Ok, it’s hot now? Spring is deranged. But life is weather.

Anyway, hi, nice to be with you again. So much news. People have been saying to us “it seems like the pace is picking up?” To which we answer, “yes it has!”

We’re thinking about pacing and listening to Bewick’s Wren by Patricia Wolf. What have you been thinking about? What are you listening to?

New Search is available for everyone

First off, we’ve been working on making search results better for the last 6 months and it’s finally launched for everyone. You should notice that your search results are generally more relevant and (more importantly) more “interesting.” This is a hard balance to achieve, and there’s always room for improvement, but we’re really happy with the steps we’ve taken in the direction we’ve taken them.

Please, by all means, do some searches and tell us what you think.

Are.na now has a CLI

If you’re the type of person who likes to spend all your time in the terminal, we have great news for you. Are.na has a CLI (command line interface) now. You can basically do everything that you can do with the Are.na API with the CLI, and you can use it as a standalone tool or as a way to automate commands.

If none of that means anything to you, don’t worry, it just means that Are.na is becoming more and more extendable (more on that later).

iOS improvements

Chef Yihui has been cooking up more improvements in the iOS app. There’s a new adding flow (which now includes drafts), new search with explore filters, index view (!) on profiles, reader mode, change cover images on links, collaborator editing…I mean…what could possibly be next?

Are.na importer

Do you use Are.na but still have old data on other services? After many years of reluctance, we’ve finally come around to the idea that we need to allow for content to be imported. So we built an importer. If you’re Supporter tier, you can give this a try now. If not, just a reminder, Supporter tier members always get early access to the big features!

WYSIWIG

WYSIWIG stands for “what you see is what you get,” and in this context, it means that our text editors (in blocks and other places around Are.na) now have a formatting toolbar. This might seem boring, but if you knew the saga that it took to get here, you’d be a little more impressed.

Are.na sticker sheet with Romina Malta

We have new Are.na stickers in the store, this time designed by graphic designer, artist, and longtime Are.na member Romina Malta. We’ve been wanting to work with Romina for a long time and we’re really happy we finally did. This pack includes black vinyl Are.na logo, wordmark, channel guy, zen stars, a rabbit hole, and “are.na is driving me crazy” stickers.

Are.na Annual Submissions due April 20

Submissions for the next Are.na Annual, themed “score,” are closing soon — get your pitches in by Monday, April 20 at 11:59pm est. Here are the guidelines for how to pitch and here is the submission form for doing so.

In case you’re unfamiliar, the Are.na Annual is an anthology of writing by the people on Are.na. You can find the past seven issues in our Gift Shop, and get an idea of the types of writing we publish on Are.na Editorial.

In fact, this month we re-published an essay and a conversation from last year’s Annual, themed “pool:” Tyna Ontko on vernal pools and Tejumola Bayowa and Mingjia Chen on carpools.

Community API Projects

Since we’ve released our new v3 API, we’re starting to see a ton of amazing projects, some of which significantly expand what you can use Are.na for.

starstar.website is a website builder for Are.na, made by Elliott Cost, complete with themes, custom domains and RSS.

arena-mux.michaelguidetti.info is a tiling window manager for Are.na, built (and recently updated) by Michael Guidetti

tiny.garden is another website builder for Are.na, built by gndclouds

kabo-design.vercel.app is a 3d channel path explorer, built by Cynthia *

arena-contributions.ext.pablomax.comarena-contributions.ext.pablomax.com is a Github heatmap graph of your Are.na activity, built by Pablo Max

arenareader.com is a reader interface for Text, PDFs, and links saved on Are.na, built by Aleph One

Lastly, to plug our own API project…mac.are.na got a little y2k-ish facelift.

NYC API meetup

Relatedly, for our engineer / software developer friends in New York: we’re having an API meetup at Index Space on April 30th at 6:30pm. We’ll go through details, answer questions, and talk about some exciting new API developments (to be revealed soon). We’re also going to carve out some space for Are.na API project demos — if you have something you’d like to share, we’d love to see it.

Please RSVP if you’re planning to attend

Community News

New York Television, our new favorite public access (web) channel, has been broadcasting old Are.na Walkthroughs alongside other excellent programming. Have you heard of NYTV? They just got a write-up in Hell Gate. More Are.na x NYTV programming is on the horizon, stay tuned.

Early this month, on April 5, Firuza Huseynova hosted a Channel Surfing event, with guests Evan Collins and Selina Kehuan Wu. Firuza asked Evan and Selina to showcase an Are.na channel of their choosing, and reflect on why resonant ideas stick. This is apparently the first of a monthly web series, so be on the lookout for the next one — these look really cool.

The Are.nauts, a group that arose out of Leslie Liu’s Classifieds ad in the Are.na Community Newspaper, is making a webring. The group is tinkering with small experiments that use Are.na / may be of interest to Are.na folks. Comment on this block if you’d like to join.

The html review just published their fifth issue, and it looks very good, as usual. It’s always exciting when html review pops back up in the spring — beautiful work from all the contributors, as well as editors Shelby Wilson and Maxwell Neely-Cohen.

Roadmap

As always, you can check out our roadmap page which goes into the features we're building, our long-term goals, and our current numbers.

There are so many places you can spend your attention, and we’re touched that you spent it reading this letter.

wind and water,

The Are.na Team