This is some epic nerdery right here. I don’t use URL schemes nearly as much as Federico Viticci and company (the extent of my iOS automation is pretty much with my aforementioned Poster workflows), but having an understanding of how URL schemes work can be quite helpful because when you come across a use-case that you think you could automate in iOS you’ll have the understanding to help make that automation a reality.
Author: Shawn Blanc
The CODE Keyboard with Clear Switches
It’s quite easy to nerd out over mechanical keyboards (I have the blog posts to prove it). There is a type of satisfaction that comes with typing on a mechanical keyboard that is rare in our touch-screen, trackpad, chicklet key world. The thud, the click, the clack — the physical work it takes to type — of a mechanical keyboard is something that hooked me once I experienced it.
My first mechanical keyboard was the Macintosh version of the Das. It’s splendid, but giant. After testing a half-dozen other mechanical keyboards over the course of a few months, I’ve been using a Filco Majestouch-2 Ninja for quite a while now and I think it’s fantastic. The Filco Ninja is tenkeyless, well built, and uses the Blue switches.
I did not order a CODE Keyboard when it went on sale because the keyboard uses Clear switches which I knew I didn’t want.
My cousin, however, did order one, and over the holiday he brought it out to Kansas City so I could use it for a few weeks and then he left it with me to use for a while because he’s cool like that.
I’ve been typing on this keyboard since December 21st and my consensus is this: The CODE is an awesome keyboard, but I don’t like the feel of the Clear switches.
Right off the bat, anyone familiar with a keyboard using the popular Blue switches, will notice that the Clears are quieter. They are more muted and produce a “thud” rather than a click. The keyboard is quieter but not necessarily quiet. If you were in a small office, sitting next to someone, the keyboard is still going to make a bit of a thud and clack as the key caps themselves bottom out when you’re typing, but there isn’t the neighborhood-waking click-clack that accompanies the Blue switches.
The CODE Keyboard has been sold out for a few months primarily because of the difficulty of getting Clear switches. On the keyboard’s website they’ve posted a few updates (one last September and another last November) stating that new keyboards are in production and will include a variety of switches to chose from: Green, Brown, and Blue.
The Green switches are a new switch. They’re pretty much identical in sound and feel to the Blue switches in that they are tactile and clicky, but the Green’s have an actuation force of 80g and a bottom-out force of 105g (the Blue switches are 50g and 65g respectively). Thus, the Greens are going to offer noticeably more resistance than just about any keyboard you’ve ever used.
If/when the CODE keyboard becomes available with Blue switches, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. Of all the different types of mechanical keyboards I’ve tried, I still remain a fan of the sound, feel, and tactile feedback of the Blue Switches. The CODE keyboard is of equal build quality as my Filco Ninja, but the LED backlighting of the CODE is just fantastic and I love it. It’s unfortunate WASD Keyboards don’t let you build a custom keyboard with LED backlighting as an option.
Rene Ritchie’s Sweet iPhone Setup →
If we asked Rene to do an interview for each of the phones he uses, it’d take a up a month’s worth of weekly interviews. The man has a gold iPhone 5s, a green iPhone 5c, a Nexus 5, and a Lumia 1020.
Sponsor: myLook →
myLook lets you easily manage your real-life wardrobe.
You can create your own perfect outfits, change accessories and colors, find your friends, rate their looks and share yours.
Create your real-life wardrobe
- mix and match your clothes, test different outfits
- design tomorrow’s or tonight’s outfit
- take a look into your wardrobe on your mobile device, anywhere; never forget your clothes again.
Create your avatar and design your current look
- cycle through haircuts, eye colors, skin colors
- switch backgrounds and select today’s scenario
- just dress it up as you’re dressed now!
No in-app purchases, no advertising, iPhone and iPad.
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My thanks to myLook for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.
My URL Schemes for Posting Links From My iPhone and iPad Using Poster
After publishing my iPad App Playlist, several folks asked me via Twitter and email to share the workflows I use for posting links to this site.
The app I use is Poster, and unfortunately it’s no longer available for sale in the App Store. Thus I didn’t make a big deal out of how I use the app because I assumed many people wouldn’t be able to make use of such nerdy information. But, based on the feedback I’ve been getting lately, perhaps I was wrong.
And so here are the details for how I use Poster on my iPad (and iPhone) to post links to this site.
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There are three places I come across things worth linking to: Safari, my RSS feeds, and my Instapaper queue. (Technically there are four, counting Twitter, but I don’t yet know of a way to get from Tweetbot to Poster, and so often most things I want to link to that I find in Tweetbot I’ll either send to Instapaper or open in Safari.)
Since I use YJ’s Linked List plugin on my site to handle the “swapping” of the permalink URL and the linked-to URL in the RSS feed and on the Home Page, the name of the Custom Field in my WordPress install is linked_list_url. Poster allows you to add the value of a custom field from within the URL scheme by defining it as such: customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAMEHERE
Also, I have the callback_url set as this site’s homepage. That way once I’ve posted the link from Poster I’m automatically sent over to shawnblanc.net to make sure that the link properly posted.
Safari → Poster
If I’m in Mobile Safari on my iPad or iPhone, I tap this javascript bookmarklet and it will send me to Poster and create a link post with the Title of the website set as the title of my post, and the URL of the web page set as the linked-to URL for my post.
javascript:window.location='posterapp:///create?text='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())+'&title='+(document.title)+'&customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAME='+(window.location.href)+'&callback_url=http://example.com/';
I then can paste in the quote I want to use (if any) into the body, type in my commentary, and hit Publish.
One thing the Poster URL scheme does not allow is the pre-defining of a category. All my link posts are in the “Linked” category; all my articles are in the “Article” category, and I use some custom WordPress hooks for adjusting the style of a post depending on if it is in the linked category of the articles category. In the WordPress admin panel, I’ve selected the Linked category as the default. Thus, if I publish a post without first assigning the proper category, WordPress will automatically assign it to the Linked category. Therefore I don’t even have to set the category for my link posts when sending them from Poster (thus saving me a few extra taps).
Mr. Reader → Poster
I recently discovered that Mr. Reader supports custom actions. I’ve now switched over to Mr. Reader as my RSS reading app of choice, and build a URL scheme that allows me to take the title, URL, author, and any highlighted text and then place it into Poster so I can publish it as a link on shawnblanc.net.
My URL looks like this (with my personal site-specific tidbits swapped out for generic examples):
posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title={[TITLE]}&text={[AUTHOR]: > [TEXT-SELECTED]}&customfield_yourcustomfieldnamegoeshere={[URL]}&callback_url={http://example.com/}
To set up a custom action in Mr. Reader you tap on the Settings icon → Services → scroll down to Add → Other App
From there, if you have Poster installed on your iPad, you’ll see it in the list. Add it, insert your custom URL scheme, and you’re good to go. Now, when you’re reading an article in Mr. Reader that you want to link to from your site, just tap the actions button, and then tap Poster.
Instapaper → Drafts → Poster
Within the Instapaper app there is an option to share to Drafts, so I use Drafts as the “middle man” for taking an interesting article and getting the title, author, link, and any quoted text into Poster.
To start, when I’ve come across an article in Instapaper which I want to link to on my site, I highlight any text I want to quote and then tap the “Share” button which appears after highlighting. (If I want to link to the article without highlighting any text from it, simply tap the action button in the top right, then tap Share.)
When the Instapaper share sheet pops up, I chose to create a draft in Drafts.
Instapaper automatically inserts the title of the article on the first line, the URL on the second line, then a line break, and then any text I had selected.
This is where Drafts gets awesome. You can define certain lines, and/or ranges of lines, to be the content for different components when sending the text file into Poster.
So, after my draft is auto-created from Instapaper, I tidy it up a bit, by cleaning up the title (if need be), adding an extra line break between the title and the URL, and then writing out any additional commentary, etc., in the body.
I then send the Draft to Poster, using my custom action which defines the title (the first line) of the Draft as the title of the link post, the 3rd line of the Draft as the URL for the custom field, and then everything from line 5 on as the body text.
posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title=[[title]]&text=[[line|5..]]&customfield_linked_list_url=[[line|3]]&callback_url=https://shawnblanc.net/
(Tapping here from your iPhone/iPad should allow you to install this action in Drafts automatically (you’ll then want to tweak it of course to your own usage needs.)
New Old Stock →
“Vintage photos from the Public Archives free of known copyright restrictions.”
Awesome. (Via Michael Mulvey.)
Trapped by tl;dr →
Related to the aforelinked.
Primary Source Material →
This is the sort of thing we all need a good reminder of every once in a while. And by “we all” I mean “I”, and by “every once in a while” I mean “every day”.
CMD+Space Episode 78: The Sweet Setup, with Shawn Blanc →
My pal, Myke Hurley, invited me back to be a guest on his awesome interview podcast show, CMD+Space. Myke asked me all sorts of questions about The Sweet Setup, and topics include the site’s genesis (I give the whole answer that dates way back to before there was even an iPhone), the site’s goals, and what in the world a dorky guy like me is doing running three different websites.
(Side note: rumor has it that Marco Arment, Jason Snell, and myself are currently tied for most-frequent guest on CMD+Space with 3 appearances each. First one to 5 wins?)
Dell’s Upcoming 28-Inch 4K Display, Just $700 →
That is one crazy deal for what looks to be a fantastic monitor.
Update: Jason Evangelho over at Forbes has the specs of the monitor. The bad news is that it tops out at 30Hz 3840×2160 and 60Hz for 1920×1080, which means you probably don’t want it for your computer.
The New Droplr →
Droplr is one of my most-used Mac utility apps. Long-time readers of this site will know that I’m a huge fan of the app and its service — I’ve been using Droplr since it was just a wee little beta.
Today the Droplr guys announced a few big updates: for one, the service is now paid-only. There is a basic plan which runs $5/month and gets you unlimited uploads and file sharing; then there is the Pro plan which is $10/month and gets you extra features like custom branding (use your own short URL instead of the d.pr URL), password-protected drops, the Droplr Inbox, etc.
All current Droplr users can get the basic plan for $3.50/month forever. And they’ve also set up a referral program so that if your friends sign up using your referral link then you both get a 10-percent discount for life.
The second big update is to the Mac app: you can now download the app direct from the Droplr website and the hot-key shortcut for “upload this file I’ve already selected” is back. There are also some very nice visual and functional improvements to the Mac app as well.
Droplr is a great service and utility and as something I use regularly, I’m delighted to see that it has grown into a healthy and sustainable business.
iOS Device Stats →
Underscore David Smith:
For many years I have posted a collection of iOS and device statistics collected from my Audiobooks app. Each new year I like to do a bit of a round-up summarizing the trends and details I see.
You can see David’s more detailed breakdown of stats here.
Seven Weeks With Two iPads →
Checking back in, it’s been a month since writing my iPad mini vs iPad Air impressions and everything is still about the same as it was a month ago: I’ve now been trying to use both iPads side-by-side for nearly two months and they’re both awesome.
However, bit by bit I find myself grabbing the iPad mini for almost all the time for almost all the things. Though I prefer the iPad Air when writing, that task only constitutes 20-percent of my iPad usage. The rest — reading, surfing, twittering, RSSing — is better on the mini.
In short, if forced to pick just one today, I’d pick the mini.
VSCO Film x Mark Weinberg →
The VSCO Journal featured some pictures by photographer Mark Weinberg from his trip to Norway and they’re absolutely stunning.
And I love this answer he gives as advice regarding composition:
Shooting with a large format camera forced me to work slowly and methodically, examining and controlling every variable, especially the frame. I loved contact printing, which is printing with the negative directly on the paper and thus no enlarging or ability to crop the image. What was on the negative was exactly what was in the print. The different movements available on a large format camera also taught me principles about seeing and framing that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned.
My advice would be to slow down. In the film age, we would study the shot, frame it up, and maybe make some test polaroids but rarely shoot 400 variations. Now, with digital, things have shifted a bit to where I feel like we shoot many more images than we would on film. This can be a good thing. Now, we get to actually see each step in our study. It doesn’t matter if we take 2 or 400 images of a scene, but studying and paying attention is what matters. Digital actually allows us more freedom to experiment than ever before and I love that.