Twitter's New Patent Policy Could Be Huge For Recruiting
If you haven’t heard, Twitter has made some changes to the way they will view and use patents. The big point is that the person who invented the patent, the engineer or designer, now has say in the matter and the patents can only be used defensively (I’m paraphrasing and simplifying, so go to the link in the title to learn more).
There has been a lot of talk about what effect this action will have at Twitter and on the patent ecosystem as a whole. One side effect that I feel has been overlooked concerns recruiting. Through involving the inventor the way they have, they have created a huge disincentive to work anywhere else. If you are in a position within a company where you are creating new software, and the company has any patent strategy whatsoever, you can bet that those patents, at some point, will be used to curb innovation elsewhere. That is how it has worked thus far.
Designers, engineers, and other inventors have accepted this as part of the grind, but Twitter has changed the game. You can now work at a place with a value system for patents (a very public value system). They have made a public agreement now and everyone now knows what to expect. Talented inventors now have a choice. You can work somewhere where your work could eventually be used against others (think Yahoo!). Or you can work somewhere where the company will use patents more or less as you intended it to be used.
Imagine what happens next when inventors grow accustomed to that way of working at Twitter and join another company. This is where the seeds will plant. Sentiment will spread amongst their peers and pressure will build within companies to change. Designers and engineers will stop filing for patents until policies are changed and rectified. That is where this is going. The democratization of patents.
This is absolutely early on, but you can bet that this is coming. Twitter has changed the conversation from, “Well, this is just how it works,” to “No matter who you work for, if you invented something that gets patented, you should have a say.” Boom.
And they should have a say. The next few years will be interesting to watch.
Best website presentation setup yet. (Taken with instagram)
The 4-inch iPhone: Fo' Reals, Yo
John Gruber just ignited the argument for a larger screen. In a big way.
For a long time people have openly desired a larger screen for their
iPhone, yet it never really made any sense to me or anyone whose
opinion I really respect. A bigger screen means new sized apps and
that’s a big ask on developers.
Yet, Gruber has rummaged up a comment on a forum on The Verge that
walks through a realistic scenario for a larger iPhone screen and
that’s when Gruber drops the bomb…
“Methinks “Colin” wasn’t merely guessing or idly speculating.”
I think the Daring Fireball knows about the new screen size and can’t
say anything because he doesn’t want to screw his sources. Then when
this dropped he found a way to let everyone know exactly what to
expect.
Big news. Really big news.
The Abandoned Middle
I downloaded an app earlier today called Everyme. I took the time to properly set up the app which includes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn authorization. I actually love apps that require a very specific sign up process because I feel like they are telling me that they can do more than I can currently with my established networks. On top of that, I have been reading about this app for sometime (maybe around a year or so, I can’t quite recall).
After the set up was complete, I was taken through a lengthy walk through of the app. The intro presentation, which precedes the step where users can actually use the app, has many steps that although seem visually designed well, cognitive load was clearly not a factor in the design process.
By the time I hit the main app screen I was both a little tired and surprised to find a bunch of Circles (right, like Google+ Circles). I thought I already knew that I didn’t want Circles. But I kept an open mind because I love finding ways of using new apps, at least as long as they are apart of the tech crowd conversation. The more I poked around the app the fewer ideas I had on how to use it.
The Circles, which I feel have been poorly named, seem somewhat smart and the technology behind them seems somewhat functional.
“Hey, text and email the people that share something in common with you.”
Doesn’t sound too crazy. But as it turns out, I think it is. My Circles are my work, my last job, the city I live in, my high school, and my family. I’m going to now briefly describe how much of the technology here just doesn’t work.
Circle 1) My work. This circle is a hodgepodge of people that I office with. Some I email and text with multiple times a day, some I rarely speak with.
Circle 2) My last job. As I co-founded my current company with the same people I worked with at my last company, this circle contains old email addresses and salesman of which have no bearing on my current business.
Circle 3) My city. I live in a city of 20 million people, São Paulo, Brasil. This Circle is titled exactly that “São Paulo, Brasil,” which is important to note for the next Circle.
Circle 4) My city (yeah, again). This time, however, it is called “São Paulo, Brazil.” If you missed it, the country is now spelled with a Z, which is the english spelling.
Circle 5) My high school. Yes, I still know these people. No, I don’t really interact with them. And, as with Circle 1, it is filled with a hodgepodge of people that I actually know and could interact with to people I barely even remember. This group also has random people in it that I’m guessing may have also gone to high schools with a similar name. Not sure, but there are people in this group that are at least 15 years older than I am.
Circle 6) My family. This one has 12 people in it. Basically if you have the last name Thomas you are in it. And if you weren’t fortunate to have that last name, you didn’t make the cut. Thomas only club.
The problem with each of these Circles is that I can not think of one thing I want to share with these random groups of people. This app has built a social network for the abandoned middle. The Circles are too big to really engage with. The people in them belong to too many sub-groups in my real-life social network for me to having anything to say to the whole group and have it be meaningful. The Circles are also too small for me to be able to broadcast anything one of these groups, they don’t have enough of any of the larger group for the broadcast philosophy to work. Again, the abandoned middle.
The solution to a few of these, my points, is to manage my Circles. The problem with that is that I have been taught very thoroughly by Google that I don’t want to manage Circles (by name, in fact). I already have a bunch of online social networks that I have to manage. Facebook has helped a great deal with their Smart Lists. They seemed to get things more correct in their lists than Everyme did with their Circles.
I began writing my response to this app after reading a review by one of its investors (and one of my favorite bloggers) MG Siegler. And I’m going to go ahead and call him out on this one. I’ve never read a more wishy washy post by him. Ever. By the end of his post, linked in the title, I was convinced that he was doing his best to support a budding portfolio company, but nothing more. I don’t even think he likes the app or has the faintest idea what to do with it. Go read it. It’s 10 paragraphs of “They’ll figure something out… I hope…”
Everyme will go one of two ways. Either this will be a Burbn and they’ll trash this and build something that gets adoption and maybe even sells for a great valuation, or they go the way of all the earth. Judging by the thinking behind this attempt, I don’t have a lot of faith in the team, but I wish them the best.
I’m seeing slab serif fonts EVERYWHERE right now (including many of my current designs). I hope they don’t run their course too quickly. My feeling is they’ll have some staying power. And yet, when Burger King is on board, you know something has got to give. (Taken with instagram)
Moving The Human Race Forward and Weightless
In what is the natural next step for the space exploration company SpaceX, they now have scheduled dates to dock with the International Space Station, marking the first time a private company will have done so.
Elon Musk is behind this startup. He’s somewhat of an outspoken person with all kinds of ideas about how the future will look. And he’s aloud to say basically whatever he wants. When you tackle problems the size of space flight for consumers, you know a few things.
This SpaceX project captures my imagination. I want to go to space. I want travel to France from New York in 30 minutes. I want to cruise around the moon for my second honeymoon. Companies like this move the human race forward and we’ll likely look back at this moment in history and see it as a significant one for space flight.
If you’d like to see what SpaceX has been doing over the years hit up the source link in the title.
travel musk
Mike Daisy Hired Into Apple's PR Department
Shocker: In a strange twist, it has just been made public that Mike Daisy, the monologist who caused a media storm around Apple’s manufacturing practices, has been hired by Apple’s PR department.
Mike Daisy hit the limelight when his shocking stories from Apple’s manufacturing plants in China were played out through nearly every major news source in the US. News was made again when it turned out his stories were more or less based on fabrications of his imagination.
I haven’t been able to read what exactly his role is going to be there, but several people are saying he has been hired for his adept ability to frame messages and strategize around media fallout, something he has become very familiar with over the last couple weeks.
Apple’s own statement, which you can read at the source linked in the title, was pretty vague:
“Mr. Daisy has shown his great abilities in even very difficult public relations situations and we look forward to his insight on the team.”
I, personally, can’t believe they’re really doing this. The Daisy situation has been really frustrating. However, the experience he has gained from this whole thing will be helpful for team. In a true burying of the hatch, I hope he finds success in his new position and that he’ll think twice about lying about his, now current, employer.
Internet Privacy: What To Be Passionate About
The Atlantic has a story detailing what effect the Do Not Track feature within browsers is having on advertisers (linked in the title). The answer is actually none at all. They will stop showing you targeted ads, but they will still know everything about your browsing behavior.
This is the latest evidence that legislation, executed in measured wisdom, is needed to help protect the users of the Internet. It frightens me anytime the government gets involved with the Internet. We live in a magical time where we have this free and nearly unregulated world of sharing, organization, ideas, and commerce. However, as web 2.0 has elicited personal information from the bulk of the US’s population, there is a lot more on the line then there used to be.
As this is no doubt going to be a long and heated debate (as it should be) I felt it important to share what I feel is important on the subject. I am not the right person to properly structure what government policy should say, but as a few guiding principles…
ONE | Information belongs to the person submitting it, not the person asking for it. Companies are allowed to ask for it and are allowed to use it, but only within the parameters the information owner stipulates. I also feel that we need to be careful here not to curb creativity with legislation in this area. If companies don’t have flexibility, some wonderful businesses could never be established.
TWO | Users of the Internet have a right to do so with complete anonymity. The Internet becomes alive when it knows who is using it and for what purpose. It’s functionality becomes magnified. Yet, the Internet should be built with an option for users to stay anonymous. No tracking. No optimization. I feel the web is better when companies have info on me, but it should be the user’s choice.
THREE | Open APIs are the plumming of the Internet. They are what make the information we see on nearly every site today possible. Information needs to move freely. Period. Legislation should not stop this practice, only make it more transparent and optional for the end user to opt-out.
It’s important to have an opinion about the Internet. We all use it and just because it has worked seemlessly for its users in the past does not mean it always will. Up until recently it didn’t have the power it does today. Now that everyone is a part of it, the Internet has some maturing to do. Think about what matters to you and how you use the web and develop an opinion about what should be protected and how it should be protected.
It will no doubt be some of the most important legislation of the decade. I will watch with hesitant optimism.
Welcome To The New Blog Design
I have just finished changing my blog design to something a little more browser friendly, eye friendly, and over-all more visually clean. My last design was something I hacked together as more of a lesson in programming than in blog design. It’s frameless paragraphs were never as readable as I wanted and it’s narrow 500 pixel width limited the effect photos could have.
The new layout extends 940 pixels wide, with a commanding 700 pixel primary column. Photos, which were at the 500 pixel size, can now be shared at 640 pixels. This won’t affect past images, which I may go back and change at some point, but all future images will be.
I have also changed the way page navigation works. In the past, if users wanted to peruse past posts, they needed to scroll to the bottom and click “Next”. I have added an infinite scroll feature so that all one has to do to read older articles is scroll to the bottom and… well, that’s all that would be required! Easy!
Sharing is also a new feature of the blog. It took too long to add these sharing features, but, no matter, now it’s possible and easy. At the bottom-right of every post will be a “Share” button. Clicking it will reveal a short URL for easy copy/paste as well as the usual Facebook, Twitter, Google+ buttons. This was probably the biggest reason for changing the layout from the old one. What is a blog without its sharing tools?
As for the look of the blog, I tried to keep it as consistent and possible with the old look. The background texture is the same. Links are the same color. My name logotype has remained unchanged. I’m a fan of the familiar.
I’m fairly happy with all the new functionality and see this layout growing with this blog for a long time. Enjoy!
Is Giving Away The Store a Real Strategy?
There has been more noise on this than I can really believe. Google will be directly selling co-branded and possibly subsidized tablets. This strategy has recently been tried by another tablet manufacturer and the blogosphere crucified them for it. The company: HP. The tablet: The TouchPad. These were tablets that had a hardware value similar to that of the iPad, and a similar price tag as well. They didn’t sell. Sound familiar Android tablet market?
Then the music started again for HP’s CEO musical chair game and when the music stopped the tablet was no longer part of the strategy. So, they slashed its prices, liquidated them in lightning speed and everyone was left with an open mouth.
“But…but…but, we thought no one wanted those inferior TouchPads!”
Well, wanting something, or desire, is a mix of both interest and price. Do I want to climb Everest? It is something that interests me, but I’m not willing to pay the financial or the physical price. So I don’t do it. If we somehow invented a way to fly me just passed the Hillary Step for $1,000 I’d do it! I’d still get to experience some of it and a $1,000 is a complete STEAL! The same was true with the TouchPad. As long as it had a $99 price tag it was too good to pass up. In fact, too good to be true. Because after all the hype and all the lessons we learned from all of HP’s shanagans, it didn’t build them some amazing tablet business. All that it did was teach people what it’s true value was. $99.
And there is a scarier and more dangerous element to all this. The element of commoditization. PC makers over the past twenty years have been turing PCs in to commodities and looking around today you can see that they have succeeded. It is nearly impossible to make a buck making a PC these days. But that took twenty years. These companies are so desperate to get users of their products that they are willing to bypass those twnety years to a make the tablet valueless today.
I have no doubt that Google will find success in numbers through a subsidized tablet strategy. What I also know is that it won’t buy them anything but grief in the long term. If Google were an integrated company, maybe it could work. Amazon is an integrated company and they may have found a way to make it work. But Google is a far cry from Amazon. And they are about to neuter the Android tablet industry.
Let's Make An Agreement, You And I
I read a warning this morning (linked in the title). It was jolting to me. The warning was one of destruction for distracting other’s attention for reasons not worthy of it. It made me think of this blog, here, and the few of us that engage together around it.
When I first started blogging it was more a way to share links with people than it was to record opinions and ideas. In fact my first post, if it even qualifies, was just that… A link.
Over the last year or so I have found a voice I want to share. I have opinions on things that I want people to know about and that I want a record of. I want to take stands on issues and share my passion for technology and design and entrepreneurship in the hopes of inspiring, or in the very least nudging, someone in the direction of risking something for the future. The future does not reward those that don’t risk. Design takes risk, so does new technology, and entrepreneurship, and other things like parenting and religion and nearly everything in life that I find rewarding.
I wanted to, for the first time, describe to you, my readers, what it is that I want to do here on this blog so that you can make a very clear judgement about your time and attention in conjunction with my words.
1) I am biased toward the future. I am desperate for it. One of my first brushes with technological entrepreneurship came from an old family friend who was building software that integrates with Blackboard back in 2006 (not that long ago, I’m a newby). I was asking him what was possible to build and he said to me, “If you can dream it, you can build it. That’s where we are right now.” That has stuck with me in a very permanent way. By that rule, the only limitation on technology is our imagination. It is my goal to help lift the sights of those who build software and companies to include broader and more imaginative features that move the web, our phones, our lives, and even humanity forward. Our only limitation is our imagination.
2) I take positions on things because it is better to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes than to have never lived at all. I follow the technology sector voraciously. Particularly as it pertains to São Paulo, San Francisco (and Bay Area), and New York (to some degree). Living in a foreign country obviously limits my direct exposure to the startup and tech scene in the US. True. But with a more than vibrant blogging ecosystem I feel I can keep at least moderate tabs on where things are heading and what is being done to invent the future. My point in saying that is I read my fair share of lolywriters. Fence-sitters. People who will not take firm positions and will wait for time to reveal outcomes rather than helping to create the outcomes themselves. Again, life is most rewarding when risk is involved. I have taken stands in the past and will continue to do so. I will take risks and I will be wrong sometimes.
3) I’ll never post just for the sake of it. I hear from every person who has ever blogged successfully that the only way to build a reader base is through posting as often as possible and that posting daily is a must. That doesn’t resonate with my values. I’m not here to waste your time or mine. I’m aware of the benefits of having a large reader base, and I want to build a blog that has many loyal readers, but not at the cost of cheap content. I hope to develop my voice to a point where posting daily makes sense to me. I’m not there yet. I may never get there. But, I will never post something unless I deem it valuable for this blog. I’ll never post just to post.
4) I’m a designer. I’ve designed packaging and logos, aluminum retail fixtures and catalogs. But mostly I design for the web. I love what I do. I want to do exactly what I’m doing today for the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine anything more challenging or rewarding than designing, iterating, improving, and optimizing an experience for millions of users on a medium that is advancing and developing faster than an medium imagined, the Internet. And as the iPad and iPhone an other like Android devices begin to dominate, I’ll begin spending more of my energy solving problems for those platforms as well, but they are still predicted on the same medium as the PC: the Internet. I bring this up because it is one my goals when I create posts to both discuss design in frequency and to expose the design process and make it more transparent so that everyone who uses the Internet in any form can understand more about how it is created and to what purposes.
These are the tenants of my agreement to you, my readers. Getting them down and public is a way of also binding myself to a code that I feel is important. I’m not here to distract. I’m here to discuss and to expose and to inspire.
I rarely address my readers directly. In fact, i don’t think I ever have before. But, I hope you will continue to read my posts. I hope you will engage with me about them through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Disqus (all of which have been used in the past to debate my posts). I also hope you will send the posts you like to those you think would benefit from them. It is my hope to build a community around this blog and you can help me do it. In fact, if you’re reading this, you absolutely qualify as an early adopter. Well done.
Snapguide is Pinterest For Reality
I recently downloaded an app called Snapguide (now available in the App Store). I wasn’t sure what to think as I read about it as an app for creating how to guides. Yet, after having used the app and consumed some of its content I am convinced that it plays to a similar audience as Pinterest. Lots of recipes and home arts. However, there is no simple way to play something off as your own.
My wife is a Pinterest user and in speaking of it she says that it is full of things people wished they were about. Clothes, vacations, recipes…basically everything normal people don’t have time for. Snapguide provides similar content, but verified through its creation process. It adds a depth and a reality that Pinterest lacks.
This will be an interesting app to watch as it matures. It has a beautiful interface and is both fast and easy to consume content and create it. As is true with Pinterest, it’ll be interesting to see what type of culture emerges around its content community.
Pairing For The Future
We humans have a complicated relationship with technology. We have people who defend it in nearly every way. And we have those who fight against it vehemently. And then we have billions of people who sit in front of their computers and hear out each side of the argument.
However, like it or not, ignore it or not, technology, in varying forms, helped create our very species. Back in the day (and by that I mean millions or years ago) humans started building the first silos to store grain, a breakthrough technology. Even before that, humans, or whatever preceded humans, made fires and began pre-processing food. This very use of technology alone changed the shape of our jaws. That’s how much technology has affected us as a race, it helped shape it.
Flash forward to today and technology is as pervasive as it has ever been. Steve Jobs and his smartphone have introduced the web to an omni-connected society. However, technology rarely introduces brand new concepts to us humans. Technology usually mimics or builds upon real world behavior.
When I was in junior high the most important form of communication was the passed note. Mostly in the halls in between classes, but sometimes passed during class, I remember this practice being tantamount to eating meals. Getting a note from the right person could make my day. Or even week. People would fold them in different ways and there were even politics involved with who saw the note get passed between two people. What a pleasure that practice was.
Sometime in high school note passing got replaced with emailing. The pleasure of note passing seemed perfectly preserved in this new digital medium. Everyday after school I would check my email and see who had written to me. Forwards were even less of a faux pas and actually enjoyed. As time progressed, however, this medium became more of a broadcast tool than an interpersonal tool. It lost its intimacy. It is now a task nearly every person on the planet is seeking to avoid. And yet every person on the planet still emails regularly. It’s part of how we communicate now as a human race.
I remember emailing with girlfriends in high school and in college. I remember having really cool moments with people through that medium. I can’t remember the last time I had such a moment with email. It’s a task to be done, not a pleasure to enjoy as it started out to be.
I was a volunteer preacher for my church in England from March 2004 until March 2006. I was fairly isolated at the time and when I got back to the US many of my friends encouraged me to join this new social networking thing called Facebook. Amazing. What an amazing initial experience. It became almost the exclusive form of communication between my friends in England and me. As I started college my friend connections exploded. I remember long nights going back and forth with people through simple wall posts. No such thing as Likes and Comments back then. Just a way to message people and share photos. It was a magical time. I anxiously awaited leaving classes each day to see who had “Facebooked” me. It was not unlike the early days of email. The excitement clearly paralleled between these two digital media.
However, just as email became more broadcast than interpersonal, so did Facebook. What was exciting, is now more or less just how humans communicate. I check Facebook now in a similar way to checking email. Who communicated with me, is it worth my time, is a response required. I still enjoy Facebook. Quite a bit. I still have many fun moments in the network, but my engagements are becoming less and less enthusiasm driven.
When I interact with communication technologies I see random people I barely know or don’t know mingled with people like my wife. Marketing messages, advertising, requests for donations, memes, rants, and cats are all thrown in to the same feed as my wife, my closest and dearest friend.
How is that an advanced technological experience? How is that meaningful? How does that mimic or build upon the real world us humans interact with?
I was introduced to an app a couple days ago called Pair. It is the future of technology and software. It is a social network with advanced sharing tools like photo sharing, video sharing, video chat, instant messaging, even finger painting, and a little game-like feature that lets you touch thumbs. And here’s the hitch, the network is exclusive to two people. I pair my app with one other person and from then on its paired.
Technology, exemplified through the extreme risk and creativity of Pair, is where technology is heading. Software should heighten and enhance my most valuable and frequent connections, not homogenize them. Communication tools should prioritize meaningful relationships and be designed for the close and the interpersonal because that is what makes us humans, human. Not our ability to broadcast, but our ability to love. Our ability to kiss. Our inside jokes and our idiosyncrasies.
Expect to see a lot more apps like Pair, because I don’t see the purpose of life changing anytime soon.
The Creator Of "Pull To Refresh"
Nothing exists that wasn’t first designed. That’s something I say now and then to remind myself and others that the world we know today didn’t design and create itself. The car is a great example. It’s easy to look at the car and say that Henry Ford and his assembly line brought us the car we know today. But what of the steering wheel and the grooves of the dashboard and the feel of the A/C knob as you turn it on. We tend to boil design and creation down to its largest part.
The concept is no less true for software apps. Unlike physical objects which have the luxury of being tangible to guide a person through use, software must create an entire new world from scratch. However, within each app’s world there exists common elements, none more famous than the mouse pointer, which is more or less consistent throughout every desktop app.
Focusing then on mobile, a still very young and developing platform, there are common elements that are found throughout nearly every app you use. The back or cancel button on a graphical bar at the top-left of the screen, is one common element in apps. The done or next button at the top-right. The swipe-across-content for options like delete, which is the most common, but you also see other options from time to time depending on the app. The one feature you also find in nearly every app is pull to refresh.
Nothing exists that wasn’t first designed. The pull to refresh interaction feature was not included as part of Apple’s interaction guide, it was designed by a software engineer and interaction designer at Twitter by the name of Loren Brichter. He has shared some thoughts with The Verge (linked in the title of this post) about the feature and his thoughts on its wide adoption.
I love knowing who designed the world around me. I hope to keep reading about more designers and more things more often.
What is a "Like" Worth?
It’s a funny question for the lay-user, but to businesses, Facebook and their communities on Facebook, it’s a big question and can be a complex one. At Baby.com.br we have a Facebook community that has nearly topped 500,000 people and we are constantly trying to make the most of it through things like photo frame apps, contests, and daily posts which are designed to elicit shares, likes, and comments.
The article, linked in the title, is about the latest update to Google Analytics and how they are going about answering the question, “So, what is a “Like” worth?”
