By Alex Guyot

Last week the MacStories team launched Project Calliope, an enormous new software project that we’ve been working on tirelessly for the last year. If you’ve been following along, you’ve heard us describe Calliope as a CMS; but from a software-engineering perspective, it’s actually a whole lot more. While we introduced Calliope as the foundation of our all-new Club MacStories and AppStories websites, we have much bigger plans for the new platform going forward. This is the foundation for the next generation of MacStories, from the website itself to many special projects in the future.

We’re extremely proud of what we’ve created here, and as the sole developer of Calliope, this post will be my deep dive into the more technical side of the project. Fair warning: this will be easier to follow if you’re a software developer (particularly a web or back-end developer), but I’ll be doing my best to give understandable explanations of the technologies involved. I also just want to talk about the journey we took to get here, the challenges we faced along the way, and the factors that drove us to this particular set of solutions.

AppStories, Episode 238 – The Complexity of Defining Great Modern Mac Apps →

Linked By John Voorhees

This week on AppStories, we explore the many ways Mac apps can be made today and how the frameworks, along with design choices and other factors are redefining the landscape of apps on the Mac and what constitutes a great Mac app.

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, John teaches Federico about the Arnold Palmer, a thank you to AppStories+ subscribers, plus Federico explains an ingenious collaborative editing workflow he created around Quick Note.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate a day early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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Relay FM’s Third Annual Fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Is Underway

By John Voorhees

Recently, Relay FM, which was founded by our close friends Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley, kicked off their annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help combat childhood cancer. This year’s third annual fundraiser has already raised over $70,000 with a goal of $333,333.33, and we’d love it if MacStories readers would join us in supporting this cause.

You can make a donation by visiting here.

If you’re a MacStories reader, there’s a good chance you have listened to one of the shows Federico co-hosts on the network or have another favorite, in which case you may have already contributed. However, if not, please do consider donating.

St. Jude plays an important role in the fight against childhood cancer, treating kids and doing research with other medical facilities around the world. Your donations help ensure that families aren’t charged for treatment, travel, housing, or meals, so their sole focus is helping their child get better.

Relay FM will be raising money for St. Jude through the end of September with the highlight of the drive being Podcastathon, an eight-hour extravaganza featuring special guests from your favorite Relay FM shows. Mark your calendar for Friday September 17, 2021 from Noon to 8 pm Eastern US time to watch Podcastathon, which will be streamed at twitch.tv/relay.fm.

Thanks in advance for checking out Relay FM’s fundraiser for St. Jude and to all who donate.

Tinderbox 9: The Tool For Notes. Visualize, Analyze, and Share Your Ideas [Sponsor]

By MacStories Team

Tinderbox is a powerful Mac app that stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas, bringing order and insight to the vast amounts of information collected when you’re working on a big project. Whether that’s writing a book, creating course materials, planning a wedding, or just managing your day-to-day life, Tinderbox helps impose structure on your data to keep you organized and productive.

And now with Tinderbox 9, the app offers over 150 new features including a flexible command bar, smarter artificial intelligence, a built-in gallery for saving views, improved visualizations of your data, and a whole lot more. Tinderbox has unparalleled power to analyze, visualize, and understand your notes. The app is a favorite of researchers, writers, investigators, product managers, and teachers. That’s because Tinderbox acts as a personal content assistant helping you discover connections and relationships between your notes that you might otherwise miss.

It’s easy to get started by dragging connections between notes or use Tinderbox’s wiki-like Ziplinks to link notes and ideas together. There are multiple ways to visualize your notes, too, including mind maps, outlines, word clouds, timelines, and dashboards. Each is a powerful way to gain new perspectives on your ideas.

Tinderbox also has agents and rules and employs powerful AI tools to automatically identify names and places, look up addresses, and even suggest links. Of course, the app integrates with DEVONthink, Scrivener, Bookends, Apple Notes, and more.

It has also never been easier to get started with Tinderbox. With more than 50 tutorial videos, ranging from “Creating your first notes” to “Organizing background research for architectural history” there’s a wealth of video content available. Tinderbox has a vibrant, active community, too, which includes regular meetups that offer hands-on problem-solving for new and experienced users alike. You can learn more on the Tinderbox forum or watch past meetups on Vimeo.

So, download Tinderbox 9 today to try it for free, for the best way to visualize, analyze, and share your ideas.

Our thanks to Tinderbox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Club Announcements, Custom Domains for Email, and TestFlight for Mac

By John Voorhees

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Sponsored by: Hubstaff – The All-In-One Work Time Tracker For Managing Field or Remote Teams

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

MacStories Weekly
- Federico has a Quick Note templating tip
- John collects a variety ways to take advantage of the Club’s new web app
- Why we built Calliope
- An Interview with Tempo developer Rahul Matta
MacStories Unplugged – Viva L’Umarell