AI 🔎 Search: Kagi Search 💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad) 🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox 👓 Read It Later: Inoreader 📜 Word Processing: Ulysses, Craft 📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers 🛝 Presentations: Keynote 🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders 🧑🍳 Meal Planning: None 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers 🗞️ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news) 🎶 Music: Apple Music 🎧 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts 🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain & Apple Passwords 👨🏻💻 Blog hosting: Ghost, Micro. Continue reading →
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I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am by the value Tinylytics is offering. Just finished configuring recently added options. What you see is my Blips analytics dashboard. Hat down to Vincent.
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And the next n8n project is?
My next project with n8n automation is to build a replacement for Mailbrew. 🫣 I’m facing many architectural decisions: How do I fetch content (web or RSS feeds)? How do I extract articles for more efficient summarization? How do I combine the results? How do I control the size of the summary? Do I need some form of temporary data persistence within the workflow? How do I minimize LLM credits usage? Continue reading →
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I’m making quite a bit of progress with my Micro.blog UI frontend to the point where I’m wondering how much of the whole experience I could rebuild using Vercel and Claude Code. Challenge?
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I decided to try building a small website on GitHub Pages. I have no idea if I’ll ever make something useful out of it. Since I’m spending some time with GitHub, I have found some interesting side features.
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I saw many times people talking about Ghostty for Mac, a terminal emulator. My question: why use Ghostty instead of Apple Terminal? I just downloaded it and my first reactions are: less window chrome, bigger windows, split-window mode, better font and better default colors scheme. Adopted.
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MacUpdate Is Dead?
From MacUpdate website: Unfortunately MacUpdater 3’s promised lifetime of “until 2026-01-01” is now over. There will be no MacUpdater 4 or any continuation of the MacUpdater product from us. Our daily maintenance has been stopped and we don’t verify updates anymore. MacUpdater 3.5 is now unsupported but free-to-use including all previous “Pro” features. WTF?? 😩 Continue reading →
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In 2026, I’ll Keep an Eye On…
I’m already turning my attention to 2026, in no particular order: Ghost.org next moves, now that are a better Fediverse citizen. Plausible Analytics, which seems to be overkill for my needs but I might find a use for their service exposure via their APIs. Craft because they finished the year with a bang and I’m super anxious to learn what’s next. Apple because of Apple Intelligence and Siri promised updates. Will they deliver? Continue reading →
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In my piece this published this morning, I totally forgot to mention the possibility of enshittification of AI offerings by Anthropic and OpenAI, which could trigger some decisions on my part if this happens. For unknown reasons, I have better trust in Anthropic staying away of this for a longer time than OpenAI.
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I got a lot of positive reactions about my Micro.blog front end for writing and publishing posts in a simplified user experience. I wasn’t expecting that. To me, it might mean that it’s filling a small void in Micro.blog offerings. Thankfully, Micro.blog is an open “platform” which allows such experiments like mine.
Some people asked me to make my app open source. I’m hesitant. I don’t want to feel the pressure of having to support others in using my work but who would like to add their own touches. I think, for now, I’ll respectfully decline. I would rather encourage anyone to follow the same route that I did and experiment with the tooling. 👾
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I won’t write my predictions for 2026, but I want to write about how I envision using different AI offerings to support my creative journey next year.
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Craft & Inoreader in 2025
In 2025, two notable apps or services received numerous and meaningful updates: Craft and Inoreader. Craft received long-awaited tag support, with APIs and MCP support added. The latter two are quite transformative, and I expect 2026 to bring many new users to the app. Personally, I’m barely scratching the surface of Craft APIs. Craft is at the center of everything that I create, and I couldn’t think of a better app to support my creative journey. Continue reading →
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It’s fascinating how building things with Claude AI and Vercel made me forget about my desire to expand my knowledge and experience of Apple Shortcuts. I no longer see the need for that. My wish, though, would be to see Apple bring a way to build Shortcuts using Apple Intelligence.
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I see a lot of interest in my experiment with Vercel and Micro.blog if the reactions are any indication. I’m going to do a small write up about this. I didn’t expect my experiment to be successful. Can’t wait to share more details about this on meta.numericcitizen.me.
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One of the reasons for building my own web app for posting to Micro.blog: having the title field and categories shown by default 😁🤣