Today I am joined by Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac and The Cramped, as we discuss putting our glowing rectangles down, and using an actual pen for writing. Bonus content: Patrick takes me to task over my often lack of editing my blog posts.
Thanks to Hoban Cards for sponsoring.
This week I am joined by Bryan Clark, a mobile designer at Starbucks and creator of Blixt — the best App.net client ever. We talk about mobile design life as an indie, versus at a large corporation. We also dive into our iOS 8 dreams.
I really love this episode.
Thanks to Hoban Cards and Word Counter.
This week I am joined by Bradley Chambers as we talk about iPads. In education, in offices, and how the App Store is changing for good and bad.
This week we are sponsored by: Delight is in the Details and Begin app.
This week I am joined by CJ Chilvers to talk about the ideas behind ‘A Lesser Photographer’. We explore why gear and techniques don’t do anything to help with the ultimate goal of photography: telling stories.
Thanks to my sponsors: Presentations Field Guide, and Antetype (be sure to click through to get the discount code on the latter).
Most readers of this site probably know that Shawn Blanc is a good friend of mine, and so it’s natural that I am going to link to any new project that is done by a good friend. Of course this project is good — it’s Shawn Blanc after all — but this time around things are a little different, and I want to tell you why.
You see I read and endorsed the first version of Shawn’s book Delight is in the Details — it was a good read with an interesting subject. But I pretty much left it at that, which was really too bad for me.
This time around I haven’t seen a thing that Shawn has in the new book (if you can call it a book, it’s more a media kit), but I did get to see one thing prior to today.
Shawn filmed a video called ‘The Creative Life’, and he let me see this video early. Truthfully that isn’t unusual, remember we are buddies, but here’s the feedback I had for Shawn (from our iMessage conversation):
You had me hooked from the first second to the last. No joke. That’s some of the best writing I think you’ve ever done. It was like one of the great commencement speeches.
And I truly mean that, because that video kicked off something inside of me. It caused me to decide to regain my focus and trim the fat of distractions from my life. I’m not joking either — I just pruned my Twitter follower list and RSS feed list heavily after seeing that and more is to come, major changes, but more on this later.
And quite honestly I cannot wait to dive into this updated version so that I can learn even more.
So buy it, or don’t buy it, I don’t really care.
I just want to say thank you to Shawn, because this is already making my life better and I haven’t even seen everything yet.
When I went to launch the new Podcast, I also went through a lot of trouble of trying to find a good chat system. After I killed the idea of recording live I figured there would be no use for a chat room so I dropped the idea. And then at the last minute I decided to toss up a Glassboard where I could host a ‘delayed’ chat — really a comment room instead of a chat room.
So far the Glassboard has worked well, with only 50-60 users, and only a few that are active. It has been quiet most days, but things that are brought up I have found genuinely interesting.
(more…)
Ulysses III, my favorite writing app, is 50% as part of Mac App Store’s Explore Your Creativity promotion. Go get it, it’s an app I highly recommend.
This week I am joined by Jonathan Poritsky to talk about media. We touch on Hollywood being out of touch with technological reality, the ins and outs of streaming with Hulu, Netflix and everyone else.
Thanks to my sponsors, Dark Sky and Timelytics — two fantastic iOS apps.
A while back I posted about how likely people are to interrupt each other given the device/thing that person is using. Richard Koopmann analyzed the survey data and together we put out this post.
A loyal reader pointed out that Koopmann’s data analysis had a few flaws, all minor, and none that effected the conclusion. This, however was not ok with Mr. Koopmann, who has spent considerable time to re-write and calculate his analysis. It’s so robust I gave it it’s own page.
My new podcast has over 2,500 listeners now, so if you have a product to promote now is the time. Click through for the details and pricing.
This week I am joined by Stephen Hackett of 512pixels.net, and The Prompt. We discuss wearables and how fashion is going to make this a tough market to crack, and diving into the unknown waters of what Apple may offer.
Brought to you by:
I had long been toying with an idea for a podcast chat room, but how do you do that when you don’t air live? Glassboard might work.
I’ve created a Glassboard for the podcast and all can join with code BUJRH. Come and comment whenever you want on anything about the podcast. I look forward to seeing what you all have to say.
We've made the in-app purchase for Begin, which unlocks loads of cool shit, free for the Fourth of July weekend. Go get it, the app is free already so there's really no point in not getting the app.
Also, Kyle has made his excellent calendaring app 'Horizon' free for the weekend too. That's an app on my home screen.
This week Ben is joined by Pat Dryburgh to talk about social media. What does it mean, and what is its impact on our lives? Is blogging social media? Ben and Pat also dive into the fear surrounding the NSA and Facebook’s “research” projects.
I’m still working on getting the production quality up, but I’m extremely pleased with this show. The discussion was really great. Thanks for listening.
TBRPOD at checkout to get 20% off for a limited time.I swear by this keyboard, but this is the model with the Green switches, not the Clears that I love. Either way, fantastic keyboard and a great site to save $10 on it. ((I already own two CODE keyboards.)
Sign up with my link and I get something — though I don’t know what.
FYI: I wouldn’t send you guys somewhere I haven’t tested. I’ve bought a few things on Massdrop and its been painless and as described.
Also, Massdrop is so nerdy they have a devoted category to mechanical keyboards.
Pat Dryburgh on his new venture:
And so, after working through a number of design directions and even more iterations, I’m finally ready to introduce Dryburgh Design Co. If you’re in need of a new website, a site re-design, a software interface, album artwork, or simply advice on a project you’re working on, please get in touch.
Pat’s a good friend and a great guy. Be sure to check out his new site’s homepage, one of the best I’ve seen.
Adam D. I. Kramer, an author of the research, writes on an incredibly ugly Facebook page:
The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product.
Ok, I can get behind that, you care about users. That’s nice.
We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends’ negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook.
Oh, you were so close then you had to go and be all honest. So let’s boil down the ‘why Facebook did this’ to just this: we were worried people may stop visiting Facebook because of what they see in their feed. Or, alternatively: we need to know if we should show more or less positive feed postings to users so that they keep coming back more.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Not really about the user, so much as about how much the user drives page views.
Nobody’s posts were “hidden,” they just didn’t show up on some loads of Feed.
Ummm… Let’s try that again:
Nobody’s posts were “hidden,” they just didn’t show up on some loads of Feed.
Hmm, pretty sure not showing up on some loads of the Feed is the definition of “hidden”, but I’m not an expert here.
And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it — the result was that people produced an average of one fewer emotional word, per thousand words, over the following week.
Hold the fuck up now. You found a correlation between seeing negative posts and posting negative things. The research, if I understand it correctly, shows that the more negative stuff people see the more negative they become.
Two parallel experiments were conducted for positive and negative emotion: One in which exposure to friends’ positive emotional content in their News Feed was reduced, and one in which exposure to negative emotional content in their News Feed was reduced.
Meaning Facebook caused users to feel better or worse at random, but on purpose. So instead of allowing for natural balance (seeing both good and bad posts) this “experiment” limited some peoples feeds to showing more good, or more bad. That actually does have a fucking impact on people.
The goal of all of our research at Facebook is to learn how to provide a better service.
Wait, that contradicts what you opened with when you said:
The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product.
I guess goal and reason are different at Facebook?
The experiment in question was run in early 2012, and we have come a long way since then. Those review practices will also incorporate what we’ve learned from the reaction to this paper.
Translation: We are still at it, but now we believe we are on moral high ground.
Facebook, taking UX design to a whole new level of fuckery.
Nice deal on a camera that I just love to shoot with. And fear not about it’s age, just today it received yet another firmware update to fix and keep, the camera current. I am thoroughly impressed with Fujifilm’s update regimen to the point where I would buy an older X100 and know I would be perfectly happy.
You can also snag the X-E2 from B&H for the same price if you prefer.
Almost a year ago I polled readers of this site to see what they might want to see me do more of, and less of. The overwhelming response I got was: we want a podcast (again). I heard you, and I started working on a podcast, and then in August of 2013 I dropped the idea for a bit as life got busy.
Now is the time though.
So next week I am recording the first episode of what will be known as ‘The Brooks Review Podcast’ — really catchy name.
Some notes about what this show is, and is not:
That about covers it.
The show lives here. And will also be in iTunes here.
I am currently taking sponsors, even for the first episode — but I really have no clue what the listenership will be. You can see more about that here, and I’d really love to have you sponsor the show. (Paid podcasts really aren’t feasible.)
A month ago, Marco Arment made the ill-advised statement ((Ill-advised because it required more words to clarify.)) saying:
Podcast networks are a lot like blog networks. (Remember them?) When the medium is young and everything’s difficult, it helps to band together with a large entity to pool resources on tools, hosting, ad sales, and staffing.
He went on to talk about how these networks are not needed anymore. ((Not needed to be successful that is. Important distinction.)) Yesterday Arment sought to clarify his position since he was (likely) getting tired of people emailing him:
Podcast networks are like record labels: they promise exposure, tools, distribution, and money. But as the medium and infrastructure mature, their services are often unnecessary, outdated, and a bad deal for publishers.
I read that post, and I’ll be honest, it didn’t sit well with me. It seemed a bit too defensive and not expounded upon properly.
Just this morning Arment followed up with a longer, and very excellent post. You should read the whole thing, but because I know a lot of you won’t, here are two relevant bits:
Discoverability is overrated. The real way to get more listeners is to make a great, relevant show. The best content tends to be found, but it takes hard work and dedication.
And:
Neutral simply wasn’t as good as ATP and wasn’t as relevant to the audience. The Magazine under my leadership was subjectless, unfocused, and irrelevant to most of my audience. Bugshot was only useful to a few people, and I didn’t put much time into it. All of these had the benefits of a “built-in audience” to give them an initial spike, but none succeeded because they simply weren’t good enough.
A lot of the criticism Arment has taken for his position on the rather pointless debate of whether podcast networks matter, surround this notion that Arment cannot apply his data to the overall dataset because he is so ‘famous’ to begin with.
Bullshit.
Read that last quoted text from Arment, that’s all you need to know. Your popularity and fame will only get what you do noticed, it will not sustain success. That’s why we have ‘one-hit wonders’, that’s why that stupid Color app didn’t go anywhere, and that’s why unknown people are found and loved. Discoverability is based on talent, or fame, but success is based solely on talent. ((Ok, for the most part. But certainly in podcasting unless your fame is Kanye West level of stupidity.))
I’m coming at this from a different angle than Arment. I’ve never been popular or famous. I’ve never built anything really cool. All I’ve done is yell at people to get off my fucking lawn. ((Side note: there was an estate sale on my block this weekend and after the fifth car parked on my lawn I turned on my sprinkler system for the rest of the sale.)) When Shawn and I had B&B we struggled to gain more listeners each month. We didn’t really ever lose any, but we never gained a ton either.
Ditto my paywall. ((Duh.))
When B&B joined 5by5, nothing really changed for us, other than we got better and easier hosting, and got to chat with Dan a lot. But being a part of 5by5 — the best we could tell — didn’t significantly result in any difference to listenership. Other than helping us sell ads, because it lent legitimacy to our podcast, 5by5 didn’t change much for our podcast. And Shawn is famous.
When I was on Fusion, a quasi blog network, nothing happened for my site directly because of Fusion. When I left, nothing happened either.
When I was on the Syndicate, nothing again. (Other than still being listed as part of the network on Asymco — which gets me about 5 extra hits a month.)
Sid O’Neill, whether he wanted to or not, sums up the side urging for podcast networks well:
Getting your show on a podcast network associates you with a lot of other shows that people are already enjoying. It’s a mark of quality, and these days when everyone and their mother has a podcast, it makes it a lot more likely that someone will discover your show.
And:
Obviously ATP’s success is — in part — due to the loyal following that both John and Marco had accumulated over years of putting out fantastic podcasts.
First off all, O’Neill’s first statement would imply that everyone who listens to one 5by5 podcast has listened to at least one episode of every other show. It also implies that the average podcast listener goes to the 5by5 website to see what shows are new.
That’s a dubious argument, as I doubt most podcast listeners hear about a new show at 5by5, unless that new show is mentioned on the podcast they are listening too already. But I have no supporting evidence to back up that claim it’s just my overall sense.
As for the idea that a loyal following played a role in the success of ATP: It did, and I don’t think Arment is arguing it didn’t. But what Arment is saying is that a loyal following only helps to get people to look at what you are doing, but to keep them coming back you have to actually be good.
Better than good these days. You have to be great — even if you are Marco Arment. Actually, especially if you are Marco Arment.
I’d argue a bit with Arment about how easy everything is, but that’s mostly because getting the podcast into iTunes is a bit opaque to most people. But generally speaking there are enough tutorials out there that it’s pretty simple.
Shawn and I got going not knowing a thing about podcasting, and it took me about 3 days of playing to figure out everything (Shawn handled the iTunes end of things, I did the audio). ((For those that are about to email me. Yes, I am starting back up a podcast again. NO, Shawn is not a part of it as we feel we don’t want to revive B&B — we prefer to preserve the memory of it. When it launches you can find it here, right now there is just a badly coded website and a dummy podcast of the smallest file size B&B we recorded.))
In short then, Arment is right that podcast networks don’t matter much. They won’t make a shitty podcast well listened to, and they won’t elevate a good podcast anymore than where it will naturally go. Your best bet is to put in a ton of time making your podcast not suck.