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This is my optimal productivity setup at the moment. A powerful Android tablet offers just the right balance of possibilities and restrictions to help focus. Crazy battery duration. Ultra portable. Even ergonomic. And Android works well with a mouse too if needed.

Politics and algorithmic market volatility

Right now, following markets coverage of EU Referendum vote. This in from FT – a human stockbroker comments on the reactions of AI-driven markets to human politics:

"Nearly two hours into the Tokyo morning session, the Topix is down a fairly narrow 0.4 per cent but the swings that have brought it here have been breathtaking.

"This is the algos [algorithms] and the arbs [arbitrageurs] doing this," said one broker after the Topix staged a 3.3 per cent per cent collapse and a 3 per cent rally within the space of one hour.

"Who else is going to trade into this level of volatility and uncertainty? We don't know what the world is going to look like in three hours' time.""

#euref #algorithms #ai

We Need Distributed, Open VR

This week Google unveiled Daydream VR, it's vision for a fledgling VR ecosystem. With Daydream Google aims to do what it did with Android, but faster, before an incumbent iOS gets a foothold in the market. Today Daydream is a sketch of hardware and software. Major hardware manufacturers have already agreed to create compatible headsets.

Facebook is a close contender. This far they've relied on the first remarkable piece hardware, Oculus Rift, and their existing identity and interaction ownership across the web. Apple is developing it's own entry, and Samsung already has the Oculus-created Gear VR.

None of these companies, or any other ones, should be allowed to own your virtual life.

The freedom of the world wide web has served us well into the 2010's. Despite the best efforts of Apple et al. to chain users into their own ecosystem and oversight, the content and interactions on smartphones have merely been extensions of web content. Even if Apple censored certain content from their App Store, they still couldn't censor your browser use.

This could change with VR.

Stretch the imagination just a little and consider the perfect storm of AI bots, voice recognition, natural language processing, and VR technology. Within the next ten years, we could see extremely convincing virtual actors, bots, that constitute a major part of a person's social life. After all, if you interact with other people's avatar's instead of the people in flesh, who's to say if behind that avatar there wasn't an artificial intelligence instead of an organic one? There is no "responsive design" for VR. The content and the interactions will be new.

If Apple today censors adult content from it's App Stores, it could extend this to censoring arbitrary types of behavior from AI actors. If Google today tracks your interactions with content to learn when you should be sold to, it could extend this to tracking interactions with AI actors. It's no stretch of imagination that governments, agencies, and brands would also want these powers.

There are many more scenarios like these two. Each of them dilute the "reality" aspect of virtual reality by mediating, controlling or monitoring interactions. None of them are desirable.

We've learned from over 20 years on the web that openness is good. All walled gardens have failed, all walls have been bored through one time or another. We have to make openness happen for VR too – in a way that is irreversible, uncontainable, and completely distributed.

#vr #daydream #googleio #oculus rift

From Impossible To Inevitable

I’m halfway through one of the most awaited books on the business of selling software. Jason Lemkin’s and Aaron Ross’s “From Impossible To Inevitable” came out last week. It is slow to get through.

It’s a pity that the layout, design, lack of editing, and even lack of proofreading get in the way of getting the most out of a book like this.

The content is good. There is excellent advice, presented with good evidence and inspiring anecdote. The structure is in a logical enough sequence. But the book mostly reads like a collection of blog posts. The style of writing is... well. I don’t know how to put this without making enemies. Certainly style choices are subjective and I don’t pretend to be an expert here, but the excessive punctuation, repetition, and unnecessary yet incessant bullet point lists all make for slow, agonizing reading. One third in one the two authors (there are multiple parts written in first person, but not always attributed) even jokes about their lack of written style in emails. Maybe it works in emails. But this is a book 290 pages long. It gets tiring.

An editor should have caught those things. In addition to things like repeated words, bullet point lists that don’t properly follow the leading sentence, and even a repeated testimonial customer in the “Praise for...” section that opens the book. Or a word order issue on the back cover. And so on.

The layout is another issue. I read, but I have never seen a professionally published hardcover (this is by Wiley) where the text overflows the bottom margins, coming within less than one line-height of the paper’s physical edge. This is just on some pages, not throughout the book, making it even more jarring. There are gray boxes for quotes lifted from the body text, which usually follow the very same sentence in the text, so you end up reading it twice in a row. The layout inside these boxes is not coherent – the margins seem to be arbitrary.

It’s really a shame that good content gets so muddled by bad presentation. Maybe I’m alone with this, but the target audience of this book – software entrepreneurs, startup founders and management – are an increasingly design-conscious bunch. If you’re skeptical, think how software sold today, even the B2B software, looks and feels much better than similar solutions sold 10 years ago. Good design and careful copywriting is table stakes. It shows you care for your customer’s experience. And it’s no different with books.

For Media, Facebook is Bigger Than Google

This is news, because in terms of traffic nothing’s been consistently bigger for an entire industry than Google for the last 15 years. Why is Facebook winning the media traffic game – other than, obviously, being the major part of most people’s online time?

Facebook content is algorithmic. It shows you news items that are likeliest to be interesting. It also learns what works and what doesn't. In the case of Google, people have to know what they are looking for (whereas Facebook already knows better). In case of Twitter, there is no smart feed (other than "Discover", but that's not popular).

This is just one manifestation of Facebook’s main power, which is that machines are already better than we are at knowing what we like. That’s why we keep going back to Facebook.

Facebook sees the user also outside of Facebook: all publishers have FB widgets on their pages, which continue tracking the user. They know how content works also outside of their own domain.

This is part of Facebook's advertising play: own, send & track the traffic, place ads next/among the content (in both the discovery end, and in the destination end, just like Google did with AdWords (search ads = discovery), and AdSense (content ads = destination)).

Facebook will probably be the content advertising king a couple of years down the line. The data was compiled by Parse.ly, and reported by BII.

Polling the Polls: UK Election 2015

Source: UK Polling Reports Penultimate Polls

Comparing costs in SF and Riga

Given I’ve been almost 50/50 in SF and Riga lately, and because I wanted to test Highcharts, here’s a comparison of the food and drink costs in the two:

And that's not even very dramatic. According to Numbeo, rent in Riga is on average 87% less than that in SF. Or in other words: renting in SF is almost 10x the price of that in Riga.

Speaking at Stanford University, Feb 23rd

I'll be speaking at Stanford Engineering's 'European Innovation & Entrepreneurship' speaker series. The event is open to the public, so do join if you are in the neighbourhood. Here's how to get there. I'll tell Infogram's story and sketch out the current situation and a vision for startup ecosystems in small countries like Latvia.

Incidentally, I was also happy to run a workshop at Berkeley University's Graduate School of Journalism on data visualization last week. Great to see academic interest in Infogram on both sides of the Bay.

#stanford #infogram #latvia

Tic Tac Toe Tee is the t-shirt you can play, and it's launching on Monday, Feb 2nd, on Kickstarter. Sign up for the pre-launch list here! Best way to get the Early Bird price.

This is my long time side project and labor of love – time to get it out there.

#kickstarter #launch

Update Your Footer: 57,000 visitors in the first week

On Sunday night Decemeber 28th, I posted my one-page side project on Hacker News hoping to get some feedback: UpdateYourFooter.com. Well, the thing was live from there on. In its first week, it was visited by 57,000 unique visitors, and got 808 mentions on Twitter (based on Google search). Google search for "updateyourfooter.com" now shows 3,450 results. Here are some stats and insights.

The Hacker News post opened the floodgates, but the majority of the traffic came from Twitter. Therefore, each social new spike snowballed as it was magnified by Twitter sharing. The analytics doesn't show this here, but I followed it pretty closely, and that's what seemed to happen.

For the referral-specific stats, there are some interesting factoids.This is a brand new site, so no search traffic. But also practically no Facebook traffic. FB's algorithm seems to hate the site. There's a couple of reasons: FB's algo hates things I share in general (I have proportionately low like numbers – or maybe it's just me?), and FB seems to dislike sites with no images, and/or Open Graph images that are clearly text only. UYF had both issues. At least my FB posts about the page were not seen (or at least not liked) by anyone.

Reddit link was sizable, but I don't think the link even made it out of /r/tech. That traffic also came in the same time as the Hacker News spike.

Product Hunt, a new site in comparison, is interesting here. UYF was posted there, made it to the front page, and I got invited to join so they marked me as a maker (thanks!). Not only the amount of traffic, but engagement, is surprising. The average user from PH spent 2x the time than an average Reddit user on the site. Also fun to see my favorite Sidebar.io as a referrer, and a shout to Shawn Blanc whose blog was on 15th in traffic.

Almost everything worked, except I screwed up font inclusion on the page, and having used Vollkorn (not the most popular font) a lot of people saw the page in their default serif font, likely Times New Roman. I only fixed after the main traffic spike. Sorry about that. This added a couple of things to my checklist.

I didn't really plan for a lot of interest, so I don't have much to show for it other than a few social followers. I added a link in the footer to an unrelated labour of love side project (playable t-shirts!) and got some email sign ups. Nonetheless, people's reaction and reception was so positive that I'm happy I did it. And getting comments from a couple of my internet heroes on Product Hunt also made my day.

Of course, I still have a few footers to update. Maybe follow me on Twitter anyway?

I wrote this in reply to a friend on Facebook, who thought the press should be more responsible, and that it was, at least partly, their own fault.

Because freedom of speech, [redacted]. Some free speech is offensive to some people. It should still be free speech, and we should protect it. Now, there are lines. Speech that incites violence, threatens, or limits others' liberties, like your dress example ([wearing an otherwise nice dress, but embroidered on the front is:] "mort aux arabes"), would be crossing that line. Likewise, your example of walking in a miniskirt in the souks would be stupid, but also free expression. Stupid expression, even if offensive, as long as it does not threaten or incite violence, is still to be protected. People's beliefs, no matter how radical they are, should be freely conflicted and offended anywhere in the world. It's a balancing act. Humiliation, ridicule and offensiveness are the price we pay for freedom of speech. Are they harmful? Yes, but much less harmful than inciting violence, and less harmful than losing the freedom of expression.

Freedom of speech is a difficult topic. It is important, but it is not black and white (nothing is). Here's a very good short book on the most important questions and historical turning points in freedom of expression.

Veganism: Came for the ethics; stayed for the energy, health, fun, and more ethics

I decided to try going strictly vegan for November. I've avoided eating mammals for a long time and avoided supporting especially mass-production of animal products. But I'd never gone full vegan. Because I thought it would be hard. I thought I'd go hungry. And where would I get enough protein? I thought I'd miss cheese (and I did, for about two days).

Good morning two months in. Vegan chilaquiles, partly refried three-beans, and salsa verde. And a few other things.

Silly thoughts. It's easy eating vegan, much easier than I thought. I'm not hungry at all – quite the contrary, in fact, and more about that below. And by making smart choices there are plenty of slow-metabolising, high bioavailability amino acids in a vegan diet. So I've stayed vegan for a bit over two months now, and I sure don't want to go back.

The ethics is a simple equation, and I'm not forcing it down your throat here. I'll do that in depth later. But here's a primer. I consider myself a humanist, and decreasing suffering of all kinds if high on my agenda. I don't subscribe to human supremacy over animals but rather consider everything a point in a continuum. Human suffering is more "serious" than clam suffering (this is a complex ethics I'll go into at later time; for now, think of it as there being more "points" for suffering the more complex the organism is individually and socially). In between there are sufferings of fishes, chickens, cows and pigs, to list a few favorites. Suffering is not only bodily, but also mental. Yes, animals have "mental lives" too (to be honest, I'm also a 'mind denialist', but that's another writeup again). They have stress responses, anxiety and they get depressed. Many animals are also highly social, just like humans are. Herd animals such as cows are a great example. Let's consider the social dynamics of mammalian families. Human parents are greatly concerned for their children. This is instinctual, pre-verbal, evolved behaviour. Similarly, other mammals "feel" concern, fear and the need to protect their young. If one of their young is taken away from them, or killed, this causes great suffering. Just like it would with humans.

Enough for now. You get it.

With a vegan diet, I have more energy, more focus, and I generally feel better. I also think I need less sleep. Certainly I'm not getting the post-lunch drowsiness as badly as I used to.

When I get hungry, it's a more mellow hungry. It's not hunger pangs, none of that blood sugar dropping and getting all hungry-angry. I don't need to eat more. I think I need to eat less, actually. It's as if my system needs to do less work to get the energy and nutrients it needs. The first couple of weeks took some adjustment though.

Cooking is awesome. I've always regarded cooking as a creative practice, and my creativity thrives with limits. A vegan diet provides natural limits. And there are so many awesome foods to make.

There's the old joke about how you can tell someone's a vegan: you don't need to, they'll tell you. And that's a part of the ethics, because I don't care just about the food. Actually, I seriously, empathetically don't care what you, dear reader, or anyone else puts in their mouth.

Really. Put something in your mouth now. See? I don't care.

What I do care about is limiting, even ending suffering. And that's why I'll tell you what I eat and what I don't. I may even tell you why. Like I did here.

Always Design Responsibly – Speech from Slush14

At Slush 2014, I spoke about how the scale and speed of technological innovation impact us working with, designing and creating innovative products. Here is the video of that speech.

Since then, I've kept thinking about measurable, quantifiable ways to address the challenge of responsibility in product design and business model design. It is, in a way, Corporate Social Responsibility, but something that the most studied and documented models of CSR do not reflect very well. What I'm interested in are the operational challenges of responsibility: how we ensure that we are creating the most good, and how that good can be measured and modeled already in the design phase of a product or a business.

I had more time to go into the topic at DataWeek 2014. The video from that speech is below.

There, I take a brief look at three models of Social Responsibility (Philanthropy, Innovation in CSR, and Integration of CSR), in the special context of data and data visualization, followed with examples. As I have the time, I'll keep researching and generalizing this for the broader case of technology startups.

If you have ideas about this, or can think of resources or research I should look into, do let me know.

#slush14 #startups #social responsibility #innovation

infogram-blog

Regional Maps for 200+ Countries

The long-awaited regional maps are finally here! Now you can show comparative data for regions in almost every country in the world. Check it out!

Note that this feature is only available for Pro and White Label users. Use promo code HS2014 to get 50% off your first 3 months of a White Label Account.

Social Responsibility in Technological Innovation

(photo via Tech Tidal)

I was very excited to speak at Slush 2014. I had 9 minutes for what I feel like is a very important topic – what the scalability and speed of technological innovation mean to social responsibility. At Slush, I condensed this under the lens of product design and gave examples ranging from the growth of Infogram to mechanical toilet flushing buttons. I also lambasted the design of the MTA ticket vending machines, and I felt slightly bad about it. Are they really that bad? I just went back to NYC for a few days, and I'm happy to say, the MTA ticket machines really are a low point in UX design.

My overall points are the following. The scalability of technological innovations means that even small design decisions can have a major total effect. In one extreme, about 35,000 years are spent on Facebook every day. That also calls for responsibility on us who work with technological innovations.

Equally, the speed of tech innovation means a higher bar for responsibility. For example, technology moves faster than legislation, meaning that many disruptive technologies are operating in rather unregulated markets.

Here are the slides, which will make tons more sense once I get the video from the event (they have many to process, it seems).

My nine minutes were a description of challenges rather than a ready list of solutions, but I hope to take this thinking futher soon in a more structured fashion.

#startups #social responsibility #innovation #technology

Google: Query Expansion And Respecting Users

It is disappointing Google continues to fall deeper into thinking it algorithmically knows better than its users. Query expansion is an example that I anecdotally feel has been getting more aggressive: if I search for 'vegan', don't expand it into 'vegetarian'. It is not the same thing, even if the semantics are connected. (for non-bunny-food-eaters: it's like searching for 'bacon' and getting results for 'fried chicken', too)

I think this has changed since the times I was there. I remember Sergey Brin in one TGIF (it was in a small room, so likely this is as early as 2003) talking about who Google makes products for. The user persona he sketched out was a sophisticated, highly educated user. No looking down on users. Maybe not so much anymore, 10 years on?

Related: DuckDuckGo is a pretty cool search engine.

Speaking at Slush 2014

I'm really excited to jump on stage at Slush 2014 in the Product Design Track. My topic is "Always Design Responsibly", where I scratch the surface of what the scale and speed of tech innovation means to responsibility in product design. I'll post the video and slides here, too.

#slush #slush14

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