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Micro.blog Officially Launches Support for Newsletters
So, as expected, yesterday Micro.blog introduced support for newsletters in the premium subscription tier. The official announcement follows:
Today weāre announcing a major new feature for Micro.blog Premium subscribers: email newsletters. Micro.blog can now manage, letting readers subscribe to your blog and receive emails for new blog posts. Itās deeply integrated into Micro.blog and works great for collecting multiple microblog posts together automatically.
Here is why I upgraded my subscription plan almost instantly after the news came out.
First, Iām a big fan of Micro.blog as a publishing platform and also of its foundational principles. Iām totally ok with paying a monthly fee of $10 to support the team behindāI want the platform to thrive. Second, adding support for newsletters is a great idea. Not everyone is using an RSS feed reader or like to read content through a browser. Everyone uses email clients! Itās important to provide different ways of communicating content to the readers. Newsletters are making a comeback.
Enabling newsletter is dead simple as shown below. I chose the weekly newsletter containing all the posts for the past week. Email go out at 9AM, local time, each Saturday morning. Itās a good way to start the weekend, isnāt it?
As you can see, the settings are quite simple. There is no formatting option (yet). Having a choice between all text vs excerpt would be a useful one. Speaking of formatting, one thing that I’m curious about, though: how does one newsletter look like? I couldn’t find an example in the documentation. Furthermore, how can we preview the next newsletter issue? It seems that, in case the first option is selected (one email for each post), the author has 30 minutes after posting to preview the email as explained here:
@timapple The preview works the same for the weekly and monthly option except it only creates it 30 minutes before it’s ready to send. Micro.blog will send you a preview email automatically with a link to edit it then. ā Manton Reece https://micro.blog/manton/12238527
How does Micro.blog newsletter feature fit in my workflow? Micro.blog newsletter joins two other services that I depend on: Mailbrew to create something very similar in nature to Micro.blog offering and Ghost for my monthly newsletter (previously on Substack). On Mailbrew though, my summary newsletter also brings in content published on other platforms (WordPress, Blot, Ghost, Smugmug, etc.). Itās the ultimate weekly posts summary newsletter. Ghost, for my introspection newsletter, is like Substack, but better. I see Micro.blog offering as being a convenient way for my readers to get my content into their mailbox. It wonāt replace Mailbrew or Ghost, obviously.
By subscribing to the premium tier, I also get a few goodies that could prove to be useful: bookmarking archiving and highlighting. The former allows for the bookmarking of a post on my timeline. The latter allows me to highlight some text while reading a bookmarked post or URL. Highlighted text can be conveniently used to create a link post easily. One thing that I would love to see is a browser extension for selecting text in any website. Iām not holding my breath, though.
All in all, Iām pretty happy with this addition to an already great service for content creators like me. Oh, and donāt forget to subscribe to the weekly digest! So, to those who subscribe, I guess this post is the first to get through the newsletter feature of Micro.blog!
Donāt miss the YouTube video explaining the feature.
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About Micro.blog Upcoming Update ā Newsletter Support
Apparently, it looks like tomorrow, Micro.blog is going to add support for newsletters. A few weeks ago, I canāt remember exactly, Manton posted a screenshot (which I can no longer find) where a ānewsletterā item was shown on the left sidebar on the Micro.blog main site.
Iām very curious about Micro.blog take on newsletter. Micro.blog is all about simplicity without being too simplistic. If the feature is available to entry-level paid tier, Iām might enable it and use it myself. Right now, Iām using Mailbrew to gather all my published posts via the RSS feed to generate a newsletter. There is one thing though, are we starting to feel a bit of newsletters fatigue?
Canāt wait for tomorrow.
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On My Photographic Style
The photo thumbnails are from a personal trip to Austria in 1998. When I look back at these photos, I have to come to a conclusion that my photographic style didnāt really change in 30 years. It feels a bit depressing. It is basically revolving about architecture, nature. Very rarely about people, these are too hard to capture; I donāt have a good sense of timing, and Iām shy. Iām rarely doing street photography. The only addition to my subjects in recent years is urban exploration. Do we come into this world with a pre-determined photographic style?
Here is my Glass page.
And my SmugMug page.
Oh and my Unsplash page!
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Changing my Mind
Booooooā¦ Well, it looks like I changed my mind. I didnāt remember that I wrote this blog post following the release of Ghost 4.0. At the time, I didnāt see the benefit, but now, itās quite another story. I really love Ghost and I think I made the right choice for a few significant reasons:
- Ghost comes with APIs, which enable all sort of possibilities to improve my workflow.
- Ghost editor is much more powerful than Substackās. This week, they started to release new cards type: GIF and Button. They promise another ten before Christmas! Yeah!
- I prefer Ghostās design in general over Substack.
In case you didnāt know, my newsletter website is reachable here: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog
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Testing Synology Photos as a digital assets management solution (#synology #beta #dsm7)
I’m currently testing Synology as a storage solution for all my non-personal, non-photographic digital assets that I often use to complement my blog posts. After testing Synology Moments, their previous solution for photo management on DSM 6.2, Synology Photos in DSM 7.x is a step in the right direction, a big improvement. I like what I’m seeing. It’s fast. The ability to use folders as well as albums to organize my collection is a big plus. I’ve yet to find a bug. There is an iPad version of their Synology Photos. It’s not perfect but it works. Lacking is support iPad multitasking, which is a shame but not a deal-breaker.
In order to test this solution, I’m using my DS720+ running DSM7 beta inside a virtual machine. DSM Virtual Machine Manager allows the execution of a Virtual DSM which is very cool for testing future releases of their software. I’m impressed by the relative speed of this setup running on 6 GB of RAM, 2 x 6 TB SATA drives and a Samsung M2 NVMe 512 GB cache drive.
Stay tuned for more.
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Will Apple SharePlay Really Take Off?
Readdle software released an update to PDF Expert with support for Appleās SharePlay. Using FaceTime, up to 32 people can share and annotate a PDF. According to the documented workflow on The MacObserver website, while in a FaceTime call, opening a PDF file with PDF Expert enables the SharePlay feature.
I tried the SharePlay experience using Music and screen sharing to see how easy the SharePlay workflow is to master. Each of my test with Apple Music ended up with a popup saying the selected content couldnāt be shared (probably controlled by the owner of the music track-not surprising at all). With screen sharing, I had more success and the feature worked as expected.
I think this is all cool and SharePlay brings Appleās ecosystem closer to what is possible within Zoom or Teams.
What Iād like to see is more application support for SharePlay. Appleās Keynote would be another winner where people could watch the same presentation together. I find it surprising thatās not already the case. Maybe an upcoming update to iWork will fix that.
lāll definitively play with this more in the coming days because I think SharePlay has a lot o potential, especially in the business space.
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Photo editing while on the beach
On my iPad Pro, in split-screen view: on the left, Lightroom. On the right, Appleās Photos. Same photo in DNG format (ProRAW) edited with available features and possibilities of each application. Lightroom wins, obviously. Recent update to Lightroom adds editing masks which makes a big difference in achieving desired results. Picture taken with iPhone 13 Pro. On the beach. While in vacation. Cheers. šš¹
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My Current Status
My current status ā spending quality time on vacations in Tulum, Mexico. Itās the first trip for more than 22 months. After so many sacrifices, time has come to say: enough, letās enjoy life. šš
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A New Home, Same Purposes
Iām 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, Iām 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/.
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RTFM (Read The Fuckin Manual They Say!)
When I got my first AirTags, I was anxious to get this wallet from this KickStarter project: āSnapback Slim Air - A Wallet for AirTagsā. This is my Snapback Slim Air. With the AirTag inserted.
Can you see the problem? The AirTag hardly stays in place and has the tendency to pop out of its place. Not great at all. I always found the fitting to be so so. Then, today I got an email from KickStarter with the following promotional photo. Can you see what Iām doing wrong?
I happen to insert my AirTag the wrong side. Duh! The white side (the best looking one IMHO) must be inside and the silver side exposed outside. Ooops. Hereās the result.
As you can see, the fitting is a bit better but not that much better. Iām already looking for alternatives. Any suggestions?
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Like the Dislike ā Put the Decision in Creatorās Hands
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 Googleās decision. His view echos mine. Iām 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, peopleās reactions on each video could be turned off by the authorās 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 creatorās 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 āmost ofā the video. That no rocket science. There are probably other tricks that could be played to better control whatās going on in userās reactions. But at this stage, it seems closer to be only implementation details.
As for the creatorās 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. Thatās something that could help others in dealing with this.
Glass, a photo sharing service, didnāt provide a like button from day one and doesnāt plan to add one. Is it good? Well, it depends. One thing is clear, from the comments Iām seeing posted by others, I have to ask myself: what is the difference between getting dozens of āI love itā or hitting the ālikeā button? Not much.
Photo credit: Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
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Android Phones Are Forā¦?
A story by MacRumors reports Tim Cookās answer about not being able to sideload applications on the iPhone is not restricting customers choice. Hereās the beginning of Tim Cookās answer:
āI think that people have that choice today, Andrew, if you want to sideload, you can buy an Android phone.ā
Tim Cookās answer reminds me of another one. Steve Jobs once said that if you want porn on a phone, just buy an Android phone. Appleās stance is fascinating. You want shit? Thereās Android for that.
Photo credits: Dainis Graveris on Unsplash
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Revisiting My Craft Content Organization
Even though Iām using Ulysses for most of my writings, after reading the āA Complete Ulysses Writing Workflowā, it gave me the idea of revisiting the way I organize my content in Craft. As shown in the previous screenshot, my content is now organized following a similar flow often seen on Kansan boards. As you might expect, everything start in the Inbox folder then eventually get āpromotedā to the next folder, according to the contentās maturity. I like this a lotāitās much cleaner than before. I should have known better, as I experienced the Kanban method a few years ago at work.
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From ProRAW to JPEG ā When JPEG is Simply Enough
Here is a situation for which Iām searching for a solution. Letās say Iām going out with my iPhone 13 Pro to take a few pictures outside. After a while, I notice that all the pictures that I was shooting were in ProRAW format. What if the lighting conditions were great that day and my photos didnāt require post-processing of any kind besides the iPhoneās own processing? How can I convert from ProRAW to their optimized JPEG counterparts and keep them in my iCloud Photo Library? Such process would decrease image size by a factor of ten.
I cannot find an answer for this seemingly easy question. So far, it all comes down to exporting the photos from Appleās Photos application and then reimporting them. Such process needs to be followed by the deletion of all the original photos to prevent duplicates. There has to be a better way. Shortcuts, on iOS or macOS doesnāt provide any solutions as far as I can tell. Why is such thing not possible? If you happen to have a solution for this, please let me know.
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Exposure Notifications ā Still Useful?
The other day I was looking at my iPhone battery consumption only to find out that the Exposure notifications feature was consuming close to 10% of the power on a 24 hours period. Itās not the first that I see Exposure Notifications to take so much juice out of my iPhone battery. Iām not alone, apparently, according to a Google search with the āexposure notifications battery drainā keywords.
The question is simple: considering that Iām fully vaccinated, considering the state of the pandemic here in Canada, considering that hardly any people actually enter their test results if found positive, why should I continue to care about having this turned on? I think I could turn it off.
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Got Things Done This Week
Iām feeling pretty happy again this week-end as I managed to do everything that I was sitting in my bloggerās to do list (which is setup every Sunday in Craft). What youāre seeing in my summary newsletter here is only part of my content creator story.
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Remembering Macintosh Floppies
This seemingly insignificant box used to be sold by Apple and contained ten single-sided floppy disks. Those were meant to be used in a Macintosh computer. I had a bunch of them but somehow managed to keep an empty box. It was a great time.
Each floppy contained a whopping 400 KB of storage for a single-sided version. At one point we could get them for 70$ a piece. It was expansive compared to 5 1/4 inches flexible floppy disks that contained either 160 KB or 360 KB that were typically used in IBM PCs. From a design perspective, Appleās floppy disks were rigid, smaller, sturdier and dust proof, hence a higher asking price.
