Apps & Services The RSS feed for Apps & Services.

  • How fast do you need your internet to be?

    A recent post from MereCivilian about subscribing to a fast Internet service triggered this one. Here are a few reasons for having fast Internet at home: 1. You’re many people (four or more) living under the same roof who are active Internet users; 2. You’re many users who are doing streaming at the same time; 3. You’re downloading or uploading really big files all the time; 4. You’re playing online games; Other than that, high-speed internet is useless as each micro-transaction (small HTTPS requests) won’t benefit from the bandwidth available. Continue reading →

  • As much as I like #Ghost as a hosting service for my monthly and weekly newsletters, the lack of community, commenting, and recommendations by other readers make me wonder if I made the right move when I left #Substack.

  • When Uber is Being Rude

    I recently came back from a one-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico. The first thing I did before leaving the airport to go home was to call an Uber taxi. My last experience with Uber went well, but it was quite a while. Boy, this time it was a surprising and unexpected experience. After ordering the car, I was met with a plethora of notifications and ads within the application and via Uber Eat to order food on the go or before arriving at home. Continue reading →

  • On Time Machine Backups Over Network

    If you own a desktop Mac, you probably use an external drive for Time Machine. If you use a portable Mac, most likely not, and according to the Tidbits article, you’re not alone. The portability of the Mac is hindered by having an external drive hooked permanently. I, personally, have a different strategy: I use a Synology NAS DS720+ with Time Machine enabled to do my backups over the wireless network. Continue reading →

  • On Carrot Weather — Is It That Cool?

    Why is Carrot Weather so popular? I’m a weather enthusiast and I like trying new weather-related applications. I use many all year long, but Carrot Weather is not part of my application arsenal. They recently introduced updated weather maps, but to get a sense of them, I would need to subscribe for a year subscription. Most of the interesting features are available in the premium tier. I like the maps feature, but I wonder how better they will get compared to the ones that I’m already using in MyRadar. Continue reading →

  • Challenge of the day: exporting posts from WordPress to Ghost

    Well, well, well, it seems that data portability among CMS is an issue. Who knew! I’m trying to find an easy way to move a few posts from my WordPress blog into my Ghost website. Exporting data from WordPress seems like an all-or-nothing situation. There are a few plugins available for this. The problem is that the content isn’t easily imported into Ghost. The latter does have a plugin, but it doesn’t support selecting posts. Continue reading →

  • I’m mostly done with my love letter to Cleanshot, a screen grabber utility for the Mac. I’m close to 500 words. I should be paid for doing this. Oh well… what passion can make us do…

  • I Just Paid $50 to Wikipedia

    I think it’s worth it and it’s important. The transaction was easy (Apple Pay), which makes a big difference. Consider this an impulsive buy. Continue reading →

  • Micro.blog Officially Launches Support for Newsletters

    So, as expected, yesterday Micro.blog introduced support for newsletters in the premium subscription tier. The official announcement follows: Today we’re announcing a major new feature for Micro.blog Premium subscribers: email newsletters. Micro.blog can now manage, letting readers subscribe to your blog and receive emails for new blog posts. It’s deeply integrated into Micro.blog and works great for collecting multiple microblog posts together automatically. Here is why I upgraded my subscription plan almost instantly after the news came out. Continue reading →

  • About Micro.blog Upcoming Update — Newsletter Support

    Apparently, it looks like tomorrow, Micro.blog is going to add support for newsletters. A few weeks ago, I can’t remember exactly, Manton posted a screenshot (which I can no longer find) where a “newsletter” item was shown on the left sidebar on the Micro.blog main site. I’m very curious about Micro.blog take on newsletter. Micro.blog is all about simplicity without being too simplistic. If the feature is available to entry-level paid tier, I’m might enable it and use it myself. Continue reading →

  • Changing my Mind

    Boooooo
 Well, it looks like I changed my mind. I didn’t remember that I wrote this blog post following the release of Ghost 4.0. At the time, I didn’t see the benefit, but now, it’s quite another story. I really love Ghost and I think I made the right choice for a few significant reasons: Ghost comes with APIs, which enable all sort of possibilities to improve my workflow. Ghost editor is much more powerful than Substack’s. Continue reading →

  • Big Update to Timery — I Love It!

    Timery received a major addition in this week’s update: REPORTS! As I wrote recently, I’m tracking the time I spend on my blogging and content creation activities. Timery is my go-to client for Toggl, a time tracking service. Having access to reports within the application, instead of heading to the Toogl’s website is really helpful. Now, looking forward for Timery to support macOS Monterey’s Shortcuts! Continue reading →

  • Readwise.io Reader App — A Potential Game Changer?

    In a recent announcement by Readwise.io: We’re now in position to reimagine aspects of the digital reading experience itself, from how you annotate a document, to how you navigate. Readwise as you know it today isn’t going anywhere, but this is our future. And: With the new Readwise reading app, not only will these resurfacing and syncing features not go away, they will be enhanced through tight integration into the reading experience. Continue reading →

  • I’ve been experimenting with time tracking. I’ve been doing it as an experiment at first, but now it’s part of my workflow. I’m using Toggl and Timery. Ask me anything.

  • My Go-To Internet Destination for Reading: Mailbrew Website

    I recently noted that I’m spending much more time on Mailbrew website for my newsletters reading rather than in HEY Feed. Why is that? Well, I think there are a few sticky features in Mailbrew that helps me better process information tidbits. First, the reading experience is great. The “Read” button next to a URL will bring a nicely formatted version of an article from a URL. Second, A “save” button is handily available for me to use if I want to keep a piece of information for later use. Continue reading →

  • I’m thinking about subscribing to Instapaper and Readwise to help me gather and manage text quotes and other tidbits. The former is a “classic” while the later seems a work in progress and not exactly easy to grasp for me. Your thoughts?

  • The race is on. Can’t wait for the moment Notion’s APIs go live and Craft be updated to support them so it can suck all my data from Notion. #notionhq #craftdocs

  • Anyone here using a CDN to accelerate their website access around the world?

  • Anyone using @Readwiseio here? My trial expired. A few thoughts: their app feels “strange”; like a big “webview”. Workflow not yet clear to me. No Safari Extension support. Not cheap. Seems popular. You’re thoughts?

  • HEY World, it's now official! (#hey #heyworld #blogging)

    They flipped the switch to ON. HEY World is LIVE! I’m so glad, curious and already excited to use this other channel to share my written content with the world. I’m already thinking about my first post on this new platform. Furthermore, I think this addition brings even more value to an already useful service, on which I depend every single day. Recently, I asked: How many websites can a blogger have? Continue reading →