After shipping NewsWave for Mac, this last few weeks I’ve been playing around with two new NLP (natural language processing) projects. Each quite different from the other: The first is targeted at the corporate world, its focus is in identifying new trends and winning themes based on RFP’s (requests for pricing) submitted by clients. This …
Author Archives: mmv
Announcing NewsWave for Mac!
Without further ado, NewsWave for Mac is available on the Mac App Store. Create your own timeline of stories by following your favorite feeds. Now from your iPhone, iPad or Mac. What differentiates NewsWave? – Twitter style timeline of your personalized content. – Easily discover feeds through categories or catalogue search. – Streamlined experience that …
Creating a Digital Gardener | Home Automation – Raspberry Pi 4
Last December my wife and I flew to Europe to spend a couple of weeks with our overseas family. Although we live in a very safe neighborhood, for peace of mind, we wanted a way to check on our house while we were away. There’s a couple of good commercial options, but they are a …
Continue reading “Creating a Digital Gardener | Home Automation – Raspberry Pi 4”
Designing the new NewsWave App Icon
One of the things I like about working on on-the-side projects is that I touch all aspects of them, this allows me to learn and grow many different skills. It’s so rewarding to learn about app development, server-side development, marketing, communication, design… And it’s the latter one I wanted to touch on for this post, …
Cliffski on Social Media
I have followed Cliffski, founder and solo developer at Positech Games, for many years. He’s quite opinionated and his last post is no exception: “ […] In 2020, the internet is an absolute cesspit, bringing out the absolute worst in human behavior. Its almost impossible to enjoy surfing the web without being sucked into social media. …
Time until next day starts in UTC (Swift)
Although users interact with NewsWave on their iOS and -soon- Mac, some features are provided by a server. So, how can I let users know when the server triggers certain tasks? If they are triggered at regular intervals you can simply calculate on the device how long until it will be triggered again. This reduces calls …
Continue reading “Time until next day starts in UTC (Swift)”
NewsWave for Mac – Dark Mode
NewsWave for Mac is moving along quite well. In fact, 1.0 is feature complete, meaning all features I planned to ship in the first Mac release are already in. I’m now focusing on testing and polish. Speaking of polish, here’s a couple screenshots of the -mostly- final version of Dark Mode, updated icons and all …
Making Sense Podcast #201 Yuval Noah Harari
One of the podcasts I typically follow is “Making Sense” by Sam Harris. I found his latest episode, where he had a discussion with Yuval Noah Harari especially insightful. “[…] They discuss the failures of global leadership, the widespread distrust of institutions, the benefits of nationalism and its current unraveling in the U.S., politics as …
Continue reading “Making Sense Podcast #201 Yuval Noah Harari”
Create a NSButton in code (swift)
Some time ago I shared a simple way to create custom UIButtons in code. As I’m starting to polish NewsWave for Mac, I wanted the same ability to easily create custom buttons. So, I ported the function to macOS, feel free to leverage: func createNewNSButton(title: String, textSizeDelta: CGFloat?, textColor: NSColor?, backgroundColor: NSColor?, …
NewsWave 2020.1
There’s many things that have changed since social distancing began about 15 days ago: meeting friends, going for morning coffees, weekend escapes and many other activities are now on hold. However, there are also some positive consequences: my wife and I have really gotten into board games (Forbidden Island, Exploding Kittens, Scrabble…), I’ve gotten a …