When “Productivity” Apps Hit a Wall

According to Wikipedia,

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it.

Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input. Productivity is a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input.
.

As of today, there are 4 762 productivity apps available on iTunes for both ipad and iphone. I have downloaded a few of these including “pages” and “numbers”. The expectation was, that I would increase my output and efficiency of production by because I would be able to work in more places with my ipad than I would with a computer. In turn, this implied that I would carry my ipad to more place because it is lighter and generally speaking, more easy to transport, store and switch-on.

However, it became clear that these apps offer only theoretical productivity gains. I have used these apps a few times and then stopped.

The problem was not the apps themselves, the problem was the keyboard; I can deal with answering emails (if they are short) using the virtual keyboard on the ipad. But when you think of text-editing and productivity, it generally involves long sentences, moving around text or cells and extensive edits. All of this becomes prohibitive with an ipad keyboard and therefore always reverted to using my heavier but more user-friendly computer when it came to these activities.

Yet, the productivity apps have been resurected, at least as far as I am concerned due to a very low-tech event. I was offered an ipad case with a bluetooth keyboard. Though the keys are still a tad too close for fast typing I am comfortable writing the equivalent of a few pages without much frustration.

The key insight of this experience is that sometimes a given set of products or services rely on third-parties upon which they have no control. In this case, the apps themselves may be faultless in terms of features, stability and user experience but to express their full potential they need keyboard manufacturers to create a symbiotic eco-system.

Post Scriptum, the above article was written with the use of my new ipad keyboard.

Morning in London

Morning in London (http://instagr.am/p/jfyEZ/)

Debate: How much would you want to know?

How much would you want to know?

This question was prompted by several reports which highlighted how cheap DNA tests (or personalised sequencing) have become. It might have taken months, if not years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the early 2000′s individual can now buy their own tests for a few thousands dollars and obtain the results within weeks.

A Caffeine Break for all iPads

 

This prompted us to ask ourselves whether we would want to take a test which would tell us which terminal diseases we might carry. (Would you like to know the likelyhood of your developing Alzeihmers?) Furthermore, how would you deal with these questions when it comes to your progeny?

The difficulty in considering these questions is that the answers usually come in percentages. “You have a 75% chance of developing this disease”. What does this mean exactly when it comes to one person? Should you treat this as a “yes” and therefore start writing your will? What if you are told you have a 25% chance? Would it be business as usual? Lastly, you know that there are false positives (diagnosed with a disease but not actually having it) which very in their recurrence depending on what is being diagnosed.

The human brain, it turns out, is not well equipped to deal with one estimate at a time (what is the likelihood that you share the same birthday with one of 25 other guests?). So when it comes to dealing with a battery of these in the medical field (false-positives etc…) the public at large lacks the ethical and mathematical tools. (Insert here a call for the medical profession and statistician to come-up with guidelines).

In the winter of 89/90 I was invited by my brother to go trekking in Nepal. I

A personal high

looked at the map and thought that with extra training (I was quite fit for sea-level purposes) I would be well-prepared. It turns out that by 3 000m my brain was blanking-out. I could not l beyond a few steps. The magnificent Nepali and Tibetans were zooming by me (barefeet) as if I had been standing still.

I entertain two contradictory notions from that experience:

1) If I had known how difficult it was going to be, I would not have agreed to it

2) I am glad I did it

So far, there is no system that I know of, which might tell you when “there is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action” and when “knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven”.

Sunset over westminster

Sunset over westminster (http://instagr.am/p/e5jPs/)

Formalising our Blogging Sessions

The big news from today’s blogging session is that it has been decided to give the following structure to our meetings:

1) Newsround. We will take the first 20 minutes for a round-table news and apps update. We will share which news and/or new apps caught our attention and would be worth mentioning.

2) Main topic. We will then move on to discuss one main subject. Each will make a proposal and we will as a group select the most interesting one. If your subject is selected, be ready to lead the discussion; you will be become the host of the discussion.

3) Each of us will then be encouraged to write about this topic.

Branding our sessions

http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

We have decided to brand our meetings so that it will be easier to refer to them across social media.

The two contenders so far are:

#cupofnotes
#cupofthoughts

please vote “through this google doc” you will be able to make a suggestion as well.

I will announce the results on Monday evening so that we can start using the brand-name for our next blogging session.

Morning in London

Morning in London (http://instagr.am/p/eaLFu/)

Jobs: Crashpadder is hiring

The following positions are open at www.crashpadder.com located in central London.

• Head of UI/UX – define the future of the Crashpadder experience
• Customer Champion – turn our users into advocates & build the community
• Business Development Manager – drive the business forward and manage our commercial partnerships
• Head of Communications – develop and manage our global comms strategy
• Marketing Manager – deliver agressive growth objectives in key global locations
• Ruby/Rails Engineer – build new technologies and deploy daily
• Marketing Internship GTI – have real input building our community
• Tech Internship – write code used by thousands a day

London Trends: Harrods Displays

Your Memory Inbox is Full

By Laura Corbett

I was recently tagged in a photo from nearly two years ago on Facebook. Upon seeing this photo I immediately was flooded with memories of my backpacking trip around Europe with my best friend. These positive memories were short lived when the next thought popped into my head “Wow! I was a lot more chubby than I remembered….” this led to a spiral of self reflection about my body image and how I’ve changed both physically, mentally and emotionally throughout the years. Would I have been better off with simply my memories? Do photos and the ability to see them instantly and keep them forever ruin the preciousness and uniqueness of our own memories? Before this was possible all we had were the images we created in our own minds. We could access them when we pleased, and they were exactly how we wanted to remember them. Some fade over time, others remain fresh as the day they happened; but isn’t that how its meant to be? Do we over load our minds with data by keeping digital copies of our memories? Shouldn’t we naturally make room for new thoughts and reflections?

While its great to have reminders of the good things in the past, we may too often dwell on the negative. Life is too short to dwell. We often find ourselves worried about how a certain picture we post will make others view or judge us. My trip to Europe would have remained positive and unclouded by my reflection of my physical appearance, had I not been tagged in that photo. Don’t get me wrong, I love photography and the way it enables us to see things we may not have had a chance to see otherwise; but I also believe in moderation. Technology in essence makes our memories (and associated emotions) permanent, and sometimes inescapable. So enjoy things while they are happening. Soak up the moment and don’t worry so much about capturing that photo to remember it later. You will always have your memory database in your head. Isn’t that enough?

Emotional baggage 2.0: Memory, Personality and Technology

By A.J. Barroso

Picture this: an individual’s emotional baggage as gauged by organic memory and experience. Take this image and place it within the context of modern technology. Does today’s technology take away a part of the individual? Does it affect ones memory and personality? Of course it does.

This is emotional baggage 2.0. One can argue that it benefits us with respect to storing and sharing our thoughts and memories. But it’s deeper than that. I would argue that rather than technology taking a part of us away, it weights us down with added emotional baggage within this context. With all the digital experiences and memories we’ve amassed throughout the years, one doesn’t usually think about the fact that all of this remains with us on our hardrives and inboxes as well as in our minds.

This example is especially manifested when one goes through their inbox or old pictures and initiates a “memory purge”. The ennui of emotional baggage: it plagues us and we don’t know it. And what is worse is when we get that “almost full” notification on our system we are forced with two decisions: Delete, in the hopes of no regrets or have a bittersweet reminiscing. Both paths are inevitably dark or have dark elements.

Now picture this: a mind, personality and inbox cleansed. In the famous song “Bag Lady” by neo-soul artist Erykah Badu: Pack light.

A.J’s Blog http://poutine-in-london.tumblr.com/
Follow A.J. at @mraaronjoshua