Converge Newsletter
Useful tools, apps and more.
Decentralised social network
Mastodon is a bit odd. And kind of clumsy to get started with. There are also not that many folks using it. But in all those regards, it really reminds me of the early days of Twitter and I’ve found I kinda like it and I think I can see it sticking for me.
Interactive guide
Colour & Contrast is a comprehensive guide for exploring and learning about the theory, science, and perception of colour and contrast.
Presentation software
iA Presenter is all about simplifying the process of putting together and giving a presentation. It does this by getting you focused on the content and the story you’re telling, rather than you getting bogged down with the design and layout, which it kind of automates away. It has all the hallmarks of iA Writer which is a wonderful writing app, so if you’re someone who gives a lot of presentations, I reckon it’s worth a look.
🔗 ia.net
Reader and bookmarking app
I’ve been using Matter for a little while now to gather together different articles and stuff to read later. While the ‘read later’ concept’s not new, what I love about Matter is that you can have any saved article read to you and it has a really nice highlighting/noting feature to save salient points for later. Useful.
Writing platform
As all the big social media companies continue their slow demise, I’m keeping my eye out for new and upcoming small platforms. Nicheless is just that — a micro-blogging platform for raw, unfiltered thoughts. I like that it’s described as being “like long form Twitter, minus the status games.”
Bypass paywalls
Prepend their web address to the URL of any paywalled web page, and 12ft will do its best to remove the paywall and grant you access to the article. Without dwelling on whether this is fair or right, this has been very effective and useful for me so far.
🔗 12ft.io
Flash player emulator
Appreciate that this is only likely to be useful to a small minority of you as it’s a bit of a niche use case, but I still think it worth including, as it was recently a real godsend for me.
Website framework
I’ve had a bit of a hiatus from building websites in recent years. This is driven in part because I don’t like the deluge of over-engineered JavaScript frameworks that push you to build sites bloated with unnecessary JS. They’re often a very enormous hammer for quite a small nail, or at least in my case.
Analytics
I was looking for a decent alternative to Google Analytics for my site and found one in Splitbee. It's just simple metrics to satisfy my curiosity, while respecting the privacy of users. And I am so glad to finally be shot of the over-engineered mess that is Google's UI.
Social network for reading
For a better designed alternative to Good Reads, check out Literal, which I've been using since it's private beta. You can track and share the books you read and get inspiration from others on what to read next. Lovely. And now publicly available too.
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