Carl Setzer

I love how they used video to really enhance the unique qualities of this music, and the underlying physics.

I value knowing what’s going on in the tech world. Yet, there is so much change, coming so fast, that sometimes I miss the obvious. I subscribed to YouTube Red some time ago. My focus: ad elimination. So much of my family’s video time is spent on YouTube, so it was a prudent investment. I didn’t realize that the subscription includes Google Music. I discovered this today, so used it as my music delivery mechanism. Music is such a core part of my being, that the way I access it has value. I like the interface. So far, the selection has been solid. Spotify, of late, has been quite a resource hog. Accessing via a web browser seems to use resources better, or at least more gently. Anyway, I’m exploring shifting over fully, and cancelling my Spotify account. I’ll be diving deeper into Google Music and share what I learn.

As I've focused the past few years on marketing, I have no issue with web ads. Currently, they're the way many web personalities and other sites pay their bills. Family feeding is a fun, fantastic feeling. However, web designers need to build advertising around mobile. Too often advertising either destroys the user experience, or critically hampers it. Pop ups that can't be cleared are big issues. Several times this week I've struggled with sites where the "close" button was off the screen, AND clicking on the ad took you to a new website. (Sidenote: web devs and designers, use the target attribute on anchor tags. Don't build ads that push your readers away from your site!) These things make your site unusable on mobile. And, let me reiterate what's been stated myriad times: the web's future is mobile. If your mobile experience sucks, you're are already behind. Perhaps you're ahead of the curve on being an anachronism. It's hardly ide...

Lately I've pondered "connection". With several hundred Facebook friends, LinkedIn connection, over a thousand Twitter followers....maintaining connection starts to feel easy. Too easy. I'm noticing that I interact with a smallish group of the same people on those different channels. These are dear friends, but not  even close to the larger group of people I want to maintain relationship with. So many good folks that I keep thinking "why don't we get together more often?" That bothers me. I signed up for Plaxo ages ago, and I really haven't done anything to maintain that list. But I get emails reminding me of birthdays and any other events (anniversaries) that I noted in my contact when I synced. These reminders are nice in that they trigger me to reach out. That's a start. So, I'm trying to "up my game". Going to build a list of those contacts to, well, contact. I would like to start sending notecards out, too. That just seem...

I just received an recruiting email, where the writer found me via my long neglected Indeed.com resume. It got me thinking about all the sites I've used over the years, that I've eventually abandoned, or at least dropped into neglect. Profiles on Monster, Indeed, NWJobs, MySpace...what do these say about me? To the recruiter emailing me about positions at Microsoft, what is there expectation of who I am, and would any elements of my current reality match? On a somewhat related note, Om Malik recently posted You've Go (No) Mail . He talks about the sense of loss accompanying the ending of his Gigaom email. I've felt these twinges in the past, with the suspending of my Starbucks and Microsoft emails. But those were different at an elemental level. Regardless of my emotional connections to those institutions, I didn't found them. They didn't hold my name, they never represented me at the same level. The closest I could imagine is with this site, and the email ass...

This July Forth, one of the key things I'm doing: cleaning out my inboxes. I've been quite over-full with activity, and this was one area sacrificed. Brings back to the front of mind a continuous quandary: information flow. I have a huge array of interests, thus have subscribed to a huge number of email lists. And, like today, most of what I'm doing is dumping those emails into the trash. Even the ones being saved to "read later". That's something happening less and less: "reading later". Slowly, I continue culling subscriptions. It's hard, really hard. Iteratively, I'm defining/refining my interests. And weeding out what I won't read, or keep the most up-to-date with. This weeding has been the most painful. Even with knowing I can look things up instantly. Perhaps it's a legacy: I'd keep magazine subscriptions of stuff that I cared about to "read later". Though it might be weeks or even months later, having access to ...

A self-observation: I have several hundred contacts in my addressbook. Synced automatically with the cloud, my laptop, and OTA with my iPhone, I just haven't thought about them. I can search for who I want. Or, even better, when I'm typing an email, boom, it pops up. Done! However, I'm certain I have duplicate info, and, worse for a data-driven geek like myself, bad data . I know I have expired email accounts, old phone numbers, and worthless addresses. A quick skim shows people I haven't talked to in years, as well as people I don't know. (I've long had the habit of making sure key project contacts were in there "just in case". Some never needed calling, and, thus, their relevance to me has faded form memory.) Cheap storage and good search tools have made this something of a non-issue. But I like my data clean and accurate. Plus, this does provide opportunities for confusion. I have a few folks I infrequently email, and have with multiple email ad...