innonate

Every morning, as I clear out my inbox, I find, and read religiously daily digest emails from News.me, KnowAboutIt, Percolate, and Timehop. When I’m done, I head over to New Relic to see what the worst bugs and slowest queries were in my software app overnight.

What similar about all of these services is that they present small amounts of well organized information that has been algorithmically compiled and designed based on my specific interest or needs. Gone are the days of generic real-time streams, feeds, and editor-driven digests. Data Dumps be gone!

Digests and Dashboards are not everything I could know, but everything I probably should know. Instead of being oppressive, like a feed or an inbox or a newspaper, the new smart digests and dashboards are here to help — they tell you, “It’s okay that you were’t paying attention at every moment. Here’s what you missed.”

Right now, the best digests and dashboards are aggregators. They pull from multiple sources or if they don’t, they use another service’s API.

In the future I think more products will want to provide smart digests and dashboards to their readers. Every blog or newspaper has a “most read” tab. Some have a “most emailed” tab. None of these tabs tie into your social graph and in order to see these you have to be on their site in the first place.

For those services who decide to make this a feature, figure out how to deliver it is key.

My favorite form to get these digests and dashboards in is email, because emails end. On a website you can get lost clicking around and pretty soon you’re down a time-suck rabbit hole of the web. With a digest email I can skim through it and when I’m done I’m done, and I can move on. Smart digests and dashboards make me feel like I’ve accomplished something and that I’ve been truly more productive, not just entertained in a new medium. Entertainment is not something I need more of; I just want to be productively informed.

I’m building something right now and feeling like I’m really missing a smart dashboard experience with it. This weekend, I may start banging on a weekly digest feature for it. Could be nice to have.

Photo Credit: Scott Heiferman

The fight to stop PIPA and SOPA are far from over. The word we’re hearing from Washington is that PIPA’s supporters are trying to double down their pressure and make this bill sail through the Senate even faster than before.

We can and will stop this bill, but before we get back to work I want to say how incredibly proud I was to be a part of the NY tech community yesterday.

We did something that’s never been done before, in any tech community: Over 2,000 of us — developers, investors, entrepreneurs, designers, salespeople alike — came together physically to protest something that we universally agreed would damage our industry and therefore our lives, our City and our World.

No doubt, this is a turning point for us as a community. This won’t be the last time we come together and this won’t be the last issue we’re willing to fight for.

Until the next Meetup, keep hammering away on the phones. MobileCommons has set it up so that you just need to text “PIPA” to 877877 to be connected to the Senators’ offices. I called this morning and a Gillibrand staffer said she had no plans of changing her mind. It’s not an acceptable answer and so I’ll be calling back every day until that answer has changed.

Next Wednesday, we are holding an Emergency NY Tech Meetup in front of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices to demonstrate our opposition to PIPA and SOPA.

Together, as a NY tech community, we need to come together, so please take a long lunch next Wednesday, bring your co-workers, and let’s stop this thing.

Senators Schumer and Gillibrand need to understand that with a single vote in support of PIPA, and without publicly condemning and trying to stop the legislation leading up to the vote, they would be dead to the NY technology industry for good.

Why so harsh?

On patent reform, we understand that we can’t get everything we want. We understand that there’s a process. We’ll press you hard, but we’ll also be patient. We understand.

On immigration reform, we understand we can’t get everything we want either. While our companies are starved for talent and our Country turns away job creators (who happen to be from a different country themselves) dying to grow the US economy and employ Americans, we will be patient as you try and navigate the political waters on this tough issue.

On capital gains reform, we understand that what’s in our best interest as entrepreneurs is not always fair or easy to shoulder for the rest of the country. Again, we understand the process is difficult and ou are doing your best job.

But PIPA is wholly different. We will not understand. We will not accept anything short of public condemnation of the bill in its current form and pledges to vote “No” as long as damaging structural changes to how the Internet works exists in the legislation.

And without that condemnation, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand need to know they will permanently damage any credibility they had built as innovation-friendly representatives. PIPA is an appallingly damaging piece of legislation. Show us you get that.

See everyone next Wednesday. Together, let’s stop this horrific bill.

It may be surprising, but the blog I’ve linked to more times in my 5 years of blogging isn’t a tech blog: it’s the blog of East Village street-anthropologist and photographer Bob Arihood.

I was lucky to find Bob’s blog in 2006 blog by Googling “Mosaic Man,” right after I met the artist in Tompkins Square Park. My view of New York City and the East Village has never been the same.

For years (many years before his blog) Bob told the story of the East Village — more specifically, the corner of 7th St and Avenue A — with both his camera and words. A wordsmith he wasn’t, but next to his poignant and very personal photos, the reader of his blog was sucked into the complex history of the area and the even more complex and dramatic stories of its people. Reading Bob’s blog was better than watching Law and Order… but very much the same. There were common characters, danger, loss… all wrapped up in a story of New York. The big difference, though, was that Bob’s characters were very real.

Jewels, a young man who Bob focused on more in the last five years than any other character, was someone you would read about on his blog, but then also see on the streets, sometimes sleeping in his own urin, huddled by a bus stop, and you really knew his story. You knew about this young man’s love and marriage (Bob was there)… You knew about this young man’s addictions (Bob saw his battles)… and you knew about this young man’s arrests (Bob captured most of them, and tried to talk him down from acts that would have caused many more).

Actually, from reading Bob’s blog, you probably knew to fear Jewels more than the unsuspecting walker-by.

And there were dozens of characters and people like Jewels who went from people you’d just walk by to people you knew, all because of Bob’s work. Mosaic Man, the man behind all of the amazing mosaic work in the East Village, is one of those people. Chronically homeless, the Mosaic Man’s plight and contributions were shared to the world by Bob, likely helping Mosaic Man find the home he needed.

Ray’s Candy Shop is another amazing and important story covered by Bob Arihood. Chances are, if you’ve lived in NYC as an under-30 year old in the past 20 years, you’ve stumbled drunk, late one night, into Ray’s Candy Shop on Avenue A for some belgian fries or soft serve ice cream. However, when you did, you probably didn’t know Ray’s story. Ray has been an undocumented-yet-legal citizen of the US for some time, and an important business establishment in the Lower East Side for years. However, with health department citations, immigration issues, and rent being hiked, old-man-Ray was in a lot of trouble this past year, and needed his community’s help to get all his issues sorted out. Bob’s blog served as a beacon for this cause, and Ray’s is still in business, documented, and on good terms with the health department.

And so it brought me great sadness to hear last week that Bob died last month.

I feel lucky to have lived in New York City with Bob in it. I also feel lucky to have eventually met Bob and become friendly with him. After meeting him in May of 2007, I spent dozens of late nights chatting with Bob on the corner of 7th Street and Avenue A. We shared a passion for photography and the complexities of the East Village’s gentrification. Bob was also a fantastic story teller (he could go on and on and on and on) and I was always willing to be a listener. The last time I saw him was in 2010, and he was talking about taking down his blog. He later did, only to come back with it this past Spring.

Anyway, in digging through some emails, I found this email below. It was something I wrote my family and friends the night I first met Bob. Most of the email is more of the stories I told above, but it’s still fun for me to read in context of first meeting the first and only truly New York artist I’ve really ever known.

Rest in Peace, Bob. You will be very, very missed.

Truth be told, Bob Arihood’s photo blog is one of the best chronicles of the East Village around. I first found it by Googling “Jim Power” after meeting the “Mosaic Man” himself back in the Fall, while walking in park with Evan. Anyway, Jim shows up a lot on this blog, so I found it; I became hooked, and now follow it religiously.

Bob, originally from a farm in Indiana, has been in the East Village for 30 years (he’s 61 years old, but looks 35). He’s seen it all, and lucky for us, he’s been capturing “everything” on camera for nearly the entire time. After reading his blog and seeing his pictures, you can’t walk through the neighborhood the same again. This was illustrated as Sara, Jordan and I walked by a homeless man the other night. To them, he was another homeless man, but because I had seen this man’s life chronicled on Bob’s blog, I knew him as Jewels (and knew to proceed with caution!).

Anyway, the reason I’m passing on the link again is because I finally met the author/photographer last night, walking back from Alex’s place after our Urban Fishing planning session. I had read about Bob’s Leica M8 (his camera) on the blog, so when I passed by a fellow with such a fine piece of equipment I knew it was him and introduced myself. Since I had blogged favorably about him before, and he had stumbled upon my praise, when I told him my name was “Nate”, he said, “Oh, ‘innonate!’”. That made me laugh.

I sat around and chatted with him for about an hour, and in that time I learned more about the East Village than I had in my year and a half of living in the City. His perspective on the area is immensely valuable, and so I’m pleased to share the link to his blog. Also, because some of you are involved in art or media, I encourage you to consider how valuable his photos and stories are, and keep him in mind.

This past weekend was my re-birthday, marking the one year anniversary of leaving the “Sweat Lodge” — the first step on my important journey of becoming an engineer.

Anyway, I need to get back to some pretty sophisticated engineering problem, but I thought I’d acknowledge the anniversary and repost the “Sweat Lodge” section of The Hope Manifesto:

The first key to learning anything is real commitment. How many people have taken years of Spanish classes but can’t speak a word? Meanwhile, we all know people who studied abroad and immersed themselves for a few weeks and came away with the ability to communicate freely (though perhaps difficultly).

Learning to code is no different. If you think you can learn how to code by going to a few classes, being “taught” or sitting down for an hour or so every so often, you’re 100% wrong and will waste your time. If you truly want to learn how to code (or learn any other new skill, for that matter) you must find some serious time to dedicate to the cause. And the cause is teaching yourself, not being taught.

I call this The Sweat Lodge.

When I left AnyClip, I spent a few weeks playing around with online tutorials and reading books about coding. Not surprisingly, I felt like I was as much of a NoPE after a few weeks of this as I did when I began.

My real education started the second to last week of October, when I took five days of my life and commited myself to Change.

For five straight days, I sat at my desk, from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, and obsessed over my education. I barely showered. I ate at my desk. I obsessed.

I went into my personal Sweat Lodge a NoPE and emerged a HoPE. Did I have all the answers? No. In the weeks and months that followed that week, I’ve learned a huge amount more than what I learned in that week.

But in that week, I taught myself the most important, foundational lessons that allowed me to emerge a new person: the skill of self-sustenance.

So this is your first test: Are you willing to commit to The Sweat Lodge? Are you willing to take 5 days — at least! — of your life to go through mental hell? Do you really want to code or are you just saying you do?