I’ve always been drawn to clean design—the kind that doesn’t shout for attention, but quietly says, “this just works.” That’s why reading about how Steve Jobs once spent only ten minutes dragging sliders around to design the original Mac calculator feels like a revelation. According to the article from Ars Technica, a young Apple engineer …
There’s this meme floating around online that draws a line from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics—our ancestors’ earliest attempt at picturing ideas and emotions—to today’s colorful emojis blinking across our phones. And it got me thinking about an intermediate chapter in that journey: the humble emoticon. Back in 1982, at Carnegie Mellon University, computer scientists were trading …
Lately I’ve been thinking about death—not the usual poetry or quiet-room type of death, but death in space. Yes, I know it sounds sci-fi, but according to a recent article—”Is NASA Ready for Death in Space?“—NASA is quietly preparing for precisely that. Picture it: you’re floating hundreds of miles above Earth, in a metal station …
I grew up thinking flying cars were a punchline, a retro-futurist promise that would always stay just out of reach. Then I started reading about the AirCar and realized we’re crossing the threshold from science fiction to something you can actually watch taxi, take off, and land. The design from Slovakia’s Klein Vision has been …
The Future Has Taken Off: My Thoughts on the AirCar Read More »
As I wrote about recently in “A Work in Progress,” I have been creating my own implementation of a “second brain.” A year or so ago, I had a pretty robust system set up that included one component I didn’t mention in that blog post: Evernote. After years of price increases and questionable software “improvements,” …
Recently, I took a look at my digital bullet journal (BuJo) setup that had evolved over the years. The system consisted of multiple tools: Google Docs—This was the “home” to my actual BuJo documents. I had one document—structured through a series of nested tables—which contained a record of my week in one place. Google Calendar—I …
America Online—later rebranded to the simpler AOL—was ahead of its time. Once upon a time, the company connected millions of homes to the internet, wooing customers through their prolific free CDs available at retailers and sent to homes directly through the postal service. The rite of passage of making sure no one was on the …
“Nerds will save the world.”—Wil Wheaton I’ve never been one of the “cool kids.” In my youth, I had an interest in playing sports, but life’s circumstances didn’t let that materialize, either. I was a good student from an early age. Science fairs, spelling bees, and other academic competitions were things I could participate in, …
Every year, tech titans Google and Apple hold major events to launch new mobile phones. Apple, along with nearly all major software manufacturers, also has annual events to release new versions of software. A couple of weeks ago, one of the most well-known software packages—Windows 95—recognized the 30th anniversary of the software’s release. In the …
Earlier in my career, I worked for an international book publisher. I started there, working on the creation of books that I would later see on the bookshelves at Borders (remember them?) and Barnes & Noble. As my career continued, I transitioned from print books to online content and, subsequently, ebooks. I understand the convenience …
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