Pocket Beta

Posted on November 30, 2015 by erictummers

Today I found an invite in my mailbox for the Pocket Beta.

We’ve been working on making it wayeasier to recommend the most interesting things you’re reading and watching in Pocket to others.

We think you’ll love what’s new – open the link below on your iPhone to begin playing around with these new features before we unveil them to the public.

pocket_beta
The installation is painless. Just browse to a website and accept the certificate. All well explained.

After the login I was presented the familiar but slightly changed list of articles, images and videos. When the update is released I think some might not even notice the new recommendations feature until some weeks of usage. Below a picture of current (left) and beta (right) version.

The navigation is moved from the top to the bottom. Some little changes to the icons (like the hamburger menu).

In the article view the favourite is moved to the ellipsis/menu and replaced by the hart/recommend button. Tapping this will open the Recommend dialog. A comment input and extra sharing options are offered. The recommendation is added to my profile and visible in my recommendations.

To build this network Pocket uses my other social accounts (twitter and Facebook) When someone I follow/friend signs up I’ll be notified to follow that person on Pocket.

I think that the way Pocket is introducing the social network thing is great. Now I don’t have to scavenge my twitter feed for interesting reads. Like the tip from Scott:

Find your aggregation site. Find your Scoble.

Posted in Tooling | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Week roundup

Posted on November 27, 2015 by erictummers

Last week recap and links:
Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are your best reads this week? Leave them in the comments below.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Use RescueTime and IFTTT to report working time

Posted on November 25, 2015 by erictummers

rescuetimeOn my work machine I’ve installed RescueTime. This tool monitors the processes and websites. Everything is categorised and a weekly report is sent to my inbox.

Last week I noticed a RescueTime Channel on IFTTT. A simple receipt logs my daily report to Evernote. Now I know what days I perform best.

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
― William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Static webpages with Jekyll

Posted on November 23, 2015 by erictummers

Next to this wordpress blog I have a blog about my running. I used to host this with postach.io from evernote, but that started to cost money. I moved to scriptogr.am that uses dropbox, but they quit the service. Now I’m using Github Pages which is running Jekyll from Github repositories.

jekyll_logo

Jekyll makes hosting a blog easy. You’re in control where it is hosted, how it looks and the content. Since Jekyll generates static webpages the hosting is simple. No requirements for frameworks or extensions. Just a location that can serve a file. The browser will do the rest.The templates, styles and resources are all files you can edit. Jekyll takes the files and generates static files that end up in a folder. Just put that folder on the server and you’re running your blog. Markdown files separate the information from the representation. From these markdown files Jekyll generates the post / page as HTML.

How I host my blog

First I install Jekyll. This is a Ruby Gem. Easy install instructions are on the Jekyll site. I ran into some issues but running the update and using a different folder fixed my issues. All is well documented.

After the installation I generate a new blog with Jekyll. The markdown files from scriptogr.am need a small change in the header. After that my posts are already browsable.

Now the customisation of the css and templates. I install sublime text which is an awesome editor that can among others show all files in a folder as a project. A quick look at SASS and the blog is looking fine again.

With a simple push to Github I can add a new post. Github offers an online editor for adding new posts so I can post from everywhere. The generation of the site is the part that runs on Github. If Github ever stops being free or quits all together I can move my files to any other hosting provider. The generation (Jekyll) would be done by my machine and the static files are uploaded to the server. My running blog is future proof now 😉

References

Jekyll, the home of Jekyll
Pluralsight course static websites with jekyll
Portable Jekyll for Windows, not used but wanted to mention this

Posted in Tooling | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Week roundup

Posted on November 20, 2015 by erictummers

Last week recap and links:
Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are your best reads this week? Leave them in the comments below.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment