Matthew Lang

Social media is always on the change. They clamber over each other to promote their best features and in come cases even copy the features of social media networks. I'm looking at you Instagram!

Through all this changing landscape there's been one slow less obvious change that has happened over the last couple of years.

Goodbye Twitter

It's been a quiet on Twitter recently. With the absent Patrick Rhone and Kurt Harden on my Twitter timeline, I found that I wasn't checking in on my timeline as often. There seemed to be little point.

So over the weekend I removed the Twitter app from my phone and I removed all the lists I subscribe too with the exception of one. I then logged in to the Twitter website on my phone and then closed the tab down. The change has been positive.

I'm no longer a slave to the Twitter app on my phone. I'm no longer checking my timeline on an hourly basis. I'm no longer thumbing through the moments tab just to see what's going on. I like Twitter's Moments section but the lack of filtering on topics is infuriating. Yes, I would like to see the latest scores from the NFL, but I can't be bothered with things like celebrity news, football news and trending posts on Twitter.

I mentioned that I removed all but one of the lists I created. While lists were initially a good idea on Twitter they haven’t changed to keep pace with Twitter and now are nothing more than a less useful form of your timeline. I think lists can still have their place on Twitter but as of filtering your timeline rather than being a separate list. You still have to follow everyone on each list but with a change of a dropdown, you can change the accounts that are displayed on your timeline. Perfect for sports enthusiasts who might like to keep an eye on their timeline during major sporting events.

I also have less notifications distracting me. I did have notifications on for direct messages but that's just something that I now check on the mobile Twitter site. Replies aren't so important that I need to know about them right away and knowing about my latest new follower isn't worth checking out unless I'm not working and I have the time to do so.

Twitter has always been something of a necessary evil for me. It's now just a placeholder for myself on that network and I don't see me using it often for anything else but cross posting from other places like Instagram and Pocket. And I think that's a real shame. Twitter had such great promise in the early days but the changes over the last few years have seen the usual crowd I follow fall away from it and finding people with similar interests is possible, but it's not the same as following people that you have connected with and know.

Hello Instagram!

And while Twitter has been suffering it seems that Instagram is flourishing. Multiple photos on posts, stories (although I've still not used these), bookmarks and the soon to come collections has made Instagram a rising social media star for me.

Once I thought of it as nothing more than just a place for selfies, but having spent the last couple of years on it, it's definitely more than that. The creative spark behind a lot of the accounts on Instagram is great to see and the visual timeline is so much more appealing and positive than browsing my Twitter timeline.

It's not without it's faults though. The comments on posts is a nightmare to navigate. Frequently people simply comment with another person's name and that's it. It adds no value to the comments section but it's a quick way of notifying that person about the post. I think Instagram could definitely improve it's comments section by allowing you to filter comments and promote comments that are like by many.

Considering others

And while there are other places like Snapchat, Ello (still going?), and even a couple of new places, I've been slow to consider setting up accounts on other networks. Mastodon is a newcomer to social media and while the promise of a less centralised social media network is promising, the truth is that I simply don't have the time for it.

The recent closure of App.net taught me that it's wise to weigh up a social media network before you create an account on it. Sure, you can grab your handle and start posting, but what real value are you going to get from it? I suspect in most cases the answer is little. Social media networks are designed to be places where you consume data. To do that social media networks try to wall you in with features and formats that are special to that one network.

I'm glad to say that Micro.blog by Manton Reece is hoping to change all that by creating a social network that is powered by one of the oldest timeline tools on the Internet. RSS. Using RSS feeds, Micro.blog aims to break down the barriers of wall garden social media networks and provide something that uses a publishing medium you're already using. Your own blog. I'll be glad to see that released and hopefully soon.

My changing tastes in social media is down to the fact that I’ve less value in Twitter and more value in Instagram. One is getting weaker and the other is getting stronger. Twitter isn’t a sinking ship yet, but it’s far from a great place to be. I’ll stick with the more positive and visual Instagram for the foreseeable future.

Selected by Time magazine to be the most influential images of all time.

Warning. Some people may find some of these images distressing.

The complete mix of human emotion. Photographs that feature amazement, happiness and sadness. An amazing collection.

via Kottke.org

There's a lot of things I love about living in the UK. Beautiful scenery within an easy drive, great golf courses, bearable weather through the winter and easy access to the continent for holidays. There are lots of other benefits as well, some important, some not so important. There's one thing though that I envy North America for and it's already started this year.

It begins at the start of October and runs right through to the end of December. It's the mix of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all running one after the other. They all coincide with each other whether you're American or Canadian. The order might be different for Canadians, but they still celebrate Thanksgiving within this period.

We visited Jennifer's parents in October a number of years ago. It was the first week in October and people had already started decorating their houses with pumpkins, lights and other decorations celebrating the time of the harvest and the ghoulish night at the end of the month. It was great to see so many homes making a big effort to decorate their homes.

Then there is Thanksgiving. As you know the UK doesn't have any holiday like this. We have Guy Fawkes night on the 5th of November but I would gladly trade it for Thanksgiving day. The family around the table for a big meal and the NFL on the television through the afternoon and evening.

Finally there's the run up to the end of it all. Christmas. We've spent a couple of Christmases in Canada and both we're great, although I have to say it was much more fun with the kids around.

At Christmas as well there are a lot of houses decorated with lights and they definitely go into in a bigger way than we do in the UK.

We've got neighbours with relatives in Canada as well and with this common ground, the conversation at this time of year inevitably falls back to how it's better in North America at this time of the year.

It's not about any one particular holiday, just the fact that there's so much happening during this time of year and it also coincides with a favourite of mine, the NFL season.

Was I born in the wrong country? Probably. Jennifer often jokes that I would be more at home living in North American than in the UK.

I would love to experience the whole run of holidays through the autumn and winter but it would mean a major upheaval of the family. For now though, I'll just quietly be envious on this side of the pond.

It’s been a while since I updated my daily email service, DailyMuse. It’s a year old now and I’m finding it to be a great start to the day. If you’re unfamiliar with it, then here’s the gist.

DailyMuse emails you single snippet of text from your own collection of snippets. Think of it as your nudge for the day. In the past year I’ve collected a number of quotes, lists and nudges that I keep here. Every day I get an email from DailyMuse with one of these snippets.

For the last year thought the service hasn’t unchanged. It’s not through lack of work on my part. I’ve built three different features and trashed them on the basis that they’re not suitable or too complicated for DailyMuse. The last thing I want to do is complicate DailyMuse but I do want it to be a more powerful nudge in the morning, and not just for me.

Here’s a few ideas I’ve been pondering on for DailyMuse.

The Daily Mantra

I recently read Paul Graham’s Top of Your Todo List post in which he talks about 5 commands that sit at the top of his todo list. It’s a nice idea but I don’t have space at the top of my todo list, but getting something like this in all my DailyMuse emails would be a nice idea.

Rather than having the commands at the top though, I thought about including it in the footer of the email. That way once you’ve read through your nudge for the day, the last thing you’ll read will be your commands.

Call it commands, a daily mantra, a motto. It could be anything, but lots of people live by this in some form and a daily reminder of it couldn’t hurt.

Categories

One of the trashed ideas for DailyMuse was adding the ability to organise snippets using tags. The daily email from DailyMuse could then send a snippet from a specific tag on different days. After testing the idea though I realised that tags allowed for a huge number of ways of organising your snippets. It was overkill.

Tags was too granular for organising snippets. I needed something broader, something simpler. Rather than organising snippets into tags, how about organising them into categories? One category per snippet is much simpler and with a limited set of categories to play with it means that people have a simpler way of organising their snippets.

Cards, Not Snippets

There’s one thing that has irked me since I built DailyMuse and that’s the use of the word snippets. I don’t like the word snippets, but it seemed like the best way to describe the information you collect for your DailyMuse emails. Maybe it’s my developer background that swayed towards this, but it isn’t the right word to describe what these snippets are. I had to get away from the programmer influence for this.

If DailyMuse was a paper-based service that didn’t rely on computers then how would it work in the real world? Well, every day you receive your snippet in the post, but it wouldn’t be on a letter because that’s for long form writing. DailyMuse is all about getting a short burst of information every day. It would need to be on something smaller. A card. An index card.

What wasn’t obvious in the past when I built DailyMuse now is. Rather than using the term snippets, I should have used cards.

This is one change to DailyMuse that is happening. A change in the terminology should simplify what DailyMuse is and encourage more people to sign up for it.

Find the Right Features

DailyMuse is still a side-project. While it does have a number of paying customers, it’s just enough to cover the hosting costs for most of the year. I’m taking my time with it and allowing it to a grow at a steady pace.

Not everything I build for DailyMuse get shipped. I’ve trashed more features for DailyMuse than I’ve added. I’m trying to keep it simple and easy to use. Burdening it with features isn’t going to make it anymore useful but it does have some space for improvement. I just need to find the right features that fit that space.

The morning routine is going well since officially embarking on it around November of last year. Here's what happens.

• 5 mins - Review the day ahead and ensuring that I don't have any conflicting work. Use Todoist and Timepage to do this.
• 10 mins - Scan through my Feedbin subscriptions and then read a couple of articles on Instapaper.
• 15 mins - Write in my notebook. When I say writing I mean with pen and paper. None of that digital nonsense. I'm on my third notebook and plan to keep it going for as long as I can. I use the time to write drafts of blog posts, private pieces or every now and then try out writing some fiction.

I do this all at the dining room table. Just me, my phone, a pen and a notebook. And maybe a coffee if I'm feeling adventurous.

I have to say, it's working well for me.

Makes you wonder why on Earth the US military has needed billions for more advanced bombers when this still works.

The B-52 is an Air Force plane that refuses to die. Originally slated for retirement generations ago, it continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement’s replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s replacement.

— After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet by The New York Times

A nice reminder that there are more pressing matters in the world than the growing number of icons in my menubar.

We are becoming disconnected from collective issues for want of personal entertainment. If continued, informing the masses on domestic and foreign affairs could very well devolve into an exercise in herding cats. While the individual might not see this as an issue, the collective should because it will influence entire generations. Those who cannot see past themselves are doomed.

— The Public Square of You by Caesura Letters

At a buck or few per app, how could it be otherwise? That type of pricing will work for Angry Birds and a handful of other games, but very poorly for most other types of software products. The scale you need, the sustained influx of new customers, well, it’s a place for mega stars, and people who think they can beat the odds at becoming just that.

That’s why I’ve been discouraging people from chasing dreams of a successful, sustainable software product business by pursuing paid apps. Far better be your odds at succeeding with a service where the app is simply a gateway, not the destination.

— Don't Base Your Business on a Paid App by Signal v. Noise

Refreshing to hear an argument for web based subscription services that are proving be more financially stable and profitable than paid apps.

NB is back with essential skills for the new semester. Number 6 on the list is strictly enforced in our house on a Sunday from September to the end of the year.

Relaxation: the ability to easily let go of the deadline for 8 hours and get some quality sleep, to watch the game without guilt, to know what is truly important at this point. Do less, achieve more.

— Back to School II by Nicholas Bate

During this time the rule is that Sundays are for home cooked meals, everyone sitting round the table to enjoy it, taking the boys for a walk on their bikes and then sitting down for a couple of hours of NFL.

Journalong has been limping along for a few months now. With almost no interest from myself in rolling out anymore features and a lack of activity from those users that have accounts there, I made the decision a few weeks ago that I would kill the Journalong service off completely and transform it into something else. There were two main factors that influenced this:

1. Lack of Interest & Activity - Journalong started off well with and managed to accumulate over 100 users in the first couple of months. The next few months weren't so great. A couple of users signed up to the service every month since then but in the last few months there has only been two sign ups. From those people that signed up, just a few accounts used Journalong on a monthly basis. Not exactly a busy service you could say.
2. Being Free - In the beginning Journalong was free, then it was paid, then it became free again. If anything from this, I've learned that products and services like this should be paid right from the start. Yes, it can be a hassle coding the payment processing for a web site, but even just a basic monthly subscription should be there if you want the product to become a sustainable business. Once something has been free, it's almost impossible to convince all users of the product or service that they should pay for it.

So that's the reasons for killing Journalong as a service so what next for Journalong? Well I did want to remove myself from managing a dead service, but I think there's still value to having a Markdown journal for your Dropbox. So, over the last couple of days I took the source code for Journalong apart and repackaged it as an open source Sinatra application that you can run on your own computer.

The great thing about this is that I can keep Journalong going at my own pace. Being open source I can make any changes I need or others need in my own time and accept changes from others.

Building and marketing products isn't for me. I prefer to be neck deep in code rather than marketing tools.

Jason Fried wrote about finding a positive experience when he joined Instagram:

Every scroll through Twitter puts at least one person’s bad day, shitty experience, or moment of snark in front of me. These are good happy people – I know many of them in real life – but for whatever reason, Twitter is the place they let their shit loose. And while it’s easy to do, it’s not comfortable to be around. I don’t enjoy it.

Every scroll through Instagram puts someone’s good day in front of me. A vacation picture, something new they got that they love, pictures of nature, pictures of people they love, places they’ve been, and stuff they want to cheer about. It’s just flat out harder to be negative when sharing a picture. This isn’t a small thing – it’s a very big deal. I feel good when I browse Instagram. That’s the feel that matters.

— Look and Feel and Feel by Jason Fried

I too have recently joined Instagram. I was curious to see what all the fuss was about and having discovered a few good accounts that embrace my different interests, I was surprised at the diversity of content on Instagram. Put it this way, it's no longer selfie central or at least it doesn't need to be.

I've always been doubtful about my coming back to Twitter and seeing how positive a difference it would make on me. Truth be told, I've not been that active, and I've purposely kept the number of accounts I've wanted to follow down to a minimum but there's still a number of issues I have with Twitter.

The ongoing changes to the time-line on the web interface makes it difficult to use. With tweets being promoted and inserted, I just can't easily follow what's happening. Not a big problem as I mostly read my time-line using the Echofon OS X app.

One feature of App.net that I really like was that I could verify my own account. This still isn't the case with Twitter, and the rules for having your account verified depend on a number of factors. Whatever the rules are, you can't help but notice that it's usually famous people that get verified status. I would like to see Twitter allowing users to verify their own accounts as well as a filter that only displays content from verified accounts. It would be one way to filter out the nonsense and garbage on Twitter and get back to the content that really matters.

Given my tweets have been infrequent recently, I don't have the number of spam accounts following that I did in the past, but it's still an issue. I did a clear down of my followers recently and found a couple of questionable accounts.

My experience on Instagram has been extremely positive and the visual aspect of the network is something that is much more enjoyable to flick through than Twitter is. It's just a more pleasant place to be.

My following list is biased towards mountain biking and fixies of course with a smattering of notebooks, the NFL and National Geographic plus a few Internet celebs whose work I enjoy.

Initially I'll be keeping my account private. If you request to follow me and I know you, I'll approve it. If I don't know you, you don't get approved. Sorry, that's just how it is for the moment.

It's been quiet of late on my blog and for a good reason. While my daily posts have ground to an almost complete stop, I do have a good reason for it.

Today I'm officially (and nervously) announcing a micro-service of mine, DailyMuse. So what is DailyMuse? Well, let me first take you back to a post that Patrick Rhone made on App.net.

Maybe something like this exists but, if not, someone should build it: I want to type a bunch of things into a place and then have that place pick a thing at random and email it to me once a day.

I made a note of this post with the intention of building something, but I never got round to it. Patrick's tweet in October was finally the nudge that I needed.

"Making cool stuff for our friends that they would like" sounds like a solid, successful, business plan to me.

— on App.net by Patrick Rhone

Now while I don't know Patrick personally, having not met him in person, he is someone who is a great influencer on how I work. His books are great source of reflection and I've long been a fan and user of his Dash/Plus system. So having established that I'm not friends with Patrick in the traditional sense, I still wanted to make this "thing" for him.

Having toyed with a few ideas before the end of last year, I started putting something more concrete together that Patrick could use. After a couple of weeks I had the basics of the service working. After a brief introduction by email, Patrick became the first user of DailyMuse.

That's the story behind the idea, but what is it? I think it can be best summed up as this:

DailyMuse is your own personal email subscription. You're the curator and audience.

Using DailyMuse you can collect quotes, phrases, lists and links in your own collection of snippets. DailyMuse then sends you one of these snippets at random, once a day.

Snippets are written in plain text or using Markdown. You can tell DailyMuse to pick a snippet at random or to pick from a queue of previously unsent snippets.

Receving the same snippet on consecutive days doesn't offer much value, so I added the ability to pick from snippets that hadn't previously been sent. There is still a lot to be done with it, but with the it's core value in place and working, it didn't make sense to hold on to it and never ship it.

So if getting the right start to the day sounds like your thing, and you don't mind curating your own collection of content to start the day with, then why not give DailyMuse a try? It's free for 30 days after which you can subscribe for $2 per month or £20 per year.

Last night, round about 5pm, I closed down my work apps, shut the lid on MacBook and left my iPhone at my desk. I checked my son was doing his homework right and proceeded to get the dinner started for the rest of the troops coming home. Not much different from most weekday nights really. Other people had different plans though.

Last night Apple announced more information for their Apple Watch and a new MacBook, as well as a few other things I guess. Don't worry, this isn't a post analysis of the event. It's a few words about my increasing indifference to Apple media events.

I like my Apple products. They help me make a sustainable living, they make the daily grind easier, they make connecting with remote family easier and they can even go with me everywhere letting me capture those little moments in life that you always want to remember. I could buy alternatives to them, but the prospect of getting different platforms and apps talking to each other and working isn't something I want to do. I just want my devices to connect and work so that I can get on with more important things. That's all they need to do.

At no point last night did I feel the need to watch Apple's event or even read the flood of nonsense tech journalism that followed it. I skimmed through my timeline on Twitter and I saw a couple of hundred tweets mentioning the Apple Watch and about maybe twenty or so tweets mentioning the new MacBook. So the Apple Watch is a given, but I'm not interested in that in the slightest. The new MacBook was interesting though, so I checked the specs on the Apple website. Job done. It probably took me a couple of minutes to do that. I refused to spend any more time digesting the why and how of Apple announcements or read any of the associated articles with the luring headlines by technology news sites that at the end of the day just want people to click through to their site for advertising.

The reason why I'm becoming so uninterested in the actual Apple media event is that anything remotely Apple related is over hyped to the point where you would think that Tim Cook was announcing world peace on the stage. Last night's event announced information for a product that we already knew about and information on a new product as well as other minor announcements. If this was made by any other tech company it would have got a minimal amount of coverage at best, but because it's Apple we get flurry of tech sites falling over themselves to be seen to be reporting on the event. Live blogging the event, doing a post event analysis and then making their final predictions on whether the product will be a success or notand usually whether it will make or break Apple. It's too much and thats what puts me off them. Not necessarily the even itself, but the inflated media interest around it.

Next time Apple make an announcement, I'll do the same. Leave all my gadgets at my desk and get on with the rest of the day, because even though I've bought into the Apple world of products, I can catch up with the changes in their product line-up on their website and in my own time.