Net Gain

My oh my, what have I been doing these last few months? Not a lot of constructive stuff, that’s for sure. No, I’ve instead been doing a lot of destructive stuff, filled in with a lot of neutral time wasting. I want to change this.

I miss writing in my diary and writing for my blog. I miss writing and creating things in general. I wish I’ve been taking more photos, and perhaps playing the piano. I wish I were still running. I like doing these things. These things are constructive and I find great value doing them. 

I feel better about myself because I know that I’m working all of the creative and corporeal muscles of my being. When I do these things I know, in even the smallest of ways, that I am creating a net gain within my own life. I like knowing that I’m taking steps forward, instead of standing still, or at times sprinting in reverse. 

I just had an intense urge to delete this short spurt of text above here. I do that sometimes. I wasn’t quite happy with it; I think I can do better. I’m still not happy with it. However after I post this, I will have done a tiny part in keeping myself creeping forward. As they say too: Perfect is the enemy of the good. 

So momentum might be gained after this. I certainly hope so. I haven’t quite picked a great time to do it, but perhaps what pressure there is will make this output all the more valued. 

The Crazy Case Made For Paying For Software

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend about her iPhone. She was a recent Android transplant, and I wanted to get her take on iOS and the entire iPhone experience. She talked about the hardware, the operating system -she had her pros and cons about all of it, but then she made a critique about the App Store: “All of the apps cost money.”

I didn’t catch it then, but then I thought about it later that day, and it really forced me to a stark realization. People are becoming more and more acclimatized to free software and services, and balking at the idea that those things should indeed cost money.

I though about it more, and I really was puzzled about her negative observation. No, not all apps in the iOS app store are paid, but a lot of them are. Certainly more than the Android Market, where even extremely successful paid apps on Apple’s platform are forced to give themselves away, i.e. Angry Birds. Regardless, yes, a lot of applications cost money. Why does that surprise people?

You are getting a product or a service when you download an app. It is not unreasonable to expect that you pay for something in a grocery store, so why not in an app store? 

Some apps by their very nature are free, those put out by non-profits or educational institutions. There are also the free apps that benefit and strive on the network effect, so it is vital that they get their applications installed on every single phone that is available. Other than that, games, utilities, anything else, I expect will cost money, and am surprised if they don’t. 

These applications that we all enjoy, well, these are made by developers, people who in fact do need to pay their rent and eat. It is a novel concept, but for those people to take their workdays to produce the next version of everyone’s favorite app, they need to be compensated for that time. If they are not, they will not be able to continue to produce it. Simple as that. 

This feeling has seeped into a lot of other areas of the market. Companies that use software as service, such as Instagram or Twitter, realize how anathema it has now become to the general populace to charge for what they provide. We’ve all heard of Twitter’s morass that resulted into trying to monetize their company. Instagram has taken huge amounts of venture capital funding, and still haven't found a single way to make a cent. Companies are bending over backwards to find a way to make money. Yet, nobody dares of charging for anything.

Is it so damn unreasonable to everybody if Twitter started to charge per month? I know this would never happen and would most definitely kill that wonderful network effect they have created, but think about it for a second. This is something that all of us get so much utility and importance out of. Something that has become an almost central part of our day. Is that really not worth five or ten dollars a month? Some companies have become very adept at profiting off a free service, but others are not so lucky. Is charging not a legitimate choice in that case?

That example up above is merely hypothetical. Of course it is too late for Twitter and Instagram. Jason Fried of 37signals, a web application company, explains quite well why this is the case. “Trying to charge for something that was previously free can undermine the product’s value, causing potential customers to ask why the service is suddenly worth more than it was in the past. My feeling is that you should begin charging right from the start... The longer something is free, the less it’s worth.” 

Don’t complain to me that the apps that you find so very useful and entertaining cost money. And don’t be surprised that one day the hot new website that everyone is talking about is subscription priced. We don’t have a problem paying for things, we just have a problem paying for things on the internet. Get used to it. We all are going to be doing a hell of a lot more in the coming years with our respective technological platforms, so if you don’t want to be relegated to the crappy freeware so commonly found when there isn’t a robust software economy, start forking over the cash.

Mixed Feelings on National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month is an effort put forth every November to get people to write an entire novel, or 50,000 words, in one month. At first glance I thought this was a great idea. Now I am having mixed feelings about it. 

From the proponent’s point of view, this is allowing people who never had the wherewithal or resources to sit down and write everyday, accomplish the creative project they had in mind. I am sure as well that it has gotten people who have never before put much thought into writing create something as substantial as a novel.

The movement’s website, nanowrimo.org, has forums and features that help you along every step of the way. They seem to be facilitating the creative process, and synthesizing that processes down to one month. After all, it frequently helps to have set time frames in mind whenever working on a big project like this. 

Following this affords you many benefits. You are given a start date, November 1st, when you begin to write. Procrastination and all of the ill that comes with it is effectively eliminated, since the very small window in which you can write forces you to push out words everyday. With the strong community influence you are encouraged to write everyday, and if all goes according to plan, you have a novel come November 30th.

Perhaps you always had it in you, but the push that National Novel Writing Month gave you, in terms of structure and support, was just enough for you to finally produce that piece of work you had been thinking about for ages. Like I said, looking at it from the proponent’s side, this is an incredibly valuable movement in terms of creativity and productivity. 

Then I began to think about it for a while. The more I though about it, the more trite and artificial it all seemed. Here’s why.

I was browsing through the many forum topics they have on their website and was surprised at the number of posts having to do with word count and daily content production. While this is important to the semantic, seeing that a novel is at a minimum 50,000 words, I was disturbed about how important it was for the many authors who’s goal it was to reach that magic number. I was even more disturbed that it seemed like it was their only goal. 

“Getting to that 50,000 mark is my main aim, anything over that is just a huge bonus for me.” This is an excerpt from a post about how to stay motivating during the month of writing. This sentiment, along with many others of the same nature, started to sour me on the whole idea. Why take the time to write something if your “main aim” is not going to be producing quality material? Anybody, if they feel like typing an hour a day, can ramble off 50,000 words and call it a novel, but is the final product going to be something that you are proud of?

Your goal should never be to churn out content only for the sake of having it fill a page. Writing for your own personal sake should be as long or as short as you need it to be. Quality over quantity should be thought about in cases like these. 

I’m finding math equations on these forums so people can accurately plan out how long it’s going to take them based on their words per minute typing speed... This is ridiculous! I think if people would put more effort in to what they write instead of how much, they would be infinitely happier with whatever they produce in the end.

Yes, online communities and a little bit of work flow structuring certainly do not hurt, but don’t use it to exclusively focus on this ridiculous obsession with word count. Writing a novel length story just because it’s a novel length story doesn’t prove anything, except that you are concerned with all the wrong things. 

Even after that diatribe against National Novel Writing Month, I am still not sure where I stand. All of those benefits I talked about earlier are still valid. It’s just a matter of where you are putting your focus. Anything that helps people create when they were not creating before deserves some consideration. 

So who knows, I may try and do it after all. Maybe not. Like I said, if I don’t have the ideas or the drive to devote my time toward a novel length work, I am certainly not going to do it just so I could have written a 50,000 world long string of crap.

You Changed, You Used to be Cool Netflix

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, and a man who has no idea what he is doing anymore.What in the hell has happened to Netflix? There was a time, not too long ago, that Netflix looked like it was making the transition from DVD-by-mail to streaming very smoothly. Now they seem to have completely lost their shit.

Netflix’s flip-flopping, bi-polar actions of late has really made me wonder what upper management is thinking. They are taking an extremely successful and innovative company and marring it with price hikes, kooky business spinoffs- à la Qwikster, and so much backtracking that it’s become comical. Not to mention the pot smoking Elmo.

Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO, has always seemed like a competent, forward thinking kind of guy. That makes me wonder even more how he is letting his company flounder so badly. Netflix’s stock price has already lost half it’s value in the  months of August and September, and I can almost guarantee that this latest reversal of course won’t put Wall Street at ease. 

Does Hastings know something we don’t? Is this why he seems so skittish about keeping Netflix’s business model the same? Continue to push streaming while you work to make as much of it available on the web as possible, and slowly let physical media sunset quietly. But these recent actions remind me of a company in trouble, a company who is desperate to reinvent itself or face death. This does not strike me as Netflix’s problem, that is why I am so bewildered by their erratic behavior. 

The price hikes in July seemed very anti-consumerist, nearly doubling the monthly fees for streaming and DVDs. Backlash mounted over this, prompting Hastings to announce a split in their offerings via a clumsily written blog post and mass email to subscribers. Qwikster would handle the DVD’s, and Netflix would go forth focusing only on streaming.

From day one Qwikster seemed like a poorly though out, poorly designed, and poorly named endeavor. From what I could gather looking at it from an outsider, Netflix was not putting much brainpower into this new company. Netflix, being a progressive company that it is, always saw physical media as a dying form of delivery. What they were doing however, cutting Qwikster loose so haphazardly and with what seemed like very little regard to its future success, seemed premature. 

I have said before that Netflix’s streaming offerings were not going to be able to replace their DVD by mail service, and they are still not able to. They may even be going backwards due to their valuable Starz deal ending next February. The recently announced news that Netflix has snagged a few movies from DreamWorks Animation and The Walking Dead from AMC are lousy conciliation prizes. 

That really doesn’t matter anymore however, because today’s announcement from Netflix’s blog assures us the physical DVD’s will be staying with Netflix. “This means no change: one website, one account, one password... in other words, no Qwikster,” Hastings writes in the post. This is the latest word out of them, and if their recent activity is any clue, not the last.

Jason Snell on Twitter sums it up in the best way possible, “I'll say this for Netflix: It sticks to its guns. And then shoots itself in the feet with them. And then changes guns. And shoots again.”

Can You Call Coffee Brewing a Hobby?

I have been reaching the conclusion more and more frequently that if it is not worth doing with care and attention, then it may not be worth doing at all. As I have iterated in my previous posts, I want something that I can be proud of when everything is said and done. This applies to schoolwork, my hobbies, and even daily chores such as making my bed (you can bounce a quarter off of those sheets). When you take this approach, you enjoy yourself more while doing it, and are more satisfied after you do. So why am I not applying this to all aspects of my life? 

The one aspect where this absolutely does not apply is to what I drink. Not alcohol, I don’t drink that stuff anymore, and probably should write a post detailing why, but not now. No, this is referring to my practical addiction to diet soda. 

As I am writing this I am on my third for the night, and this half empty Diet Sunkist is not going to last me until bed. I am not thirsty, nor in need of caffeine. I drink them because it is a habit, and it is something to do as I fiddle around my room. I drink mindlessly. By doing this, I am absolutely not putting care into what I do.

They are diet sodas, so I feel no compulsion to limit my intake of them. It’s like chain smoking, except replace nicotine with aspartame. The fact that they’re diet also excludes any enjoyment in regards to taste. Let’s face it, no diet soda tastes good, it’s a compromise drink. So I drink these constantly, not getting any enjoyment or pleasure out of them, and not putting any effort in the process of preparing them. It is my opinion that when you do not put time and thought into something it is harder to savor and appreciate the final work. In this case, the final work is an open can of not so sugary water, and true to my prediction, I am not savoring it.

That’s why I have been thinking about getting into some other type of beverage. Tea, coffee, I’m not really sure right now. I want something that I can make and drink that will allow me to throw some of my cycles towards, and actually create something delicious and worthwhile. 

Marco Arment, of Tumblr and Instapaper fame, has started to really sell me that the way to go might be coffee. He talks about how great it is to really care about something, and the more that you can really care about those things in your life, the happier you will end up being. He is a coffee enthusiast, and has described making coffee as his “ritual.” There are so many fantastic intricacies to the world of coffee, and it seems like something that I could get really nerdy about. The fact that I like coffee and tend to try and find the best when I do drink it, doesn’t hurt either. 

It’s all about finding something that you can really throw yourself into. “Mindless” anything is no way to go through your life. For the amount of enjoyment I get from drinking my eighth Diet Mt. Dew, I might as well be having a glass of water; and I think I will from now on. For the times that I do feel like really enjoying something to drink, I think that I can take the time to boil some water and grind some beans. 

Now, I have no idea where to start right now. French press or cold press, Costa Rican or Kenyan, I don’t know yet. I will tell you this though: The time I put in figuring out this coffee business and fine tuning what I like and don’t like, I will be putting it in with care and appreciation, and I will get satisfaction out of it.