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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Hello, Bluesky. Nice to Meet You.
In my Friday Notes edition #102, I shared my thoughts about my last four months without Twitter and how calm and quiet my digital life has become. I even wrote that I might ignore Bluesky. But that was last week.
Well, it didnāt take long to contradict myself! As you might have guessed, Iām now on Bluesky as @numericcitizen (of course), thanks to a generous donator of an invite link (looking at you @Maique).
Please make no mistake; itās an experiment. Iām not planning to spend too much time on Bluesky, but Iām genuinely curious about its evolution and the traction it gets, if any.
Iām allowing myself to get on board for a simple reason: Manton from Micro.blog added support for cross-posting content to Bluesky. It didnāt take long. For me, itās like getting a seal of approval from him. I highly value his opinion on Bluesky and the open web in general. So, I made the jump without really knowing what to do next except to enable the cross-posting of my content posted on MB.
Now, I wish Bluesky doesnāt get filled up with too many dark clouds. My fingers are crossed.
PS. Iām curious how Micro.blog will push that post onto the Bluesky universe. See you on the other side.
PPS. Iām gathering my thoughts and observations for an upcoming experiment status report. Stay tuned.
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And Just Like That Micro.blog Syncs with Readwise.io
Today, I unexpectedly came across this announcement from Micro.blog: Highlights are now synced to Readwise.io, provided that you have an account with them and that you are on an Micro.blog Premium plan! How cool is that!
I immediately configured my Readwise.io connection in the Bookmarks section and exported past highlights in a CSV file. Next, I tried the feature on an article from MacRumors.
After a few minutes, I could read the archived version of the article and highlight some portions. And sure enough, my highlights were saved to Readwise.io in a snap.
The nice thing is that Inoreader also supports saving my highlights to Readwise.io. Everything going at the same place. Occasionally, I export and then import my highlights into Craft. Readwise remembers the point of my last export session.
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Just curious here, is anyone paying OpenAI to get one of their apps (like Raycast AI) to work with ChatGPT?
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Iām currently testing Little Snitch mini. I had the Little Snitch app on my radar for a while, but this week they released what could be a better & lighter solution for me. The problem? As an IT guy, I like to know what is happening in my machines, and this little piece of well-crafted software could be the answer. So far, I really like what Iām seeing. It makes me think of Flighty from a visual design perspective. It could replace a portion of Stats, an open-source replacement for iStats Menu. Iāll decide once Iām back from vacation.
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š Iāve been testing iA Presenter for a short while, and boy, I like this app. Itās not that often that we get new native apps on the Mac these days. I wonder if it is built with AppKit or other tech. Back in the day, before using Ulysses, I was a fan of iA Writer for its simplicity. iA Presenter feels so familiar and yet so rightly different. Iām impressed.
Now, looking for a use case for it! š¤
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I find Rewind to be very fascinating. Now, it comes with ChatGPT integration where I can ask for a summary of the things that I worked on last Friday, for example. Itās a great way to document my numeric life. There is a free-tier, but at 10$ a month for the paid tier, I mean, itās a lot of money. Anyone tried it?
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Introducing āMy Micro-Workflows Explainedā Series
Iāve been working on this for a while and now I feel itās time to share with the world. Follow this link, then expand each question to read the answer. It was a lot of fun to put together.
This site is going to be updated as new micro-workflows are documented or tweaked. This document is now joining my Complete Content Creator Toolset.
If you have a question, feel free to ask, using the commenting feature of the website as shown below. I welcomed suggestions for workflow improvements too! Enjoy and I hope you learn a few things along the way or that it triggers some ideas for your own workflows!
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Iāve invested so much of my time into Craft, since I left Notion. I never really left Notion, actually, but my usage of this app dramatically dropped. Only a few very limited use cases were left under the Notion umbrella. Today, I tried something in Notion for a project at work. Iām blown away to see how Craft is so far behind compared to Notion for things like databases, integration via APIs and general flexibility.
Sure, Notion has been around for much longer. Yet, I secretly wish I could use the best of both worlds: the elegance of Craft built on top of the robust Notion foundation. Iām actively looking at use cases that I could do in Notion to keep it alive somewhere in my workflow.
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Hey, just a reminder that this invite is still open if you are curious about Wavelength, a secure and simple messaging service. We’re currently 26 nice people in there! Come on and join! You can leave at any given time!
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The maker behind ToolBox Pro has passed away, as reported here and there. Itās very sad. I recently re-installed this utility on my devices for a shortcut project I started working on. There are some features in ToolBox Pro that I could use, but now Iām not so sure. What will happen to this app? Is this developer account be terminated and when? Or maybe someone is going to take over?
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Quick Thoughts and Observations About Wavelength
After reading Gruberās article about Wavelength, I decided to try it. Iām not sure I require another messaging solution. Besides using Appleās iMessage and Telegram to get news from Ukraine, the rest of my messaging app usage is anecdotic.
So, what are my thoughts about this? The initial few moments with Wavelength are not what I call an honest onboarding experience. Well, I already shared my surprise at having to enter my phone number at the very first step of the application onboarding. I thought it was brutal. I was quickly reminded that asking for our phone number is the usual thing to ask in a messaging app. Māok. š¤Ø But hey, Wavelength is still in beta, right? So, letās give them a break.
So I created a group called Microbloggers (invite link) for hosting people coming from Micro.blog (well, anyone with the link can join). As Iām writing this, there are 25 members. Iām surprised. I wasnāt expecting that many people to join. I guess my Micro.blog circle is made of very curious people. I love this. Is @Manton joining? Nope. But @Jean is among the participant, which I find cool!
My general feeling with the application is that its design reminds me of Micro.blogās simplicity. Wavelength is simple but not simplistic. I love it very much. Iām using Wavelength mainly on the Mac, but also on the iPhone. I prefer the Mac experience. But, again, Wavelength is not complete. Iām looking forward to watching its future evolution.
An interesting byproduct of Wavelength is the inclusion of a ChatGPT client inside. Itās the group called āAIā. We can interact with it at any given time, even include this āguyā in a conversation within a group, using the @AI in a message. Each request to the AI entity is kept as an individual conversation (except the one occurring within a group conversation). Itās fun, valuable and fascinating at the same time.
But now, the big question: why would someone of Micro.blog starts using Wavelength and participates in a group chat? Conversations are already happening on Micro.blog. Just like on Micro.blog, if you are a member of a Wavelength group, conversations are public. Iām still pondering this. I understand people who are also wondering about the usefulness of having Wavelength alongside the Micro.blog. Maybe the instant nature of such messaging platform is something missing on Micro.blog? This is something I liked on Twitter: this ability to enter a private conversation with one of your followers.
Well, thatās it for now.
You can join the āMicrobloggersā Wavelength group with this invite link. I plan to leave the group open as long as my experiment with Wavelength lasts.
One last thing: after launching the app for the first time, this wave animation is mesmerizing.
Another thing: my avatar photo is me at 5. š
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Testing the latest Micro.blog beta with picture upload. This is a screenshot of the current list of threads on Wavelength (invite link). š
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For those who are (very) curious about Wavelength. This in an invite link to join a private group. It is called āMicrobloggersā. Youāre welcome.
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Why a dedicated music app for Apple Music Classical? When we first learned that Apple would launch a different app for Apple Music Classical, I was surprised and wondered why not add a big tile in its current Apple Music app. Apple explains this in more detail here about the reason:
Classical music is different. It has longer and more detailed titles, multiple artists for each work, and hundreds of recordings of well-known pieces. The Apple Music Classical app is designed to support the complex data structure of classical music.
I get it. It makes sense. Now, here is another question: could there be a need to create more āgenre-dedicatedā apps offering different browsing and listening experiences? How much could an app be different for electronic music? How about creating an app dedicated to music videos? All of these apps could tap the Apple Music back end. This needs more time to think about.
Oh, no iPad app, at launch, really?
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Notion releases buttons. The world goes wildš¤Æ. Seriously, I came a cross this announcement on YouTube this morning and god I never thought buttons could be that useful in such a tool. Iām not holding my breath for such a thing in Craft, but yeah, Iām already thinking about a pretext to bring back Notion into my workflow just for the kick of using thisš.
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Two years ago, I had this wish list for Micro.blog. As much as I love Micro.blog, my list shows that a lot still needs to happen.
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WordPress to Ghost migration report. Content has been imported on Ghost. Domain name moved from GoDaddy to CloudFlare. WordPress subscription cancelled. Getting ready to rename my Ghost website to take over my blog domain. FYI: Ghost.org concierge service has done an incredible job in moving my content, a much better job than if I had used their WP plugin. I’m really impressed by the service. š
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Moving out of WordPress is such a pain. It was a pain to be there. It is a pain to get out of it. My problem: Iām moving to Ghost. I need to use their plugin, but the resulting files will get ingested in Ghost with a format that I donāt like. Each post will be inside an HTML object instead of a native Ghost post. That, I donāt like. Thinking of exporting content using WordPress export option and then translating it to Markdown. But Ghost doesnāt support Markdown files import. I could republish each post using Ulysses for example. But I cannot back-date any post when publishing.
Did anyone try importing from WordPress to Micro.blog?
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It Was (Probably) a Rough Day at Craft
Craft version 2.4.5 came out today after more than six weeks since the previous release. Usually, releases come out every two to three weeks. I guess peopleās expectations were pretty high after having waited so long.
Not only did the update bring very limited functionality, it broke a seemingly simple gesture that was used by a majority of users, mostly on the iPhone. As you might expect, this caused plenty of pushbacks on this. My guess is that it took the Craft team by surprise. Moreover, a new navigation sidebar design is also causing a some more pushback.
There is a recurring theme on Slack that people are tired of waiting for basic fixes while receiving questionable features they donāt see useful in general, not only for them. Itās a bit of a public relation crisis. Now my question, could this crisis be prevented? My short answer is yes. I gave a longer answer in my recent YouTube video… āA Proposal for Handling Users Feedback Differentlyā and published an article too.
Craft is a young company. They have plenty of things to learn, and managing expectations is certainly one of them. Managing or at the very least communicating a clear roadmap is another. Itās not enough to publish an article once a year on the companyās blog. Such messages need repetitive reminders and on more than one platform. If they would rather not share a roadmap, then they should probably stop using Slack and Circle. Those are discussion platforms where feedback and feature requests are expressed, albeit in a chaotic way.
What Iām starting to find really troubling and worrisome is the lack of fixes to obvious issues affecting many users, me included. And we are talking about long-standing issues here. Slack is full of users expressing their resentment for unfixed problems. Sure we get answers like āweāre on itā, āwill check this out, thanks for the reportā, ābla bla blaā. Actions speak louder than words. For the first time since Iām using Craft, Iām starting to wonder if I should reconsider my posture with my dependency on Craft.