I wrote about my love for the Studio Neat Canopy here. Literally, the only thing it lacks compared to the new iPad magic Keyboard is the different viewing angles. It’s virtually perfect for me.

One thing I omitted to mention is that when you have your iPad in portrait mode, there’s enough space on the side to sit an iPhone, giving you the ability to have an extremely portable two-screen setup. It’s not an extended desktop or screen-sharing, of course. However, if you use Continuity, as I do, copying and pasting between devices is simple and fast.

This ultra-portable and ultra-productive setup is my goto configuration for the time being.

27 April 2020 — French West Indies

A thoughtful and interesting must-read, worth all of the twenty or so minutes it’ll take you to read it in detail. Take your time and ingest. It’s packed with sensible and researched information.

Opening up

Most developed countries will be moving into the second phase of the epidemic in the next two months. In one sense, it is easy to describe this next phase. It is semi-normal. People can go out, but not as often, and not to crowded places. Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table, and airplanes where every middle seat is empty. Schools are open, but you can’t fill a stadium with 70,000 people. People are working some and spending some of their earnings, but not as much as they were before the pandemic. In short, times are abnormal but not as abnormal as during the first phase.

24 April 2020 — French West Indies

I’m a little late with publishing my posts to be strictly adhering to the challenge. Still, as its a voluntary test, I’m not particularly worried as no money is relying on this working. I guess if I publish 30 articles in the 30 days with an approximate schedule of one a day, then it could be considered that I completed the task.

Many of us use services on a daily and regularly that are free. What many of us don’t seem to appreciate is how those services are paid for. That in itself might seem like a silly question to some, that have come to expect that services are generally free.

Take, for example, your electricity supplier. Look at the bill, and you’ll note a number to call in the event of needing help. Help could be something serious about having no power or merely having a query on your bill. When you call you will no doubt fall on a human being (eventually) whose role it is to help you through the process.

That human has to be paid, the equipment the person uses (computers, telephones, databases, headsets, etc.) have to be purchased, and the building in which the person is located, along with the associated insurances and taxes need financing too.

A small number of years ago, these types of services all had a cost. The cost was published before you used them (sometimes). Then these services started to be offered as part of the price of the “product” being purchased (tagged on to your electricity bill), but something changed. Now services like these are expected and are expected to be offered for free.

The Internet is the same. Most services, particularly social networks, are entirely free, albeit that they have employees. They possess enormous, phenomenally-expensive datacenters and telecoms bills that would make entire countries cry over. And yet they are free to use.

Most of us are led to believe that the data they collect on us is being sold, paying for everything. In most instances, this is simply untrue. Facebook doesn’t sell your data. To my knowledge not never has. What they sell is access to some of the meta-data employing a bidding platform that is ultimately used to sell advertising. You see the difference. If Facebook sold the data, it would quickly devaluate as it would be out there for everyone to use freely. Freely as in when they want, but also without cost.

Companies are inventing subtle ways of exploiting data for two reasons; one is to keep the services free at the point of consumption and the second, to prevent loss in the value chain.

10 November 2019 — French West Indies

We're not going to get to Level 5 autonomy anytime soon for a whole host of reasons. That's why it's interesting to see a new idea about self-driving cars.

Car manufacturers have carefully studied the pain points for drivers and, I'm guessing by using Jobs To Be Done Theory, have set out to solve an exponentially simpler problem that point-to-point or start-to-finish autonomous travel. They're concentrating on highway driving only, in what they call on-ramp to off-ramp. The basic premise is to allow the car to take control as it gets on to the highway and relinquish the same as you move off the highway.

As a majority of distance and time spent driving in the US involves highway driving, this is an opportunity to reduce friction for drivers without overly complicating the technology required to achieve the goal.

Autonomous driving will not happen overnight, it’ll take a generation or two to fully get used to the prospect of cars deciding what they do on a road, and this is a very good way to help,take part on that change management.

9 November 2019 — French West Indies

A long, but informative article, on redef from Matthew Ball. Really worth the read.

I was thinking about this and other ideas around Fortnite. 12 Million people attended a Marshmello concert hosted by Fortnite. Then 12 hours later, they did it again with almost as many people attending.

Think about that for a minute. A 12 million person concert! In less than 24 hours it was possibly something like 20 mIllion. That’s phenomenal, for the phenomenon called Fortnite.

I began wondering what it’d be like to hold more educative or informative events based on the same idea. Not only could it reach more people, but precisely because it could reach more people it could make more money. The biggest Conferences attract tens of thousands of people. A similar structure to the one used by Marshmello could provide a rich conference experience to millions.

Instead of buying a 10$ dance or a 10$ outfit, how about a 10$ concert?

We’re living in interesting times.

8 November 2019 — French West Indies