Self Distraction

Self Distraction

Hic – What did I do night?

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I don’t need this and I’m not suggesting that you do either, but, well, we all have friends who might find this a wee bit useful, don’t we?

Sobrr [is] a social networking app that deletes everything posted to it within a day. Photos, messages, even friends and new connections all disappear after 24 hours, a spin on the ephemeral messaging service Snapchat. The idea, summed up by Sobrr’s catchphrase, is to help users experience “life in the moment.”

Sobrr’s 24-hour limit does two things. First, it offers users a social media safety net. That photo of you doing a keg stand? Share it! It’ll be gone before you sober up. Second, it encourages users to repeatedly check Sobrr for new content they know will soon be deleted.

Social Network Sobrr Deletes Your Drunken Debauchery After a Day – Kurt Wagner, Re/code (16 August 2014)

The full piece is here but you really want to go to Sober directly, don’t you? I mean, your friend wants to go there.

“Are You Making This Common Mistake with Graven Images?”

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From the gorgeous McSweeney’s site (via the equally good-looking Kottke one comes this Buzzfeed-style version of the Ten Commandments.

There’s one of them in the headline above and here’s one more that tickled me:

37 Things in Your Bedroom That You Need to Get Rid of Right Now, Like Adulteresses.

More Engaging Copy for the Ten Commandments – David Tate, McSweeney’s (23 July 2014)

Run to read the other eight, okay?

Weekend read: the end of in-flight video

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At least, the end of those terrible, terrible screens in the back of the seat ahead of you.

Earlier this year, I boarded a United flight from Newark to San Diego. After passing the first few rows, a young boy turned to his mother and asked, “Why aren’t there any TVs?”

“It’s probably an older plane,” she responded — but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The aircraft, a 737-900 with Boeing’s Sky Interior (a Dreamliner-esque recessed ceiling lit with blue LEDs), had only been flying for a few weeks. It looked new, and it even had that “new plane smell” most passengers would only associate with a factory-fresh auto. But despite the plane’s clean and bright appearance, the family only noticed the glaring absence of seat-back screens. To them, our 737 might as well have rolled off the assembly line in 1984.

Why your brand-new plane doesn’t have a seat-back TV – Zach Honig, Engadget (6 August 2014)

You’ve already guessed that it’s because we watch more on our iPads with their gorgeous screens and just about anything we fancy watching. It’s not hard to beat those dreadful airline screens with a limited selection – all of which has been edited. They’re edited to take out material that might upset you as you fly in an airplane – I believe Snakes on a Plane gets shown as a three-minute music video – and they’re cropped to fit the crappy screens.

But what interested me in this full Engadget article is why airlines hate those screens too. That’s what sold me: this is true, this is how it is going to be on all aircraft, everywhere, just as soon as they can pull it off.

Self Distract: the end of Kindle?

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My personal blog this week is about a claim that ebooks and specifically Kindle have had their day and are now steadying off as just one format instead of the dominant one. I don’t know if it’s true but there’s something to it and I’d be okay if ebooks stayed as one option.

I just wish Kindle books weren’t so ugly.

Read more over on Self Distract.

Star Wars productivity advice

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Make better films.

I’d start with the scripts, myself.

But if you’re not George Lucas, there is apparently still much advice can you take, mmm, from the films of the Wars of Star. Writer Yael Grauer knows more about Star Wars than I thought existed and has found eight apposite quotes to help us in our work.

Spoiler: one of them is the one you just thought of – “Do or do not, there is no try.” And one of them is just “Ready are you?”. But overall the eight have interesting points, starting with number 1 where she says you could benefit from reframing a job, from looking at it all in a different light:

“Deliver more than you promise. The best way to be always certain of this is to deliver much, even when you promise nothing.” ―Master Tho-Mes Drei, Jedi Master and Jedi Temple instructor

Somewhere on your journey, you’ll hit a point where you have enough work coming in that walking away from a client doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. As a Jedi, you are sworn to protect the peace and justice of the Republic. Therefore, you would follow both the letter and the spirit of the law of any contract you sign, putting effort into each project that you’re obligated to complete. That means you may find yourself in a non-ideal engagement you’re committed to finishing, even though you’re dreading every minute of it.

This is where business coach Pam Slim, award-winning author of Escape From Cubicle Nation and Body of Work, recommends defining specific benefits to your plight. Maybe it’s realizing an assignment will look great in your portfolio, or perhaps the money from a project will pay your healthcare bill the month. “Sometimes making it super concrete can create a positive correlation for you in getting something done,” Slim said. Focusing on the direct reward of completing a project can take your mind away from the challenges.

8 Jedi Mind Tricks for Freelancers (and Star Wars Nerds) – Yael Grauer, Contently (4 August 2014)

Seriously, I could do without the Jedi bits. But I like the points her full article makes.

Merlin Mann: Scared Shitless

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Mann is a particularly interesting speaker that I’ve mentioned before. He’s behind the idea of Inbox Zero and I like his productivity dash. But this might be my favourite thing of his.

Not the most useful: Inbox Zero is really useful. But favourite. Mann talks less about being productive per se, more about what it is like committing to things. I actually think the opening three minutes or so of this are a bit standard-issue-presentation stuff but then I find it honest and open and rather inspiring.

An English professor on the dying art of the password

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First passwords went from the “Open Sesame!” kind of literature to stuff we type to log on to things, then they went from actual words to incoherent symbols in an attempt to be more secure, now they don’t seem to even be all that secure.

News this week that Russian hackers have stolen 1.2 billion passwords makes me want to throw up my hands in resignation and change all my passwords back to “password.”

As a professional wordsmith (English professor and writer), it saddens me that these “words” we’re supposed to “pass” when we log onto our email and bank accounts even remotely share the same categorical denomination as the words that actually embody value for humanity: Words like “April is the cruelest month” or “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” Today’s passwords aren’t words. I demand a new term for them.

The Lost Art of Passwords: What We Lost When Hackers Conquered the Internet – Randy Malamud, Salon (9 August 2014)

As a professional wordsmith, I twitch at the ugly repetition of the word ‘lost’ in that headline but I don’t write an article about it. And I just use 1Password to get around most of Randy’s problems. Still, Malamud’s full piece is part entertaining rant and part collection of password gems such as my new favourite from the Marx Brothers:

This is design

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It angers me – actually angers me – when people insist design is making things pretty. You get this a lot from PC users who say Mac ones are fools paying extra for pretty boxes when Windows is just as good. It’s like script writers who claim dialogue is a tasty little extra you add on your final draft. These are both bollocks but they’re pervasive and persuasive bollocks because they’re said by writers who can’t write dialogue and they’re usually said by PC users who couldn’t afford a Mac. I have more time for the PC users, I think scriptwriters who can’t write dialogue are like taxi drivers who can’t drive.

But it’s still bollocks. Dialogue and design are things you see on the surface but which reach down to the very bones – or they don’t work at all.

And here’s an example. I got this from an article on Business Insider which ran a report about an internal Apple University. This place tries to convey to new employees what design, and everything else, means to Apple. And it reportedly includes a point where a lecturer will show employees an image of a TV remote control. Business Insider believes it’s this one:

google-tv-remote-1

That’s a Google TV Remote built by Sony. It’s a TV remote. A remote control for your TV set. It looks like one of those model helicopter controls coupled to an ancient Blackberry or perhaps a label maker, but it’s a TV remote.

And then of course the Apple professor shows Apple’s equivalent:

apple-tv-remote-1

Yes, it’s prettier. But you’ll also use it. That’s the thing: not fancy aesthetics, not pretty pictures, but something that you will use to do something you want to do. Design is not about device per se, it’s about you. Making it work for you.

That’s design.

If you search for it, it will come

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You’ve done this. You’ve searched eBay for something from your childhood – maybe Spangles, if they wouldn’t have gone off by now, maybe that particular blue-and-white-striped Cornishware teapot that your mother has asked you to find and by God you’ve searched every antique shop there is in existence and still there’s no sign of the bloody thing.

(There is, by the way. Look at TG Green’s website for genuine Cornishware stuff. I’d have found that several years sooner if I’d know that blue and white stripes are a Cornish thing. Who knew?)

But if I hadn’t found the real thing, there’s a good chance I would eventually have found the fake.

If enough people search for something on eBay, they will find it because it will be made for them.

“We send [manufacturers] data about what people are looking for on eBay and they respond and turn it around incredibly quickly,” president of eBay Marketplaces Devin Wenig told me. “We have a really big China export business to Europe and the United States. And they respond very, very quickly to consumer taste, whatever it might be. It’s really remarkable to see how quickly the manufacturing base adapts to the demand signals they get.”

In other words, that red wool-blend Cross Colours hat on eBay might not be the relic from 1989 it appears to be, but instead a newly manufactured replica. (It is, of course, against eBay’s policy to sell counterfeit items.) Yes, there’s a huge and thriving “new vintage” manufacturing sector built around—and tailored to— your online searches. It’s why, for instance, you can find something like an original 1960s-era Pan Am tote bag, and its new “vintage style” counterpart.

Why eBay Tells Chinese Manufacturers What You’re Searching For – Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic (6 August 2014)

Let’s do it. Let’s make up some fictitious 1980s craze and see if we can’t get it made for eBay. It’ll just be like a convoluted form of 3D printing.

Read LaFrance’s full piece for more.

Why? Microsoft releases celebrity app

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So far it is only available on the US iTunes Store but Microsoft has released a free iPhone app that lets you stalk – I mean, track your favourite celebrities. Seriously, why?

Okay, I’ve never bought a celebrity magazine, I have never chosen a film based on the actor in it – or the director, for that matter, though I have because of the writer – so I’m not the target market here.

I’m also not someone who would find the app’s name anything but irksome: it’s called SNIPP3T. All caps and with the 3 instead of an E. Cool. Like a naff password. If you’re interested and if you have a US iTunes account, knock yourself out here.