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 364 👋

Greetings from Vorarlberg, Austria's most west state, where I am spending the week as part of my workation. After a January which basically felt non-existent (and we are already half-way through February), it was time for a much needed change of scenery.

The past weeks have been a whirlwind: hunting for a new apartment, juggling fresh projects and connections, navigating emotional ups and downs, carving out moments to unwind, and, of course, meeting deadlines. So it feels especially good to be in the corner of Austria that always seems to slow time down. Maybe it is the mountains framing every view, the crisp alpine air, the quiet charm of Bodensee, or just the way life here moves at its own unhurried pace. Whatever it is, this is where work feels less like work.

I have always been fascinated by how places imprint themselves on us, not just in memories but in habits. In Vienna, I’m a creature of cafés and deadlines; in Berlin, I am all sharp edges and late-night brainstorms. But here? Here, I am learning the value of the interlude. The walk between meetings that turns into a detour through a forest. The lunch break spent watching sailboats drift across Bodensee instead of scrolling through emails. It is not about escaping work, it is about redefining what work can look like. Maybe that is the real luxury of a workation: not the change of address, but the permission to ask, “What if I did this differently?” And then actually trying it.

In that sense, have a great week ahead, and enjoy this new issue of Creativerly.

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Fresh Updates & News

Surf now lets you set your preferred feed layout →

Surf is an app build by the team behind Flipboard, and it offers a lovely way to discover and create communities across the open social web. It is still in beta, but you can join the waitlist via the linked website. With the newest beta update, Surf introduced a new way to set your feed layout, which means you can choose to set your default tab to Posts, Read, Watch, Listen, or Look. Within each tab, you can then choose continuous or paginated scrolling, sort by recent or top, and filter by Bluesky, Mastodon, or RSS. Yet another lovely update to Surf.

Raindrop introduces 'Stella', its new AI assistant →

Stella is the new AI assistant baked into Raindrop.io and currently in beta. With Stella, you can get answers from your saved content, linking back to the source. Additionally, it can also manage your library, which means moving, tagging, sorting, or cleaning up your content (and it will always ask for confirmation before making any changes).

'Notchie' turns your MacBook's notch into a teleprompter →

Notchie leverages the MacBook's notch in a super creative way, as it turns it into a teleprompter, so you can read your script while lookin directly at the camera of your MacBook. During screen sharing it is invisible though, so you do not have to worry that others will see it too. A powerful feature of Notchie is its voice-sync technology. Notchie listens to your voice and scrolls in real-time as you speak, which means in case you pause mid-sentence, the text waits, until you start speaking again. In case you are not ready for voice control, you can always switch to classic mode, which auto-scrolls the text with adjustable speed. To use Notchie all you have to do is pasting your script, look at your camera, and read the text.

You can try out Notchie for free, to get access to all its features you can grab it for $29,99 as a one-time payment.

Mental Wealth

❯ There's no such thing as "tech" (Ten years later) – “Ten years ago I wrote that there is no “technology industry”. It’s more true than ever. There is no “tech”. There’s no such thing as “a FAANG company”. There is almost nothing in common between the very largest tech companies and the next several hundred biggest companies that happen to create tech platforms. Whatever shorthand we use for the biggest tech companies, they almost never have much in common—whether it's how they make money, what products they make, how they make decisions, who leads them, or what drives their cultures.”

❯ Stop generating, start thinking – “Throughout my career, I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job of staying top of new developments in the industry: attending conferences, following (and later befriending!) some of the very smart people writing the specs, being the one sharing news on Slack about exciting new features of CSS or JS with my colleagues. The joys of working on an internal tool where you only need to worry about latest Chrome, and playing with anchor positioning in a production app while it’s still experimental!”

❯ Replication Is Not Innovation – “The economy is both thriving and failing, depending on where you’re standing. The stock market remains strong, driven almost entirely by the valuations of seven companies. Meanwhile, most people experience a daily reality defined by inflation — everything costs more, no one is being paid more, and the gap between what the market says is happening and what life feels like keeps widening.”

❯ Craft, not fame, makes your story worth telling – “I’ve bought and flipped through a couple of memoirs lately from popular recording artists. Tens of millions of people stream their music on Spotify every month. It’s not surprising that traditional publishers would offer them book deals. ”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

The sixth part of Tiny macOS utility apps I love focuses on apps to enhancing your macOS experience, helping you finding files fast, and quickly checking your camera before your next call.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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