space age madness
Bending Spoons acquires Evernote, marking the end of an era – I was all in on Evernote, and don’t pay for it any longer. I hope for the product and user base that this next chapter ends up being a productive transition.
It always makes me a little sad when a startup whose work I really liked spirals down.
I wear a lot of black t-shirts. My family makes fun of me for the fact that I pretty much wear a black t-shirt and gray shorts/khakis almost every day. I’m not sure how it started, probably about twenty years ago, but I think a black tshirt and jeans/khakis are the perfect clothing base layer.
My t-shirt drawer is half printed t-shirts and half black T-shirts. I have, right now, black shirts from three different brands in that “varsity” set of shirts. In a lower drawer there is another half drawer of the “junior varsity” shirts.
In my opinion, people who review black t-shirts tend to do it all wrong .
T-shirts should be reviewed like books, worn until they are worn in, and worn out, until the end. Making sure that they hold up and keep themselves and their collar in good shape.
I tend to find a brand that makes black shirts that I like, and then slowly acquire a half dresser drawer full of that brand until the end of that shirt. Like many things in life, all good black t-shirts come to an end.
At one point that preferred brand was J. Crew, and then they went and changed the shirts, and I didn’t like them anymore, no longer recommended. Next was a company called Pact, which also had the advantage of being environmentally conscious. Then, for some reason Pact stopped making black t-shirts altogether for some period of time. When they started selling them again, the new ones weren’t good, no longer recommended. (I still have about 8 of the good ones, but they are starting to wear out, so sad.)
Currently, Ugmonk and Western Rise are the two shirts that I have tested/worn for a length of time, and will buy more of, slowly, these things aren’t cheap. The road behind me is littered with other brands that I didn’t like, or which didn’t weather well. Ugmonk are more like the Pact and JCrew ones of those salad days, and the Western Rise shirt is this awesome athletic fabric. If I’m going to wear the t-shirt under something, I usually pick an Ugmonk shirt.
I won’t throw shade at the other companies whose shirts I have tried and discarded, but there are a lot of those. I like the Supreme Tagless Tees Hanes shirts as a knock around, but wouldn’t put those in my varsity lineup. Got a shirt you think I should try? Throw me a line on Twitter, I’m @bump.
Here are some things I’ve been enjoying recently, in no specific order. I am not compensated in any way, even referral payments, for these links. Hope I turn someone else onto something they enjoy.
This is an equivalent for rowing to Peloton, and by all accounts the best interactive rower on the market. I grew up as an endurance athlete, but I just hate riding stationary bikes, and I find rowing a better workout as well. Hydrow offers great instructors, a great community of people to support you as you progress, and it has worked for me. I know, this thing is crazy expensive, and also requires a monthly subscription, but I was able to cancel my gym membership altogether. We’ve had ours for about 11 months now, and I have worked out on it 300 days. This device, and the service it comes with, which includes guided yoga, pilates and strength classes, has been a key to maintaining my sanity and improving my fitness over the last year. Since we purchased it, I have lost about 26 pounds. (I don’t care that much about weight, I care about fitness, but it’s still an encouraging metric.)
I love this little wireless charging stand that I keep on my desk. It holds/charges my iPhone 12 Pro Max in either portrait or landscape, making it great for my ten hour shifts monitoring the live streaming coverage of our events through our app. It also wirelessly charges my AirPods Pro. It’s a game changer to be able to see your phone screen while sitting at your computer.
You may not be able to find these too far outside of Atlanta yet, but I’m fairly certain that you will be able to at some point. While most cocktails in a can that I have tried have been, frankly, gross, Tip Top came to the table with Old Fashioned, Negroni and Manhattan cocktails in a well designed can that are delicious, and have become a staple for me. In the last month, they added new Daiquiri and Bee’s Knees cocktails to the lineup, and these two are both a welcome taste of Summer. I am not recommending their Margarita though. Start this Summer with the Daiquiri, you won’t regret it. So great for a delicious cocktail on the go.
This neighborhood burrito joint opened last month in Kirkwood, on the edge of the Atlanta/Decatur line. If you are local, I would recommend joining their mailing list, which gives you ordering access to their Wednesday pre-order an hour earlier than people not in the know. Most burritos are protein-rich breakfast bombs, really flavorful and very filling. Each week they change their menu, introducing a new meat burrito, a new veggie burrito and a new frozen burrito, typically all named in some theme. (This week is Steve Martin themed.) There have been weeks, since they opened, when I have consumed one of their burritos for lunch 5 out of 7 days.
How are you? I’m doing okay given the circumstances, and I truly hope you’re doing well at this crazy moment in history. I should mention that I am currently looking for a job in digital products and you can read more about my background on my LinkedIn profile. I’m long overdue for some sporadic blog posting, so here goes, here are some things I have enjoyed lately.
Something to Read: A great TechCrunch article by Darrell Etherington about improving your at-home videoconference setup on any budget. This article goes into a lot of detail and has excellent videos inline that help along the way. Even if you think you have a great setup, worth a read.
Something to Listen To: I really enjoyed the most recent episode of Switched on Pop, an excellent podcast about pop music. This episode, Why lo-fi is the perfect background music, covers the rise and origins of lo-fi music, including J Dilla’s influence on its origins and Adult Swim’s role in its popularity. I’ve been listening to a lot of this style of music for a long while, this was a lot of information that I didn’t know, and was very interesting to learn.
Something to Listen On: I’m loving my $20 IKEA Frekvens Portable Speaker. It’s become the speaker that I take out to the backyard to work on some project or to the front porch to listen to something while I have a beer and relax. I don’t think you can order them online, but I highly recommend if you have a means of obtaining. The sound is really good for such a little speaker, and the device was created in conjunction with Teenage Engineering. You may have heard of them because of Playdate, but I’ve wanted an OP-1 since basically forever.
Something to Snack On: I discovered Honey Mama’s, I believe, through the Random Show, which is a podcast that Tim Ferris does with Kevin Rose. In any case, these bars, and I love love love the Mayan Spice flavor, are made with honey, instead of refined sugars, cocoa, and other ingredients depending on the flavor. The Mayan Spice are a little spicy and a little chocolatey, are a nice treat. I will say that these are not cheap, and take a little while to ship if you don’t have a store near you. Worth the price and wait, in my opinion, I just had one after lunch.
What went wrong was very simple. We never made enough money.
Source: Vesper, Adieu
I really like(d) Vesper, but it never stuck for me. I was a day one user, mainly because I am huge fan of all three of these guys, and also consider their QA lead an internet friend.
I don’t know what they could have done differently, especially with only three of them, I do think that, for their core audience, there are three platforms that matter:
I think to be successful in the market segment they were in, you need to have solutions for all three. Other solutions, like Apple’s Notes app and SimpleNote, while they might not be as elegant as Vesper, win based on the utility on multiple platforms. That’s why Vesper never stuck for me. Having said that, even Evernote, which appeared to be a juggernaut in this market, are having their own issues with a subscription business model.
Only Brent, Dave and John know for sure, but from my outsider’s view, this was a part time job for all three of them. I suspect that if even one of them had made this more of a full time job, it might have generated perspective and possibly drive to succeed. Just guessing on that bit, and I could be completely wrong.
I’m currently using Apple Notes as my primary phone/tablet/desktop text tool. iCloud sync has worked great for me.