app
- GoodLinks has all that, minus highlighting. I cannot update it on macOS anymore, but it works.
- Readwise cannot be installed on my old laptop. It has an incredibly cool web view though.
- Omnivore cannot be installed on my old laptop. It has a very barebones web view. For now.
- Readwise has a very nice iOS app.
- Omnivore, on the other hand, as it’s still in beta, has a… well… beta app.
- GoodLinks has a solid iOS app, with a nifty custom actions feature.
- GoodLinks has no subscription, I already paid for it.
- Readwise is expensive (relative, of course).
- Omnivore is free.
-
Found out GoodLinks is adding highlights in the near future.
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GoodLinks also seems the one the scrapes the articles better, rarely missing photos. It does have a tendency to include a lot of unnecessary stuff, sadly.
-
Omnivore misses photos often. I keep reporting this.
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I have no use for most of Readwise Reader’s features, and there’s a ton of those. It’s the most complete app of the three. By a very long distance.
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Good links also seems to be the only one that saves a link from the iOS share sheet, and doesn’t require an extra tap to make the dialog go away. After a few saved links, I find this extremely welcome.
Defaults
After listening to Hemispheric Views 097 - Duel of the Defaults!, and reading what Gabz, and Robb, posted, here’s my list for the Duel.
📬 Mail Client: Fastmail HEY
📮 Mail Server: Fastmail, HEY
🗒️ Notes: Drafts, Notes.app (longterm)
✅ To-Do: Things
📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: iOS Camera, Halide
🌅 Photo Management: Photos.app, Flickr
📆 Calendar: Fantastical, with iCloud
📦 Cloud file storage: iCloud Drive
📖 RSS: Feedbin, Fiery Feeds
👥 Contacts: Contacts.app, Cardhop, with iCloud
🌐 Browser: Safari, Orion, Quiche (iOS) / Brave, Orion (macOS)
💬 Chat: WhatsApp, Signal
🔖 Bookmarks: Raindrop
📑 Read It Later: Omnivore
📝 Word Processing: n/a
📈 Spreadsheets: n/a
📊 Presentations: n/a
🛒 Shopping Lists: Grocery, with iCloud Reminders.app
🥘 Meal Planning: n/a
💸 Budgeting & Personal Finance: n/a
🗞️ News: Mastodon, Público, The Guardian
🎹 Music: Spotify YouTube Music
🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast
🔑 Password Management: 1Password, Proton Pass
🎨 Photo Editing: Lightroom
Uber Bye
Haven’t used Uber in years. We have better alternatives, cheaper alternatives, and alternatives that will not leave you with a funky taste in your mouth.
I don’t know how’s the company track record these days, but I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, if possible. I still remember all the shitty things they did. Maybe they still do.
Today, I could have used a scooter, I was carrying hot take away food, and would shave a few minutes off my walk.
The only ones available were Lime/Uber. I opened the app, checked if the account was active and Apple Pay selected as payment method, and tried to unlock the scooter.
I had to top up my Wallet. Why? I do not know. Ok, I’ll do it. It then told me I needed to confirm my account, with my national ID. Why? I do not know.
By then I was fuming, and our meal not so much anymore. I gave up.
Walked home. Exercised a bit. Saved some money. Deleted the app.
I call this a win-win-win-win situation. Thanks, Uber. Bye, Uber.
Reading and Readers
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been going back and forth, trying to decide where I’ll save (and hopefully read later) the incredible amount of links that show up daily.
TL;DR I’m back where I started.
For as long as I remember I’ve been using GoodLinks for that. And Raindrop to save some of those (and others), mostly links that are meant to be kept as reference, not necessarily reading material.
The system works. But I, as one does, felt the urge to shake things up. The app that started all this was Readwise Reader, and then Omnivore joined the party.
My perfect setup would be a good looking app, with a feature set that fits me, on both iOS and macOS. Affordable as well. I don’t need much, truth be told: tags, highlights, ability to use my fonts…
How do they stack up?
macOS
iOS
Cost
What else?
If I had to, Raindrop could be used on its own, for everything. It has a free tier with most of the features I need, and a decently priced Pro tier. It’s not perfect as a reading app though.
So, for now, I’m exactly where all this began. Feel like GoodLinks was the app I used for a reason and, even though I’d love to use Readwise, I can’t justify the cost, especially when I have a solution that is free by now, since it was paid in the past, and I will never be able to use it fully. At least until I get a new laptop.
I’m still keeping an eye on Omnivore, as new features are being released as I write this. It’s in, as I’ve said, beta stage, and I expect it to change a lot before it’s done.
At the moment I’m saving Readwise Reader’s money for something else. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble spending it.
Me@Mastodon
The wonderful Adam has enabled social.lol for all the usernames one has on omg.lol, his wonderful suite of internet fun, so I went ahead and activated all three of them. Yes, I now have not one, but three Mastodon accounts! Well, four, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
(Truth be told there are a few others, scattered around instances I tried in the past, but these are abandoned now)
So, where can you find me, and what can you expect when you do?
The main one is @maique@social.lol, where every single post that shows up on {micro maique} ends up, as well as every sticker on sticker spotter. That’s the whole maique package, or a close as it gets. It’s the account I use to follow people, and interact.
If you don’t want all the yadda yadda yadda, and just wish to look at stickers, you can follow @stickerspotter@social.lol. The blog with the entire sticker collection is also a separate one, so it made sense to offer the same on Mastodon.
The third one is mrBatsu, my alter-ego for ages, and test account at omg.lol. I’m using the @mrBatsu@social.lol account to share links of stuff I read. For now. Something else might end up there in the future.
There’s a fourth account, one I’m not using, but felt I needed. The Portuguese community gathers at masto.pt, so I went ahead and asked for an account there, warning the admin I wouldn’t be posting often. He said yes. The instance is administered by Hugo, a wonderful developer, sysadmin, and owner of masto.host, a fully managed Mastodon hosting service. If you’re looking to host your own instance, I can’t recommend it enough.
If you’re looking for an instance to call home, take a look at the server list on joinmastodon.org.
Bonus: the iOS apps.
Mastodon has an official app now, and it’s ok. My favorite, the one I’m using more often, is Metatext.
There’s also Toot!, Mastoot, tooot, and a ton others. I’m sure you’ll find one that suits you.
You can also just add the web view to your home screen, and be done with that.
Mastodon is great fun, and I’m glad it’s getting more attention, and more users. Hope to see you there as well.
Paletro
I did it! I managed to spend a whole day without buying an app!
Obviously I caved on the second day, and got Paletro.
I loved using ⇧⌘P on Sublime Text, and then VS Code, as a quick way to access commands on those apps, wouldn’t it be great if this Command Palette was available on all apps ? It would. It is now.
It works beautifully with Drafts, so that would be enough to buy it, but I’m happy to report that plenty other apps also get better with Paletro.
The app is fairly priced, and there’s a generous 14 day trial period, so you can see if it fits your workflow.
The app is a recent one, so I’m waiting for the custom themes (where would we be without custom themes for every app we love?) and maybe some other features, like extensions.
Curious ? Go get it.
Drafts
Drafts, again, maybe forever ?
A couple of weeks ago I got back into the Drafts train. I’d been a user, on and off, for years, but always found myself stepping off and using other apps for my note taking. I’ve used the usual suspects, Notes.app, Bear, …
This time around, locked in a hospital room, waiting for my first child (baby girl, thank you very much), I had time to start digging in, and try to find other uses for it. And I did. Turns out I found a few.
Pro subscription
First thing I did was find an excuse to subscribe to the Pro tier. An icon sealed that deal. I NEEDED that classic Mac icon!
Soon I found myself using other Pro features: Themes, Workspaces (amazing) and editing actions to better suit me. But I didn’t have to. I wouldn’t really need these.
Supporting development is the main reason you should pay, even though the app feels Pro on the free tier. It does a LOT without the extra features. Most actions don’t need editing to work for you, workspaces are really nice to have, but only needed if you find yourself using it all day, for everything (by then you should be paying something anyway), and the theme selection is still far from perfect (Nord theme maybe coming ??).
Moving on, what am I using it for ?
A few of the things that now live on my Drafts:
Notes. Duh.
Note taking, let’s get this one out of the way first. I love taking notes, small bits all day long; and I love doing it in Monoid. Turns out Drafts is really good for note taking and you can pick from one of the included fonts, or install your own.
Clarinha Diary: write something down real quick about the baby, press a button, it gets added to a running note, complete with date and time. When the day ends, I just paste that note into Day One, where a more complete journal is being written, with photos.
Get your Tweet on!
Twitter! I found out I love to tweet from Drafts, and I’m not talking about an action to send the draft to Tweetbot. Just using plain old simple Twitter, from inside Drafts. The tweet gets published and I’m not spending another minute, or hour, going down my timeline. You can, of course, use Drafts to send your text to Tweetbot, or Twitterrific, but this is the one working for me.
Actions:
| Tweet
| Tweet with Tweetbot
| Tweet with Twitterrific
Out Shopping
Shopping List. I’m a big Things fan, and use it for all my task needs. I have dozens of personal and professional projects going on, all neatly organised in Things.
That’s where my shopping list also lives. That was pre-Covid, when I could freely unlock my phone when out in the supermarket. Not anymore. Wearing a mask makes this an excruciatingly hard exercise, and I found myself thinking there had to be a better way. Turns out it does.
Drafts to the rescue. The shopping mode keeps the screen on the whole time, and the keyboard is disabled. I can get my phone in and out of my pocket as many times as I wish, it’s always on. Perfect.
Action:
| Toggle Shopping Mode
Scheduling stuff
Calendar. Inputting stuff into Fantastical. It now feels weird to go into Fantastical to add an event, even though that’s also an easy task. But I’m so used to opening Drafts when I unlock my phone, I’ll just write it down and add it to Fantastical from there. Even nicer when I have multiple events to add. You’ll see.
Actions:
| Event in Fantastical
| Events in Fantastical
| Fantastically Good Event Parser
Tasks galore
Tasks. Same workflow for Things. Drafts is now the place where I write down what i need to do, and then these tasks are sent to Things.
Action:
| Task in Things
Email that for me, will you?
Writing Rich Text emails in Markdown and sending them on their way with Spark. Easier to format text this way.
Actions:
| Email (Spark)
| Email - Spark (Markdown)
Are you talking to me?
Messaging. Telegram/WhatsApp. For quick replies I’ll go into these apps and write on the appropriate chat. If I’m preparing a longer text, I find it more convenient to write it down on Drafts.
That’s something I’ve found very comfortable for a lot of apps: writing down stuff away from the app where it’ll end up. It’s easier for me to focus on the thing I’m writing if it’s just a black screen with no distractions from the app.
The Telegram action wasn’t available and it was well within my level of expertise to make one, so I did.
Actions:
| Send to Telegram
| Send to WhatsApp
Extra things
You can quote me on that
Quote repository. Workspaces are great for this. They keep my inbox clean, and make it easy to find stuff when I need it. Tag support is great on Drafts, if you tag your notes, it’s super easy to have them automatically organised in Workspaces.
Snip snip
Snippet vault. Same goes for snippets. Tot is a great app for snippets with a short expiration date, Drafts is used to keep the ones that’ll live longer, like hashtag bundles for Instagram…
My Wife is a hoot
Wife Sleepy Craziness. My wife sometimes says the craziest things while sleeping. Some of the most hilarious sentences I’ve heard. This is where they live.
Meta action.
One of the things I felt I needed when writing, is a notes file for the note I’m writing. I know, I know…. Obviously someone had thought about that already (thanks, @agiletortoise, again) and I can now press a button and go back and forth between the note I’m writing and the notes for that note. Helpful as hell.
Action:
| Meta Data < > Draft
GitHub Gist
Even though I’m not a developer, I like to use GitHub. I host this blog on GitHub Pages and I use GitHub Gist to share stuff with friends. I make small travel guides with tips for my friends, and post them there, or small tutorials when another friend needs help with something and I feel I can help. I used Sublime Text to compose these, and then upload them to Gist. There had to be a way to do this with Drafts, so why not change my workflow? Turns out the action to do that was outdated, not working. A quick trip to the forum, and @agiletortoise came through, yet again, updating the action in no time. Isn’t that the greatest customer support ever?
Action:
| Post Gist to Github
Edit 09-05-2020
I forgot a couple of things, so I’ll just add them here. More coming in the future, I’m sure, as this app is so cool it feels like having a new phone, and I keep finding new stuff I can get accomplished with it.
Blogging, still
One of the things I do, on and off (mostly off these days) is blogging. Sometimes I write down something and post it, that’s it. It’s mainly for myself, my readership levels should not even make it to two digits, but I like to do it, from time to time.
Longer posts go into a Medium publication that lies dormant most of the year, and other stuff I publish on this Jekyll install hosted on GitHub Pages. It was set up mainly as a proof-of-concept, when I was looking for ways to use GitHub as a non-developer, and I remember I have it here, ready to post, from time to time.
Can you hear me?
Dictation is not the first thing that comes to mind when I’m writing, but maybe it should!
I never got into the habit of talking to my iPhone, but Drafts does that really well. I started getting into it now that one of my hands is usually holding a baby, and I’m forced to write with the other one. The size of the iPhone is not well suited for that, so I started using this feature more often. Press a button on the extra keyboard row, say a few things, and most of it is usually write. A few tweaks and it’s ready to go.
I can keep on talking for as long as I want to, it never goes into sleep mode, and I can do it in English and Portuguese. Maybe I’ll even stop hating the way my voice sounds!
Note
Most actions I’ve posted are the official ones, made by @agiletortoise. There are countless variations, some with a huge amount of extra features. You should try them out if you feel you need something more than the stock features. Most of them are already included on the action groups that are installed by default, so you don’t even need to download them, unless you’ve deleted them in the meantime.
Browse the Drafts Directory and I’m sure you’ll find dozens that fit your needs.
Todoist
Todoist
I have memory issues. And I need to keep track of a lot of things, as one usually does. The two don’t go well together.
A recent post on Todoist’s blog reminded me that this is one of the apps I use the most, one that gets a lot of credit for keeping my life together (along with theLovelyWife, obviously).
I already knew I was a heavy user, as I rely a lot on Todoist to keep track of everything, but it came as a surprise when I found out I was on their Top 2%. That’s what you get for trusting your life to an app.
I don’t feel I’m anything but average when it comes to workload, I do more than some people, and a lot less than others, I’m sure. But keeping track of the things I have to to for work, with it’s multiple projects at the same time, as well as helping me manage my personal life at home and everything that has to be done on the web is a monster task, one that Todoist excels at.
I could go on forever about the things that I love about the app, but filters, comments and files and keyboard shortcuts on the web version are three that I can no longer live without. Of course you can still use Todoist as a basic list of stuff you have to do and be done with it. But once you start using the more advanced features, you’ll find yourself in organisational heaven.
Filters are a god send. Stuff you have to do at work, on project X, overdue and today ? Easy. Overdue tasks I promised theLovelyWife I would do at home ? Done. What will I have to get done at work next week on project Y ? Here you go. Being able to save these and countless others, and access them with a click ? Priceless.
Comments and files are part of the Premium package at Todoist. I can definitely recommend going the Premium way. It’s not expensive and adds a ton of features to an already complete package.
How do I use comments and files ? I get an email regarding something I’ll have to deal in a month’s time. I’ll create a task, and add all relevant information as comments. URL, pdf files with portfolios, phone numbers, email contacts, whatever. I then forget about all of these. When the day comes I don’t have to look for that information in a thousand scattered places.
Or you’re doing a list of stuff you need to get from a store you’re visiting in real life. You can add a photo of the item, along with the URL of the item on the company’s site, on each item’s comments. Handy.
Files can be uploaded from your computer, or from Dropbox and Google Drive.
Keyboard shortcuts, coupled with Intelligent Date Input, are a recipe for painless input. Adding tasks and organising them is so quick and effortless you’ll soon fall into a groove and do it with muscle memory alone.
Another nice thing about Todoist is the fact that you can get to it everywhere. They have you covered no matter what your preferred ecosystem is. There are versions for Web, Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, Chrome and Firefox. You can even have it living inside Outlook for Windows and Gmail, if you use them. Everyone happy ?
I could go on and on, Todoist has changed the way I run my life. Maybe it can help you too. And it’s free to try.