Apps & Services — Numeric Citizen Blog

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. 🤔

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.

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.

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…?

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.

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.

The next time someone tells me that Mastodon is complicated, I’ll respond: try Discord. You ain’t see nothing yet.

My experience with Pixelfed goes so well that I’m in the process of migrating my old photos from Instagram. And what comes after this migration? The IG account closure. While everyone goes wild about Threads and going in drove to Threads, I’m turning my back to this privacy nightmare and fully embracing Fediverse.

These are my first downloads and purchases from the App Store in July 2008. Since the iPhone 3GS came to Canada the year after, those downloads were done on the iPod touch. For many people, the iTunes Remote was the first download. I have a hard time explaining the remaining ones. I mean, I never was a reader of the New York Times after having completed my university degree back in 1993 and yet, this is the second download.

I spent quite some time on Pixelfed today. I shared a few photos but also started writing an article about my experience with the service. So far, I do like the experience. Much more than I originally thought. Is it because of its polished design? Or is it because of its openness and its citizenship of the Fediverse landscape? I still don’t know. I do sense a few red flags here and there, though. More on that later. But for now, I enjoy the beginning of the ride.