spaboleo

I am wondering for a long time whether this differs from person to person based on their preferred mode of thinking.

As a seemingly overly visual thinker the aspect of making several small decisions about how to layout what I'm writing down by hand also seems to play a huge role in that. I have to make positioning and thereby spacing and sizing decisions, choose the color, as well as making decisions on in what style (caps, cursive, script) I write each letter. I can easily use graphical elements like lines, arrows, boxes, etc.

Anything created digitally by primarily typing will always have a more dynamic and flowing nature, while following the linearity of the typed sequence of characters. It takes away a lot of the decisions that I have to make when laying out a handwritten note.

Anecdotally, I seem to remember mindmaps created with digital tools that rearrange elements automatically based on available space much less than hand-drawn ones. Yet, those come with their own downsides.

In this study they observed specific patterns that previously were attributed to learning and remembering.

"The present findings suggest that the intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain’s connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering."

But you are right, they do not directly _prove_ that handwriting yields a greater learning effect.

Cloud since a web interface and email interaction are showcased in the keynote.

I agree, yet I consider this to be the other way round. I treat "rm" still like a direct removal of the file and therefore use it with caution every time. Having it trash the file on my local machines is just a to me hidden fallback. But it is a very valid concern, of course.

Thank you. I just recently discovered the nRF52 as a potential solution for my own BLE project. To use a keyfob as a housing is brilliant and very 'stealth'. I have no experience with the nRF52 chips, but this will be a very useful resource for me.

In your blog post you mention that "switching between 24km/h and 25km/h" is very important. May I ask why? Isn't such a speed difference almost negligible as you easily surpass it when pedalling?

One of the few aliases I always use is:

  alias rm='trash -i'

I've also added the -i flag to the following:

  alias mv='mv -i -v'
  alias cp='cp -i -v'
  alias ln='ln -i -v'

This is awesome! It would be perfect if there an occasional artefact line crossing the entire page vertically could be added. You know, those lines caused by an old crusty ink jet print head. Also a visibly cast shadow by the allegedly scanned edge of the paper due to misalignment on the flat bed would add to the illusion.

I'm very interested in those Boox tablets. Is there a way to have them display a static image (a custom website or Android app) when they are in standby? Or do they force-switch to some screen saver mode, like many e-readers do?

Uhm? Why do you consider a resting heart rate of under 75bpm to be a bad condition?

I'm just assuming that you are within the average age group of hacker news readers (somewhere between 20 and 40 years) it's not really recommended for you to be above 75bpm.

I agree and this kind of work day contraint is by far not suitable for everyone. If you'd tell average Joe, working in retail in some DIY market filling the shelves (just an example for a rather simple job, no implications, judgement or anything) that he from now on would have to work just 6h instead of 8h a day for the same paycheck...would this make him do the work more deliberately? I highly doubt it.

Who actually uses them?

I still can't wrap my head around why people are willing to rate products on pages like amazon or leave restaurant ratings on yelp and write detailed reports on tripadvisor or holidaycheck, but are not willing to do the same for their workplace and schools attended.

The obstacle seems to high for most of the users to write honestly. Only a fraction of the potential people that could be rating (all of the students for example) actually do it.

Facebook would have had the chance in the early days. But I guess that card is drawn...

At some entrepreneurial meetup I met a german scientist, who was working on applying their image and information system's detection algorithms for exactly that. Could be useful to make an "uncheatable" driver's log.

Didn't hear if it actually made it to market. It still would be quite niche, as the only "improvement" would be that the user wouldn't have to enter the current mileage by hand and can just snap a picture.

However I have a strong feeling that other tools, such as "automatic.com" or other systems that plug into the Can BUS of the car are of more use, if you have to manage a small fleet of cars with varying drivers.

The problem with this is most likely insurance and safety related. :(

Dangerous.

The "investors" buying their share expect it to be a safe investment. – Spread damage one could say. But especially in the housing industry the risks are really high that you could actually have to pay on top.

Just a few examples: - Unforeseeable maintenance - Legislative changes that require major changes to your building substance - The risk that tenants mistreat the rented space (think of moisture and fungus due to wrong ventilations habits)

And the worst for you: You have to communicate and deal with the 100 of your "micro-investors". Let's say something really bad happens that requires all of them to pay on top just to avoid a major loss in the futurs...just imagine the number of them trying to get out of that. Maybe even with legal actions.

I have a strong feeling that you didn't think that through and got stoked by the potential to milk a cash cow after you did some basic calculations. :/

I carry this idea around since a couple of months as well.

And I would totally be willing to pay $100 per month for this, if it only would include literally everything:

Paywalls of newssites, magazines, books, scientific papers, series, movies, music, audiobooks. Everything. - DRM / Region Code free. - With curated meta-data. - Accessible wordlwide. - Free choice of audio tracks, independent of the customer's location. - Available upon release (no delays). - Streaming and local download (well-established, non-proprietary file formats!). - All accessible from this one central "media hub".

Most of the services have lost me as a customer, due to ridiculous limitations (Player), only streaming possible (no sufficient "download over wifi and playback offline" options) etc.

What the content providers are missing...it is about convenience. I'd be willing to pay $1200 a year to have this convenience, freedom and feeling of not being "screwed over".

Right now I am paying for none of those services and lent my media on DVD or BR from friends and colleagues. Or listen to free music streaming services and podcasts. I get audiobooks on CDs from the local library. I get books from friends or the library. I don't have cable or anything else.

The content providers are missing out. Because my yearly spendings for media are below $100 and I pretty much can observe similar behavior amongst my friends and colleagues.

It is a big opportunity, but it has to be done right.

Doesn't www.tripit.com do exactly this?

Think of this from the viewpoint of changing demographic: People get older and need to taken care of, which is shockingly expensive.

There are several attempts, with prototyped like housing/neighborhood scenarios, where the younger generations (students) live together with the elderly. Older people might live in the ground-level apartments, while the young students wouldn't worry about walking up 2-3 flights of stairs. They could do some shopping, basic housekeeping, watch them take the right medication in the morning. In return the elderly could return the favor by exchanging non-monetary things, like home-made food. Or they could just pay for the students to lower their rent.

All those solutions are great, but they require serious building of infrastructure, which can't be done immediately.

So services like the one described above seem to be an intermediate solution. The problem is that all those "micro-tasks" (take the cleaning the litterbox example) are too easy/short to be paid a sufficient amount of money to be done. It's an entirely different league if you pay a gardener to come to your house twice a week for 3-4 hours. And even gardeners/poolboys etc. have issues if they have to drive from client to client for 30min. or more.

It would be great if there would be a platform that allows people living geographically close together share a qualified person doing specific services. Take someone walking their dogs every morning as an example. The cost can be shared amongst 6-10 dog owners. While the time spent for walking 6-10 dogs might only double (you need time to collect and return them) instead of increasing 6-10 fold.

So the service should bundle and curate requests from a neighborhood or house. If a couple requests are similar, like "I would love someone to clean my windows every X weeks." They get bundled into a service package for which local contractors provide a quote. And other people living in the neighborhood can then pledge for the service. With every new customer joining the average price is lowered for everyone.

Kind of like a curated form of a cross between taskrabbit and kickstarter.

The issue with this is the increasing number of people on mobile devices and variety of device types.

Worst case (and sadly most common one): You share the dropbox link, the recipient clicks on it, it opens the browser, triggers a download, he has to choose a download location, download vanishes or takes a few seconds that are spent doing something else, worst case: the person forgets about the file / best case: he digs ups a file manager, navigates to the downloaded file and opens it, player selection...maybe...and all that for a 5-15s just audio-greeting message :/

It should just work out of the box.

People seem to use Messengers for that. Like Whatsapp, which play back recorded or attached Audio. But yet this is only mobile.

Yeah it is a total hassle to research that and don't get screwed. One can basically spend days researching on that topic and in the end you'll still feel like you made the wrong decision.

The problem with this is that you (as a customer) mostly are locked down by... a) a long-term commitment (2 year contract) b) the process of changing is made so complicated (30 day grace period, waiting for technicians)

All that makes it hard for the customer to adapt to the ever so fast changing market.

The only way I see is to virtualize this. So that you would no longer be a customer of cellular provider X and internet service provider Y, but you'd be a fixed-fee customer of Z-ALL. The company Z-All then acts as a customer for provider X and Y.

It would be interesting nevertheless!

Regarding the first topic: Check out Handup (https://handup.us/) – It's not exactly what you described, but they are kind of a middle man between the homeless, charities and you as a potential donator.

I dig the peer 2 peer chat.

Thanks for your reply. I would love to hear from you in an update-post, when those customer relations actually end and you have to establish new ones. Especially given the situation that you both, can't profit from the company's relations and are working remotely.

Awesome travel blog as well...went straight to my feedly! Cheers

I totally disagree with this! There are obligations, such as young children that clearly might keep one from jumping onto a plane for 20h (from Europe) to get to south-east asia.

I am really wondering how you communicate with your customers?

Do they know that you are living in places where most of them might even can only dream of going to for vacation? Or do you just simply "not tell them"? How do you handle call requests then? Or situations where the customers just invites you over to discuss the project in detail in person?

And what are their reactions like when you tell them that you currently are living just a stone's throw away from a beautiful sandy beach? What is the quota of lost jobs due to that?

Thanks!

Otherwise really insightful article. I enjoyed it :) And being a frequent traveller myself I would recommend you to stay longer in predefined places. Like you said...catering for the logistics (accommodation, internet access, checking out the neighborhood, finding grocery stores/restaurants) all that is yet interesting but really tiering and time consuming. It is a better choice to stay somewhere for 3 months, plan ahead for the next location during that period and use weekends or other "time-slots" of your choice to explore the region. If you want to travel to a place that would require you to have more time than a regular weekend offers, you should take a vacation. Which would require you to work the time on weekends the weeks before and of course one should stick to a set number of days off per year in addition. It's the student-dilemma...when there is no one micro-managing you, people tend to slack-off. So you should keep yourself accountable towards yourself in that situation. Like you were employed, but by yourself ;)

Oh and another question: What is your girlfriend doing that she has the time and financial backup to do this with you? Is she working in the same field?

Yes, I agree with you that the way we manage our contact date is outdated.

The problems nowadays are:

1) If you include pseudonyms and literally all user data, you will earn the distrust of millions of users that don't want this data centralized in the databases of one company. (I know it is possible to figure out almost all the interconnections e.g. via IP, Cookies, Location data, your browsing history. But still they are given implicit. Handing all your user data to one company firsthand plays in a totally different league.)

2) This system, especially the automatic updates via sent out API calls, requires deep integration in countless pieces of software. Windows, Mac, Linux and all their ways of managing contacts, the corresponding mobile systems need to adapt and what about the business sector? You could counter that it is a standalone app and the user has the choice on every platform. And that would be the next problem. All the existing services (about.me, dooid.me, even the Gravatar, or even providing a downloadable or scannable .vcard file or QR-code on a self-hosted webpage) are not used by any majority of people. Why? – The majority simply does not submerge that deeply into the technology. Yet another service that bring yet more responsibilities (setting up privacy boundaries etc.) might be appealing to the techy-nerdy kind, but not at all to "Joe Average".

3) What this would need is huge company's backup. And to be honest, Google has had the chance...but they screwed it up. Google+. The idea behind the circles is great (hence the resemblance to your "spheres"?). But tying it to yet another social network and forcing it upon it's users is not the way to build a user base that trusts and accepts the platform. I don't believe any piece of statistic released talking of 400 Million registered users (of course, because they force it upon the Google Play and YouTube users) or the 100 Million active users (of course, YouTube commenters, still want to comment). If I check my Google+ Stream it is dead to 95% of my contacts. There is less going on than on facebook. (Which we all apparently distrust and has seriously lost the contact management game.)

All this leads me to the conclusion that the introduction of an important functionality like the one you describes can't be done by any kind of service.

It should become a "protocol". Maybe a vcard-protocol. And in the best case a P2P based one that is encrypted. Why? - My user data doesn't change every second, so there is absolutely no need for 99,99% availability. - Our smartphones are online almost 24/7 anyways. And in addition our various other internet access devices even increase that number ;) - Ot the information could be circled around in the P2P-network, highly encrypted. As the data size of maybe a profile picture and a bunch of contact details is not really an issue, this actually would be feasible. - It could be combined with PGP, maybe even use the very same keys. Which could and should increase the number of users encrypting their conversations. - The information would not leave the users hands unencrypted. - The possibilities are defined by the protocol and the user has to set up allowances (sphere permissions) accordingly on the platform he uses. - As you now can setup various IMAP mail accounts you could create various vcard-information snippets for all the various identities you want to manage. - A unique ID of course is necessary, this could be used for the NFC/BT or just motion-sensor/timestamp/location based ("bumping") handshake to exchange the information. The encrypted vcard-information package can of course be published directly or in form of a link/QR-code via NFC/BT/local Wifi. - It should not be file based to the user. - The encryption (I don't know if PGP allows this) should be able to terminate itself if the user didn't refresh the permission or didn't prolong the availability.

The big problem is...how can a protocol like this be made attractive to be used. One would need a group of manufacturers/companies, like Google with Android and it's web-based contact database and Apple with iOS and it's horrible contacts App.

The problem is...there is too much money in user-data... So I guess all of the above will remain a dream. *sigh