Tim Chesney's notes
on the internet.

Well, not really, but the above is a link to an interesting study comparing the conclusions drawn by professional reviewers (ie New York Times or Engadget) and regular Joe Blogs on sites like Amazon.

I was thinking about this very thing tonight while researching a new camera and a couple of new lenses I’m interested in¹. I found myself gravitating to user rather than professional reviews. What I’m really looking for are people’s feelings or responses rather than a highly technical details. I want to know more about what the camera and lenses are like to use and how people feel about them, rather than detailed comparisons of corner vignetting or chromatic aberration. There’s definitely a place for that but more often I’m looking for whether people love the product or not. Even with more technical aspects like high ISO noise, users often offer a better perspective on the real world use. There’s only so many interactive widgets of 100% crops of still life I can take in one night. All I really want to know is that I’ll probably mostly be happy with 6400 unless I’m printing large prints.

The other reason I like Amazon reviews is that they are by people who actually bought the product to use as their personal camera. They shelled out their hard earned cash unlike most reviewers who can grab any camera from the pile whenever they want. Reviews on amazon are often from people who used the camera for a month or more before posting their review which gives them more time to work on any kinks and find the flaws. Essentially paying users are invested in both money and time and so are in a better position to answer the big question of value - is it worth it?

I think in the end it’s the sites like Engadget, The Verge and Wired that really loose out here. They are neither highly technical nor do they really offer a useful personal perspective (that of the buyer). If I want technical information I’ll hit up DP Review, if I want a personal take I usually gravitate towards Amazon. Kudos to Amazon for providing a platform for quality reviews and having a good system for surfacing them. Quite impressive when you think about it.

If Treffert’s hypothesis is true, it potentially upends a lot of what we know about genetics — not disproving it, necessarily, but vastly expanding the boundaries of what we think our DNA to be capable of. Could genes be more than a way to pass on physical traits? Could they, in fact, also be used to transmit knowledge from one generation to another? If so, what kind?

Brian Fung writing for The Atlantic.

In one way I don’t find the idea that knowledge could be passed on genetically that implausible. Babies of all species are born with quite amazing reflexes that allow them to quickly find food or, in the case or primates, cling on to their mothers (human babies actually still have this reflex funnily enough). Maybe a reflex doesn’t count, but animal instincts go much further than that.

I was reading recently about an insect that lays its eggs in the bark of a certain type of tree. However if the back is still on the tree the eggs will die. So the insect gnaws through a twig which falls to the ground and then lays its eggs in the amputated bit of wood. That isn’t a reflex, and it’s not learned behaviour (little bugs don’t watch their parents do it), it’s extremely practical knowledge passed on genetically. It’s not that much of a stretch to think other skills and types of knowledge could be passed on through genetics. Maybe there is something more than nurture to the idea of a ‘musical family’?

$25 and an internet connection doesn’t bequeath the title of writer.

Bam. This whole piece is such a good read. There are a lot of people who publish words on the internet, but precious few writers.

I’m happily just an unpaid hack who likes the sound of his own voice. If what I do here has value for a few people, the only payment I’m looking for is their time and maybe, just maybe, an encouraging word via email or twitter. Is that a ‘sustainable business model’? No. But this isn’t a business, it’s a blog. And did I’m mention that I’m not a writer?

A really great essay about humans and technology by Sep Kamvar. I was trying to find just one bit to excerpt but you really just have to read the whole thing.

Get ready for a serious dose of musical nostalgia with this Rdio-powered musical time machine. I just jammed out to to some Brandy from 1996 and it felt good.

We have built waste into our entire consumer culture to the point where we don’t notice it anymore because of these conveniences we’ve created for hiding our garbage. … In a difficult economic environment, it’s just crazy to take all this material and just bury it in the ground.

The thought of all the rubbish horrifies me - but I’m guilty as anyone of sweeping it all under the carpet. How differently would we act if we had to personally deal all the rubbish we generate? Imagine going out to your backyard or in to your ‘rubbish room’ and being confronted with everything you had ever thrown out. It would be completely terrifying.

Via: NextDraft

Really great collection of photos with the Enterprise on the back of a 747. Space nerdery!

A short but sexy video on the AeroPress. I really should get one of these.

True story: When I used to work at Yahoo! we’d bucket-test new features using New Zealand. New Zealanders accessing our sites would get features we weren’t sure would work or were still in testing. 

If true, this story is kinda awesome. It shows that New Zealand was viewed as completely inconsequential to Yahoo’s success (which we almost certainly were) which is a reminder to me that we’re just a tiny nation, miles from anywhere, with a population similar to that of just two New York boroughs.

For some reason that makes me feel good.

Apologies for swearing in the presence of a child, but the first thing I thought was “Fuck me”. Not just as an expression of surprise, but as a mission statement, as in: “Fuck me and what I want – from now on, my task is to protect you, whatever or whoever you are.” Prior to the birth, other dads had warned me that “bonding” might not happen for weeks, even months. Also, I was worried I might simply feel nothing. Instead I felt reprogrammed, head-to-toe, in an instant. That was a shock.

This is actually a pretty good list of annoying things.

This is indeed a great story.

Each year, I keep a running list of the most exceptional nonfiction that I encounter while publishing my twice-weekly newsletter The Best of Journalism. Along with my curating work for Byliner, this hoovering of great stories affords me the opportunity to read as many impressive narratives as any single person possibly can. The annual result is my Best of Journalism List, now in its fourth year. I could not, of course, read every worthy piece published during the year. But everything that follows deserves wider attention.

If you like long reads, Conor Friedersdorf has really got you covered.

I’m not too sure what to say about this other than, yep… this is a thing.

Great read by Marco Arment on the sustainability of Apple’s profit margins and growth. If I had to name one thing that sets Apple apart from any other manufacturer, it would be that they essentially make hardware so they sell their software.

Nice flow chart and good follow up on my post the other day

This really brings out the can-I-have-a-turn-now 5 year old in me.

I put “free” in quotes, because the business model Ben’s talking about (giving away a service or product for free forever) isn’t a business model at all; it’s charity. And it’s not what anyone’s talking about when they talk about Instagram or Twitter or any other service that people like in their current iterations and really hope don’t change. And I know that no one’s talking about that because even Ben can’t think of good examples for his conception of “free”.

I was about to write a response to Ben’s myopic post on “free” services but Tim does a much better job that I would have. This is a classic case of Ben whacking himself in the head with his opinion sledgehammer.

I doubt Apple wants to make the device itself bigger in any dimension. The existing iPhone has a significant amount of non-display surface area.

I actually quite like that idea. Same size phone, bigger screen.

For the research subjects who followed [Leslie Perlow’s] policy of disconnecting from work at night, 78% said that they “feel satisfied” with their jobs, compared to the group of people who ignored the policy, where only 49% noted the same sense of satisfaction. Her results show that we’re creating a self-perpetuating perception that working faster is better — even when speed may not be necessary.

It’s that last line that, for me, is so telling. Often we feel that we must be connected all the time to ensure we don’t miss anything, when in most cases there is simply no need to do things so quickly.

As someone who owns my own service-based business I used to have a very unhealthy attitude to ensuring I was always contactable, even at night and on weekends. It took me quite some time to realise that waiting a till morning or until Monday rarely resulted in any negative consequences. In fact, it more often resulted in a better thought-out response where a little extra time to think, rather than just react, meant I offered a better service.

The problem with being ‘always on’ is that every email or phone call dragged me back into thinking and worrying about work. Even if I wasn’t stressed, my brain would begin problem solving or planning or creating at all times of the day or night. I’d often be the guy caught out completely oblivious of a conversation going on around me or staring into space when everyone else was captivated by something. I had to change before I became someone I really didn’t want to be.

A key factor for me in learning to switch off outside work hours was turning off all email notifications and badges on my phone. It sounds small but constantly hearing the noise or seeing the unread badge increasing made it just too tempting to check in on my inbox. And once I’d done that was only a small step to start replying and expending mental and emotional energy on work. So now my inbox is totally silent - no sounds, no notifications, no badges. I only check it when I remember to check it. It’s great and means it’s far easier to be ‘in the moment’ with friends and family.

We only have so much energy to put towards the myriad of things in our lives. For most of us, work takes up at least half our waking hours and, with the help of smartphones, threatens to take up even more. For me, that’s already too much. There’s so much more to life than earning money and the daily grind. According to Ekekwe, it just so happens that we’re also more productive when we remember that.