-
Giving without asking in return (#bloggerlife #blogging #writing)
Greg Morris recently on his blog about trying hard as a blogger to make something out of all this:
“I asked, I’m giving, and I am still blogging — now more than ever.”
Strangely, pure coincidence I guess, I wrote this last week-end “The journey is the Reward” in which I said:
“It doesn’t really matter if nobody comes and reads my stuff here or there. What matters is the process and the thinking that took place behind my writing. It’s all the small moments where I had to pause, think, read, learn and write. It’s about feeling creative. Alive. The rest is just another tiny drop in the numeric ocean. A few will taste it, and most won’t. That’s the life of a blogger and a writer in a sea of abundance. So, I’ll keep doing it, no matter what.”
The journey is really the reward for me.
-
Desktop vs Laptop vs Mobile vs Tablet (#blog #bloggerlife #analytics)
Here is something absolutely fascinating and surprising to me. According to my main blog’s visitors statistics, thanks to my recent switch to Plausible, over the last thirty days, the distribution of devices type used to visit my blog puts the tablet far behind the desktop, the laptop and the smartphone. One would think the tablet form factor to be much more popular.
The iPad is massively popular. I’m still in love with this form factor after all these years. These numbers doesn’t jive.
-
Our secret? Optimizing workflows (#blogger #writer #tools)
I like to see other people talk about their own writing or blogging workflows. Here’s an interesting tidbit from Greg Morris about using Apple’s Shortcut to publish to WordPress:
“Shortcuts is a really robust way to publish to WordPress and not have to use the WordPress app or third-party app.”
Apple’s Shortcuts are also an important part of my blogger workflow. Since I’m using Ulysses, which supports publishing directly to WordPress, I don’t need a shortcut for that. But for many other small things, it is a valuable tool in my arsenal. Shortcuts are an interesting technology within the iOS and iPadOS ecosystem.
-
Being robbed, again (#stealing #robbing)
Someone stoled my most recent article. I hate when this happens. I guess my article was good enough for this guy to bother.
This morning, I got a pingback on WordPress for an article being published elsewhere as shown below.
Someone copied my latest article “The Ultimate Twitter Tips and Tricks for Mastering Your Twitter Experience”. By doing so, he forgot to remove one of the URL pointing back to another previously published article, “My Review of Mailbrew: a Powerful and Time-Saving Internet Information Aggregator”, I was notified via a pingback. I paid a visit to the “publisher” and sure enough, 90% of my article was reproduced. The guy removed the screenshots but left the captions (weird). The title was modified too. The conclusion was removed. Here is what I wrote to the “published”:
I also posted the same thing on the comment section but comments being moderate, I don’t think the guy will republish them. I will see what happens. This is the second time this happens to me.
Meanwhile, The Startup magazine on Medium accepted my article submission. More than 750K followers can see it from the magazine homepage. 😃
-
That one was hard (#blogging #writing #article)
I just published one of my most difficult to write article in a long time. It is about transforming your Twitter experience to make it more focused, enjoyable, tailored to your personal interests. I’ve been working on it for the last few months. Along the way of writing this long piece, my Twitter experience was profoundly changed. I’m pretty happy with the end results. If you’re on Twitter, consider giving a look to this guide. Hope you’ll like it.
“The Ultimate Twitter Tips and Tricks for Mastering Your Twitter Experience”
-
Dear bloggers, let’s not forget about the link posts (#blogging #writing)
In “A Love Letter to the Link Post”, CJ Chilvers lament the lost of link posts from the blogosphere. Link posts marked the debut of so many websites raison d’être back in the nineties:
“At that time, they weren’t even called blogs. You’d simply update the front page of your website every day with a few interesting links you discovered since the day before.”
I love link posts. I follow many bloggers just to have a peek at their discoveries and comments about them. A big portion of my monthly Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter is built around sharing a curated content of links that I find interesting. They generally fit within the boundaries of my deep interests. Link posts within newsletters = 🥰
In summary := Link posts > comments on a social network.
-
Optimizing my blogger workflow (#writing #tools #workflow)
This is a test with (redacted) currently in alpha, which introduces support for posting to Micro.blog. I’m a big user of (redacted). This new feature alone could significantly enhance and simplified my blogger workflow. I’ve been waiting for this feature for a long time. When the update is ready, on iPad or the Mac, it means that I’ll be able to start the initial writing in Craft, then export to (redacted) using the TextBundle format, finish the editing in (redacted), then publish to Micro.blog. On the Mac, the same sequence applies, rendering MarsEdit unnecessary. How cool is that? Optimizing my workflow is very satisfying. 😎👨🏻💻
_This is a first post with (redacted), things could break. _
-
About My Friday Notes on @Medium (#writing #blogging #medium)
Today, I decided to remove my Friday Notes stories from Medium paywall. In other words, you can read them without paying a penny to Medium. They can be found here, in my Numeric Citizen Tidbits Newsletter. Please, if you like ’em, give ’em some hands claps! Thanks. -
Wordpress.com: six years already (@wordpress #blogger #bloggerlife)
I got this notification in the Wordpress.app this morning. Six years already. Over the years, I became a paying subcriber of their Business plan. Automattic offers great support when you need it. But in the least year or so, I noticed a change in the way they do business with us, paying members. There are a lot of reminders about additional services available to us. which aren’t free, by the way. They keep advertising their ExactMetrics service that I don’t need with tricks that I don’t appreciate as shown in the second screen shot above. Recently, they started to advertise WordPress courses on the main admin page on WordPress.com. I really don’t like the trend. And this story by Alan Ralph doesn’t help either.
-
Don't forget about RSS feeds (#blogger #rss)
Paolo Amoroso writes on his blog:
Back in the early days of blogging, the tech press bashed RSS out of existence as it was supposedly too complex for ordinary users. To the point new bloggers don't even know what RSS is, some recent blogging platforms don't support RSS, and the blogs of new startups sometimes don't provide RSS feeds.
It’s a shame in a world where open standards are on the way out. RSS feeds are another important part of Podcasts, another open standard where big tech would like to monetize, i.e. make it proprietary.
Amoroso continues:
The readers who subscribe to your RSS feed always see all of your posts. No matter what Google, Facebook, or Twitter decide.
A long time ago I decided my blogs feeds would push the complete content of the articles. As I don’t have ads on my blogs, I don’t really care if the readers consume the content from the RSS feed only. RSS feeds are conduits who escape any algorithm-based feeds. It’s the most direct connexion between a blogger and their readers.
For the best part, Amaroso nails it:
They are the readers you want. The superfans who share your work. They may be bloggers themselves and link to your posts from theirs, or enable other opportunities such as guest blogging or podcast interviews. Those few RSS subscribers are much more engaged and valuable than the many who don’t even click links on social media.
If you know how to use RSS, you’re my best friend, you are more then welcome.
You can find my main blog feed here. For my micro blog, the feed is here. Hope you enjoy.
-
A new kind of goal for me - writer engagement (#writing #blogger #bloggerlife)
Writing is an important part of my life. It’s all about feeling creative, thinking, taking a pause of everything else. As a blogger, I like when people stop by and take the time to read my blog articles and then response with a comment. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like. I would say, one percent of my visitors will do it.
For 2021, I decided to set a new goal for myself: stopping by, taking the time to drop a meaningful comment on a blog post or an article from someone else. I call this goal writer engagement. Some platforms are easier to interact with than others. I like both Medium and Substack for this. Responding to an article or a newsletter is just a few clicks away.
So, today, I dropped two comments. One comment to a post from MG Siegler about writing more often on medium. The other comment about a way to consider the iPhone 12 Pro Max as a tool for photography, from a too technical point of view.
So, will you drop a comment today? Feel free to engage too and maybe start a conversation, why not!
-
Why I didn’t write a personal year in review for 2020 (#blogger #bloggerlife #writing)
The year 2020 came to an end without me posting my personal year in review. You might wonder why. I read many reviews in the last few days. Most of them are delightful to read as they contain gems about personal lessons learned, personal discoveries, etc. To write those reviews, you have to be prepared for that particular intention to write about it later. Without notes, it’s nearly impossible and takes too much time to prepare. It also would be too easy to miss essential tidbits.
What about 2021? Good news, for 2021, I want to be ready. Now it’s the best time to get organized. All year long, I’ll be using the excellent notes taking application called Craft. I already started to put things down. The picture at the top of this post is a glimpse at my journaling space structure, where personal notes will be confined all year long. I’ll use a monthly section for each domain or theme I want to touch on in this future year in review. I’ll see where it goes.
-
Pinboard, Pocket, Raindrop, Instapaper, Notion? Which tools is best for you? (#blogger #bloggertools #writers)
Alan Ralph on Why I Use Pinboard As My Reading List
I’ve mentioned before that I use Pinboard for bookmarking webpages of interest so that I can refer to them later. I realize this might seem like an odd choice, given that there are more obvious candidates such as Pocket or Instapaper, so I’ve decided to summarize my reasoning
I could add other apps and services like Raindrop (which I tried) or even Notion (which I love) as places to save bookmarks. It’s tempting to use more focused tools to fill a very specific part of a workflow. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of preference or workflow optimization (you can read about my recent workflow update).
-
The Substack "clique"? (#substack #writers #newsletters)
Is Substack the Media Future We Want?
“on Substack, the most successful newsletters are almost always written by people who have already cultivated an audience at traditional publications or built up a following elsewhere.”
and
Substack is a natural fit for the influencer, the pundit, the personality, and the political contrarian.
Starting from scratch on Substack is quite a challenge. From the graph shown above, this is the curve of my subscribers count. It plateaued. The new reader feature coupled with the discovery tab didn’t move the needle at all. We have to wonder if Substack is just a clique in disguise.
You can read my past newsletters by visiting my Substack page. Be sure to subscribe, it’s free!
-
Thinking of closing my Google Analytics account − who knew (#googleanalytics #privacy @mailbrew @plausiblehq)
Mailbrew shared a blog post about the services they use internally for their needs. As a die hard fan of Mailbrew (see my profile here), it’s interesting to see what SaaS they use for their internal use. Especially interesting to me, Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics. I’m currently using Google Analytics which is free but, you know, it’s Google and it’s too complex for my needs. On the eve of a new year, it would be a nice time to start fresh in that regards. I’m currently testing the service as I write this! I never thought closing my Google analytics account could be a thing. Every new year is the occasion to do things differently, don’t you think?
-
Tempted by Vimeo, again. (#vimeo #YouTube #experiment)
I have too many projects on my plate to complete and experiments that I want to try. Today, I’m thinking about subscribing to Vimeo, again. I used to have an active account where I would publish photo processing session recordings with voice over. These sessions are still available by the way (one example here). I stopped doing those because they were time consuming to create and publish.
Subscribing to Vimeo’s first paying tier is not cheap. I know what you’re thinking, why not use YouTube which is free!? First, I don’t like YouTube and the business model behind it. I don’t like to depend on Google for my stuff. Vimeo is better in my opinion as a video content platform, for what I want to do. I prefer their embedded video player compared to YouTube’s. I don’t want ads on my feed and on my content. For all these reasons, Vimeo > YouTube.
My Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/numericcitizen
Now you know. 😎
-
What do you use as a shortcut menu utility on macOS? (#apple #macOS)
I’m currently writing a piece about the tools and services I use to help me be more efficient in my blogger workflow. Currently looking at Shortcut Bar - Instant Access on the Mac App Store. I had this utility in my list that I never bought but the features are exactly what I would like to get. Is there any alternatives to this utility? It’s a bit on the expansive side and is not yet updated for M1 Macs and Big Sur look and feel.
-
A few thoughts on Twitter's Space feature (#twitter #experience #audio)
Today, unexpectedly and for the first timr, I had a chance to experience Twitter’s Space. It’s a virtual room of twitter users who can speak to each other. When there is an open space, a small icon appear at the top of your timeline among twitter fleets. Tapping on it allows you to enter the space. By default your mic is disabled. You have to request permission first in order to be able to speak. There is a speaker who controls people’s requests to speak. People who are listener can react using emojis. It’s pretty interesting, much more interesting than audio tweets in fact.
I spent maybe ten minutes chatting with the space owner about things like COVID-19, confinement in Christmas time and how to use Twitter space. Others in the room were just listeners. It was pretty cool. I can see myself using this instead of doing a podcast for example. It’s easier to setup up, doesn’t require a distribution platform to maintain. I could setup a space to talk about Apple, photography, privacy or climate change. Can’t wait to try it out with my followers, once the feature officially rollout.
-
The unexpected good side effect of COVID19 on me as a blogger (#writing #blogging #blog)
Who knew COVID-19 would have a very positive side effect on me. It started on March 13th of 2020, and it’s still going on nearly uninterrupted. What is it? I have more time than ever to focus on my writing and publishing activities. Why?
As I’m working from home from mi-March of this year, I no longer have to commute. I save countless hours per week just because of this. On top of that, consider many activities on the weekend that no longer can take place because of the on-and-off restrictions in place.
I never wrote or published as much stuff in the last nine months as in the last year or so. I have a lot of projects in my head, small and more significant. I did spend quite a lot as I no longer travelling on software, services, work-from-home equipment. I also have more time for reading than before, it makes a difference.
COVID-19 is transformative at the society level but also a personal level. There are things that I don’t want to return when COVID-19 is no longer among us. Time is a precious resource, once you have it, you don’t want to mess with it.
-
Too bad @AppleNews, this could have been fun 😔 (#applenews #blogger #bloggerlife #writer)
Now it’s official, Apple is no longer accepting blogs on their news platform, Apple News. I got my rejection mail today (read about my original submission). I understand Apple News as being a… news platform, yet I think Apple is missing an opportunity here. Why? One word: Substack. Another word: Medium. Apple could have done to the written space what they did for the audio world with podcasts. Apple could have created a special place on Apple News for individual writers, not only bloggers per se. This would have been a message of inclusion, diversity and openess. Instead, Apple is again sending a message about begin a walled garden, exclusion, elitism. Too bad.
