tech

  • A New Reading Partnership

    I was starting to get down about the fact that my read-it-later digests from Matter were causing crashing errors on my Kindle. The issue has been pretty consistent lately and I don’t have much hope of getting help since it’s not really a supported integration. A few years ago, I enjoyed the Kobo and Pocket sync, but Pocket was far from my favorite app. Now that Pocket is dead, I didn’t have much hope for another option.

    The news that my O.G. favorite read-it-later service, Instapaper, is building a Kobo integration was a wonderful surprise today. I could definitely see myself moving back into the Kobo ecosystem, especially now that I can’t back up my Kindle purchases and Amazon can revoke my access to them at any time. In addition, I always want to reduce my reliance on Amazon in any way that makes sense.

  • I never expected to, nor did I want to, read the phrase “a gritty Pac-Man reboot.”

    https://www.theverge.com/games-review/708833/shadow-labyrinth-review-gritty-pac-man

  • MoonShots

    Oversized ambition seems to be an increasingly common feature of new software applications and services. Many of the new apps I try are swinging for the fences and walking away when the home run or grand slam doesn’t materialize. As I’m evaluating software now, I have to dig into what the expectations are for the commercial performance of the software. If they are unrealistic, it may be better not to get attached in the first place.

    One of my favorite tools is the read-it-later app Matter. A few months ago, the founders of Matter posted about their health issues and how they had to give up on their goal of making Matter the next Duolingo. At some point, it became clear the product wasn’t going to have the same level of success. Their response was to call the app feature complete and put it in maintenance mode.

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  • I think we are starting to see how Ghost with ActivityPub will work for self-hosted sites. It will be interesting to understand how PikaPods will support this as it seems right up their alley.

  • The Decline of Design

    Sean Heber of Iconfactory brings the harsh realities of maintaining steady design work in the era of AI dominance.

    I am sorry to read about the challenges Iconfactory is facing. The first product I worked on after I got into software development used icons created by the studio. Their Twitter client, Twitterrific was what lured me to join that network years ago. I love their design sensibilities and the level of craft they bring to their work.

    My favorite Iconfactory project has to be the artwork for the iOS version of Carcassonne. I was so sad when that app ceased development. It was truly a cut above.

  • Readwise MCP

    Microsoft made the Model Context Protocol (MCP) a major focus of their Build conference last week. Though the Microsoft engineer I spoke with, who is heavily involved in AI thought the emphasis was a little overplayed, it’s easy to understand some of the excitement. Seeing your favorite applications easily plug into agentic AI through a standardized protocol can open your mind to the possibilities. The first integration to spark my interest is with Readwise.

    In simpler terms, setting up your own Readwise MCP server allows you to chat with your Readwise highlights using an external chat client (such as Claude), rather than the Chat function on the Readwise website.

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  • Bandcamp Playlists

    Bandcamp is finally adding a feature that I, and other like-minded enjoyers of music have been wanting for some time. The new ability to create playlists feels like in most ways it aligns with the ethics of the service, which is a good thing, but the focus may be a bit too heavy in that area.1 Bandcamp describes the feature as, “Like digital mixtapes.” There isn’t much need to describe how it works, everyone is familiar with the concept of playlists and this feature appears to do exactly what it says on the tin.

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  • Pocket Closing

    Mozilla made a surprise announcement today that they are closing the Pocket read-it-later service. With nothing but a bland, corporate statement to go on, I imagine users have a fair amount of confusion about the move. I was actually looking at the Pocket entry on the App Store earlier in the day to see if it had been updated lately. I always had dreams of the service/app being improved, so I could go back to using it with a Kobo, which is a quite delightful combo. I had a Kobo a few years ago, and the sync with Pocket, while it could use a few features (like highlight sync), was key for me. I probably read more articles than books on the device. I kept this option in the back of my mind for a possible switch back.

    I would have been extremely frustrated if I had bought another Kobo under the assumption that I could fulfill my use case of synchronizing with my saved articles from Pocket.

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  • Closed Off

    My son watched the Spike Jonze movie Her a few days ago and remarked to me about how prescient some of the ideas were. I was thinking about how accurately Jonze (who also wrote the screenplay) predicted some of the aspects of generative AI and the role that it could play in our lives. The film was made not too long ago, but remember how quickly OpenAI sprang up with most of its current capabilities and how taken by surprise everyone was.

    My son mentioned the fact that everyone in the movie walked around with headphones on and how that’s now the case when you are out and about. My wife actually wears AirPods most of the day in the house. It makes it challenging to have conversations with her. I always feel like I’m intruding into her little audio bubble.

  • Oh HEY, Hello

    I have to admit something: After writing about quitting the email service HEY from 37Signals, I ended up going back and resubscribing (before my data was deleted). Sure, I tried other services. Proton was a total bust. I ran into bugs that rendered the platform unusable, unless I wanted to wait for hours to be able to access the emails the alerts were telling me I had in my inbox, or deal with the emails that, for some reason, couldn’t be deleted. Fastmail was better, but lacked polish. There were some unpainted spots, carpet that had a few stains, etc.

    When HEY warned me that my data would soon be deleted, I dutifully entered my credit card information and resubscribed for another year. Reading debates about the service, I often come across discussions about the unique features, such as the screener. People have come up with some clever hacks to replicate the functionality of the screener in other email tools. My needs/wants are not so simple, though.

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