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Quick Thoughts and Observations About Wavelength
After reading Gruberās article about Wavelength, I decided to try it. Iām not sure I require another messaging solution. Besides using Appleās iMessage and Telegram to get news from Ukraine, the rest of my messaging app usage is anecdotic.
So, what are my thoughts about this? The initial few moments with Wavelength are not what I call an honest onboarding experience. Well, I already shared my surprise at having to enter my phone number at the very first step of the application onboarding. I thought it was brutal. I was quickly reminded that asking for our phone number is the usual thing to ask in a messaging app. Māok. š¤Ø But hey, Wavelength is still in beta, right? So, letās give them a break.
So I created a group called Microbloggers (invite link) for hosting people coming from Micro.blog (well, anyone with the link can join). As Iām writing this, there are 25 members. Iām surprised. I wasnāt expecting that many people to join. I guess my Micro.blog circle is made of very curious people. I love this. Is @Manton joining? Nope. But @Jean is among the participant, which I find cool!
My general feeling with the application is that its design reminds me of Micro.blogās simplicity. Wavelength is simple but not simplistic. I love it very much. Iām using Wavelength mainly on the Mac, but also on the iPhone. I prefer the Mac experience. But, again, Wavelength is not complete. Iām looking forward to watching its future evolution.
An interesting byproduct of Wavelength is the inclusion of a ChatGPT client inside. Itās the group called āAIā. We can interact with it at any given time, even include this āguyā in a conversation within a group, using the @AI in a message. Each request to the AI entity is kept as an individual conversation (except the one occurring within a group conversation). Itās fun, valuable and fascinating at the same time.
But now, the big question: why would someone of Micro.blog starts using Wavelength and participates in a group chat? Conversations are already happening on Micro.blog. Just like on Micro.blog, if you are a member of a Wavelength group, conversations are public. Iām still pondering this. I understand people who are also wondering about the usefulness of having Wavelength alongside the Micro.blog. Maybe the instant nature of such messaging platform is something missing on Micro.blog? This is something I liked on Twitter: this ability to enter a private conversation with one of your followers.
Well, thatās it for now.
You can join the āMicrobloggersā Wavelength group with this invite link. I plan to leave the group open as long as my experiment with Wavelength lasts.
One last thing: after launching the app for the first time, this wave animation is mesmerizing.
Another thing: my avatar photo is me at 5. š
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From A to B ā Another Digital Journey Completed
From the Numeric Citizen Blog
to the Numeric Citizen Space.
The former was my WordPress site, now on Ghost and merged with what used to be the Numeric Citizen Introspection, the home for my Friday Notes Series newsletter. It took me a while, but here I am. Iām so relieved from not having to use WordPress anymore. I have learned quite a bit about WordPress since 2015, but my desire to simplify my digital life was pressing me to make some changes.
From now on, in Ulysses, I got two places to push my articles, here or Ghost. Thatās it.
Both are under the same domain name, which is something that I wanted for a while. Now, I hope to spend more time writing than moving things around. I will publish my migration process in the upcoming days on my Numeric Citizen I/O, my metablog.
From a design perspective, Iām using Ghostās Casper default theme, which is relatively close to what I was using on WordPress. Iām ok with this for the moment. I may hunt for alternatives in the future, but for now, that will be it.
Now, returning to normal programming.
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It Was (Probably) a Rough Day at Craft
Craft version 2.4.5 came out today after more than six weeks since the previous release. Usually, releases come out every two to three weeks. I guess peopleās expectations were pretty high after having waited so long.
Not only did the update bring very limited functionality, it broke a seemingly simple gesture that was used by a majority of users, mostly on the iPhone. As you might expect, this caused plenty of pushbacks on this. My guess is that it took the Craft team by surprise. Moreover, a new navigation sidebar design is also causing a some more pushback.
There is a recurring theme on Slack that people are tired of waiting for basic fixes while receiving questionable features they donāt see useful in general, not only for them. Itās a bit of a public relation crisis. Now my question, could this crisis be prevented? My short answer is yes. I gave a longer answer in my recent YouTube video… āA Proposal for Handling Users Feedback Differentlyā and published an article too.
Craft is a young company. They have plenty of things to learn, and managing expectations is certainly one of them. Managing or at the very least communicating a clear roadmap is another. Itās not enough to publish an article once a year on the companyās blog. Such messages need repetitive reminders and on more than one platform. If they would rather not share a roadmap, then they should probably stop using Slack and Circle. Those are discussion platforms where feedback and feature requests are expressed, albeit in a chaotic way.
What Iām starting to find really troubling and worrisome is the lack of fixes to obvious issues affecting many users, me included. And we are talking about long-standing issues here. Slack is full of users expressing their resentment for unfixed problems. Sure we get answers like āweāre on itā, āwill check this out, thanks for the reportā, ābla bla blaā. Actions speak louder than words. For the first time since Iām using Craft, Iām starting to wonder if I should reconsider my posture with my dependency on Craft.
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Spending Most of Your Life Running a Blog
Kottke.org turns 25. Itās quite a remarkable journey. I didnāt know about this website until recently. Iām not a frequent reader of it, although I spent quite some time today on it to better get the gist of it. Yet, Iām barely sure how to pronounce it. But Iām quite impressed to see someoneās life spent running a blog and getting paid for it.
Iāve been into computer tech since I was a teenager. Iām 55 now. I learned quite a lot from writing software, doing digital photography, followed Appleās story with avid attention. My creativity is at its best with computers. I even found my career by simply being exposed to computers.
For some reason, I didnāt know much about website hosting back then, even less about blogs. I didnāt pay attention, I guess. Itās like being a writer who didnāt know we could write books. This sounds strange.
I wish I had a blog for this long. Itās not the first time that I have written this thought. But Kottke.org turning 25 reminds me that I wish I were this guy. Can you imagine having written 40 000 posts? I donāt know if we can still read them all (it appears we can). You wonāt find all my posted content since I first wrote my first post. And I keep deleting stuff while moving from one place to another because I think it makes no sense to keep all that.
Bravo to Kottke.org.
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Here's The Weekendā¦ Suggestions Instead of Infinite Social Media Scrolling...
It’s the week-end in a few hours, consider those suggestions by Shawn Blanc: A few alternative things you can do when youāre bored (instead of scrolling social media)
Here are a few alternatives to what I call the āJust Checksā.
ā Scroll through your Day One timeline and read a previous journal entry or browse some old photos and memories.
ā Launch Day One and log how youāve spent your time so far for the day. Doing this for a few weeks can also be super helpful for getting a perspective of where your time and energy are being spent.
ā Write down 3 new ideas. These could be articles you want to write, business ideas, places you want to visit or photograph, topics you want to research, date ideas for you and your spouse, gift ideas for a friend, etc. These ideas never have to to be acted on ā the point isnāt to generate a to-do list, but rather to exercise your mind and build your idea muscle. Ideation and creativity are muscles, and the more we exercise them the stronger they get.
ā Send a text message to a friend or family member to tell them how awesome they are.
ā Donāt get out your phone at all ā do some stretches or take a 5-minute walk.
Me? I’ll be creating, as always. Have a great weekend.
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About This Special Apple Device
I couldn’t agree more with 9to5Mac here: There’s something special about the 2018 iPad Pro - 9to5Mac
The 2018 iPad Pro deserves a prominent spot in the Apple hardware hall-of-fame. No other product from Apple has remained so functional for so long without appearing long in the tooth. The 11-inch iPad Pro, specifically, has held up extraordinarily well for a product from nearly five years ago.
I used my iPad Pro quite often and for so many different use cases. During work days, it becomes a second screen next to my Apple Studio Display. At night, it’s a content-consuming machine. During the weekend, it’s a streaming device while I do some food.
Thereās something else special about the 2018 iPad Pro: New features for any given year are often likely to make their way to cheaper versions of the same product given enough time. The 2018 iPad Pro hasnāt had to deal with this.
The 2018 iPad Pro feels snappy and a very capable device, except when Stage Manager is turned on. It’s not.
Upgrading from a 2018 iPad Pro would fetch you a LiDAR sensor, an ultra wide camera, 5G compared to LTE, and a modest new Apple Pencil feature with hover.
Next year I’m pretty sure to upgrade my aging iPad Pro. I’ll be looking for the hover capabilities with the Apple Pencil as well as get an upgraded screen quality with OLED.
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Another Day, Another Discovery: TimeStory
After Anybox earlier this week, now is the turn of TimeStory to make its debut on my list of apps under consideration. About TimeStory, from the application’s website:
TimeStory is a Mac app for illustrating events on a timeline, designed to help you easily create plans and roadmaps, capture history, tell stories, and more.
I spent quite some time today on a project at work using TimeStory. I’m blown away by the simplicity and the craftsmanship that went into this app. It’s very focused, which makes it easy to learn. At every step of my experimentation with the app, I was met with an evident interaction and response from TimeStory. I built something that took me a few hours instead of days in MS Project. Consider me impressed.
I’m on the seven-day free trial. I’ll probably buy the app for two reasons: it brought me real added value in my workflow, joy, and some rewards along the way. Also, I can see a few use cases in my personal numeric life, for my Apple Rumours hub, for example.
We need more apps like this. Very focused, not trying to impress with undeeded features. On the Mac only. Native: AppKit + Swift. No subscription.
Oh, and I love TimeStory’s About page. It’s always interesting to learn about the behind-the-scenes story of an app. I hope this app continues to evolve and improve for as long as possible.
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Testing Micro.blog Bookmarking Feature
For the first time today, I diligently tested Micro.blogās bookmarking feature. I donāt know if this is a popular feature among MB users, but I wonder if I should find a place for MB bookmarks in my workflow. Letās see a typical workflow.
So, I start reading an article from my now favourite RSS reader: Inoreader. I decide to open the source website and use the bookmarklet to save the page into MB bookmarks. After a few minutes, MB diligently created a readable article archive stripped of all the noise. Think of it as an MB version of Instapaper.
I open the newly created archive and start my reading. I find an interesting or very valuable passage that I select in the browser. MB shows a very gentle overlay titled āHighlightā. I click on it, and sure enough, the text gets highlighted. But thatās not all.
MB can display a list of all my highlights. If I find a highlight that I want to create a linkpost for, I simply click the āNew postā button underneath it. And voilĆ , I can start writing my linkpost right there.
Moreover, MB offers a simple way to save a bookmark by entering the articleās URL into the provided field at the top of the āBookmarksā section on the MB website. Very handy.
Bookmarks can be embedded in a blog post too. Just click āEmbedā underneath a specific bookmark.
The only downside, for now, is the lack of data portability: bookmarks and highlights canāt be saved or exported outside MB.
The bookmarking feature is part of the Premium subscription tier.
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Coming out of another rabbit holeā¦
šØāš» Iāve been extensively testing Inoreader recently and I have to say that as much as I like the service, I find the support for third-party services seriously lacking.
Inoreader supports many third-party services like Blogger, Telegram, Buffer, Evernote, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Pocket, Google Drive, Instapaper, OneNote, Hatena Bookmarks and Dropbox.
It certainly a long list of services but the problem is that I donāt use any of them. I recently cancelled Buffer and Pocket. Iām surprised to see Blogger but not WordPress or Ghost. Whoās using Hootsuite these days?
I wish Raindrop.io or Notion would be supported, after all, both of these services support offer APIs. Too bad because with better integration often come more efficient workflows.
Building something around tags, IFTTT and RSS could unlock some form of automated workflow. For example, tagging an article would generate an article in a custom RSS feed built using Inoreader which would trigger an applet on IFTTT monitoring this RSS feed which in turn could create an entry in Things 3. The latter part is a challenge, though. IFTTT canāt talk to Things, but it can talk to Google Sheet.
Nothing is perfect I guess. š¤·š»āāļø
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AI Comes to WordPressā¦ Who Knew
The pervasiveness of AI is starting to look troubling at best. This week as I was heading to my WordPress admin page, I got this message at the top.
Who knew? I was curious so I read the official āAI Engineā plugin page on WordPress.org. Hereās something that I found dubious.
Five stars reviews only so far. I wonāt have the pleasure to test this plugin or implement any of this on my website as Iām getting ready to move out of WordPress this year. Now, whoās next, Ghost?
The official plugin page can be found here.
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A Typical Morning Rabbit Hole
Iām heading to Micro.blog and start reading on my timeline, I read someoneās post about note taking apps, mentioning how Bear Notes is great. I switch to Bear Notes website. After watching the introduction video, I head to the websiteās blog section. Bear Notes certainly looks great. This particular blog post looks at how Bear Notes can work with other apps like Things 3 and Readwise. I wonder how I could use Brea Notes for my workflow. Iām reminded that we can export Readwise highlights in markdown files. I head to Readwise website and give it a try. I play with the export options for a while and export all my highlights, more than 1400 in total. Easy and quick. Next I wonder if I could import them in Craft. Yes I can. What about importing them in Ulysses. Yes I could. Then I remember that Ulysses, my go-to writing app, is great. And forget about Bear Notes.
Written and posted using Ulysses on my M1 MacBook Air.
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The Computer is Wrong ā Stay Critical & Curious
This evening, using an Apple Shortcut called Clips, I imported the Ā«Ā Apple in 2022 The Six Colors report cardĀ Ā» by Six Colors into Craft. Itās a 25 000 article that I started reading on my iPad, within Craft. Then, fifteen minutes into my reading, I asked Craft assistant to summarize the Mac section. It came out with this summary:
Ā«Ā In 2022, Apple released the M2 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display. The hardware in the Mac lineup is powerful and impressive, and the M2 MacBook Air has become a favorite of Mac users due to its light weight, zero noise, and long battery life, as well as its ability to handle workloads that used to require a pro-level desktop. macOS Ventura has some great features, but there is still backsliding represented by bugs that have gone unfixed and apps that don’t work well. While many users are disappointed that an expected Mac Pro did not arrive, Apple is still praised for their strong hardware lineup and the Mac Studio, which might be a success except for the long shipping delays.Ā Ā»
Because Iām an Apple pundit; I read a lot about Apple in general, I find this summary Ā«Ā plausibleĀ Ā», but also because I read the entire Mac section of the Six Colors report. Otherwise, I could I really know? This is where this article ChatGPT from Matt Birchler comes into view Ā«Ā The Computer is WrongĀ Ā»: itās fun to play with ChatGPT or any derivative services but staying critical, curious is still a mandatory thing to be these days.
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Eternally Unsatisfied With My Reading Apps
Iāve been a News Explorer RSS reader user for a long time. Itās a less-known RSS reader compared to Reeder or anything else. Itās really good, but missing a few things that keep bugging me. There is no web version, no filtering feature, and no text highlighting either.
I started testing Inoreader yesterday and Feedbin. Both seem good RSS readers, but none of them is satisfying. In fact, Iām never satisfied with anything when it comes to RSS readers and reading applications or services in general. Itās been going on forever.
Read-later apps are unsatisfying, too, for me. None of Instapaper, Pocket, Matter, and Readwiseās Reader satisfy my needs. Readwise is too busy and still immature, Matter is nice, but some things like tags handling donāt scale well.
The perfect combination of a read-later function with an RSS reader doesnāt exist. If I were twenty years younger, I would write my own.
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Highly TroublingāOps are Taking Over Apple My Friends
Don’t bother reading too much into the latest Apple financial numbers. They’re not too bad. What you should be paying attention to is this:
Apple is eliminating one of its most high-profile executive positions. According to a new report today, Apple is eliminating the role of āindustrial design chiefā as part of a broader shake-up. This role was once held by Jony Ive, and most recently held by Evans Hankey.
More specifically:
Under this new structure, the design team will report to Appleās chief operating officer Jeff Williams. Source: Apple is eliminating its iconic ‘industrial design chief’ position
This comment by one of the 9To5Mac staff members is not reassuring at all:
I think itās important to keep in mind, however, that Williams has been involved with the design team for several years at this point. Hankey has reported to Williams since 2019. The difference now is that the middle ground between Williams and the rest of the design team is being removed.
Maybe Hankey saw this coming and couldn’t adhere to this direction. Here’s my take: ops are taking over Apple, and design is no longer the top priority. It is utterly troubling to read rumours of Williams possibly replacing Cook which looks like being more of the same if you ask me. Maybe Williams has more design experience, but not as a first-party involvement. Troubling.
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My Taxi Ride to The Past
I recently took a taxi ride to leave the airport as Uber taxis were unavailable and plagued with longer than usual delays. We were directed to the traditional taxi lines. I couldnāt use an app on my iPhone to call a taxi instead.
Boy, it was a trip in the past. The taxi driver had no Google or Waze open to know where to go, only his memory and his knowledge of the city. The taxi timer was this old and ugly box installed on his car dash, partially blocking his view.
It was disorienting not to get any feedback about how long the trip would go, what was the best road alternatives along the way, and not having a driver reputation score.
You would think that Uber would kick the butt of taxi companies so they evolve the customer experience and get their shit together to build a competitive experience, but no. They seem to have given up a long time ago.
My message to taxi companies: enjoy the ride while it last.
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Integrating Adobe Enhance Voice Tech Into My Video Production Workflow ā In Search of a Solution
I don’t know if anyone knows about this free web tool by Adobe: Enhance Voice (link), but it is really impressive (@MattBirchler knows about it). Here is what I’d like to do: find a way to integrate this tool into my video production workflow.
So, I’m producing YouTube videos with ScreenFlow (my YouTube Channel). So far, I’m ok with the results, but I think my voice, and the sound in general, could be improved (I’m using the Blue Yeti Microphone, but Adobe Enhance Voice is really impressive).
So, how can I:
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual
- Extract the audio track
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Replace the audio track in my Screenflow document
- Export the final video
Step 3 and 5 are not possible in the current release of Screenflow. Any suggestion of tools I could use instead?
Hereās what I know or already use:
- Permute allows for easy conversion of audio files, including converting video files into the audio-only version.
- QuickTime Player can export the audio track only out of a video file.
- I know how to use iMovie.
- Iām a happy user of Audio Hijack
- I donāt really want to get rid of Screenflow. LumaFusion, FinalCut Pro, etc., maybe could do the job here, but it would be ok if I could find a simple utility that can replace the audio track easily instead.
This question has been posted to the Screenflow Telestream forum.
Update #1: corrected a few typos but added the solution using iMovie. Hereās the solution.
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual and export the video
- Extract the audio track using Permute in .MP3 format
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Convert .WAV into .MP3
- Launch iMovie and create a new Project
- Import the produced video in step 2
- Detach the audio track and delete it
- Add the enhanced version of the audio track
- Export the final video using iMovieās share option
VoilĆ !
Update #2: there is a major issue with this process, the video and audio are not in sync over time, even though both files are of the same duration. This is not something easy to fix. Back to the drawing board. š
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Thanks for Paying Attention
Thereās this question that keeps popping up in my mind all the time since Iām being more active on Micro.blog. Why am I getting way more interactions with others on Micro.blog compared to Twitter? What am I doing differently? I write about the same subjects, albeit maybe more frequently. I think I have a few possible explanations.
First, Twitter is full of bots. Twitter is a dumpster. I suspect many people or organizations are simply cross-posting stuff on Twitter without real human beings behind the content. I did exactly that myself via Buffer for a few years. Optimizing exposure by scheduling posts at the ārightā time was the idea. A bot worked for me.
Second, and this is probably the most probable reason: algorithmic timeline. The Twitter engine is tuned to generate higher engagement. The more you engage, the higher the probability that your content will appear on peopleās timelines. If youāre well-known, again, the higher the likelihood that you will make it to the timeline of others.
Iām not well-known. I didnāt engage that much with others. Both made me a near-nobody on Twitter. So I didnāt get exposure, hence the lack of engagement with my content.
Third, there is just too much noise on Twitter to get noticed. My content competes against the rest of the Twittosphere. My context was noise for others, hence the lack of feedback, comments, and interactions.
Here on Micro.blog? Night and day. Iām not a star, far from it. But I get a sense that some people are paying attention.
Thanks for that anyway. š¤
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When Matter Made a Major Strategic Error
Today I spent some time in Matter to read a few articles. I went to the Staff Picks section, noticed those tweets between articles and remembered Matter's decision to leave the social portion in their early days. They preferred to go the Twitter route instead. That was before the Elon Musk fiasco. As you might expect, it was a deception for me, and I preferred Matter to build its own thing instead. I actually like to comment on articles and share my thoughts on them within the Matter sphere. Oh wellā¦Ā
How ironic things can sometimes be. I think the Matter team made a significant strategic error by dropping the social portion of their initial offerings, and they should reconsider their decision.
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What's Really Behind a Subscription Fee?
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.
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Should Apple Offer AI-based Services at the OS Level?
In recent months, weāve seen the addition of many AI-based features in apps like Notion and Craft, two apps that I know pretty well. Now Iām wondering if it would be a good idea that Apple integrates such features at the operating system level. Just like we can double tap a word in a text and get its definition from the dictionary, wouldnāt be cool if we could select a whole text and ask for a summary or anything involving the selected content? Apple would have to decide which AI sources to use or provide users a choice, just like for search engines. Any apps manipulating text would instantly benefit from this added capabilities. Your thoughts?
