If you have Jetpack enabled on a WordPress site, you can post by email in a way that is much simpler than the default WordPress post by email functionality.
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Lily Hay Newman, writing for Wired:
Ads that automatically redirect you from your daily browsing to a flashy sweepstakes have long been an incredibly annoying facet of the internet. But the versions that have evolved on the mobile web are particularly vexing, because they can trap you with a pop-up “notification” and nowhere to go. And a recent surge in these mobile pop-ups, even on reputable sites, has left people more frustrated than ever.
Somehow yesterday’s article by Alex Hern, writing for the Guardian, seems very relevant:
Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web. Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced.
With annual revenue in 2016 topping $730m, the overall cost of the privacy feature on just one company is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
These are two separate but related issues. The push back against online advertising arose because of how readers were being abused with privacy violations, and by ads that destroyed the browsing experience. What did these advertisers expect?
I think many content creators have an uneasy alliance with Twitter. They might like the ability to share thoughts with a wider audience, but dislike having their content and thoughts housed in a proprietary silo. One developer recognized this, and created a service called micro.blog after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
The best summary of micro.blog was contained in a blog post on the site:
Instead of yet another social network, Micro.blog is designed to work with the open web. It’s built on RSS and independent microblogs. It’s about pulling together short posts and making them more useful and easier to interact with. It prioritizes both a safe community of microblogs as well as the freedom to post to your own site.
The service’s About page also explains the concept further:
Instead of trying to be a full social network, Micro.blog is a thin layer that glues the open web together, making it more useful. Micro.blog adds discovery and conversations on top of previously unconnected blog posts.
With micro.blog, you can publish to your own domain name (or publish through micro.blog) and control your own content. Even if you publish to your own domain name, you can always see your posts in a familiar timeline interface at micro.blog or its apps, along with with centralized replies and favorites. In a way, your posts live at two places at once.
You may have already noticed a couple of shorter posts here at 40Tech over the past 24 hours. Those are posts that I initiated through the micro.blog app. Given my time constraints over the last few months, I can see myself posting in this format a bit more frequently. 1 I also realize this could be something I try for a while, but don’t stick with for the long haul. We’ll see. For now, my posts will crosspost to my Twitter account as well.
If you want to give micro.blog a try, you can register. The basic service is free if you don’t need hosting (it may work with some free hosting services, like Tumblr). Micro.blog also offers a $5/month plan if you want them to host your microblog. If you host your own site, you can pay $2 per month for cross posting to Twitter and Facebook.
You can see my microblogging posts here at 40Tech, or at micro.blog/40tech.
Yes, I recognize the irony of describing a microblogging service with a long blog post.↩
The Legal X Conference takes place this week in Park City, Utah, running from Thursday, September 14 through Friday, September 15. Legal X focuses on issues in Plaintiff Law, and takes place at the Treasure Mountain Inn at the top of Park City’s Main Street
I’ll be speaking this year. My topic is “Set Your Practice on Auto-Pilot,” and I’ll be talking about automation tools to up your personal productivity game. Other topics will cover how to hire and train your staff, effective case management strategies, facilitating the intake process, and more.
I believe there are still a few openings, so you can register for the conference.
All of the good ones are taken.
That’s how I feel when it comes to keyboard shortcuts on my Mac. Between Keyboard Maestro and app shortcuts in System Preferences, I have used up all of the easy to remember shortcuts. Enter the MacBook Pro and the Touch Bar. When used with BetterTouchTool and Keyboard Maestro, some commonly used shortcuts are just a tap away.
BetterTouchTool allows you to configure the TouchBar on a per app basis, and also globally. You can configure TouchBar buttons to execute certain system commands, and also to type keystrokes. That last part – typing keystrokes – is huge. If you trigger a Keyboard Maestro macro with a keystroke combination, you can map that keystroke combination to a Touch Bar button via BetterTouchTool.
For example, check out my “End Call” Touch Bar Action in the screenshot below:
You can see I’ve mapped my “End Call” Touch Bar Action to the Option-Command-H keyboard shortcut. Over in Keyboard Maestro I’ve set up a macro that is triggered by that same keyboard command. The macro hangs up the VOIP software phone on my Mac, so I don’t have to hunt down the VOIP application to end a call.1 With the combination of the BetterTouchTool Action and the Keyboard Maestro macro, I press a nice red phone button on the Touch Bar, and the call ends. I have a similar Touch Bar button set up for answering calls.
In future posts, I’ll break down some more Touch Bar layouts to show what I’ve done with the Touch Bar, such as adding Markdown bold and italics buttons for use in my firm’s case management system, and more.
BetterTouchTool currently is sold under a “Pay What You Want” model, with a minimum price of $4.99 and a suggested price of $8.99. It’s sold directly from the developer’s website.
- Even on my iMac, I typically keep apps spread between several Spaces. I didn’t want to have to hunt down the VOIP app, or tab between open apps, to go to the app and end a call. ↩