bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Twitter is having a second go at it, with one of their co-founders Jack Dorsey returning to the helm.

Whilst you have the ability to follow Obama, Snowden, Lebron. The challenge has been, sorting through the tweets, to see, to have and participate in the conversations.

The refreshing thing about the platform is, it is about talking, about listening, whereas Facebook is about sharing. They can look the same, but the experience is different. Twitter is about the now, getting as close to having a real unfiltered conversation.

And now, is the last frontier of the internet, it is the ultimate shared expression – the now.  If they can just nail it, so that that experience is more accessible, we’ll see some exciting times ahead.

And in a broadcast internet, that’s what we need.

The three books I recommend the most, for those on the journey of making something from scratch, whether that be a career change, a startup, a personal project… these all fit the bill.

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

This talks through the process of creating something from nothing, it just gives you that prod you need to keep at it. Another second read by Steven is Do the Work, also excellent.

Steal Like An Artist, by Austin Kleon

This encourages us all to collect and then curate ideas that interest US. You, being the key filter, it’s about the things you like, that inspire and motivate you. As these are what help provide the input to all the work we create.

The Dip, by Seth Godin

Tremendous read, it’s for the moments when you’re evaluating, should I continue or leave this project. Often I find, the projects that you care about the most, to then read this book are the ones that you should absolutely stick with. But buy it, give it a read now, then revisit as you need to.

So, I swapped to Mac, around 5 years ago now, I’d held out on Windows for a while.

One thing, I noticed was, on a Mac your workflow was more horizontal.

You Command Tab between apps, and kind of revolve around them.

But when I was on Windows, it was more start + stop.

You minimize and open Windows.

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But so, when you play with Windows Mobile, it is more like the Mac experience and ironically IOS is more like the Windows experience (start + stop).

It’s just an interesting thought, some of these formats work better at different parts of the lifecycle. As your users become more expert, you can evolve the experience, the challenge is keeping that sense of mastery whilst making it easy to start from scratch.

It’s the most basic of analogies, but, if you were power company, the growth of appliances, powered by electricity changed everything.

You went beyond lighting, to sitting in the background enabling households to increase their quality of living.

This rings true, for the App Store on top of the iPhone, Developers using AWS, Websites on the internet.

Give people the tools to build, to solve real problems for your existing customers and they will.

That sense of patient urgency, whereby you are yourself, working steadfastly towards what’s required.

The web we need to save is a post by Hossein Derakhshan, who is an Iranian-Canadian blogger who was jailed for 6 years, around questionable charges. Finally pardoned, he returned to the internet and he shares some thoughts on how it’s changed.

Indeed, when I started this blog, you sought and discovered new bloggers, content and shared them through posts.

Now, the internet pushes content to you, via feeds. Scrolling a feed is analagous to watching tv, as you spend more time with it more content comes to you.

The Stream, mobile applications, and moving images: They all show a departure from a books-internet toward a television-internet. We seem to have gone from a non-linear mode of communication — nodes and networks and links — toward a linear one, with centralization and hierarchies.

The web was not envisioned as a form of television when it was invented. But, like it or not, it is rapidly resembling TV: linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking.

When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts.

This, is, to me indicative of the internet becoming mainstream as a media channel. To his point, it’s turning the internet into a television channel, rather than a book based internet.

It’s compelling read, challenging and provoking. Let me know what you think, I’m still mulling it…

Fueled by companies like General Assembly & SkillShare I’ve noticed a bit of a trend: training for microskills.

People going out, proactively (or paid by employer) learning a few niche skills that help them do their job better.

They don’t need a whole degree, a certificate, just how to improve their presentations, or learn the latest updates in PhotoShop.

This knowledge, is often unregulated, informal but matches a practical skillset or need. General Assembly & SkillShare just offer the platforms to match the supply and demand.

Reflecting on my Time post from 2011,  one thing I’ve noticed in terms of cultural differences between the US and New Zealand is how time cost is viewed.

For private companies in the US if they can speed up time to a goal with money, they’ll do that.

In NZ it’s different people wait a little longer. Two sides of the coin.

You might infer that time is less valuable in NZ, but that’s not the case, it’s just different approaches to business.

The opportunity cost is less as the competitive landscape isn’t as deep. In the US, you have direct competitors, then indirect competitors who can launch in to your space overnight, you’re not fighting on 2-3 fronts, you’re fighting on a dozen.

Underpinning this the pay off is a lot larger, if you can make that move before others, you get a jump on the market.

I’ve found it quite curious and insightful, so thought I’d share for those I know on either side of the Pacific.

A valuable habit I’ve developed over time, is collecting things.

Collecting little ideas, designs, ways of saying things, quotes, lists, blog posts, notes.

Anything that for some reason keeps my eye, almost like a digital scrapbook.

It’s now at this point, that’s really paying dividends, that cool product tour page I saw a few years ago – bam Evernote still has that, or the speakers I like, over on Pinterest. Or the hiring notes I have from our first employees (nuts).

But the most valuable thing about the collections, is when I can share them, mix them up, take inspiration from all sorts. I really like that. It makes my work now even better than what it would have been – if you don’t yet have this habit, give Steal like an artist a read, it’ll help bring to life what you can do with your collections.

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ps

One thing I haven’t cracked, is digitising a decade of notebooking. Now my notebooks aren’t always insightful but they transport me back to a moment instantly, what was I thinking then?! If you have any experience with this or ideas, I’d appreciate it. -Ben

The challenge with streaming 5 years ago was that there weren’t the agreements in place, now most rights holders have solved that. There is now a standard rate, which Apple, Spotify and others base on.

The next challenge, is then, now that the wholesale rate is fairly standardised, how do you innovate on top?

It would be incredible if Apple opened up a API (or a full SDK) where anyone could request a song, or a beat, or a sample from Apple, then they pay on a volume like pricing. This then would mean developers could build new innovations on top, want to make a running app that plays music based on weather and speed – suddenly you could. Or a recipe app that plays you Sinatra whilst you cook…

Think of, Twilio but for Music.

Every single app could add the dimension of music, for a small fee.

Please Apple, do this.

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Update: @d_jones points out that Feed.fm currently offer this – music as a service.

Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Amazon, Apple, ThePirateBay.

Like Spotify has done for music, I think the TV & Movie industry as made some real in-roads to providing greater options for consumers.

Getting those options outside of the US is yet to come to fruition but it is getting there.

And same-day releases…better, but still more a ways to go I think.

But it can also be the best thing to do.

Suck it up. Take a breath. And do nothing.

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Inspired by Antifragile.

I will admit I’m not a primary user of Pinterest, but I do use it for a couple of things.

1) Travel planning / inspiration -> the best way to figure where/what you want to do next is from images from that place. Anytime I’m traveling I do a quick search on that area to see what we could do.

2) Design Inspiration -> soaking up design inspiration to apply at home and at work.

With Nudge we actually see, if you’re targeting females Pinterest performs exceedingly well, even if you don’t optimize for it.

In fact Pinterest is a key driver of the top 10% of the content we analyze.

So, if you haven’t yet had a dabble with it you should. And then secondly they’re slowly opening up their ad product, promoted pins, so you can get visuals in front of your key demographic. It’s worth a look, I’m gonna have a play.

Tesla is going to launch a at home battery pack, for storing electricity from solar.

Wherever you go the electricity market is quite convoluted. It’s not easy generating electricity, feeding it in to a leaky grid, then collecting payments for that grid from everyone. It’s almost like a tax system.

For example, how is the price decided? Often it’s the cost of the most expensive contributor to the network. Such that if there is a expensive coal generator, the price is set to that.

For those that are generating solar power, and are feeding in to the grid, the challenge is how do you fairly compensate for that? Of course you would want the most expensive option but the power company doesn’t want that as they lose money on it.

And those that generate electricity at the moment use the grid more as they treat the grid as a battery, feeding in to it on low consumption then drawing at high consumption.

The battery pack helps alleviate a lot of this, you don’t need to feed in to the grid, you can store it for later. And then when you need electricity you can top it up – ideally if at all.

SolarCity has already begun installing Tesla batteries, mostly on commercial buildings like Walmart stores, which have to pay higher rates when they use lots of power during peak hours. Tesla’s batteries let them store up solar power when they don’t need it, then use it when rates are high, shaving 20-30 percent off their energy bills, according to Ravi Manghani, an analyst at GTM Research.

“When batteries are optimized across the grid, they can direct clean solar electricity where (and when) it is needed most,

Source: TheVerge

I suspect, this little innovation will be the catalyst for a lot of disruption in the industry.

And who knows what will happen if electricity becomes as cheap as internet. When kilowatts are consumed like megabits.

Wearable technology would provide a seamless, invisible, like utility.

Disney has invested $1b in to just this and visiting Disneyland is almost like a little incubator for what it could be like.

This piece by Cliff Kuang over on Wired about it is excellent, give it a read or a instapaper.

I’ve yet to go but need to go check it out.