When I started researching this post series, the aim was to review each app and service myself. Unfortunately, I have what’s known in financial circles as a one-way bank account – money’s going out, but nothing’s coming in. So, I’ve had to adapt. A number of paid-only services will not receive full reviews. Instead,...

Newsblur is not new to me, but it might as well be. I signed up within hours of Google announcing its intentions to close Reader. Since then, Newsblur’s design has improved and it has invested in faster, more responsive servers. It had to. Shortly after the announcement, like many other feed-reading services,...

Mr. Reader is the go-to app for catching up with my RSS feed subscriptions, and has been since September 2012. But ever since Google announced it was closing Reader back in March, I’ve been exploring other options. That has meant a lot of time spent in other apps and using a number of different feed-reading...

First up, BazQux. You’ve probably never heard of it, and nor had I up until a couple of days ago. As for the name, don’t ask, even the developer says it has no meaning. But what’s intriguing about BazQux is that its interface is so like the Google Reader of old; you feel at home immediately. It’s also fast,...

Get Mac Apps allows you to select multiple apps and install them with a single Terminal command. Simply check the box next to each of the apps you want to install, click ‘Install these!’ and Get Mac Apps generates the Terminal command for you. Copy, paste in Terminal, and hit Enter. Job’s a good ’un. Rather than...

All images uploaded to this site are compressed in ImageOptim – free, open-source software for the Mac – after being put through Photoshop’s ‘Save for web’ routine. But I decided some time ago that that part of my workflow could be speeded up by using Hazel, a handy little utility for the Mac. Let Hazel do the...

Roger Johansson, in ‘How to proportionally scale images that have dimension attributes’: Allowing images to scale along with their container is an important part of responsive web design (and was so even before the term “responsive web design” existed). It’s really quite easy – all you need to do is give the image a...

Hide the dock. It’s as simple as ⌥-⌘-D, or point your mouse at  > Dock > Turn hiding on/off. I can hear the in-rush of air as you suck volumes of the stuff between your teeth, but bear with me. Look at the clutter in my Dock in the image below; look at the distracting new-email announcement. I often found it...

This post, as the title suggests, describes a workflow that involves Markdown writing apps Ulysses and Byword, and the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress. There are two other things you’ll need to make it work: Hazel, an automated organiser for Mac – it’s not essential, but it helps – and the WP-Markdown plugin...

Metaclassy has released Byword 2.0 to the masses. I dived straight in and paid the £2.99 ($4.99) in-app upgrade fee, forgetting that this blog is running under the static-file system delivered by Kirby CMS. Not for long, though. I was already halfway towards restoring and redesigning this blog under WordPress when I...

The Postbox filter described below organises then sends iTunes receipts to Evernote, ready for me to browse when it comes to completing my quarterly VAT return. I’ve been using note-taking app Evernote to help manage my financial affairs for a couple of years. For the most part, this has involved storing PDFs for...

In a survey of book typography from the 18th century to the present, Dave Bricker, of The World’s Greatest Book blog, questions the authenticity of classic design work: The non-proportional digital typeface argument [for single-spacing] is an interesting distraction that ultimately fails to either support or...