11MAY2025: What Did I Just Write?
My fav EDC pen, an in person note taking hack, making any button a smart switch, and more
Happy Sunday and happy Mother's Day to all who are celebrating today!
This week, I've been jamming out to this remake of the Goldeneye 007 pause music done on a Teenage Engineering K.O. II and OP-1 Field, 3D printing my own TinyPod knockoff, buying too many Kaiju Kitties, marveling at KORG Berlin's new eight-voice acoustic synthesizer featuring tunable electromechanical voices (what did I just write??), and writing about Breville's forthcoming Oracle Dual Broiler espresso machine over at CoffeeGeek.
On to the good stuff!
🎛 SwitchBot Smart Switch* - We're at an interesting intersection in home tech. An increasing number of our electronics are networked and can be controlled via app, voice, presence, and more. But what do we do with older tech that we want to automate that doesn't connect to the web? Well, this humble Smart Switch aims to help answer that dilemma. In short, it's a little physical flipper that you can attach to any device with a button or toggle that you'd like to be able to flip remotely. The flipper can be activated over Bluetooth out of the box, or with a SwitchBot hub, you can control it with Apple HomeKit / Alexa / Google Home. Personally, I picked one up to be able to automate turning on my low-tech espresso machine in the morning so that it's ready to brew by the time I stumble into the kitchen.
🗣 Granola.AI - There are a bunch of AI note-taking apps/services out there. This is the one I've been using lately and really liking. It runs in the background on your Mac and records both sides of virtual meetings, but cleverly also presents a notepad on screen that you can take notes in during the call. Once the call is over, it combines the transcript of the call with your notes to give you a nicely organized meeting summary. You can use their default templates, or create your own prompts for how you'd like the AI summary to be formatted, what it should focus on, etc. I like that it doesn't require having a weird bot dial in to your call, it just runs locally on your Mac. Handily, Granola also just released an iPhone app this week. It can't record calls yet, but it can be used for recording and generating notes for in-person meetings.
🖊️ Big Idea Design Base Line Pen - My everyday carry pen of choice is a Big Idea Design Bolt Action Pen. I love it, but it's pretty pricey and hard to recommend at an eye-watering price of $100. The big brains over at Big Idea Design recently came out with a very similar offering to the Bolt Action Pen that maintains the same fun, fidgety bolt action for just $60. It appears that the only thing you give up is the adjustable body length of the Bolt Action Pen, as the Base Line only accepts Parker-style refills… Which is just fine by me, because I'm always rocking a Parker-style Monteverde Ceramic Gel* refill in my pen anyway.
📰 Particle News - So I almost hesitate to share about Particle News because it feels like the last few times I mentioned a good news app it got acquired and shut down within a month or two. That said, I've been really enjoying Particle. It lets you tailor your news feed to the topics you're most interested in, and then for every news story it starts with a condensed easy-to-read summary of what it is and why it's newsworthy, and then offers more details, along with a list of links to multiple news sources to go read more details directly from them. It's super customizable, all the way down to your being able to choose whether you want the intro summary for articles to be simple bullet points or an "explain it to me like I'm five" description, or some other style.
🎮 Backbone Pro - I've been enjoying my original Backbone controller* for years— It's a handy video game controller that turns your iPhone or Android device into a portable gaming station by docking the phone right in the middle of the controller via a USB-C connection. The new version now not only connects to your smartphone but will also connect to your Mac and AppleTV via Bluetooth. It also appears that they have beefed up the grips a little bit for better ergonomics. This thing is perfect for playing platformers from Apple Arcade, cruising through retro games in Delta for iOS, and even streaming games from your Xbox or PlayStation cloud accounts while traveling.
That's it for this week, be well everyone! (Make sure to call your Mothers!)
*Asterisks indicate links that may generate a small commission to support the site at no extra cost to you. These links are not sponsored, and I have no relationship with the makers of these products.