Twitterific Team Tames Timeline With Tapestry - DTNSB 4949  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: Twitterific Team Tames Timeline With Tapestry - DTNSB 4949 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/e5243cba-27d8-4c45-b677-ec1546836837 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Tapestry App** - Tapestry, a new app from Icon Factory, aggregates feeds from various platforms into a unified, chronological timeline. - It offers custom timelines, cross-device syncing, and third-party extensibility, but lacks full interaction features. Transcript: Jason Howell Icon Factory, that's the team behind the very popular and unfortunately now defunct Twitterific client for iOS, has a new multi-feed app for iPhone called Tapestry. It's iPhone and iPad. The app pulls in feeds from Blue Sky, Mastodon, RSS, YouTube, Tumblr, and more, which we'll talk about, into a single unified timeline in chronological order. So you can imagine using an app where a blog entry appears on top of a new podcast that came out slightly before it, that appears on top of a Blue Sky post, on top of a youtube video from your Favorite creator i'll let you decide who that might be it's just the app doesn't include any recommendations doesn't have any algorithmic sorting at least not yet that's the cynical Side of me like uh will it eventually but i hope. The Icon Factory team calls it a, quote, personal unified timeline. Full stop. So that's it. Tapestry offers custom timelines. There's cross-device sync ability for your position where you happen to be reading from. It just picks up on another device. Custom rules so you can mute posts from view if you don't want spoilers or don't want to see certain keywords appearing in your timeline. Cross-platform search, third-party connectors. And that's actually pretty cool because that means that developers can actually add new capabilities and feed types to the app. So even if it doesn't carry your favorite service now, maybe it will eventually. However, Tapestry will not be all things for all people as it does carry with it some notable limitations. For example, blue sky posts are readable, but the app doesn't enable replying or you can't like the posts as you read them. YouTube videos are viewable, but the comments section isn't accessible inside of Tapestry. For some people, that might actually be a selling point. And of course, anytime I see a story like this as an Android user, I'm like, okay, so when do I get mine? And I'm sad to see that it's Apple only, at least for now. I didn't see any indication as far as whether it's going to come to Android. I think considering Twitterific stayed on the iPhone, that makes me feel like it might not come to Android, but I'm crossing my fingers. It is free to download with ads, $1.99 monthly subscription or $19.99 yearly subscription, or you can just go whole hog, pay $79.99 as a one-time purchase. I don't know. ([Time 0:02:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06c1ac07-b84b-4890-b466-430ae44a66f1)) - **Tapestry for Power Users** - Icon Factory's Tapestry app offers a strong design and prioritizes user privacy and customization. - Consider this app if you're a power user seeking an aggregated, chronological feed reader. Transcript: Jason Howell What do you, what do you think, Tom? Like one app to, I mean, we've seen many of these apps come along over the years. What do you think about this one? Tom Merritt Icon Factory is great at design. It's a very pretty app. Its user interface is great. There's a lot to like about how they constructed it. It's very privacy forward. It's very customizable. If you are a power user who likes this idea, you're going to get a lot of the whistles and bells right out of the gate that you're going to like. Yes, it's disappointing that it's not for Android, especially because my opinion is this is for power users and there tend to be more power users on Android than iOS. Not that there aren't power users on iOS too, but my question about it, because it has a lot of buzz in the community around this sort of thing, and it had a successful Kickstarter, is do We really want this? A lot of people say they want it. A lot of people say they want chronological timeline, but it turns out that when you do that, you miss things. Uh, and the algorithms when they're working well are good at surfacing things you would have missed. Otherwise that you did want to know what people get upset about is when the algorithm is doing things that the company wants you to see instead of what you want to see. So I think this will be successful amongst a power user community who really wants a reader app for lots of different things. And this is super successful at that. This is a great app for what you were describing. Like, I want my podcast, my YouTube videos, my Mastodon and Blue Sky feeds, everything all in one. And I think it'll just get better at that. Tumblr's in there, all that stuff. I don't know what the upper limit on that audience is. I also don't know that Icon Factory needs it to be huge. Icon Factory isn't trying to be Facebook. They're not trying to be Twitter. They're just trying to satisfy a need. And I think they've done that here. ([Time 0:05:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4d73fdaf-f5c2-49fa-9d12-9d1cbc8414ef)) - **Potential Drawbacks of Tapestry** - Aggregating diverse feeds might lead to a cluttered experience, especially with third-party additions. - Limited interaction options within the app necessitate using separate apps, hindering a true unified experience. Transcript: Jason Howell Yeah, I'm wondering how an app like this, I'm wondering a couple of things. The messy potential, the potential for messiness. I mean, some of the screenshots that I've seen, because I don't, you know, like I said, I have an Android device, so I haven't installed this on my phone to really use it. But some of the screenshots that I've seen, things look very pretty and everything. But I think the challenge or the risk is that when you start pulling in all these different feeds from all these different places, do things look cohesive and unified? Do they have kind of a disconnected kind of feeling quality to it that puts at least a little bit of a speed bump into the process. And I think that also extends to the fact that third-party development is wonderful, but could that end up making all of this just a little bit noisier, depending on how that's approached? And then not being able to interact in all ways, or at least all important ways. I would say it's pretty important to me if I'm using a client like this that pulls in Blue Sky, I do want to be able to reply from that app. Because if I do want to reply, now I have to then open up another app and it's not a true solution. It's like a step towards the right direction, but it's not fully committed. And that bugs me a little bit. Tom Merritt Those are both really good points because the messy thing you can tame, but it takes work. Right. And that's why I think this is more for a power user who's like, no, I like to manage things and customize and create connections and all of that. For people who are very casual and just lay back and wanted to give stuff to them, it may get a little messy. I think that's a really good point. However, the second point is the biggest one, where even if you're a power user, if you have to leave the app to do a thing, to reply, to like, and granted, you can do some of that in Mastodon. It's just not Blue Sky, so maybe they'll be able to figure out the API and get that to work later. But the more you have to do that, the less likely you're going to keep opening it because you're like, well, I'm just going to have to open Blue Sky anyway. Let me just open Blue Sky instead. ([Time 0:07:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ada791b-af68-4b72-806b-a75733e72bb2)) - **Micro.blog Experience** - Jason Howell shares his experience using micro.blog, a similar platform that failed to fully unify content. - Despite simplifying content aggregation, the need to open separate apps remained. Transcript: Jason Howell Like a two month experiment with micro dot blog, which is, you know, kind of a federated kind of micro blogging platform that also allows you to share out to Twitter and, uh, and to threads And to, you know, essentially rebroadcast it, but you're maintaining your own blog. And, you know, it was very inexpensive. I think it was just like a buck 99 a month or whatever, but at a certain point it was just like, you know, this is great. And the reason that I wanted it is because it would hopefully simplify things, but it didn't like remove my need to still open up those other apps and sometimes post individually versus One unified post. And if it's not living up to that promise, then I'm not sure why I'm continuing to use it. And that's a little bit of this kind of sniff test that I'm getting here. I just hope that it's a wonderful start. And I really do like the look of it and like the idea and the concept and everything. I hope that in a short amount of time with the team, given who they are, I'm pretty confident they can get here with some work, but that they can get it to the point to where it alleviates Most of those speed bumps. ([Time 0:09:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7fd5f865-4d74-4e13-88ad-fa8fbe0243db)) - **Yarbo Introduction** - Yarbo is a modular landscaping robot with interchangeable attachments for mowing, blowing, and snow removal. - It has a base unit for navigation and brains, and modules are easily swapped. Transcript: Tom Merritt Here with ken from yarbo uh us a little bit about this. It looks like it's a modular system. Kenneth Coleman Yeah, correct. But very big modules. Yeah, yeah. So Yarbo is the world's first modular yard robot, right? So basically, there's two kinds of robots right now, predominantly for the yard, right? Pool robots, lawn robots, and maybe a lawn robot that sweeps leaves. So we knew there was more to the yard than just that. And we really wanted to create one solution that could handle all of the seasons. So one solution to invest in that can handle all your yard care needs. So YARBO, really the center of YARBO is its main core. The main core houses all the brains, all the power. None of the modules have separate batteries. They're all run off one big battery in here. And as we mentioned, they're all modular. So if you want to take a module off, this one is just a button on the bottom, and it literally just slides off. Oh, okay. When you slide it off, you just twist the connector here and give it a little wiggle and now this is off you can put the next one on. Tom Merritt And then you attach whatever. Does this have any functionality other than locomotion on its own or is it all in the modules? Kenneth Coleman This really is all the brains for navigation. Yeah, okay. Primarily GPS, but then if we don't have GPS or we're in a weak area of GPS, we rely on our wheel odometry, right? Our IMU, and then what our cameras see to navigate. How many cameras are on it? Yeah, so every module has two cameras in the front, binocular cameras in the front, two binocular cameras in the rear on the main body, and one on each side. Okay. The cameras on the main body are heated because we don't know whether you're going to get a snowblower, a winter module, or a lawnmower module. But if it's not for the winter, then that module in particular might have to be heated. Tom Merritt Are there other sensors in addition to the cameras? Kenneth Coleman Yeah, there is. So this has binocular cameras um but if we go to the snowblower this has binocular cameras it has a soft touch bumper um but really we rely on on our cameras these are these are heated um Depends on the application though right so these have and this actually if you feel this this is resistive so it's not like a lot of the mechanical bumpers that you'll see where they have To ram into something. So we wanted to make it really, really sensitive. And if you go to something like the lawnmower, the lawnmower has additional sensors that are applicable to it, like ultrasonic sensors, binocular, and then again, that soft-touch Bumper, and a rain sensor. And then you'll see the leaf blower also has the same binocular cameras. All our modules have headlights so they can operate in the dark, which is really important. And that same soft touch bumper at the bottom. Tom Merritt And then whatever module you've attached to the front, it can be autonomous. It could just do what it's going to do. Kenneth Coleman 100%, yeah. So there's a couple different ways to use Yarbo, right? So really it's designed to marry with the wireless docking station, right? It has to be wireless because in case you are going to use it in the snow, it needs to be able to clear off its own docking station, right? And we don't have to worry about having snow in between the unit and the charging, right? But, yeah, I'm sorry. The question again? Tom Merritt No, I was asking if it's fully autonomous for all the modules. Kenneth Coleman Yeah, yeah. They are all completely autonomous. So this module allows a couple things. One of them is follow me mode. So Yarbo can tow up to 3,500 pounds. So one popular loose case is towing things around your yard, firewood, mulch, right? Yeah. So you can literally walk in front of Yarbo and it will follow you around the yard. Yes. Then the idea is to take the heavy lifting out of it, right? So Yarbo can't be a complete replacement for every little thing in your yard, but take the mundane tasks, the heavy lifting out of it. So if you enjoy gardening, right, you don't have to bring the mulch around, right? Dragging that around with a wheelbarrow. Dirt. Tom Merritt Having just done that, that speaks to my heart. There you go. There you go. Kenneth Coleman The other thing this allows is tow mode. So anything you tow with a ride on tractor or universal like hitch, like an aerator, the Thatcher, you can tow with Yarbo in autonomous mode. So if you were to hook up, say, a leaf sweeper, four foot leaf sweeper, you say, hey, I want to go into tow mode. I want to tow something that's four feet wide. And I want a one foot overlap between passes. It already knows your lawn. So now it'll go and autonomously, you know, tow that attachment. The other thing that this module allows is patrol mode. So it can patrol your yard, say, at night, and if it sees somebody or you're away, before they get to your front door, it will make an announcement through the stereo speakers and say, You know, the owner's been notified. Please leave the property immediately. Okay. And then flash its lights. How heavy is just the main module? Yeah, the way it sits like this, it's about 100 pounds. Okay. But it's, I mean, if you want to try and yank on one side, it's very, very solid. Yeah. Tom Merritt Maybe raw, but I'm not going to do this. Kenneth Coleman Yeah. That's one of its anti-theft, passive anti-the settings. The other one is geofence. So you make a geofence area around your property. If it leaves that area, it'll set off an alarm. It'll activate its 4G antenna, and you can track it anywhere in the world for up to 10 days. How much battery life does it have? Yeah, good question. So it depends on the application. The battery is optimally hot-swappable. Oh, wow. Okay, so that's modular, too. Yeah, the battery's about 25 pounds. That's a 38-amp battery. So if you're doing an application like tow mode, you can cover acres. If you're doing the lawnmower, you can maintain up to six acres at a time, which means basically cutting two times a week, right? Maintaining your lawn. Gotcha. If you're doing the snowblower, it's about 6,000 feet per charge. And if you're doing the blower, you're probably talking about the same, a little less coverage than the lawnmower. Tom Merritt How does it learn your location? Do you train it? Kenneth Coleman Yeah, exactly. So if it's the driveway, you'll drive it around your driveway. And we have different modes. So for the snowblower, we have areas which would be like your driveway, a small parking lot, something like that. We have walkways. We call them pathways, but that could be a walkway. And then we have a dedicated sidewalk mode because a lot of people that are in snowy areas are responsible for their sidewalk. So that takes a dedicated algorithm. You can control the auger height. If you have a gravel driveway, you can raise it electronically. The other really cool part about the snowblower is that it's actually better than a typical traditional two-stage snowblower because a traditional two-stage snowblower you're Going to leave you're going to typically adjust your snowshoes so it's a little bit off the ground so you're not always catching it on high points of your driveway but yarbo actually Is designed to scrape to the bottom of your driveway unless you have a gravel driveway okay ([Time 0:22:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dd8496cd-e3ec-4223-96f6-61c36ba946cb))