Now Let Us Try Earnestness

Remote Work Requires a Trust-Based Management Philosophy

Classical management philosophy is preoccupied with productivity, not just output, all under the watchful eye of the supervisor. Instead, what work needs—and remote work in particular—is trust.

Lightbox

Software as Craft and the Passion Project

I firmly believe that creating software is a craft discipline. Like other craft disciplines it draws on scientific and engineering knowledge, but reaches its greatest heights when it marries that with details about human ergonomics or aesthetic flourishes intended purely to delight.

NBA

China and the NBA

In a global marketplace where Chinese profits and their future potential dwarf those from any other individual territory, firms will increasingly be driven to acquiesce to the Chinese central state authority.

Lightbox

Software as Business and the Passion Project

There has never been a better time to start a software business. At the same time, for certain types of software, there has never been a worse time to start a software business.

Lightbox

Announcing Lightbox

Lightbox is a mobile-first, full-featured, traditional (hand-drawn) animation production application/suite. It is what I am focused on building now. I am incredibly excited, and look forward to sharing this adventure with the world.

Diversity

[Citation Needed]

James Damore's citations do not support the conclusions he is drawing from them. This makes his findings and proposals for remedies worthless. He has some good ideas, but his presenting them amid so many simply wrong claims means they won't be valued as they should.

MLBAM

ESPN NOW

Live sports has been viewed as the final frontier in cord cutting. We may now be approaching the tipping point in VODs usurpation of broadcast television.

Spin the Cylinder?

The cleverness of the 2013 Mac Pro's design (inadvertently?) became more important than performance headroom.

Apple

Device as Sculpture

Jony Ive's design aesthetic is fundamentally sculptural, not ergonomic: he makes objects to be beheld, not to be held. Following the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011, there really wasn't anyone at the company to rein him in.

Apple

The Beginning of the End of "Apps"

When Siri can replace much of an app's interface, and do so for the multiple apps a user may need to complete a complex task, it raises the question of whether we even need "apps" at all.

Tesla, Electric Vehicles, "Disruption" and Hype

On Thursday, March 31, 2016, Tesla Motors unveiled its much awaited "more affordable" fully electric sedan, the Model 3. It began taking pre-orders, with a USD 1,000 deposit required, and within hours had racked up in excess of 100,000. As of this writing, the number is

Skin Deep: Black Johnny Storm, White T'Challa and other Nerdery

As I write this, the 2015 theatrical reboot of the Fantastic Four film adaptations is failing miserably at the box office. Naturally, in an environment where superhero films are the most reliable earners in cinema, this prompts "analyses" and "think pieces" attempting to divine the reason

I Kissed the Sky, and It Bit Back

I was thirty-four years old the first time I got high. It wasn't the first time I'd tried marijuana, but it was the first time it had an effect on me—any effect. Until then my friends and I wondered if I was nonresponsive to THC.

Love in Stockholm

Last week, the poor state of independent software sustainability on iOS moved noted developer Brent Simmons to write an essay urging indies to "do it for the love [http://inessential.com/2015/07/01/so_much_love]," a resignation of sorts to the seeming reality that supporting oneself

Formula 1

Long Live Formula 1

You hear it almost everywhere in the Formula 1 community, from fans, from commentators, from bloggers, from former drivers: the rules are "ruining" Formula 1. You hear complaints about the lack of noise, how quiet today's V6 hybrids are in comparison to the V8s, V10s and

Oluseyi on Tech

Tech is Dead

There are no more tech companies, where by "tech" I mean information and computer technology. This statement is immediately, trivially disproven—except it is also essentially true. There are no more companies that thrive by selling technology as technology to consumers. Every company you thought of doesn'

Perspective Diversity

In 2014 the US "tech" industry discovered a truth that I'd always known: it was staggeringly homogenous, basically a bunch of white dudes, a couple of South East Asians (also mostly dudes), and a sprinkling of women and ethnic minorities. The largest tech companies published their

Animation

A Bowlful of Nostalgia: the "Death" of Saturday Morning Cartoons

On October 11, 2014 I saw a couple of people on my social networking feeds lament the "fact" that it was the first time in decades that there were "no Saturday morning cartoons" on in America. What really happened was that the last over-the-air broadcast station

animation design

On Animation Design and Production Methods

It's interesting how the production method of an animated show—traditionally hand-drawn, Flash-style "paper" marionette, stop motion, or 3D CGI—can so deeply affect design. I've noticed some long-running shows switching from one to the other, typically from hand-drawn to Flash-style, and there is

Robot Byline: Software Sportscasters and Other Stories

Several months ago I was reading a fun piece by Kontra on the subject of sports previews written by software [http://counternotions.com/2013/12/10/algorithmic-writing/]. Prolific Internet commenter Walt French [http://disqus.com/WaltFrench/] (you'll find him writing detailed comments on several sites: Asymco, Monday Note,

Release

Release Therapy

I've been a professional software developer for over a decade, all told: 2006 to present, plus an earlier stint in 2000 and 2001. I've written a ton of software and released or contributed to the release of numerous components, web apps, services, mobile apps (most of

Feet of Clay

Our heroes are often fallible. How, then, should we react when—not if—they falter? I admire Ed Catmull. Yes, present tense, even after learning of his role in the anti-poaching, wage-fixing arrangements of several Silicon Valley and SF Bay Area technology and technology-related companies. I admire Ed Catmull for

The Responsibility of Audience

A while back I casually stumbled into a metaphor war over "rape." An individual had described what he considered an aggressively, eye-searingly ugly web page design (ironically for an essay entitled, "Design is Intent") as "visual rape." You know what happens next. Let'

The Sanctity of Focus: A Notifications Primer

I rarely write about my personal habits, in any area of life. I share them liberally when asked, and post about them intermittently on App.net (the only "social network" I belong to—except Tumblr; maybe I'll write about that sometime), but my good friend Chris

Value, Price and Explosive Growth

First, the most heartfelt thing about App.net I've read all week [http://pjb.io/2014/05/07/app-net-eulogy.html]. Thank you, Pete. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Continuing with my examination of viable business models for App.net, I think it's worthwhile to examine the questions of value