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Resolve and Clean URLs with Clean Links for iOS

Clean Links

Clean Links

In July, I wrote about my Pythonista script to resolve and clean URLs copied from apps that used shortening services. Clean Links, developed by Griffin Caprio, is a free iOS app that does more than my script as it resolves URLs, removes useless parameters, and supports x-callback-url for inter-app communication.

Clean Links’ sole purpose is to receive a URL that was shortened, put behind a proxy, or cluttered with parameters/tokens and turn it into the clean, basic version that’s the one you want to share with your friends and followers.1 Clean Links can resolve YouTube URLs, links to blog posts generated by FeedBurner, classic Bitly URLs, and more. In my tests, Clean Links never failed to clean up a URL that I gave to it – the recent addition of YouTube URL support is extremely welcome as YouTube mobile redirects are particularly annoying. By default, Clean Links cleans a URL you’ve copied and puts the cleaned version back in the iOS clipboard.

With callbacks, Clean Links can be used with other apps as a “URL cleaning service” in the middle of a workflow. Here’s an example: I’ve found a link in Tweetbot and I want to tweet it, but the URL is ugly. With Clean Links, I can copy the URL and launch this Launch Center Pro action to have it cleaned up and return to Tweetbot’s Compose screen automatically. Or, with this action, you can resolve a URL and automatically add it to the “URL” field of a new event in Fantastical 2.

A tip for x-callback-url power users: when chained to other apps, Clean Links can automatically insert text not by using clipboard hacks, but through a “return parameter” called retParam. If you take a look at the URL schemes that power the actions above, you’ll see that, for Tweetbot, the text parameter is omitted from the Tweetbot URL scheme and given to retParam (same concept for Fantastical). If you want to pass along cleaned URLs with x-callback-url keep this in mind and take a look at the app’s documentation.

Clean Links has a very utilitarian approach to the problem it solves: it’s powerful, but it doesn’t come with a pretty UI for iOS 7. You’re not supposed to be looking at Clean Links all the time though, and the app’s functionality makes it the best solution to clean URLs and send them to other apps I’ve found. Clean Links is Universal and available for free on the App Store.

  1. Tweeting URLs with “mobile.” domains and UTM tokens is comparable to this. ↩︎

Thoughts On The Nexus 7 From The Perspective Of A Longtime iOS User→

As someone who primarily works on iOS, I won’t lie – I considered buying an Android device to see how customizing some parts of the user experience would benefit my workflow. The Services-like menu and improved document management framework seem like features that Apple should be inspired from instead of relying on the clumsy Open In menu.

Richard’s article offers a good, honest perspective that includes many of the reasons why I don’t want to switch to an Android device.

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A List of New iOS 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

With iOS 7, Apple has introduced the possibility for third-party developers to support custom shortcuts with external (Bluetooth) keyboards in their apps. Keyboard shortcuts, longtime favorites of OS X power users, can now be enabled in iOS apps and, in the past few months, we’ve seen some notable examples such as OmniOutliner by The Omni Group adding support for this feature.1

Apple itself has been experimenting with keyboard shortcuts in built-in iOS 7 apps, and I thought I’d provide a list of the ones that I’ve found to be working on iOS 7.0.3 with my iPad mini and a Logitech tablet keyboard due to the lack of official documentation. This list was inspired by Rui Carmo, who first found out about keyboard shortcuts in Safari for iOS 7. Since Rui’s post (and my link to it), the issues with the Logitech keyboard that he described have been fixed (the Spotlight key works on iOS 7.0.3) and I’ve collected some new shortcuts.

Right now, new keyboard shortcuts have only been added to Safari, Mail, and Pages in a very limited fashion. While they are consistent with their OS X counterparts, Apple has only brought a few of the Mac’s shortcuts to its iOS 7 apps, leaving other apps like Messages or Reminders without shortcut support. It’s likely that, with time, Apple will bring more shortcuts to Safari, Mail, and other stock apps. I couldn’t find official documentation on Apple’s website and I’ve tested every possible shortcut with a simple trial and error procedure on my iPad.

I will update this list regularly as Apple adds more keyboard shortcuts to its iOS apps. If you have discovered other keyboard shortcuts that are new to iOS 7 and haven’t been mentioned here, please ping me on Twitter or send me an email.

Update 11/11: New shortcuts added thanks to Steven Troughton-Smith.

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Ramp Champ 1.2→

Ramp Champ was one of the first iPhone games I bought in 2009 after I got my iPhone 3GS. I remember spending hours with Ramp Champ trying to beat my records and get the highest scores – we’re talking about the days when you couldn’t buy Smurfs with In-App Purchases and he called the shots.

The Iconfactory then sold Ramp Champ, which is back today with a version 1.2 that adds Retina graphics and support for the 4-inch screen. I’ve been playing Ramp Champ after three years and I can gladly confirm that it’s still fun and powered by great graphics and sounds. As reported by TouchArcade, Ramp Champ 2 is in the works under the new owner Seven Gun Games.

Ramp Champ is an App Store classic – and it’s a free update if you bought the original app in 2009. If you’re not familiar with the game, make sure to read Louie Mantia’s original design article.

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The App Design Handbook for iOS 7→

Nathan Barry and Jeremy Olson have released the iOS 7 edition of The App Design Handbook, a fantastic guide for anyone who’s interested in iOS app development but doesn’t know where to look or how to start. I have read the book today – even if you’ve been working with iOS for a while, Nathan and Jeremy explain iOS 7 with practical examples and why the changes the OS brings aren’t just cosmetic (or “flat”). The style of the book is informative and concise and several aspects of app planning, design, development, and marketing are covered. I’ve known Jeremy for years, and he knows how to make good apps, pitch them, and turn them into financial and personal successes. These guys know what they’re talking about.

What I like is that you can choose between various options for purchase, starting from the standalone book to the $199 package that comes with 9 interviews with folks like Mark Kawano and Marc Edwards, 9 video tutorials, and 5 resources for app design and development.

With the holidays coming up, The App Design Handbook makes for a great gift to friends or relatives who think they have a potentially good idea but don’t know how to turn it into a successful app. Nathan and Jeremy did a great job and you can buy the book here.

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Skitch for iOS Gets “Open In” Support, Maps, Other Enhancements

Skitch 3.0.4

Skitch 3.0.4

Released in late September, Skitch 3 for iOS was a great reimagination of Skitch, but it lacked some handy features like Maps integration and an Open In menu to send annotated images to other apps. I called Skitch 3 “a fun, quick annotation app with a lot of tools but a focus on speed and straightforwardness”, noting how it became my go-to image annotation app (again).

With today’s 3.0.4 update, Evernote has brought a series of minor but welcome enhancements that make Skitch more powerful and integrated with other iOS apps. Notably, an Open In option has been added to the sharing menu, allowing Skitch to send annotated images directly to iPhone and iPad apps (in my case, Droplr).

As detailed on the Evernote blog, other additions include an overflow menu that contains a Crop function and a “Clear All Annotations” shortcut; possibility to annotate your current location on a map view; and new controls for Evernote notebooks. While Skitch 3 wants to be an annotation app that can be used without Evernote sync, users who want to send images to Evernote can now choose a default notebook in the Settings.

I like today’s Skitch update, especially for Open In support (my Skitch > Droplr > Tweetbot is now much simpler). Skitch 3.0.4 is available on the App Store.

Apple Announces Features Coming Back to iWork→

Apple responds to iWork criticism:

The new iWork applications—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—were released for Mac on October 22nd. These applications were rewritten from the ground up to be fully 64-bit and to support a unified file format between OS X and iOS 7 versions, as well as iWork for iCloud beta.

These apps feature an all-new design with an intelligent format panel and many new features such as easy ways to share documents, Apple-designed styles for objects, interactive charts, new templates, and new animations in Keynote.

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

I’m glad I didn’t believe Apple was a company that didn’t care about advanced users anymore (as the narrative goes in some corners of the Internet these days). I still think that Apple should avoid this kind of software launches (no criticism is better than criticism, after all), but I’ll take promised features over nothing. If Apple can’t afford to ship more complete rewrites on day one (and it’s not like Apple didn’t think this would happen), being communicative about future changes is obviously better than silence (and we have plenty of precedents).

AppleScript “improvements” have been announced for Numbers and Keynote, but not for Pages (who’s going to tell Pierre Igot?). Seems like a curious omission.

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Doxie Flip: A Flatbed Scanner For Paperless Workflows

Doxie Flip

Doxie Flip

Disclaimer: The folks at Doxie purchased a MacStories sponsorship for this week and sent me a Doxie Flip as a gift. I didn’t promise any review or coverage in exchange for me selling the sponsorship and receiving the device. As always, this article contains my impressions and honest opinion.

Like many others, I’ve been trying to go paperless and get rid of paper documents as much as possible. Aside from the fact that paper is a waste of storage space, it’s easy to lose and it’s impossible to search: even with a solid archival system, it’s likely that you’ll eventually misplace an important receipt or lose hours trying to track it down only to find out it was in the drawer under your desk. And what about old photos or notebooks? Unless you take action and find a way to digitize them today, time will get ahold of them and they will be gone. I bet that you don’t have fancy equipment to preserve your personal documents and photos for decades (or centuries).

It’s much better to use a database that can hold digital copies of your documents, allowing you to trash the physical counterparts or, in general, have the peace of mind that time doesn’t destroy pixels (although it does come with a whole new set of problems). The barrier to entry to paperless workflows, though, is pretty high: while there are great “getting started” resources such as David Sparks’ book, there are many questions that follow the decision of going paperless. Which storage service should you use? Is it preferable to keep documents as PDFs or JPEGs? 300, 600 DPI, or more? Should you use a dedicated scanner or an iPhone app? Dropbox or Evernote? And so forth.

I decided to go paperless about a year ago and I’ve been tweaking and improving my workflow since then. I have scanned hundreds of health and work-related documents and when I thought that the system I had set up was future-proof, it miserably failed and I needed to rewrite it. I struggled to find iOS apps to scan receipts on the go, and I had to go back and reimagine several aspects of my workflow because apps that I relied upon were updated and their feature sets changed. If I haven’t detailed my paperless workflow on MacStories yet it’s because I’m still ironing out the kinks on the software side.

As far as hardware goes, I’ve been a satisfied Doxie user for almost two years now. We have two Doxie scanners at home (a Doxie Go and a Doxie One) that we regularly use to scan documents (paper sheets) and old photographs we want to keep on our computers or upload somewhere (usually Facebook). I think that Doxie makes good stuff and I like the company’s focus on enabling cordless and PC-free paperless workflows. The Doxie One and Go aren’t the world’s most powerful scanners, but they produce good quality, searchable PDFs and we like them because they don’t demand any desk space as they’re small and portable.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying the Doxie Flip, the company’s new flatbed scanner that, unlike the One and Go, is meant for pocket notebooks, old photos and postcards, books and magazines, and just about anything that you can put above the device’s 4x6” glass surface – or below, as you can remove the lid and flip the scanner over. The Flip retails for $149, and, like other Doxies, it saves images to an SD card that can be used in conjunction with a dedicated Mac app or on iOS through Apple’s Camera Connection Kit.

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