Blogging The RSS feed for Blogging.

  • A New Home, Same Purposes

    I’m done putting the final touches to my new home, a place where I continue sharing my newsletter and publish new posts under the Friday Notes and Photo Legend Series. Instead of using Substack, I’m now on Ghost(Pro). And I love it! I hope you stay with me in this transition.

    Considering bookmarking this link: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog or adding it to your favourite RSS reader: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/rss/.

  • Like the Dislike — Put the Decision in Creator’s Hands

    Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

    So, YouTube will remove the dislike button soon from its platform. In one of his recent video, the popular YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, expresses his dissatisfaction about Google’s decision. His view echos mine. I’m not a big consumer of YouTube content, but when I do spend time there, I want to spend it on good quality content. The like / dislike ratio is an important indicator for me, and I suspect it is for many people.

    We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.

    I think the content creators should play a bigger role in all this: let them decide. The same way a blogger can turn off the comment section at the end of each blog post, people’s reactions on each video could be turned off by the author’s decision. In fact, I would argue that the ultimate decision to allow likes and dislikes should be held by the content creators. Simple as that. Make it an opt-in or opt-out default, but put the decision in creator’s hands. I would go as far as saying that the counters could stay private to the author if he or she decides so.

    To me, one of the best rewarding indicator is the one that shows how far users are watching videos. They may agree or disagree, but as soon as they watch most of it, anything else is irrelevant.

    I wonder if this decision by YouTube better serves their interests. I mean, without any ratio indicator, users have no choice but to start to play the video to decide if it is worth the time. This simple change makes people spend more time on the platform. Or is it the other way around and users will instead look at the comments to get a better idea of the video quality? I doubt it, as reading takes too much time to decide. People are busy, their attention span is short, a quick glance at the like dislike ratio is the way to go.

    Once the decision to let people react to a video is made, then the platform could finally make it available only if the user watch ā€œmost ofā€ the video. That no rocket science. There are probably other tricks that could be played to better control what’s going on in user’s reactions. But at this stage, it seems closer to be only implementation details.

    As for the creator’s mental health issue, again, I would argue that if they tend to rely too much on the likes to feel rewarded, they could turn off the option. That’s something that could help others in dealing with this.

    Glass, a photo sharing service, didn’t provide a like button from day one and doesn’t plan to add one. Is it good? Well, it depends. One thing is clear, from the comments I’m seeing posted by others, I have to ask myself: what is the difference between getting dozens of ā€œI love itā€ or hitting the ā€œlikeā€ button? Not much.

    Photo credit: Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

  • Here is my Sunday so far… how is yours going?

  • Got Things Done This Week

    I’m feeling pretty happy again this week-end as I managed to do everything that I was sitting in my blogger’s to do list (which is setup every Sunday in Craft). What you’re seeing in my summary newsletter here is only part of my content creator story.

  • I’ve been experimenting with something in recent weeks. Each Sunday, I open Craft and switch to the calendar view and create my todo list for the upcoming week. I love this. It it because I’m checking off most of the items on the list? Probably. Here’s last week plan.

    Not bad. Now, let’s prepare the upcoming week. šŸ§šŸ§‘šŸ»ā€šŸ’»

  • Hey guys! I’m still around! Been busy on Twitter recently, using Typefully. I’m still in love with Micro.blog even though I’m publishing less from here. I’m reading my timeline from time to time and I’m happy to report that it’s still a vibrant community. Keep it up!

  • Am I missing Notion? @notionhq @craftsdocsapp

    Been thinking about Notion recently. Before using Craft, I was a fan of Notion. I spent a few moments today on Notion to make some cleanup. I think I’m still a fan. Craft feels better for me as a writer tool. Yet, Notion is features rich. They keep improving it. I don’t know if they do it at a faster pace than Craft. They are certainly more mature. The team behind Craft being smaller, they don’t have the same resources. Many features are missing. But there is something to it that is missing in Notion. Craft being native on the Mac (it’s a Catalyst app), it makes a big difference. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on Notion. Who knows if I’ll come back.

  • Dear @Viticci, I’m Not a Professional Reviewer, So What?

    Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

    This podcast episode from MacStories featuring Viticci triggered quite a few reactions. Why? Because of these two sentences in the first moments of the episode talking about the iPad mini:

    ā€œYou wouldn’t want to read/or watch a review by someone who is not a professional reviewer. It wouldn’t be enjoyable.ā€

    Yep. Viticci said that. In ā€œThe value of a non-reviewer’s perspectiveā€ from Mere Civilian:

    ā€I agree, a review from a person who does not write for a living may not be enjoyable. However, I strongly disagree with the first sentence. ā€œ

    What? Really? Then, I read this reaction from Lee Peterson on his blog:

    ā€MacStories posts some great stuff but not everyone wants to read long articles, some like smaller easy to digest articles from independent writers, I like to think I do that here. I get to the point and try to respect my audiences time, does that make my opinion invalid or not enjoyable?ā€

    And here is my response. Viticci comments make him look full of himself. Period. I’m happy for him if he can live from writing reviews. I would rather read review from real end-users because the point is to get comments and observations from real use case scenarios. Sure, I like reviews from Marques Brownlee because he has well-balanced and critical point of views on a lot of stuff. It also touches the subject of what makes someone a blogger or a writer. If you write constantly, then you are a writer. Are you Shakespeare? Probably not. There is a starting point for everyone. Some will fall along the road, others will thrive. I tend to think of reviews by professionnel reviewers as synthetic reviews, where there is a lot of speed and feed talk. At some point, we want to go beyond that and have comments coming from experience. So, sure, I’d like to read comments from pilots about the real usefulness of the iPad mini. They are the one who can make a judgment on the subject.

    Last year I wrote ā€œI’m not an audiophile, but here are my thoughts on Apple’s AirPods Maxā€ which is not of ā€œreviewā€ but a collection of observations. I concluded with this:

    ā€So, do I like the sound quality of my AirPods Max? Yes. Do they sound better than my Bose QC25? Yes. By a wide margin compared with the price difference with my Bose Q25? No. But, hey, they are wireless, convenient, comfier, have transparency mode, spatial audio and they fit within Apple’s walled garden.ā€

    Is there any value in this? I think so. Should Viticci care? Certainly not. I do have genuine thoughts and opinions, and this is my ultimate right to share them with the world for exactly what they are: thoughts and observations. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

  • A typical month on Substack

    Five publications each month. Four Friday notes posts, one monthly newsletter. Some new subscribers. No comments. A lot of fun at writing and publishing these posts. I’m writing for myself. I don’t feel the pressure of regular writing schedules. It’s easier than I thought. The more I do it, easier it becomes. Substack is a slowly evolving publishing platform. I wish it was a bit more like Twitter’s Revue. Anyways. https://numericcitizen.substack.com.

  • I spend between 4 to 5 hours each month to put together my Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter.

  • Decided to put everything I read online through @Pocket. Highlights are synced to my @Readwiseio account, and I share a lot of them with comments on my Pocket page here. Feel free to follow me there.

  • I’m trying something new, again. I’m testing Revue, by Twitter. What I found is quite interesting, from a Substack user perspective. You can read all about it here, on Revue. Tell me what’s your impressions.

  • Feeling honored

    It doesn’t happen too often but when it does, I feel very proud about it. One of my blog post about the story of 1Password 8 going ElectronĀ  on https://numericcitizen.me received a backlink from Michael Tsai (look for ā€œJF Martinā€ and you’ll see the excerpt).

    Mr. Tsai does a tremendous work with his link posts in general. I can imagine how much work he puts into this each day.I would love to have a peek at his blogger workflow.

  • Doing all the things I love

    Photo by karl chor on Unsplash

    After an emotional week-end, long in coming, today I’m doing all the things I love the most: doing computer stuff — writing in a coffee shop — feeling like a real blogger — doing some photo processing — walking — biking. I know time will fly.

    Life is good. Those days are so rare. I’m enjoying every single minutes of it. Work resumes tomorrow.

    Photo by karl chor on Unsplash

  • I Love This Machine

    It is light, fast and an absolute design gem. Small, but not too small. It runs a powerful operating system. It’s highly portable. It is venerable. It is a rare ā€œspeciesā€. There is something really special about it. Furthermore, it has a real keyboard that I can trust. Battery life is good. It is out of the way. It’s the perfect device for writing and blogging.

    It’s a 2013 11ā€ MacBook Air.

    I’ll explain in the coming week or so.

  • It’s always saddening me a bit when, on the day of a new issue of my newsletter is being published, a few people decide to unscubscribe. I know, I cannot please everyone, people are busy, etc. And yet… šŸ˜’ oh well. šŸ¤·šŸ»ā€ā™‚ļø

  • I’m mostly done with the latest issue of my Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter. It’s been a year since I started this free monthly newsletter and I still love it. While waiting for the next issue tomorrow, why not give a look at the previous one here. Subscribe, it’s free!

  • I wish I could have used « Digital CitizenĀ Ā» instead of « Numeric CitizenĀ Ā». Oh well. It’s a branding issue, nothing serious.

  • A few thoughts on cleaning up my Twitter accounts following list

    Since last year, I’ve been making a major cleanup of my Twitter account. I came from following more than 2000 people down to less than 300… and my goal is to drop below 100. I’m slowly getting there. Here are a few take outs from this major cleanup of my accounts following list.

    First, there are a lot of stale accounts on Twitter, which tends to artificially increase ā€œfollowshipā€. It looks like people stopped tweeting a while ago — they left the building. Second, a bunch of accounts were iPhone developers that I started following during my indie developer era, back in 2009-2013. My interests have since then shifted to writing and blogging. I no longer need to get in touch with the developers community. Third, and this coud be the most troubling take out: Twitter has become less and less useful in my numeric life. Articles readings happens more and more though RSS feeds and Mailbrew. So, what’s left for me from Twitter? Getting reactions from people during specials events, related to Apple’s announcements. That’s pretty much it.

  • 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.