Matthew Lang

Focus this week for Markcase is to add a registration screen that is only open until the number of accounts reaches a certain limit. The idea here is to allow a limited number of registrations without having to worry about scaling. Much easier than me handling invitations.

Switched to the annual plan for Micro.blog account. Another great reason to love Micro.blog!

I need to learn the shortcut keys for Slack. The constant clicking between accounts is such a distraction. Three shortcuts to learn for the week that I think will make a difference. Quick switch (Cmd K), Browse DMs (Cmd Shift K) and All Unreads (Cmd Shift A).

The kettle is on, notebooks are out and I’m about to kick off a weekly planning session.

I’m already having to change the plans for today. Ethan’s golf coaching has been cancelled and there’s no way it looks like we’ll get out for a few holes either today thanks to the rain.

Me, Jennifer and the boys went to see Captain Marvel yesterday. A great and enjoyable movie as well as being something a bit different from many of the Marvel movies. A nice lead in to End Game next month. A nice hap tip to Stan Lee at the start as well.

Okay, the device in The Expanse is not a cell-phone. Still, it looks more environmentally friendly.

Apparently, Apple is now under demand to deliver a foldable iPhone. Nevermind a foldable iPhone, how about delivering something like those handhelds that are used in The Expanse instead?

As with these other platforms, the idea behind the iOS app is to let you enjoy your PS4 titles without having to sit in front of your TV (so you can let your family watch a show, and pick up where you left off on your phone). Your game will be streamed to your mobile device, and use on-screen overlay buttons to control the action. Unfortunately, unlike with Android, you can’t pair a Dualshock 4 controller to your iPhone or iPad for use with this app.

— You can finally run PS4 games on your iPhone or iPad with Remote Play

I’m on the fence with this one. While the idea comes from good intentions, not hogging the television for your gaming, it leads me to think how often I’ll need to chase my oldest off his iPad and iPhone. That’s only when he has a iPad or iPhone that can support the remote play though, as I think his devices are too old for this.

I normally relay gaming news and updates to my oldest, but I think I’ll let this one slip under the radar for as long as I can.

A very detailed post over at NicePage about the changes in web design, the gap between site builders and designers and how you can design for the new 3.0 era.

My design skills as a web developer are definitely lacking, but I can do enough to get by and make a functional user-interface. I prefer to use Bootstrap, but I’ve also been using the Vuetify framework recently as well.

I think Bootstrap gets a lot of bad press for being the popular framework out there, and sure there are a lot of designs that look similar, but there are alternatives out there. The Themes For App site provides free themes based on Bootstrap and looking at them, you couldn’t say for definite that they are built using Bootstrap. They make good use of whitespace and visuals and lean towards NicePage’s 3.0 trend.

Another Bootstrap based theme I’ve been looking at is Material Kit. Take the Bootstrap framework and wrap it in a design influenced by Google’s Material Design.

I’m glad to see there is a new trend in web design. It keeps everyone in the industry on their toes and ensures that there is something else to work towards. It’s not for everyone, and I love minimal plain text designs just as much. It’s good though that we can have this choice as users of the internet.

I’ve been working on a little side-project for the last few weeks, and now I’m ready to reveal it in a soft opening kind of way. Say hi to my bookmarking app, Markcase.

I’ve been an ardent user of bookmarking apps right from the early days of Delicious. Since then I’ve been back and forward to Pinboard a few times and tried Pocket a couple of times. They’re all excellent apps for bookmarking, and they all have their pros and cons.

Delicious is now under the control of Pinboard, and Pinboard itself has been very quiet on the development front. It does what it promises, but after I struggled for a few weeks with bundle issues, I decided to close my account.

I like Pocket for its visual appearance, and it negates the need for a read-it-later service as well, but the last time I tried it, I found it challenging to organise all 1800 of my bookmarks.

I decided to roll my own bookmarking app. After a few weeks, I had a single-user version of Markcase up and running. A few weeks on and now I have Markcase running as a multi-user service. It’s still very early days for it, but I’m definitely keen to take it forward. There’s still lots of work to do, but it’s ready to go as a service for saving bookmarks and organising them.

It’s still in a state of beta though, but I would be interested in hearing from anyone who wants to give it a try. While in this beta phase, accounts will be given out as free, but once we leave the beta stage, accounts will be charged an annual fee for using Markcase. If you don’t feel like using Markcase beyond this point, then you can delete your account.

At the moment, you can log in, change some of your account details, save bookmarks with tags, organise them with tag bundles and use a private RSS feed for your bookmarks. I expect to add many features over the coming months including importing and exporting of bookmarks and integration with other apps and services.

As for native applications, Markcase is a web app first. It will work on mobile devices, without having to install an app. I will be providing an API in the future for those who want to build their own native app for Markcase, but it’s not something that I will be interested in doing for at least a year, maybe longer.

If you’re interested in taking Markcase for a spin, then please reply to this post on Micro.blog or email me at matthew [at] matthewlang [dot] net. I’ll be setting up account requests as and when they come in. It might not be right away as this step is manual at the moment. I will be adding a sign-up page after the beta has finished.

Markcase was previously called Commonmarks, but that was far too similar to Markdown specification of a same name. A name change was definitely needed.

A light installation that shows the future sea levels in a Scottish coastal town. A powerful image of what the future could look like.

via swissmiss

A few thoughts from Michael Wade on crisis management.

You’ll need a “deep bench” to handle a major crisis because the first team will soon be exhausted.

— Thoughts on Crises

Reminds me of the recent Rework podcast episode that I listened to that covered Basecamp’s significant product outage and how they handled the situation.

The MacStories team have compiled a collection of shortucts for Apple’s Shortcuts app. Well worth a peek if you want to save yourself a few taps a day.

The “I Miss Rave” playlist on iTunes takes me back. 🎵

These glacier pools in Iceland are the result of retreating glaciers. The photographs themselves are amazing but they signify the increasing problem of climate change.

Curtis McHale shares his plans for March with his bullet journal.

If you need proof that it works for him, then give him a follow on social media. He manages to fit so much into a typical week!

Also Curtis' blog is worth a daily visit as well. .

I can think of a few people who would appreciate these little books of bookmarks.

Hat-tip to swissmiss.

For those looking to learn web development, then I would highly recommend Thoughtbot’s Upcase site as a place to begin. And just for some added value, Thoughtbot are also making all their e-books free as well.

First beta user setup on my bookmarking app, Markcase. I still have a list of bugs and features I want to deliver sooner than later, but I expect to start looking for more beta testers towards the weekend.

A list of ideas for Firefox. I would love to see these picked up and made into browser extensions.

Me and Jen took the boys to Taekwondo this morning. Usually we alternate it, but we decided to both go this morning. We sat and had a coffee while waiting for the boys to finish. Not often we get the chance to talk without interruptions. It was a nice wee start to the day.

Just blitzed through my unread feeds in Feedbin in a matter of minutes using the keyboard shortcuts. I forgot these existed! And yes I used the Vim arrow keys, ‘h’,‘j’,‘k’ and ‘l’. You can use traditional arrow keys asd well.

Twitter’s “Hide Tweet” button feels like another feature for the platform that requires manual interaction to filter the noise out. Managing a Twitter account is starting to sound like a full-time job.

A change of seasons means a change of colour for my blog. I’ve been doing this since I started using the Hyde theme on Micro.blog. Just a small way in which I can refresh the look of my blog without too much fuss.

Chrome’s continued dominance of the web now puts it in the same position as Internet Explorer all those years ago. “It works on Chrome” is the new “It work on IE”. I’d like to think though that most web developers out there don’t just build for the one browser.

Reda Lemeden’s post, “We Need Chrome No More”, sums up this change.

The dominance of Chrome has a major detrimental effect on the Web as an open platform: developers are increasingly shunning other browsers in their testing and bug-fixing routines. If it works as intended on Chrome, it’s ready to ship. This in turn results in more users flocking to the browser as their favorite Web sites and apps no longer work elsewhere, making developers less likely to spend time testing on other browsers. A vicious cycle that, if not broken, will result in most other browsers disappearing in the oblivion of irrelevance. And that’s exactly how you suffocate the open Web.

— We need Chrome no more

While I can see Reda’s point, I don’t think that the developer’s building for the one browser is as big a problem. I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I visited a website that only worked in Chrome.

For me, the problem isn’t so much that Chrome is the most popular browser, it’s the organisation behind the browser and how they integrate features into that browser that support how they use data and ads to make profits.

Switching to another browser is one answer to this problem, but perhaps there’s also another answer.

For Google to change as an organisation.

That sounds like a pipedream, and even looking back at that sentence, it just seems ridiculous. I’ll leave it though because even the most ridiculous of ideas can still happen.