Microsoft Releases Social Scheduling iMessage App, ‘Who’s In’

Microsoft has introduced a new app called ‘Who’s In’ to the iMessage App Store. The app is designed to help friends plan social events together without ever leaving the iOS Messages app.

When you want to coordinate an event with friends, opening ‘Who’s In’ will present several types of activities to choose from:

  • Eat and drink
  • Watch a movie
  • Visit an attraction
  • Create your own

After making your selection, a Bing-powered list of relevant options will be presented such as restaurant names, movie titles, etc. These are sorted based on your location, and once you’ve picked one, you’ll be asked to specify a date and time for the event to take place. These details are all compacted into an iMessage card that gets saved into your message body so you can send it to friends. When they receive your message, they can vote on whether they’ll be attending or not.

In many ways ‘Who’s In’ resembles the scheduling app Doodle, but with a more narrow focus on the specific activities featured in the app.

‘Who’s In’ is available for download from the iMessage App Store.

Apple Launches Clips Video App for iPhone and iPad

Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.

Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.

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The Twitter API Platform’s Future→

Twitter today disclosed future plans for its API platform and published a public roadmap where developers can track the company’s progress.

One of the most significant changes announced is that later this year the company will be unifying its API platform, combining the strengths of its Gnip APIs with its more affordable REST and streaming APIs. This will simplify the platform and provide more powerful APIs at, in theory, lower costs to developers with smaller-scale needs – though pricing plans have not been announced at this point.

The announcement post contains many details on the API platform’s future, but a few specific things are highlighted which launch today or in the short-term future:

  • Today, we launched the Account Activity API, which provides access to real-time events for accounts you own or manage, with delivery via webhooks.
  • Today, we also launched a set of new Direct Message API endpoints that will enable developers to build on the new Direct Message features we recently announced.
  • Later this year, we’ll launch a new set of tools that enable developers to sign up, access, and manage APIs within a self-managed account. This will including the ability to get deeper access and more features, all with a transparent pricing model.
  • We’ll also be shipping a new Search API that provides free access to a 7-day lookback window with more sophisticated query capabilities and higher fidelity data retrieval than is currently available. We’ll also provide a seamless upgrade path to full-fidelity 30-day or full archive lookback windows.

Twitter’s openness regarding its plans should be an encouragement to anyone who depends on third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot or Twitterrific. The Direct Message API, for example, will now support media attachments like the official Twitter app.

Although it may be some time before we see today’s announcements bring specific benefits to third-party apps, Twitter has had a rocky relationship with developers in the past, and today’s announcement is a sign of commitment to its API platform and developers.

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The 2016 Panic Report→

From Cabel Sasser’s latest Panic report (as always, a great read):

If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!

Giving more tools to companies like Panic to make professional, powerful software for iOS is one of the challenges Apple faces along with making the OS itself more capable. There should be more iOS-first and iOS-only Panics and Omni Groups around.

See also: last year’s episode of Remaster on Firewatch (which you should go play right now if you haven’t).

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MindNode for iOS Adds TextBundle Export Option

I’ve long been using iThoughts to create mind maps for my longform stories, but I’ve been playing around with the latest MindNode for iOS over the past couple of weeks, and I’m intrigued. MindNode 4.5 for iOS adds the ability to export mind maps as TextBundle archives (more precisely, the compressed version called TextPack), which can then be opened as rich documents in Ulysses.

Launched three years ago, TextBundle is an archive format designed to let Markdown text editors exchange text documents that also contain referenced images. Ulysses, my favorite text editor, fully supports the TextBundle spec, along with the popular Bear and Marked. With the latest MindNode 4.5, this means you can now create a mind map that contains sub-nodes, inline images, and notes, export it as TextBundle to Ulysses (or other apps), and you’ll end up with a Markdown-formatted sheet that retains inline attachments.

A mind map with an image becomes a sheet in Ulysses thanks to TextBundle.

A mind map with an image becomes a sheet in Ulysses thanks to TextBundle.

While writing in plain text with Markdown formatting is fantastic for file portability, there’s the downside of .txt files not being able to act as containers of other referenced files (such as screenshots). Ulysses’ unique handling of sheets breaks with the tradition of plain text files, but it enables for powerful additions to standard Markdown editing, including notes, keywords, and images. I’ve been writing in Ulysses for over a year, and its non-standard approach to Markdown hasn’t been an issue because every time I publish a story or save a draft for a document I’m working on, I also save a second copy of the same file as a regular .txt in my Dropbox. This way, I enjoy the best of both worlds – Ulysses’ richer editing environment, and the portability of plain text files synced with Dropbox.

With MindNode, TextBundle, and Ulysses, I can now create mind maps that contain images and notes, outline a document visually, and then copy it to Ulysses, where I can write, edit, and continue to see images referenced inline. This feels like a much better workflow than having to constantly keep my text editor next to a mind map. I’m going to test this system and evaluate how much it could be automated1 over the next few weeks, but, overall, it’s a fantastic improvement for MindNode and Ulysses users.

MindNode 4.5 is available on the App Store.

  1. My ideal scenario: I would like to export a .textbundle archive from Ulysses and let Workflow turn local image references into images uploaded somewhere on the web. However, I can’t figure out how to open .textbundle archives with Workflow, as changing their extension to .zip won’t work. ↩︎

Ulysses 2.8 Adds Touch ID Security and More

The Soulmen released version 2.8 of Ulysses on iOS and macOS today. The headline feature of the update is Touch ID support, which gives users the option to lock Ulysses automatically as soon as it is closed or after one, three, or five minutes. If your iOS device or Mac doesn’t support Touch ID, you can require Ulysses to use a password instead. I don’t have any particularly secret documents in Ulysses, but there are some documents I would prefer to keep private. With Touch ID, it’s so easy to unlock Ulysses that turning it on was a no-brainer.

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Connected, Episode 136: Metaphysical Garbage Disposal→

Apple comes clean on what’s going on with the Mac Pro, but Federico still isn’t buying one. Myke gets excited about new Samsung phones and Stephen feels old when thinking about Twitter.

A good episode of Connected this week. We talk about the implications of Apple’s Mac Pro news and our relationship with Twitter. You can listen here.

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Spotify Will Offer Time-Limited Exclusives of Some Albums to Premium Members→

Music Business Worldwide reports on a new, multi-year deal Spotify has struck with Universal Music Group. One change tied to the deal is that some new albums from Universal will be exclusive to Premium subscribers for a two-week window. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek shares:

“We know that not every album by every artist should be released the same way, and we’ve worked hard with UMG to develop a new, flexible release policy. Starting today, Universal artists can choose to release new albums on premium only for two weeks, offering subscribers an earlier chance to explore the complete creative work, while the singles are available across Spotify for all our listeners to enjoy.”

Another change brought by the new deal is highlighted at the end of the article. Quoting a Spotify press release:

‘The new agreement will also provide UMG with unprecedented access to data, creating the foundation for new tools for artists and labels to expand, engage and build deeper connections with their fans.’

Although this information is spun by Spotify as a positive, it may be concerning to any more privacy-conscious users.

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