A few months back, I created a shortcut that lets me quickly and easily take any Amazon product URL and format it into a clean link with my affiliate tag attached. Since this site is a hobby with ongoing costs, I count it as a win whenever I can get a few pennies back for products that I recommend and y’all purchase.

As a side effect of the shortcut making it so simple to open any page with the affiliate link, I’ve started using it when I purchase things myself. It may not be in the spirit of the affiliate program, and perhaps I’m shooting myself in the foot by writing about it here, but it’s a fun experiment.

But something was nagging at the back of my head. My understanding is that the affiliate link is only effective if it’s the one that opens your browsing session. So, if I’m searching around for an item, find it, and then reopen the page with the affiliate tag, does it still work? That led me to wonder if I could build the tag right into my quick searches.

Fortunately, the Amazon Affiliate website offers built-in functionality to attach your affiliate link to a particular search. By deconstructing the resulting URL, I was able to identify where the search term goes, hardcode in the Amazon Smile domain, and remove the additional tracking parameters that Amazon includes by default.

Here’s the final search URL, in which “@@@” is replaced with the search term, and “###” is replaced with the Affiliate ID:

https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=@@@&tag=###

Making it all work with Keyword Search

Since I have the excellent (and free) Keyword Search Safari extension installed on all my devices, setting up a custom search was trivial. This app lets you create custom searches for nearly any site using an abbreviation that you define. I just added a new item with “az” as the keyword and “https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=@@@&tag=heydingusnet-20” as the expansion. And I only had to add it once since Keyword Search syncs automatically across its installations.

All I need to do to open an Amazon search page with my affiliate link included is to prepend “az” to my search query. I can do this directly from Safari’s Address Bar or Spotlight on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I typically use Alfred as a Spotlight replacement on the Mac, and it works there, too.

Now, any Amazon search that I start from my Mac, iPhone, or iPad always opens to Amazon Smile, includes my affiliate tag, and doesn’t include any other grossness from the end of the URL. You can, of course, change the Affiliate ID to any you want (or keep mine if you’d like to support this site 😉). And if all you want is quick access to a clean Amazon search, you’re welcome to remove everything after the “@@@”.

If you haven’t tried Keyword Search before, I highly recommend it. It’s a far faster way to find something from a specific domain or search engine on the web.

Bonus: Search Menu shortcut

I couldn’t let you go without including something for Shortcuts. Ever since I installed Keyword Search, my ‘Share Menu’ shortcut gets less use these days, but I used to run it all the time. Say you have a shortlist of places that you search regularly. For example, YouTube, Twitter, HeyDingus, Apple Maps, and Amazon. This shortcut asks for a search term and then presents a menu of just those places that you’ve defined. Tap one, and you’re brought directly to the search results. There is no need to locate the app on your device, then navigate to its search view, and then finally type in the term to search for the results.

It works with search engines built into the ‘Search Web’ shortcuts action and any URL you construct, like the one above. And, if an app on your device provides a search action, you can add those in, too (e.g., Maps or Reeder). (You’ll also find in it a teaser for another shortcut that will be published on HeyDingus soon!)

’Search Menu’ works well as a widget, as a standalone icon on your Home Screen, or in other launchers. It’s also compatible with the Mac, as long as the corresponding apps are also installed there.

Get the ‘Search Menu’ shortcut → Original Version | Latest Version

Shortcuts Tips Apps

Casey, John, and Marco discussed on Accidental Tech Podcast how Apple could bring lossless music support to its wireless headphones. It was sparked by a recent interview with Gary Geaves, an Apple audio VP who hinted that they’re not content with Bluetooth’s capabilities.

A brief synopsis of their discussion: Using vanilla Bluetooth sounds like it’s out of the question for lossless because it’d take too much bandwidth, so Apple would need to use some special sauce on top or go with a new protocol. John did some (banned) research and found that Ultra Wideband (UWB), which Apple has built into several generations of iPhones, not only has plenty of bandwidth but also beats out Bluetooth on a whole host of features like range battery life, and latency.

Looking back at the launch of the U1 chip with the iPhone 11, Apple didn’t have much to say about why it deserved its spot on the tightly-packed motherboard where space is at a premium. But they did tease future capabilities (emphasis mine):

The new Apple‑designed U1 chip uses Ultra Wideband technology for spatial awareness — allowing iPhone 11 Pro to understand its precise location relative to other nearby U1‑equipped Apple devices. It’s like adding another sense to iPhone, and it’s going to lead to amazing new capabilities.

With U1 and iOS 13, you can point your iPhone toward someone else’s, and AirDrop will prioritize that device so you can share files faster. And that’s just the beginning.

Since that humble beginning, not much has come of the U1. HomePod mini uses it to bring more reliable music handoff when tapping your phone to the speaker. Some cars can use it for a key, and some new HomeKit locks do too. Developers are starting to get access to use it in their apps. But no features have been introduced that I would say warranted that unusual public tease from Apple.

However, if Apple were to put UWB chips into more of their products to enable better wireless audio, I think they’d have a banner feature. It would be another way for Apple to own and control the underlying technology leading directly to a better experience for their customers. John mentions that Ultra Wideband is an open standard, which means that third parties could likely still take advantage of its capabilities down the road. Still, Apple can bring it unilaterally across its entire ecosystem more quickly and effectively than perhaps any other company. I could see that as a tangible benefit to switching to the Apple ecosystem.

If everything John said about UWB is possible, it really could lead to “amazing new capabilities.” It doesn’t have to stop with audio. Any sort of local device-to-device data transfer that benefits from fast speed and low latency could potentially benefit from it. Maybe features like Universal Control would be better suited to use UWB than the legacy Handoff stack built on Bluetooth and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi.

Anyway, the entire discussion in this linked podcast chapter is worth a listen. I’m firmly on Team UWB and hope to see more fruits from it soon!

Go to the linked site →

Linked

David Smith just released a really cool update for Sleep++:

There are a number of dedicated fitness trackers that seek to provide you with an indication of how “rested” or “recovered” you are each night’s sleep. My goal is to bring this to automatic sleep tracking on the Apple Watch.

After laying out the three measurements that factor into it — Heart Rate Variability, Resting Heart Rate, and Restful Sleep Duration — David explains the scale for the daily Readiness Score:

These three values are then combined into a single numerical score from 0 to 100. With 100 indicating that all three measures are pointing you towards a highly restorative night. And 0 indicating that your body appears to have been really struggling during the night. Additionally, each composite value, and its comparison to baseline, is shown for reference.

His short explainer blog post is worth reading in full to better understand how and why the score makes sense.

Sleep++ has been my sleep tracker of choice for years because of its no-hassle approach. I beta-tested this new version and have already found value in checking my Readiness Score. And it’s accurate — when I wake up feeling tired, I’ll check the score, and it is always indeed on the low side. Sleep++ is free, so there’s no reason not to give it a try!

Go to the linked site →

Linked Apps

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Introducing Quick Reviews, a Website for Making Beautiful Micro-Reviews for Books, Movies, or Whatever | Birchtree

Matt Birchler:

Quick Reviews is a very basic website that replicates the look of my reviews but does it entirely in HTML, CSS, and a hit of JavaScript. This is aggressively simple, and it’s far from a premium site at this point, but I wanted to get something out there and see if people are interested.

I’ve enjoyed and coveted Matt’s micro-reviews for a while. It’s super cool that he’s put this together for anyone to use. If I had one piece of advice, it would be to put a Carbon ad on the page to augment his side hustle income. I think it will be a popular little tool, and I’ve started using it for my TV series reviews.

2️⃣ Close Your Rings Differently | Nahumck.me

Tim Nahumck:

The better way to handle this would be to create a new type of streak for weekly goals and provide associated badges which are separate from the daily goals. This preserves everything from users who are currently happy with how everything is implemented, while creating a new paradigm for those who aren’t as emphatic about fitness but want to remain healthy. For example, I could see where a user might set weekly goals — say 10,000 kCals active calories burned, 180 exercise minutes, and 45 standing hours — which sets up their week with more flexibility to adjust their routines based on how they are feeling.

I hadn’t considered a weekly goal before, but I like this idea!

3️⃣ Making Sense of New TV Features in 2022 | The Verge

Chris Welch:

So with all the latest TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others now announced and due to ship over the next few months, it seems an opportune moment to review the features you should be looking for when TV shopping.

A helpful roundup if you haven’t been staying on top of the latest in TV tech.

4️⃣ A Vision of the Future With 1Password | 1Password

1Password:

Say hello to Universal Sign On. 1Password will remember how you log in to each account so you can get where you’re going with a single click

The only thing of any real interest to me on this forward-looking site from 1Password is for it to save what sign-in service I used for each site. I typically use only email or ‘Sign in With Apple’ but there are a few exceptions. The rest of this mini-site is too corporate to get excited about. This makes sense when looking at their funding model lately.

Honestly, I’m starting to consider an exit from 1Password back to iCloud Keychain. Better family sharing features would make the exit cleaner, but waiting for that isn’t absolutely necessary. iCloud Keychain’s substantive improvements over the last couple of years have been impressive, and there’s no sign of that team slowing down.

5️⃣ Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is actually a failure | Macworld

Jason Snell (emphasis mine):

The problem isn’t the failure of users to embrace buying pizza inside iMessage chats and turning sticker apps into the next big thing. The problem is that when it flopped, Apple seemed to react with what I’ll charitably call indifference, though it might be more accurate to call it denial combined with inflexibility. Instead of diagnosing the failure and seeing what was next, Apple did what it often does with its failures, which is to leave them to rust away and then make them quietly disappear.

Snell lays out how iMessage had had significant misses over the past decade, rather than being the resounding success that locks people to the iPhone. His point here cuts deeply because we see it happen far too often with Apple products. If a feature doesn’t take off, nary a word is spoken about them, no improvements come, and then they just disappear.

Without even digging too deeply, here’s a brief list of example:

• iTunes Ping
• Apple Music Connect
• Music Memos
• Mail features
• Third-Party Keyboards
• iMessage Apps

6️⃣ This Call is About… | Dan Mall — Twitter

Dan Mall:

I would love it if phone calls came with a subject line. Sure, there’d be kinks to work out, like if someone called from a landline or other unsupported phone. And it would bifurcate smartphone operating systems even further if it wasn’t a standard across multiple ecosystems. But just imagine if it were!

7️⃣ Hangman is a weird game | jan Misali — YouTube

Jan Misali:

an analysis of the two player asymmetric adversarial pencil and paper word guessing game hangman

Fell down a rabbit hole and learned more about hangman than I ever needed to know. But be wary if I ever challenge you to this weird game. I have a strong strategy now!

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Sometimes getting the perfect thing on-screen to capture can be tricky. Trying to hit the hardware button combination at just the right time leads to frustration and a photo library full of erroneous screenshots. Getting the right moment would be way easier if all you needed to do were simply lift your finger. Luckily, Apple has built just such a method into iPadOS.

You may not know that you can take a screenshot on an iPad using a gesture as an alternative to pressing the standard hardware buttons. Using a finger or Apple Pencil, just drag inward from the bottom left-hand corner to take a full-screen screenshot. I like to think of it as the opposite of Hot Corners in macOS, where you fling your mouse into a corner to activate an action.

Playing around with this gesture led me to discover today’s quick tip. If you don’t lift from the screen after swiping in, you’ll see that the screenshot UI appears, and the preview stays active. It isn’t until you release the gesture that the screenshot is saved and the markup controls pop in.

A cool byproduct of this method is that when you’re trying to capture a frame from a video, it keeps playing while the screenshot gesture has been started. Just set it up, wait for the perfect moment, and then lift. It’s way better than trying to scrub to the right frame or pause at the right moment with software controls that fade out.

See the gesture in action below and let me know if you find other neat uses for this.

(Video: Christopher Lawley)

Bonus: If you have a hardware keyboard connected to your iPad, the standard Mac keyboard shortcuts for screenshots work too. Give Command-Shift-3 (full-screen capture) and Command-Shift-4 (capture straight into crop mode) a try.

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If the gesture isn’t working with your finger, check the Settings app to ensure it’s enabled and not just for the Apple Pencil. Go to Settings → General → Gestures → ‘Allow Finger to Swipe from Corner’. I had to disable and re-enable it to get it to recognize my finger.

Tips

Parker Ortolani, at 9to5Mac, commenting on how Apple could and should take the obvious route for their entry consumer display:

The iMac starts at just $1,299. That base model comes with a Magic Keyboard ($99) and a Magic Mouse ($79). Right off the bat, you can remove $180 off the price. Apple’s displays don’t need to come bundled with other accessories. Then remove the actual computer. I can’t really say what the computer inside of the iMac would cost, but it’s likely that the display itself is a more expensive component than anything on the motherboard. Apple could probably charge less, but to maintain a healthy margin they could sell their display for just $999. In fact, that’s the price of the last consumer display that was retired in 2016.

Yes! Use 👏 the 👏 same 👏 parts! By all accounts, the 24-inch iMac has a great display. Keep the speakers, the ports, the webcam — hell, even the same enclosure would be fine — and call it a day. They’ve already done the hard part.

Then Apple can shift focus to high-end monitors with fancy features like Mini LED, HDR, and high refresh rate.

Go to the linked site →

Linked

Chance Miller reports at 9to5Mac on the latest Apple exec switch up. If the shoe doesn’t fit…

This shakeup is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. For context, Steve Dowling was named vice president of communications for Apple in April 2015, taking the reigns from Katie Cotton. Dowling, however, then abruptly left the company in October 2020. From there, Apple fellow Phil Schiller was in charge of Apple’s public relations until Low was hired in May of 2021. 

[…]

Low’s seven months on the job were tumultuous in a number of ways. Apple is currently embroiled in a number of high-profile legal battles with the likes of Epic Games and Spotify, and also facing antitrust pressure around the world. Apple also announced a handful of new Child Safety features last summer. These announcements were widely criticized — with many suggesting Apple botched the announcement and press around the features more than anything.

Apple’s tone-deafness in its announcements over the last couple of years has been notable. They’ve got to find the right person to overhaul their public communication strategy. I don’t know if Huguet will be the one — she’s been at Apple for 15 years, so she’s been part of both the ups and the downs — but I hope so.

Go to the linked site →

Linked

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Hiring movers is the best.

We’ve used Two Men and a Truck twice now and have been very happy with them both times. It was expensive to have them drive a couple of states over with us, but we had our stuff the same day we arrived. Plus, they know how to move things around corners and upstairs that I’ll never understand.

2️⃣ A fresh coat of paint makes all the difference.

Our previous two apartments had each been painted between tenants. This rental home was not, leaving it feeling distinctly…lived in. It was a pain to fill all the drywall holes and paint ourselves, but it has made it feel like our home rather than someone else’s.

3️⃣ Related: Get paint chips before sample paint.

Those paint chips are free for a reason; use them! This may seem obvious, but after priming your wall, go ahead and tape a few colors up there and see what it looks like in different lighting throughout the day. It’ll save you from buying too many sample paints.

4️⃣ Also Related: Let a small area of sample paint dry on the wall before buying a larger amount.

This also seems obvious, but you learn a little more each time: Paint a small area and let it dry before covering the wall. Again, it’ll look different as it dries and in various lighting throughout the day. Make sure you actually like that color there before committing.

5️⃣ Don’t worry too much about all the boxes. You’ll find space for your stuff. Or you won’t, and that’s okay, too.

When we got into the house (with the moving truck only minutes behind us), I was pretty concerned that we wouldn’t be able to fit in all of our stuff. I grew more concerned as the boxes kept piling in, one after the other. Our living room was full. Our kitchen was full. Our bedroom was full. I was stressed. How would we even move around it all to unpack?

But humans are excellent puzzle solvers, and a new home provides all kinds of opportunities to play three-dimensional Tetris.

In the end, the only thing we ended up having to send back with the moving guys was a large couch that we had inherited from my wife’s grandparents. And we knew going in that it would be a stretch to find a place for that.

Plus, packing and unpacking have been good chances to review if we actually need to keep a lot of our stuff. Many donation trips have been made and will continue to be made over the new few weeks.

6️⃣ Prioritizing internet and TV/entertainment hook up pays off.

As the Chief Technology Officer of our home, it fell to me to make sure we would have internet at our new house. There’s only one provider option in our area, but luckily Spectrum makes self-installation super easy these days. I picked up their modem from a store in Ohio and kept it with me in my car on our long drive.

Though it may seem frivolous, one of the first things I did (once we could move things around a little) was hook up the internet, our Apple TV, and the PlayStation. It brought a semblance of normalcy at the end of a long day, being able to relax with our usual shows and games. And it made for a happy wife. 😉

7️⃣ Get out and explore your neighborhood for things to be excited about.

Besides the job opening for my wife, the big draw for us to move to the Adirondacks was the chance to do more of our favorite outdoor activities. Right behind our home is a rails-to-trails system, so we took the dog for a walk down it on our first night. We found an athletic center within walking distance.

Driving back and forth to the hardware store gave us plenty of time to scope out a few restaurants and bars that we want to check out. And we ogled at the many “mom and pop” corner stores that just didn’t exist in our last neighborhood.

It is very easy to lose yourself in unpacking, decorating, and general nesting in a new home. But you’ll lose out on the chance to form new habits if you never venture out the front door. Our next adventure will be to try out the ski resort a few minutes down the road!

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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The Consumer Electronics Show is a breeding ground for wacky tech ideas. Some of which actually make it to market. This is a collection of neat ones that made it across my radar.

1️⃣ TP-Link is finally making some HomeKit-enabled products | The Verge

I’m all for more HomeKit devices that don’t require a hub. I hope their thinking about supporting Matter, though.

2️⃣ Schlage unveils smart lock with support for HomeKit and home keys in the Wallet app | 9to5Mac

I’m so looking forward to the future with my home and car keys being stored in Apple Wallet and enabled through Ultra-wide Band.

3️⃣ CES 2022: Chipolo Launches Find My-Compatible Wallet Tracker | MacRumors

This is the Find My device that I’ve been waiting for. I lose my wallet more than any other item, and it’s one of the few that the classic AirTag form factor doesn’t really work for. It was an insta-order for me. (I actually just got an AirTag-compatible wallet for Christmas — it has a holder for an AirTag built-in — but being able to use my favorite wallet is better by far.)

4️⃣ Anker showcases new 100W GaN charger, first laser projector, much more at CES 2022 | 9to5Toys

Anker’s chargers are best-in-class, and I get overly excited by how much power they can pack into such a small space. The projector looks pretty sweet, too.

5️⃣ Sony pivots into cars with Sony Mobility and a Vision-S SUV prototype at CES 2022 | The Verge

I never heard about Sony’s previous Vision-S concept car. But creating a new company around the initiative seems like a big move — especially for someone as brand-conscious as Sony. I’m interested to see where this goes, especially in the context of the rumored Apple car.

6️⃣ Belkin Wemo going all in on Thread and Matter for 2022 with new Switch, Dimmer, and Smart Plug | 9to5Mac

Wemo hasn’t always been the most reliable for me, but hopefully this pivot to support Matter and Thread makes a noticeable difference. More competition in the Smart Home space is a win, if you ask me.

7️⃣ BMW debuts its new color-changing paint technology at CES: E Ink | The Verge

You probably saw this announcement already, but it doesn’t make it any less cool! While it’s not something you’d want to do while on the road, this technology looks way fun to tinker with. And it’s built on the tech used in e-readers, for goodness sake! Just wow.

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Thanks for reading 7 Things! If you enjoyed these links, or have something else neat to share, please hit me up on Twitter or send me an email!

7 Things

Tyler Hall wrote about finding a way to customize notifications the Mac, Growl-style, with his new app, Roar:

I eventually stumbled upon the SQLite database that holds app notifications. To my surprise, all the contents of your notifications are open and readable. And that’s when Growl came to mind. Could I build my own poor-mans Notification Center with different skins and themes?

It turns out, yes.

It’s no secret that Notification Center took a big step back in usability with Big Sur. Way further back, before Apple had an integrated solution, Growl was the go-to app for getting pop-up alerts from websites and apps. I’d completely forgotten that you could adjust their design to your liking. It’d be good to see some of that come back across Apple’s OSes. And it does seem like they’re trending in that direction.

But maybe a first step could be to let apps design their own notifications like they can with widgets. It would bring a lot of character back to the operating systems, and maybe even provide some inspiration for Apple to improve Notification Center.

There are limitations, but Roar lets us peek at that potential future.

Go to the linked site →

Linked