My recent thoughts in <400 words
Improving my information diet with Hey
- Have been enjoying creating a 'Feed' of newsletters using the improved email that Hey.com provides (tomd@hey.com).
- The 'Feed' content is more like a targeted, healthy snack than the junk food of BBC news and others.
- If the information that I consume is the raw material for my thoughts, it strikes me as very important to mentally eat good information. The benefits of higher quality input might be massive.
iOS shortcuts as a personal API.
I have been trying to avoid being late for anything. To help this, I hooked up the iOS shortcuts app and Airtable to log any lateness.
The bigger idea is that you can use iOS shortcut as a personal API from the physical world into the digital. There are lots of applications here: e.g., You could make a voice-to-text journal app in about 30 mins.
Wired to like audiobooks more than reading?
- I have been enjoying listening to the audiobook of 'Red Mars' by Kim Stanley Robinson. Given that the oral storytelling is much older than writing, I wonder if humans are wired to find audiobooks more engaging than reading.
Fiverr - Skills as a service
- I have been struck by how revolutionary Fiverr seems. Using it, you can hire skilled people to perform discrete tasks quickly. For example, I hired two artists in a few clicks to draw these portraits of me below.
- Being able to access skilled people easily is so helpful to building products quickly. And, the pricing mechanism aligns: people only get paid once they have completed the task.
^ 5 days, $22
^ 4 days, $9
Potion - Using Notion to build websites
- Have been playing with Potion to create a website on top of Notion. Potion allows you to build a website by writing Notion pages. Deployment is instant: you write on your Notion page, and your site updates immediately.
- I like Potion’s concept. Potion uses an existing, powerful tool (Notion) as its host, and builds something extra on top.
Digital world gives information, physical world gives actions
- As I think about interacting with things in the home, I am struck that there is a tension between the physical and digital worlds.
- The digital world is great at giving me information, but less good at giving me actions
- Integrating the digital world into the physical world would allow me to interact with things at a more natural level
Outro:
I am just starting to use Twitter: feel free to be my first follower @tomdekan (DeepL converts 'Tom Dean' to the german 'Tom Dekan', which I find fun)
By the way, I generated one of the above sections using OpenAI. Any guesses which?
I hope that you are having a great week :) I am in sunny Scharbeutz, swimming in the sea and programming.
Tom