Just as the original Wordle was bought by the New York Times, the spin-off music guessing game, Heardle, has now been purchased by Spotify.

Oli Welsh, Polygon:

Heardle has already been rebranded and now runs using Spotify rather than Soundcloud, but otherwise the playing experience remains the same — and it’s still free for all players. However, as a result of the move, Heardle has been made unavailable in all but a small number of English-speaking countries: the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The move to make it only available in a limited number of countries is a shame. I would guess it's down to licensing, but that's going to annoy quite a few people that have surely been playing Heardle.

That aside, it makes sense in my opinion, that Spotify would purchase Heardle. For one, they can now put the Spotify logo on the website, but by making it easy for a guessed song to play via Spotify, I assume they're going to get quite a few new users.

What I'm sure will happen further down the line, is that the song choice will become a marketing tool, and potentially could be sold for promotional purposes.

Update: 25/09/2022

If you've ever fallen into the YouTube rabbit hole deep enough to find the types of building videos, where there are a few people in a remote place, seemingly building relatively elaborate structures with mud and water, you may (or may not) be surprised to find out that they are mostly fake.

The YouTube channel SunnyV2 made a great video showing how they are staged, and how much work really goes into a lot of the builds.

The James Webb Space Telescope, lauched December 2021, has now produced it's first images. And they are incredible.

Perhaps the most impressive image, is the image known as "Webb's First Deep Field", which is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the universe. But there's also images of the Southern Ring Nebula, the group of galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet, the edge of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula, and analysis on the atmosphere of a hot gas giant exoplanet.

The images are amazing, and my brain can't comprehend that thay aren't just CGI, and are in fact part of our universe.

Here are my two favourite images that have been released:

Text Case 2022.2 has just been released. It’s a relatively minor update, as the main reason for it was to fix 2 bugs. But I still threw in two new formats that have been requested.

As for the new formats, they are:

• Replace “X” with Line Breaks
• Replace Line Breaks with “X”

Relatively simple, but I’ve been getting quite a few requests, so I thought I’d add them in. These new formats are available when building a flow, and also via new actions in the Shortcuts app.

And then for the bugs, one was a rather simple one that one of the formats wasn’t appearing in the formats list. But the other was rather annoying, and was specific to the macOS app, where when you selected the Settings tab, the app review prompt would appear. And it would happen every single time. So, thankfully that should be fixed too.

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Text Case is available on the iOS App Store, and Mac App Store.

One way that I've been realising my age recently, is the amount of anniversaries for music that I used to listen to when I was a child.

The most recent one is Avril Lavigne's album Let Go, that has now reached it's 20th anniversary. Which obviously means, a new anniversary version has been released, and I'm listening to it right now.

Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.

I just watched this great video on the early web - The early internet is breaking - here’s how the World Wide Web from the 90s on will be saved. It's relatively short, but it shows what the web looked like in the 1990s, and how prevalent personal website were. And also the measures that some people are taking to try to preserve early and current websites.

I wish personal websites were still as popular nowadays, the web sure was a fun place to be when they were.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a company called “Nothing”, and they’re very close to releasing their second product, the phone (1). It’s a company that seemingly loves hype. And I think it’s worked well for them, as they’ve been getting a decent amount of press.

As far as I can tell, it’s an Android device (with a custom launcher), that looks a bit (from the front) like an iPhone 12, but with a whole new back design that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

They call it the Glyph Interface, as you can see, it’s full of lights. The one near the power connector will show the current charge when plugged in, and you can also assign various light patterns to ringtones, which Marques Brownlee made a great video showing off. Maybe that sounds a bit useless to you. But to me, it just seems fun, a bit quirky, but overall definitely something different.

The problem I’ve already started to see with this phone (that isn’t even released yet), is that some are already asking “Is this the iPhone killer?”. Let’s not beat around the bush. The Nothing phone (1) is not the iPhone killer. Nor will it kill any popular current major smartphone. And it doesn’t need to.

I want this phone to exist in a wide marketplace of different offerings from various companies. I want devices that exist to have a bit of character, not just be a minimal slab of glass with a generic camera square at the back. I think there should be loads of smaller niche devices that cater more towards certain markets or tastes. Because if everything is the same, then it’s just boring.

I really want this phone to succeed because I think it will encourage other companies to do something similar. To me, it seems like the big phone manufacturers are just trying their hardest to reach the phone design singularity, where you can have the smallest bezels, the thinnest body, and the best camera. But they don’t seem to make anything fun, or unique, or even just plain interesting.

There’s a big chance I won’t end up purchasing a phone (1) when it’s released. I just hope enough people do, so that the smartphone market starts to become a bit more diverse.

Twitter has just started to roll out a new composer tool, Twitter Write, which adds the support to write long-form content. It allows users to write a note, which can essentially be seen as a blog post, just hosted on Twitter itself. There are still limits to what you can write in a note, with the title being limited to 100 characters, and the body having a limit of 2,500 words.

In some ways, I find this feature to be an obvious addition to the platform, especially given the number of Notes app screenshots, or “TwitLonger” links shared on the platform. There’s clearly a demand to share more than 280 characters.

However, I think this feature is a lot more than just a mechanism of increasing the character limit. Especially if you think of the other features that have been added to Twitter in the last year or so.

To some, Twitter should be used as a pure chronological timeline, of tweets from the accounts that you follow. But it’s clear that Twitter as a platform is becoming more of an ecosystem, in which multiple social networking services exist.

Just to name a few of the recent additions, there’s got Spaces that brings live audio conversations to the platform, Communities that allows groups of people to create dedicated places for people to connect, Shopping is a recent experimental addition, and soon people will be able to post longer written content via Notes. For a platform that was originally designed to share tiny pieces of text, it’s evolved substantially.

On top of all of that, there’s Twitter Blue, Super Follows, Tips, and a ton more that I’ve forgotten about.

It’s fascinating to me to see the visible evolution of the platform. And while the big elephant in the room is Elon Musk, I’d still prefer to keep a positive mindset on the situation and think about the ways the platform could still improve.

Back when I got a Pixel 6 to try out, I was pleasantly surprised with the initial Android set up process. Especially as there was a way to transfer WhatsApp data (chats, history, media, etc.) from an existing iPhone.

However, when I decided to switch back to my iPhone being my primary device, I discovered that the reverse process just wasn't possible. Which wasn't exactly the end of the world, but as I'd only switched for a few weeks, but would certainly be a much bigger friction point if there was a lot more data involved.

Thankfully, this is now supported. So depending on versions, the Move to iOS Android App will also include steps to include your WhatsApp data in the transfer.

This process will sign you out on your old device. Until you delete the app, of course. But it sure would be nice if WhatsApp allowed you to be signed in on multiple devices at the same time. It would make transferring between platforms even easier.

Only a few years ago, after his passing, I was made aware of Anthony Bourdain. Ever since then, I’ve watched a lot of his television shows, and read quite a bit about him. I’m not sure I’m able to describe him in words, but one of my favourite aspects of him and his work was his focus on real people. Not large population statistics, or generalisations, but individuals.

And now, thanks to Nick Heer, I’m now aware that he used to have a blog on Tumblr. The first post I read, Parts Unknown, has to be one of my favourite blog posts I’ve read.

Here is the beginning of the piece:

Before I set out to travel this world, 12 years ago, I used to believe that the human race as a whole was basically a few steps above wolves.That given the slightest change in circumstances, we would all, sooner or later, tear each other to shreds. That we were, at root, self-interested, cowardly, envious and potentially dangerous in groups. I have since come to believe – after many meals with many different people in many, many different places – that though there is no shortage of people who would do us harm, we are essentially good.

I think that quote gives you a glimpse into his feelings on people, but I’d still urge you to read the full piece.

I’ve since read more on his blog, and I’m constantly left amazed at his writing. Not only because of the stories he told, but also how he wrote, and the type of things that he wrote about. I wasn’t blogging much in the “good days” when things like Google Reader existed, and when RSS apparently wasn’t dead, but if people’s blogs were anything like his, then I can only imagine how much I missed out.