Ten Years In: Finding Balance to Enjoy Twitter

Last week saw my 10th anniver­sary of being on Twit­ter (as @stopsatgreen). That’s a long time, but I’m still there and still active because I still get huge val­ue from it. I don’t want to down­play that, for some peo­ple, Twit­ter became very tox­ic and com­pelled them to leave; but for me, no oth­er net­work has come close to match­ing the expe­ri­ence it pro­vides.

Over the course of my ten years I’ve devel­oped a few rules that help me con­tin­ue get­ting the most from Twit­ter; keep­ing my time­line fresh,  inter­est­ing, and valu­able. I’ve shared them here on the off-chance that they’re use­ful to you too, dear read­er.

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Thinking Out Loud: Understanding Voice UI, and How To Build for It

At work, we talk a lot about ‘voice’; what is it good for? Is it the post-mobile plat­form? And our clients ask us a lot about ‘voice’, and how to build a brand­ed app. But I’m not sure every­one is talk­ing about the same thing; and I’m just as unsure that any­one knows what makes a real­ly good brand­ed ‘voice’ app. I mean, I’m fair­ly sure I don’t.

This arti­cle is my attempt at defin­ing what we’re talk­ing about when we talk about ‘voice’; and, based on my expe­ri­ence as a user and devel­op­er of ‘voice’, try­ing to nail down some of the oppor­tu­ni­ties for brand­ed third-par­ty apps.

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Staring At Their Screens

One com­mon phrase that’s guar­an­teed to rile me is when peo­ple are accused of ‘star­ing at their screens’. It’s usu­al­ly pre­fixed by ‘mind­less­ly’. This accu­sa­tion is espe­cial­ly often made of peo­ple on pub­lic trans­port or in cof­fee shops, not inter­act­ing with each oth­er but instead ‘star­ing at their screens’.

This morn­ing I did a quick stealthy sur­vey (OK, I looked over their shoul­ders) of my car­riage on the train to see what peo­ple were doing with their phones. Here’s the list—bear in mind that some peo­ple did more than one activ­i­ty:

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My Favourite Books I Read in 2017

I read 25 books in 2017, eight few­er than I did in 2016; I think this is because I read a lot more arti­cles (saved to Pock­et, on my Kobo eRead­er) as research for my job and my newslet­ter. Still, 25 books in 12 months isn’t a bad return, and I aim to read around the same num­ber this year.

Of all the books I read, these were the notable ones.

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