Here are some things that belong on Tumblr,

brycedotvc:

This is what the long game looks like.

via ventureswell

readme.txt

nybots:

Welcome to the New York Review of Bots, a professional journal of automated-agent studies. We aspire to the highest standards of rigorous analysis, but will often just post things we liked that a computer made.

Winter is coming, so I made a gif to commemorate the new season.

ninakix:

We’ll have coffee shops full of people twitching in little kinetic patterns. Maybe the gestures will gain a rhythm, it’ll be a little bit like dancing with our hands. But we’ll probably still take the glasses off when our friend joins our table.

Don’t we already have coffee shops full of people twitching in little kinetic patterns? Typing feels normal, but was never natural.

davidtylerson:

Its not as though architects dont fight for the user. I have been in many meetings when we championed design decisions that were good for the user but were pulled off the table because they were too expensive, or because they didn’t align with the client’s “vision.” Sure, the principals and senior designers of the firm could have fought harder for the user, but the users weren’t the ones signing the commission checks. And so I left, to take my talents and passion to another field. One that has the possibility to affect millions of people, one that is not yet hampered by the status quo. One where the end-user is the most important thing.

(via entrepreneurdesigners)

twitterportraits:

#ifihadglass I’d build info sharing tools for enriching IRL conversations. If I search for something, the friends with me should see result.

February 28, 2013

Thanks for the portrait, Cameron!

"I usually solve problems by letting them devour me."

Franz Kafka, Letter to Max Brod (via sanarao)

(via garychou)

naveen:

muir woods.

our first ever hike in these woods, where we went seeking quiet. the awesome height and ages-old wisdom of the redwoods is something to be seen in person. there was one tree we came across which had been burned and destroyed (probably by lighting many years ago). newer, younger trees have grown up all around it since, rising from its roots, growing strong, protecting it ever since.

(Source: naveen)

"Look at how we live: We communicate in text messages and e-mails; even those of us old enough to have lived in a world where landline was not a word because it’s all there was have fallen into this lazy substitute for human contact. I have. When I was young, when I was the age I should have been when all this happened, if I needed to tell a friend, an acquaintance, or the customer-service person from AT&T the smallest thing, I had to talk to him. Every day, many times a day, whether I felt like it or not, I spoke to people, lots of people. It is as obvious from a voice as it is not from print if all is well. Now, in a whole long day of croissants in the morning and multiple dog walks and stops at the bodega for yogurt and jam, I may speak with people I care about only in type. When you add the mistake of Facebook and Twitter into this equation, very bad things can happen: The illusion of friendship defeats the real thing."

ninakix:

Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts Her One-Night Stand of a Life - The Cut — this is an interesting thing for a writer to say. My own relationship with type is based on the context of the relationships that it mediates: for many people, type falls overwhelmingly short. But it’s mostly the people that refuse to treat a typed conversation like a real one: we would never, for example, hang up the phone in the middle of a conversation without saying, and hearing from the other person, a farewell first. Those that do well with type have facilitated amazing relationships through the medium, relationships that due to distance or just the inability to chat with someone on the phone ten times a day wouldn’t have existed otherwise. It’s a kind of closeness that is baffling to people that haven’t experienced it, but they’re probably missing out. So, in many ways, a sort of literacy and comfort with these modern tools for conversations creates opportunities for richer relationships. For those who can’t, or won’t, embrace this medium, the option then becomes different: each relationship takes that much more effort, that much more time; while text lets us make space in various moments for our friends, the lack of it means dedicating time explicitly to relationships. Most people aren’t capable of that sort of work: so maybe they build an illusion of friendship in their own right. The ones that can and do make an effort, with your own energy reciprocated, are gems. We have a tendency to revert to the lowest energy state, that is true: but if we focus on relationships it doesn’t really matter. It’s only when we lose sight of that goal that something feels a little empty.

(via ninakix)

"I think the right thing is to think about what other features are missing in the mobile OS and figure out the right mode of engagement to implement that feature. That is what Twitter did with status, Foursquare did with location, Instagram did with photo sharing, and Snapchat did with privacy. That got each of them on the home screen. Figure out what the next thing is."

Fred Wilson, Feature Friday: Privacy