🍪 #13: The missing link in my RSS workflow
How I use Apple journal and Copilot plugins and free GPTs
Hi,
and welcome again to Little Bites, my weekly bite on productivity, apps, tech, …
This week I am explaining the missing link in my RSS reading workflow, a way to use Apple Journal and Copilot plugins and GPTs.
Happy reading,
Steven
Reading time: 5 minutes to chew through.
🔍 The missing link in my RSS reading workflow
🏷️ Apps
I mentioned earlier that I went back to RSS with Reeder as a way to keep up with information overload. Besides RSS, Artifact was also playing a part in getting up to date and having recommendations of things to check.
With the shutdown of Artifact, I had to find other ways to stay on top of things.
I found myself relying more on RSS, but my initial setup had one flaw. Reeder is an excellent RSS app, but only for the Apple ecosystem.
I'm spending my working time on a Windows device which meant I couldn't access my feeds nor update my progress.
Following a recent article on the Verge of top RSS readers I realised I could use some of these tools to read online and curate my feeds, while also being able to continue reading with Reeder on my phone.
Feedly/Inoreader can plug into other apps, too. For example, if you prefer the interface through a macOS / iOS app such as Reeder, you can organize your feeds through Feedly/Inoreader and then read them through Reeder.
Choosing between Feedly and Inoreader seemed easy as many of the articles I found recommended Inoreader as the best bang for your free buck.
I have used Feedly in the past and seeing all these articles made me curious as to why Inoreader was the preferred choice. If this overview from Inoreader isn't enough, after some testing, I can only agree it offers more in the free tier. One I like most is Google News alerts, where a topic you're interested in becomes a feed. Having an interest in iOS shortcuts I created a Google News feed for it, and it immediately pulled 100 articles for me to check.
Looking back at this it seems that Inoreader was the missing link for me.
I can read online and manage my feeds while doing the same on mobile via Reeder. And what's even better is that if a mark an article as "favourite/read later" in one and have it show as such in the other.
How are you staying up to date on things?
How are you managing your RSS feeds?
✍️ How I use Apple Journal
🏷️ Apps
When Journal became available with iOS 17.2 I wrote about my first impression. While it was a good start and probably something that gets many people started already, I found it a bit lacking to fully commit to it.
Especially the fact that no search or data filters are available, makes it very hard to find anything if you have a lot of entries.
And while I'm not using Journal to reflect or write about my day/thoughts, I'm already using it as a "memory bank". We all take a lot of pictures and go places, but with the default Apple tools, it's not always easy to keep track of them. Sure, you can scroll through your endless feed of photos/videos feed and check for each where it was taken. Or you can have a look at your photo and video map, but this will only list photos and videos and not all you've been to.
Having it in Journal can provide a better way to have a look at your memories.
So how am I using Journal?
For anything I want to remember, I add an entry with a photo or video, the location and a small title of what I did. I also add a tag like # family or friends.
Tags or searches are currently not supported, but once they are it'll be easy to review those specific memories.
Adding entries this way provides a nice feed of pictures, videos and locations making it easy to tie them back to your memories.
Are you using Apple Journal?
And if so, how?
✨ Copilot plugins and free GPTS
While I'm an avid ChatGPT, Poe and Perplexity user, I find myself using Microsoft Copilot as well. This is in part due to my work and it being the only AI chatbot I should be using as "secure" for my data.
I'm still trying to figure out the roadmap of Microsoft and their AI tools, as after the launch of Bing Chat they rebranded to Copilot, yet both are still active with their dedicated app yet a different feature set.
If you use Copilot, you are now able to add "plugins" to the chat. The list is currently rather limited (7), but you can already connect up to 3 to one chat to get specific output or that from specific sources.
Examples of plugins are Kayak (search flights), Klarna (compare prices), Opentable (book restaurants),...
I expect that more plugins and services will be added over time, where Copilot could become the central assistant of anything you want to do.
Let's see where it goes.
If you use Bing chat, besides these plugins, you also can use some free GPTs (pre-prompted) to talk about specific topics, like food, fitness, and holidays,…
You could replicate this by adding a prompt yourself, but one thing I found in testing is that a regular Bing Chat often provides a summary with only links to online articles, while the GPTs were rather good at providing a more in-depth reply.
When asking for support with strength training for running, it first asked me about my fitness and goals, to afterwards provide links to resources but a complete training schedule as well.
Do note that chats with these GPTs are not stored in your chat history.
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