Cool Links

If you drive, you’ve probably hopped around between Waze, Google Maps and even Apple Maps at some point. Each has their own pros and cons, and while Waze used to have the edge on real-time information, that edge was stolen by Google Maps (not literally stolen; they’re literally developed by the same team).

But besides that, this case study goes into the differences between the 3 apps and how each displays similar things differently in order to highlight their own strengths.

Not that you asked, but my favorites are Apple Maps for actual navigation and Google Maps for everything else.

If you use a Mac, you probably know that Spotlight (the search box/launcher that opens when you press ⌘+Space) is shit. It’s slow, inconsistent, slow, and tries to do too much at once. (did I say it’s slow?)

TinyStart strips out all the useless stuff and keeps just the essentials, which means it’s really fast. You can launch apps, links and folders, and also pick emojis (it’s better than the built-in emoji picker too!). It’s a €5 one-time purchase, with free updates forever.

It does less than alternatives like Raycast (which is free) on purpose, but has the added bonus of never having to deal with features you’re not interested in, because it’s not trying to sell you anything extra. (plus, it’s just inevitable that Raycast will enshittify eventually…)

This is pretty cool! Terry built a RSS reader that rethinks how to approach a continuous feed — or rather, a current — of articles and links. I particularly love how it aims to solve the noisy feed problem, where a source that posts 20 news items a day might drown a really cool article from someone who doesn’t post often, which is a problem I’ve had on every single RSS reader I’ve used (and that I “solved” by unsubscribing from noisy feeds).

It’s a one-time-purchase and on iOS/iPadOS/macOS only, and I haven’t tried it out yet because I just renewed the annual plan for another RSS reader 😅

This is a really cool initiative! Kagi has been my search engine of choice for over a year and I’m really happy with how they’re aiming to stop AI slop from taking over their (still great) search results.

In my experience, their results are miles ahead of Google’s, Bing’s or whatever other search engine out there, partly because of their algorithm prioritizes good sites, partly because they allow you to prioritize/deprioritize/block the sites you want.

But a good algorithm only goes so far and with the amount of AI slop hitting the web every day, it’s gonna be harder and harder to avoid them. Now Kagi users can report certain articles as AI-generated so other users can know that beforehand and not click on them, or even block their domains.

Okay, this is pretty cool. This lil’ website allows you to do quick image edits right on your browser. Nothing new there - except for the fact that it actually works with no account, no ads, no popups, no upsell. Truly a marvel!

The same as Edit Photo, but for Videos!

Another cool little web utility. This one lets you squoosh your image files to greatly reduce their file size without any significant loss in quality. Especially useful if you have a website of your own and want to optimize your images.

The best part about Mastodon is the lack of a “For You” algorithm. That means nobody controls what you see (except for Time, I guess, since it’s chronological).

That is also the worst part of it. Sometimes I just can’t keep up with all the posts in there.

Sill is a neat little service that checks your timeline daily and sends you an email with the most shared links in your timeline. It works really well and it’s a neat way to make sure you didn’t miss a really cool project or article from your timeline even if you have skipped social media for a day (which you should really try). And, at least for now, it’s free!

Oh, it also works with BlueSky, though I haven’t tried it with that.