Recomendo

Window Swap/Telescoping ladder/Symbololology

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Recomendo: issue no. 209

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Travel without moving
I just spent the last ten minutes on Window Swap staring out a window in Villalago, Italy, where I could see the mountains and hear birds chirping and church bells ringing. Anyone is welcome to submit video (and audio) of their window view, and with the click of a button you can bounce around all over the world. — CD

Telescoping aluminum ladder
Like magic, my 12-foot ladder will telescope down to less than 3 feet. I can throw this Telescoping Aluminum Ladder in the trunk of my car, but more importantly, I can effortlessly move it through our house under my arm when I need to reach high ceiling bulbs or skylights, etc. It collapses instantly when done and stores in a closet. It’s what a home ladder should be. There are a bunch of no-brand models, almost identical, for about $100. — KK

Characters that aren’t on your keyboard
A lot of characters aren’t on your keyboard, but you might find them useful. For example, ♠, ♣, ♥, and ♦. An easy way to browse and use these hidden characters is by visiting Symbololology, a one-page site with about 500 non-keyboard characters. Symbololology,  where have you been all my life‽ — MF

Best virtual museum
Google hosts one of the best virtual museums in the world. They’ve scanned many thousands of the world’s masterpieces at super high resolution. So from my home I can visit their “Arts and Culture” site and by scrolling get very very close to the art — much closer than I could in a physical museum. I’ve seen many of the originals in their home museums, and I feel I was seeing them for the first time here. — KK

Over 180 useful Mac apps for $10 a month
Setapp is a subscription service for Mac applications. I pay $10 a month for over 180 useful applications. I don’t use all of them, but the ones I use are indispensable throughout my day. I use Meeter to quickly enter scheduled Zoom meetings. I use Mosaic to move and place windows on my desktop. CleanMyMac X has a bunch of useful utilities to free up disk space and delete apps and large files. IM+ puts my Google chats and Slack groups into one convenient place. Downie makes it easy to download YouTube videos. Forecast bar is a great menu bar weather application. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Setapp also adds new applications into their offerings frequently, and I’m always eager to check them out. If you have a Mac and are interested in design, productivity, and utilities, this is a no-brainer. (I’ve mentioned Setapp on Recomendo before but they’ve added so many useful apps to their collection that it was  time for an update.) — MF

A notepad that follows you
After my recent computer upgrade, I lost my Papier chrome extension that I previously recommended for taking notes in your browser. The website no longer works and it doesn’t exist in the chrome store and I was really bummed because it’s so useful to just be able to open a tab and have a space to write out your to-do list, or do a brain dump, or collect quotes. Thankfully, I was able to find an alternative created by a Google AI designer called Mindful (Beta). What’s better about Mindful is that it syncs with my chrome account so I can access my notes on both my desktop and laptop. — CD

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 07/19/20

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