Hi, my name is Dave Ho. I've worked in various roles within the startup space as an entrepreneur, product developer, programmer, and business manager. These are some of my thoughts.
Is it just me....or is space travel making a comeback?
Star Wars being renewed and crushing, killing, and destroying it at the box office,
SyFy going back to its space-odyssey roots with The Expanse, drawning comparisons with Battlestar Galactica and Firefly,
A new ninth planet being just discovered in our solar system,
Plausible considerations about interstellar commerce and regulation
In 25-50 years, (or sooner!!) space mining and travel may not only be possible, but a new profession! It gives me chills to think the stuff from Interstellar could very well leave the realm of science fiction enter the realm of reality. (minus the Earth dying, that is).
Notable conclusion: if the product is free, you are the product. Meaning, your data is being mined and sold elsewhere to pay for the service. So where do you draw the line? It varies from person to person, but perhaps there will be lines that will solidify in the years to come
Nobody Wants To Use Your Product
Developer, designers, and entrepreneurs all want to believe their products are awesome and customers want to use them non-stop. But the reality is that consumers care less about what it does, compared to what the end result is. For example, I don't care about using Google Hangouts vs Skype to video chat. But I do care if Hangouts lags or Skype doesn't pick up my microphone. End results matter and products should be designed to get out of our way instead of fancy animations we don't care about.
Is Lyft the Bing to Uber’s Google?
Platform businesses inherently yield monopolistic positions. But certain platforms leave room for duopolies or oligopolies. The question is whether or not the market leaves enough sustainable room for more than one player.
Why Media Titans Would Be Wise Not to Overlook Netflix
"What if Netflix is the Amazon of the entertainment industry — the embodiment of a slow, expensive, high-risk effort to consume the entirety of [the media] business?"
ProPublica heads to the Dark Web so that its readers aren’t spied on
If this can be real and the business model sustainable (maybe with donations à la Wikipedia), this would be a big deal. Truly independent, decentralized news source that would be unbiased and free from corporate interests. However, I'm skeptical that it will last...
CB Insights posted an interesting (while eye straining) chart on the fall of most news aggregator apps and more comments on Hacker News.
Sure, Flipboard was pretty. Heck, some might call that “personalized”. But it missed the point. The layout and design actually hurt the reading experience—it was more of a distraction. At its core, it was just a glorified RSS reader, that didn’t really get me the news any better than ugly my RSS listfeed (below).
(note: Feedr was an amazing RSS app that was discontinued a few years ago)
However, there are still many various readers out there and new ones still are released on both the Play and App Stores. Why?
Let’s just assume that founders and investors know what they are doing and say that the reason for their failures was due to the fact that technology had to catch up to their ambition:
Summly summarized news via NLP (Natural Language Processing) was acquired by Yahoo, shut down, and has not made much impact to Yahoo content;
Retickr was a social reader that attempted to learn what you liked, shut down;
Flud focused on hyper relevant news by being a social network where friends could share news, also shut down;
Wavii tried to condense the deluge of news into small bite size updates was acquired by Google for their NLP tech
What the above list hopes to demonstrate is that most news readers either shut down or were acqui-hired for their tech and team to do other things. If an investor had ambitions of building a social network out of news, those hopes eventually creeped into actual social networks.
Investors who previously were banking on the possibility of automated curation and AI are finally starting to see things happening today. Which is to say, of course, that the failure of RSS readers described in the chart could very well have been because they were trying to implement solutions that were before their time. Solutions that, as it were, have only recently experienced mainstream acceptance and adoption.
These days, I have been so impressed at how Pocket, the app that helps you save articles to read later, has been able to surface trending/popular content that is truly relevant to me. They also have a Recommended section that provides suggested reads based on the saved articles I have on the platform. Why does this matter? Well, with the sheer amount of content saved across its user base and the advancement in machine learning, the company is now able to do thing that can actually enhance my access to news and highlight content that I would not have otherwise discovered. While that might have been their goal all along, it wasn’t until surviving for years after launching and building creative partnerships to increase user adoption/ubiquity, that made it possible.
What this suggests to entrepreneurs, is to take careful consideration with regards to timing and the trajectory in relation to the trends in the market. It also means for those companies like Circa and Flud, which ended operations after running out of cash and capital, to be exceptionally careful when considering their runway. While it is important to drive metrics like user signups, usage, and app downloads, it is equally important to have a realistic expectation about whether or not you have enough cash on hand to sustain the years waiting for technology to improve, enough data to accumulate, or enough mindshare to build in consumers.
1. I don’t want to make “yet another” online account! What value do I get from an Inc. account? More spam? No, thanks.
2. These things are actively preventing people from accessing content and thereby also from seeing advertising...which, if this was simply plastered with a crap-ton of ads, would at least make some rational sense.
3. It doesn’t solve the problem: I simply saved the article to pocket and voilà, article saved.
Result: $0 revenue from this page view by bypassing your system and you managed to upset an avid reader.
Journalism values the dissemination of unbiased reporting or information and opinions that encourage the spread and sharing of knowledge. Ironically, this post was a guest post by Applico head of marking Erik Zambrano. I bet he wanted plenty of people to read his words and communicate his perspective--and that simply did not happen in this case.
Case and point: not many of us will sit for hours straight reading magazines and newspapers, but over the course of the day we do just that and more on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, consuming bite size snippets and content bit by bit.
Take this statistic: an average adult consumes 5.5 hours of video per day. It has been proven that shorter videos result in higher engagement. Simply put, the reason Snapchat, Vine, Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope/Meerkat exist is because of a difference between the perception of the relativity of time vs the totality of time. Several one-minute videos spread throughout the day has a much different mental model to a 20 minute video all at once.
The “zen” of Muji can also be attributed similarly to Apple’s reduction of the Mac line up to simply:
consumer: Macbook Air
prosumer: Macbook Pro
professional: iMac (desktop)
Customization options were also limited: ~3 choices when purchasing online, a single model when purchasing in store. While “overclockers” and “modders" shunned Apple, the broader population embraced the simplicity in choice. Instead of esoteric model #’s the Microsoft OEMs provided, the message was simple: an amazing product for the each kind of consumer without worry about the rest.
This is what Muji has excelled at. The philosophy to not overwhelm the consumer’s mental decision tree with multiple “editions” or gimmicky “features” and add-ons has been highly effective.
In explaining why Muji sells a product called “mattress with legs,” he insisted, “You don’t need a bed,” as though a bed were an unnecessary extravagance. “A mattress with legs is enough.”
It’s funny, but the above line makes a ton of sense. Why does my bed have to a fancy headboard? Why does it need anything else besides the bare essentials for providing a place to rest and sleep?
But just as Muji and Apple sell the notion of simplicity and minimalism, the likes of Google/Android sell “individuality” and “personality”. Each are simply marketing spin. However, each are effective nonetheless.
Muji’s success is deeply rooted in the allure of their marketing message: serenity and simplicity in a cacophony of choice and noise. Kudos for tugging at the powerful desire to escape the clutter of our lives; even though the branding “magic trick” has been revealed, there is still a want for that fantasy to be true.
Or why I hate the mobile view of magazine publication websites.
TL;DR: There are two factors that is killing the online experience for major publishers:
The incessant need to drive revenue through sheer volume of ads rather than an intentional innovation around raising the effectiveness of ads
The over emphasis on implementing fancy animations and cool “effects” as “good design”. Spoiler: it isn’t.
Links: 1 2 3
My current process for reading content is as follows:
subscribe to the publisher’s RSS feed using Palabre
on my daily commute review the feed and mark to read later via Palabre’s integration with Feedly
review in the evening save stories to Pocket or Readability
In none of the above steps to I really touch the publication’s mobile website. Which is to say, I like the content, but try desperately to avoid the fancy, schmancy javascript bloated, 10MB high res images, and kaleidoscopic CSS fluff found on the publisher websites.
In a single page load for an article on FastCompany, it takes 103 requests over 7 seconds to load everything!
On mobile it is even worse. The page loads the content, then proceeds to load the images and the adverts. Each time an advert loads, my view port experiences a page jank. After four or five janks? I close my tab out of nausea.
Part of the reason is publishers trying to recreate a premier magazine experience, except on the web. While this is not wrong in theory, the paradigm they follow is inconsistent with the medium. On native apps or with e-magazines, there is room for elaborate animations, user interactivity, or gaudy colors and fonts. But on the web, trying to mimic these aspects just creates a really poor UX.
The other part is revenue. Such is the state of publishing in the 21st century. Everything has to integrate with some kind of 3rd-party javascript plugin to serve ads. But instead of finding a more pleasant way of serving them, publishers (or perhaps the advertisers) insist on placing them in ways that inhibit the reader from consuming the very product they are producing: the content. And you wonder why content has been reduced to listicles and clickbait.
The perfect example of this is the “slideshow” view. While the effect is pretty “cool”, the slideshow does nothing for the actual article.
The slideshow view above actually takes attention
away
from the content. It doesn’t look anything like the article, there is no cohesion between the two, and there is nothing here that compels the user to continue reading. It would be much better to spread the images in between relevant points of the article as the user scrolls.
Worse culprits forgo content altogether and lazily post just the slideshow. As you’re scrolling through, interlaced ads in between slides will show. On a desktop, they are trivial to skip, but on a mobile device, you end up clicking the stupid ad with your fat fingers (mine). And after pressing back, the page doesn’t remember the slide you were just on and resets to slide 1. Worst. Experience. Ever.
A few years ago, this site went pretty viral as a tongue-and-cheek criticism of over-engineering websites with superfluous animations and effects just for the sake of looking “cool”. I feel the publishing industry widely ignored this sentiment and rush full on with 5MB(!) per article. As bandwidth grows, this becomes more trivial, but without any care given to the end user, one can expect the experiences to continue to worsen as publishers will find new ways to bloat their pages with excess and cruft.
And hence ad tech continues to kill the online experience.
Interesting snippet from the article above reinforcing my point:
Apple blogger John Gruber started off a new debate about these issues recently, when he noted that a 537-word text post on the website iMore.com weighed in at 14 megabytes. (Fourteen megabytes of text should correspond to about 7m words, or about 10 times the combined length of the Old and New Testaments.)
Remember, it's better to create something and be criticised than to create nothing and criticise others.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais)
November 22, 2015
Blank’s Rule – To predict the future 1/3 of you need to be crazy
33% insiders who know the processes and politics +
33% outsiders who represent “brand-name wisdom” +
17% crazy insiders +
17% crazy outsiders = 100% reason to remember the name
Looking back on 2015: six exciting web technologies
Electron,
React Native, more: why React matters (it’s not because of web) also: check out NativeScript,
Progressive web apps, more: …and another perspective,
VS Code,
Rollup: more: github also: tree-shaking,
Web Assembly
Supporting People
The author asks the question about supporting legacy software, but he is really asking about accessibility and the responsibility as makers to hold to a standard of universal compatibility.
Brave New War
“Now the informational element appears to be as important as, if not more important than, the physical dimension.”
“It’s a brave new war without beginning or end, where the borders of peace and war, serviceman and civilian have become utterly blurred—and where you and I are both a target and a weapon.”
On one hand, you could have argued that government controlled communications in the 20th century could be dubbed propaganda in one extreme, but the other is to control widespread panic and hysteria of the masses. New forms of “warfare” as described in the article is escaping borders and boundaries specifically because of the freedom that the internet provides. Is this a good thing? Or just a swinging pendulum?
Perhaps 2016 will be the year I return to my Twitter feed. But definitely see the need for improvements to make it less "lonely". Unlike Slack and Gitter, the sense of community and dialgue is not immediately apparent and thus the network effects aren't fully captured. Very good read--and hope that I would get drawn back!
Envisioning the Perfect Design App
With web technologies moving faster than ever and rapidly changing practices, apps like Photoshop and Illustrator seem like relics in comparison to some of the new tools out there. Highlights: reponsive design, ease of collaboration, user flow controls, and componentization of elements for object reuse that make designing and gathering feedback a joy rather than a chore. Aside: I need to revisite framer.js and Project Comet looks amazing...
Sitting on an Ocean of Talent
Super interesting take on opening up borders and allowing for a much more fluid immigration policy. Got to revisit this another time with a more comprehensive post ;)
Unicorns and Other Things We Must Stop Talking About in 2016
My guesses for topics in 2016 that will result in the new buzz: virtual/augmented reality, interoperablilty of IoT, info security, value-driven startups
Artificial Intelligence Finally Entered Our Everyday World
Should be labeled "AI finally became 'cool' enough to talk about". AI has always been advancing in the background at large corporations like Google and Facebook. This shouldn't be anything new, but finally we're starting to talk more about it as the technology is starting to show mainstream appeal like in Google's revamped Photos app, self-driving cars, and more apps you can talk to: Cortana, Siri, Alexa. Yeesh...
Source: Getting More Work Done Without Simply Working More Hours
For 2016, I'm committed to making the most of whichever situation and lose the bullsh*t associated with worrying or doubting whether or not my decisions are "optimal" or right. It's going to be the year of getting stuff launched and out there.
The article lays out some tips that I'll utilize throughout the year. Here's to making order out of chaos!
A clear conceptual model not only helps with the design of your product, but it helps validate whether what you’re doing has true inherent value and prevents a lot of blind decision making upfront
Measuring Price Elasticity and More
Understanding how pricing mechanics work…simple and practical
Pirate Bay Cofounder Builds a Perpetual Piracy Machine
One could argue that, with intellectual property such as music or film, the value is a function of how widely the song or video has been distributed (demand). Making copies without a market sure makes the argument that placing value on copies is absurd. It has similarities to how printing more paper cash can devalue the underlying asset. But not sure if its the same when pirating material, since you’re ultimately creating a market…
Why Your Degree, Experience, and Hard Work No Longer Matter
The next generation of employment and work will be defined by what you can deliver, not what you can regurgitate. Changing education and the proliferation of content online + new technologies like augmented reality will vastly revolutionize the next decade of workers. Can we adapt?
The iPhone’s camera is so good because 800 people are working on it
Tech has done something funny with our minds: we take these tiny devices for granted and overlook how much actual complexity and power we hold in the palm of our hands. 800 people…dayum son!
A few days ago, I met up with a friend & peer over coffee.
My conclusion: pick something that you ultimately enjoy, feel that there is a lasting community, and where said community is moving at a pace that you can keep up with.
This is to say, React may not be for you (as the Laravel/PHP community demonstrates with their adoption of Vue.js). Even if you choose React, perhaps you don’t have to use the tools that everyone is clamoring on about until you absolutely have to use it (i.e. when you hit the pain points that others have hit...and then subsequently wrote these libraries and utilities). Though, this may be easier said than done...
It is ironic, however, how React was meant to reduce complexity, yet has only opted into creating more of it.
Recent writedowns and less-than-stellar IPOs remind us that creating a product with lasting value > marketing hype and short-term results
The Encryption Debate: a Way Forward
John Chen (Blackberry, CEO) reminds us that privacy does not extend to criminals. Hmm. Who defines a "criminal"? Isn't Eric Snowden arguably a "criminal" to some people despite how he did revealed the malpractice of US surveillance? Can balance ever be struck?
Square Enix Montreal gets what makes mobile games great
"These are not games made in two months. [Our games take] one to two years, which is big for mobile games." Intentionality to the medium and thoughfulness make for interesting developments to mobile gaming from Square Enix Montreal.
Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us.
"Can spending money on games be a problem? Frankly yes, and its because games marketing and the science of advertising has changed beyond recognition from when games first appeared."
I'm a Privacy Advocate, but I Still Use Windows 10 and Google Now
The "currency" of the web is your data. You "pay" for free services from Google, Microsoft, Facebook not with $ but with personal data. Spend wisely.
