Topic
technology
- How Big is Twitter Moments?
A post from Balaji Srinivasan from a couple years back on Twitter Moments. He had some interesting points on the likely traffic and comps to other news outlets. Twitter is still huge in the timely news space. I likedā¦
- Venkatesh Rao on Waldenponding
āWaldenpondingā is a phrase coined by Rao to describe the growing backlash movement against hyperconnectedness, driving people to disconnect completely and long for a life of lower information overload and deeper meanā¦
- Weekend Reading: Strasburg Tipping, RapiD, and TikTok Investigation
ā¾ļø How the Nationals Fixed Stephen Strasburg and Saved Their Season Strasburg tipping his pitches almost ended the Natsā run: He remembered the game Strasburg pitched in Arizona on August 3. The Diamondbacks pounded Sā¦
- iPad Pro 11" Impressions
I just got the latest version of the iPad Pro, opting for the 11ā model instead of the previous generation 12.9ā one that Iāve been using for 2 years. Some brief thoughts so far on a weekās worth of usage: The iPad Soā¦
- Why New Technology is Such a Hard Sell
Why does it take so long for new technologies with seemingly-obvious positive benefits to get adopted? This example on the speed with which the polio vaccine was adopted and administered are incredible, but an outlierā¦
- The History of Steel
Since Iāve been following the progress studies movement and Jason Crawfordās Roots of Progress blog, it was cool to see video of his talk on the history of steel from a San Francisco meetup a few weeks ago.
- Dictating Notes with Siri
Iāve been looking for a smooth way to dictate notes and thoughts while hands-free from my phone, particularly while running or driving. When I run I typically wear one AirPod and have my phone inaccessible in a waistbā¦
- The All Things Tech History List
Through a Twitter thread I ran across this running catalog of resources on the history of the tech industry ā books, articles, movies, and more. A definitive list of content. There are some great recommendations hereā¦
- Age of Invention
A newsletter from Dr. Anton Howes, a historian studying innovation and the Industrial Revolution. Iām a historian of innovation. I write mostly about the causes of Britainās Industrial Revolution, focusing on the liveā¦
- Instant Stone
This is another great one from last year on Jason Crawford's Roots of Progress project, in which he dives into advancements in human progress. In this post he covers a brief background on cement, one of the oldest ofā¦
- Green Tech Bringing Life Back to the Sea
This is an interesting startup out of Tel-Aviv called ECOncrete that's creating a new concrete recipe and technology that's safer for coastal wildlife and actually strengthens over time in the water. They create diffeā¦
- Netlify for Content Management and Hosting
We've been exploring options for adding a CMS to our Jekyll-powered website for Fulcrum over the last couple of weeks, looking for ways to add more content editor-friendly capabilities without having to overhaul everyā¦
- AirPods with Apple TV
I recently learned that you can pair your AirPods with the Apple TV, which I've been using for the last couple of weeks. With two kids sleeping nearby plus noise from the nearby kitchen, it's impossible to get the volā¦
- Adobe Wall Hut
Another fun one from the Primitive Technology channel. I previously linked to his videos a few months back. This time he builds a stacked brick wall around a new thatched hut out of clay bricks. The patience and craftā¦
- 1Password X
For a long time I've used the full 1Password desktop app and its browser plugin that installs alongside for support inside of Chrome. But recently I set up the 1Password X browser extension they first released a couplā¦
- Suncoast Developers Guild
A few months ago I joined the advisory board of the Suncoast Developers Guild, a code school and developer community here in St. Pete. Our company has been involved with this group since back when they first launchedā¦
- Steve Jobs in 1981
I saw this Nightline interview clip with Steve Jobs from a recent Steven Sinofsky post. In this clip is his famous "bicycle for the mind" quote about the personal computer. This is a 21st century bicycle that amplifieā¦
- On the Tumblr Sale
One of the big events in tech last week was that Verizon offloaded Tumblr to Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's company most known for Wordpress. I had my main blog/website on Tumblr back when it first launched in 2007, whiā¦
- The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
I ran across this piece about a month ago, but avoided it after sensing spoilers for the book I was in the middle of at the time. Is our universe an empty forest or a dark one? If itās a dark forest, then only Earth iā¦
- Garmin fenix 5
Wearables have become such a big market these days that there's a wide variety of options to pick from if you want to monitor activity metrics. From the basic Fitbit step counters to more ruggedized outdoor watches toā¦
- Why Did We Wait So Long for the Bicycle?
Roots of Progress has an interesting deep dive on why it took so long for a (relatively) simple invention of the bicycle, even in a time when the principles of a bicycle's components were well understood for a long tiā¦
- Neuralink
Yesterday was Neuralink's unveiling of what they've been working on. Their team of engineers, neurosurgeons, and computer science experts are working on a "neural lace" brain-computer interface. Elon Musk announced thā¦
- Entrepreneurs, Then and Now
I always enjoy conversations with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. This interview (conducted by Slack founder Steward Butterfield) reviews their experiences as founders back in the pre-bubble era and compares and conā¦
- The Bing of Maps
At the recent WWDC, Apple announced an overhaul to their Maps product, including millions of miles of fresh data from their vehicle fleet, along with a new Street View-like feature called āLook Aroundā. Even though itā¦
- Reaching the Early Majority
Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm is part of the tech company canon. It's been sitting on my shelf for years unread, but I've known the general nature of the problem it illuminates for years. We've even experiencedā¦
- Weekend Reading: Tissot's Indicatrix, National Park Fonts, and Starlink
š Tissot's Indicatrix This is a neat interactive tool to visualize distortion due to map projection using Tissot's indicatrix, a mathematical model for calculating the amount of warp at different points: Nicolas Auguā¦
- Primitive Technology
I just ran across this YouTube channel called Primitive Technology, created by an Australian from the North Queensland bush country who attempts to recreate building things with Stone Age technology. He makes his ownā¦
- A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge
I loved this piece, a history of the spreadsheet from Steven Levy originally written in 1984. It's a great retrospective that demonstrates how much impact spreadsheets had on business, even though we now consider themā¦
- Twitter Lists
Like many in the Twitterverse, I love the platform. It provides my main interface to following what's happening, along with staying connected to interests both personal and professional. Jumping off something James wrā¦
- Foxelli Headlamp
Since I do so many of my runs at night (even as late as 10-10:30pm), I've always been mindful of being visible for safety. Until we moved last month, I used to drive down to the Coffee Pot Bayou area and run on what'sā¦
- New Things In New Ways, or Same Old Things In Old Ways?
This latest piece from Steven Sinofsky considers product strategy on 2 axes: What problem is being solved and How it is solved The spectrum he paints here runs from the most conservative (old things in old ways, "incrā¦
- Clippy: The Unauthorized Biography
One of my favorite tech figures, a16z's Steven Sinofsky, gives a history of "Clippy", the helpful anthropomorphic office supply from Microsoft Office. As the product leader of the Office group in the 90s, he gives somā¦
- Weekend Reading: Gene Wolfe, Zoom, and Inside Spatial Networks
š Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction Into High Art Wolfe's work, particularly his Book of the New Sun "tetralogy", is some of my favorite fiction. He just passed away a couple weeks ago, and this is a great piece on hā¦
- Disney and the Future of TV
Disney recently announced details on their upcoming "Disney+" direct-to-consumer streaming service at their Investors Day ā big news for everyone in the tech and media scene since Disney is one of very few content comā¦
- Weekend Reading: Remote Work, Autonomous Behaviors, and AirPods 2
šØš½āš» Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work is the Future Anyone that works in a successful company with a large distributed staff can attest to remote-first being the future for knowledge work organizations. The moā¦
- A Resurgence of Email
Email is seeing a resurgence in an age when everyone's been crying that email is dead. The comeback is not so much as a tool for intra-office communication (though itās still alive and well in most organizations, Slacā¦
- Weekend Reading: Private DNS, Opportunity, and Millennial Socialism
š Announcing 1.1.1.1: Privacy-First DNS This is an old announcement, but new to me. CloudFlare now hosts privacy-centric DNS at 1.1.1.1, available to all: We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a pā¦
- A New Approach to Understanding How Machines Think
This is an interesting interview with Been Kim from Google Brain on developing systems for seeing how trained machines make decisions. One of the major challenges with neural network-based based deep learning systemsā¦
- The End of the Beginning
An excellent talk from a16zās Benedict Evans on whatās next for tech and the internet.
- A Week with the iPad
For the last 7 days I've only been using the iPad. I've had a 12.9ā iPad Pro for about a year, but have only used it in āwork modeā occasionally so I don't have to lug the laptop home all the time. Most of what I do tā¦
- High Security, High Usability
As computing platforms get more complex and critical to daily life, maintaining secure usage gets more challenging. Iāve written about this before, but itās a known mantra in the product and IT space that security andā¦
- A Product Origin Story
Fulcrum, our SaaS product for field data collection, is coming up on its 7th birthday this year. Weāve come a long way: from a bootstrapped, barely-functional system at launch in 2011 to a platform with over 1,800 cusā¦
- Weekly Links: Ambient Computers, Drones, and Focus
š» The Disappearing Computer For his final weekly column of his long career, Walt Mossberg talks about what he calls "ambient computing", the penetration of IoT, AR, VR, and computers throughout our lives: I expect thā¦
- Kindle
A couple years ago I bought a Kindle Paperwhite, after moving almost exclusively to ebooks when the Kindle iPhone app launched with the App Store. I read constantly, and always digital books, so I thought Iād write upā¦
- Voice and the uncanny valley of AI
Great post from Benedict Evans on the state of voice computing in 2017. On wider answer domains and creating the uncanny valley: This tends to point to the conclusion that for most companies, for voice to work reallyā¦
- Melton + Ray on Safari, standards, and ad blocking
The latest episode of Debug had a great discussion with Don Melton and Jim Ray on Safari's development, web standards, and the state of web advertising. The link jumps right to the discussion of ads and the ethics ofā¦