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Spent part of the morning trying to do some automation using Hazel and Shortcuts. What a time-consuming task. I’m wondering if I’m not wasting any future productivity gains here. 🤔🤨
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Here's The Weekend… 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 you’re bored (instead of scrolling social media)
Here are a few alternatives to what I call the “Just Checks”.
– Scroll through your Day One timeline and read a previous journal entry or browse some old photos and memories.
– Launch Day One and log how you’ve 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.
– 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 — the point isn’t 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.
– Send a text message to a friend or family member to tell them how awesome they are.
– Don’t get out your phone at all — do some stretches or take a 5-minute walk.
Me? I’ll be creating, as always. Have a great weekend.
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As noted by MacRumors:
The second beta of iOS 16.4 that was introduced to developers today appears to have a limited number of new features, but it does have a major update for those who use Apple Books - it reintroduces an option for the page-turning animation. Source: iOS 16.4 Beta 2 Re-Adds Page Turning Animation to Apple Books - MacRumors
One quick question: who decided it was a good idea to remove such page-turning animation in the first place? What problem did it solve? Books are still a big part of our life, and this animation is a great reference to the experience of reading a book.
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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.
There’s 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 hasn’t 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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👉 Updated my complete toolset website. ➕ Zavala ➕Anybox ➕Inoreader ➖ Raindrop.io
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😅 Moving all my newsletter subscriptions to Inoreader (instead of Hey Mail) for a better reading and annotation experience. Unsubscribing to many along the way. That’s one of the many benefits of switching to Inoreader. Hey Mail isn’t that good for reading newsletters after all, when you compare it to other solutions (including Matter, Readwise Reader, etc.). Substack doesn’t make it easy to change the subscription email, BTW. 👨💻
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Massive migration going on right now… to Anybox. I’m in love with this little app. Currently moving out my bookmarks from Craft. Next up will be Safari. Thankfully, Anybox can import Safari-exported bookmark files.
I’m always anxious when I use an app built and maintained by a single guy, as seems to be the case for Anybox.
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I want to share a little follow-up to my previous post regarding Anybox. As much as I like what I see in this nifty little app, it must replace something else to make the cut (Raindrop.io?). It must help improve an existing portion of my workflow (putting my monthly newsletter together - possible initial use case). It must make a real difference, not only add a new stopgap.
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Another day, another rabbit hole. This time, meet Anybox, a bookmark manager for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. I’ve been playing with it on macOS and I really like what I’m seeing. It’s a bit nerdy, but I do like it a lot. Everything I tried or wonder if it could do was met with a “ah” or “ooooh”. PopClip integration, easy integration with Things 3, data portability secured (lots of import & export formats), great user interface, Safari extension support. The list goes on and on.
Now, the only thing is to try to find a real use case for it. I’ve been using Craft for the most part for bookmarks collection, so my need for an app like Anybox is still unclear. Stay tuned on that one.
Is this another solution in search of a problem? 🤔
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Got this for the Apple Studio Display and iPhone 13 Pro. With macOS Ventura Camera Continuity, it works much better than I thought. It works great with Microsoft Teams. Best way to add Center Stage to Microsoft Teams (using the Control Center settings while the camera is on). No latency. Surprising how low the battery power consumption is. It would have been nice if the iPhone mount could also recharge the iPhone, though.
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Testing Micro.blog Bookmarking Feature
For the first time today, I diligently tested Micro.blog’s bookmarking feature. I don’t 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. Let’s 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 “Highlight”. I click on it, and sure enough, the text gets highlighted. But that’s 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 “New post” button underneath it. And voilà, I can start writing my linkpost right there.
Moreover, MB offers a simple way to save a bookmark by entering the article’s URL into the provided field at the top of the “Bookmarks” section on the MB website. Very handy.
Bookmarks can be embedded in a blog post too. Just click “Embed” underneath a specific bookmark.
The only downside, for now, is the lack of data portability: bookmarks and highlights can’t be saved or exported outside MB.
The bookmarking feature is part of the Premium subscription tier.
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We now live in a world of multimodal communications, and how we communicate is changing. The omnipresence of devices in our lives — smartphones to computers, means most of our conversations and communications happen through text. We have replaced so much of our face-to-face interaction with the written word. Teams, Slack and Discords, are part of our daily lives now. As the volume of text in our lives increases, we need tools that help facilitate and perhaps improve how we write and how fast we write.
Am I alone in having the feeling that people no longer read?
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Apple pays $12.1 mln fine for alleged app market abuse in Russia - Antimonopoly Service
U.S. tech giant Apple has paid a 906 million rouble ($12.12 million) fine in a Russian antitrust case alleging abuse of its dominance in the mobile apps market, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said on Monday.
First, where is the money going once paid by Apple? The current situation in Ukraine mandates more scrutiny. Personally, I would have shut down the App Store altogether in this market. Plain and simple as well as give a middle finger instead of paying the fine. But that’s me.
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Dear developers, be honest with us. In my usual morning rabbit hole digging, I stumbled on Flow, a Pomodoro app for the Mac. According to the website, Flow is free.
I click on the “Available on the App Store” link. Once in the App Store, I look at the app details.
Then, things start to look different. There is an “In-app purchases” tag. Scrolling down to the details, I get to see this.
Now, I go up and read the app description. 😠 The developer fooled me. I feel cheated when basic and core features are under the “Pro” plan (like a timer custom duration). It’s a stupid one-feature app, and the developer manages to put the core feature under the pro plan!! I skip the app and move on because I don’t feel the developer is honest in his approach. Yeah, I know it’s called “marketing”.
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Will be spending the rest if the weekend trying to advance my (many) projects. One being to produce my next YouTube video about using Craft as a website publishing tool.
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Coming out of another rabbit hole…
👨💻 I’ve 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 don’t use any of them. I recently cancelled Buffer and Pocket. I’m surprised to see Blogger but not WordPress or Ghost. Who’s 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 can’t talk to Things, but it can talk to Google Sheet.
Nothing is perfect I guess. 🤷🏻♂️
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👉✅ I’m running a quick poll on my YouTube Channel, in the community section! I’m curious about your interest in “how-to” videos about Micro.blog. Thanks for taking the time to vote! 🙏🏻
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The funny thing about posting ideas on Friday nights, writing out loud ideas, it goes out unnoticed; nobody is paying attention. Everyone is too busy enjoying their weekend!
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Since last June I’ve been producing YouTube videos about Craft (the note taking app, not the game! 😜). I’m closing in to having fifty videos done. I like doing this quite a lot actually.
Now I’m looking for the next product or service to talk about. 🧐
It seems there is a lot to talk about with Micro.blog, don’t you think? 🤓
