Posts in Linked

Second Gear Pit Pass→

This is a neat idea by Second Gear: instead of the regular newsletter, they’ll be using Passbook to gradually release information about their new app.

In Italy, I’ve seen a couple of services that are starting to use Passbook. Pit Pass is the first item that I’ve added to my Passbook since its launch last year, and I’m intrigued by the prospect of more developers using it to tease upcoming apps.

Lex Friedman has a nice overview of Pit Pass at Macworld. As an aside, I’ve also found out today that Passbook files can be viewed in Mountain Lion’s Mail through a popover.

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Gmail Introduces Categories With a Tabbed Interface, Gradually Rolling Out Over the Coming Weeks→

Today, Google announced new features for Gmail that sorts your inbox into various categories for social network notifications, receipts and shipping updates, and promotions from your favorite shopping sites. While Priority Inbox made an attempt to surface only the stuff that really mattered, categories breaks the inbox down to a series of tabs that should help cut down on some of the clutter. Categories and tabs are basically pre-defined filters and labels with training wheels.

On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when.

Categories for Android, iOS, and the desktop will be gradually rolling out to Gmail users and their respective app stores over the coming weeks. In the meantime, be sure to check out The Verge, who have an initials hands-on with the latest features.

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Capturing the Moon With an iPhone→

One of the best methods of taking photos of stars, planets and satellites is with a webcam, like the old Toucam Pro, and processing with Registax. That’s not the easiest method though, and when you want photos of the moon, an iPhone does the job very well.

Jared Earle captures spectacular photographs of the moon by attaching an iPhone to a spotting scope with an interesting set of accessories and offers up some tips on how to get the perfect shot. So cool.

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Tim Cook at D11: The Full Video→

In last night’s interview, Tim Cook didn’t reveal new Apple products or hint at new software features specifically (not a surprise), but he did share his thoughts on the “grand vision” for TV, opening up iOS APIs to third-parties, and letting Jony Ive contribute to the next version of iOS. I am watching this today.

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Dark Sky 3.0→

Today, Dark Sky 3.0 has been released with much anticipation since the release of their own forecasting API / website forecast.io with incredibly accurate weather prediction packaged with an elegant, simple user experience.

Version 3.0 is now powered by the Forecast API and support for the UK and Ireland is now available. Gone are the brief text summaries which have been replaced by ‘intelligent’ ones that are more detailed with current conditions, next hour, and the rest of the day. They also include more than just precipitation, which is a big addition I have been waiting for.

Another new feature to Dark Sky 3.0 is the ‘Personal Weather Reporter’: any user can submit their own current conditions with a simple shake of the iPhone and then selecting conditions. You can even include a weather photo with your submission as well. The radar screen is still the same with the exception of a new magnifying glass icon in the upper left. I don’t plan on dumping the forecast.io web app or my other favorite, Today (which also uses the forecast.io API), but now that Dark Sky is more than just precipitation, I will use it for more than just alerts. It is awkward that notifications are still considered “beta”, but the Dark Sky team is still actively making changes to them.

The Dark Sky team has done a really great job with this update (and in the last few months) and they have proved their dedication to this genre of apps. Be sure to check out their other web app, Lines. Dark Sky 3.0 is $3.99 or a free update for existing users. The app is universal and available now on the App Store.

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Using Tweetbot Searches to Replace RSS→

Sean Korzdorfer shares a Tweetbot tip that I didn’t know about: you can construct complex searches with boolean operators and filters and launch them with a URL scheme, both on OS X and iOS. And not just regular searches – you can apply a query to look for specific keywords inside a Tweetbot search.

Basically, Sean is using Tweetbot searches to replace RSS feeds. By saving searches that filter out RTs, mentions, and tweets in foreign languages, he receives a stream of tweets containing links from a specific set of users. Sean has turned his searches into Alfred workflows for Tweetbot on the Mac, and I thought I could do the same on iOS.

Sure enough, here’s a Launch Center Pro action to launch a Tweetbot search for links (no RTs, no mentions) from users I care about:

tweetbot:///search?query=from%3Amacrumors%20OR%20from%3Averge%20OR%20from%3Adaringfireball%20OR%20from%3Apolygonall%20OR%20from%3Akotaku%20OR%20from%3Amacdrifter_feed%20OR%20from%3Areneritchie%20OR%20from%3Amattalexand%20OR%20from%3Anateboateng%20OR%20from%3Adujkan%20OR%20from%3Amarkgurman%20OR%20from%3Apanzer%20filter%3Alinks%20-filter%3Amentions%20-filter%3Aretweets%20lang%3Aen%20[prompt]

And here it is decoded for reading purposes:

tweetbot:///search?query=from:macrumors OR from:verge OR from:daringfireball OR from:polygonall OR from:kotaku OR from:macdrifter_feed OR from:reneritchie OR from:mattalexand OR from:nateboateng OR from:dujkan OR from:markgurman OR from:panzer filter:links -filter:mentions -filter:retweets lang:en [prompt]

The URL action ends with a [prompt] for Launch Center Pro, but that can also be a [[draft]] for Drafts. You’re not forced to launch the search URL with a keyword – if you don’t enter anything in the prompt, Tweetbot will display all links from the search (which is why you probably don’t want to use Drafts for this, as it can’t launch an action from an empty draft). Also, you can see that the first portion of the URL isn’t percent-encoded, but the one after the query parameter is. For this, Launch Center Pro’s encode/decode actions can come in handy.

I am subscribed to a series of Twitter lists to discover interesting links on a daily basis, but these complex searches have the advantage of filtering out RTs and mentions, providing a cleaner, links-only experience.

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