At BOA Steakhouse West Hollywood
Birthday dinner – at BOA Steakhouse West Hollywood – See on Path.
So This Is The Future
Music, snark and visions of the future. Sometimes my own, sometimes borrowed
Noteworthy Links | Edition 1 - Create Your Own Game Of THrones Sigil
Jesus Christ is no Fan of Path Founder Dave Morin. A refreshing and hilarious take on a few entrepreneurs sounding like they take themselves too seriously.
Make sure you have a backup pair of underpants. It’s that funny.
http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com
Throughout the realm, countless realms are creating their sigils and preparing for Winter. I’m no RR Martin, but I can still build my house of Scott sigil. Create your own courtesy of the folks at HBO.
I love this little tool from HBO to keep us busy between episodes. My only wish is that they would have provided a family saying generator…
Ever wanted to create a time-lapse video using Google Street view images?
Well neither did I till I saw what the agency Teehan + Lax put together as a side project. Yeah I said agency and side project. Check it out, but make sure you use Chrome
Facebook to Google, Check, You’re Move!
Like a great chess master, Facebook in a single move, has complicated things for Google’s and Apple’s plans of world domination. This move has been dubbed Facebook “Home”
Facebook Home Is
Well here is the fun part, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t exactly describe what it is, but rather what it isn’t. According to the Facebook Founder, “Home” isn’t a phone, it isn’t an operating system and isn’t an app, at least the like we’ve been used to. And to a large extent he is correct. ”Home” is a layer that sits on top of the Android that provide a Facebook-centric view of the world. To everyday Facebook users, that means being able to see on your home screen, the latest messages from your friends, their events as well as status updates. All powered by Facebook For many of us, that is our world.
But there is more. Home is more than a Dashboard for you and your friends Facebook activity. Indeed it aims to make unnecessary, any visit to the the Android operating system, by including an App Launcher within their experience. This means that b just dragging your favorite apps to it, you can launch Instagram or Facebook Messenger from it.
Why Was Home A Brilliant Play
Strategically, its a brilliant play. By staying away from hardware, FB focuses on two areas its been known for. The first area would be our social habits and communication patterns, while the second area is building a great experience. Don’t agree with me on the latter, well go back to the old MySpace for a refresher course of what social meant prior to FB.
Another reason why I applaud the play is from an experience stand point it’s a Trojan Horse for Google, effectively using Google’s very own success at distributing Android while at the same time creating an experience layer that aims to monopolize user’s interaction, time and attention.
Lastly by leveraging HTC to bring a phone to the market specifically designed with Home in mind and at such a low price point, it adopts Android low pricing strategy to attack developing markets, the markets which are seeing the greatest growth for Facebook.
Here is a great article on the strategy and one on the launch
What do you think of Home? If you are an android user will you download the app?
I’ve Seen Tomorrow And It’s a Waze’ian World
Like many others, Robert Scoble being the most obvious, I’ve been waiting for apps to start leveraging the enormous amounts of data we generate and explicitly share into a utility. Yet except for a few exceptions, exceptions we will be talking about, the majority of apps continue create more noise rather then filter our the signals. Why can’t apps learn that on weekdays when I wake up I always check whether and traffic?
A Glimpse Into the Future
While many lamented the switch in iOS from Google maps to Apple own’s offering, it brought about a search for alternatives. One of the most popular or talked about alternatives was the Waze app. Saying the Waze app is an alternative to Apple or Google maps is like saying a motorcycle is an alternative to a bicycle, sure technically its correct but it so much more. So let’s look at what makes this app so special and what should other app makers strive to emulate:
- Built on user input: with 34 million users, it will be hard for any company or process to be able to build the information network ways has along with the participation they are encouraging via some neat gamification features
- Reacts in real time: unlike Google’s or Apple’s map product, as you drive you get traffic updates from other users that help the program re-route you. From traffic, to accident to road closures, it all works together to get you home not only safe but faster
- Values User Experience: whether through happenstance or effort, the app flows really well. Care is taken to make sure that we’re not asking drivers to do too much (ie no chatting). The reporting interface is quick and the buttons are big. All and all its a well crafted app. Even simple things like the map switching to a darker BG at night is a welcome little touch
- Gamification: and while it’s a word we have all come to hate because of the abuse of this methodology, Waze like Foursquare uses gamification features to its advantage to make sure users not only use the app for way finding, but continue to be active reporters of road hazards and closures. This is done through the accumulation of points which allows greater customization of your avatar
Trust and technology
Something really interesting happened on this trip to the future. I learned that to get the most value of the app, you had to trust it. You had to trust is realtime re-routes to a degree i hadn’t done with any other app.
When Yelp gives you a restaurant rating, you are free to believe it or not and plan your evening accordingly. With Google maps, although you may get a few routes to your destination, once one is chosen, it doesn’t change. However with Waze that is not the case. You indeed get your choice of routes to take (the fastest one is by default the one you must opt out of), but along the route, as new information (ie hazrds and accidents) is reported, your route is updated on the fly.
Many times, It’s taken me on side streets to bypass a busy artery. I’m getting use to it, but in the future this feeling of having to trust the technology will only become more of the norm.
Have you downloaded the Waze App? If so, what are your impressions? Did it take you a little time to get use to the real time rerouting?
Thought via Path
Another incredible performance by Zander at Flag football. He singlehanded kept the other team at bay recording a safety. Yes a safety in flag football. We lost with 0.10 seconds to go but he left it all on the field. So proud of him – Read on Path.
Noteworthy Links | Edition 1 - Music coming to Twitter
Simply put a set of 3 to 5 links you will find interesting, delivered fresh every wednesday to beat those Hump days doldrums.
The New York Times is redesigning its websites and while its doing that it’s giving us a peek at the process starting with the article page.
I love the fact that they are being this open and iterative about the redesign. It’s a great way to get feedback as well as build up positive equity for the coming changes. Smart move on all counts.
http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/index.html
Don’t believe in the YouTube content Revolution? Think again
No plot necessary. Sometimes we just want to see a cool fight scene without having to sit through 87 minutes of poor dialogue and under-developed characters. This brought to you of talented YouTubers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DaPJuteodfs#!
There something musical brewing at Twitter
Last year, WeAreHunted.com was acquired by Twitter. And since then, the team behind the site has been working fast and furiously on Twitter Music, a new music discovery tool that would leveraged users tweet and twitter behavior to suggest artists. Along with Vine, Twitter is not just staying put as a distribution network but finding ways to create new content on the existing platform or making it easier to discover content within it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57573859-94/twitter-acquires-we-are-hunted-readies-standalone-music-app/
The Twitter Platform is Dead, Long Live The Twitter Social Network
The recent news that Tweetdeck, a third party timeline app recently acquired by Twitter, was being shut down on all but two platforms, was another reminder to the early-adopters and tech-savvy crowd of just how much the company’s DNA has evolved over since 2006, all in the name of profitability.
A developer’s dream
When Twitter first started out it was this curious startup that only geeks and early-adopters got. Even after its success in 2007 at SXSW, most non-tech or geeks reaction to their first few uses of Twitter was “I don’t get it”. However to geeks, it’s openness in the form of their stable and inviting API was a stroke a genius and it quickly converted many geeks into evangelist. Twitter added fuel to the fire by being very active within the dev community, adding features to the API and in general being very collaborative. It’s safe to say that in the early days Twitter not just survived but thrived because of it legions of loyal geeks. In this point in the game it was about growing the user rolls..
Going Mainstream
An early fork in the road came in April of 2009 when Ashton Kutcher openly challenged CNN to a race to the first millionth follower. The event created a lot of fanfare for Twitter and was the first sign of its growing cultural relevance outside of Silicon Valley. Soon after, now that Twitter was on their radar, many public figures including Oprah would create. Presence on the network. This jumping of the shark would do wonders for it in terms of new users. A few years later in 2011, Twitter would hit a magic milestones for advertisers, the 100 million active users mark. With its user rolls now fat, Twitter’s mission was to figure how to make money.
The Day The Twitter Universe stood still
On march 11, 2011 a message to theTwitter Google group signaled the nd of the era of no-limit collaboration by making it clear that Twitter was focusing on the timeline experience and that it was reclaiming the experience in the name of consistency. However it was clear that Twitter felt it had to own and tightly control the timeline experience in order to make money.
More of the same
What has happened since is more events that push twitter towards a more closed and controlled environment with making money still a goal. One is left to speculate as to why it has chosen to abandon its first fans. While that API remains the spirit of collaboration is lone gone. Developers and tech-savvy users are left to wonder why. Was it a resources issue as there were more than 300,000 apps leveraging twitter or was it reclaiming the influencers and power users, the very audience for 3rd party apps, the ultimate goal.
Lost in that endaveour are its identity and most ardent supporters. the irony is that it is now at its most popular and vulnerable point. the audience that uses it are fickle and new entrants like a Snapchat could quickly spell the end of Twitter. Now heather it makes money or not, the implicit contract it entered with its early users is null and void. We’re no longer needed, since having been replaced by Oprah, the Trump and hashtags in superbowl ads.
What do you think? Do you still trust Twitter and have a positive view of them? Why?
