Technology resolutions for 2015
It’s not original but lately I’ve wondered a lot about my choices in our magical world of technologies. I realised I was quite mature about it, so there, my changes and goals in review.
What’s new
I recently cleaned up a bit on my internet behaviour. I stopped using Buffer to tweet — to be more in a “tweeting in the moment” mood. I also got rid of some apps, because of redundant use with others, or not enough use at all.
The addiction of Wunderlist to my life has been a huge success and I absolutely love it. It’s more simple to use than Evernote, and richer than my beloved Vesper and Idealist, that sadly I had to let go.
Noisli is now part of my daily routine. At the office I mainly use the beautiful Markdown text editor, on the weekends and especially when I travel, I often listen to the “noise” of rain on the app. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend you try it at work.
I also got rid of the great photo app VSCOcam. It’s a lot of effort to edit pictures there, and with iOS 8 and the Instagram app, I can reach some satisfying levels of tuning without the need of a third picture-dedicated app, as good as it might be.
After the fall of Everpix, I switched to Carousel by Dropbox, and it works perfectly. More importantly, it gives me peace about the perspective of losing my phone. All my photos are constantly being backed up and they are easy to find.
Recently I also stopped using the iOS Music app, ending a relationship of 10+ years with the whole iTunes thing. That’s right, I now use Spotify to manage my collection of music. It’s not perfect, and I am not satisfied with the way it gives money back to artists (I wish I could pay more), but the technical problems I encountered with the Music app were just too much. It is not coincidental that this week Marco Arment published a blog post on the software issues at Apple. iTunes Match and the iTunes Store for instance, are painful to use, even after all those years.
My iPhone homescreen, January 2015
What’s still here
Another year has passed and email is still standing. I am not talking about work email (from which I’ve cut all links when I’m out of the office), I am talking about personal email. After unsubscribing from all I could, creating as many rules as possible (for skipping the Inbox), I now reply to email via IM or text, thus getting out of the horrible email hole. Special mention to the newsletter Swiss Cheese and Bullets by Daniel Benneworth-Gray.
Phone is still there too, of course. My days are now mostly spend using WiFi only. Airplane mode is now “living mode” for me. And it feels good. I now check my SMS and missed calls like we check snail mail: once a day — very liberating and very battery friendly too.
I am still a security freak. I have been a LastPass user for almost five years and I recently added two-factor authentication on every service I could, combining it with Google Authenticator.
What I want
For a long time I wanted a new shiny toy. Let it be an iPad, a new phone, or a new laptop. Fact is, I am happy with my current setup. I will continue to use my two-years old iPhone 5 (as long as it is alive), my beloved 3rd generation Kindle, and my work PC (Surface Pro 2) which doubles greatly as a tablet for entertainment (meaning Netflix) and is really good for transport. My great earbuds follow me everywhere I go, giving me fantastic sound and some noise isolation. I really don’t know what I could possibly afford also capable of improving this minimal setup. Any suggestion?
In 2015, I want to solve my problem of reading. I am saving dozens of articles per week on Apple’s reading list thing, Instapaper, pinned tabs on Chrome, Medium and sometimes Wunderlist. Some bookmarks are also old articles I wanted to read someday.
Problem is: I barely ever read them.
There’s always something new and shinier to read. When I travel, I always prefer watching movies, listening to podcasts (or Noisli), or reading books. I never catch up on my reading list, and that’s my real resolution for 2015.
Happy New Year everybody.