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I started testing Safari’s Profiles feature that comes with iOS 17. And judging from my initial experience, just like Focus modes, it takes a lot of management and understanding to make it work to my liking. I’ll make it work, but not today.
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Thoughts on Micro.blog Tags
I’ve been playing with Micro.blog’s new bookmark tags. At first, I thought the feature was underwhelming. I don’t think there is a way to add more than one tag to a bookmark. This might be a good thing after all. Still undecided on this. Then, I discovered how you can select a tag to display associated bookmarks. Hoping for the iOS app to receive an update soon. I updated a few dozen bookmarks to add a tag. I’ll see if it makes a difference. My bookmarks are not that many and many are deleted after a while.
Update #1: someone pointed me that we can have more than one tag, simply by adding commas. Update #2: I can see Micro.blog bookmarks as a complement to Anybox, but focused on content originating from people I follow on Micro.blog / Mastodon. I don’t see that replacing Anybox anytime soon.
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Is anyone looking for Reddit alternatives? Is Beehaw such a viable alternative?
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I digg iOS 17 beta 4: much smoother. I’m guessing we will start to get new betas weekly from now on or maybe from beta 5. I still have to test iPadOS 17 beta 4, though. Are you having a similar experience?
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My analysis of Craft’s latest announcements for the summer. They think they are announcing a roadmap. They don’t. No words about eXtensions. No words for better automation support via Shortcuts. You must look at what isn’t announced to get a real view of what they did.
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Putting the final touches on my analysis of today’s announcements by Craft. I’m not sure they will like my take. I tend to be very critical of them. I’m still happy with Craft, but I’m honest in my sentiments.
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The Beginning of My Journey to Midjourney
“A man sitting in front of a retro computer doing some important work”. 👀
This is my first ever prompt sent to Midjourney. I think this image is an excellent representation of my current state. A guy experimenting with Midjourney in front of my computer. I’m blown away. What a great time to be alive! Discord, as a client of this back-end service, is fascinating. 🤯
I subscribed for one month to the basic plan. I’m not sure how I’ll use the service. One example could be to create illustrations for my blog posts on Numeric Citizen Space. Another use case would be for illustration purposes for my work. I’ll see and continue experimenting. I’ll report back here my discoveries and impressions.
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A new camera app for the iPhone. Photon. 📸 By the makers of Camera+. I’m currently subscribing to Halide since my last trip in late June. I will skip that one, but Photon feels simpler to use yet more powerful. And I like the name.
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Surprising how many Reddit posts about Notion never get an answer. It’s the vast majority in seems (3 out of 4 questions). This /r/Notion is super popular, with many subscribers (292K)! Weird.
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I'm Subscribing, Now What?
Now that I’m a subscriber of Tapbots’ Ivory client for Mastodon, what’s up with the updates? Is it because it’s summertime? Why do I feel that the development of new features and improvements has considerably slowed in recent weeks and months? After all, the roadmap is clear here.
Tweetbot followed the same trend. Not all developers or companies follow the same product releases, but regarding Tapbots, the trend is slowing and is a pattern. Now, look at Mastodon’s official client; there is an update nearly every two weeks or at least monthly. Ok, there are more than 40 contributors to the open source project of r the iOS app while Tapbots is a three-person company.
I’m ok with subscriptions, but just like the subscription itself, the commitment from the developer has to keep up. The subscription model is everywhere and is here to stay. The software and services landscape has changed forever. Expectations from customers like me are changing too. It’s too easy to grab my money regularly without showing up in the App Store “Updates” tab.
I’m watching you, Tapbots. Don’t deceive me again.
Yeah, Tweetbot was a great app, just like Ivory is, but it lacked some love in the last few years before its demise.
Ranting off. Sorry.
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On Clipboard Management & Subscription Model
I’m testing Paste, a clipboard manager software utility for Mac, iOS (link). I kind of like it. It has better management features than Unclutter, which also offers some clipboard management. I’m on a 14-day trial period, but 19 $CAN, a year for a utility without a one-time purchase option, is bugging me. Will see where it goes.
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🔎 Calling for hints: what do you use for sharing text snippets or sharing a single image with others (something like “pastebin”)… 👀
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I’m a big fan of Inoreader. Make no mistake. But one quick comment. Consider the following screenshot where you can see the article-sharing option. You can see options like Blogger, Evernote, and Twitter. The first two options are dead horses. I mean, Blogger, really? Evernote is the next in line to die. The third is soon to be a dead horse, too. No other options are provided. I’m surprised that we don’t get to send an article by Fax, too.
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Notion Can Be Impressive
I’ve been working hard with Notion at work for a unique project. It’s a 14-database setup containing 18 database relationships, many calculations as well as a place for knowledge management. I think I’m pushing the boundaries of what Notion is all about. It’s still manageable, and Notion still is speedy. I’m really impressed by what this tool can help achieve. 🤩🤯
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On Data Portability in the Modern Digital World
I recently read about the news that Evernote is currently downsizing its operations worldwide, especially in the US. It’s not the first troubling episode for Evernote. I remember when they “redesigned” their app, which created a massive pushback from the community.
I used Evernote in its early days and was appreciative of its capabilities. For some reason, I left for another solution. But for those who built massive data collections inside Evernote, now might be the time to think about going elsewhere. But there is a big gotcha: after searching for a way to export all the data, I discovered that it’s not that easy. And people are angry. This brings me to the data portability of modern software and services. Evernote’s ENEX export format was not a standard the last time I checked. A handful of apps can import ENEX files; Notion is one of them. HTML is also supported but is far from ideal. Options are limited and are seriously hindering the data portability of services like Evernote. Besides content, metadata is also critical (tags, dates, location, backlinks, etc.).
Is Notion suffering from the same potential issues? PDF, CSV, and HTML are the supported formats. 🤔
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For those interested in what others are using in their workflow, I spent some time this early morning updating My Complete Content Creator Toolset. Added Plausible + Tinylytics, among other things.
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Even as a satisfied Plausible analytics subscriber (see current analytics), I proudly support @tinylytics on my blog (see current analytics). I paid for a year to show my support in a more concrete manner.
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This screenshot is from Patreon about my profile page there. You can share a page on social networks when creating a page there. It’s a common thing to do, right? I’m wondering when Facebook and Twitter will stop to be the only two options for sharing stuff on the web. Pinterest is nice but what about the open web like Mastodon? Or Bluesky…?
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A 60-minute Video Tour of Pixelfed
I’m finally ready to share my 60-minute video tour of Pixelfed. If you’re contemplating the idea of creating your account on Pixelfed, I encourage you to do so, but after watching this video. You’ll learn about Pixelfed’s capabilities. It’s not a comparison analysis with services like Flickr or Smugmug, though.
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Finished recording an hour-long video about Pixelfed. Yep. 60 minutes. If you are on the fence, that’s the one video that you should watch. Online soon.
