As summer comes, we get to lighten up. A bit. As well as the productivity tip of the week, the latest email newsletter covers how to get more money at your current job – and how to get another job instead. Plus folding phones, an OmniFocus clone for Android and the first hints of sequels to The Blank Screen.
Read more in this week’s The Blank Screen email newsletter.
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It’ll never happen. Google wouldn’t give a monkey’s but Apple would. And I don’t know that I’d want it to happen anyway: it wouldn’t be much of a step from that to having every phone run the same software and then where would we be? I don’t like using Android phones but there’s no question that iPhone has benefited from there being competition. Though plainly Android took nothing from iPhone, nooooooooo.
Still, it could happen in theory – because it is happening today, it is just now just about possible to run an iPhone app on an Android phone:
…six Columbia University students have bridged the gap between the two platforms with something called Cider (via The Next Web). Not to be confused with the other Cider software (for OS X), the Android version of Cider essentially fools iOS applications into believing they’re running on an actual iPhone or iPad.
There’s work and there’s work. You would never use this in real life. And I have serious questions about the smartness of university students who don’t know the difference between portrait and landscape: have a look at their video about all this.
I automatically resist claims that there is, for instance, one single thing that makes people successful/rich/attractive* (*delete as applicable) because there isn’t. But the Inc website makes such a claim (via Lifehacker) and it is persuasive. I’m sure there is more to it but I could be convinced that this one thing is an essential part of being successful:
The only major personality trait that consistently leads to success is conscientiousness.
This is the Personality Trait That Most Often Predicts Success – Inc
Besides, I like it. I like that this is successful trait. Read on for some statistical research and more detail.
You’ve negotiated for a raise, you’ve got some extra cash, all is well and right or at least better with the world. And then it goes wrong:
It seems like common sense: a larger reward encourages a greater effort. So if you need to inspire a person or team to strive harder, an obvious tactic is to offer more money. Reality, however, is not that simple.
Even the mere mention of money can be enough to change our mindset: It has the power to make us more selfish and competitive, while also putting some useful social contracts on hold. Meanwhile, large financial rewards transfer challenges that would have been pursued for passion or creativity’s sake into emotionless financial exchanges.
The Unpredictable Consequences of Using Money as an Incentive – 99U
Recently I’ve seen several times when an article has been published under one title and then changed – but either they forget to change the web address or their system won’t let them. Here’s the address in full for that article:
http://99u.com/articles/26185/how-money-makes-us-lazy
So the original headline was How Money Makes Us Lazy and I think that’s a better one.
The rest of the piece goes into specifics and is interesting.
I once went to a seminar about emotional intelligence. The first hour or so was rather good: I’ve forgotten it now because the rest was so bad that I walked out, but there was something interesting and appealing about an idea that alongside regular intelligence one can have an emotional one. I think I was expecting it to be an empathy or maybe street smarts.
It was bollocks.
This fella had lots of great ideas but then he did the science trick: stick the word science in there in order to make your concept sound better. He even put some maths up: he put a formula up that proved EQ was better than regular intelligence and when I took it apart and questioned the variables, he didn’t know what they were.
He then proved that emotional intelligence was real by revealing how science could detect people’s hearts from a few feet away. “How?” I asked. “Heat? Electrical current? Sound?” His eyes flicked to the assistants at the back of the room. “Also, the heart is only the seat of emotions in fiction. In reality, the heart is a pump so what precisely is your point here?”
“Next question?” he said, looking around the room.
I shut up. But soon he was being very forceful about how emotional intelligence is so strong that if you have it, you cannot be beaten by anything or anyone. Somebody else in the room asked what happens if such a person meets someone else with emotional intelligence. Apparently it doesn’t matter, you still can’t be defeated. A third person asked what happens if one such person meets two or ten or a hundred such people.
“Anyway, time for coffee,” said the guy.
I make it sound as if the group was against this guy and there were a few of us but that was a day-long workshop and I was the only person who didn’t come back after the break.
And I didn’t mean to go off on this with you, I was just going to point you at a piece by Creativity Post that I thought you might be interested in:
What makes some people more successful in work and life than others? IQ and work ethic are important, but they don’t tell the whole story. Our emotional intelligence — the way we manage emotions, both our own and those of others — can play a critical role in determining our happiness and success.
Plato said that all learning has some emotional basis, and he may be right. The way we interact with and regulate our emotions has repercussions in nearly every aspect of our lives. To put it in colloquial terms, emotional intelligence (EQ) is like “street smarts,” as opposed to “book smarts,” and it’s what accounts for a great deal of one’s ability to navigate life effectively.
How Emotionally Intelligent Are You? Here’s How To Tell – Creativity Post (May 2014)
See? They said ‘street smarts’. I really think this fella had some good material that he torpedoed by being stupid. Which is entertainingly ironic. And nothing to do with the Creativity Post which I do think is worth a read.
Apple has released its iOS Human Interface Guidelines as a free iBook. And the thing of it is that even if you don’t like Apple, even if you’re looking at me like that because you can’t conceive of being interested in interfaces, the book is a good read. I think everything is interesting, except football, and behind anything is a lot of thought. Read this to see what lies behind the apps we use every day.
From iOS Human Interface Guidelines, free on the iBooks Store
That’s a page recommending that an app just gets on with it. No fancy startup screen, just wallop straight in there.
Startup screens, sometimes called splash screens, are where a company’s logo or the app’s name are displayed at the start. Lots of people hate these and argue that they’d rather get on with using the software but the splash is often there because it takes time for certain apps to load and the alternative is that you have nothing to look at. The alternative is that you wouldn’t be sure it had even started. So they can be necessary. But Apple is really keen on you making apps that load quickly enough that you don’t need them.
I read the old Mac Human Interface Guidelines in paperback a lot of years ago and I’ve never designed a Mac app. It’s still like getting a peek at a philosophy of craft. I don’t believe there’s a Microsoft or an Android equivalent book but I’d read it if there were. Mind you, Microsoft has done something similar in blogs and I did read those until they suddenly took a daft turn into being demonstrably ridiculous. That’s where I read about a redesign of Microsoft Word and its last blog post showed a final screenshot and you could see what huge flaws remained.
The Pomodoro technique is where you set a timer and you work for, say, 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes. Then you do it again. And again. The name Pomodoro comes, through a reasonably short but twisty route, from a type of clock or timer that was apparently popular somewhere. This timer looked like a tomato. And the word pomodoro means a kind of tomato sauce. Flash forward to the age of the app and we get this:
Looks more like a fella with green sunglasses if you ask me, but it’s a tomato timer for the Pomodoro Technique:
Pomodoro Timer helps you boost your productivity using the Pomodoro Technique™, one of the most effective time management methods out there. Not only will you get a fully configurable timer that lets you customize every aspect of the technique, but you will also enjoy a clear and beautiful user interface.
Pomodoro Timer costs £1.99 UK or $2.99 US and is available in the Mac App Store.
I want to tell you this:
Being a bully may be good for your health, study finds
Children who bully others have lower levels of inflammation later in life
Childhood bullying has been linked to a number of physical and mental health effects, including lower self-worth, depression, and serious illnesses later in life. But until now, researchers had largely focused on examining these effects in victims of abuse, not the bullies themselves. This may soon change, as a long-term study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was able to demonstrate that “pure bullies,” people who have never experienced bullying themselves, do in fact face a long-lasting health effect from abusing others. As it turns out, that effect is actually beneficial — even when compared to people who aren’t involved in bullying at all.
Because I want to show you this:
Though do go pay some cash to the Frasier folk now, okay? The show is available on DVD.
I so clearly remember saying I would only ever buy flip phones. It’s not that I’m usually an angry kind of guy but it is that I so regret the fact how we have given up the ability to slam a phone down. At least with flip phones you can say “Here’s what I think of your idea” and scrunch the phone closed. What can you do with a non-flipping mobile? You can yell “Take that rejection and shove it, scum” but then you get your pinky out and tap a tiny button. If I have to have bleeps, I want it to be because this is a family show.
Nonetheless, I changed away from flip phones and have not once looked back since 2007. Can’t imagine why.
And now I think I would change to this. Or I’d change to what it’s going to become once manufacturers get to it, once designers take the raw idea and include it a complete system that works as well together as this concept does on its own. In other words, right now it looks awful – but it also looks fantastic.
Read more about it – quite a bit more – on the Human Media Lab website. And a nod of the hat to @GuyKawasaki for the link.
I’m an iPhone user. Can I have more money, please?
A report by Battery Ventures – I’ve not heard of them but they’ve a nice website so they must be serious – examined who buys iPhones and who buys Android phones. It’s oddly hard to get the full report to examine but many, many sites are all picking up on coverage of it by Re/code. As am I. The Re/code piece is unusually light on details but its headline analysis reads:
Android Users are More Likely to Take the Bus, While the Frequent Flyers Choose iPhones
Then:
“You would think iPhone users are all pinot-drinking yoga enthusiasts,” said Jonathan Sills, the Battery Ventures entrepreneur-in-residence who conducted the firm’s study. Well, that’s at least partially true.
It turns out more iPhone users do in fact prefer wine to beer. They are also more likely to own stock and to have flown on a plane in the past year. Meanwhile, Android users are more likely to rely on public transportation, describe themselves as religious, have eaten McDonalds in the past month or to smoke tobacco.
I use public transport a lot – I mean, a lot – and it’s certain that the convenience is a big factor. I live in a city, I can do this. But money is also an issue: for me, a car would be a handy indulgence, I simply don’t need it. Would I have one if money were no object? Probably. Not definitely. But probably.
I don’t own stocks, I can’t remember the last time I was on a plane but it’s 50/50 whether it was within 12 months. I’ve never tried tobacco. I have often eaten McDonalds.
I need to buy me an Android phone, clearly.