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Twitter Instant Timeline→

Vindu Goel writes about Twitter’s new “instant timeline” feature, which will allow users to sign up and start reading tweets without curating a following list manually:

Over all, however, the quality of the instant timeline was so good that I was almost tempted to dump my regular Twitter account, where I follow more than 700 other accounts, probably one-third of which are no longer important to me.

But:

The first part of the sign-up process is unchanged. After you pick a user name and password, Twitter asks for access to your smartphone’s contact list. Once you grant that access, the service scans it for people with Twitter accounts and suggests them as people to follow.

The feature has currently rolled out to a small percentage of users on Android. On multiple occasions, Twitter stated that getting people to sign up and enjoy the service without the burden of choosing accounts to follow is a priority for the company, and the results reported by The New York Times sound encouraging.

Still, I wonder how scanning contacts to find accounts based on common interest would work for people who have heard of Twitter but don’t have friends who use it (example: my parents). Keeping this instant timeline in addition to the traditional way of creating an account and picking people to follow sounds good though, and I’m curious to see when it’ll roll out to iPhone users.

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Virtual: My Friends Thought I Was a Genius→

This week Federico and Myke talk about their experiences with Grim Fandango Remastered and the Code Name S.T.E.A.M demo.

A great game and a promising demo featured in this week’s Virtual. You can listen to the episode here.

For more Grim Fandango reads, I recommend this story by Polygon on how Grim Fandango came to life again, Laura Hudson’s article on playing the game today, and Kotaku’s guide to why so many people love Grim Fandango.

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The iPad Introduction, Five Years Later→

Five years later, Federico, Myke and Stephen re-visit Steve Jobs’ announcement of the original iPad.

On January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. Five years later, the iPad has sold over 200 million units and it has become my main computer. So, obviously, we’d have a special episode of Connected to revisit the keynote and its message after five years.

I’m very happy about how this turned out. We put a lot of work into it – don’t miss the rumor section before the actual keynote – and it’s been fun to look back at the origin of the device I now use every day. You can listen to the episode here.

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Microsoft Releases Outlook for iOS→

Microsoft today released an iPhone and iPad version of Outlook, their well-known email app from the Office suite of productivity apps. The app is free and does not require a subscription to Office 365.

Outlook for iOS supports email accounts from Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail - but does not yet support custom IMAP accounts. Interestingly, the app also directly connects to online storage services such as OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive so you can easily attach and send files.

Outlook makes it simple to share files stored in the cloud. With just a few taps, you can insert a link to any file from OneDrive, Dropbox and other popular accounts in your email message. Recipients are automatically granted permission to view these files, with no extra steps.

Need to find a file quickly? No problem. Outlook provides a view of your recently received email attachments, so you don’t have to go searching through email to find that document you need. Outlook also lets you search across both your cloud storage and your email attachments at once, with Quick Filters to let you quickly sort by file type.

Be sure to read the full announcement blog post from the Microsoft Office team, they highlight a number of neat features that might convince you to try the app out. And if you’re ready to try the app out, here’s the direct link to Outlook on the App Store.
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Andy Baio on The Internet Archive→

Andy Baio writes about a topic that is dear to me: The Internet Archive and software preservation.

The Internet Archive is a chaotic, beautiful mess. It’s not well-organized, and its tools for browsing and searching the wealth of material on there are still rudimentary, but getting better.

But this software emulation project feels to me, like the kind of thing Google would have tried in 2003. Big, bold, technically challenging, and for the greater good.

Read the post, then go listen back to episode 13 of Connected if you missed it.

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Slack to Add Voice, Video, and Screen Sharing→

Today, Slack announced they have acquired Screenhero, a real-time collaboration service with support for video and audio. Their technology will allow Slack to integrate voice, video, and screen sharing in the main Slack apps.

Around the same time we started building Slack, another team began building their vision; a service specializing in voice, video and screen sharing that would allow people working remotely to work as if they were in the same room, and people in the same room to work better than ever.

That team was Screenhero. And the more we got to know them, the more we liked the cut of their jib.

We use Slack at Relay, and, like many others, I like its integration with other services and apps. I always wondered if Slack would ever take on Skype, and I’m curious to see if what they’re building could be a possible solution for podcasters who are forced to use Skype today.

See also: The Verge and TechCrunch on today’s news, and Mat Honan’s profile of Slack founder Stewart Butterfield from last year.

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Alfred Remote→

Very nice addition to Alfred for Mac released today: Alfred Remote lets you control Alfred and even trigger workflows from an iOS device. I’ve been testing the app and, while not for me (I work on my iOS devices), I think it’s a great solution for those who get work done at a Mac and wouldn’t mind keeping an iPhone or iPad next to it to offload some shortcuts.

The app is easy to use, with large touch targets and a page-based UI to organize and launch shortcuts. Besides files and folders, I like how you can trigger workflows from an iPhone – nice, say, to wake up in the morning and prepare your Mac for work before you sit down.

Now this is where things get really fun! Add a “Remote Trigger” to a workflow to allow you to launch it from your Remote. A single tap can launch multiple things; For example the “Morning tasks” action launches all of my essential websites and apps to start the day at once.

Alfred Remote is $4.99 on the App Store and requires Alfred 2.6 for Mac.

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Vine Is a Window→

Speaking of video on Twitter, Mat Honan has an excellent take on two years of Vine:

That’s not to say there isn’t a performance element to most of the year’s best. There very much is. Vine’s best is still largely dominated by dancing and singing and sports and music and gags. And I would argue that the best stuff on there is still mostly people performing.

But increasingly the popular clips have a documentary element; a human element. I’m guessing there will be quite a few really beautiful Vines of the Juno snowstorm, and part of what will be so gorgeous about them will be the futility of man in the face of nature.

You can find the best Vines of 2014 here.

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Legacy TestFlight Service Shutting Down on February 26→

Apple has informed developers that the legacy TestFlightApp.com beta testing service will shut down on February 26:

The services offered at TestFlightApp.com will no longer be available after February 26, 2015. To prepare for the TestFlightapp.com closure, developers and team leaders are recommended to transfer their testers to the all-new TestFlight Beta Testing in iTunes Connect.

The legacy TestFlight website has continued working in spite of Apple’s acquisition of TestFlight last year and subsequent integration in iTunes Connect. Apple is providing developers with instructions to migrate existing testers to the new TestFlight service, with more details available here.

As I wrote last week, the new TestFlight is not perfect, but its native presence on iOS 8 offers a superior solution for testers and developers thanks to the reliance on Apple IDs. Notably, the legacy TestFlight website allowed developers to release betas for devices running older versions of iOS, whereas the new TestFlight is only available for iOS 8.

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