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Connected, Episode 114: Two and Half Macs→
Hello again. The Connected trio have just wrapped up watching Apple’s Mac event and are here to talk about the news and share some first impressions.
In the latest episode of Connected, Myke and Stephen discuss today’s announcements from Apple’s ‘Hello Again’ event while I listen and quietly wish for a Touch Bar on the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
- TextExpander, from Smile: Communicate smarter with TextExpander.
Logitech Launches Amazon Echo-Harmony Integration→
Earlier this week, Logitech announced support for a new Alexa skill that lets Echo owners control their Harmony hubs and associated devices and services.
Today Logitech announced a new Amazon Alexa skill that enables voice control of your entire living room entertainment experience using a Logitech Harmony Hub with Alexa-enabled devices such as the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot.
When the skill is enabled on Amazon Echo or Amazon Echo Dot, you can start and stop Harmony Activities, control your entertainment devices, or even turn directly to your favorite channels, hands free, using only your voice. Harmony users can simply say “Alexa, turn on the TV,” or “Alexa, turn on Netflix” to control the TV as well as other entertainment and smart home devices, and Harmony makes it happen.
As those who listen to Connected may know, I’ve spent the past few months building a home automation setup based on the Amazon Echo and Alexa (more on this in the future). Connecting my TV to voice commands was the missing piece.
Here’s Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors:
I set up a similar system a while back, using a combination of other services like IFTTT and Yonomi, but Logitech’s first-party integration definitely puts it in the reach of anybody with an Echo and a Harmony Hub who doesn’t want to muck around with nitty-gritty technical details.
Logitech’s integration mostly delivers what I could already do with those other services, but there are a couple of nice additions. For one thing, it gets rid of the “trigger” nomenclature imposed by IFTTT. Additionally, it lets you declare “friendly names” for your devices, so even if your Harmony Activity is “Watch Apple TV” you can just say “turn on Apple TV”, or you can use “turn on game console” or “turn on Xbox.” Other smart home devices that work with the Harmony Hub, like Hue lights, can also be triggered, though of course the Echo already has built-in control for those devices as well.
This sounds great. I ordered a Harmony hub + remote yesterday, and it’s coming next week.
Twitter Is Shutting Down Vine→
Earlier today, from the Vine company blog:
Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we’ll be discontinuing the mobile app.
Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.
Vine had the best seconds-to-laughs ratio of any modern social network. Its constraints bred a unique form of creativity I’m sad to see go away.
See also, this story by Brian Feldman:
Most important, the engines of this creativity were groups poorly served by, and often shut out from, mainstream cultural creation and consumption. Vine wasn’t just dominated by teenagers — it was dominated by teenagers of color. Especially black teens, who created a disproportionate number of popular Vines and used the social network to demonstrate wit, intelligence, creativity, and comic timing that was rarely given a spotlight elsewhere. That included dance trends like the yeet.
Pocket Launches Explore Page on the Web→
Interesting announcement from Pocket today: the company has launched an open Explore section to browse and search for the best content saved on Pocket:
For the first time, we are opening up Pocket’s understanding of what’s good and worthwhile on the Internet, and making it easy for anyone to search and discover the best of the best on any topic. No Pocket account necessary.
[…]
When you first visit Pocket Explore, you’ll be greeted with a question: What interests you?While Google is great at helping to answer a question, and Pinterest is a great place to search around an idea or thing to do, never before has there been a specific and intentional place to go when you want to satisfy a curiosity or surface the best content around a specific topic you care about.
I switched to Pocket late last year, and their recommendations have been, by far, the best article recommendations I’ve ever been given by a read-later service of this kind. There’s no shortage of great articles and longform stories nowadays, but being able to browse the best options in a single place seems convenient. Potentially, this could also become a better research tool than Google for specific topics.
iThoughts 4.0 Adds Markdown Formatting
When I have to research and outline longform feature stories such as my iOS reviews, I use iThoughts. I wrote about my mind-mapping workflow in the Club MacStories newsletters before: essentially, iThoughts allows me to have finer controls over the way my mind maps look and how they work with external keyboards on the iPad.
I love the way I can structure a mind map in iThoughts to my needs, and several touches such as pasting images into nodes or quickly creating parallel or nested nodes speed up editing and collection of research material. Without iThoughts, my iOS 10 review wouldn’t have been possible.
Today, iThoughts developer Craig Scott launched version 4.0 of the app with native Markdown formatting. Markdown was already supported in the iThoughts URL scheme to create templates; now, you can format text inside individual notes with standard Markdown and iThoughts will display it as rich text when you’re done editing.
I took Markdown formatting for a spin today, and it’s exactly what I hoped it would be (for instance, I like how links are automatically converted after pasting them in a node). This is going to be extremely useful in June 2017, but I also think it’ll help me use iThoughts more regularly alongside my text editor.
Stress-Testing iPhone 7 Plus’ Portrait Mode→
Brian L.W. Moore on iOS 10.1’s Portrait mode:
While a lot is super good, there are a couple areas where the Portrait Mode just ain’t gonna cut it. Complicated foreground and background combinations seemingly overwhelm it and the blur edges get confused throughout the photo.
Portrait Mode doesn’t even begin to successfully work with translucent or shiny objects. Though this is pretty understandable considering the hardware — attempting to detect depth on objects like these is probably difficult. Not sure if Apple will ever be able to get over this one unless their machine learning becomes near-perfect.
He concludes:
People have asked me what camera I used to take these photos, which is I’d call a good sign. I like how they look, and this is a camera I can keep in my pocket all day as I walk all over a beautiful country. That’s a win for me.
Check out his examples here and here. They’re not technically perfect, but I think they’re beautiful, and they were made on a portable computer. Impressive.
Remaster, Episode 21: The Nintendo Switch→
After months of speculation, Nintendo’s next big console has been unveiled and named. This week on Remaster, we discuss whether the Nintendo Switch is shaping up to be what we always wanted.
On the latest episode of Remaster, we talked about our first impressions of the Nintendo Switch and what a hybrid console means for the future of Nintendo games. You can listen here.