When Hey came out I trialed it for a few days and then decided to try to mimic some of its features in Fastmail. So I made a “Feed” folder and created rules to send promotional emails to it. Recently, I added a feed@mydomain.com alias that does to that folder, so when I’m signing up for a mailing list, I can make it go to that folder from the beginning. I think that’s better than Hey!
I wonder if music streaming would have grown so dominant, if digital music stores had let you listen to an entire album once or twice before buying it.
Well, this was way more difficult than it should have been.
My take after using Pocket for years and trying Instapaper for a few weeks: both have features that the other lacks that, in my opinion, should be table stakes for a read-it-later app. There’s no good option and I’m very frustrated. ☹️ If you’re already using one or the other, my advice is just stick with it so you don’t learn what you’re missing.
I had thought Instapaper’s killer feature for me (vs. Pocket) was going to be notes, but I think it’s actually the ability to shuffle my reading list. My list is too long to ever get through and growing, so randomization is the only way I’ll ever read the things I saved in ~2018.
Is Google just straight up getting worse at search? I swear there was a time when a search like “app to track protein but not calories” would return relevant results. Now it’s giving me nothing but the exact opposite of what I asked for.
I’m finding that lots of websites have major bugs when it comes to editing text fields: Twitter, Notion, a health care provider’s website… Weird stuff like if I select some text and hit delete it only deletes one character, or if I try to type in the middle of some text it deletes one character from the end for every character I type. It’s happening on my Mac in multiple browsers, currently on Catalina but if might have started before I upgraded to Catalina. Anybody else experiencing this? Haven’t found anything on Google. Mac OS problem or shitty websites problem?
Is there an iPhone app that can automatically turn the screen to grayscale at a certain time of day? Or would it be possible to build one?
Today’s internet rabbit hole: Andy Matuschak’s evergreen notes
Conclusion: I need a personal wiki! I want something private, not published on the web. Will probably try Bear first, but any suggestions?
Is there a Pocket/Instapaper alternative that has no discover/browse/explore page? I have a bad habit of repeatedly checking Pocket’s discover page instead of actually reading any of the articles I have saved and I want to block myself from doing that.
Big Joel did a great video essay about YouTube’s Creator Academy and how it describes the things that help YouTube channels make money as if they are natural laws and not choices made by the people who make YouTube. Something similar: when you look at a Reddit page in the browser on a mobile device there’s a banner saying “This page looks better in the app!” Hmm, I wonder who has the power to make Reddit look good in a browser?
My latest food obsession is organic freezer pops from Whole Foods. Taste great, perfect serving size, and you don’t have to worry about them melting on the way home. Highly recommend buying if you see them.
Thanks to How Did This Get Made? I watched The Peanut Butter Solution last night. It is very, very strange. 🇨🇦
The Scaredy Cats Horror Show is set to be my favorite podcast of 2020. The first movie podcast that got me to watch the movies before listening to the episodes. Only 5 episodes, great guests. Interesting commentary about what a horror movie is and why (some) people like them.
I got my Hey.com invite today, so I am noncommittally trying it out. Now I find myself in the strange situation of wishing I was getting more emails!
The iPod is the only consumer hardware device that came out in my lifetime (once I was old enough to remember) that I immediately saw the benefit of and wanted one for myself. Everything else has taken me a while to come around on. Apple Watch and Kindle are the two that took me a while but I now unambiguously enjoy. Smartphones are the one I’m most ambivalent about. AirPods and iPad are in the middle.
A smarthome technology I’d actually be interested in: a fan that follows you around your house.
Not yet sold on actually using Hey, but seeing how much of their philosophy I can recreate in Fastmail. I have created a “Paper trail” folder and am manually creating rules to direct messages to it. Same for “Feed”, except I typically direct those kinds of things to Feedbin anyway so not sure how much point there is to that. Might even set up some rules to recreate their Screener feature based on whether a sender is in my contacts. I’m sure actually using Hey is a much more seamless experience, but this may be good enough.
I just configured my email client to not show remote images by default and have now learned that Amazon shipment notifications contain zero non-image content. 😫
Kind sad I missed this while it was happening: Instagram Accidentally Made Emoji Fun Again
Hello, people of Micro.blog! Haven’t been around for a while, how’s it going?
Ranking 2020 Presidential Candidates’s 404 Pages
Really cool video about how the animation in Toy Story 4 simulates camera effects. But I wonder if this technique will eventually go the way of skeuomorphic design in smartphone UIs. Will computer animation get its own Flat Design?
A lazy fix 20 years ago means the Y2K bug is taking down computers now
IMDB’s mobile site is one of the most uniquely terrible websites I’ve encountered. The junk is not even that obtrusive but every time I visit, without fail, I scroll right past the information I’m actually looking for.