Apps & Services

The yearly renewal of my WordPress.com business plan is a reminder that I need to go elsewhere. This thing no longer makes sense to me. Hard to justify. Where (and how) to move my data? Ghost?

January 18, 2023 8:02am

Privacy

I’m dropping this here. It’s a matter of time. Mark my words.

January 17, 2023 8:17am

My latest project… explaining this thing… harder than I originally thought. 😅

January 15, 2023 7:24pm

Blogging

Up until now, the Mastodon ecosystem felt like some sort of black magic to me. Today I spent a few minutes explaining to my wife what Mastodon is. As someone who already knows about Twitter and its subtleties, she got it pretty quickly. I couldn’t have done it a few weeks ago, but now, I could. I always thought that when you can explain something to someone, it is probably because you know enough about the subject. I think my explanation made sense to her, and for me! It was only then that the magic and the profound nature of the social and decentralized network became so clear to me. It was an enlightening moment, for sure. Better late than never. I instantly felt convinced that my awakening to the open web and Mastodon, a form of open web instantiation, would be a game-changer for me.

January 15, 2023 11:04am

Today, for some reason, I decided to delve into the Write.as “ecosystem”. I’ve been subscribing to this writing service for nearly a year, I post from time to time like I did yesterday. I’m not so sure to grasp all of it. To get started, I went into Craft, and through the Craft Assistant, I asked a few questions (since ChatGPT seems overloaded). I got surprisingly good results, enough to get some context around the write.freely project. Then, I started a diagram illustrating all the components of the platform. This will become a blog post for sure. Today, I have a better understanding of this project.

What I want to emphasize here is the help that a service like ChatGPT (through an app) can bring to kick-start a small project like this. I’m blown away. But I’m staying critical too. More on that eventually.

This blog post was written by me.

January 14, 2023 12:43pm

Misc

Thought of the moment: on any platform, porn is never very far. #mastodon 🫣

January 14, 2023 12:38pm

Misc

I just updated my Numeric Citizen I/O website to summarize the last few weeks of change to my blogging setup if you are curious to know more.

This post is required because Craft’s shared documents don’t support RSS feeds, sadly. 😔

January 13, 2023 11:01pm

👉🏻 Well, that was fast: @numericcitizen@techhub.social 😎

Reasons why I joined this Mastodon instance. 1) I like the name “techhub.social”. 2) It’s operated by a Canadian. 3) He speaks french and has a Ukrainian flag on his profile.. 4) I’ll be able to see the interaction between Micro.blog and a Mastodon instance.

Micro.blog will stay my home, but I’ll experiment with Mastodon, even though I said and wrote that I would focus this year. Damn.

What's Really Behind a Subscription Fee?

January 13, 2023 6:02pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Food for thought

This video from birchtree@mastodon.social resonated greatly with me today. Here’s why.

First, someone is finally calling out something about software subscriptions that I always wanted to call out myself. Every developer seems entitled to charge a subscription for whatever reason. Matt brilliantly illustrates that some subscriptions are ok, some are borderline ok, but others are not.

For applications like Notion or Craft, developers must pay costs for hosting the backend. For example, Craft’s backend seems to be on the AWS cloud. In that specific case, it’s clear that a subscription makes sense. So we must help the developers pay their bills, right?

Things get more controversial when the developers charge for a subscription, even though no backend services are required. Why would the developers go with a subscription model, then, you might ask? Well, this is where I want to chime in. The developers may not have to pay hosting costs, but what about their development time? It is as if we value infrastructure costs more than craftmanship time. It should not be this way.

I’m willing to pay for software or service using a subscription if the product comes with updates regularly. Matt has shown Tweetbot as an example. Well, this isn’t the best example because Tweetbot rarely gets any updates; it doesn’t fit my criteria for using a subscription. CleanShot X, absolutely yes. I recognize, through my subscription, not only the value of the service but the time it took to put it together and keep it running fine. I’m willing to support the developer for that through a subscription.

We pay 5$ for a drink that takes less than a minute to prepare at Starbucks. Why is it so hard to pay for developers’ time, spending weeks or months writing great software? Also, we must try to consider not only backend bills when deciding that a subscription is ok; craftmanship is something to pay for too.

January 13, 2023 7:49am

Safari counternotions counternotions mastodon social Mastodon 2023 01 12 15 29 35 2x

Something will have to happen in 2023 in the Mastodon world. I would love to join (even though I said I wouldn’t). Now that I’m starting to get it, to understand all this is about, I fail miserably at finding an instance that I can join and fit my content publishing desires.

January 12, 2023 8:38am

I really like how Substack is evolving as a platform for content creators, especially for writers. I kept my account open after moving from Substack to Ghost.org. You may disagree with the fact that you don’t really own the content or whatever, but Substack is evolving quite a bit. If I compare the features set when it started and today, it is night and day. They are really killing it. As a member of Substack (free) and Ghost (paid), I would say Substack > Ghost.

I would really like to find a niche use case for Substack. And I thought that 2023 was the year of focusing more.

January 11, 2023 8:18am

I just finished expanding the descriptions of the apps and services in my toolset.

December 27, 2022 12:47am

Misc

Thought of the day: airports are probably the most user hostile commercial environment that we can think of. Bad UX. Wrong expectations management in general. Badly designed physical areas. The list goes on and on. Convince me of the opposite. 🫤

Thinking About 2023 and My Future Creative Projects or Experimentation

December 26, 2022 10:07am

It’s the time of the year where I start to think of my upcoming year from a content creation perspective and as someone who likes to try new things. Here are a few things that I’m going to explore. First, as a subscriber of SoundCloud, I’m finding it hard to find content for my DJ mixing experimentation. More often than not, those publishing content on SoundCloud wants you to buy what's available on Beatport. Someone told me recently to use Beatport instead. I may switch from SoundCloud to Beatport for 2023. Second, I’ll continue my slow migration from Smugmug to my Exposure page. Smugmug was good but didn’t fit well with what I expected from a modern photo-sharing service. Third, I finally found a use case for recording videos with CleanShot. I’ll use it to add short video clips showing how to use specific features and tricks in Craft. Those clips will be added to The Craft Bible (a website dedicated to Craft, the document writing app) and will come as a complement to my YouTube channel. It’s fun to be full of projects.

A Few Takeaways About My Mastodon-Related Questions Today

December 25, 2022 7:21pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Thanks to all who replied to my question regarding Mastodon. What a great community over here! Never had this in fifteen years on Twitter. 😊

Here are a few takeaways (many may be obvious, duh!).

Just like for emails, one cannot "reserve" a username in the Mastodon-friendly world. Makes sense.
Registering with a specific instance (or server) is mandatory just like opening an account with an email provider.
Using a custom domain that I own is something I should consider doing.
I should probably go ahead with my custom domain name for Micro.blog before doing anything related to Mastodon.
Setting my websites (I do have a few) to display my Mastodon username or profile is a good idea too.
Setting my Mastodon profile to display my website is another good practice.
Finding an instance I can relate to is probably the most daunting task if my research is any indication. I didn’t find any so far.
I still don’t understand how a Micro.blog compatible Mastodon name is helping in any of this.
Having a registered account on a Mastodon won’t do much for me. I already get everything I want on Micro.blog. People can follow me from their Mastodon instance, and I can, too, from Micro.blog.
Thinking about all this on Christmas day shows that I don’t have a life! LOL

Anyway, happy holidays to you all! 👋

December 25, 2022 2:16pm

Any Mastodon experts in the room? One quick question: how do I proceed to “reserve” my content creator name “numericcitizen” in the Mastodon world? I understand that I need to select a Mastondon server first where the account would be created, am I right? Then, what else?

Rewind: Thanks but No Thanks

December 19, 2022 8:32am

After watching a recent video from Matt Birchler about Rewind, a constant screen recording utility for the Mac, I was excited to give my email address and get onboard the waiting list for early access to the app. I got my invite a few days ago. As much as I would like to test this app, here's this deal-breaker for me: 20 US$ per month to get on the early access program, no thank you. Why?

I understand Rewind is still in beta, but the developer wants me to pay for testing the application. Shouldn’t it be the other way around so I get a rebate when the app goes out of beta? I mean, even with a 30-day “trial” I still can’t get over this. If it’s 20 US$ a month now for the early access, what will be the price of the final product then? Even more expansive?

HEY Your invitation to the Rewind Early Access Program 2022 12 19 07 26 04 2x

Rewind makes me think of CleanShot, and I find Rewind’s pricing overly expansive if I think about the scope of both apps.

Rewind is a great idea, even if it pauses many security risks, but I’ll pass for now.

The Cost of Twitter

December 18, 2022 10:57pm

I could save more than a whopping 400$ annually by shutting down my Twitter accounts. Thanks to the potential removal of a few service subscriptions from my workflow and potentially unjustified without Twitter in my digital life: Buffer, Typefully, Mailbrew.

It’s incredible how thinking about my Twitter reliance makes me realize so many things on so many levels in my content creation workflow.

Mailbrew, Typefully and Twitter

December 17, 2022 9:27am