Welcome to the 9th edition of Type, my email newsletter.

Automations and iPadOS are here

Wow, it’s definitely been quite a week. Not only did the last few days before my last newsletter already feel huge, but on Monday there were two posts written up about my Shortcuts Library – from AppleInsider and Lifehacker.

Here’s a chart showing the before/after of my website stats – those tiny, tiny first three bars were my daily web traffic before, and then you can see how it went after that:

It’s a Bezos chart—no actual units—cause I’m still too chicken to share hard numbers (it's leveling wayyy back out), but I saw significant growth on Twitter, YouTube, and this email list too which has been amazing.

Automations also came out with iOS 13.1, and along with it linked to the types of NFC tags I bought for my Shortcuts Automations now that you can use them to run shortcuts automatically.

Funnily enough, Amazon actually kicked me out of their affiliate program on Saturday night at 10:45 pm. Apparently I listed exact prices instead of noting that they were estimates from a specific day and didn’t have a disclaimer that “prices may be subject to change”.

It’s pretty lame that Amazon just entirely boots you from the program and you have to sign up again without any chance to right the wrong, so now I don’t actually have those stats for the long-term anymore in my new account.

In terms of Automations, I decided to pull back on post last week for a moment because I added a lot more and had to reintegrate some for my new project (more details below), but it’s coming in a few days.

I also began adding all of my shortcuts to my new Home Screen setup using Federico Viticci’s new set of icons, but, as you may know, I have a lot of shortcuts, so that post is still in progress too.

However, there's still something new and fun...
 

My new show: Smart Tech Today

My newest project has just now been announced as I write this Sunday night – I’m starting a new podcast with Mikah Sargent!

The show is called Smart Tech Today and is part of the This Week in Tech (TWiT) network, airing via livestream every Monday at 4pm PST and then releasing as a normal podcast later in the evening. Here’s a bit from the blog post announcing the release:
 

Smart bulbs, voice assistants, connected devices… how do you make sense of it all? Mikah Sargent and Matthew Cassinelli are here to help you stay on top of all the connected devices and keep you frustration-free.

Their new show Smart Tech Today will explain the exciting, dynamic, and sometimes-confusing subject that is the Internet of Things. They’ll deliver smart tech news you can use — with healthy skepticism and no cynicism.
 

Mikah has tons of experience in tech, but I’ve known him through his previous role for iMore—where I write freelance posts about Siri Shortcuts—and his current role as host of the Clockwise podcast on Relay FM.

He just recently moved to California to join the TWiT team full time; Mikah's a fantastic person, has a positive and fun energy, and we’re both equally excited about this new show.

The network’s studios are located in Petaluma, California—about an hour from me in Berkeley, California—so I’ll be joining Mikah in the studio fo the first episode and then recording from my home office after that.

For now it’s audio-only, but if it’s a big success there may be opportunities to capture video along the way too.

We’ve just published an Episode 0 giving an explanation of the show that’s under 60 seconds, so please subscribe to the show and help us out with a strong launch.

Note: The Apple Podcasts takes into account the “velocity” of shows, so lots of new listeners and ratings in the Podcasts app go a long way to getting our show in front of new people – please subscribe!

Here are the links for the show:

• Website
• RSS
• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• PocketCasts
• YouTube

I hope you enjoy Smart Tech Today and I look forward to all the fun experiments we’ll get to do along the way.
 

Links of the Week

• Reddit: Definitely check out the Reddit community r/shortcuts which is now 109,000 people strong. I’m also trying to make a link guide for everyone to utilize there too, so if you come across any resources or have your own, feel free to add them.
   
• Succession: I caved and started watching Succession on HBO GO last week. However, tonight our friend’s account that we use doesn’t seem to be active anymore – we finally actually signed up to keep watching.
   
• Audiobooks: I’ve been relistening to some audiobooks in the mornings – Atomic Habits is great, I never actually finished Triggers, and I just got The Messy Middle from Scott Belsky.
   
• Honk: I’ve been anticipating the Untitled Goose Game ever since I got to play the first level at XOXO, so this week has been filled with honks, an amazing reactive soundtrack, and laughing at the great memes on Twitter. I even brought to my girlfriend’s parents house to show them :P
   
• Totebook: I finally broke into the pages of another Studio Neat Totebook to get some stuff out of my head when I got sick of being on my iPad and iPhone the entire week - that’s a damn fine notebook. It has the same feel as the Cortex Theme System notebook which I researched how to use but haven’t given proper time to yet.
   
• Home Screen shortcuts: I mentioned this above, but the MacStories team launched a set of 300 custom icons for adding atop your shortcuts as you add them to the Home Screen. They’ve got a clever transparency so the color of your shortcut is still shown, but things can have a more person feel alongside your apps. Themes for iOS anyone?
   
• Change App Store shortcut: Vidit Bhargava, the developer of the great dictionary app LookUp, built a shortcut that lets you change the current country for the App Store easily. His app has a cool new features you can favorite a word by smiling at it.
   
• Sandwich: Sandwich Video has rebranded to Sandwich and everything from their logo to the website is fantastic. I’ve been slowly trying to find colors for my “brand” and these are fantastic.

I’ve gotten about 1,000 replies, comments, and emails in the past week, so if I haven’t replied yet, my apologies – I’ll be responding ASAP!

In the meantime, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great week.