"The program of my ranch life was as follows: Each morning, at eight-thirty, having been reading or correcting proofs since four or five, I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes occupied me till nine, and at nine sharp invariably, I began my writing. By eleven, sometimes a few minutes earlier or later, my thousand words were finished. Another half hour cleaning up my desk, and my day’s work was done, so that at eleven-thirty I got into a hammock under the trees with my mail bag and the morning newspaper. At twelve-thirty I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode."

Jack London in John Barleycorn

It’s what you do with what we do

I saw this tagline a few weeks ago in a TV commercial for a cell phone company.  The message is clear and meaningful: cell phone companies power the communication layer in our lives.  They provide the technology that allows us to communicate, but short of censorship what we choose to communicate is out of their hands.

Before the Groupon acquisition, we thought of Hyperpublic in a similar light.  We powered a data layer on which developers built location-aware applications. The inputs into a final product were (1) our data and (2) a variable in the form of a developer’s decision to build something cool/fun/useful/boring/simple/etc. We had direct control over the first input - the data sources, their quality, how they could be accessed, etc. - but the second input was largely in the hands of HP’s users.

I’ve been thinking about this dynamic a lot recently, both from the perspective of product makers and product users.  Makers churn things out with the expectation that people will do something cool with them.  Sometimes, though, the unexpected happens (Airbnb’s vandal scandal is an extreme example).  Makers should expect variability in how their products are used and be prepared to adjust accordingly (the ever popular “pivot”).

For product users, web and mobile apps can improve facets of our lives, but no app alone can solve all of our problems.  Even the hottest new social dating startup can’t change the fact that, at some point, a date seeker will have to close his computer, put on a nice shirt, and buy someone dinner in the real world.  Same goes for job seekers, shoppers, artists, and every other class of user I can think of.

"Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why’? I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not’?"

Robert F. Kennedy

On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after claiming victory in the California Democratic primary.  He was 42 years old.

(via ourpresidents)

(Source: jfklibrary.org, via ourpresidents)

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Nostalgia: just found a bunch of old Hyperpublic decks from last summer.

Experimenting with Spotify (Redux)

Few things are as personal as music.  It defines moments and becomes wrapped up in our memories.  People’s music streams are a window into their lives.  I can look at a friend’s Spotify stream and infer so much about him: his mood, his location, the weather, his plans for the evening, who he’s with or planning to be with, and more.

Given how personal music is, the music listening experience after Spotify feels incomplete without a social interaction of some kind.  Months ago I critiqued Spotify’s iPhone app and claimed I would switch back to the iPod app if Spotify didn’t improve its mobile UI, but I haven’t been able to make the switch.  The app still stinks, but I underestimated how well Spotify fills music’s social layer.  It feels great to have someone like my favorite album on Facebook or subscribe to my new playlist; it even feels good just knowing that people are seeing what I’m listening to if I want them to.  So this morning, when I opened up the iPod app to listen to an album that’s not yet on Spotify, I only made it two songs before switching to Spotify and listening to something that my friends could see.

"I think the secret is really observation. If you observe what’s going on, try to figure out how people are thinking and determine the times of your day, I think you can always write something that people will understand."

Sam Cooke on success in music.

Syncing Problem in Dropbox for Windows

I stumbled upon a frustrating syncing issue in Dropbox yesterday when I couldn’t find a shared folder created by a friend.  The filename of the folder ended with a period, which is a no go for Windows files.  This meant that the folder was visible in the Dropbox web app but not in the desktop app.

Web App

Desktop App

Dropbox has helpful instructions and a bad files check script for diagnosing syncing issues like this one, but I hadn’t seen them before.  

Results of bad file check

Problem solved.  (This is obviously not a problem on Macs; Windows stinks.)

*Thanks to Josh for the sanity check.

Charisma in the classroom

One of my favorite professors from Williams passed away last week.  He was brilliant, intense, and charismatic.  I still have my papers and exams from his class on jazz history and spent a few hours re-reading them over the weekend.  I tend to look back at previous work and minimize it with thoughts of “wish I had tried harder” or “should have spent more time on it,” but with him I don’t feel that way at all.  I worked hard because I wanted to impress him, and in the process learned the material, got a good grade, and became a better writer and critic.

True charisma is invaluable, especially in the hands of a professor who spent 20+ years at the front of a classroom.  Professor Brown will be missed by many, especially those who had the privilege to know and admire him.

Here’s a playlist of the music we studied in class.

"I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea."

Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz