Tag: Apps

Bookmarked Patatap (Patatap)

Patatap is a portable animation and sound kit. With the touch of a finger create melodies charged with moving shapes. Warning: contains flashing images.

I came upon this website/app which provides a combination of sounds and visuals. Although not quite ‘found sounds‘, there is a certain serendipity in tinkering with the various sounds. Although I always seem to fall into repetition. When exploring, I am always reminded of Kirk Hamilton’s adage thump, pop, sizzle and Jack Antonoff’s discussion of I Wanna Get Better.

ᔥ “Charles Arthur” in Start Up No.1830: explaining those odd wrong-number texts, Covid’s missing immunity, Google offers abortion data deletion, and more | The Overspill: when there’s more that I want to say ()

Liked Triple Entry Blogging (tomcritchlow.com)

Here’s a super rough proof of concept Replit tiny library. I’ve never written nodeJS code before and managed to copy and paste together a little thing that takes a library.json file and turns it into a library. Right now it only iterates over a single library but it’s easy to imagine how to extend this to include a feed, info across library files etc etc. I’m gonna get to all that, I jut haven’t had time.

Replied to The HP Sprocket Mini Printer by Wouter GroeneveldWouter Groeneveld (brainbaking.com)

But really, any Bluetooth client should be able to send stuff to the Sprocket printer. Like, my laptop, whether it’s a Mac or formatted with FreeBSD.

I wish my Pogo would still work. What do they call this? Devolution?

Apps. I have the sudden urge to go and rinse my mouth now.

I am glad that it is not just me who has issues with the HP Sprocket and the dependency on an app. Also appreciated your thoughts on parking machines too.
Bookmarked Google Photos is so 2020—welcome to the world of self-hosted photo management (Ars Technica)

Our perhaps unsatisfying conclusion to this seven-app showdown exposes an important truth: the photo management software world is too complex for a one- or two-person dev team to properly handle. Unless we see some of these app-makers start to pool their resources together, it could be a while before we get a truly excellent self-hosted option to pry many of us away from Google.

Alex Kretzschmar takes a dive into the open source alternatives to Google Photos. Might be something to tinker with in regards to Reclaim Cloud, especially Nextcloud Photos.
Bookmarked App Store Predecessors: Many Early Attempts at Digital Distribution (Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.)

Assessing the landscape of the app store concept in the years before it became an idea “originated” by Apple. The prior art is strong with this one.

Ernie Smith explores the app stores before Apple’s App Store. He discusses various examples Tucows, Electronic AppWrapper Digital River, Steam and Xbox Live Arcade. Makes me think about how an idea is often about execution and context, than the idea itself.
Bookmarked Desktop Means Web (inessential.com)

I’ve learned something that I suspect is true across much of our industry: the list of platforms in the world is iOS, Android, and desktop.

And — this is critical — desktop literally means web.

Brent Simmons suggests that although there are many different platforms, it all comes down to desktop and mobile. The web subsequently sits with the desktop.

the web sort of lost as a software platform on mobile. The web is for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines — it’s the old way of things. For mobile, it’s all about the apps. But maybe the web didn’t totally lose here, because often those apps are cross-platform affairs that run on web technologies.

Liked When Every App Crashes (Anil Dash)

we have to demand of our technology what we have of our food, clothing, medicine and other essential needs: visibility into how they’re supplied & sourced, understanding the workers & working conditions that shape them, and accountability when the system has failures. When the supply chain for Tylenol was vulnerable, the manufacturer addressed the issue directly. When consumers wanted to know their tuna was dolphin-safe, companies responded.

That raises a few key questions: Who makes your apps? Where are they sourced? Which apps do you use that were made by people you trust?

Replied to Social distancing? Moog and Korg have made their synth apps free to keep you occupied (Resident Advisor)

The iOS versions of the Minimoog Model D and the Korg Kaossilator can now be downloaded free of charge.

This is fantastic. I think I could get lost in both of these apps for hours.
Replied to Freshen Up Your Trello Workflows With These 7 New Features (blog.trello.com)

Many people have the same card or similar cards across multiple Trello boards that they work with, and it can be a pain to keep them all consistent. We’re pleased to report that one of our Power-Up partners has created the ability to mirror Trello cards!

I really like the idea of mirroring cards across boards. I think that has been one of my biggest bugbears with Trello.
Liked How Game Apps That Captivate Kids Have Been Collecting Their Data by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries;Natasha Singer;Aaron Krolik;Michael H. Keller (nytimes.com)

A lawsuit by New Mexico’s attorney general accuses a popular app maker, as well as online ad businesses run by Google and Twitter, of violating children’s privacy law.

via Ian O’Byrne
Liked The Toca Boca Story – The Startup – Medium by Danielle Newnham (Medium)

So, our research and strategy has helped a lot and has actually created a great environment for our staff because they bought into the business from the beginning. We have created a confined space in our business with very strict parameters. The business is digital toys; it’s not winning, no losing, no stress, no high scores, no rules. It’s open-ended, focusing on creativity; playful, fun experiences. You have to buy into all of these things before you start here.

We do open-ended children’s apps that don’t have any rules, so you have to focus on the fun. If you start at the company and you know that, then it’s completely free because we don’t go to staff and tell them to make it a different color. As long as you buy into the initial constraints, it’s free. In fact, I have designers who say they have never worked somewhere where they have been given so much freedom, which is ironic considering that we have limited down the market so much. But it is very free for them as long as you buy into the idea — and I think that is a result of strategy. It also creates a good work environment because, quite frankly, if I think I could design better than the designer, then I have probably hired the wrong person. If I can’t bet on the designer to know best, then something is wrong.