As you likely know, in November CogSci Apps released Hook 2.0 – 2.0.3. Hook has become a truly universal automatic, contextual bookmarking app.
It has long been known that note-taking is an essential way to extend your memory and understanding. One of the major benefits of Hook is to enable you to create notes (in the app of your choice) and link them to what they are about. This in turn allows you to instantly navigate between your notes and what they are about! Hook can create & link notes about a web page, an Apple books ebook, a PDF or any other addressable resource.
Today, we at CogSci Apps are pleased to announce Hook 2.1, which enables you to create links in two additional note-taking apps — one old, one new:
- Apple Notes. See Using Hook with Apple Notes. And
- Obsidian. See Using Hook with Obsidian.
We encourage you to check out those note-taking apps, along with other great linkable apps.
Detailed release notes
For more information about
- Hook 2.1, please see the Hook 2.1 Release Notes.
- Hook 2.0 – 2.0.3, please see the Hook 2.0 (and 2.0.x) Release Notes.
It takes a village to link a world of apps
We are grateful to Apple for fixing, in Big Sur, bugs that it (Apple) introduced in macOS Catalina Notes automation. We are also grateful to Artëm Chistyakov for his solution to addressing Apple Notes, which he published on Github macos-automation/src/notes at master · temochka/macos-automation and which Hook 2.1 adapts. Artëm’s Twitter handle is Artëm Chistyakov (@artemchistyakov) / Twitter.
Thanks also to Josh Nichols for publishing a script on which Hook’s integration with Obsidian is based. Check out Josh’s work on Github and his communications on Twitter.
As noted on the Hook productivity forum, we are developing an app-linking liaison (advocate) programme. We would thus like to thank Lisa Sieverts for being a liaison between CogSci Apps and the Obsidian community. Thanks also to many Hook users who contributed to the discussion on the Hook productivity forum and on Obsidian’s forum. We all benefit when app developers better understand that making their apps truly linkable matters to their users.
David Sparks has been making a great case for using in-app links as a way to work in psychological flow, which of course is the raison d’être of Hook: Linking and Contextual Computing — MacSparky. I recommend the article.
Each linkable app illustrates the importance of hyperlinking. This brings me to my next point…
Manifesto for hyperlinking
In November, Future of Text Publishing published a chapter written by myself and Daniel Jomphe on the importance of hyperlinking:
Beaudoin, L. P. & Jomphe, D. (2020). A manifesto for user and automation interfaces for hyperlinking: How hypertext can enhance cognitive productivity. In F. Hegland (ed.) The Future of Text (pp. 266-269). https://doi.org/10.48197/fot2020a
CogSci Apps and others are developing a new .org website that will contain an accessible version of this manifesto, also based partly on What’s a Linkable App and Why Does Linkability Matter?. Several leading Mac developers and influencers are participating in this manifesto.
If you are a Mac software developer, blogger, writer or podcaster who agrees that it is very important for app documents and objects to be linkable, and if you might like to participate in the manifesto, please email linking-manifesto@cogsciapps.com. We’ll then keep you posted.
More gratitude
Thanks for reading!
Luc P. Beaudoin
Co-founder
CogSci Apps Corp.