My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 309 👋

I am still feeling a bit in the process of gearing up to speed since the new year has started. While I feel energized and motivated to work on other projects, I feel a bit slow when it comes to writing. During the last week, I sat down multiple times and tried finishing up a post I am currently writing about apps and tools for decentralized social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky. However, for whatever reason, I had to squeeze literally every single word out of my brain. It did not feel as fluid as for example writing this intro section. My thoughts seemed to be quite clear when it comes to just capturing and writing down some quick things (again, just like this intro section or like the updates and news section down below), however, when it comes to writing well-researched, detailed insights, I had a hard time to get anything done.

This pretty much felt like writer's block. And it got probably influenced by all the things currently going on in my life. I am fully focusing on applying to jobs as I am currently looking for my next role and the uncertainty that comes with that situation takes up a lot of mental space. Additionally, I try keeping up with Creativerly, as well as other projects that I currently have in the pipeline, keeping my personal website up-to-date and publish new blog posts, and ... even ... more.

Anyway, I sorted out some big things throughout the last week. Mainly because I decided to not write, like not at all. I found myself in one of those very rare situations in which I just close my note-taking and writing app, and focus on something else. Usually, writing and note-taking is my gate to almost everything, but in this specific situation I was overwhelmed with thoughts that much, that even writing them down did not bring the usual clarity.

However, just today, a single day, felt already very refreshing, as I was able to tick off another big task of my list. Another one was getting this newsletter out, since it is already delayed by one day.

Alright, I hope you enjoy this week's issue of Creativerly.

Fresh Updates & News

Horse Browser celebrates 1000 active users →

I was incredibly happy when I received the latest newsletter from Horse Browser, saying that they reached over 1000 active users. I hopped on the Horse Browser train last year, and immediately fell in love with it. In the deep dive I wrote about it, you can learn more about Horse Browser, its features, and why it is such a cozy and calm environment. It is amazing to see how Horse Browser is evolving and progressing. Pascal and Elly pour so much dedication and effort into building this internet browser designed for research, projects, and simply focus and efficiency. To me it was a no-brainer that Horse Browser became one of Creativerly's Favoruite Apps of 2024. I encourage everyone to giving it a try. You can subscribe to it for $20 year, or get a lifetime license for $60, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

After Mark Zuckerberg suddenly decided to remove fact-checking from Meta’s platforms, loosens its content moderation rules, basically turning into the next gate to hell on the internet, as a next step Meta randomly started blocking links to the decentralized Instagram competitor Pixelfed. However, this all led to a huge spike in new signups for Pixelfed, and the platform continues to grow, especially since Pixelfed and its creator Daniel Supernault, recently launched its official mobile apps.

Ghost looking ahead with its ActivityPub integration →

It has been remarkable to follow Ghost’s journey on building its ActivityPub integration to federate Ghost sites. In case you want to follow along the journey, you can subscribe to the newsletter or check the archive at activitypub.ghost.org. In the most recent issue, Ghost looks ahead for what they are planning to work on over the upcoming months. The most exciting bit: Ghost is planning to ship ActivityPub to everyone in a flagship Ghost 6.0 release this year. Over the next couple of months Ghost will continue to add people to the private beta to further test the integration before opening up a public beta.

In the long-term, Ghost is planning to look at ideas around integrating RSS, federated comments, ActivityPub-based member authentication, and paid content in the Fediverse. Exciting times ahead.

One of my favorite newsletters and sites is back. Sidebar got started by Sacha Greif back in 2012. At that time, his vision was to create "Hacker News for design", however, the vision changed along the way, and ultimately he created Sidebar, a newsletter that simply focused on sending out five design-focused links every single day. No comments, debates, or editorials, just five links. For the past 12 years, Sacha Greif has done an incredible job of curating and maintaining Sidebar every single day. In June 2024, he announced that it was time to take a break. Fans and readers feld a bit worried that Sidebar might fade away.

One of those readers was Fabricio Teixeira, Partner, Design at Work & Co, Founder of UX Collective and Doc, and fan of Sidebar. Therefore, Fabricio Teixeira felt like he needed to act, so Sidebar can live on. Long story short, Fabricio Teixeira is now taking over the daily curation of Sidebar, as well as its management duties and operational costs. He is also bringing back Sidebar back to its basics, simply sharing 5 links a day, publishing on the website and sent out via the email newsletter.

Raycast introduces Focus →

Raycast probably is my most used app on my Mac, especially because it is involved in so many different workflows. It is exciting to see how Raycast is evolving and expanding its product. While the team is still working on Raycast for iOS, it introduced a new feature recently called Raycast Focus. Raycast Focus helps you staying in flow by blocking distracting apps and websites. Simply start a Focus Session by choosing a duration and which distracting apps and websites should get blocked during that time.

With Raycast Focus you can focus on one goal at a time to minimize context switching. You can set a Focus for 5 minutes or the entire workday, durations are flexible and you decide the length of them. When it comes to the distracting apps and websites, you can block entire categories. New Focus Sessions will remember your preferences, so you can quickly start without changing the settings over and over again. In case you try to access a blocked app or website, Raycast Focus will subtly remind you about your Focus Session. However, during such a Session you still have the ability to snooze it or pause the whole session in case you need to access a specific app or website. At any time, you can edit your blocks to be more or less strict during your session.

Raycast Focus is completely free to use.

Read.cv and Posts.cv shutting down, team joins Perplexity →

Read.cv just announced that it got acquired by Perplexity, the AI-powered startup that made headlines because of multiple controversies during 2024. As part of the deal, read.cv, as well as posts.cv, the microblogging social network, will shut down. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages, until May 16.

It is devastating to see such beloved platforms, especially across the creative fields, shut down. I always enjoyed using read.cv and described it as “how LinkedIn should have been”, a calm and cozy professional network, where people actually enjoyed sharing their work, because they were proud of it, rather than triggering any kind of algorithm to go viral and get encouraged by tech bros. When creating such a platform with the idea to turn it into a business, you obviously need to think about ways to keep the lights on. This task turns into a bigger challenge once you took on outside investments.

I am not saying that if someone would have bootstrapped something like read.cv that there is no chance of it getting shut down sometime in the future, but there is no doubt that with VC money there comes a certain type of pressure. It is sad to see that yet another beloved tool and service shuts down. It is even more sad to see creative minds like Andy Chung, co-founder and CEO of read.cv, joins a rather dark place like Perplexity.

Mental Wealth

❯ Cognitive load is what matters – “There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but most of them have failed. We need something more fundamental, something that can't be wrong. Sometimes we feel confusion going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It's not some fancy abstract concept, but rather a fundamental human constraint. It's not imagined, it's there and we can feel it.”

❯ Whither dashboard design? – “It’s true: the dashboards we use today for doing operational diagnostic work are … let’s say suboptimal. Charity Majors is one of the founders of Honeycomb, one of the newer generation of observability tools. I’m not a Honeycomb user myself, so I can’t say much intelligently about the product. But my naive understanding is that the primary way an operator interacts with Honeycomb is by querying it. And it sounds like a very nifty tool for doing that, I’ve certainly felt the absence of being able do high-cardinality queries when trying to narrow down where a problem is, and I would love to have access to a tool like that.”

❯ How Anxiety Hides in Your Habits – “I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of reading the same tips over and over about how to calm down and destress. I’m tired of trying to slow down my breathing when my chest feels heavy, and question the worst-case scenarios running around my head.”

❯ The rise of the generalist – “For a decade, I worked at the edges of disciplines—not quite a writer, not quite a designer, not quite a strategist. In startup land, this wasn’t unusual. These teams needed people who could context-switch between growth experiments and UX copywriting, or jump from onboarding new users to brainstorming a marketing campaign. As a writer with a background in design, I was able to spot the subtle differences that set products apart, whether through carefully crafted copy or thoughtful interface details. But explaining this to friends at larger companies often meant watching their eyes glaze over as I fumbled through descriptions of my work. “I do a bit of everything” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in traditional corporate environments.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

In case you are looking for a privacy-friendly and ethical Gmail alternative, I wrote a post gathering a bunch of lovely options to create and set up your secure email environment. It is a living post, since whenever I stumble across additional services, I will add it to the post. Check it out.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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