Some may find it weird, others unnecessary and others plain stupid. I find it intriguing, awesome and useful. Data is important.

In the short term it – might – is pointless but the exciting part starts when one distances himself from the present and try to figure out the patterns that emerge and as a result change his life – not in any kind of spiritual way but in a very practical one: his behaviors.

“Data is important because patterns,“ simply to put in a meme-ish way.

I’ve been logging chunks of my life with the Daytum iPhone app. Currently on the free plan (offers also a pro membership with unlimited logging) not only can I log data but also view in-app visualizations — one extremely important part of the Data mantra. Plus, there’s also a web interface with heavy logging and (most importantly) visualization functionality.

The problem is that this stuff is still manually-driven — unless you go for a Fitbit or a Nike+ Fuelband, which I’m thinking of buying.

Finally, check the PlaceMe app. It’s way over the freaky line yet even more exciting. Tracking everything via your mobile phone from your mobile phone. Watch PlaceMe founder talking with Robert Scoble – don’t be put off by its 30min length. It’s totally worth it.

(Re: PlaceMe: I’m not yet sure if I’d use it – I think, though, I would.)

I will follow-up with another really freaky, interesting and exciting perspective of data. Soon.

The main difference between those two (RSS, Twitter) is time-relevancy. And, well, acceptance and usage from the masses. That’s where RSS is behind.

Time-relevancy and the real-time newsfeed

Twitter took off for several reasons. One of them is the “instantness.” Using Twitter, a user gets to know what happens *right now* in the world, real-time, for whatever he’s interested in. Be it the Arab Spring, celebrity news, an earthquake, citizen-journalism from around the globe, breaking tech news, etc, etc. Occasionally, a user also gets to know real-time commentary and thoughts about the things happening or your usual Instagram lunch.

All those are great, don’t get me wrong. And I love them — I’ve used Twitter since 2008 in every possible way. Irrelevant status updates, easing my boredom at airports, Instagram lunches, chat-room, covering political protests in my hometown (see pictures at Flickr,) “breaking” tech news and all the usual yada yada.

But RSS is different

And most importantly, not a competitor. Well, back in the early days (2007-2008) one could argue that possibly those two technologies could compete — but not anymore.

RSS is not instant, yet it is contemporary. This is a very important logical step to make. Think of RSS as your contemporary, although not 100% real-time, editorial and commentary on all things interesting for you. You know, the aforementioned list without the Instagram-lunch tweets.

Twitter is like Reuters and Associated Press; RSS is like Time and The Economist (or any other similar media outlet based on your interests.) A good curated news platform customized by you. With the things you care about and all. And of course, there are several ways to read your RSS feeds; the most prominent one is Google Reader (I can also recommend Reeder app for iOS.)

Now, one could think of ways to make better the curation flow and how to organize your feeds, how to find new blogs and relevant information, etc — but this is not our topic.

In the same way we can distinguish between Flipboard and Zite. Though the differences are not based on time-relevancy. I will follow-up.

Local Thessaloniki is basically a foursquare list (you should follow it here), heavily curated to feature only the best venues of the city. All about food, coffee, drinks and cocktails. But there’s more. It’s a list embedded on an external (mine, lol) website that helps with the visual part — foursquare lacks on that one.

Whether you’re a tourist, a new dude in town or an old local, you’ll find places that you have and you are or you will be in love. In the meantime Local Thessaloniki also serves as a small foursquare experiment, thus the site might be in constant visual and technical change.

With six words, best local venue picks for Thessaloniki. Full of awesomeness.

What can you do with the list, by the way? Use it, browse it, mail me if you think I missed something and of course, share the hell out of it. You really should do that.

I’m also preparing versions for Athens, Vienna, Berlin, London and maybe San Francisco. Get in touch with me if you’re from any of these cities.

Update: visit Local Thessaloniki from your mobile/iOS device, wait for the new mobile view to load, tap on “Add to Home Screen” and enjoy the Mobile Local Thessaloniki as a web-app. Plus, as icon, Thessaloniki’s new brand.

And by the tech I mean one MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone 4S and iPhone 3GS (which is used only when I’m traveling to Greece – serves as the Greek digit.) Carrying both the Air and iPad is a lot of kilos in your backpack – I used to do that for the past couple of months. Especially because most of my flights were non-direct, I used the Air to work while waiting at the lounge for the next flight.

Naturally, I tried to understand my work/web browsing habits and needs so I could adjust between the Air and iPad. Despite not actually needing the Air on-flight, I needed it for my entire stay at my destinations. The epiphany came when I was traveling to Stuttgart, Germany for one weekend. I figured out that my Air was useless and took only my iPad. Boom.

So next fly (to Thessaloniki,) I experimented a little more. I packed only the iPad in my backpack, the Air in the big one. And the result? Just great. Backpack weighs now a lot less – carries only stuff I actually need. The iPad, iPhone, Moleskine, Passport, and the Power Pouch; you know, power adaptors and stuff. Hopefully the Air was in perfect shape after spending the flight in the big luggage.

What I learned from this small experiment:

• You always can redux
• Backpack really needs to have stuff you’ll need only while at the airport and on board
• I love my iPad
• You can make a blog post out of this

And a few tips for the best traveling iPad experience. Sync a movie or two, and an entire season of your favorite sitcom (or series) to watch while flying. Right now I have Scrubs, Breaking Bad (which is awesome,) Très Bonne Équipe – a ski movie from my favorite athlete, Kaj Zackrisson. Use BUZZ Player for that (and Air Media Center to stream media from your computer while you’re at home.) Also always pack your Instapaper with awesome articles, and be sure to install Longform.

That reminds me to do a list of must-have iPad apps – which I’ll do. And something really small but awesome that I can’t tell you right now. Surprise!

PS: I have to blog since 2011 (yeah, literally, since 12/2011.) It seems I’ve suffered a huge writer’s block. In the meantime I started a tumblr about computational cultures and other awesome stuff, have a look and follow it here. So, in other words this is also the first post of 2012. Props!

Όπως λέει και ο ίδιος (και θα συμφωνήσω,) έχω περάσει από όλα μάλλον τα στάδια χρήσης apps: από αυτό που κατεβάζεις το μισό AppStore και έχεις 9 home screens με apps, κλπ. Fast forward στο παρόν και το iPhone 4S, πιστεύω πως έχω ένα ωραίο curated list από apps συνδυασμένο με έναν απλό και efficient τρόπο οργάνωσης αυτών.

The Structure

Το οργανωτικό σύστημα έχει ως εξής. 2 screens, το πρώτο με τα most frequently used apps και το δεύτερο με όλα τα υπόλοιπα categorized στους respective φακέλους, εκτός από το Newsstand και τα Settings.

Υπάρχουν κάποιοι “άτυποι κανόνες,” όπως για παράδειγμα, το πρώτο screen θα πρέπει να έχει 12 apps (3 γραμμές, 4 apps each) χωρίς να υπολογίζονται τα 4 στο dock (το οποίο έχει και στο τέταρτο slot τον Twitter client.) Υπάρχει μία εξαίρεση, η οποία επιτρέπει να υπάρχουν παραπάνω από 12 apps — προσωρινά όμως μόνο. Δηλαδή, το app του TEDxAthens βρισκόταν για την ημέρα του event στο πρώτο home screen για εύκολο access. Μετά έγινε uninstalled (sorry, folks!) Παρομοίως το LeWeb app βρισκόταν και αυτό σε ένα extra slot, αλλά στο δεύτερο screen.

Το homescreen μου

Όπως φαίνεται και στο screenshot τα most-used apps μου είναι το Messages, Calendar, Photos, Camera, foursquare, Dropbox, Maps, Messenger, Wunderlist, Instagram, Music, Soundhound και το Path.

Το second screen μου

Πάμε λοιπόν στο ζουμί, το δεύτερο screen. Εδώ υπάρχουν όλα τα υπόλοιπα apps, μερικά εκ των οποίων τα χρησιμοποιώ αρκετά αλλά όχι εξίσου συχνά. Ταυτόχρονα όμως, είναι απαραίτητα. Εδώ υπάρχει πάλι ένας κανόνας. Αν γεμίσει ένα folder, π.χ. το News, με τα 12 slots του και θέλω να βάλω ένα νέο app, θα πρέπει να διαγράψω αντίστοιχα αυτό που δεν χρησιμοποιώ συχνά, γιατί δεν θέλω να γεμίζω με παρόμοια folders (2 folders έχουν μόνο τα Apple apps) — και κατ’ επέκταση, με παρόμοια apps. Αυτός ο κανόνας δεν παραβιάζεται!

The App List

Τώρα θα αναλύσω (σύντομα, υπόσχομαι!) όλα τα apps τα οποία έχω και χρησιμοποιώ. Σε όσα κρίνω πως χρειάζεται θα γράψω μια μικρή σχετική φράση.

Dock

1. Phone
2. Mail
3. Safari
4. Tweetbot: μέχρι πριν λίγες ώρες εκεί βρισκόταν το official Twitter app. Μετά το update, ενώ αρχικά μου άρεσε, είδα πως έλειπαν core features (όπως Send to Instapaper.) Ήταν το Tweetbot και σε προσφορά ($0.99), δεν γινόταν να πει κανείς όχι. [1]

Home screen

1. Messages
2. Calendar: το sync μέσω iCloud με iMac & iPad είναι όλα τα λεφτά. No need anymore για Google Calendar.
3. Photos
4. Camera: ποτέ δεν βρήκα κάποιο άλλο (Camera+, γκουχ) ώστε να το κάνει replace. Ούτε πρόκειται, ούτε χρειάζεται.
5. foursquare
6. Dropbox
7. Maps
8. Messenger: το ιδανικό messenger app για το Facebook inbox σου (είναι το official). Αρκεί να κλείσεις τα Push notifications των messages από το original Facebook app.
9. Wunderlist: από plain.txt to-do list user, το μόνο to-do app το οποίο βρίσκω εύκολο, γρήγορο, και αξιόλογο για χρήση.
10. Instagram
11. iPod/music
12. Soundhound: IMHO, καλύτερο από Shazam
13. Path: το καλύτερο νέο app για iPhone που έχω δει. Not YASN (Yet Another Social Network) όπως λέει στο bloggable.gr ο @dkalo.

Second screen

1. Δύο Apple folders με μέσα τα Contacts, Calculator, Compass, Voice Memos, Stocks, Clock, iTunes, AppStore, YouTube, Videos, Game Center, Reminders και Weather, Notes, iBooks, Find Friends, Find iPhone, iTC Mobile (iTunes Connect — για developers.)

News folder

1. CNN
2. ΣΚΑΪ
3. Feedly
4. Gazetta.gr
5. Naftemporiki
6. SuperLeague 11/12
7. PAOK 24
8. Instapaper
9. Reeder
10. The Verge
11. Flipboard
12. Zite

Utilities folder

1. ERSTE BANK Sparkasse netbanking
2. 1Password
3. Analytiks: minimalist και to the point Google Analytics
4. Skype WiFi
5. Glyphboard: web-app για διάφορα Unicode symbols (βελάκια, Apple icon, etc)
6. Adobe Reader
7. Google Translate
8. Apple Remote (για το Keynote)
9. Notifo: με δυο λόγια, send text/links/imgs/whatever από τον browser στο iPhone με Push notification
10. iMathematics: edu list με διάφορα mathematical functions, πληροφορίες, κλπ
11. Wikipanion
12. ATTScanner: ο πιο γρήγορος και εύχρηστος QR scanner που έχω βρει. Της AT&T.

Photography folder

1. 360 Panorama: της Occipital, καταπληκτικό
2. Photoshop Express
3. SocialCam: your Instagram for videos, hooked up with Facebook
4. Photosynth: όπως το 360, κάποιες φορές καλύτερα panoramas, χωρίς Twitter sharing
5. Batch: group photo-sharing app
6. iMovie: το καλύτερο mobile & on the fly video editing που έχω βρει
7. Camera Plus Pro: όχι το Camera+, εξαιρετικό feature για video shooting: μπορείς να κάνεις pause και να συνεχίσεις, στο ίδιο file. Thanks to @612gr
8. Vimeo
9. teleportd: πρόσφατο download, από Scoble, με δυο λόγια: location based, visual photo search. με μία λέξη: awesome.

Travel folder

1. ThessBook
2. TripWolf
3. Flight Card: πολύ ωραίο για frequent flyers, εξαιρετικό design και ευκολία στο να θυμάσαι πτήσεις, gates, departures & arrivals
4. AccuWeather
5. Strava: είχα γράψει για αυτό πρόσφατα
6. Mightybell
7. Aegean Airlines: που και που έχω δει αρνητικά σχόλια για αυτό, προσωπικά μου αρέσει και το βρίσκω χρήσιμο
8. Navigator: αντίστοιχο (όχι ίδιο) όπως της Aegean, αυτή τη φορά για όλο το Star Alliance
9. Shine: πιο όμορφο από το AccuWeather, ίσως όχι 100% αξιόπιστο πάντα. Παρόλαυτα, κάνει καλά την δουλειά του.
10. MyTaxi: το Taxibeat της Βιέννης και των Γερμανόφωνων πόλεων
11. Trazzler
12. Taxibeat

Music folder

1. SoundCloud
2. TuneIn Radio: για τις στιγμές που θες να ακούσεις OFFradio από το iPhone/iPad
3. Apple Remote: για το iTunes αυτή την φορά και όχι για το Keynote
4. IMDb
5. Overdub
6. Band of the Day
7. 8tracks: το official app του 8tracks.com
9. Audium
10. Bowtie
11. TuneTug: για όταν έχεις party
Update 12: OFFradio: το καλύτερο internetικό ραδιόφωνο τώρα και με το καλύτερο iOS app (released 14/12)

Social folder

1. Skype
2. LinkedIn
3. Tumblr
4. Facebook
5. WordPress
6. Amen
7. Gowalla
8. Viber
9. Yearly
10. 4sqwifi
11. Twitter official client
Update 12: Oink: downloaded just now, like it so far.

Games folder

1. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2: για τους old school skaters
2. Canabalt: εθισμός
3. Chess Free

Ski folder

1. The North Face: Trailhead: app για κοντινά trails από την North Face
2. Snow Forecast: το επίσημο του snow-forecast.com (best snow forecasting website)

και τέλος, το Newsstand με τους New York Times και subscription στο WIRED και τα Settings.

Σχετικά με το πως διαλέγω να κατεβάσω ένα νέο app. Αυτό λοιπόν εξαρτάται από το εικονίδιο του app και το γενικότερο design που έχει, τον σκοπό-χρήση του, την τιμή του, αν το έχει κατεβάσει κάποιος φίλος ή γνωστός και έχει θετική άποψη, αν έχει γράψει για αυτό κάποιος tech blogger που διαβάζω και “ακούω” στις προτάσεις του ή κάποιο μεγάλο (tech) blog. Αν όλοι αυτοί οι παράγοντες ικανοποιούνται, τότε κατά πάσα πιθανότητα θα το κατεβάσω και θα μείνει για αρκετό καιρό σε κάποιο folder (ή και στο home screen αν είναι τόσο καλό,) μέχρι που να κυκλοφορήσει κάποιο άλλο που κάνει καλύτερα την δουλειά ή μου είναι άχρηστο ως προς την χρήση του.

Σύντομα θέλω να γράψω και για τα apps τα οποία χρησιμοποιώ στο iPad. Θα ήταν μια ακόμη πιο ενδιαφέρουσα λίστα, αν όχι εξίσου. Εσείς ποια apps χρησιμοποιείτε, πώς τα έχετε οργανώσει και τι συμβουλές ή recommendations έχετε να δώσετε;

—
[1] Ο φίλος @kpvl εδώ και μήνες μου έλεγε για το πόσο καλύτερο είναι το Tweetbot σε αντίθεση με τον official client. Αναγκάζομαι τώρα, με το καινούργιο version του δεύτερου να συμφωνήσω. Παρόλαυτα, Tweetbot vs previous Twitter official client: 1 – 1.

Που δεν έχω.

(Αυτό το post δεν είναι περί του τί έγινε το Σάββατο της 3η Δεκέμβρη, πώς μου φάνηκαν οι ομιλίες, and the usual yada yada.)

TEDx Athens curator, Dimitris Kalavros-Gousiou

TED σημαίνει “ideas worth spreading” και αυτο ακριβώς έγινε στις 3 Δεκεμβρίου στον χώρο του Ελληνικού Κόσμου, στην Πειραιώς, από τις 11 το πρωί μέχρι τις 10+ το βράδι. Ideas, inspiration, disruption, diversity, κάτι το διαφορετικό, έξω από το comfort zone μας λοιπόν, και όχι projects, προϊόντα ή κάτι απτό. Το TED είναι για το μυαλό και τη σκέψη μας — ένα έναυσμα για τους εαυτούς μας. Δεν ξέρω πως αλλιώς να το περιγράψω, it’s all about ideas worth spreading. Period. Το TED δεν θα εξηγήσει το πως, πχ θα βγει κανείς από την εκάστοτε κρίση. Το TED δεν καθοδηγεί, το TED δίνει vision.

***

Παρακολουθώ το TED από το 2008 και έχω παρεβρεθεί μέχρι τώρα σε τρία: TEDxThessaloniki, TEDxVienna & TEDxAthens. Θα τολμίσω μια σύγκριση μεταξύ του TEDxVienna, το οποίο έγινε τον Οκτώβριο και του TEDxAthens. Θα περίμενε κανείς λοιπόν με γνόμωνα όλες τις current δυσκολίες τις οποίες αντιμετωπίζει η Ελλάδα και η ελληνική κοινωνία (more on that later) η οργάνωση του event να είναι μέτρια, ο κόσμος λίγος και οι ομιλητές “μικρομεσαίοι.” Έτσι ακριβώς όπως έγινε στην Βιέννη. Read that again. Το περσινό TEDxThessaloniki ήταν καλύτερο από αυτό που είδα φέτος στην Βιέννη, ενώ της Αθήνας ξεφεύγει και φτάνει, όπως είπα, σε επίπεδα TED.

Λείπω από την Ελλάδα από τις 15 Σεπτεμβρίου όπου και μετακόμισα στην Βιέννη ώστε να ξεκινήσω τις σπουδές μου. Συνεπώς έχω χάσει την επαφή με την ελληνική καθημερινότητα. Όταν έφτασα στην Αθήνα το απόγευμα της Πέμπτης εντυπωσιάστηκα. Αρνητικά. Όλα τα πρόσωπα που μπόρεσα και παρατήρησα ήταν σκυθρωπά, λυπημένα. Νικημένα από το zeitgeist και τις δυσκολίες. Φαινόταν στα μάτια όλων — απόγνωση. Με ένα βλέμμα να κοιτάει το μέλλλον (;), το χάος.

Αυτό κατάφερε και το άλλαξε το TEDx, έστω και για κάτι λίγοτερο από 24 ώρες. Το Σάββατο λοιπόν έβλεπα μόνο χαμόγελα, θετική διάθεση για το μέλλον, the life, universe and all. Δεν ξέρω αν είμαστε οι τρελοί αλλά επιτέλους είδα έναν θετικισμό ο οποίος λείπει από το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της κοινωνίας — κακώς.

Επιτέλους είδα ζωηράδα, αυθορμητισμό και ενέργεια, άκουσα νέες ιδέες, γνώρισα νέα άτομα, άλλα τα οποία τα ήξερα μόνο μέσα από το web και έκανα catchup με παλιούς φίλους και φίλες. Με μία λέξη, ήταν καταπληκτικά.

***

Σίγουρα, το TEDx και το κάθε παρόμοιο (στην πιο ευρεία έννοια του TED & του “παρόμοιου”) δεν θα μας βγάλει από την κρίση και το εκάστοτε πρόβλημα, it’s not the holy grail. Μπορεί όμως να λειτουργήσει ως καταλύτης για έναν νέο τρόπο σκέψης, θετικό, ρεαλιστικό, visionary, έξω από αρνητισμό, μιζέρια και μη-προσπάθειας για κάτι καλύτερο. Έναν τρόπο σκέψης ο οποίος μπορεί να tackle humankind’s big problems. And can push the human race forward.

It’s all about ideas. Then comes execution.

Κλείνοντας και έχοντας ξεχάσει μια φράση την οποία ήθελα να γράψω στην προηγούμενη παράγραφο, θέλω να δώσω τα συγχαρητήριά για την διοργάνωση του event και το ευχαριστώ μου στην οργανωτική ομάδα του TEDxAthens που μου προσέφερε την ευκαιρία να είμαι κριτής στο TEDx Challenge, στους ομιλητές, εθελοντές, τις 154 συμμετοχές στο TEDx Challenge, τους 3 finalists και τον έναν νικητή, το κοινό και όλους όσους βοήθησαν.

–

Έχω αφήσει τις τελευταίες ελπίδες μου για την ανθρωπότητα στην αγάπη, την δημιουργικότητα, το επιχειρείν και το Internet. Let’s get our hands dirty.

–fin

Launching is maybe one of the most critical stages of your product. I don’t feel like there’s a difference between a startup or a “weekend-show-HN” project. Launching is launching, is critical and will remain this way for better or for worse.

Aside critical, it’s the one that offers you the most knowledge, as a developer, marketer, professional, hobbyist, […], and in the and even as a human, whether it’s a software project or not. Let me explain myself.

Keep It Simple, STUPID

Keeping your first version as simple as possible is top priority. You want to show people what’s the core of what your app-project-whatever does, yet not overbloated with features and chaotic design. It must be inspiring too, letting people know that this product has a feature, a vision behind it.

I could have included all possible features in the first version of 4sqwifi. Venue checkin, Twitter/Facebook sharing, in-app tip section for each venue so people can add wifi passwords within 4sqwifi, map view and hell knows what more. Inspite all this glitter I decided to keep only the most core feature of all and 4sqwifi’s promise: show nearby venues which have wifi and their password. But of course, along with a basic package of usability: Google Map for each venue, address, by whom-and-when each tip was written, number of all nearby 4sqwifi venues.

Beta test like a B*TCH, BITCH

You don’t want to launch with bugs. Seriously, I repeat: you don’t want to launch with bugs. Users in their vast majority won’t give you a second chance, unless a) they’ve seen a whole lot of potential behind your buggy product in its idea/vision b) were smart enough to figure out how to bypass the bug, c) where lucky to not spot the bug, d) you wrote a post, released a public announcement and whatnot about the bug and they were aware of it. But probably they won’t give a second chance.

And that’s what happened with 4sqwifi. A stupid bug that didn’t appear in the testing period (on-iPhone 4S/3GS, on Xcode iOS 4.3/5.0 simulators) or to a handful of other users. Suppose 1,000 people downloaded the app, 100+ had the bug, they wrote bad reviews in AppStore (which, by the way, its review system sucks big time) and that prevented other people to download the app. Plus, it annoyed me. The bug was very simple: it appeared after a user logged-in with his Foursquare account. A callback URL of the 4sqwifi website didn’t disappear and users thought that the app was crap and shit. The solution? One simply had to kill the app from multitasking and re-open it. Users don’t know about, don’t care, don’t want to do these kinds of stuff so they were totally right being wrong. Anyway, it’s already fixed and waits to be shipped. Mentioning shipping: real artists ship & launch fast, fail faster.

Ratings do NOT fucking matter

Clear example: Facebook Messenger for the iPhone has 2.5* stars in the Greek AppStore and Facebook itself has 3. The average user doesn’t know how to rate — that will remain so — and most of your users will be average users. Fact. The sooner you understand it, the better.

4sqwifi started with a solide 6/6 5* star rating, then dropped to 4.5* and finally to 3.5*. The main reason behind the low ratings is the bug itself, the other is that users didn’t get actually what 4sqwifi is about. Many thought it is a cracking tool, you see a wifi nearby, open 4sqwifi and it cracks it for you, showing the password. No, nein, όχι. Others didn’t get that it requires a Foursquare login so they were like “WTF IS THIS CRAP, DUDE,” I don’t want to sign up for anything. Others thought it’s a scam or a non-app app. Your idea might be perfect, your product might have the best intentions and potential behind it but without a excellent user experience, the rest is meaningless (quoting Pascal Finette, a Mozilla dude I met in my Silicon Valley trip.) Oh, remember Color? Yeah.

Listen to people that are of VALUE

Feedback from the average users doesn’t mean anything. Feedback from someone who is of value means a lot. Doesn’t matter who he is (can be, theoretically, your mom), it matters what is he doing and what’s he done. Experience that can be shared matters.

And how did this apply to 4sqwifi? I got feedback from Chris Wanstrath, co-founder of Github, Google engineers, Google semi-execs, founders of 8tracks, Crowdbooster, Higear, a Twitter Product Manager, i/o ventures. That’s valuable feedback. AppStore reviews in principle are not. Curate your feedback, understand better your users. That’s key for you. I’m not saying don’t listen to negative feedback. You should, but don’t get overwhelmed of it and start thinking that’s the end of the world. No, it’s not. But: don’t listen to the average user for future features. Don’t do that, it’s going to destroy you.

Sharing is good, oversharing is fucking LAME

Unless you want to appear like a 14 year-old girl cheering the one whose name shall not be spoken in this blog, do not overshare about your app. Don’t spam Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Foursquare, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, your blog and whatnot about the new product. This will kill the interest people might have in you and your product and start consider you like a douche. And probably they’ll be right.

I did overshare once about 4sqwifi. The moment when the 3 Push notifications from Apple came saying “Your app is under Review” blah, blah, blah. I did about 3-4 consecutive tweets and 1-2 Facebook posts. In retrospect, I don’t like it — I don’t regret it either. Being more discrete is valuable for everyone — your product, your users, our timelines. Luckily it didn’t kill the interest people had. Nor did it increase it, methinks. Things I shared afterwards and in the next days were: direct link to download the app, some “inside-statistics,” a couple of photos with AppStore rankings. Be descrete, not secretive; share, not overshare.

~fin.

Imagine how awesome it could be for a geeky dude, 10 days (4/11 to 14/11) in the Mekka of all things tech, meeting with people behind big startups like Facebook to smaller ones like 8tracks, invited over to the other side of the pond by the guys of PionierGarage — a student entrepreneurship team from KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.)

I’ll break down this post to a few categorized sub-topics. The trip, Silicon Valley mentality, 4sqwifi.

Doodling on my Moleskine

The Trip

The trip itself was mind-boggling. One of the best I ever did, flew over Greenland, the southest part of the North Pole, saw the Canadian Wilderness, its forests and lakes, the Atlantic Ocean and Rocky Mountains by night. Unfortunately there was no direct flight from Vienna to San Francisco, but switching flights in Toronto, I think, it was a great experience. Toronto by air is beautiful, I presume “on ground,” too. Toronto’s, along with Munich’s airports are the best I’ve ever been. On my way back from San Francisco I flew my biggest flight ever, 11 hours — San Francisco to Zürich, and one of the biggest in the world (I’m not 100% sure about that, though.)

San Francisco view

San Francisco is a darn beautiful and-not-your-typical-American city. Lots of bikes (singles & fixies), green (parks & trees), uphills and downhills, skyscrapers and small homes. All arranged and mixed in a European-American blend. Many cool stores and cafes (like The Summit, Cafe Sophie) and 4sqwifi works perfectly too. I’ve made a decision to move sometime eventually in San Francisco. On the same note, Vienna is darn beautiful, too.

Valley (mainly Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View) is, simply to put, great. I didn’t ever think that it’d be so green and outspread. Most people commute via car, it’s the fastest way there, unless you live in Mountain View and work in Google, then biking is kinda acceptable too. I ate an awesome ice-cream in a shop that I do not recall the name and climbed at Planet Granite (insanely great indoor climbing place, so big, so cool, so outdoorsy) — thanks, Dimitris.

Silicon Valley mentality

The best has yet to come. We visited StartX & Crowdbooster, LinkedIn, Google, StartupGrind, i/o Ventures, Twitter, Github , BV Capital, Bump Technologies, Andreesen Horowitz, BASES’ ETL workshops, SoftTech VC, Facebook, Peter Thiel, Lean Launch Lab, Mozilla, Apple, had a BBQ at BlackBox Mansion and 8tracks. I met also with Paul Stamatiou (finally after 4 years knowing each other on www — he’s doing Picplum, check it out) and Dimitris Glezos (Transifex & sushi ftw!).

Google offices

I don’t think I can explain every meeting itself, that’d take 2-3 posts, so I’ll try to sum up as much as I can focusing on the key points. Some of our best meetings were the discussion with Peter Thiel, visiting Twitter, Github, Facebook, Google, Mozilla. Meeting with 8tracks, StartX/Crowdbooster, i/o Ventures was very good, too. Plus, the BBQ over at BlackBox was delicious. Om nom nom.

My notes spanned across 20+ pages in my Moleskine. The knowledge, mentality and inspiration we got was enormous. The networking that happened, such as meeting with some exceptional Stanford students in a Stanford’s d.school workshop (d as design), where, among them two interned at Facebook, is extremely positive. The trip was a chance to give my first Moo cards to other people (hoho.)

One of the key topics in our discussions with everyone is whether “Silicon Valley is transferrable.” That is, if Europe can have its very own Valley — a hub that thrives on innovatio, business, lots of $ and darn smart people. In my opinion there cannot be a second Valley. Simply to put, it’s like saying “I want to become the next Mark Zuckerberg” but guess what — you can’t, because Mark will always be Mark and #1 and you, at the best #2. (Yeah, I know, Ashton said that.) Aside Ashton’s recent rants, this is true. Silicon Valley has been growing up for 40 years, from the first hardware and semiconductor companies that started outside San Francisco, it eventually moved mainly to software — not to say that there is no high/clean/renewable/green tech. There is, and it’s getting big.

Meeting with Peter Thiel

What we can do though, as the Europas who are left in terms of tech innovation and culture is, guess what, to grasp a bit of this culture and mentality, try to mix it with our beliefs and slowly, start to create hubs of alike-minded people. Berlin, London, Amsterdam are on their way doing that — but in terms of human resources, Silicon Valley has much more density of smart, willing to help people. VCs and all are in one single place, not spanned across 3 different countries.

One of the key differences though between US/Valley and EU is the mentality as an early adopters aka people who see/listen/demo and want to use new products. In the Valley, if you go to a random person and talk to them about your idea, show your app, etc the first thing they’ll say is “That’s awesome, dude!” (OK, unless it really sucks big time.) They’ll try to give you feedback, new ideas and help you by default. That’s how people live there, and they’ll expect nothing more of a “Thanks!”, a conversation or something like that — not $ reward, equity or other douche stuff. On the other hand, in our mighty Europas the first thing someone will say in a similar situation is “Uhm, yeah… ok… unless you do that… it won’t work… maybe… yes…” and the rants continue on similar wavelength. People in the Valley are always positive, back in Europe people do not adapt fast, fallen within the ease of habits, i.e. laggards. I don’t say that we don’t have early adopters, they’re just a smaller fraction of people and not the majority.

Mark passed two times in front of me

4sqwifi

4sqwifi launched while in the Valley. One of the best things that happened there. The day was Wednesday, we were hanging out in The Summit, waiting for our meeting with i/o ventures. And, BOOM!, Push notifications from Apple came. “Your app was marked as In Review,” and the other usual yada-yada. Couple minutes later I had the direct link which shared over Twitter. I don’t know how, but it 4sqwifi really big: it soon became No. 4 top free Productivity app and in under 15 hours it climbed up to the No. 1 top free app in the Greek AppStore. That was huge. In the first day it got something more of 5,888 downloads. After a few days, I woke up, checked Twitter and saw a mention that 4sqwifi had a post in The Next Web (really big! — thanks TNW!). Previously, away.gr, iPhoneHellas.gr and a few other websites also covered 4sqwifi. Plus, aboutfoursquare.com.

Not everything was great, though. The app had a nasty bug which didn’t appear while testing 4sqwifi on-device (4S, 3GS) and Xcode simulators (iOS 4.3, iOS 5.0). That did cost 4sqwifi some bad reviews, from users who got that bug (it didn’t appear on everyone, very weird) but it’s already killed and waiting to be shipped with the new version. That’s good news!

All in all, 4sqwifi taught me some very valuable lessons. I’m gonna write a separate post about them. They deserve it.

Steve Jobs quote across Town Hall

Conclusion

I was very lucky going there. It got me a whole new perspective on all things tech, www and startups. Much knowledge gained, did a little San Francisco tourism, experienced America, and the mighty Silicon Valley. Thanks to everyone who made this possible. I want to close with one last remark: as Pascal Finette, the Mozilla dude we met, said: “Book the cheapest flight, book the cheapest hotel and come, stay, in the Valley for two weeks. Just hangout out Starbucks and feel the vibe. Then get the vibe and do things.”

You can see all 154 photos from my Silicon Valley trip in their Flickr set. Click.

Since a kid I was hooked with computers. The first I used was a Compaq laptop, black-and-white screen running Windows 95. On the third grade I wrote my first website, on the fourth I cracked the password my dad entered for my PC because I was spending kind of much time messing with it. I remember seeing an ad with the first iMac, I loved the computer — I didn’t know what it was, what even Apple was. And only two years ago  switched to a Macbook Air and a 27″ iMac (last summer).

This post though is not about me. This post is about a story involving Mike, one of my best friends and his new iPhone. Mike, and the majority of my buddies —except two of them— was never a tech savvy guy. While I was on the internets since 6, he only discovered it around 14. He never owned an iPhone or iPod before. He had a clunky PC (hopefully he has a new awesome Toshiba laptop now) and your typical Sony Ericsson cellphone.

Anyhow, he just got a new 8GB iPhone 4. He felt he didn’t need a 4S, unfortunately there wasn’t any stock 16GB iPhone 4 left so he went with the 8GB version — for which he is absolutely happy about. Long story short, we arranged a Skype call, he’s in Thessaloniki, I’m in Vienna, to explain him how to download apps, what iCloud is, how to use the phone, what iMessages, FaceTime and Viber are, the iTunes Sync thing, the Remote and many more cool stuff. Remember: he is not a geek, an enthusiast or whatever — just your plain typical user with a new iPhone which he only knew the basics through using our friends’ and mine iPhones before.

The first great thing about this story is that explaining him all that stuff was easy. iOS, the concept, apps, iCloud/Messages/et al were all understandable. He was stoked with iMessages, FaceTime and Skype. The great thing about him is that with the new iPhone he also got a data plan with his carrier.

A couple of days pass, and today while entering the subway I received a Viber call from him. I swiped to answer the call and after the usual chit-chat he said to me: “Man, this is awesome. I’m with 3G, downtown or wherever else I’d wanted to be, and I can call you, in an another country, and it doesn’t matter where you are, you have 3G too and you can answer my call and we can talk and communicate freely with no roaming or whatsoever costs, be it voice or text, depending only on our phones, this is so awesome.”

And then came a moment of clarity. I understood 100% what Steve Jobs was all about. Not that I didn’t before but now I had a living example right from my life. Steve made what no other could do. Technology for the masses. And I’m completely thankful for that to him. See, before using Mac OS X I was a Windows user, then switched for 3+ years to Linux and for a little while back again to Windows. But Apple and its products made finally sense.

It’s not about hardware anymore; having the fastest CPU or the best GPU. Technology alone is not enough. The end-user wanted something that simply works. People didn’t know that, Apple made it clear. And don’t get me wrong: hacking, Linux, choices, customization and all the rest are darn good things — I don’t ditch them, I like them, It’s simply  not what the end-user wants.

So after all this yada yada: Thank you, Steven Paul Jobs.

There are three key-aspects I’d like to discuss about Strava and how they make it a unique biking experience. I’m not going to exaggerate, Strava (as any other athletic-sport-etc-driven app) does not transform the sport itself, it (or they) add a whole new layer of data, enhancements, feedback — a new reality atop our reality, which is extremely valuable, insightful and new.

Design

Strava is all about simplicity. The only thing you can change from the app’s Settings is the unit of measure (klm/miles). There is nothing else to bother you. You can start biking right away. The whole process starts from the icon. (That’s what made me in the first place to download the app — it is well-known that with a great icon you can attract more downloads for your app.)

Strava Icon

Have a look now in Strava’s landing (first) and main screen. (click for full resolution)

Main Screen of Strava

There are no unnecessary UI elements that distract the user. The time, a basic concept which apps like this one are built around, underneath it with slightly smaller size the distance and the average speed and just below, a big blue “play” button that says “Come on, press me, let’s start!”

Simplicity is also to be found in the navigation bar of the app. Only three tabs: New Ride (main screen), Rides (your history) and Settings (where you can only edit Imperial or Metric system). I like this; a like this a lot.

Strava Stats screen

Strava Settings screen

As someone said “Good design is a design when the user doesn’t have to think.” Strava totally gets it, imho. Plus, if you know who said it, add it in the comments below, I’d appreciate it.

Community

Strava is not only an app that lives in your walled-garden of your iPhone. Surprisingly it communicates with a reach social network of bicyclists on which you can make teams, share rides and stats, see stats of yours and other possible public routes.

You can even create the must-ride routes in your city for tourists or other fellow bikers. Or virtually explore other cities’ routes from the comfort of your chair. Naturally, you can use it only as a personal training app — but do know: it’s a lot more than that, yet more simple than all the other competitors. (click for full resolution)

Strava Routes website

Strava runs on a freemium model. That means all the basic features are free but with a subscription fee you have more data, analytics, records, analysis of you personal work-out profile and all that geeky mathematical stuff.

From athletes for athletes — and everyone else

As a skier, ex-member of the Greek Junior-Development National team and with a 1st place in National Championships I can deeply understand how much better is something sports-related when it’s being developed by athletes. That is because athletes not only understand but know exactly what are their needs and make stuff explicitly atop those problems eventually solving them. A jacket (or any other thing, even an app) that’s being designed with the co-operation, feedback and insights of an athlete instead of a pure R&D team it will be ten times better at least.

Quoting them, “Strava grew out of our own needs as athletes. With busy lives requiring much solo training, we missed the sense of camaraderie and friendly competition that drove us to achieve our best through training with others. We envisioned Strava as the means to put our workouts and races into context. We call that social fitness.”

Summing up

In < 140 chars: If you bike, Strava is the app to download, for to enjoy and cherish your rides.

Disclosure: I have none whatsoever relationship with Strava, its founders or its developers.

Before I continue on with writing, I’d like first to clarify some things. I’m not an entrepreneur, neither consider myself one. I’ve never founded a company, never worked or did a startup (yet?) (I don’t consider 4sqwifi as a start-up.) This means, these opinions stated here are fully personal, 100% of how I see things and all that disclaimers’ crap. All what I do is because I love it and have fun. You’re free to disagree — and please do so in the comments! Let’s continue, shouldn’t we?

・・・

Yesterday I went to an interesting panel titled “Entrepreneurship Education Panel; Outlook for Entrepreneurship education in Europe” moderated by a guy whom I haven’t heard about. The same applies for the rest of the speakers (including a member of the Austrian Parliament, a serial entrepreneur who also teaches at a university, some other entrepreneur turned VC turned a university teacher too and some other guy who I can’t remember what he’s doing.) Except one: Sophie (she works at TNW) with whom the other day discussed the same thing actually.

If you’re eager to find out the names, more infos, etc, visit Startup Week’s website.

Anyway, I didn’t know she was participating until someone told me about yesterday, and so I went.

Government and entrepreneurship (yawn), skills and knowledge

Long story short short, I heard that the government can change the Educational System by creating entrepreneurship classes and a network of entrepreneur want-to be’s (not in a bad way of speaking) students across Europe (by the parliament member). I also heard that one can teach entrepreneurship to university students. The skills, that is, to become a (successful?) entrepreneur (from the guy entrepreneur turned VC, etc.) That academia needs entrepreneurship (or hates it, I didn’t quite understand to be honest.) — this was told by the serial entrepreneur and the guy entrepreneur turned VC, etc.

Well, I disagree.

It’s not that I’m against university. Kinda the opposite, I’d say. Neither I’m against personally on any of those guys — that’s one thing to have in mind. I just disagree.

And what the heck do I think

I don’t think that you can teach the skills or the characteristics of an entrepreneur to someone (in formal education at least.) As “entrepreneur” is a hyped word lately, I want to add that it’s not easy working 9-5 for a big corp., either. Definitely, entrepreneurs have many more things to do, problems to solve, less time and, while bootstrapping, less money.

Entrepreneurs are driven by the need to create (stick with that) and by gut and instinct which is driven by empirical knowledge. Try and fail. That’s it. They don’t go with business strategy manuals, academic approaches to marketing, etc. They deliver. The desire to create overwhelms many times anything else, that might pop in their way. The beauty and the joy of having created something — well, that’s something unbeatable.

One thing you can create is — foster, actually — the culture around entrepreneurs. I strongly feel that one cannot teach the skills but one can inspire someone, can transfer him ideas, mindset, desire, creativity, and lessons learned (to-do’s & not to-do’s.) The most important thing: creativity. And how do you do it? Look no further than Berlin, a thriving new community of startups. They managed to gather in the same place many artists, creatives, programmers, designers, photographers and all kinds of people who make this community go big time.

I also do think that you cannot create culture, either. Culture creates itself from the network of people who do systematically things together. It takes years and it’s not easy at all. But you, through actions, as said, can foster it.

It’s all about everything

And for a government, there are four things that need to be done. The first is: don’t create “entrepreneurship” classes. Yeah, simply don’t. Secondly, if your goal is to foster and enhance entrepreneurship add many creative classes throughout Primary up until High School, then teach kids the joy of creating. It hasn’t to be software only. The third is to introduce into university-level schools a class in which every student would get a $x-amount of money and will have to deliver product and profit within one or two months. A real life project, out there, outside of the bubble. In the real world, in the real market. And lastly, but not least, it’s vital for the government to create a new Law Framework around creating businesses, which will demand less paperwork but it’ll be a thousands times easier for someone to create a new company.

Entrepreneurship is such an overhyped word, to be honest. “Oh, you’re an entrepreneur, right? Duuuude.” Entrepreneurship is not the Holy Grail of economics or our own economies. It won’t save us, even if we all turned entrepreneurs today. Someone has to work for someone else. Plus, most importantly, not everyone can handle being or want to be an entrepreneur. Some people are happy working 9-5, feel secure, don’t want to take risks and all that yada yada. It’s ok. Yeah, shake your heads and understand that it’s ok. I cannot imagine myself doing some dull thing for 8 hours 5 (or even 6) days a week, but I do understand it’s ok for someone else.

And what we do?

There are very specific places in this world that things work really good out, where people understand the game and chase their dreams. What we could do? I said my opinion. It’s your turn now.

Additional discussion, upvotes, downvotes and other fun things for this post over at Hacker News.

And yes, I already did enable the new Timeline through the, already notorious by now, developer work-around. And no, Facebook is not making its way into the internet of things — nor is it becoming one, nor is even close to the Semantic Web. Why? More on this in a minute.

Change the verbs, change the world

Facebook is transforming itself right from its core. Last year it was all about like. What you like; pages, people, things, articles and blog posts — everything. Today it is about do. What you do — and… serendipity. You’re not sharing — you are doing. Running, eating, watching, and the list goes on and on. Optionally with whom and where. Its core, though, is the “do” factor.

This like to do transformation shifts Facebook from a website to a hub. You login, you see what people are doing, or did, optionally you stalk. It’s not about sitting in front of the computer and hitting “Share” on a YouTube video. It’s about getting out to jog, which is shared (if you’re having the Nike app, that is.)

Not your typical profile

Facebook is now a life stream only better. Richer, interactive, and you can create things atop and with it (Hello, API + Open Graph.) Mark wants us to share everything. “One Mark to rule us all.”

Your profile is not a profile anymore. It is you. You, you, you. Right on from when you were born, up until your very latest activity. Your e-go (see the pun here, yeah, I’m that smart-ass.) Until Google+’s next major update, Facebook has won the identity war in the Internets, plus many more other things.

Google’s on fire, caught on sleep

Sadly for Google, Google+ is out of competition now. In its current form is fighting with the old Facebook, the moment where it started getting some serious user base (estimated at 40M.) Despite that it became a heaven for spammers and totally random people (I mean, I get circled even by plumbers with their contact and work availability information public, etc). So unlucky and unfortunate, but, hell, this is life.

What Google has to do is still, for me at least, unclear. One thing is sure: they have to innovate. Heavily. As MG Siegler said, Facebook skated to where the puck will be — or even better, Facebook kicked it there while everyone else still tries to skate to where the puck was. I’m talking to you, Google et al. A nice typical Apple move.

Semantics and why Facebook simply isn’t it

To get a gist of what actually the Semantic Web is read this very short older post of mine.

In a very naïve approach one could argue that Facebook’s upgraded Open Graph is a step closer to Semantics or even it is Semantics. But I think this approach is false.

Firstly, Facebook is a very closed ecosystem, a web-ish Apple, that doesn’t plan any time soon on opening up. This is neither necessarily bad or good. It is simply Facebook’s strategy. But this isn’t Semantics. Semantics need open environments, open data, to fully be sustainable and grow.

Secondly, Semantics is not about who does what or having <objects> in your code. Semantics is about linked data (don’t know what linked data is? Watch Tim Burners-Lee’s TED talk and call-out to everyone to open his data.) It is about describing the world, objects, things, data — describing and naming the relationships between anything. From human to human relationships to human to objects et cetera. Based on Wittgenstein’s question, the foundation of contemporary Western Philosophy, “Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world?”

Thirdly, Facebook can’t become the Semantic Web because of Mathematics. Let’s do a bit of Venn diagrams. Facebook is a web, it is not the web, not everyone on the web is registered in Facebook that is , only a handful of 750M people. The web is much bigger. Not every device that can be connected to the web can be connected to Facebook. Plus, as already discussed, Facebook is not open to communicate with with its data.

Schematically, (click for full-size)

If you can’t figure out my writing read it here: [1] denotes people who use things. [2] denotes people who have internet, axiomed in: you can’t have internet w/o a human (who would create the internet if humans = 0?) and a thing (eg. router), and [3] denotes Semantic Web. People + things + internet, assuming it will push industries to make connected things. The “→” trend goes (will, actually) up until 100% things = connected things. This graph was a quick response to @manogr as we discussed this on Twttr. So it may contain math errors. So can my argument based on Set Theory. Feel free to point them out. But I think you get the point. (another pun? Oh.)

Recap, not a TL;DR

Facebook did innovate. A lot. And this is very good, for everyone. Facebook also transformed itself and the web — again. From like to do, Facebook is now about sharing everything, not only web & media (club photos, videos, etc) related. Google+ is left behind. Just in a day, Mark and team made it to look obsolete. Google has to innovate too, otherwise it’ll lose again the social web game, as it did several times before. And this time it will be such a pity, since Google+ is really good. And a call for Semantics: open your data!

Additional discussion, upvotes, downvotes and other fun things for this post over at Hacker News.