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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Tonight, following one of my year’s goals of focusing on and reducing my digital footprint, I deleted my Tumblr account, where each post was cross-posted from Micro.blog ➡️ Tumblr. This platform seems like a ghost town.
I’m also testing the new “Show cross-posting” feature to push this post on my Mastodon instance. Zoom zip and hop to @numericcitizen@techhub.social!
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A Typical Morning Rabbit Hole
I’m heading to Micro.blog and start reading on my timeline, I read someone’s post about note taking apps, mentioning how Bear Notes is great. I switch to Bear Notes website. After watching the introduction video, I head to the website’s blog section. Bear Notes certainly looks great. This particular blog post looks at how Bear Notes can work with other apps like Things 3 and Readwise. I wonder how I could use Brea Notes for my workflow. I’m reminded that we can export Readwise highlights in markdown files. I head to Readwise website and give it a try. I play with the export options for a while and export all my highlights, more than 1400 in total. Easy and quick. Next I wonder if I could import them in Craft. Yes I can. What about importing them in Ulysses. Yes I could. Then I remember that Ulysses, my go-to writing app, is great. And forget about Bear Notes.
Written and posted using Ulysses on my M1 MacBook Air.
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👉🏻 Day One, now available on the web. Woah! This is cool.
I’m a big fan of Day One. I use it 99% of time for documenting my numeric life (details here if you are curious). When Automattic bought them a while back, I was curious to see how it would influence its future. Now we get a much better idea. The web access maybe was an obvious “next step”, but they did a superb job of transposing most of the Day One experience on the web.
What could be the next step for Day One? Well, what about being able to blog from Day One? A dedicated “public” journal could be created and any entry saved into that journal would go online. Boom.
Now, if only I could spend more time writing personal thoughts in it.😒
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I’m still pondering about cross-posting everything from MB to my @numericcitizen@techhub.social mastodon account. Why should I, why shouldn’t I?
Hint: I don’t want to de-focus from Micro.blog as my hub for feeling part of the larger fediverse microcosm.
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I don’t know if it is a popular opinion or not, but Telegram is such a well-designed messaging app. It looks cool, and it has the right amount of gamification. Telegram.app feels native on all Apple platforms.
I use Telegram passively to subscribe to channels that publish news and information about the war in Ukraine essentially. Many of the publishers were on Twitter too, but I left this shitty platform. I don’t use Telegram for chatting with others.
I’m pondering about subscribing. there are things that I don’t like about Telegram (like insisting on getting access to my contacts and being owned by Pavel Durov). I don’t like the owner’s attitude toward Apple’s App store rules in general. He’s Russian with Ukrainian origins. Thankfully, is fled Moscow a long time ago to live in Dubai, a safe haven for many Russians these days. The fun fact is that Telegram is hugely popular in Ukraine and serves both sides in good and bad ways.
Are there any Telegram users here? Do you share my sentiment? Are you subscribing to the Premium tier?
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Nothing more to add.Micro.blog things I like:
- No ads
- No likes
- No brands
- No metrics
- No algorithms
- No influencers
- No follower count
- No suggested/sponsored posts
- Reverse chrono social timeline
- Bookshelves feature
- Simple, clean, UI
- Customizability
- Photos feature
- Friendly folks
- Blog hosting
- iPhone app
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Mailbrew still works but sadly feels increasingly abandoned by its founders fooling around with TypeFully, a writing tool for Twitter. Now Twitter is dead. TypeFully too. And Mailbrew is dying too. How sad this story is.
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👨🏻💻I’ve spent quite some time recently on Inoreader, and I must say that I like it a lot. I’m on their generous three-month subscription. I can test everything without worrying too much about hitting the paywall. I must say that I’m more of an RSS-type-of-guy which fits Inoreader’s mission perfectly. I’m seeing fewer and fewer reasons to consider Matter or Readwise’s Reader… who knew.
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Are there any Inoreader subscribers here? How do you take advantage of the service’s features? Do you use the Broadcast feature? How about tags and annotation features?
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Eternally Unsatisfied With My Reading Apps
I’ve been a News Explorer RSS reader user for a long time. It’s a less-known RSS reader compared to Reeder or anything else. It’s really good, but missing a few things that keep bugging me. There is no web version, no filtering feature, and no text highlighting either.
I started testing Inoreader yesterday and Feedbin. Both seem good RSS readers, but none of them is satisfying. In fact, I’m never satisfied with anything when it comes to RSS readers and reading applications or services in general. It’s been going on forever.
Read-later apps are unsatisfying, too, for me. None of Instapaper, Pocket, Matter, and Readwise’s Reader satisfy my needs. Readwise is too busy and still immature, Matter is nice, but some things like tags handling don’t scale well.
The perfect combination of a read-later function with an RSS reader doesn’t exist. If I were twenty years younger, I would write my own.
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Just found out about iA Presenter, from the makers of iA Writer. Looking at the website, this app looks like a superb macOS app! I can see a specific use case here for me: writing queue cards for when I’m recording my YouTube videos. Is anyone on the beta from TestFlight here? Any thoughts?
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Any Little Snitch users here? Thoughts? I’m using NextDNS to block tracking sites, but what would be the added value of using Little Snitch?
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I’m super happy to see Ivory going out to light and all. I was on the beta, downloaded the official release and played with it a bit. It’s really a great client. For now, I’ll let things settle down and see how Tapbots delivers on its promise. I’m focusing on Micro.blog for now, but I’m curious about Mastodon ecosystem evolution. I don’t want a new Twitter in disguise. Micro.blog in its current form is a very good compromise.
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I’m seriously warming up to Readwise Reader. I get the feeling that I’ll be able to build a database of references and notes while I’m reading. The close proximity to Readwise is also a plus. It’s really geeky stuff for power readers, which I’m probably not. I’m waiting for the filtered view builder, they are working on a simplified and more visual version. Filtering the feed’s content by removing things like “Deal” or “Special Deal” would help remove some noise. I also keep an eye on the mobile app.
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So, the only way to set a profile image in IFTTT is to use one of the following services?? Not possible to upload a picture. My profile image is now blank because I deleted my connection to Twitter. Weird.
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On the web, I prefer Matter, but on the iPad, I think I prefer the Readwise Reader. In particular, I prefer the customizable home screen of the latter. But I prefer the reading experience of the former. Today that is what it is. Tomorrow? Who knows. 🤷🏻♂️
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Integrating Adobe Enhance Voice Tech Into My Video Production Workflow — In Search of a Solution
I don’t know if anyone knows about this free web tool by Adobe: Enhance Voice (link), but it is really impressive (@MattBirchler knows about it). Here is what I’d like to do: find a way to integrate this tool into my video production workflow.
So, I’m producing YouTube videos with ScreenFlow (my YouTube Channel). So far, I’m ok with the results, but I think my voice, and the sound in general, could be improved (I’m using the Blue Yeti Microphone, but Adobe Enhance Voice is really impressive).
So, how can I:
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual
- Extract the audio track
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Replace the audio track in my Screenflow document
- Export the final video
Step 3 and 5 are not possible in the current release of Screenflow. Any suggestion of tools I could use instead?
Here’s what I know or already use:
- Permute allows for easy conversion of audio files, including converting video files into the audio-only version.
- QuickTime Player can export the audio track only out of a video file.
- I know how to use iMovie.
- I’m a happy user of Audio Hijack
- I don’t really want to get rid of Screenflow. LumaFusion, FinalCut Pro, etc., maybe could do the job here, but it would be ok if I could find a simple utility that can replace the audio track easily instead.
This question has been posted to the Screenflow Telestream forum.
Update #1: corrected a few typos but added the solution using iMovie. Here’s the solution.
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual and export the video
- Extract the audio track using Permute in .MP3 format
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Convert .WAV into .MP3
- Launch iMovie and create a new Project
- Import the produced video in step 2
- Detach the audio track and delete it
- Add the enhanced version of the audio track
- Export the final video using iMovie’s share option
Voilà!
Update #2: there is a major issue with this process, the video and audio are not in sync over time, even though both files are of the same duration. This is not something easy to fix. Back to the drawing board. 😒
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Matter is officially a paid service (if I want to get all the goodies). Well, my queue is full of unread articles. So this should be an excellent indicator to decide whether or not to subscribe.
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Today, from WordPress:
Your favorite Jetpack-powered features from the WordPress app – including Stats, Notifications, and the Reader – have a new home: the Jetpack app! These features will soon be removed from the WordPress app so that its focus will be on essential user and publishing tools. With the Jetpack app, you can expect the same attention to core features like managing and editing content, as well as next-level tools to grow your audience on a trusted platform.
The JetPack app is now officially being pushed out, and WP asks site owners like me to consider transitioning to JetPack for managing the website and viewing stats. I’m not sure why the one-app-fits-all" is considered in need of a rework. I’ve read the blog post and couldn’t find a real reason worth forking these apps into two. Even more strange, when you run both WordPress and JetPack on the same device, the latter suggests removing the former from the device. Anyways…
I’m not sure if I want to spend too much energy trying to understand what’s going on. The reason is that I’m in the early stage of planning my migration off the WordPress.com platform. It will require some serious planning and some tedious work, but I’ll move out, before the end of the present year.
