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SREO (Matt's NGO / consultancy work)
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CoachBot: a tool for language-learners
Master Arabic: Alex's new book on learning the Arabic language
Alex's new Arabic podcast
Macdrifter (Gabe's personal site)
Gabe (not really any more) on Twitter
Technical Difficulties (Gabe's old podcast)
6:50 - http://www.sphider.eu/ - Resource to make your website (or others) searchable.
8:50 - Podcasts are great for ruminating on a topic, where you’re just riffing and talking real time about it, but it’s not great for thinking through things. People that I’ve seen who become more podcasters than writers, I think their logic suffers for that. They’re not ever really thinking things through at a deep level other than to have a kneejerk conversation.
11:02 - I think there are a couple different flavors of app developers. There are those who are in it for the money. Then there’s the app makers who have their own personal problem they’re trying to solve. Then of course there’s the career developer. We were more in the bucket of we had a problem we wanted to solve, and we wanted customers to pay to help us solve that problem. We learned a lot. 1) iOS development is not cheap. 2) There’s not much of an equation or plan that you can follow. It’s like viral marketing is luck of the draw and what sticks, no one really knows. We were naive, thinking ‘if you make a good thing, people will come to it.’ That’s not really how it works.
14:52 - We learned that we were really terrible at business because we were in love with our own principles too much. And we learned that you have to give up some of your principles to be really good at business.
19:42 - I have left Twitter without announcing it. I don’t think Twitter and Facebook are good for people, in general. I think that it’s not healthy the way people are interacting with each other, and focusing in on things and they’re too easily deceived by what they think the world looks like, and I’m a victim of that, looking at the world through the kaleidoscope of Twitter, thinking I understand how everything works because I read fivethirtyeight.com! The conscious choice to limit my view of the world almost predestined everything. Coming out of this election, I would be shocked because I viewed everything differently whereas maybe the old way was I watched the news, I read different newspapers, I talked with different people, I consumed all of this different content and pulled it in and came to different conclusions.
24:45 - I left Facebook because of their attitude towards privacy, and the way they’ve repeatedly tried to trick their users into revealing more information about themselves. I’m a big privacy proponent in my own life, I don’t really like algorithms following me. I feel like a bit of a nut talking about this.
There was a conversation where someone told someone to delete their Facebook app. I said, to a large number of people, that’s like telling them to delete their mailbox. That’s their connection with family and friends, that’s how they know what’s going on with their actual associates. And to tell them oh you should get rid of that is naive at best. I don’t need facebook because I have other ways to connect with friends and family, and they mostly aren’t on facebook. (Laughs) I’m a hermit.
I don’t think a non-commercial product will replace facebook. Money is what drives it. So collecting user data will always be the business. And selling ads will be the business because that makes the most money. In order for their to be an alternative that didn’t track people for people who cared about privacy, most people don’t want to pay for that service and they especially don’t want to pay what the company would make on ads instead. So I don’t think that will be replaced. I do think facebook will eventually die away because younger people care about different things. Younger people are using different services.
29:11 - Right now, I don’t think there’s enough money in privacy for people to make much off of it.
Quick App Notes:
I like Slack a lot.
I like Sublime Text. There’s a commercial version I use a lot.
I use Keyboard Maestro a lot.
I have Hazel on Mac. Copied on Mac and iOS.
1Password of course.
I’m really hopeful that the Devonthink Team adds document provider service to Devonthink on iOS.
40:00 I would own an iPhone at this point just to use Devonthink. I have so many notes because that’s how I’ve always been. I’ve always been the guy that created 3x5 cards with bits of information and kept them in a shoebox and created a little tagging system with little colored flags. That was just how I worked. On the computer, it made sense – I’m not going to run out of space.
A great example of this is Christmas shopping. I have a little note that’s just information about my wife’s shoe size, ring size, which is great for gifts. I also have a note with the gifts I’ve already given people, so I don’t get them the same gift five years later. Little bits of information.
43:17 – Apple Notes is great.
49:00 – Task Paper is also great.
1:05:18 – I love mind mapping, that’s a big thing that I do. And my favorite is iThoughts.
1:07:56 – I use Arq which encrypts things before it goes to backup servers. Backblaze is great too. And Little Snitch is useful for monitoring what apps are connecting to the internet.
1:10:33 – I recommend people get this: Napkin. Great little app for Mac.
Gabe’s Picks:
Film:
1) The Hayao Miazaki Blu-Ray Collection
Music:
1) QC35 Headphones by Bose. They are fantastic. Get the iMic flip USB cable.
Book:
1) I use Audible. All the time.
