Apps & Services

I just realized that I could (and should) use Raycast AI to summarize articles saved into Omnivore and save the summary into the article notes. Then, I could finish up the metadata with appropriate tags. I used to do that within Craft before, but the Craft AI assistant uses GPT 3.5, limits the length of the input into the summarize request and doesn’t support “real tags” like in Omnivore.

So, I made the decision: **Bye-bye Write.as**👋🏻. It’s fun to move things around on the internet, but I pay the price for being too impulsive and not intentional in some of my decisions. It was an impulsive decision to subscribe to Write.as. There was something seductive in the post editor, and being open source is the way to go. But I have to admit that it was a diversion. Now, focusing on Micro.blog. 😊

Sidenote: I find great satisfaction in simplification. This reminds me of when I was an indie iOS developer: I remember the instants of removing lines of code and making things leaner. It procured a lot of satisfaction.

I want a dedicated domain name for The Craft Bible. I did some research this morning to find out that I can buy craft.com for a mere 4960US$! WTF! 😳 Meanwhile, thecraftbible.com is available for a mere 9.77 US$. 😅

Update: finally bought and configured thecraftbible.com with Cloud Flare.

Another bill to pay, I guess. I love Keyboard Maestro.❤️

Does anyone know if Cultured Code is actively working on Things 4? Any rumors about what could be the gist of this release? Asking for a friend who’s considering switching to Apple Reminders¹.

After watching this video, I came to the conclusion that 95% of what I’m doing with Things 3 can be done now with Apple Reminders. Tags, templates, folders, section headers, it’s all there. Some of the things are better presented in Reminders (link previews), and there is a column view that can act as a Kanban board. Something to reconsider. 🤔

My ChatGPT usage at work made me think about using GenAI in general. I came to the conclusion that you must be experienced in the field you are asking questions to be able to distinguish good answers from bullshit. My thought.

👉🏻Cast your votes guys! This is your chance to influence what’s next for Micro.blog! I did.

So, is Notion Calendar essentially a Google Calendar frontend? This is what Cron was? Is that right? What am I missing from my experiment? The first thing the app asks is to authenticate to my Google account. 😳

9to5Mac reporting about WhatsApp usage in the US:

The fact that more people in the US have been using WhatsApp recently is definitely intriguing. Source: WhatsApp has been getting more attention in the US

iMessage usage in Canada is probably similar to that in the US. I started using WhatsApp when I went to Morocco last summer. I also have a friend who moved from Canada to Mexico, and he switched to WhatsApp, so now I have to use WhatsApp to reach him. I must say that I like it. I also follow some news channels, just for fun. I like the messaging app format to get news; that’s why I also use Telegram for the same purpose: to follow news from Ukraine.

Finished my work day in Microsoft Loop because one of my colleagues insisted on using it for a special project. Boy, this thing sucks. After many months of availability, Loop feels more like a proof of concept than a productivity tool. I guess Microsoft will iterate on it, but so far, as a Notion user, meh.👎🏻 Sorry for the rant.

Google announcement regarding egress fees:

Starting today, Google Cloud customers who wish to stop using Google Cloud and migrate their data to another cloud provider and/or on premises, can take advantage of free network data transfer to migrate their data out of Google Cloud. This applies to all customers globally. Source: Eliminating data transfer fees when migrating off Google Cloud | Google Cloud Blog

This is major. I often see clients forget to consider the exit costs of any hyper-scaler in the TCO calculation. Getting into the cloud isn’t cheap. And up until today, getting out of the cloud wasn’t either. Now, for those on GCP, it is. I expect the others (looking at you, AWS, and Azure) to follow, maybe not this year, but they will, either by their choice or they will be forced. This is an anti-competitive measure to charge for egress fees.

For those who are new to Micro.blog, in this video, I talk about creating and managing pages and redirects on your Micro. blog-hosted website. I hope you learn something. Now, time for a wish: @jean and @manton could create a page on the help.micro.blog site referring to these videos that I’m creating for the platform¹! 🙏🏻

I’ve been testing Up Ahead the past day, and one thing is clear: software doesn’t have to be boring. Up Ahead is anything but boring¹.

My complete toolset page was updated to start the new year. Make sure to pay a visit if you want to make a few discoveries.

Is TextMate abandonware? The last post was in early 2020. I like this app (free). I wonder if BBEdit is the obvious replacement (which is not free!). 🤔🧐

Today, I spent some time with a friend to talk about Craft, among other things. Video available here (In French). Tagging @abc because he likes French content!

It appears that my goal of cancelling CleanShot Cloud was not a good idea. The savings wouldn’t be that substantial. I’m paying for two Macs, which is 49$ for a one-year updates license. If new releases come out after that time, the renewal cost will be 19$ to keep receiving them. I know that I’ll be upgrading each year to stay current. Updates are relatively frequent and add value. The CleanShot Cloud brings many features and I think are worth the price difference. CleanShot is central to my workflows. I use it all the time. Pricing information is available here.

Zavala, an outliner for the Mac, iPad and iPhone, recently got a series of updates after a year of silence. I’m happy to see this app is still alive and well.

Frankly, I had to read these instructions many times but couldn’t figure it out. The Kagi Safari Extension 2.0 looks like a major change in design and how it works. They had to revert back because too many users reported issues. I understand Apple’s guidelines and privacy protection might be the root cause for this less-than-user-friendly setup.