I have survived - it is official. I haven’t used a feed reader for over 30 days, and I can’t say I miss it. I have more time to work, the important news still reach me, and whenever I want to dip into a stream of inspiration (something I used my feeds for quite often), I visit specific sites I know will freshen me up with new ideas.

Here’s where my plan failed, though (not completely, mind you): there’s still important people who’s thoughts don’t end up on Twitter, Techmeme or Hackernews. The hidden gems are still hidden, somewhere around the blogosphere - and there’s no external curator (automated or human) to provide you with that information. With that, here’s a bit of history and the description of what I believe to be a great opportunity:

An opportunity in hiding

A few years ago (around 2004, if memory serves me right) I started working on ways to solve this problem, but never really delivered a solution. I had written the plans and the algorithms for a site (and rss feed-based service) where people would read based on their interests using a recommendation system. Work came in the way and that vision was never fully realized.

I believe there is still an untapped opportunity here. People have little time and thirst for knowledge (anyone who works in the information business can attest to this). There’s people whose recommendations make a valuable, filtered and curated reading list. We need the service that joins these two together and gives us the definitive reading list. A filtered, personal, vertical-less Techmeme.

Why no-one tackled this problem efficiently in the past puzzles me. There’s been attempts, of course, but they somehow all ended up either failing or just heading in the wrong direction. How Google (to state the obvious) hasn’t dedicated a big slice of their research to this area, I don’t know. But I wish someone did, because unfortunately work is still in the way, and I (as I’m sure, many many others) still need this tool.

Footnotes

I always say this, but now I mean it more than ever - I would love your thoughts. If you have any, please leave a comment or send me an email directly (fred at this domain). I would also appreciate it if you could share this post with your friends and colleagues, in hope that someone reading may get the sudden urge to work on this problem.

Image in this post is part of the concept art for what I believe to be one of the most innovative games in the last few years, Katamari Damacy.

From an outsiders’ perspective, it is pretty odd that Google is acquiring good ideas and businesses and letting them fade slowly. It is easy to assess why Google acquired these companies (for the talent, technology or just for the modjo), but not having a structure to deal with the new intellectual property seems a bit clumsy, particularly coming from people we’re used to seeing excel when it comes to launching products.

What I’d love to see? Google integrating some of this acquired IP into their core offerings. Dodgeball, Jaiku and Orkut should live together. Feedburner and Google Analytics were made for eachother. Grandcentral would be ace tied to “Google Apps for your domain”. I wouldn’t be bummed if they actually brought all these companies down if their functionality were to appear elsewhere within the Google universe.

I’m pretty sure there’s people at Google who can build and implement this strategy. But please stop leaving these things (some of them with quite a chunk of users) in the acquisition closet.

I escape 9-5 by working 8 to 8. I work weekends. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about work. Sound bad? Maybe we have different ideas of what work is. Work has no negative connotations to me. It’s equally rewarding as it is inspiring; equally exciting as it is relaxing. I always have my eye on the prize: making things better all the time for our company, for our community and for our customers. It’s not that I have no life, hustlers are expert life-multitaskers. They recognize that ideas or opportunities can arise at any time, and they’re always prepared.

Coincidentally, a few weeks ago I posted another quote on the same topic.

I took the opportunity to ask Paul Graham for advice on something that was troubling me at the time. A little context: WBS had two main sources of income - products and consulting. Goplan was growing steadily (it became profitable a week after launching) and our consulting business was doing extremely well. I had growing questions of where to focus our efforts.

So I asked Paul what he thought we should do - focus on our products, or our consulting business. It was now two years ago so I can’t remember Paul’s exact words, but his answer went something like this:

“It is pretty obvious to me. You have a growing, successful product and a team that has proven it can deliver. Why spend time working on the ideas of others when you can do something great with what you have today, and worry about your consulting in the future? You have a great opportunity right now.”

I left YCombinator that day with those words in my mind and I remember them to this day. I often get into conversations on whether to work on one’s ideas or work for others (be that as a consultant or just joining the ranks of a major company) - and although I don’t quote PG on those conversations, my advice has always been the same. Work on the things you are passionate about^[2] - particularly while you can afford to do it.

Foot notes

^[1]: Three highlights from that evening: meeting the Justin.TV guys, who were then just a couple of guys with a neat idea and weird headgear; Trevor Blackwell’s robotics lab (at the YCombinator HQ), still ingrained in my memory as the coolest place on earth (homegrown Segway!); Jessica Livingston, kind enough to give me a signed copy of her book Founders at Work (which you should read if you’re an entrepreneur) before it went out on the shelves.

^[2]: This was actually one of my new years’s resolutions - to only work on things I’m passionate about. It’s been working just fine thus far, and I’m not alone in this.

Drinking from the fire-hose

RSS was fine for a few years. It was manageable because there weren’t that many blogs you were interested in reading. Those things pile up, though. Suddenly you get unread-item anxiety because you see the red notification saying “5000 unread items” and you think “sh*t”. And you go at it, reading all you can read, like a buffet of information. Is this story ringing any bells?

Me, I’ve declared feed bankruptcy. Over 1000+ items are produced in the blogs I subscribe to a day. Unsubscribing a bunch didn’t really help. Also, most of the things I was reading in the feed reader that caught my eye were either featured on Techmeme (which I still have as my homepage on Firefox) or Hackernews. Those that didn’t get to any of these two, would come to me via Twitter. So I just stopped opening the reader. Now I don’t even have one installed and to be honest, I don’t miss it one bit.

Things come to you

We’re living in a pubsub world. I have people I subscribe to on Twitter, and there’s people who subscribe to me. This creates a conversation channel that removes the need for RSS. The conversation becomes the news mediator. Yesterday I heard about Joshua Schachter’s move to Google through Twitter before it was on Techcrunch. Today, I knew about the new Yahoo CEO before it was “all over Techmeme”. Because I subscribe to people whose interests are similar to my own, I hear about things as they happen.

Some might argue that Twitter is more attention-intensive than an RSS feed reader is, but I would disagree. While the feed reader gives you anxiety because you know something is piling up for you to read (much like email), Twitter is a river of news/updates (hat tip to Dave Winer) you can just choose to pay attention to whenever you have time for it. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely closer.

So in conclusion: take my word for it even if only for a few days. Go reader-less for a while and see how much of a difference it makes. Chances are you’re going to be both okay and with a lot more free time to do great work.

Photo credit: Wizardhat on Flickr.

The last few weeks we’ve been hearing all sorts of speculation and rumors about Apple considering the iPhone the ultimate gaming device, and how it’s set to revolutionize the mobile gaming industry by pushing the hardware in that direction. A quick google search for “iphone gaming” will tell you how hyped up this idea is, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find quite a lot of people excited about that idea. Personally, I hate it. And I hate it to the point that I’m happy that Palm came out with a competitor worthy of that title so that Apple can get back to thinking about the “Phone” in “iPhone”.

The iPhone is a brilliant platform, and has pushed the boundaries of mobile device innovation at a deep level. Regardless of whether it is the best phone to use everyday or not (although I would say it is), it has set a new mark for what defines a phone’s user experience. This is what Apple does right. Personally, I don’t really care if the iPhone lets me play 3D games. Games are not a part of the original vision for the device (”A Phone, an iPod, an internet communicator”), and would only be spreading that vision too thin. Why lose two battles (the phone battle and the gaming battle) when you can blow everyone else out of the water by doing one thing right at a time? I can think of several companies that tried to do that too many times and ended up down in the dumps.

For more information on the Palm Pre check out its official product page or the coverage and hands-on video that Crunchgear and Engadget have of the device.

^[1]: Because the iPhone is really the full package of phone + software to manage it + App Store experience. By building the whole system Apple not only controls all your experience (ultimately a good thing for you) and keeps you under their grasp (ultimately, a good thing for them). More on building products systems in a post in the near future.

As an exercise, think about what you just saw and how it compares to the normal reaction to similar situations. It’s not about using video, or using twitter, or communicating instantly. It’s about using the platforms on which your audience engages with you (whatever those might be), and being authentic. Gary sure was.

1) The user: if you consider your twitter account account a part of your identity (like I do), you shouldn’t be giving out your password to anyone. Particularly a service that has no terms of use or privacy policy showing. These people could be hijacking your account tomorrow and you would be to blame because you gave them the means to.

2) Twitter: because they’ve been sitting on their OAuth implementation for over a year now. Essentially, it would give users a way to provide external services with temporary access to the account, without actually giving the entire account away. This would provide a safe way for services to communicate without the user actually being in jeopardy. Twitter folks, what the hell?

3) Twply: because they’re violating trust and being shady. Interestingly, someone asked them (over Twitter, no less) if the passwords people were giving were encrypted on Twply’s service to which they replied “yes they are“. Well, they can’t be or they wouldn’t be sending them to twitter, would they?^[1]

The subject of trusting web applications and services with your data is complex and tricky. But there’s definitely apps out there that make it really clear that they’re shady. Problem is, naive users (looking for the latest bling because they see pundits mention the service) will still be lured in.

Footer notes

^[1]: To put it simply, let’s say you give TWply your password, and they encrypt it. If they do encrypt it properly there’s no way to reverse the process, which means they can’t authenticate as you with Twitter (because instead of sending Twitter your password, they would be sending the encrypted version of it, which would be invalid). It is 99.999% safe to assume that these people are lying, here.

Updates

And *bam*, they’re sold! Not only do they have your passwords, they’ve sold themselves (and your data) to someone else to do as they please (remember folks, there’s no terms of use or privacy policy, here). With the passwords for accounts like @techcrunch, I was betting on a bit more than $1.200, but you know, they made a quick buck. My best recommendation: if you did give these people your password, go change it.

I’d like to leave you with a video of BusinessWeek’s five questions with Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and someone who’s brain I’d love to pick every once in a while. In the first few minutes of this video, Tim goes through what he defines as Design Thinking as a practice, and how companies (much like yours or mine) can benefit from the discipline. Inspiring stuff. Have a look:

I’m making getting back to doing more design and strategy one of my resolutions for 2009. This means that if you ever need a consultant with a flair for building products and experiences today, get in touch, I am dying to get back to work with people passionate about ideas.

Note: This being the first post of the year, I thought I’d commit to something else in addition to more work on design thinking - blogging more. I’ve gone through posting highs and lows in my years of blogging, but I plan on redeeming myself from all the lows during 2009. Happy new year!

The crowd jeered but the stark reality of it all is unavoidable. And the fact that the panelists on stage, all either American or living in America, suggested that you can somehow succeed with a startup while maintaining a healthy work-life balance is unfortunate. Too many people choose to be entrepreneurs as a lifestyle, without realizing that it takes everything you have and more to win. And if you aren’t in it to win, why not just take that nice job down the street that gives you five weeks of vacation.

Funny, because it’s ultimately and unfortunately true.