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Linked Posts with Drafts and Poster

When we announced a new format for linked posts last week, I hadn’t set up a proper workflow to create linked posts on the iPhone and iPad. Driven by annoyance, I put together a Drafts action and a bookmarklet to help me post links to WordPress with or without additional text and quotes.

Our linked posts use a custom field to link back to the original source and format the clickable titles that you see on the site. Tom Witkin’s Poster is my default app to publish posts on MacStories from iOS, and, fortunately, it has support for calling and assigning values to custom fields from the URL scheme. On the other hand, Agile Tortoise’s Drafts, my favorite app to chain multiple actions together, can launch custom URL actions differentiating between the first line of a note and everything else after it. That seemed like a good opportunity to separate my source URL from any possible text I wanted to add to a linked post. Read more

Context→

The iPhone does not know enough. Proper context will require data in many more dimensions, dimensions which can define the user and his state. Their sheer number will placate strenuous constraints on their size and energy consumption but demand ever more accurate data. It is not difficult to realize that sensors will ride the next wave of innovation in computing. These minuscule and sophisticated apparatus will usher in the age of personal data.

Great post by Amit Jain.

More sensors and new algorithms will make our devices more personal, context-aware, and versatile. Let’s keep in mind that, however, more always-on sensors will require Apple to make significant strides in another area.

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Ecoute 1.2 With URL Scheme→

Nice update to my favorite iPhone music player: automatic download of missing artwork, iTunes 11-like “Play Next” feature, and a URL scheme (linked above).

We first reviewed Ecoute in August 2012; in October, I added:

The thing I like about Ecoute is that it displays Artists using album thumbnails. The Music app does this only for the Albums view, and then again they’re small thumbnails arranged in a list view. Ecoute is more similar to iTunes’ grid view, which I use on my Mac.

I like the new URL scheme, and especially the search action. I use Rdio on a daily basis, but I keep some albums on my iPhone. With Ecoute 1.2, I can use a Launch Center Pro action to look for a specific artist/album name and view search results for matching artists, albums, and songs. Here’s what it looks like.

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“So You Wanna Be A Mac Consultant Now”→

Great advice (again) by Patrick Rhone:

If you are not a very, very, very, patient, friendly, likable and kind people-person you probably should not be in this line of work. I’ve seen tons of consultants who quite obviously would have been happier if they had never shaved their neck beard and ventured out of their mother’s basement. If that is you, please take up some line of business that keeps you in the basement. You have to be a person who honestly likes dealing with people that are clueless when it comes to this stuff. Your thrill has to come from giving these people “lightbulb moments”.

I also like the brief follow-up by Stephen Hackett (a former Genius):

We did a fair amount of consulting, and the most important thing I told people was this: “I don’t know, but I know how to find out.”

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Barry For iOS Takes Full-Size Screenshots of Webpages

I often find myself having to capture a full screenshot of a webpage (that is, not just the portion that’s shown in the browser, but the full-length site), and while Skitch for iOS is a fine option, I’d like to have an app that’s faster to launch and easier to use. Barry, a $0.99 universal app by North of Three, provides just that kind of functionality. Read more

Bungie’s “Pathways into Darkness” Re-Released For Free On The Mac App Store→

In August of 1993, Bungie Software released Pathways into Darkness the most advanced and ground breaking First Person Shooter for the Macintosh.The game broke new ground combining Adventure gameplay with the new First Person Shooter game that was just emerging onto the scene. As time passed, the Macintosh hardware and software changed and the game Pathways into Darkness was no longer playable on a modern computer… Until Now.

Pathways into Darkness was a critical success, and it’s widely regarded as Bungie’s first commercial success as well. As Bungie’s Jason Jones said in an interview in 1995, it was “the game that launched the company”. The same company that would show, four years later, gameplay footage of Halo at Macworld.

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GIF Finder for iOS→

Reports of the GIF’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Not a day goes by that I don’t see a reaction GIF pop up in a Twitter conversation or text from a friend. Here at MacStories, we “rely” on GIFs as our daily source of visual entertainment and subtle feedback in our iMessage group thread.

GIF Finder is a recent addition to my arsenal of GIF discovery tools that is simple but well executed. The app is free and it can search for GIFs on Tumblr; you can search for GIFs matching queries like “excited” or “sports fail” and tap on a thumbnail to view a GIF in full-screen. Tap the share button, and the app brings up a menu with options to Copy URL (which doesn’t work for me), share on iMessage and Twitter, but also open in Google Chrome and Tweetbot. The app is universal for iPhone and iPad.

I wish GIF Finder could search beyond Tumblr: ReplyGIF, Reactions GIFs, and imgur’s reactiongifsarchive albums are essential resources that I’d love to see supported in GIF Finder.

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