Different gets ignored & Shopify acquired Threads
My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the weekly digest about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, combined with useful insights, articles, and findings from the fields of design and tech. The newsletter built for the creative community.
Hey and welcome to Creativerly 278 👋
Quick update on the new Creativerly website and how it is going: I have not had time as of recently to put the final touches on it, but we are close, in fact we are almost there. I did a lot of writing to update the content on specific pages on the website. And to land on something that I actually liked, it took quite some time. Since with the new website, I am also going to introduce new content categories to further structure the content I create, I also need to go through all my previous post and assign them the new tags, which will also take some time.
Nevertheless, I would say I am 85% there. It is always exciting to work on such updates and improvements. But it is even more exciting to get them out there. Therefore, I am going to double down on working on the website. At the same time, I am also excited about all the new post I got in my backlog. Writing for Creativerly feels amazing currently, and I will do my best to keep the momentum.
Enjoy this week's newsletter!
The new wave of email marketing software: Loops, Audienceful, and Mailcoach
Most of us are getting bombarded with loads of marketing emails every single day. Many of them are simply spam. However, sometimes I find myself actually reading and keeping up with the news, insights, and offers shared in such marketing newsletters. While the information within those newsletters is the one thing that should stand out, I am a fan of lovely designed newsletters too. Whenever I get the feeling some newsletters look bland and similar to others, I scroll down to the bottom of the email, and almost every time I find the Mailchimp logo.
Although there are various newsletter services for marketing emails, Mailchimp is still the number one pick. And I do understand that to a certain point. Mailchimp is simple, easy to get started with, and has a generous free tier. So, it is a great service to pick, once you decide to get into email marketing. However, it does not feel like that Mailchimp (and other, similar well-established newsletter services) did innovate that much over the last couple of years. Mailchimp is that one service a lot of companies default to, just because it is the most popular one, but not the one you should be using. When it comes to creating product, marketing, and transactional emails, you need a modern platform that puts design first, lets you write and edit with ease, and adapt your branding with a few clicks rather than writing a lot of code.
The Mailchimp era is over. Creators, Startups, Developers, Marketers, and other creative minds build on new marketing tools to grow, connect, and convert. If you are looking for a modern, beautifully designed, and powerful service to send product, marketing, and transactional emails, you need to check out the three tools presented in this article.
Loops, Audienceful, and Mailcoach all feel like a new wave of marketing email services, tailored at modern software companies.
Read the whole post here:
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Fresh Updates & News
Bear 2.2.0 →
With the newest update, the lovely note-taking app Bear introduced and shipped some small yet significant improvements, alongside essential bug fixes, and new themes to enhance your overall Bear experience. Among the improvements you find a better and easier folding experience, as a new side action in the editor makes it so much easier to expand or collapse your content as needed.
Additionally, a copy code button has been added to the side actions of code blocks. This button allows you to quickly copy long code snippets without hassle. To spark up your overall experience, Bear now has four new themes. You can now enjoy 'Tokyo Night Light', 'Gruvbox', 'Catpuccing Latte', and 'Catpuccin Macchiato'.
Shopify acquires Threads (no, not the microblogging service by Meta) →
Threads is a Slack alternative that launched its product from stealth in 2019 with $10.5 million in funding. In a post on its website, Threads pointed out that once Meta's new social network, also named 'Threads', was on the rise, a few companies approached the startup to acquire it.
Furthermore, Threads disclosed that they would have had to rebrand from Threads if they stayed independent. As of now, we only know that the Threads team will join Shopify, but no information has yet been disclosed whether Shopify is planning on integrating the product or shutting it down.
Maven imported 1.12m Fediverse posts →
Maven is a new social network founded by a former OpenAI Team Lead, Ken Stanley. After a recent investigation by Liaizon Wakest, news arose that Maven has been importing a vast amount of statuses from Mastodon without anyone's consent. It did the same with Bluesky statuses, pulling in content via the Bridgy Fed. Additionally, Maven did not link back to any of the original profiles.
Liazion Wakest's post on Mastodon gathered loads of negative comments about Maven's behavior. Jimmi Secretan, Maven's CTO, joined in on the discussion mentioning that they were working on some tests regarding integrating ActivityPub. Based on the feedback from the post, Jimmy Secretan announced that Maven will pause everything related to the Fediverse integration and delete everything ingested. He also pointed out that the extreme negative reaction was a surprise to him. I mean, for real? You decide to scrape date without anyone's consent and suddenly you are surprised that people are not happy with that?
Do better. The Fediverse is indeed built on top of the idea to connect and integrate with different networks and services. But to gain the trust from the community, communication is all it needs.
Mental Wealth
❯ Different Gets Ignored – “Consider the overlaid promotions, tips, or call-outs typically found in an interface. To get these elements noticed, designers will apply contrasting colors, shapes, fonts, and more. All in an attempt to make things pop. But if a pop-up or any element of a user interface for that matter looks too different from the rest of the design, people will often perceive it as something that doesn't belong (like an ad) and dismiss it.”
❯ The AI Designer – “For creative craftspeople, AI is more of an imposed thought experiment than it is a utility. Yes, there are countless AI tools that can do parts of the job — make an image for you, create a layout, automate a workflow, even predict eye-tracking — but when you start using them for deadline-driven work, the quality isn’t there, and neither are the time-savings. It is often more than reasonable to conclude that the outcome would be better and faster done yourself.”
❯ Familiar vs Novel – “Familiarity enables the transfer of experience between similar products or services, allowing us to be productive without first learning how a system works. When we encounter familiar interface patterns and conventions, we intuitively understand them based on previous experience. This rule of thumb is the basis of Jakob’s Law and helps guide design decisions.”
❯ Can Happiness Be Taught? – “Staring into the mirror, on a Tuesday morning, you decide that your self needs all the help it can get. But where to turn? You were reading James Clear’s “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” and doing well until you spilled half a bottle of Knob Creek over the last sixty pages. Now you’ll never know how it ends. You tried listening to David Goggins’s “Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds,” on Audible, in your car, but so thrilling was Goggins’s prose style that you stomped on the gas and rear-ended a Tesla. Do not despair, though. Succor is at hand. Roosting on Amazon’s best-seller list is “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier,” by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey (Portfolio).”
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Appendix
❯ ICYMI
In case you are on the hunt for a privacy-focused Gmail alternative, I gathered a couple of great privacy-friendly email services in a new post called Say goodbye to Gmail. Gmail has lost its trust, Google has lots its trust. If you are done with the data-scraping nightmare from Gmail and Google, there are several services which provide a great experience, combined with lovely and powerful features, and a dedicated privacy and security focus.
❯ Quick Bits
- Ransomware attackers quickly weaponize PHP vulnerability with 9.8 severity rating
- Meta halts plans to train AI on Facebook, Instagram posts in EU
- Apple punishes women for same behaviors that get men promoted, lawsuit says
- Apple set to be first Big Tech group to face charges under EU digital law
- Microsoft delays Recall again, won’t debut it with new Copilot+ PCs after all
- Tesla investors back $56bn Musk pay deal
- Gaming giant Steam accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers
- Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back
- We don’t want AI writers in the newsroom, say humans
- Hackers linked to Hamas tied to cyberespionage via Android spyware in Palestine
- Can platform-wide AI ever fit into enterprise security?
- Mozilla defies Kremlin, restores banned Firefox add-ons in Russia
Till next time! 👋
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