Meta's Instagram-linked Twitter rival 'Threads' could arrive on July 6th

We've known for quite a while that Meta has been building a Twitter competitor, but now we have a more solid idea of when it will become available. A listing for the app called Threads has popped up in the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report came out saying that the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could be arriving at a time when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to try an alternative. 

Twitter recently put a cap on how many tweets an unverified account can read per day. In a post, Elon Musk announced that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts a day, while unverified/nonpaying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation." A regular user can easily hit 600 posts, so people who haven't been paying $8 to $11 a month for blue checkmark have been getting locked out of their feeds as a result. 

Meta describes Threads as "Instagram's text-based conversation app." Based on the screenshots posted in the listing, users can keep their Instagram handle and follow the same accounts they follow on the photo-sharing platform. That means users will have a pre-existing following and circles on the new app, giving it an edge over other Twitter rivals. Users will also be able to choose the privacy of their posts and make them visible to anyone, to the profiles they follow or only to the accounts they mention. They will be able to heart, send and share other people's posts, as well. 

Previous reports said Meta's Twitter competitor would be a decentralized service that's compatible with Mastodon, but it's unclear if that's still the case when it launches. We'll know for sure within a few days. 

Screenshots of the iPhone screen showing a new app called Threads by Meta.

Is Matter or Readwise Reader the Read-Later App for You?

There’s been a battle brewing over the past year or so between Matter and Readwise Reader over which is the better brand-spanking-new read later service. Here at The Sweet Setup, we try to pick the best apps and services in every category we can, but the TSS crew is split on this one, so today Josh and Matt are going to make their case for why they prefer each of these apps.

Why Matter is the Best

There were a few apps that brought delight to your iPhone and iPad in the early days. The clicks and sounds of the original Tweetbot for iPhone come to mind. I also loved that old quick note-taking app Scratch — it had a great icon, super fast opening, and simple UI. And we probably all remember when Sparrow came to the iPhone to handle your email. That app was awesome!

Matter is one of the few apps that fall into this category these days. I get a tinge of excitement every time I tap the Matter icon. From the simple, reader-first UI to the excellent Apple Pencil support, I love capturing and reading in Matter.

Matter isn’t without its competitors though — Readwise is right on its heels with many advanced features for the heaviest power users. Where I think Readwise could well be the pick for the power read-later user, Matter is the best option for the rest of us readers who want a beautiful place to read and relax in the later evening with a glass of wine.

Here are the three reasons why I choose Matter as my read-later app.

Rock Solid Apps for iPhone and iPad

Matter feels like it was made for iPad first (specifically in portrait mode) and everything else after. There are very few hiccups, quirks, or janks in the app — tapping on a saved Youtube video takes you into a simple, viewer-first view, while text articles open immediately into a newspaper-like format, perfect for in-depth reading.

Both the iPhone and iPad app benefit from iOS-specific share sheet extensions, ensuring you can save anything from anywhere on iOS. The extension works well, too — tapping the Matter icon in the share sheet brings up the extension UI which can be dismissed with two quick swipes down when it’s all finished. Better yet, you can even jump straight into the article or highlight text from outside, make a note about the article in the share sheet extension, add tags, and more. A hallmark feature of a read-later app has to be a powerful share sheet extension, and Matter has this in spades.

I find myself saving more on iPhone and reading more on iPad, but this is me. Matter has this great read-out-loud feature so you can listen to your saved articles as well. This feature is probably more tuned for the iPhone and a pair of AirPods and is sure to please podcast listeners. You can also forward in your favorite RSS feeds and newsletters right into Matter and follow popular writers right in the app.

Finally, Matter has a neat feature to share your favorite articles with your Matter friends. By tapping the share button inside Matter, you can send the article or video straight to your friend’s Matter queue. It’s ridiculously simple to use and unearths a range of great reading from your online community.

In my experience, the Matter app on iPhone and iPad was rock solid. It surpassed any experience I’ve had with any other read-later app for iPhone and iPad, including Readwise.

Simple, Reader-First Interface

Where the backend of the Matter app feels rock solid and iOS-first, the actual user interface is one of the best app designs on the market right now. Matter was designed for reading — and I think designed for reading on the iPad specifically — and it shows from top to bottom.

The app opens to your Queue, which is a list of all your saved articles, videos, and threads from across the web. The list is wonderfully spaced, with a perfect amount of text, iconography, color, black and white text, etc. to suck you in. There’s nothing overwhelming about the Queue and nothing that leaves you wanting.

When you ultimately jump into an article, Matter’s design prowess jumps out at you. Matter has a total of 10 different fonts to choose from, including New York, Valkyrie, Lyon, and Literata. I’m a Valkyrie fan, for sure. In its early days, Matter used Bookerly from Amazon, which has to be the prettiest reading font out there today.

You have four different themes to choose from for both light and dark system themes. Paper gives Matter a newspaper feel, especially if you are into serif fonts for reading.

Matter nails highlights, both in visual design and utility design. Highlight colors aren’t magnified on the screen, instead opting for a slightly more neutral yellow to ensure you aren’t distracted as you read. The pop-up contextual menu when you tap on a highlight is really nice as well — you can take a note on a highlight and share the highlight with a nice “quote shot” image. When you’re done reading an article, you can tap the note button in the top right corner to view all your highlights and notes from the article. I use this button all the time to share my notes into Apple Notes for saving.

Matter has my favorite app design on the App Store today. It reminds me of Things 3, Mimestream on the Mac, and Unread — all apps with their own unique, airy feeling that instill delight every time you open the app.

Apple Pencil Support

The last killer feature for me is Matter’s Apple Pencil support. And the Pencil support is very, very simple — if you put your Pencil to text anywhere in an article, the Pencil is a highlighter. There’s no pause to see what you’re going to do with the Pencil. There’s no press-and-hold to invoke the highlighter. You can just immediately highlight the text you want to highlight.

You can, of course, navigate with the Apple Pencil so long as you don’t first tap on text. You can use the Pencil to tap on a highlight and take a note, which then uses iPadOS-wide Pencil support for handwriting text recognition.

There’s something very analog-y about this experience. Inside Matter, Pencil is used as a pencil is used — to take notes and highlights — and your finger is best used for navigating the app. It’s a lot like a book, really, which is what it appears Matter wants to be in the best way.

If you want to read, Matter is the best app for reading I’ve come across in a long, long time.

Why Readwise Reader is also excellent

There’s no way I can argue on the feel of Matter, because it really is top notch, but I do think that Readwise Reader has some really excellent features that could push it over the top for some folks.

More Robust Highlighting

Readwise started as a service for saving highlights from a bunch of different sources, so it’s probably not surprising that it has a longer list of features when it comes to highlights. One big advantage Readwise has is that it can sync in highlights from things that aren’t web articles. You can save highlights from books (via Kindle, Goodreads, Libby, Apple Books, etc.) as well as Medium, Twitter, and even otherwise closed systems like Discord. Heck, if you get tired of Readwise Reader, you can link your Instapaper, Pocket, or Omnivore accounts to Readwise to keep syncing your highlights all to the same place.

The highlighting built into Readwise Reader is top notch, especially if you’re a power user who loves shortcuts. Without going on and on, here’s a few clever ways you can highlight in Readwise Reader that I really appreciate:

• On the iPhone and iPad, double-tap on a paragraph to instantly highlight the whole paragraph.
• On the web app, press h on your keyboard to highlight the currently-focused paragraph.
• When listening to the text-to-speech version of an article through AirPods, double-squeeze or double-tap your earbud to highlight the last paragraph without even touching your phone.

And if you’re an Obsidian user like I am and have your highlights syncing there, I’ve found Readwise’s plugin to be far quicker than Matter’s. After getting past a few hundred highlights in Matter, I really noticed it took a few minutes to sync each time I opened Obsidian, and it was just getting worse the more highlights I added. Readwise’s plugin is much faster for me, even though I presently have about 500 highlights in my Readwise account. I also really like that Readwise lets me customize the formatting of my Obsidian notes on the Readwise website, while Matter effectively doesn’t have an option to customize its format unless you are comfortable updating its plugin code directly (which will also get undone when the plugin updates).

Finally, Readwise has an email feature I really like that sends me an email every week with a few semi-random highlights I’ve saved before. This won’t be for everyone, but I find it really useful in helping retain some information that I read once and might have forgotten otherwise.

Saving YouTube Videos

This is one I didn’t really expect, but I absolutely love. You can save YouTube videos to Readwise Reader and not only will this let you watch the video in your Readwise queue, it also imports the video’s captions, so all the text in the video is there to be highlighted and saved/synced like anything else you save to Readwise Reader.

The cherry on top here is that the app will highlight and scroll the text as the video plays so that you can easily follow along.

Text-to-Speech

While I usually read articles on the screen, sometimes it’s nice to listen to them as if they’re a podcast. I have a dog who loves to walk, so I spend upwards of an hour each day walking that little guy, and it’s a great opportunity to listen to some articles along the way. Matter has text-to-speech as well, but I find Readwise’s voice to be more natural and easier to listen to for longer stretches of time.

I also really like the interface for listening to articles. If the app is on screen when you’re listening, you can follow along with real-time highlighting of each word as it reads to you. Matter is less precise here in my experience.

I also love that while the app scrolls the article as it reads to you, you can scroll backwards of forwards at will. Once you do, you can tap one button to zip back to where the voice is, or tap another button to have the voice skip to your scroll position.

Automatic Summaries

Whenever you save something to Readwise Reader, the app will automatically generate a short summary of the article. It’s just 2-3 sentences, and is generated by GPT 3.5.

While these summaries are not at all replacements for reading articles written by humans, I do find them very helpful when my reading list has gotten too long (we’ve all been there, don’t pretend you haven’t!) and I need to trim it down to what I actually want to read.

Wrap Up

Both Matter and Readwise have recurring subscription costs associated with them to use the full features. Readwise Reader currently costs $8/month (even if you pay for a year up front), while Matter is $8/month or $60/year, which means Matter can be a bit cheaper if you’re ready to commit for a year.

Ultimately, it probably comes down to what you value more: a smoother reading experience or easy and powerful highlighting features. Whichever works better for you, we’re all winners in a world where apps like these are competing to be the best they possibly can.

How to Create Notion Buttons to Automate Your Workflow

If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.

Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.

Components of a Notion Button

At first glance, the configuration for the new buttons can be a bit confusing and daunting. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to create Notion buttons for everything.

To create a button in Notion, just type /button and hit enter. You will see these options:

Start by giving the button a name and an icon. Then you have to decide what you actually want the button to do. Here’s a brief description of all the options:

Insert blocks: You can create a block (full of whatever you want) and have it be added to the page when you click it. All the formatting options are available in this block, i.e. toggles, headings, lists, etc.

Add page to: You can choose a database and add a new page to it. So you could hit the button and have a page added to your Task List Database.

Edit pages in: This allows you to edit properties in pages that already exist. So you can change the assignee or status on a specific page.

Show confirmation: This will add a confirmation step when you hit the button like “you sure you want to do this?”

Open page: Pretty self explanatory. You push this button and it opens any page you want.

The real gold about these new buttons? You can add multiple steps to each button. You can change the order of the steps. You can even duplicate different steps.

For example, you can create a Notion page, edit the page you just created, have a confirmation page, and have the newly created page open in a side-peek. Or you can add 20 tasks to your task list at once. Legitness.

Let’s look at some specific use cases.

Using Notion’s Button for Quick Capture

I wrote about using buttons for quick capture a few weeks ago. One of my complaints about Notion has been its lack of quick capture options. If I ever want to just jot something down, it takes a few steps to actually get where I want to go. Buttons speed up this process.

I created a quick capture button on my personal dashboard (along with a few others).

With this button, I can easily add an idea or note to my personal Note’s Database. Here’s how I configured it:

I chose Add a page and selected my notes database. Then I added a step to open the newly created page in a side-peek so I can add my note or idea right then and there.

Create tasks

When I first found out about this new feature, I was most excited to figure out how to quickly add tasks. Once I figured it out, I added the button in a few different places, then created one for everyone on our team. Cause you know, why not.

For this button I selected Add a page and chose our master task database. But what help would that be if it’s not assigned to anyone? You can edit properties and assign it to a specific person (in this case, me) and change the status. Or whatever property you want to change.

I also added a step to open the task in a side-peek so I can add all the relevant information quickly.

I also created a synced block with four more buttons. A button adding a task for each member of our team and dropped the synced block into our meeting notes template. So every time we have a meeting and a task comes up, we can quickly assign it to someone.

Button inside of a Notion Template

Notion has a lot of things going for it. One of those things is templates. They have literally saved me hours of work. We use them in our editorial calendar, meeting notes, projects, and many other places.

But there was always a frustrating component. It was a bit of a headache to add any default tasks to any database template. This was a bummer for us. We have a lot of projects that we do multiple iterations of (like Focus Academy, Digital Planner, or Plan Your Year), and we already know some of the tasks required.

We had to either add them manually each time or create a to-do list of basic tasks and drag them into the task database once the project was created.

But not anymore. Muhahaha (maniacal laugh).

For our most common projects, we created a button in the project template so we can add a bunch of tasks (and update their properties) with the push of a button.

One of our recurring projects is Focus Academy. We also know most of the tasks required to pull it off, so we added them to a button in our Focus Academy project template.

Isaac (the Director of Focus Academy) and I added the main and already known tasks to the button. Oh, and you can create tasks using the parent-task and sub-task feature 😎

So now when we start working on Academy, we already know most of the tasks that need to be done to knock it out of the park.

Changing Assignee

Our articles and newsletter go through a lot of hands before they get published. Once an article has been finished, it gets passed to our editor. Once an email is ready to go out, it gets passed to Marcela to schedule it.

So why not automate this process?

I added a button on our Newsletter template that automatically changes the assignee to Marcela and changes the status to Review. All I had to do was choose Edit a page and choose This page. The This page setting is dynamic, so it changes whatever page the button is on.

Once I hit this button, it notifies Marcela. I also then leave a comment letting her know it’s ready to be scheduled. I do wish buttons could automatically post comments, because that would be amazing.

I created a similar button for our article template. When everything is done, we just smash the button and it gets assigned to our editor-extraordinaire Jeff, and changes the status to Review.

Honorable mentions

There are a lot of little things you can do with buttons. You can create a button to simply open another page. I do this for my Learning Dashboard. I click the button from my personal dashboard and it opens my Learning Dashboard. There are other ways to do this, but buttons are more fun.

You can add confirmation steps to your buttons. Although not always necessary, it’s helpful when you’re wanting to do something major.

I showed you how to add a page to a task database already, but you can add a page to any database. You could create a button called Bug Report that would add an entry to a software bug report database. The possibilities are endless.

The goal of buttons is to automate your workflow, and so far it’s doing just that for me.

Wrap up

Notion just announced some new Project Management features. Their new project home base template includes some updated features such as an improved timeline view, Sprint databases, and Wikis.

They are also coming out with more automations. It seems that this new button feature is just the beginning. The new automation update is rumored to be able to do if/then statements, which would take workflow automations to a whole other level. Pretty exciting!

Although the new automations update is still TBD, the new button feature is a huge step towards automated workflows. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to create Notion buttons. There are countless ways to use them to streamline your workflow.

Your imagination is the limit. Well there are a few limitations. But you get my point.

Actions for Obsidian: An Obsidian Companion App That Adds Additional Shortcuts Support

I love me some Obsidian, but one of Obsidian’s weak spots has always been it’s Shortcuts support (or lack thereof).

That’s where Actions for Obsidian comes in.

Actions for Obsidian serves as the bridge between Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac, resulting in almost native support for Shortcuts actions that allow you to do some pretty neat things with the text you send to Obsidian.

To call Actions for Obsidian an app is a bit of a stretch. It’s a macOS utility that serves as a graphic interface for adding over 30 additional actions to Shortcuts that Obsidian doesn’t support out of the box. It also includes a tutorial for setting up Obsidian to take advantage of them, and gives you a link to an Actions & Workflow Library where you can download some pre-made example Shortcuts workflows to download and use instantly.

When you first launch the “app” you get a window with three options: 1) link your Obsidian vault, 2) open the Shortcuts app to use the actions, and 3) visit the Actions & Workflow Library to download pre-made workflows.

In order to use the new actions, the first thing to need to do is to link Actions for Obsidian with your Obsidian vault.

Click the blue button, and the app walks you through a short wizard that helps you set everything up and make sure it’s all connected.

Once you link your vault, the next step is to go into Obsidian itself and enable a specific plugin that allows Obsidian to receive and act on the requests that will be sent to it from the Shortcuts actions. If you’ve not used community plugins before, it will show you exactly how to enable them first.

Once community plugins are enabled, Actions for Obsidian walks you through installing and enabling the Actions URI plugin needed for the Shortcuts actions to work.

Once everything is configured, Actions for Obsidian will perform a test to see if instructions can be sent to Obsidian (and whether it can also send information back using callback URLs). Click the blue Ask Obsidian to call back button and you should see a confirmation prompt if everything is working correctly.

Once everything is good to go, you can start to use the additional actions by creating and editing shortcuts from inside the Shortcuts app. You can find the additional actions by looking for Actions for Obsidian under the Apps section.

The actions are split into five sections:

• Daily Notes
• Dataview
• Folders
• Notes
• Vaults

Some examples of things you can do with these additional actions are creating your Daily Note using a shortcut to help start your day, adding events to an appointments section of your Daily Note from your calendar, and even getting results from a Dataview table (another very powerful third-party plugin that can query your entire vault and return results in the form of a table).

While this does add a nearly-native level of Shortcuts support to Obsidian, there are some limitations. For example, the additional actions currently only work on macOS. The developer is working on adding support for iOS, but it’s not surprising that there are some additional technical hurdles to be overcome there with iOS sandboxing. So right now you can build Shortcuts and fire them on iOS, but the extra actions will break the moment they need to communicate with your Obsidian vault.

Regardless, I’m thrilled this app exists and find it fascinating that a cross-platform Electron app like Obsidian can offer such extensive support for Shortcuts — with a little help from a utility like Actions for Obsidian.

The distribution model is interesting too, as Actions for Obsidian is free to download on the Mac App Store with an in-app purchase. There are three different price tiers to choose from based on how helpful you find the app, starting at $9 USD and going up to $15 USD.

I think this is a really interesting business model for a really interesting app. I hope it’s successful, and I hope to see others create extendable Shortcuts like this for other popular apps. I know Obsidian is well-suited for this because of the third-party plugin architecture, but I think power users of apps like Notion or Craft would absolutely be willing to pay to have a little more automation power at their fingertips too.

How We Created our Master Resource Database

A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.

Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.

Why use a Notion Database?

For those who might be new to Notion or unfamiliar with relational databases, here is a brief intro (feel free to skip ahead if you’re already a pro). Using Notion’s databases are a great way to store important information that you want to find quickly.

A Database is essentially a dynamic spreadsheet. You can create different views of the same information. For example, you can see it as a simple spreadsheet (similar to what you might see in Google sheets), calendar view, Kanban view etc. The secret sauce of Notion’s databases is that they can talk to each other. I can easily reference information from several data sources in one place. If you want to learn more, check out this article we wrote on relational database.

We do all of our project management inside of Notion. It just made sense to build this master resource database inside Notion. Plus, it connects to all of our projects.

Problems it had to solve

If this whole thing was going to work, it had to solve a few problems for us. We needed a place to store the links to PDFs, source files, Keynote slide decks. We also needed the link where the PDFs “lived” on our site. If it’s part of a course, where is the sales page in case asked about the resource?

We wanted this database to be helpful, but not so complex that it becomes rigid and unusable. Thanks to the versatility of databases and their properties, I think we figured it out.

Database properties

First off, don’t be alarmed by the amount of properties we created. They all serve a purpose, and luckily we can hide the ones we don’t want always displayed.

Here’s a list of all the properties we have:

Name: This is pretty self explanatory. This is the name of the resource, like A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless or Margin Assessment.

Resource Type: This is for noting the file type, i.e. PDF, Slide Deck, Pages File… We used a select property for this one (a select property is basically a dropdown).

Content Type: Similar to resource type, we used a select property to distinguish what type of resource it is, i.e. Worksheet, Assessment, Guide, etc.

Content Category: Also a select property. We can add the category for each resource, like “Time Management”, “Margin”, “GoodNotes” etc. This is helpful in case we want to see all the resources that we have on a certain topic, like PKM.

PDF Version: Next we have a file property. Here is where we upload the actual file. So for our Focus Method Checklist, we can upload the PDF file and add the link to find it on our site.

Link to Access Resource: This is where we save the link where the resource lives on our site. So if someone asks us where they can find our Goal Setting worksheet, we can just send them the link to the resource (like when you click on a link and it opens the PDF in your browser or downloads it onto your computer).

Location on site: This is different than the link to access resource. Let’s say that someone wants the workbook for our Focus Like a Boss program. We can send them the actual PDF or we can send them to the page where they can download it themselves, like a course page. In a more common scenario, we have a few dozen of our most popular resources on a dashboard for our Accelerator members. So, we can easily point them to what we call “The Vault” where they can pick and choose what they want to download. So we may not always need the Location on site property, but it’s helpful in some cases.

Editable Source File: This is another file property. We only use this property for slide decks or the Pages version of our workbook. With these source files, we can make quick edits or only export certain sections, if needed.

Notes: Well, this is pretty self explanatory. An example of a note that we’ve written is “Also available in the All the Things Course,” which means that one of our resources is available in multiple places on the site, including the All The Things Course.

Sales Page: This, again, is pretty self-explanatory. In some instances, it’s helpful to know where we sell certain resources, like our Day One in Depth Guide. Sometimes people ask us where they can find certain resources and thanks to this property, we can quickly send them the right sales page to buy the resource.

Site: This is another select property where we can distinguish what site it lives on, The Focus Course or The Sweet Setup.

Related to another resource?: This is a relational property. You create a relational database by simply connecting two databases together using a property called relation. This tells one database to pull in information from another database. But in this case we are pulling in information from itself. I created this to connect resources to each other, if needed.

For example, “A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless”, “A Kick Butt Cheatsheet for Getting Your Email Inbox Calm”, and “Setting up a Distraction Free Mac & iPhone” are all part of a bundle called Workflow Essentials. It makes sense to connect them together, but what’s great about connecting them to each other is that once I connect one to another it shows up for each of them. Lost? Check out the screenshots below.

Created by: Again, self-explanatory. This property automatically captures who created the new database entry. This is using a property called “Created by”.

Projects: This is another relational property. Except instead of relating to this page, it relates to our Projects database. If a resource is relevant to a particular project, we can easily connect them. This is helpful in the case of course workbooks. Like the “Focus on Time Workbook” connects to the Focus on Time project.

Use cases

We don’t use every property for every resource. It’s just not necessary. But we still created all of them because it’s pretty handy for some resources.

The main view (the spreadsheet view) might seem a bit overwhelming at first glance. So we created a second gallery view. It only displays a few properties, such as site, content type, and resource type.

But if I ever want to see all the properties for a resource, I just have to click on it and it will open for me.

This might seem like a lot, but what actually took the longest was hunting down all the resources across our sites. Let me assure you, this has already come in handy, especially in our Accelerator membership. Our members get access to everything, and they ask about certain resources or recommendations. I can easily jump into this database and grab what I need without needlessly looking on our sites.

Notion Quick Capture Hacks

Why does Quick-Capture matter?

If you’ve been around here at all or are a fan of the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) world, you’re no stranger to the term “Quick-Capture”. Quick Capture is an essential component of a good PKM system. Since Notion is my go-to app for pretty much everything, I’ve worked out a few ways to create a good system for quick capture in Notion.

New to Notion? Check out our Beginners Guide to Notion here.

A few months ago, Mike Schmitz (our resident Obsidian and PKM expert) hosted a PKM workshop for our January cohort of the Focus Academy. He talked about the important components of a good PKM system and how no single app will be a complete PKM system. It is a collection of apps that allow you to disseminate ideas from note-taking to quick capture to creative output. You might collect and organize your ideas in Notion, write about them in Ulysses, and drop your projects back in Notion, but having ideas and making sure you capture them is a key first step.

In this article, we are going to focus mostly on how to quickly capture ideas and notes into Notion.

What is Quick Capture?

Quick-capture simply means that you can easily capture or record an idea or task for later so you don’t forget about it. Sometimes you are out and about and don’t have time to pull out your computer and write down three paragraphs about your latest epiphany, but you still want to record a simple idea for later.

The idea here is to reduce as much of the friction as possible so that you can record the idea when inspiration strikes.

Quick Capture from my iPhone

Often when I am on the go, I have an idea that I want to make sure I remember. The easiest way for me to jot it down quickly is from my iPhone. I used to just write things down in the Apple Notes app, but it got messy. I would also drop an idea or two down in Ulysses, but that was an even worse idea for me since I only use Ulysses to actually write my articles — not brainstorm or store ideas.

So I created a widget on my main home screen that sends me straight to my Notion Personal Dashboard. I can quickly add an idea or a task to my databases using Notion’s fancy buttons that run automations (more on this in a minute).

Here is how you create and add a Notion widget to your home screen:

1. Make sure you have a dashboard created in Notion (or another page or database that you want to link your widget to).
2. Go to your Home Screen and long-press on an app to bring up the contextual menu, then tap Edit Home Screen. You can also long-press anywhere on the Home Screen to enter jiggle mode.
3. Tap the + button in the top left corner, and search for Notion.
4. Choose the first widget called Page (you can also swipe and see all the different kinds of Notion widgets you can add).
5. Tap + Add Widget.
6. Move the Widget around until you find the perfect spot for it on your Home Screen (I put mine on the first page front and center so it’s easy to access).
7. The widget will say Tap and hold to set up. Tap and long-press on the widget to bring up the contextual menu and tap Edit Widget.
8. Choose the correct Notion Workspace and Page you want to link (in my case the name of the page is Chloe’s Dashboard), tap back on the Home Screen and voila, you can now easily access your dashboard to add tasks and ideas throughout your day!

Web Clipper

When you come across an interesting idea or article, there’s an easy way to quickly save it to Notion. Since I find the native “Reading list” for both Chrome and Safari a pain, Notion’s Web Clipper is much more my speed.

Just add it as an extension to your browser, and it will add the article as a new card in your database. It doesn’t just add the link to the card, it actually pastes the content of the article in the card.

Quick capture from my Mac

I work mostly from my Mac. My Mac is pretty much my most prized possession. I do most of my work from it, and while I’m working I regularly have ideas about other projects or think of tasks that I need to do later. I want to jot those things down without having to get off track from what I’m doing.

I created a shortcut using Shortcuts and a custom keyboard shortcut using BetterTouchTool to open Notion with the command command + Shift + 6. There’s a lot of different ways to do this — most of the people here at The Sweet Setup use Alfred, but I use BetterTouchTool because it’s a part of SetApp (one of the best subscriptions I pay for).

When Notion opens or when I change workspaces, it automatically opens up on the top page in my sidebar, which is my top Favorited page — my personal dashboard.

Creating fancy shortcuts is definitely not my forte. There is probably a way to set up a shortcut or automation that always opens the page you want using a keyboard shortcut, but I didn’t want to spend hours going down a rabbit hole to figure it out. So this is what I came up with.

When I land on my personal dashboard, I have two buttons that I click that add a new task or new note / idea. Notion’s newest update to their buttons is pretty amazing. It runs simple automations, so I can create tasks and new pages faster than ever — elevating my Notion quick capture system significantly.

Using Notion’s Buttons to Capture Ideas and Tasks

Once I land on my personal dashboard, either from my iPhone or my Mac, I have two buttons that I can use to quickly allow me to either add a new note / idea or a new task.

When I first saw a video talking about the updated buttons and the automations they can run, I probably could have cried. This makes it easy to add tasks from anywhere in Notion, add new ideas, and it takes templates to a whole other level. It’s fantastic. It also sparks major joy when there’s a Notion new feature I can “play” with.

They can only run simple automations at this point, but we’re looking forward to updates in the future that will allow them to run some more complicated automations.

But enough of me nerding out. The first button I created was to add a task for myself. I called the button Gotta do something?. This button creates a new task in our Master Task Database and assigns it to me, and opens it in a side peek so I can add more information.

The second button I created I named New Idea / Note. This automation creates a new page in my personal database called “Chloe’s Notes”. This database is full of tons of different notes, ideas, and personal SOPs (Standardized Operating Procedures) for myself. When it creates the new page, it also opens it in a side peek so I add the note right away.

The Task database and my Notes database also live on my dashboard so I can see all my tasks and notes, but this is a quick way to create new entries.

How to Create a Button

To create a button, type /button. Name the button and add an icon. Then, create the automation you want it to run. You have a few different options, such as inserting blocks, add a page, or edit a page.

To create a new task or add a note, you would select Add page to. Then you would select the database to which you want the page added. You can name the new page and change the properties (like the status property or who it would be assigned to). You can also add more steps, like a confirmation message or to open the newly created page in a side peek (highly recommend this so you can add more detail to your newly-created task or note).

There are lots of different use cases for buttons, but so far my favorite is quickly capturing tasks and notes.

Buttons in synced blocks

We (at Blanc Media) have also incorporated buttons for quick capture on a few other pages in Notion. We added them to our weekly meeting notes. In our weekly staff meetings, we often need to assign tasks to ourselves or each other while we discuss our projects, etc.

So I created four different buttons — one for each team member that attends our staff meetings. I added them to a synced block and dropped the synced block inside of our meeting notes template. Now every time we jump into our meeting notes for that day and need to assign a task to someone, say Shawn, we just smash the button for assigning a task for Shawn.

Wrap up

Quick capture is one of the foundational stones for a successful PKM system. Capturing your ideas, notes, and tasks on the go is a critical component of creating. The more ideas you have, the more ideas you create.

As Mike Schmitz shared a couple of months ago, the perfect app is not the goal. The goal is to capture your ideas and make something out of them. I use Notion to help me capture my ideas so I can then create something out of them.

Google to roll out new extreme heat alerts in Search soon

Google is introducing new extreme heat alerts in Search that are designed to surface information to help people stay safe during heat waves. The new heat alerts will roll out in the coming months.

When people search for information on extreme heat, they will now see information about when a heat wave is expected to begin and end. The alert will also surface tips on staying cool and warn users about related health concerns they should be aware of. All of this information will be prominently displayed in Search results. The search giant said it has partnered with the Global Heat Health Information Network to ensure that the information it surfaces in the alerts is accurate.

“We’ll be launching a new feature to raise awareness about extreme heat to keep people safe, cool and healthy,” said Hema Budaraju, Google’s senior director of product for health and search, during a briefing with reporters. “Soon, you will see dedicated features highlighting relevant news, recommended actions and local information during a severe heat wave. The new heat alert is one of the many ways we’re continuing to update search to help people find timely, authoritative and actionable information when they need it the most.”

Google has been displaying alerts for things like wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes and more for several years. The company notes that the introduction of the heat alerts feature comes as search interest in heat waves reached a record high globally in June 2022.

Image Credits: Google

The company also said Tree Canopy, a tool that combines AI and aerial imagery so cities can understand their current tree coverage and better plan urban forestry initiatives, has expanded from 14 cities to nearly 350 cities globally — including Atlanta, Baltimore, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Mexico City, Paris, Sydney and Toronto. Google plans to expand the tool to thousands of additional cities this year.

Today’s announcement comes a day after Google said it was introducing new ways for users to verify information on Search. The search giant is launching new features called “Perspectives” and “About this author,” while also expanding some of its current tools, including “About this result.”

Two weeks ago, Google said it was making it easier for people to find affordable healthcare centers near them in Search. If a medical clinic offers affordable care, you will soon see a label that reads “Free or low-cost care” under its name in search results.

Google to roll out new extreme heat alerts in Search soon by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

How Notion’s Relational Databases Connect Everything Together

What’s so great about relational databases?

We have been big fans of Notion for a while now, and relational databases are what makes Notion, well Notion. If you had a lot of organized spreadsheets next to each other that would be great, but in Notion your organized spreadsheets talk to each other. Relational databases connect everything together.

You can see which projects are connected to which clients and what contractors you hired for that project, or how much you need to bill a client for that project, and more — all in one place. It’s pretty great.

How they work

You create a relational database by simply connecting two databases together using a property called relation. This tells one database to pull in information from another database.

Let’s look at an example.

Say that you have a database called Exercise Log. If you want to know what meal you ate after a particular workout, you would connect your Food Log to your Exercise Log using a relation.

To create a relation between two databases, click + Add a property, then scroll through the property options until you find Relation. You can do this from the main database view or inside of a specific card.

Then, you will see all the different databases you can connect to. We are going to choose Food Log for this example.

Then, you adjust the settings for the relation. We want this relation to show up on both databases, so click Show on Food Log.

Once the database is all set up, you choose the entry from the other database that you want to connect, and voila, it’s connected!

And now when you head over to Food Log, you will notice that Cross Fit Workout appears in the entry for Protein Shake.

This is a pretty simple example, but it should give you a good idea of how they work. Now let’s look at some more complex use cases of Relational Databases.

How we use Relational Databases at Blanc Media

Here at Blanc Media, we have a lot of important databases that we want to relate to each other. At any given moment, we are working on between 5-10 projects, in addition to our normal day-to-day stuff (like our newsletters, blog posts, etc.). So we want to make sure everything is organized and easily accessible.

From our project database, we can easily see all the emails associated with the project, all the tasks, files, messages (that’s what we call our notes), product information, and loads of other relevant information. Oh, and did we mention this all happens automatically because we set up a brilliant project template?

One of our largest projects, Accelerator, has a ton of important information that we want to keep track of. We’ve gotten pretty good at making sure we “file” everything in the right place when we add/create it in Notion so that when we use relational databases, they are actually useful.

As you can see in the red boxes, we have several connected databases.

We want our main databases talking to each other. We want the task database talking to the project database so that when a task gets assigned to a specific person they know what it’s for. We want our Files database connected to our projects database; otherwise, it would be the equivalent of having a bunch of loose papers all over your floor, and you’d have no idea what anything was for.

Editorial Calendar

Another crucial connection we’ve made using relational databases is for our editorial calendar. Our editorial calendar is not for the faint of heart. We create a lot of content for a lot of different channels, and we need to know what each piece is for at a glance. Relational databases help keep things organized and talking to each other.

As a writer who is in our editorial calendar a lot, context is everything. We can jump into this email that Isaac wrote and quickly see that it is for the Accelerator project. And remember the Content relation from the Accelerator project? This email will show up there too.

Tasks

Chloe has her own private dashboard that shows her all the things (emails, articles, tasks etc.) that are assigned to her. Relation databases let her know the context.

She can easily see the tasks that are assigned to her and the projects they are attached to. And yes, we are already working on the 2024 Digital Planner and Plan Your Year. ☺️

What if you have dozens or even hundreds of entries? There’s a handy search feature with relational databases. You can easily search for exactly the right entry you’re looking for.

How Josh Uses Relational Databases in Notion for Practice Management

We apologize in advance for some of the Canadian tax lingo below. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the terms:

• T1 = Personal tax return
• T2 = Corporate tax return
• T4 = Employment income slip reported to the Canadian tax agency
• T5 = Interest income slip reported to the Canadian tax agency

This should cover the basics.

Here is the very simple structure our office utilizes inside Notion to manage our relationships with our clients:

Structure

1. Clients
   1. Bookkeeping
   2. T1 – Personal Tax
   3. T2 & Financial Reporting – Corporate Tax
   4. T4 & T5 – Tax Reporting
   5. Other Projects
   6. Mail Log
   7. Work Log

Each of these seven different databases houses various types of work we do for clients. Each database should have different items inside — a T2 and financial statement doesn’t have the same type of work as a T1 personal tax return, after all — but we could well do a T2, financial statement, set of T4s, and other work for a specific client. So we’ve built things out in such a way as to always have a property in every database item that relates back to an item in the “Clients” database to ensure better tracking and relationship management.

When searching for anything in Notion, it’s easy to jump into the Quick Search field in the top left corner. However, if this doesn’t immediately yield what we’re looking for, our relational database structure ensures we can start with “Clients” and then discover all connections to that client from across all 7 other databases. So long as we’ve properly filled in the relational database property in those other 7 databases, every client’s card in the “Clients” database should yield all the work we’ve ever done for that client.

In addition to all of the specific tax and financial reporting work we do for a client, we also have two separate miscellaneous-type databases to cover off miscellaneous-type work we might do for clients. If we mail out documents that need to be charged to a specific client, we can log the mail, log the type of document, log when it was sent, log the cost of postage, and relate it back to that specific client. If we ever need to do a quick check on mailing billings at a month-end or something, it’s as simple as applying a filter to all clients who have a populated “Mail Log” relation in their client card and get those onto an invoice.

Same goes for our “Work Log” database. This database houses any and all work we do for every client in the office. In many ways, it adds an extra layer of connection between our related databases. For instance, if we work on a specific client’s personal tax return for 3 hours on the morning of March 21st, we will create a work log entry stating we worked on that tax return for 3 hours. We can use linked database items to create a quick link to the item in the T1 – Personal Tax database, which itself is related back to the Clients database at the top. If we ever need to find how many hours it took to finish that tax return, we can begin by looking up the client in Clients, clicking on the related database property for the T1 – Personal Tax file, then clicking on the Work Log entry which shows as a back link in the T1 – Personal Tax card. In about 2 or 3 clicks, we have exactly how long it took to complete the work and have a better idea of what needs to be billed.

It’s these inter-database connections that ensure our office can better know what we’re doing for clients, how long it’s taking us to complete the work, and for whom we’re doing the work. Obviously this pays off when it comes time to bill, but it has an equally important impact on our relationship with each client — in only a few short clicks, I can refresh my memory on all the work we’ve done for someone and ensure our professional work is more informed and guided. This makes better use of our work time and provides better guidance for clients so we don’t retrace our steps on work we’ve already completed. So, sure, there’s a better bottom line for our office as a result, but we believe our relationship with each client has improved significantly due to our use of relational databases in Notion.

How we’ve used Relational Database to help other clients

You might not have a robust editorial calendar or a tax company, but relational databases are still part of the magic of Notion. A couple of months ago we were doing a consulting job for a marketing and brand strategy company. Chloe spent some time creating a decked out Notion workspace for them.

They had a lot of moving parts. Dozens of clients, hundreds of past, current, and potential projects, tons of contractors they worked with on different projects… You get the picture. Lots of information.

Chloe was tasked with finding a way to get all of their information to talk to each other and show everything they needed to know quickly. It was fun.

She created a Master Client Database, Master Project Database, Master Contractor Database, Master Contractor Agreement Database (so they could easily find their contractor contracts for specific projects without digging), and a few others for meeting notes, etc.

She made it so that they could easily jump into an existing project or create a new one and add the client it’s for, the contractors that are jumping onto the project, attach their agreements to the project, and any meeting notes that they take over the course of the project.

When you’re working on large projects for clients, the last thing you want to do is spend time tracking down information. It should all be in one place, easily accessible.

Wrap up

Relational databases create a one-stop shop for relevant information — no more digging through countless files folders or through your email looking for that one document. You can see it all in one place. Notion’s hallmark feature is a game changer.

You can take it to the next level and create an advanced tagging system similar to Obsidian using relational databases. I’ve created something like this, thanks to Marie Poulin’s Notion Mastery course, for my Notion Library.

Notion’s Rollup feature takes everything to the next level, allowing you to pull in even more information. But we can save that for another time.

Aimi's app for listening to AI-generated beats arrives on Android and iOS

Following a beta that saw just 5,000 people get a chance to use the software, Aimi’s iOS and Android app is now available to all. The release brings the company’s generative music platform to mobile, where it was not available previously. Engadget’s James Trew has been using the app since January. Since then, Aimi has made a few user interface tweaks.

What hasn’t changed is the premise of the app. As before, Aimi is built around continuous music “experiences” you can subtly tweak by interacting with a handful of interface elements. If you're familiar with platforms like Endel and Brain.fm, you probably know what you're getting into. You can tap the thumbs-up and down buttons to guide Aimi’s algorithm. There’s also a shuffle button if a section comes on that you don’t like at all. With today’s release, Aimi will also prompt you to indicate if you want to hear a section more or less frequently, as well as for longer or shorter periods of time.

Previously, Aimi had planned to offer a $10 per month premium tier that would have included additional controls. During the recent beta, the company decided to make those controls free to all users. First, a “Section” view allows you to isolate individual elements of a musical composition, including parts like the harmony and melody, and adjust the gain and tell Aimi whether you like what you’re hearing. An additional “Composition” interface allows you to shape what you’re hearing by adjusting a set of four sliders. For instance, by moving the “Progression” slider, you can instruct Aimi to modify the experience you’re listening to more or less often. Meanwhile, the “Intensity” and “Texture” sliders allow you to control the number of effects Aimi employs and whether a composition sounds organic or synthetic. Last but not least, there’s a self-explanatory Vocals slider.

The release of a mobile app is part of a broader plan by Aimi to bring more people into the world of generative music. Later this year, the company plans to release Aimi Studio, which will allow users to take a more hands-on approach to craft their own compositions. “One of the strengths of generative music is that we can use it to attract casual listeners with continuous music experiences and then introduce them to interactive music by letting them take ownership of their music experience,” Aimi CEO Edward Balassanian told Engadget at the start of the year. 

Update 11:01AM ET: A previous version of this article stated Aimi planned to charge $10 per month for additional controls. During the app's recent beta, Aimi decided to offer those features for free for the time being. 

Screenshots of the Aimi app floating above a white background.

Apple Music Classical arrives on March 28th

Apple said it was building a standalone app for classical music when it purchased, and subsequently shut down, the Primephonic streaming service. That was 2021, and until now, we haven't known when the new software would be available. The company announced today that Apple Music Classical will be available on March 28th as part of an existing Apple Music subscription. Users on the individual, student, family or Apple One plans will get access, but customers on the Apple Music Voice Plan won't be able to use the new app. 

At launch, Apple Music Classical will be available on all iPhones that run iOS 15.4 or later. Apple says a version of the app for Android is "coming soon." The catalog includes over five million tracks spanning new releases to "celebrated masterpieces." Apple says you'll be able to stream up to192 kHz/24 bit high-resolution lossless audio quality and "thousands" of recordings are available in spatial audio. The company also explains that a portion of its classical library is "thousands" of exclusive albums. 

In addition to the music, you can expect to browse written content like composer biographies, descriptions of key works and "deep-dive guides." Apple also says it rebuilt the app's search feature specifically for classical music queries and the app will serve up over 700 curated playlists. Overall, the app carries much of the same design as the main Apple Music software, although one key change is the company has swapped out the modern sans serif font for a serif for the main titles and section headings. The navigation bar is just four buttons in Apple Music Classical — Listen Now, Browse, Library and Search — as the Radio shortcut has been removed. Lastly, the music note on the app icon has been replaced with a treble clef.

Apple is letting eager listeners "pre-order" the app starting today in the App Store. Once you do, Apple Music Classical will automatically download on launch day as long as you have Auto Update selected in iOS settings. 

Apple Music Classical

Messenger is returning to the Facebook mobile app after nine years away

It's been so long since Meta cut Messenger out of the Facebook mobile app that Windows Phone was still somewhat of a thing at the time. Almost nine years later, Meta is ready to bring them back together. "We are testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app and you’ll see us expand this testing soon," Facebook head Tom Alison wrote. "Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook."

When Meta removed Messenger from the Facebook app in 2014, it said that "our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences." It's unclear whether Meta has any plans to bring messaging back to the mobile browser version of Facebook. It started pushing mobile web users toward the Messenger app in 2016. In any case, having one fewer app to juggle on your phone is probably not a bad thing. You might be able to send messages to Instagram users from the Facebook app too.

Meta made the announcement in a bizarrely framed blog post about Facebook's focus areas for 2023. The post seeks to assure people that "Facebook is not dead nor dying," as it now has more than 2 billion users.

In an effort to become more competitive with TikTok, Meta is attempting to shift Facebook away from an app where you keep up with friends and family to more of an entertainment and discovery platform. It's trying to "make Facebook the best place for social discovery and sharing," as Alison put it in the blog post. 

A key reason why Meta is bringing messaging back to the Facebook app is to "make it easier for people to share what they discover on Facebook via messaging, when, where and how it suits their needs, without needing to switch to another app," Alison wrote. TikTok enables users to share videos that they stumble upon with their friends through built-in direct messaging. So, on one hand Meta is reversing course and going back to an older way of doing things, but on the other it is, once again, aping a competitor.

Messenger and Facebook app logos are displayed on a mobile phone screen for illustration photo. Krakow, Poland on January 23, 2023. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Even Slack has a ChatGPT app now

Slack is the latest notable app to embrace ChatGPT as the generative AI buzz continues to sweep through the tech industry. OpenAI has built a ChatGPT app using Slack's development tools and it's available in beta today.

The app can draft messages and summarize conversations and threads, according to Slack. If you have the ChatGPT app installed, you can click on a thread's menu button and select the "summarize thread" or "draft reply" option. The app will whip up a summary or response that only you can see. You'll then be able to share that information.

Slack says the app can also use AI to deliver answers and insights on any project or topic, chatbot-style. It suggests this could be useful when looking up best practices or researching a potential new customer. Slack notes OpenAI won't use any of the data that the ChatGPT app can access on the platform to train its language models.

Meanwhile, Slack's parent company Salesforce has created a generative AI system called Einstein. It includes integration with OpenAI’s tech, but companies that use Salesforce products can tap into other third-party AI models through Einstein too. As such, Salesforce says its customers can "use natural-language prompts directly within their Salesforce CRM [customer relationship management tools] to generate content that continuously adapts to changing customer information and needs in real time."

In any case, this is another case of generative AI quickly being shoved into even more mainstream tech products beyond search engines and many facets of the Microsoft ecosystem. But hey, at least you won't have to bother thinking up responses to your coworkers' terrible jokes in Slack DMs.

Illustration of the ChatGPT app in Slack, showing an AI-generated summary of a thread.

Speech therapy app uses biofeedback

A new app called staRt aims to help people learn speech skills, such as pronouncing the “r” sound, through biofeedback.

Has someone ever corrected the way you said a word? You reply with another attempt, only to be corrected again. Frustration mounts as you struggle to hear nuanced differences between the speaker’s pronunciation and your own.

A similar experience often occurs for children in speech therapy who are trying to mimic proposed words. In some cases, a child can get stuck trying to perfect an “r” sound over the course of months or even years.

To address these challenges, Tara McAllister, associate professor at New York University Steinhardt, and colleagues created the staRt app. Biofeedback uses instrumentation to create a visual display of some aspect of body function, such as heart rate or speech acoustics. As director of BITS Lab, McAllister has conducted multiple studies on biofeedback for speech, including studies in which an ultrasound probe held beneath the chin allows users to see how they position their tongues during speech.

With the staRt app, a cheerful starfish prompts users to speak in order to see their own sounds as ocean waves that move as the user talks. Since its launch in 2020 on the App Store, staRt has been downloaded more than 9,000 times.

Here, McAllister talks about the creation of staRt, its influence on the practice of speech therapy, and the other ways speech visualization can benefit language learning:

The post Speech therapy app uses biofeedback appeared first on Futurity.

Infinite Canvas App Roundup: Comparing Miro, Freeform, and Obsidian Canvas

I’ve been spending time playing with infinite canvas apps lately, and there are a lot of great options available. In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the features of each of these apps to help you choose the one that best fits your needs.

What is an Infinite Canvas App?

An infinite canvas app is a digital board that gives you an unlimited virtual workspace to create and organize your ideas, sketches, notes, and other types of content. Think of it like a virtual whiteboard, but with no predefined pages or fixed dimensions so you never run out of space (hence the term ‘infinite canvas’).

Infinite canvas apps are particularly useful for creative professionals, artists, designers, and educators who need to brainstorm, sketch, or plan their projects in a flexible and unrestricted way. They can also be beneficial for personal use, such as for note-taking, mind mapping, or laying out the different parts of a large project.

The goal of an infinite canvas app is to provide you with the space and tools to think more creatively about things. I’ve spent a bit of time with three of the more popular ones as of late:

• Miro
• Freeform
• Obsidian Canvas

What surprised me is that these three different apps really have three very different scenarios where they shine. Here’s how they stack up and where they really shine.

Miro

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform designed to allow teams to work together on brainstorming, planning, and visualizing ideas. It is primarily focused on visual collaboration, allowing teams to create diagrams, mind maps, flowcharts, and other visual representations of information.

When you create a board in Miro, you have the option of using a pre-made template to help get you started. There are templates for meetings, kanban workflows, flow charts, product roadmaps, presentations, and much more. If you can think of a business use case for collaboration (i.e. a SWOT analysis or department-level OKR tracking), there is probably a pre-made template you can use.

Because Miro is first and foremost a web app, it offers integrations with lots of other popular online productivity tools. For example, you can embed cards for tasks from apps like Asana and ClickUp, embed design images to get feedback from apps like Figma and Sketch, and collaborate from other communication tools like Slack and Zoom.

What I like about Miro is that it’s really easy to pick up and use. The templates make it easy to get started, and it’s easy to collaborate with others regardless of the technology they decide to use.

If you’re looking for something strictly based on how easy it will be to collaborate with others, Miro is a solid choice. You can access it from just about anywhere, and the integrations with other popular productivity tools make it an ideal choice if you need to work with others (especially in a corporate setting).

Freeform

Freeform is an infinite canvas app from Apple designed for creative brainstorming and collaboration. It comes pre-installed on current versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, giving you built-in creative tools on any Apple device.

With Freeform, you can create multimedia boards on top of your infinite canvas that includes photos, video, audio, documents, PDFs, links to websites and map location links, sticky notes, shapes, diagrams, and more. You can use drag-and-drop from Files and Finder and built-in alignment guides help you snap objects into their proper place.

But the big emphasis in Freeform is on collaboration, with the ability to have up to 100 collaborators on each board. You can drag a board from Freeform into a Messages thread, and all members of that thread will instantly be invited. FaceTime is also built into the app so that you can connect in real time as you collaborate in the app.

What I like about Freeform is the ability to sketch and use the Apple Pencil when using it on my iPad. I still like GoodNotes better for sketching, but using Freeform on an iPad opens up a lot more creative possibilities. Unfortunately, it’s hard to use handwriting like this on your Mac, forcing you to use it more like a standard collaborative whiteboard app.

If you’re an Apple Notes user who has ever wished you could just drag things around inside the Notes app, you’ll love Freeform. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it’s a pretty impressive thinking tool that offers simple collaboration with others — as long as they are fellow Apple nerds.

Obsidian Canvas

Canvas is a new feature added to Obsidian that gives you the ability to create an infinite canvas app inside your Obsidian vault. It’s available as a Core Plugin inside the app and is available on both desktop and mobile (but must be enabled to be used).

Once enabled, creating a Canvas allows you to lay out your notes and ideas so you can organize them visually. You can embed your notes alongside text blocks, images, PDFs, videos, audio, and even fully interactive web pages. Canvas views can be embedded in other notes, and even inside another Canvas.

While Canvas files in Obsidian use a different file format from the standard Markdown formatting the rest of the app is built on, it’s still designed with interoperability in mind. By using an open-source JSON format for Canvas files, apps, scripts, and plugins can enhance your Canvas by adding or modifying the cards and connections it contains.

What I like about Canvas is that I don’t have to leave Obsidian. It reminds me a lot of the corkboard feature Scrivener had back in the day, where writers could lay out all the parts or sections of their writing project and move them around visually on screen. There’s something powerful about simply rearranging your ideas visually that can cause things to click.

If you are all in on Obsidian, Canvas is a great tool for helping you make sense of your notes and ideas. The killer feature is the ability to create boards inside your Obsidian vault and make connections between things. But, it doesn’t allow you to collaborate with others, and if you don’t keep everything in Obsidian then it is pretty feature-limited compared to other infinite canvas apps.

Which Infinite Canvas App is Right for You?

If you need to collaborate with others in a corporate environment (or don’t have any influence over the devices your collaborators will use), check out Miro. It offers a free tier, and the large template library makes it easy to get started.

If you are all-in on the Apple ecosystem and feel comfortable using Apple Notes, check our Freeform. The tools will feel familiar, and your boards will sync across all your Apple devices.

If you are a heavy Obsidian user (like me) and use it for note-taking AND writing, check out Canvas. There’s a lot of insight to be had from arranging the contents of your Obsidian notes visually, especially when brainstorming or planning larger personal creative projects.

Uber's redesigned app puts all its services in one place

Uber has given its app a major redesign for the first time in a long while, and the new version reflects the massively expanded range of services in recent years. The updated Android and iOS apps center around a new home screen that puts ridesharing and Uber Eats deliveries in one place, with fewer steps needed to book trips or order food. There's also a dedicated tab for all the services available in your city, so you won't have to wonder which options are available.

The revamp promises more personalization as well. Tap the usual "where to?" button and you'll now see both saved locations as well as recommendations for destinations and ride types based on your habits. If you normally reserve rides instead of booking on the spot, you may see other scheduled options. An activity hub shows all your past and future Uber uses.

The upgrade also brings some long-expected Live Activities features to iPhone users. Anyone using iOS 16 can now see live ride progress on their phone's lock screen. And if you happen to have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, you'll see those ride updates around the Dynamic Island (read: front camera cutout) while the device is unlocked. You won't have to wait for notifications to know when it's time to head out the door.

The app is available today. Uber tells Engadget the Eats app "isn't going anywhere," and that the iPhone-specific upgrades will reach that software in the "coming months." The unified experience in the main app isn't exactly a shock, though. Uber now handles bikes, scooters, package deliveries, groceries and many other services beyond basic car hailing and restaurant orders. The app redesign might help you discover offerings you didn't realize were available, or encourage you to try features that previously felt like too much of a hassle.

A rework like this might be necessary. While Uber touted higher bookings and profit margins in 2022, its delivery business grew just six percent over the year. The harmonized app isn't guaranteed to improve Uber's bottom line, but it might encourage delivery orders from customers who otherwise wouldn't have tried a feature like Eats.

Uber

Readwise Reader: A Very Good Modern RSS App

RSS has been an important part of information workflows for many years, but read-it-later apps (and the RSS services many of them are based on) desperately need some inspiration and innovation.

Enter Readwise Reader, an app that attempts to combine your RSS, newsletters, web highlights, and more into a single location.

I’ve been using this Reader service for the last couple of months, and it’s completely revitalized my read-it-later reading workflow.

What’s the Difference Between Readwise and Reader?

Readwise has been around as a service to help you get the most out of what you read for a long time. It allows you to sync your highlights from your Kindle device or services like Instapaper or Pocket and then review them periodically. You can even share your highlights, and you’ve probably seen images of Readwise quotes circulating social media before without maybe realizing where they came from:

Recently, Readwise has opened up a public beta of a new app named Reader that aims to handle all of your read-it-later needs. You can subscribe to feeds of your favorite websites via RSS, collect your favorite newsletters, save highlights from web articles, and more. Reader pulls it all into one place so you don’t need to juggle a dozen other reading apps.

What’s So Great About Reader?

All of the standard features you’d expect in your RSS aggregator of choice are here: you can collect and organize feeds, take notes on the articles and posts you’ve read, and archive things that you’ve looked at already. But Reader aims to bring your reading material from multiple places under one roof, so you can also use it to collect things like Tweets, web articles, ePubs, PDFs, and more.

Reader even gives you a special email address you can use to forward things to. Over the past several years of using Feedbin, I’ve used this feature to collect all of the email newsletters that I want to read regularly into my RSS app (a great feature if you’re trying to spend less time in your email as it helps separate the good stuff from the rest of the random junk that tends to show up in your email inbox). But the ability to highlight things in these newsletters and have that automatically get stored in Readwise means I can collect quotes and text snippets from more than just ebooks and web articles.

On iOS, Reader not only gives you a clean user interface for both your Library (which includes an inbox, later, and archive) and your Feed (a list of things that are either seen or unseen), but also makes it easy to add things to either using the iOS Share extension.

There’s also a bunch of new stuff in here that IMHO makes Reader better than just about every other RSS or read-it-later service out there.

For example, you can also save YouTube videos to Reader. But in addition to simply viewing the videos that you’ve saved at your convenience, Reader also gives you a live transcription that appears below the currently playing video and highlights the text as the video plays:

This makes following along with the video even easier and allows you to highlight text from the video to save for later.

On mobile, you can also listen to articles and have Readwise read the entire text to you. Just tap the Listen button in the upper-right, and a play bar opens at the bottom of the article that allows you to control the speed of the playback and even select from a couple of different text-to-speech voices.

Reader also has a Ghostreader feature, which is an AI-based tool that you can use to help create notes from the things that you read. You can choose a prompt from categories like Summarize the document or Ask the document a question and the output gets added to the article as a note.

You can also enable a public link to anything in your Reader library which makes it easy to share things with others. A public link not only allows anyone to view the article in Readwise, but they can also see your highlights, notes, and tags as well.

Readwise & Reader: Better Together

The Readwise service and the Reader app go together like peanut butter and jelly. Either one is fine on their own, but they are much better together. It’s hard to overstate how cool it is to have all of your highlights synced to Readwise automatically. I have a few paid newsletters I’ve subscribed to, and I love being able to see my highlights from those newsletters show up in my Readwise summaries and reviews alongside notes from books, YouTube videos, and more.

The Reader app itself feels like the breath of fresh air that RSS desperately needs. It’s also very reasonably priced, as when the beta is over the app is to be included with the current Readwise service at no additional cost. Historically, the full Readwise service has been $7.99 USD per month. While that hasn’t been enough for me to justify paying for the service previously, the addition of Reader makes the decision to switch a no-brainer for me.

For context, I’ve been paying $5 USD per month for FeedBin for a very long time. And while I’ve been happy with the service, Reader gives me everything FeedBin does and adds a bunch of new features on top of it. Plus I get access to the traditional Readwise service, for a couple of bucks more a month.

If you rely on RSS for any part of your read-it-later workflow, you should definitely check out Readwise Reader.

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Pentagon employees ignore security protocols to download all kinds of dodgy apps on their government-issued phones

A new Department of Defense investigation revealed that Pentagon employees are ignoring security protocols to download a variety of verboten apps for dating, Chinese drones, cryptocurrency, multi-level marketing schemes, and (gulp) potentially-dodgy VPNs. The audit of government-issued devices showed all kinds of cybersecurity risks, not to mention "potentially inappropriate content." — Read the rest

Watch epic Nextdoor chat about a lizard on the loose, amusingly reenacted on Jimmy Kimmel (video)

The Nextdoor app can get bit mundane when all you hear about is car break-ins, home invasions, and raging political feuds. But it's breaking news like the real-life missing-lizard investigation — a long-winded saga about the unknown whereabouts of a "large lizard" on the loose, last seen near someone's mailbox slot — that makes me think I should give the neighborhood app another try. — Read the rest

Quick Tip: How to use sub-tasks in Notion

Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.

The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.

How to use Sub Tasks

To start using Sub Tasks in Notion, you actually have to enable it in your workspace. Start by either heading to your current task database or creating a new one and clicking on the three dots next to the blue New button. Click on Sub-items and then click Create.

This is essentially creating a relational database between your tasks. You can keep the names Sub-item and Parent Item or you can rename them. I renamed mine to Sub-task and Parent Task.

What it looks like in action

Let’s look at a real example and see how it works. I created a task called “Write Notion Article on Sub-Tasks”. I could leave it at that, but there are a lot of steps involved in writing an article. I could create a separate task for each step, but that would take the fun out of sub-tasks.

To add a sub-task, click on the arrow next to the parent task and then click on + New sub-item. It’s like magic.

When you add the sub-items a few notable things happen:
The relational database between the parent task and sub-task database blows up.

When you just look at the parent task “Write Notion Article on Sub-Tasks”, you can see all the sub-tasks attached to it:

For each sub-task, you can see the parent task it’s attached to as well:

This is just relating the sub-task to the parent task. The same way that you would use any other relational database, except this does all the leg work for you. At a glance, you can see all the sub-tasks attached to the parent task. And any time you’re working on a sub-task you can see what parent task it’s related to.

If you open up the task, this is what it looks like:

(If you look closely, you’ll notice that you can even create a sub-task for this sub-task. Rabbit hole for another day)

You can also hide all the sub-tasks by clicking on the arrow under the parent task. You can also hide the parent task/sub-task properties if they become distracting in your view.

What’s cool about this feature is that you can assign each sub-task an individual due date and assignee. So if you are working on updating a page on a website that involves a few people, you can break down the task and assign each sub-task to different people.

You might be asking, why is this better than just creating an individual task for each item? Why do the whole sub-task thing? Is it a bit much?

Well, this next feature is why.

Task Dependencies

Seeing sub-tasks is pretty cool. But not a deal-breaking-change-my-life feature. But for certain teams, this task dependencies feature is pretty nifty (yes I just used the word “nifty”).

In the timeline view, you can now see how certain tasks are blocking other tasks.
This feature, like the sub-items feature, needs to be turned on. First, create a timeline view of your task database and then click on the three dots next to the blue New button and click on Dependencies.

Click + Create New Relation. Their pre-named properties worked for me (Blocking and Blocked by), but feel free to rename them.

This will effectively show what tasks have to be completed before other tasks can be completed. To create a dependency, you just need to drag the arrow next to one task and connect it to the task it is blocking.

It’s also helpful to view a few more properties on this view, such as status and assignee.

You can easily jump into the timeline view and see what tasks are holding up others. And even more helpful, see which person (people) are holding everyone else up 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Closing Thoughts

This new feature might not be life-changing for everyone (especially if you work solo). But for those who work closely on teams, this might be a game changer. If you’ve been on the fence about checking out Notion because of its limitations for team collaboration on tasks, now might be the time to jump in.

Enabling the parent/sub-items and dependency features does add about a million new properties to your database, but like everything else in Notion, you can hide it if it’s not helpful in a particular view.

We use Notion every day over here at Blanc Media, and I’m excited to see how this will help us in our project management.

Artifact is an AI-driven news aggregation app from the creators of Instagram

After a few years of staying mostly under the radar, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are back with a new project. It’s an app called Artifact, a name Systrom told Platformer’s Casey Newton is designed to evoke the project’s three tenants: “articles, facts and artificial intelligence.” In short, it’s a news aggregation app driven by a TikTok-like recommendation algorithm.

When you first launch Artifact, you’ll see a central feed populated by stories from publications like The New York Times. As you read more articles, the app will begin personalizing your feed. According to Systrom, the recommendation system Artifact’s team of seven built prioritizes how long you spend reading about certain subjects over clicks and comments. He added Artifact will feature news stories from both left and right-leaning outlets, though the company won’t allow posts that “promote falsehoods."

In the future, the app will also feature a social component. Systrom and Krieger plan to roll out a feed that will highlight articles from users you follow, alongside their commentary on that content. Additionally, you’ll be able to privately discuss posts through a direct-message inbox. At the moment, Systrom and Krieger are funding the project with their own money. They say Artifact represents a first attempt to imagine what the next generation of social apps could look like. If you want to give what they created a try, you can join a waiting list for the app’s iOS and Android beta. Systrom said the team plans to invite new users quickly.

A screenshot of Artifact, the new app from Instagram creators Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, running on an iPhone 14 Pro.