Principles of spatial design

There are so many neato things about visionOS. One I’m most excited about is removing the boundaries of interfaces to be more transparent and a part of the environment with less cruft. May it trickle down across all the OSes and computing experiences!

developer.apple.com

visionOS Music app floating in a living room

A bicycle for the senses

Stephan Ango’s optimistic thoughts on sensory computing paired with the just announced Apple Vision Pro.

stephanango.com

Kepano’s avatar (a smiling face with eyes closed)

Web Roulette

Swipe through favorite websites or shake for random fun. This looks like an extra fun way to browser the web. / via Daring Fireball

techcrunch.com

Web Roulette app icon

Arc Boost

Arc just leapfrogged every browser with Boost, a way to customize how websites look and ”zap” features you don't like.

arc.net

Arc browser screenshot showing customization screen

Make an annoying RoboCall in order to get rid of annoying RoboCalls

MSCHF exploits a dumb government loophole that allows for robocalls as long as a human initiates them. Now you can help raise money and awareness to lobby against them by firing up a ton of spam calls.

antirobocall.com

Screenshot of robocall website

A good bird app

Merlin Bird ID is free app by Cornell Lab that can identify birds by sound. Noah Kalina said (on a non-bird app that doesn’t allow deep links) “It will change your life and how you experience the natural world.”

merlin.allaboutbirds.org

Screenshot of app that identifies birds by sound

Making an interactive blog map

Or any sort of diagram for that matter. Tom Critchlow shares an option that uses Figma, SVGs and CSS. I had no idea this was possible — this opens up so many doors!

tomcritchlow.com

Interactive blog diagram

Digicam Finder

The bad news: Amazon is shutting down the excellent DPReview, a favorite website to learn about digital cameras. The good news: Folks are making an archive that in some ways, is better! / via Tom Watson

digicamfinder.com

Digital camera database

I wish my computer cursor was this lively

Figma has tight animations to show off new features. Dig. And yay for hanging punctuation among oodles of other improvements.

figma.com

A panel for Bartlett Pears showing off new features for the design tool Figma

The Magical Musical Thing

David Hilowitz explores the 70’s toy electronic instrument from Mattel and speaks to the creator. We had one of these growing up and it was indeed a bit magical. / via Chuck Jordan

spectrecollie.com

Magical Musical Thing

John Gruber on Wavelength

His post describes a new app for group chat, built on privacy and fortified with (deep breath) A.I. So good he’s on board and makes a compelling case as to why.

daringfireball.net

Wave icon

Maybe drone delivery will really be a thing

Actually, it already is. This video is a fine use of twenty minutes and as JP says, “makes me feel a bit more optimistic about the future.”

youtu.be

Zipline drone delivery thing

The Funny Pages in Modern Times

David Friedman missed the funny pages. So he used ChatGPT to work through coding up a tool to select and deliver the dailies through a page generated by RSS feeds. One of the best uses of AI I’ve seen yet.

ironicsans.substack.com

Auto generated comics HTML page

Tidy Reader

“A simple bookmarklet to tidy up articles for easy reading” and OMG IT’S AWESOME

stephanango.com

Tidy Reader

My Favourite Computer, An Old Mac

“I can tell it my thoughts and my secrets without wondering if it's going to share them with others, or with corporations.” – Connor Oliver / via Daring Fireball

muezza.ca

Bitmapped photograph of a Macintosh Classic II and a black cat

Remove backgrounds in macOS

I knew this was a part of iOS but didn’t realize it was a contextual menu away on the Mac. Thanks Christian Heilmann!

christianheilmann.com

Remove background command in macOS

Adobe adds photogrammetry tools

Turn still photos (from phone or camera) into 3D models with automatic subject masking and texture mapping. (Wikipedia on Photogrammetry)

jnack.com

3D photo setup

AI-generated code helps learning and experimentation

Outside of image generation and prose, it's interesting to understand a coding workflow. Matt Webb has thoughts and shares some insight and throws some bonus footnotes about language models. I particularly like this application angle to “parse intent instead of nouns”

interconnected.org

AI-generated code helps me learn and makes experimenting faster

Ivory for iOS

A Mastodon app by Tapbots that leaps over the current experience on Twitter. Also enjoying the Ice Cubes app by Thomas Ricouard

tapbots.com

An elephant peering cautiously behind a computer

Sofa

Could this app replace my messy notes that collect shows and movies to watch, books to read and games to play? / via CJ Chilvers’ How to Stay Creative Forever

sofahq.com

Screengrab of app that organizes books and movies and tv shows and games and whatnot

Action Mode

I honestly didn't know there was an Action Mode.

sethw.com

Person using mobile phone to shoot video of a foot race

All Things AI

Rick Waalders has created a sortable directory of AI tools plus a glossary and resources. Soon there will be an AI creating NCIS variants. / via sidebar

allthingsai.com

Screengrab of All Things AI website

A Big Pile of Personal Developer & Designer Blogs in an OPML File

Chris Coyier shares list of blogs in an XML format. He carved it out to encourage those curious about RSS and need a place to start (and to try out a new RSS reader).

chriscoyier.net

A drawing of a bear wearing a shirt and sweater. Code from an OPML file is overlaid

A community isn’t a garden, it’s a bar.

I nodded all along the cases that Derek Powazek presents and concludes. “Online communities are bars and we should admit that and start building the diverse, engaging, and safe gathering places we deserve.”

powazek.com

A crowded bar

More AI, this time, step by step instructions

On how to train and develop prompts for impressive outputs of illustrated portraits of a person. Sidenote: Matt Haughey has been doubling down on posting short and longform content on his blog. So. Good.

a.wholelottanothing.org

AI illustration of Matt Haughey

From real to animated AR

Yup, more with the AI stuff. This particular thread by Sergei Galkin details the steps to transfer a physical toy to the digital world in very short order.

twitter.com

Creating an animated digital character from a physical toy

Invasive Diffusion

Andy Baio goes deep on the state of images generated from AI along with the ethical (and legal) debates. An excellent long read.

waxy.org

Portraits of Andy Baio generated in popular illustration styles

PodMod

I have the sudden urge to modify an old iPod with an SD card.

seansharp.org

hand holding a modified iPod with clear case

Teenage Engineering Record Factory

Compact and portable record cutter that allows you to create your own 5” vinyl records and playback in lo-fi sound. WHOA + NEATO! / via Tom

teenage.engineering

A record cutting machine brightly colored with orange and white plastic

Relight

Change lighting of photos with AI. It's free, so there's all that comes with that. But it's also pretty dang good.

clipdrop.co

A man holds his cat and three colored dots indicate changing the lighting

TikTok monitoring all keyboard inputs and taps

If you use their in-app browser that is. Which is kind of a huge deal. (Other apps do this too and that's what this post details. TMKY

krausefx.com

Alert showing the amount of snooping that Javascript can inject into apps that build in their own internet browser

Murf.ai

Text to speech with a AI voice generator. (The pro versions sound particularly good.) / via John Maeda

murf.ai

Illustrations of users with different use cases for AI generated audio including an educator, marketer, author, corporate coach and broadcaster

How to Temporarily Disable Face ID or Touch ID

It's very simple on iOS to bypass biometric authentication and require the passcode.

daringfireball.net

Touch ID Home Button on mobile phone

Craigstarter

A free to use, edit, extend crowdfunding tool for Shopify with multiple goals and variants as campaign tiers by Craig Mod. (Excellent video tutorial to boot!) / via Kevin Kelley's post about The Proprietary Path

github.com

Screenshot of a crowdfunding website tool

ImageOptim

Radically optimize image file sizes with this Mac app or web service. I've used this before but it wasn't until I asked Naz how he got his photographs so wonderfully compressed that it all clicked. Now a tool in my everyday workflow.

imageoptim.com

App Icon showing a mechanical vice compression a digital image

Canvas Cards

A gallery of card designs created with the HTML Canvas element and JavaScript with editable code to tweak and generate new variants. Created by Luke Patton

canvas-cards.glitch.me

Randomly generated card designs

Collective

Back-office for a Business-of-One, including company formation, tax, accounting and bookkeeping services. Not available in Ohio yet, but this looks v promising. / via Erik

collective.com

A stylized logo with the letter C made of many small circles

pocket operator

Teenage Engineering created a pocket operator app to sequence sound and video (for Google Pixel phones). No real idea what this does, but I love their approach to interface design.

teenage.engineering

AR Art Projector

App that blends an image on your phone with video of your pencil / paintbrush to draw. Once set, you can even zoom around. Fascinating. Da Vinci Eye has another app for murals too.

youtu.be

A phone shows a blend of a photograph and a pencil drawing a picture from it

Prompts plus powerful AI

Two examples show another approach of how tools like Dall•E can generate imagery

jnack.com

An image of a man's face closely cropped on one side, and what appears to be a zoomed out photo of the same man dressed as a sushi chef (but it's not real, it's made from AI)

Asking AI to generate some logos

Janelle Shane's AI Weirdness blog is great. This particular post makes me wondering about job security.

aiweirdness.com

An In and Out burger sign as interpreted by AI... (All of the signs are whacky and misspelled.)

Song Link / Odesli

Automatically scours major streaming platforms to share links for songs, albums and podcasts. I no longer have to link to YouTube videos! (I do fear if the service will exist much longer after a Linktree acquisition...) / via Andy Bell

odesli.co

An icon of interconnected music notes above a grid of album covers

Touch screens in cars are not good

This entire article can be summed up by the title. Don't get me wrong, as soon as fully autonomous vehicles are a real thing? Screens everywhere!

song.link

An illustration of a figure trapped inside a screen

Around

It's like Zoom, but funner apparently, breaking out of boxes and adding filters, music, and games.

around.co

A whacky circle of videos with filters for video conferencing

Bionic Reading

The most concise parts of words are set in bold which, in theory, guides the eye and increases comprehension. Intrigued to try this with longer text. / via @LukesBeard

bionic-reading.com

A block of text where the first few letters of each word is set in a bold

My 16 Favourite Finder Tips for Mac

I thought I knew MacOS well, but almost every single item on Rory Bowcott's list was an a-ha! / via another link on Belong

fourth-wall.co.uk

A MacOS Finder window with contextual menu open to batch rename files

How to block domains from search results

Luke Harris has a good rundown of options. I just installed the uBlacklist browser extension and I might never have to see an image result from Pinterest or iStockphoto again. Glory!

lkhrs.com

A preference panel for a browser extension to block websites from showing up in searches

Excel, an overlooked design tool

I've done a pretty good job of making Powerpoint look good, but this is next level stuff. / via Sidebar

bootcamp.uxdesign.cc

An infographic of a circle chart and bar chart

Hyundai IONIQ 5

Need to pay off my current ride and drive it for many more years. But I like to dream of what the next vehicle will be and this new EV from Hyundai presses a lot of buttons (and kept a few important controls as real knobs).

hyundai.com

The rear view of an electric vehicle with LED brake lights

Contra Chrome

Online webcomic by Leah Elliott that exposes what really happens when you use the Chrome browser (and other Google services). Be sure to use the arrow pagination tool and not the 'skip to the end' button.

contrachrome.com

A few introductory panels from a webcomic about Google Chrome. A man holds a tabbed browser window with a speech bubble that reads "Hi, my name is Scott McCloud! I'm a cartoonist and comics scholar. Back in 2008, I created a comic book for Google explaining the inner workings of their soon-to-be-released new browser, Chrome."

Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart?

Mobile phone photos look like weird paintings anymore. I'd like an option to turn off computational photography.

newyorker.com

Pixelated flowers in a vase on a mobile phone screen

ID. Buzz

This long dreamed about VW moves (slowly) into production (for Europe). The front design is busy, but the rest of the package is compelling.

vw.com

An orange and white electric van of the future from Volkswagen

The Problem With NFTs

I've seen half of this (two hour!) video but agree with Michael here that it's worth watching to get a better understanding of this emerging (and divisive) technology.

yewknee.com

Title card for a Youtube video featuring two NFT characters on a brick wall with the title "Line Goes Up"

How Brian Lovin’s site works

Whoa. This is densely awesome. A personal website that operates somewhat like an OS. Thoroughly engaging and inspiring.

brianlovin.com

A screenshot of a personal website

NightWatch Magnifying Clock Dock

I already have enough clocks and a charging solution for my watch. But if I didn't I'd totally consider this beauty. / via smartpeopleiknow

yankodesign.com

A magnifying glass for your Apple Watch

BrickIt App

Throw your lego down and scan it with this app and it will give you step by step instructions to build new things. Haven't tried this, but it sounds far out. / via ProductHunt

brickit.app

A colorful abstract Lego helicopter held by a hand

A portal to feel connected

Marveling at this huge circular screen and camera with real-time feed between Vilnius, Lithuania and Lublin, Poland

theverge.com

A circular video portal

How Uber is Scamming Everyone

Edward Ongweso, Jr. and Gravel Institute present such an alarming and compelling case against Uber I will vow to seek alternatives and understand the landscape of travel options with more thought.

youtu.be

Frame of animation with blue cars circling on roads

Scrapbook

After seeing this post on Fonts In Use I am now scouring the internet for a modern replacement of this old Apple utility that was probably better in my memory than actually useful.

fontsinuse.com

Black and white interface of the old Mac OS Scrapbook

Apple’s Privacy Commercial

I had only seen tiny snippets before seeing the whole thing. This really brings clarity to the insanity of tracking. I would actually appreciate seeing a longer and deeper dive. Sadly the video is hosted on Youtube. / via DaringFireball

youtu.be

A man holds a mobile phone with ghosts of privacy trackers dissipate nearby