09.17.14 |
Work |
∞
Many tech and productivity blogs promote device convergence: with a single smartphone, tablet, or laptop, you’re ready for almost any activity, from gaming to video production. After years of experience with assorted tech gear, I’ve found convergence overrated. It’s the exact opposite – device specialization – that’s a lot more effective.
More concretely, the next time you unlock your phone or sit down in front of your laptop, ask yourself: “what works best here for my needs?” Isolate the apps that you use regularly and that feel natural in context; keep them on your home screen or otherwise easily accessible. Bury the rest in folders knowing full well you’ll probably be faster and more efficient if you wait to perform those activities on another device.
For me, multi-device specialization translates into a set workflow:
- My iPhone is used for quick reads of the news (NYTNow), short saved articles (Pocket), catching up on Twitter (Tweetbot) and the occasional quick puzzle game (Threes).
-
My iPad is for daily scans of news feeds (Mr. Reeder), long reads (again, Pocket) and classic strategy games (Hearthstone, Ticket to Ride) that don’t rely on awkwardly tacked-on control schemes.
-
My Macbook Air is mostly used for writing, development, and design.
-
The PS4 is optimized for most of my gaming needs. It’s essential for any game that plays better with traditional controller input. With the comfort and immersion factor of a large screen and sound system, it’s also ideal for play sessions longer than thirty minutes at a time.
There are exceptions to the above (e.g. occasional writing edits on Writer Pro with my iPhone when I’m in the subway), but I’m generally more productive if I delay work until I reach the right device. I also happen to be someone who actively uses all this gear; some may successfully embrace a simpler workflow around a single device. But that’s not for me, and I suspect it isn’t for many others.
Overall, if you’ve found yourself struggling with your device’s size, context, power, or input method for certain activities, try changing your workflow. Move away from convergence and toward multi-device specialization.
09.09.14 |
∞
In light of today’s annual big Apple media event, Quartz’s Dan Frommer crunched the numbers of how these events historically play out. Frommer examines average presentation time, video style, Steve Jobs’ stage time versus Tim Cook’s and other material. Very interesting.
09.05.14 |
∞
Sam Adams, writing for Indiewire:
In [Verge writer] Pierce’s rationale — or, more to the point, rationalization — downloading the movie in advance is like peeking at a band’s setlist before the concert…”The Expendables 3,” you see, “is meant not to be watched but to be experienced. As art becomes commoditized experience becomes the only thing worth paying for, and there’s evidence everywhere that we’ll pay for it when it’s worth it. We don’t want to pay for access, but we’ll gladly pay for experience.”
Of course, commodities are things you pay for. What Pierce really means by “commoditized” is “devalued,” and what he means by that is that since ‘The Expendables 3’ isn’t worth anything in the first place, there’s nothing wrong with taking a copy for yourself.
Working as a web developer/designer myself, I tend to support policies that push technology forward. But there’s no justification behind David Pierce flat out stealing a movie with the justification that it’s “access” over “experience”. Technology has limits; it’s worrisome to see Pierce, a senior writer at what’s normally a pretty solid tech news site, adopt this sort of blind “techno libertarianism” bent.
08.04.14 |
∞
Facebook engineer Carlos Bueno, writing a post already heavily passed around tech circles about the Valley/startup insular culture:
The problem is that Silicon Valley has gone completely to the other extreme. We’ve created a make-believe cult of objective meritocracy, a pseudo-scientific mythos to obscure and reinforce the belief that only people who look and talk like us are worth noticing. After making such a show of burning down the bad old rules of business, the new ones we’ve created seem pretty similar.
It’s been over a month since this was published, but Carlos’ post struck a cord with me and is worth revisiting. I suspect it’s going to be one of those posts that I revisit from time to time long from now, especially as I reach more positions to hire and shape the culture of a company.
08.01.14 |
∞
I’ve documented best practices in the Git version control system for my coworkers often, from meetings to random Google Docs and emails. Yet reading over this post by developer Jean-Philippe Boily, I realize he’s eloquently and succinctly gone through the key principles that matter most. Worth a read for Git newbies.
07.28.14 |
∞
I share code snippets all the time with both coworkers and students in my classes. The main Gist page on Github makes it easy, but there’s no substitute for the raw speed of this Alfred extension. I just copy the code block in question, type my Alfred shortcut, and a moment later a link to the Gist is copied to my clipboard. Very useful.
07.23.14 |
∞
Craig Mod:
When we explore new ground (or re-explore old ground, forgotten ground) in new mediums, we often find it necessary to swing the design and interaction pendulum to the baroque side of the scale. We do this to see what “too much” feels like in order to understand the edges of “enough.” We saw this happen with iPad “magazines.” We saw this happen with “Snow Fall.” “Snow Fall” was less about what felt natural in a web browser or what was best for the story, and more about what was maximally possible in a web browser. The experiment just happened to be attached to an article.
Great storytelling is not about maximizing technical possibility.
Spot on.
05.20.14 |
∞
Engineer Jeff Miller put together a simple but well thought out Python bot that tweets Hacker News stories:
Here’s a robust cure for Hacker News overload: use score thresholds. This solves the problem of too many stories by cutting out low-scoring noise while still leaving behind those links interesting enough to have been upvoted by the HN community.
I’ve created a handful of Twitter and RSS feeds that apply score thresholds to Hacker News. Stories enter the feeds in near real-time as soon as they reach X points on the main HN site.
05.16.14 |
∞
Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz writes on TV series that are breaking away from the traditional 13 to 26 episodes per season format. It’s a concept often mentioned on social media and the occasional blog post, but Seitz constructs the best argument to date. He cites influences like the BBC and Netflix, along with our changing viewing habits and mediums (e.g. TVs, computers, tablets) to help shape the “anything goes” approach that defines a lot of TV today.
05.05.14 |
∞
Really fascinating music research by Music Machinery on how often we actually end up skipping through songs on streaming music services. The blog ran through extensive data provided by Spotify; turns out on average we skip 24% of songs in the first five seconds and skip before the song finishes almost half the time. That’s way higher than I first anticipated.
As the blog explores, it’s a big incentive why many convert to paying accounts to streaming services – not being able to skip is a large hindrance. (via MacStories)