Cocooning, really?

Are we ready for a new social network? Do we need this? Judging by their website, the nice design of Cocoon certainly looks enticing. But do we need this? It will take a lot of traction to make people leave Facebook or other well established data-ungry players. I certainly hope new players to come in and shake this rotten industry. Judge for yourself. cocoon.com

Things I look for when evaluating an app for my own use

When evaluating a new app for my own use, the first things I look for are (in no particular order): update frequency, update notes quality, user ratings, multi-platform support (macOS, iOS, iPad support), sync mecanism used, one-time purchase vs subscription based, web service backend. I may elaborate on this subject on a longer blog post in the near future. Currently using this against Raindrop.io apps.apple.com/app/id102…

Where is the date of publication?

Here is something that I notice quite often while browsing the web: the lack of a publish date on articles, blog posts, etc. While living in the age of fast content consumption, where content relevance is depleting fast, it seems important, more than ever, to put a publishing date. I know we can sometimes infer the date from the URL but to me it isn’t the right way to do it.

A content creators, If we suspect content we publish will age well, let’s put a publishing date on it! If we do think this is ephemeral stuff, a publishing date helps put some context for the content. Makes sense?

On paying for software

There is a lot of push back about software subscriptions these days it seems. But we should remember about past scams with promised updates for paid software that never came. So many examples of “significant” updates that are merely excuses to charge the user base again. There is no perfect and definitive solutions when it comes to pay for software. It is a matter of trust between the developer and the users or potential customers.