Over the past few years I’ve enjoyed the benefits of iOS URL schemes. Apple opened a tiny crack and iOS developers built impressive machinery in that space. Entire new applications evolved to do little more than interact with these URL schemes, shuttling data back and forth. While I love what can be done with URL schemes, I also see their misuse. URL schemes can become excuses for an incomplete or inefficient app UI.

I found out about this through one of my Pinboard feeds. PayPal documents around 600 different third parties they share user data with. I only use PayPal as a last resort but I might be changing that too. It’s really no more secure than just using a credit card online plus I’ve read plenty of stories about how hard it can be to reverse fraudulent charges through PayPal.

From Jon Fingas at Engadget: MoviePass' approach to gathering viewer data might raise eyebrows. According to Media Play News, CEO Mitch Lowe told those at a business forum that the movie subscription service’s app not only tracks your location, but follows you to and from the theater. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies,” he said, adding that “we watch where you go afterwards.” Not surprisingly, the company is hoping to understand customer habits and “build a night at the movies.

Yes, I got a new iMac Pro. Yes, we continue to make the Nerds on Draft podcast. Those two intersect in our latest episode.

From Nieman Labs: The top line takeaway from its analysis of 100 million articles is that social sharing is down by 50 percent across the board compared to just a few years ago. In 2015, articles saw an average of 8 shares; today that number has dropped to 4. Only 5 percent of content gets more than 343 shares. There are several spins in that Nieman article that feel more like opinion.

I’d never heard of Graphite or Blockstack before this week. I usually avoid all articles concerning blockchain tech because it’s the new Web 2.0 trend that feels more like marketing than anything else. On the other hand, I really like the idea of Graphite. It’s a secure alternative to Google Docs that can be used pretty much anywhere I have an internet connection. I don’t claim to understand exactly how the blockchain works to decentralize a document editor but I know just enough to think it’s still a neat idea.

I still prefer the variety of articles I get from RSS feeds over any social media based link aggregator. If you’re getting tired of seeing the same old stuff, here are some suggestions. First off, subscribe to the Pinboard popular feed. It tends to be pretty nerdy and occasionally political but it’s good at scooping up a good mix of stuff along with the things likely being beaten to death on Twitter.

I spend a lot of time with my task manager. My day job is a little bit of technical development and a little bit of project management. The project management piece is a capital “P.M.” I manage a dozen large projects spread over several years. Each project has between one and twenty different people on the team. This review is written from that perspective. I’m not a productivity blogger or a guy that just likes to try out software.

I shouldn’t have a LinkedIn account. If you think you are contacting me there, you should know that I’m in a non-mutual relationship with LinkedIn. I “deleted” my account back around 2012 when they had their big, poorly communicated, and majorly mishandled data breach. But, I still get emails from LinkedIn telling me about new contacts for a profile that shouldn’t exist. This would be a minor annoyance except for my long history with Lynda.

This week was a really fun episode of MPU with Rose Orchard. There’s a ton of interesting ideas for automation on this show. I especially liked the bit at the end about Launch Center Pro, which has long languished on my iPhone. It’s funny, I think Mac Power Users is the longest running podcast that I still listen to. David Sparks goes way back in my memory to the “old days” of podcasting.