The other day, I left the house and went on an invigorating ten-mile run. I log my runs pretty religiously – usually on MapMyRun, though that day I happened to use Strava – and have kept a close watch on my mileage since I started seriously running in 2013. And so I know with certainty that … Continue reading 4,000 Miles
VentureBeat has the story today of Facebook’s new partnership with Dutch airline KLM to integrate boarding passes, flight information, and customer service into Messenger. As I’ve written before, Facebook Messenger has completely embraced the platform approach and integrated everything from mobile payments to Uber booking to customer service, all in one app. And it’s compelling to see … Continue reading We Have Met the Future, and It Is Messaging
Over the course of my day, I bounce between a number of different chat apps, primarily Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and Google Hangouts. With the exception of Slack, none of these services offered a Mac desktop app, and so I needed to keep browser windows open for each of my conversations, which was very frustrating. Enter … Continue reading Franz
Fortune has a wonderful excerpt from Dan Lyon’s upcoming book, Disrupted: My Adventure in the Startup Bubble, where he talks about his uncomfortable stint in the startup world. As he tells it, it’s hard to tell where the startup ends, and where the cult begins. And in that sense, it’s remarkably, scarily, similar to Dave Egger’s 2013 … Continue reading In Startups, Truth Can Be Stranger Than Fiction
Samsung’s newest flagship phone, the Galaxy S7, has received generally favorable reviews. One caveat seems to be that, like many other phones, the Galaxy comes preloaded with a frustrating number of preinstalled apps. The New York Times has an article succinctly titled “Samsung’s Smartphones Aren’t the Problem (Just Prune the Bad Apps).” In this piece, the Brian X. … Continue reading Preinstalled Apps
There was an article last month in AdWeek about how new parents are incredibly active on Facebook via mobile devices. Some interesting points they mention: New parents globally post 2.3 times more photos, 2.9 times more videos and 1.8 times more status updates than average users. Despite the popular perception that posts about Facebook users’ … Continue reading Digital Parenting
I first discovered Spotify on Facebook about five years ago – there was some sort of promotion or link – and now it seems appropriate that Spotify forged a tighter partnership with Messenger by allowing music listeners users to more easily share music through Messenger. I think that this helps both brands in significant ways. Facebook is out … Continue reading Spotify on Facebook Messenger
Fast Company ran an article yesterday on how the gourmet food magazine Bon Appetit shot its entire March issue on iPhones. The magazine’s creative director, Alex Grossman, observed: I’m not going to say we were making fun of ourselves as we did it, but so rarely, in making a magazine, does it mimic real life. I’m … Continue reading Good Enough
The Times ran an article yesterday, speculating that Amazon may be looking to open more brick-and-mortar bookstores, to complement the one it built a few months ago: The Internet retailer plans to open more brick-and-mortar bookstores following the unveiling last year of one such location here in its hometown, according to a person briefed on … Continue reading Amazon’s Offline Expansion
There’s an article in this week’s Economist about the cult of the hard-charging, emailing-from-the-treadmill-at-4am CEO. The article also describes the investments that companies have made in on-site fitness centers and coaches: This cult of hyper-performance is nurtured by a growing army of personal trainers and yoga coaches who make their living by fine-tuning and de-stressing business … Continue reading The High End of Fitness
Silicon Spatula 