I hate email →
Not quite as hardcore as the author of this article, I’ve been experimenting with turning off push notifications on email (and other mediums). It’s quite refreshing, I suggest you try it.
So cool.
I’ve often thought that time is a better measure than distance to explain distance (I probably didn’t write that correctly). For example, how far away do you live from where you work? Most people would say “half an hour or so”, not “about a kilometer”.
TIMEMAPS (by graphsic)
Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. We can reach almost any destination by train easily and relatively quick. In our busy lives we now think in time rather than distance. Therefore the current maps, as we know them today, are obsolete. Thinking in time affects a map and hence the shape of the Netherlands also depending on the perspective from which we look. From the perspective of Eindhoven, for instance, the Netherlands is relatively small because of the quick and easy connections to other cities. At the same time, seen from a more remote and small village such as Stavoren the Netherlands is much bigger. Not only the location from which one looks, or travels, but the hour of the day is very important. At night the map will expand because there are no night trains and in the morning it will shrink once trains will commence their schedules. The map of the Netherlands will never be the same again.This short movie shows a quick demo of TIMEMAPS and how the map will shrink and grow during 24hours in Eindhoven.
TIMEMAPS can be explored at timemaps.nl
© Vincent Meertens
Great video on designing for behaviour change.
“Help people, step by step, do what they already want to do”.
He discusses how motivation is just one aspect of behaviour, with ability and a trigger being the other components. I’ve found a lot of the talk about gamification over the last few years has missed this piece, choosing instead to focus on extrinsic motivation over all else. Turns out, if you want to promote a specific behaviour, make it ridiculously easy to do when an appropriate trigger is applied. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but it’s powerful to hear it expressed so clearly in this video.
It’s a video of me, everyday for a year. I skipped a few days, but I did pretty well.
Why I switched to Rdio
A few months ago, I started using Rdio full time for listening to music, replacing my previous system of iTunes + a library of music stored on my harddrive.
Since then, I’ve gotten quite a few ‘O RLY?’ questions from people I know about this decision, so I thought I’d write up why I chose to do this, and also how I made the switch.
First, what the frack is Rdio?
Rdio is a streaming music service that you run on your computer + tablet + smart phone. They have a wide library of music to choose from, and you can still mark some music as being in “Your Collection”, so you don’t have to wade through Justin Bieber tracks to find the stuff you want. And you can see what you’re friends are listening to, which provides a good stream of likely-to-not-suck music to try out.
But why?
The simplest reason why I gave up the personal library approach is that I’ve never really cared that much about holding onto a bunch of music. I did it, but it was essentially because there wasn’t a viable alternative, and it just seemed like the way it’s done. I enjoy listening to music as much as the next guy, but have never been a big music discovery person: I have never listened to a band before it was cool.
My old system for building my music library was to listen to the music I had until I got bored of it, then go on a quest for several days to find new music that I had heard people talk about, or I’d use Last.fm to show me stuff I might like based on what I had been listening to lately. I’d torrent all those albums (always full albums, I like to hear more than just the singles) and add them to my iTunes folder, then add them to iTunes. A lot of times, there would be some metadata or album covers missing, and so I’d go through and update all of that so I could always find things in iTunes. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t efficient, and it meant I never heard new music when it was actually new.
Now, with Rdio, I check out the music my friends are listening to, spot an album cover that looks sufficiently cool, and give it a try. A lot of times it’s bad, so I try a different one, and that one’s pretty good. If I actually like an album, I’ll add it my collection, sync it to my phone, and then I can listen to it while I’m driving or taking transit.
There are a few other reasons why I really like Rdio:
One is the conceptual idea that there is a lot of stuff that I don’t need to own, to hoard, to transport between various versions of my computing hardware. It’s funny that as we’ve moved away from physical media for most things, we’ve still continued to maintain them in what is essentially a physical form - inside the computer on your desk. The idea of keeping your own library of music is pretty antiquated when you think of it, whether it’s digital or physical. I just want to listen to music, I don’t need to own it. I never really owned it anyways, it was just on my computer.
Second, Rdio is one of the few services that appropriately combines social networking mechanics with a personal utility. It shows you stuff you’re friends are listening to, without making the whole thing about that. You don’t need friends to use it, but it’s a bit better with them. They seem to really get the value that a friend’s music taste has, and don’t over-sell it, which is what I find a lot of services do when they add social elements. So, in addition to doing what iTunes does better than iTunes, it adds an integrated music discovery engine that doesn’t suck.
Third, they have an API. I’m not actually a developer, but I love contributing to services that open up their data for third parties to build apps. I’d love to see a visualization of how music makes its way through the Rdio network, eventually getting to you. There’s also stuff like Anthm, an app which let’s people near you vote on the songs to play next using your rdio collection. Neat.
How it’s done
On the surface, switching to Rdio is pretty simple: you sign up, and start listening. Done.
But if you just do that, you’ll have all your old music in iTunes, still taking up harddrive space. And it’s even worse on the iPhone, where the synced music will basically double your harddrive space. Yikes. So, here’s what I did to switch completely over:
- Use iTunes Match to ‘backup’ your existing collection - You can skip this if you’re confident that all your music is backed up on a harddrive somewhere, but I wanted to remove it from Time Machine and everything. Let someone else worry about it.
- Add all the albums from your current collection to Rdio - This takes awhile, but it’s kinda fun to go through all the backlog of stuff and realize how much stuff you never listen to. Depending on your setup, select sync to mobile at this step so you don’t have to go back through everything again.
- Burn the ships - Delete everything from iTunes, and your harddrive. Technically, I left a few albums that aren’t available on Rdio (like Girl Talk), but you get the idea. Be bold.
- Listen to Rdio. I should probably mention that it’s a $10/month fee, which is totally worth it for all the reasons I’ve explained above.
So go sign up, and start listening to music like it’s 2012.
PS. While I wrote this, I listened to Kat Edmonson - Way Down Low, Fun - Some Nights, Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls, and Sucre - A Minor Bird
The Book of the Future. Until then, we’re stuck with the book of the present and the book of the past.
I watched this movie tonight (Jiro Dreams of Sushi). It was fantastic.
You could replace ‘sushi’ in the context of the film with just about any other item, profession, or craft. Work hard, develop great taste, and demand the same from others you work with.
One of my favorite parts was when it goes into detail about all the suppliers they use for their sushi. For tuna, they go to the tuna vendor. For rice, they have a rice guy. For octopus, they go to the guy who only sells octopus. Each ingredient is selected with care, prepared with care, and then served with care.
While serving, Jiro explains that he adjusts the size of the sushi based on the gender of the eater, so everyone can finish the meal at the same time. And he’ll adjust the placement of sushi on the customer’s plate if he notices they’re left handed. How’s that for user experience?
It’s playing in Vancouver at Tinseltown, so I suggest you go out and watch it.
