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Blogging as a Lean Startup

January 5, 2020 By Bobby Voicu

I have a good friend that wants to start up a blog. And he has so many interesting things to say, I would read his blog. Well, this brilliant guy started his blog about a year ago. In his head. He knows what kind of articles he’ll write, how long they will be, how great they will be.

The issue? The articles are still there, in his head.

I’ve heard about Lean Startup (and its predecessor, 4 Steps to the Epiphany) about 3-4 years ago.

The basic explanation of the concept is that you create a Minimum Viable Product, you go to market, you learn from the feedback and reiterate. Basically “Build, Test, Learn, Reiterate”. And do this cycle as often as possible.

The shorter the cycle it is, the better you chance of succeeding in your startup (because it creates more chances of getting the things right). A lean startup sees its runaway (the time until it runs out of money) not in months or years, but in the number of cycles it has. MavenHut was a lean startup.

Now, blogging is by no means a startup, most of the time. It can be see as one, though. If we keep comparing, my friend is actually in the startup stage where you want to create the next big thing, the thing that you know will change humanity. You want to create the iPhone. You have everything in place, you just don’t have the time to create… well, perfection.

All he needs to do to reach perfection is to start the Minimum Viable Product for his blog: the first, simple, small, 200 words article. Then the second. Then the third. He will get feedback for all of them (from me, from his other friends, from people on Facebook or Twitter). And the 10th article will be a 2000 words article about something great. But the form will not be the best. Still, he will understand how to space paragraphs, ideas, use headlines and so on. And his 30th article will be a lot better. And so on and so forth.

By the time his blog is 9 months old he will write his first great article. The one that hits Hacker News and Reddit and that gets 1000 likes on Facebook and 150 RTs on Twitter. And then he will start again. Until, 2 years from the start, he will be a household name in his chosen field.

This is a good story, right? On the other hand, you might not be the household name you wanted, but writing helps a lot in other ways, ways you didn’t really think about:

I recommend daily writing for anyone, not just writers. Here’s what I’ve found from my daily habit:

  • Writing helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making. This is incredibly valuable, as often we do things without realizing why, or what effects these things are having on us.
  • Writing clarifies your thinking. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts and put them in a logical order.
  • Writing regularly makes you better at writing. And writing is a powerful skill to be good at in our digital age.
  • Writing for an audience (even if the audience is just one person) helps you to think from the perspective of the audience. That’s when the magic starts, because once you get into the reader’s mindset, you begin to understand readers and customers and colleagues and friends better. You have empathy and a wider understanding of the world.
  • Writing persuasively — to convince others of your point of view — helps you to get better at persuading people to change their minds. Many people don’t want to change their minds when they feel someone is attacking their position, so they get defensive and dig into their position.
  • Writing daily forces you to come up with new ideas regularly, and so that forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas. What’s the answer to that problem? Ideas are everywhere! In the people you talk to, in your life experiments, in things you read online, in new ventures and magazines and films and music and novels. But when you write regularly, your eyes are open to these ideas.
  • Writing regularly online helps you to build an audience who is interested in what you have to share, and how you can help them. This is good for any business, anyone who is building a career, anyone who loves to socialize with others who are interested in similar things as them.

The quote above is from Zen Habits, an article called Why You Should Write Daily.

Raspberry Pi 4: First thoughts

August 6, 2019 By Bobby Voicu

Every time a new version of the Raspberry Pi appears, I go nuts for several days, fantasizing about things I could do, like build a robot, an entire smart home or whatever. I read what you can do with the Raspberry Pi 4 in this case, I look for articles, for subreddits, everything.

Then I order the new version. It usually takes 2-3 days to receive it and by that time my excitement is less… excited. Of course, once I receive it, the excitement (or a big part of it) comes back. I unpack it, I mount it in the case, add some heat sinks, then I look for an HDMI cable.

Once I’ve done everything required with the hardware, it’s time for software. I download the latest Raspbian image (Buster, at the time of writing this) and I put it on an SD card. It takes a little bit of terminal tinkering, but it works usually right from the start.

Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for: powering up. It takes around 5-10 minutes to go through all the steps to initialize the new system, including the updates.

And here it is: Rasbian installed on the Raspberry Pi 4. But what’s next? I’m still waiting to find out, frankly. If you have and suggestions, let me know.

The things I noticed about the Raspberry Pi 4 (see official specs here):

  • my version has 4GB of RAM, so I thought it would feel faster. It doesn’t
  • I got the standard case, the recommended USB-C charger, small heatsinks, but I forgot to get an HDMI cable or adapter
  • you don’t have a standard HDMI port, so you need to have a MICRO HDMI to standard HDMI cable or adapter (see difference here). I forgot about it when I ordered the Pi, so I needed to go and buy one before I got the Pi delivered. But I would’ve been really disappointed if I got the device and I couldn’t connect it to the monitor right there and then. Just be careful not to get the MINI HDMI to HDMI, but the micro.
  • it heats a lot. I’ve used the Pi for about 15-20 minutes for light browsing (no YouTube or anything similar), I’ve done the updates. It is really hot after that amount of time, even with the heatsinks installed. I will buy the Flirch aluminum case, that acts like a big heatsink and has good reviews. I don’t want a fan because of the noise.
  • Retro Pie doesn’t work with Raspberry Pi 4 on Raspbian Buster just yet, unless you do some kind of hacks and I don’t want to. I’ll wait for the working version.

I’ve been using MacOS computers for the last 10 years or so, but I sometimes miss Linux (any version of it). So the Pi will scratch that itch from time to time.

Favicons in Safari 12 Tabs

September 19, 2018 By Bobby Voicu

Safari 12 just introduced favicons in tabs. I know, I know :)

I’ve been using Safari more and more in the last year and I hated the hacks necessary to get the favicons to show. Finally, Apple added them.

Here’s how to get them: Safari -> Preferences -> Tabs and check “Show website icons in tabs”.

Using an iPad Pro as a laptop replacement

May 2, 2018 By Bobby Voicu

For the last 6 months or so I found myself developing a new, interesting habit. Whenever I sat on the couch watching a movie, a football match, a tennis match or anything passive enough, I’d want the iPad next to me, as the device to do things on. Until then, the devices I prefered were a 2012 MacBook or my iPhone 7+.

The thing is I felt the iPhone wasn’t big enough when I was writing emails or messages and the MacBook didn’t have a touch screen, which made it more cumbersome to use.

So I found myself using the iPad Pro 9.7 I’ve had for about 2 years. It used to be my girlfriend’s device of choice to use with the Apple pen to do lettering and illustrations, but since she now uses an iPad Pro 12.9 – 2nd gen, the 9.7 was there for me to use.

Another thing I noticed is that while the 2012 MacBook is great to take with you while traveling – and I did travel a lot in the last 3-4 months – I wasn’t happy with what it offered me. I wanted more performance for the common enough tasks and more battery life. So I switched, for a while, just to experiment, to the iPad. After attaching a Smart keybord, I didn’t open the MacBook since.

I have to tell you that I also own a 2015 MacBook Pro which is my main working machine. I hate the “butterfly” keyboard on the newer MacBook Pros, so I won’t switch anytime soon.

Finally, about 2 weeks ago I took the plunge in making this iPad Pro my main computer. I will not quit on the MB Pro, I still use it often enough for some things, like video calls or podcast recording, but I discover more and more ways to not use it. I also can’t use my bank’s website on my iPad because it has JavaScript. Scratch that, I just found out they released a tablet app. What do you know.

Here’s what I use the iPad for, at the moment:

  • surfing the web. Most of it it’s from the iPad now. I rarely open Chrome on my MacBook, unless I need a specific extension of the browser.
  • reading and replying to emails
  • using FB messenger and Slack (I don’t use Whatsapp almost at all, so that’s only used on my phone)
  • reading Kindle/iBook books. I still prefer a Kindle Oasis most of the times, but I find myself reading from the iPad more often now.
  • writing long form text (I write what started as a longer article on how to keep investors and potential investors updated and it morphed into a longer potential PDF). I use Scrivener and Ulysses – this is the app I’m using right now to write this.
  • games (simple ones, I have a Nintendo Switch and a PS4 for more heavy duty gaming)
  • browsing Reddit, YouTube;
  • listening to music (Spotify) and podcasts (Overcast)
  • booking hotels and planes;
  • watching Netflix (most of the times in a PIP window, while I do something else)

If I think about it, I do most of the things that I normally would on my laptop. There are still some things I prefer my laptop for, but almost 80% of my day is iPad and iPhone based right now.

It’s true, my speed and efficiency aren’t at the laptop level yet. As an example, I still find using files on iPad frustrating (even with the use of Documents by Readdle, a really good files app the compensates a lot of things lacking from the iPad Files app). I’m looking to use Workflow to automate some tasks, but it’s still early to give you any kind of real examples. I tried adding a specific meal in My Fitness Pal and failed because MFP doesn’t allow Workflow use.

All and all, I’ve found the experience interesting enough to keep me doing it. I’ll keep you updated as new things come to light.

Conclusion

Using the iPad is becoming easier for me, even for work related tasks. The learning curve is there and I think iOS is still far from being a true computer, but for 80-90% of my tasks, it’s more than good. I don’t expect it to complete remove my need for a laptop, but I find myself looking more towards a media server (and, hence, a Mac Mini), rather than a full blown MacBook Pro.

And now I’ve published my first post on the blog using just the iPad. Nice.

Resources

Some more articles to read about iPad as a laptop, articles I’ve found and read in the last 2 weeks:

– Matt Gemmell’s iPad series

– MacStories – A Computer for Everything One Year of iPad Pro

– How to Blog on an iPad

– The Overspill: Life on an iPad

Photos: my “office” while I’m in Greece and my first screen of the iPad.

The eerie silence of Facebook: Unfollow all

June 25, 2017 By Bobby Voicu

facebook unfollowed all accounts

I don’t have that many friends on my personal account on Facebook (I’m not talking about the page). Still, they are about 100-ish. People that write updates, that put links, photos and the likes. But I don’t see any of those. Yes, the screenshot above is how my personal account looks like. Sometimes there’s an ad there.

In September – October last year I unfollowed everyone on Facebook.

The reason? Well, every 2-3 minutes I would take the phone, open it using TouchID and press the leftmost icon on the third row from the top. Yeah, that was Facebook’s app icon. Then I’d pull the screen down to refresh. And lose myself for the next several minutes. It didn’t matter if I was talking to anybody: my parents, my girlfriend, my sister or, even worse, my niece. I just got lost in a black hole, all of a sudden.

At some point, though, this was happening so often that nothing would’ve changed on Facebook. I still did it. It was time to stop.

So I unfollowed everyone, as I was saying. I moved the app’s icon to another folder on the phone (I still need Facebook for access to business accounts, this is why I can’t delete my account, though I thought about it for a little while). Then I changed the icon in position 1 on row 3 with the Weather app icon.

And YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT :)

For the next week or so I could tell you exactly what the weather would be for the next 10 days. Yeah, you asked me and I was the weatherman. Because my habit was still there: pick up the phone, unlock it by TouchID and then open the app in that specific position on the screen. And it took several seconds for my brain to understand that I already know what the weather will be like.

So, yes, social media plays games with our brains.

Almost a year in, I don’t open Facebook that often and, even more important, I don’t pick up my phone as often as well.

I also love that when I meet with my friends I don’t really know what they’ve been up to so we need to talk about it and I’m genuinely surprised most of the times. I still talk on messenger with many of them, so I know the most important going-ons in the lives, but I don’t see random pics, I don’t see random links.

Another side effect is that I don’t write that many personal things on Facebook anymore. I do, from time to time, but my time in the app dropped dramatically. I still get some notifications, I use Facebook Pages a lot, so I still got on Facebook. I just have a much more clutter-free life.

Were my friends unhappy with this move on my side? Some. There are some that will find out now? Yes. Will it change the way I use the app? No. I enjoy my new found freedom :)

—————

Photo: my Facebook account at the beginning of a Sunday morning.

How I use Reddit and how to make the site useful for you

May 4, 2017 By Bobby Voicu

How to use reddit and make it an useful tool

During the last 6 months I found myself using Reddit more and more. I’ve had a Reddit account for the last 10 years or so, since the times of Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. The reason I didn’t really use it until recently, though, is that I thought the site was crowded with things I didn’t care to know, overrun by people that wanted cat pics (I love cats, I lose hours from time to time watching at photos, but still…).

Until, once, I remembered something a friend of mine wrote about: if you want to understand something, you have to actually use that thing in earnest. So I started reading about “How to use Reddit”. And here’s what I ended up with :)

What is Reddit?

A forum of forums, a community of communities. It’s a collection of information from every domain possible which gets upvoted and downvoted by the multiple millions of users there and, based on that, it gets presented to all the users/readers on their homepages. If you don’t personalize your homepage it becomes a collection of photos and politics. But if you DO personalize your homepage, it’s a great tool to know what your community’s interested in.

First thing: use Reddit Enhancement Suite. I don’t know everything it does, but I know that my experience is so much better than with the default Reddit look/options. It’s a browser plugin that works with most browsers. From now on, in this article, I assume you have RES installed.

Second: you can find a subreddit (a niche forum, if you want) on about any subject possible. So you have to decide what kind of information you want to have on your front page of Reddit. Because, yes, Reddit has highly personalized homepages for every user. You can, basically, subscribe to any subreddit to appear on your home page and, more important, you can remove any subreddit from your home page.

You go here, where you can see the subreddits you subscribed to. As of now, I’m subscribed to about 100 subreddits, mostly business and travel, but I am also subscribed to things like YouSHouldKnow, PS4Deals, PS4, which are things I’m interested in. I’ll put a list with all the subreddits I’m subscribed to at the end of this article.

For obvious reasons, if you are interested in business and startups, subscribe to /r/Startups and /r/Entrepreneur. Also, one of the best subreddits I’ve seen around is /r/JustStart. Targeted mostly to Amazon affiliates, it’s really good because it has ridealong case studies (people write what happens to their business almost every month and it is really, really interesting to read). Another similar one, for any type of entrepreneurial business, is /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong.

Also, if you want to find interesting subreddits, search in Reddit. Or, even better, you can search for “interesting subreddits in [niche]” on Google and you can find lists from people that are really interested in the same things.

This is how I find good content to read.

Participation in communities

Another thing you can get from Reddit, though, is participation in communities. If you are the person that likes to help others, but on your own time, not theirs, Reddit is the best place. I go, every 2-3 days, to /r/Entrepreneur and /r/Startups and look at the New section on each subreddit. That’s where you see the latest things people post. And I try to comment, helpfully, on those things (if I have something to say, obviously). The reason I go to New instead of Popular or Controversial is that, by the time I get to the posts in those sections, I really have nothing to add. Most of the comments are thoughtful, people are genuinely trying to help, so I’d just repeat what others said.

Of course, from time to time you might have something to add in form of a post. An interesting link, something you want to ask or share. As long as it’s interesting for the community, people will react well, thank you for it and share with others. Be careful, though, at self-promotion. And I don’t say this about things you share with the community (my post about quitting MavenHut was received well enough), but about links to your blog/website that don’t really add anything to the subreddit. Then you will be hit with a lot of downvotes that will kill your karma. And some sarcastic comments that you will not enjoy :)

What’s karma?

Well, it’s a kind of credits system. It shows how relevant what you say and publish is for the communities you are part of. I have about 200 karma at this moment (which is really low), but I’ve seen accounts with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of points. Truth is, each subreddit has a different chance of getting on the /all page (which is, basically, the page everyone sees by defaultif they didn’t personalize their homepage). Once you get there you will probably generate about 30-40,000 karma. So, if that’s your play, this is where you need to get to. Most of the things in the subreddits I follow don’t get to /all, so you don’t really get a lot of karma.

And talking about /all: until recently I didn’t look at the page at all. It was full of politics regarding US elections (both Trump and Clinton fans manipulated the algorithm to get their stories on the front page). Several months ago, though, Reddit gave users the opportunity to exclude subreddits from the /all page. And now it’s somewhere I go from time to time. I removed almost all politics, all conspiracy theories, almost all pics. It makes a much better page for me now :)

Finally, before showing you my subreddits, I have to tell you that it took me about 2 weeks to actually start to get what Reddit is about and about 3-4 months to actually start making an effort to contribute to the communities. I do this about 3-4 times a week, for about an hour (contributing, I mean). I also read Reddit almost every day, for about 30 minutes, to see if there’s something interesting to read available.

Here are the subreddits I’m subscribed to: (if you want the link, just put reddit.com in front of it, I’m not gonna add 100 links. I’ve bolded the reddits the I think are really, really interesting.

Keep in mind that these are things I find useful, but there are some aspirational things there, as well (like /r/LongTermTravel). A guy can dream, right? :)

A list of all the subreddits I’m subscribed to

/r/entrepreneur
/r/startups
/r/entrepreneurridealong
/r/JustStart

/r/travel
/r/books
/r/history
/r/longtext
/r/ireland
/r/lifehacks
/r/cruise
/r/webmarketing
/r/todayilearned
/r/smnallbusiness
/r/wanderlust
/r/TrueReddit
/r/emailmarketing
/r/lounge (I think you need to be buy gold for this – like a premium subscription)
/r/youshouldknow
/r/datasets
/r/digitalnomad
/r/analytics
/r/debtfree
/r/Cork
/r/depthhub
/r/solotravel
/r/printSF
/r/adventuregames
/r/lowcar
/r/ifyoulikelblank
/r/truegaming
/r/explainlikeimfive
/r/travelhacking
/r/buyitforlife
/r/mildlyinteresting
/r/irishtourism
/r/everymanshouldknow
/r/playstationplus
/r/travelprotips
/r/getdisciplined
/r/dotcom
/r/travelblogging
/r/OutOfTheLoop
/r/PS4Deals
/r/OffGridCabins
/r/growmybusiness
/r/longtermtravel
/r/TravelHacks
/r/CozyPlaces
/r/PPC_Analytics

 

Online services and tools I pay for

April 20, 2017 By Bobby Voicu

I was going last week through my “spring cleaning” of things I use online. I’m not talking about the business tools, but the services and tools I use, for my own, personal benefit. So I thought it might be interesting for you to read an article about all the things I can vouch for since I give them the best review ever: opening my wallet every month. Who knows, maybe you get some ideas.

Dropbox

I’ve been using Dropbox for so long now, I can’t really remember how it was before it existed, when I needed to carry all my files with me, on a USB stick :) It took me about 3 years to say “ok, I’ll pay yearly, it makes more sense” :))

Evernote

I actually wrote an article about how I use Evernote about 3 years ago and the way I use it didn’t change much. I got into the annual payment last year, as well. I moved to Premium once they changed to the new pricing options.

Pocket

I don’t really use Pocket as a “dump everything I want to read” tool (that’s what Evernote is for). I use it more for “I need to have something to read on the plane, so I will add all these 40 long articles to it”. Because the only way I could have the mobile sync was to pay for it, I paid for it. Now, that I think about it, I travel a lot less and the internet is no longer that much of an issue, so I might stop using it. But, since I paid annually already, we’ll see. Oh, and the reason why I use it over Evernote for reading on mobile: the articles look a lot, lot better and less cluttered. I don’t know why, I just like it more. Later edit: I stopped paying for it, since I don’t use the offline option as much anymore.

Google Drive

I just use it for backups. Oh, and Photos, because Google Photos is the best photos app ever: have you tried searching in it? It’s worth it just for the search images function and how well it works.

Netflix

Need I say more? I pay for the bigger account, with 4 devices and UHD content, but I don’t really see much of a difference on a 4K screen between UHD and FHD, frankly. If I think about it, since I pay monthly, I wonder if I can pay yearly.

Hulu

Some TV series are available here and not on Netflix, so I pay for the account without ads. I need to check out if I can pay yearly as well. While Hulu is not available outside of US, I travel quite often there that it makes sense. And sometimes I get “creative” about it :) I stopped using Hulu. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.

Tennis TV 

WTAtv.com

It’s really bad that WTA is not on it anymore since I watched as many matches of the Romanian ladies as possible, but I still keep it for the ATP games. And my father uses it, as well, and he would be really sad if he didn’t have it anymore. And I really can’t have my father sad, can I? :) I also added WTAtv when it started to stream. Unfortunately, WTA’s streaming site doesn’t have an app.

Spotify

I’ve created the account the last time I’ve been to the states. It’s perfect for several people in the family (you can add up to 5, I think, under the $15/month contract). I pay monthly, cause I wasn’t sure I want to keep, but I’ll see if it’s possible yearly. I used to pay for Google Play Music, but I didn’t like it as much. I think Spotify has a better discovery engine and I like this a lot.

Overcast

The best podcasting app there is on iOS. I really like it (the cutting of pauses alone reduces podcasts duration by 5-10%, probably), but I hate that there isn’t a macOS version. There’s not an Android version, also, but I don’t use Android, so I don’t really care about it.

Myus

I need a stable US address and this is a good solution for me. They changed a little bit since I started using it: I used to be able receive packages and letters there with the basic account. Not anymore, so I need to look a little bit at how much I really need it now. The thing is I got a replacement bank card sent there and “receiving packages” is no longer part of the plan, so I needed to reorder a new card from the bank to another address. Which was bad, as you would expect.

CyberGhost

The best VPN solution I used in the last years. I used some others before and I had some issues so I preferred to go with CyberGhost. The reasoning at that moment was that if I really had any issues I could actually meet them and talk to them since the company is based in Bucharest and I could actually go to their office. Thankfully, I didn’t need help, since the app worked really well doing what I need. Though now I’m a little sorry I didn’t visit them. Who knows, maybe I could’ve invested a little bit in them and be even happier about the acquisition they announced last month :)

I use VPNs because I travel a lot and I feel uncomfortable connecting to public wifi networks without a VPN. Yes, I get “creative” with streaming services from time to time, but not as often as you would think. I’m a lot more concerned about security.

I pay Cyberghost yearly, as well.

Kindle Unlimited (Amazon Prime)

I’ve used Kindle Unlimited sparingly from time to time. You basically get free books to read, but the books aren’t always the greatest. Still, there are some worth reading, like The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins. But combined with Prime, which I started to use more in the last year or so since The Grand Tour is free with Amazon Prime and staying a lot more in the US and Ireland, I use Prime for free or cheaper deliveries as well. Again, I pay monthly, I need to look if it’s possible to pay yearly.

1password

It’s not a monthly service, It is a monthly service now, for which I pay :)  I paid for it on all the platforms I use (macOS, iOS). It’s the service I use the most on a daily basis since I have weird passwords that I always forget :)

RunKeeper

I haven’t run since September, but I keep paying this monthly because ONE DAY!!!! SOME DAY!!!! I actually played a lot of tennis during the winter which caused some weird problems with my Achilles tendon and I need a treatment which will happen in May. So hopefully, by June I will start using the app again. I stopped running. I still go to the gym 3 times a week, but I replaced running with water sports (kayaking, in particular).

Soulver

This is an app I paid about $10, I think. It’s the best calculator there is. I don’t know how to really explain it, but it’s good :)

Because I don’t consider my blog a business, here are some things I use for the blog, as well:

Mailchimp

I started to use it recently for this blog’s Curated Reading List. I used to use Aweber, but I hate their design section (I don’t want to create an HTML template, I know it’s possible). I pay for it monthly, I don’t think they have a yearly program since you pay based on the number of users you have.

Aweber

I used this for the last 5-6 years and I really like it as a platform. I understand it, it seems really straight forward for me. Designing a good looking email is an effort that I don’t want to make, unfortunately. So I am gonna quit on it in the next 1-2 months (once I move some email lists).

Hostgator

I’ve used it for 8 years or so, I think. I have all the small sites I still own there (from this blog, to my cousin’s, to Miruna’s illustration site and interview site). I should look at paying yearly :) I actually moved all the sites I own to wpx hosting and I just use Hostgator for experiments I try with some sites, nothing important.

ContactOut

Whenever I need to contact someone I found on Linkedin, I prefer to do it any other way than through Linkedin’s messaging system. I prefer email and this is the tool I use to see if it’s available.

These are the service and platforms I use every month. And I support them with my credit cards :)

Open Finder in Other Folder than All My Files

November 3, 2014 By Bobby Voicu

For the Mac OSX users out there: It’s not that complicated, you can find it in Preferences for the app, but I just want to be sure I will not forget, so here :))

Found the solution on this page, after becoming frustrated by the “speed” of this action.

Terminal tricks

September 4, 2014 By Bobby Voicu

I use Terminal from time to time on my Mac (obviously, it’s not needed as often as on Linux, but still). Anyway, I’ve found this list of tricks for Terminal, so I will add it here, just for reference.

via Marco Arment

[Tools I Use] Use Evernote WebClipper with Chrome/Safari on iOS

December 1, 2013 By Bobby Voicu

I am an avid Evernote user. Everything I find interesting I clip it into Evernote and find it there whenever I need it. The biggest issue I’ve had, though, with this is the fact that you do not have an addon for iOS browsers (Chrome/Safari).

Well, not anymore :D

Today I’ve found a workaround that is actually quite interesting and easy to use.

1.Step 1

Create a Keyboard shortcut with the webclipper code. I don’t use it generally, but you can do it by going to Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts (see the screen below).

Create a shortcut by naming it whatever you want (mine is called evwc, from EVernote WebClipper). It’s better to use a combination of letters that is not easy to find in websites, because then the autocomplete of Chrome will kick in and it will not work.

The code you need to put in the shortcut is this:

javascript:(function(){EN_CLIP_HOST='http://www.evernote.com';try{var x=document.createElement('SCRIPT');x.type='text/javascript';x.src=EN_CLIP_HOST+'/public/bookmarkClipper.js?'+(new Date().getTime()/100000);document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(x);}catch(e){location.href=EN_CLIP_HOST+'/clip.action?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title);}})()

Hit Save, then get back to Settings -> General

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2. Step 2

Go to Chrome/Safari and open the page you want to clip. Click on the top URL (this will select the entire URL), then write your shortcut name (evwc is mine), press SpaceBar and then press Go. It will open a

See the steps below:

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At the end, you can see the Evernote window and.. that’s it! :)

Though the example above is shown on Chrome on iPad, it also works on Safari and on iPhones.

Got the info from these two pages: Cute Chrome iOS easy workaround and CTRLQ

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