I need a cellophane balloon wall robot in my life.
If a meeting requires privacy, a robot that looks like the innards of a computer on wheels and is equipped with sensors to detect its surroundings comes over to inflate a translucent, cellophane balloon wall to keep prying eyes away.
ā…advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.ā
– Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a 1998 research paper while they were doctoral students at Stanford
Iāve been trying out the search engine service Neeva lately. You can read more about the founding of the company by ex-Googler Sridhar Ramaswamy here (itās a fascinating story).
I come from the time when the web was still in its primordial stage. Thought technologies such as web browsers and search engines were still young and completely exhilarating. I paid for Netscape (and I was amazed when I got to college in 1996 and walked into the computer lab with 8 machines running Netscape, WordPerfect, Office, and the Corel suite). Browsers and search engines and minute-based access to the web were something you paid for (unless you stockpiled AOL disks like I did).
Neeva is definitely a different service. Iām still wrapping my head around it, but it feels like a good mix of āold school webā and what weāll eventually get to once we exit this period of advertising-based āfreeā services that have been the predominate business model on the web for the last 15 years.
The search interface is clean and fast. There are no ad trackers. The company is looking to make money by offering subscriptions. Thatās intriguing for me. Iāve never been a big fan of the saying āif youāre not paying for a service, youāre the productā and all, but it does ease my mind to exchange money for what I consider valuable services on the web (Pinboard for bookmarking comes to mind).
Google is such an intimate part of all of our lives, whether we care to admit it or not. Our memories, correspondence, social graphs, birthday reminders, calendars etc are all wrapped up in the service (at least… much more than that for āpower usersā like myself). But we need alternatives.
Iāll continue experimenting with Neeva to see if itās one of the dandelions that pops up to spread seeds across the ecosystem of the web or if itās just a one-season deal. But it āfeelsā like it has staying power. And for that, Iām excited. Will report back here about my usage as it accumulates in the coming weeks.
One of the consequences of the wonderful democratization that the web has brought us is that now everyone is an expert at… well, everything.
Need a new website? Just use Wix or Squarespace! Sigh.
Trying to fix your dishwasher? Donāt call a plumber… thereās a dozen YouTube vids for your exact model!
Need to draft a will? Thereās an app for that.
Iām not dismissing these examples. Iāve definitely done my share of DIY home repair, legal drafting, and dubious electrical work after a couple of alcoholic beverages and a few YouTube tutorials.
But some things should be sacred, right? We all joke about how easy it is to get ordained by the World Life Church so that you can perform the rites at your friendsā wedding. But fonts… come on. Fonts!
Fonts should be sacred. We donāt need polls or comments or public input. Choose a damned font and stick by your design decision. Not everything benefits from the will of the populace and those who have no previous experience or expertise in an area (see Ancient Aliens).
Sometimes, we just need to leave things up to passionate professionals.
Microsoft is now releasing these five new fonts in Microsoft 365 so everyone can try them out before a new default is chosen. Polls and feedback will be considered as part of how Microsoft picks a winner, and the company is going to spend the next few months evaluating these new fonts and seeing which ones are proving popular. Once a decision has been made, the new default font will appear in Microsoft Office apps in 2022.
via The Verge: Microsoft is changing the default Office font and wants your help to pick a new one
Iām not technically a public āprepperā but my friends and family know that I am very interested in things like food preps, gear preps, vehicle preps, water preps, cooking preps… well, I guess Iām a prepper.
This all stems from a massive flooding event here in Columbia, SC in 2015 when my partner Merianna was 9 months pregnant with our son. We got off easy compared to many in our community, but we had to go a couple of weeks without water from the faucet and a few days without power.
It was harrowing.
Iāve always been interested in outdoor gear and prepping as a concept, but I swore one day while driving around looking for overpriced bottles of water that Iād never put my family in that situation again.
Over the last seven years, Iāve gone through quite the transition to being more prepared for short and long term situations. So reading this raised very real alarm bells given how many of us operate…
According to Pew research, 97% of people in the US own smartphones. We might not all use them the same way, and not everyone has high-speed internet access all the time, but we all face the same danger: over-reliance.
The more dependent we become on AI, the harder itāll be to reconnect with our unaugmented roots should the need ever arise.
Pretty funny because I read this via Apple News and there’s no way to share it out to a web browser on my iPad…
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern that the company’s goal is to “give users a choice.” Those four words are at the core of the problem with the position Facebook has taken since Apple announced the changes last year at its developer conference.
Go grab the iOS 14.5 update in Settings > General > Software Update if you have an Apple Watch… and welcome to our mask-wearing longterm future!
iOS 14.5 will let Apple Watch owners unlock their iPhone while wearing a mask: Another oft-requested feature, especially with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Apple doesnāt support Touch ID in it is newest iPhones, which can make unlocking with Face ID while wearing a mask a pain. But Apple is helping with that. Apple Watch owners will be able to confirm unlocking their iPhones while wearing a mask with iOS 14.5.
Source: Apple releases iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and watchOS 7.4 with Apple Watch iPhone unlock and more
Basecamp (and Jason) has been a bellwether for how companies operate for almost 20 years now. Here’s an interesting memo for the company that I can only imagine more organizations will be implementing in the coming months / years…
With that, we wanted to put these directional changes on the public record. Historically we’ve tried to share as much as we can ā for us, and for you ā so this transmission continues the tradition.
1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account. Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It’s not healthy, it hasn’t served us well. And we’re done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can’t happen where the work happens anymore.
Source: Changes at Basecamp
Iām always annoyed when I open Waze on iOS or Android and thereās a persistent widget asking if Iād like to listen to Spotify within the app while navigating. Iāve never said yes.
Now that experience is coming to … Facebook.
In a way, this makes perfect sense for Facebook (and Spotify). Facebook is looking for more engrossing engagement from younger demographics but current efforts have proven unsuccessful. Having Spotify ābuilt inā to Facebook presumably would encourage more of that while young people doom scroll to Post Malone or Ariana Grande.
This also makes sense for Spotify as it continues to position itself as the ever-present soundtrack of our lives with its own engrossing soundtracks and clever attraction-marketing that engenders constant interaction with the service (whether in a standalone app, website, desktop app, widget, or through other services).
While many of us may turn our nose up to this sort of thing, it will be very successful for both Facebook and Spotify (especially podcasts)… however, I just donāt think itāll get the young people to spend more time on Facebook these days.
āFacebook announced last week an expanded partnership with streaming music service Spotify that would bring a new way to listen to music or podcasts directly within Facebookās app, which it called Project Boombox. Today, the companies are rolling out this integration via a new āminiplayerā experience that will allow Facebook users to stream from Spotify through the Facebook app on iOS or Android. The feature will be available to both free Spotify users and Premium subscribers.ā
Via TechCrunch
Have to say it again… host it on your own. Don’t rely on Spotify or Apple or Google to grow your podcasting audience or business. That path only leads to destruction.
I read through the āApple Podcasters Program Agreementā and related documentation so you donāt have to. Hereās a thread of 11 things that caught my eye that I hadnāt seen mentioned anywhere else.
Source: The Future of Apple Podcasts