Following on from a great post by Jeff Perry about the unimportant things we worry abut when choosing a note taking app. I wanted to expand on this slightly. The way you take notes and the access you have to them afterwards is infinitely more important than the app you use to collect them.
You can have the best, most expensive note taking app in the world, but if you don’t have a system for collecting your thoughts and being able to refer to them easily then it doesn’t make a bid bit of difference.
After frequenting the Galaxy Fold owners forums and subreddits, one of the biggest and most asked questions is in relation to Samsungs new colour ‘Mystic Bronze’. Whilst it sounds all mysterious with the marketing panache of Apple’s colours — what people really want to know is if it is pink, and if so how pink is it really.
This is a difficult question to answer. Not because there isn’t enough of them about, there are loads of hands on videos and review of both the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and also the Galaxy Z Fold 2 — with Samsung providing Mystic Bronze to every reviewer.
About 10 months ago, I was invited down by Samsung KX to have a few hours hands on with their first folding phone. Mere months after it had been recalled due to major issues with the device, it was back with a bang, and already picking up quite a following. The appeal of having a tablet folded up in your pocket had a much larger pull than the £1500 price tag, as was the exciting move forward in technology that Samsung had been teasing for years.
Adi Robertson for The Verge:
WhatsApp works almost nothing like Facebook. It’s a highly private, encrypted messaging service with no algorithmic interference, and it’s still fertile ground for false narratives
After picking through Casey Newtons pick apart of The Social Dilemma I then fell on the linked post by Adi — and despite disagreeing on some major points throughout both posts — I found an interesting topic I had not considered.
Currently, I am learning front end coding skills, as well as digesting all the information I can find relating to user experience, not just for the web but everywhere else. Part of this is learning the true meaning of design.
Not just making things look pretty, making them usable, easy to understand and creating better experiences for everyone. These skills have opened my eyes to the lack of design and thought that goes into many things in the world, and something that started out as a simple learning exercise has changed the way I look at the world completely.
I am currently walking a new path of self-discovery. I haven’t disappeared to India or been on any vision quests to find myself (yet), but as a whole, I was simply not happy the way I was going, so I changed direction. The choices I was making and things I was doing were affecting the way I felt and, like many people, I simply disliked the way I felt.
Working online all day, every day and then spending large portions of my free time online was becoming a drain on my mind.
I realised after sending last weeks newsletter that I never completed the story of my lust for a simpler time. It didn’t end as far back as I wanted to go, because there is no denying in the modern world I pretty much have to have an smartphone, but it thankfully got pretty far.
I am now the proud owner of two iPhone SE’s (SEes? SI?). I bought a used OG iPhone SE first, and used this for a week of peace.
You will never in your life posses something that is as important as your attention. The notice you take of someone or something is so craved after that throughout history those that have sought it have performed some of the worst and best acts humankind has ever seen. Yet we give it away without a moment of thought towards where it is spent.
The Accident Greeks wrote the very tale many of the modern condition are named after, Narcissus could be a tale told today about Instagram influencers or Facebook moms groups.
social media companies are basically giant behavior-modification systems that use algorithms to relentlessly increase “engagement,” largely by evoking bad feelings in the people who use them.
the algorithm takes a positive social movement, such as Black Lives Matter, and shows it to a bunch of people who are inclined to be enraged by it, introduces them to one another, and then continues to rile them up for profit,
It was difficult for me to not copy and paste the whole article into this post because it is so poignant.
Julian Summerhayes wrote:
But it occurred to me, as I lay awake at just after 4.30 am, how little time I’d spent looking at the alternative. What’s that? Well, I might delete all profiles or stop opening them and/or sharing material, but the truth is I’ve got nothing else as compelling to hold my attention.Now, I’m not sure if I should weep or be angry at that statement. I mean, surely my life isn’t or shouldn’t be defined by a bit of knob-twiddling, blog-sharing, or whatever else shows up between now and the end of my days?