Wow!

I can’t wait to see this! I’m also excited for the trailer that we should be getting in a few days.

[IMDb]

I watch TED videos a lot, but I thought this one definitely had to be shared.

Forests don’t have to be far-flung nature reserves, isolated from human life. Instead, we can grow them right where we are — even in cities. Eco-entrepreneur and TED Fellow Shubhendu Sharma grows ultra-dense, biodiverse mini-forests of native species in urban areas by engineering soil, microbes and biomass to kickstart natural growth processes. Follow along as he describes how to grow a 100-year-old forest in just 10 years, and learn how you can get in on this tiny jungle party.

It’s just under 10 minutes, but I found it very fascinating, and it proves there are things we can do to kickstart nature.

Michael Kennedy, writing for ScreenRant:

While the Pokémon franchise never really went away entirely, the amazingly successful launch of new augmented reality game Pokémon Go has returned the property to a level of pop-culture ubiquity it’s not seen in many years. With millions of people currently spending their free time trying to catch ’em all, Nintendo’s stock price has rocketed up 25%, and the company’s financial outlook now looks quite rosy. Naturally, Pokémon Go’s success has led Legendary Pictures to start working overtime on a deal with Nintendo to produce a live-action Pokémon movie. While a deal is still not finalized, reports are suggesting who might be in line to write the script, if and when contracts are signed.

Really. Pokémon and Live-Action?

I can’t imagine this being anything other than a terrible idea.

That’s not a headline that many would expect, but Razer have indeed created a mechanical keyboard for the iPad Pro.

They’ve made this keyboard, and packed it into a case which also features a metal kickstand, and a protective outer case for the actual iPad.

The kickstand isn’t fixed to any specific angle, like most other cases/stands, and can be adjusted to any preferred position. That’s a pretty big improvement on the rest.

They also developed “ultra-low-profile” mechanical switches for the keys, which you can read more about. They say the force needed to recognise a key press is 70g, but I don’t really know what this means. I use a mechanical keyboard sometimes, but I don’t see any huge difference between them and my MacBook.

It also allows you to type in dark environments, as it features backlighting! Which once you’ve tried, you can’t not have.

The battery life is okay if you use the backlighting constantly, which will give you approximately 10 hours on a single charge. But if you turn off the backlighting, it will last approximately 600 hours. So I guess it isn’t that bad, just don’t use the backlight too much.

It’s available in the store already for a whopping £159.99, but it seems it’s currently being shipped from the US. So while you get free shipping, there will probably be a customs/tax charge with it.

Overall, I really like the design, and I much prefer typing on a mechanical keyboard to a glass screen. But not enough to spend that amount of money unfortunately.

If you’ve ever wondered what a glass skateboard would look/ride like, then check out this video by Braille Skateboarding.

They also have some other videos, where people have sent in some interesting skateboards, so check them out as well!

I personally would love a skateboard that I can ride in any weather.

Joe Caiati, writing for The Sweet Setup:

News has changed dramatically. Today, there are remnants of the way news used to work, but these traditional channels are slowly becoming a distant memory.

In an age past, the newspaper was delivered to your doorstep in the morning ready to be digested over a cup of coffee. When you returned home from work and settled down on the couch, the nightly news on TV caught you up on the day’s events.

While those outlets are still around today, news is much more complicated.

He talks about what news is, and how we tend to consume news nowadays,

There are innumerable online publications hurling stories everywhere. Some of them are pertinent to your interests, some of them waste your time, some of them are shared by friends, and then there is still the unknown that you may be missing out on.

To combat this news overload, a group of apps have tried to tackle this problem in hopes that they can bubble up the right stories so that you don’t have to work so hard to stay up-to-date on your interests and current events. We have tested many news digest services and found that Nuzzel is the best.

It’s a great read, and I’m a Nuzzel user myself. But even if you already use the app as well, Joe has written a very intriguing piece on news in general, and also more in depth into Nuzzel features you may not be aware of.

Dan Lages has written a piece on how WordPress is relied upon by a lot of different people and websites, but in most cases it isn’t really the optimal solution:

“That’ll do.” I can only imagine this is what was said to the WordPress developers as they bolted website service together with the initial blogging platform. It is clear that the WordPress is tailored towards bloggers, the initial audience of the service. As a result of this, users are left facing an endless amount of themes that prompt the use of posts, not pages. How many times have you seen a blog on a company website?

In fact, every element of the service appears broken without a heavy backlog of blog posts. From the menu system, to an empty archive sidebar that is included by default. The result of this horrendous integration is a collection of un-utilised pages and elements that leaves users with various questions. – dlages.com

I seem to agree with everything he’s written, and if you read it for yourself, you can clearly see for yourself why WordPress isn’t the best idea.

It may be used a ton, but it really shouldn’t be. I for one started to use Ghost recently, and I really prefer it over WordPress.

If you haven’t heard about Pokémon GO yet, then you’ve clearly been living under a very heavy rock, so check it out now.

The main restriction with Pokémon GO at the minute, is the inability to download it in certain countries. At the time of me writing this, it’s only available in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. So as I’m in the UK, I can’t officially download it from the App Store.

Unless, I was “american”.

So the way I got around it was to go to appleid.apple.com, and create a new Apple ID which was based in the U.S. You can get a random U.S. address from this generator, which will then let you create an account.

Then you will have to go to the App Store app, then at the bottom of your screen, tap on your current Apple ID and choose Sign Out.

Then sign in with your newly created U.S. Apple ID, it will prompt you to change to the U.S. App Store, which you can confirm.

Once that’s done you can download Pokémon GO simply by searching and finding it on the App Store, and because it’s free you won’t need any payment details on the account.

When the App is installed, you can then sign out of this account in the App Store, and sign back in to your real account.

Then open up Pokémon GO, and start capturing!

Apple have now added the transcripts for all of the WWDC videos from this years event. What’s more, is that all of these transcripts are searchable!

Take advantage of transcripts to quickly discover and share information presented in WWDC16 videos. You can search by keyword, see all instances where the keyword is mentioned in the video, go straight to the time it was mentioned, and even share a link to that specific time.

So just head over to the WWDC 2016 website, to watch some of the videos, and the Transcript option is directly below the video.

Finally there’s a better way to insert Emoji on a Mac.

Ryan McLeod has created Macmoji, which is essentially a list of terms and their corresponding Emojis. It lets you type Slack style tags like :cat: to insert 🐱.

The installation isn’t hard at all, just check out the project on GitHub, download the .plist file, and then drag it onto the Text section of the Keyboard settings in System Preferences.