My Current Home Screen

Comments (Archived):

1. lyft vs uber vs sidecar vs hailo – what are your preferences?

   1. Hailo in London, Sidecar in SF and LA, Lyft in NYC, and Uber in Paris

      1. thanks for answering! preferences change over time or you pick 1 in a city and stick w/ it?

         1. I try to use our portfolio company’s apps (Hailo and Sidecar) where they operate and I try not to use Uber unless I have to

            1. I was a Hailo man in London but too often drew a blank when looking for a pickup from my house (Ladbroke Grove, so fairly central). I tried Uber last week – the network seems so much bigger, I get a confirmed ride in seconds.

            2. Hailo, Uber and Lyft are pretty much the same. Sidecar creates a market.

         2. (NYC) I very rarely use e-hailing except when I leave the office in the wee hours. I always grill the drivers though on advantages/disadvantages of services and nearly every time they seem to utilize all the options available. Uber, Hailo, Lyft, now Gett, and some are still taking calls from a dispatcher. The only exception to this was recently when I had a solo Lyft guy, and the only reason he didn’t use UberX was because his car was made pre-2008.This creates an interesting problem for these services. Drivers sit on all of them till they get pinged. The most consistent demand, produces the favored service. In NYC, Uber seems to be winning this battle. I’ve been trying to use only Lyft, but its quite inconsistent time-to-ride.

      2. Uber and out;http://www.engadget.com/201…

      3. Then the question is why isn’t the home screen location aware? It seems that it would be a trivial OS feature that you could make certain apps more prominent depending on where you were at the time. For example when I’m in Starbucks picking up coffee not only do I use the Starbucks app [2] but I typically scan a few other things (consistently) including AVC. Seems that the OS could learn what I do (when and where) and make it easier to find what I need without hunting. [3] “It’s the morning and you haven’t left the house weather is probably on your mind”.[1] Woz could knock it out in a weekend in other words…[2] Not going to be an issue with NFC but other points stand.[3] Another example of this is in cars. Car has sensors front and back to warn of objects. However it’s not smart enough to know when I am pulling out of my garage or out of a parking lot where there is the same exact object in front of me every single day. It doesn’t learn behavior and location in other words.

2. audiobooks on our trip.

3. Reduction in the USV portfolio home-screen-real-estate index?

   1. I don’t think so

      1. Doesn’t even matter if it is. Seems you’re going after a different tier of problems now and home screen real estate is not the key success indicator for those companies

4. 6 Plus

5. You will be pleased to know that I’ve decided to switch to Android as my primary phone, and using the iPhone for testing Apps & wifi only. I still haven’t picked between the Xiaomi Redmi Note (dual SIM) and the Xiaomi Mi3, both 5 inches.

   1. Nice call on Xioami

      1. OK, but how do you pronounce it?#brandingissue

         1. not really a #brandingissue.They are doing record sale in India. setting record sales … like”SOLD-OUT IN 90-SECONDS”…

            1. Kasi – You are not thinking like a normal. Most people’s brains can’t do what you do or even speak two languages fluently.It’s not reasonable to expect that the same name that works in a foreign market will work in the US as well as a name that is tailored for the US. Lacking a heap of marketing and PR. No reason to make things harder than they are.For example your name “Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam” isn’t something that most US born natives are going to have an easy time remembering or spelling. And that’s friction. No need for excess friction. I mean swimmers shave their body hair, right?Despite cultural resistance I can tell you that if you were to come to this country (again) and change your name to “Kasi Andam” or better “Kasi Agil” you’d almost certainly have a leg up on others born in this country all else equal.

            2. No-one had issues calling me ‘Kasi’ for the 2+years when I lived in Philly…at work and in bars ….and No-one twisted my name ‘Kasi’ otherwise when I was making frequent visits to Milwaukee (when i was working for GE-India).what I meant in the comment was …Indians (may be others also) did not have any issues on the name Xioami though it sounded the way it sounded….the phone is selling like a hot-cake.People call it “the latest Chinese phone” not “Xioami”.P.S. If I were to come to U.S….I will with only as “Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam” … if U.S. has a problem with that I will come back :-)…anyhow, I don’t have any plans to come to U.S….may come as a tourist or a visitor though.

            3. i hear the entry level Redmi is big in India.

            4. I disagree. It is a branding issue if your customers can’t pronounce your name.I agree with you that it has not been a sales issue though. 😉

         2. From my memory [1], “zomi” there was this Bloomberg which I started watching some time ago that I never finished watching:http://www.bloomberg.com/vi…”The name means “little rice”They bought the domain “mi.com” for 3.6 million it was recently reported.[1] Actually my memory was wrong it’s “chow me” or “shall me”.

            1. wow..expensive name :)what’s the record for known domain name buying btw? you would know.

            2. Well the record shows only publicly visible sales and not every sale is public. Most aren’t public. Old school a down side to being public with things like this.Even the lists you pull up about these things will differ:http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…vs.http://www.domaining.com/to…vs. (2014) this:http://www.dnjournal.com/yt…With a few exceptions price paid (for most names) is a function of who is buying and who is selling more than anything else. fb.com is a good example of that. I’d have to say they screwed up there. Name was owned by the American Farm Bureau impossible to believe fb didn’t overpay for that. That said to them it didn’t matter – they might have just been impatient and didn’t want to waste time and play any games.The last list (dnjournal) is usually thought of as being accurate. However it recently had a name that I sold on it’s top list. The problem is that nobody ever checked with me on whether the amount was correct or not. It was pulled from an article where the buyer made a comment as to what he paid and they used that as attribution that it really happened. They claim to always want to see proof of a sale (if you approach them) however in this case that clearly didn’t happen and was not even verified or attempted to be verified.Obviously sales that are taken from public filing would be correct of course.I’m typically thought of as a cynic and a skeptic but there is a reason that I question everything. I’ve seen in the past how easy it is to manipulate the press (guy who runs dnjournal is an old school news guy for example.) and how gullible they are.

            3. tl;dr You still don’t know how to pronounce it. 😉

         3. Jomee – that’s why they are going by Mi only. http://www.mi.com/en/

            1. Oh great! Is that pronounced “me” or “my”?(same problem; fewer letters)

            2. Dunno… Try pronouncing Huawei for a change 🙂

            3. No can do

      2. Just got it yesterday, and the experience has been fantastic. I may never go back to an iPhone (shhhh….) Here’s my first home screen. It does look like an iPhone. Their MIUI interface removes the Android geekiness, and I love that.

   2. Curious why?I’m just the opposite as almost all of the people I work with are iPhone first apps.

      1. It’s part experimentation on my side. For $250, I can get a decent Android, and wanted to see what kind of crap China is putting out 🙂 I will delay my iPhone 6 upgrade til later. But I like the iOS 8.0 and definitely waiting for the Apple Watch.

         1. not certain about the watch.very certain about a slightly larger screen though.

         2. I do need one for some things but switching to as my primary is not gonna happen.

   3. William, will these phones be getting Android 5.0?or, is cyanogen partly the attraction?

      1. Not sure about 5.0. i think they have 4.4can’t i upgrade later to 5.0?

         1. nexus 4 and 5 and moto x first generation are guaranteed the upgrade. many a phone is essentially abandoned by their maker with no upgrade offered, or very fuzzy talk about if and when an upgrade might come.i’m clueless about Xioami.

         2. Depends on the Android version and the vendor/maker, I think. Not a given that you can upgrade.

6. Citibike app is first on my second page.

7. Curious what phone you’re using nowadays?

   1. Nexus5.But in have my eye on the Moto that runs stock AndroidWilliam has me thinking about Xiaomi too

      1. LG has stopped making it.Ubuntu Touch is on the way with the MX4.

      2. There’s a new Android coming out soon. It will have access to a new product from Google that you will want. Wait. 🙂

         1. A new Nexus, I mean.

            1. said to be based on the new moto x, which could be good because the x seems to have gone down the bling route (with motomaker leather options et.c.), and hopefully the new nexus will be more restrained by comparison.

8. No Google Now?

   1. not yet. it’s getting better but doesn’t do anything awesome for me yet

9. Is the home screen background taken from Miro Institute?I’m sticking with iPhone for now because all my apps are built with Objective-C and I’m deep into Apple ecosystem.Xiaomi has Google’s Hugo Barra as VP International and I expect they’ll make their phones increasingly hybrid best-of-both iPhone and Android.

   1. yup, that’s at the Miro Foundation in Barcelona

10. What’s the R2 controller control? Home automation? Entertainment? Office A/V?

    1. it controls all the smart devices in our homes

       1. Crestron? I though you swore off that platform.

          1. I had their cheap switcher. I don’t use anything else

11. Very telling that the phone app is not locked in the dock.

    1. it’s a communications app. that’s the third row. although i will admit that weather is not communications

       1. It’s nature’s way of communicating – rounding the square peg 🙂

12. No CityMapper, Fred? That knocks the CitiBike and Hailo apps off the home screen. Best app for getting around town.

    1. i use google maps for that. hard to change my muscle memory. i tried having citymapper on my home screen but it never took for me

       1. Understandable. I do love how CityMapper intregrated real-time data for subways and buses along with CitiBike docks/bikes. The Hailo partnership is also exciting!

13. SoundCloud and Bitcoin Wallet rule!!

14. why CitiBike has CitiBank’s blue roofing thing on top?R they the promoters in NY?

    1. Yes. CitiBike = CitiBank.

       1. thought so … but wanted to make sure.thx Jim.

15. Why do you need Lyft, Uber, Sidecar and Hailo? Isn’t two enough, one mainstay and one backup?

    1. He answered elsewhere in this thread

       1. Yeah, I saw. I should read the comments first. Just so lazy. :-)Maybe Disqus can come up with a feature where, when you type a comment into the box, there’s a little thing that tells you if a similar question has already been asked before you hit “post.” Because, you know, I’m sure I’m not the only lazy person. 🙂

          1. Sounds cool. Also sounds super hard to do since the comment under composition does not exist “in the cloud” but just in your browser until you hit send. Not saying it couldn’t be done. Just saying it’s hard.

          2. awesome idea!

    2. i use different apps in different cities. i listed them in another comment in this thread

16. That home screen could really use some folders.

    1. Personally never liked the look/feel of folders on mobile devices. Pretty sure I’m not the only one.

       1. count me in. there are at least two of us

       2. “Keep as few folders as necessary but no fewer” – Albert Einstein

    2. Just think of them like long folders – he has things organized by row. Not sure why I enjoy figuring out how people’s phones are organized…

    3. man i hate foldering. it’s organization. and i hate organization

       1. And yet, everything is organized so elegantly by genre in such perfect rows: productivity, music, transportation, social…

          1. good point 😉

             1. I think what is interesting about foldering is even though I have similar folders to my wife, we have different stuff in them. Everyone’s screen is customized to them. On trips, my wife tells me she can never find anything on my phone.

       2. That’s just my OCD talking! :)We reveal so much information about ourselves with smart phones these days, it makes me wonder if we need a new maxim (with apologies to the Jesuits): “Give me the homescreen and I will give you the (wo)man.”

       3. hahahaI hate android folders too. but mostly because they have bad visual feedback and it takes more taps to get to things

    4. is ‘foldering’ a natural brain function? if not don’t do it.

       1. I think “grouping” is natural (i.e. i think human brains are wired for pattern matching) but not foldering. Foldering is a crude construct we created to force “grouping” from the thought world to the real world. The problem of course is that “grouping” is extremely dynamic and foldering is not.We are still lacking a truly elegant implementation of smart foldering using tags as hints. Tagging is the closest we have so far in the real world that matches how we intuitively organize things in our head.Foldering forces an user to do a context switch whereas tagging carries the context from the user’s head into the software seamlessly.

17. I love audio books. If i can reco one — The Kid Stays in the Picture – Robert Evans narrates it, has SUCH a great voice and it’s fantastic especially if you are interested in Hollywood and the politics behind movie making. I loved it.

    1. I don’t know this book and just bought it–in Kindle not audio.Can’t find a place in my life for audio books honestly.Everything Hollywood history interests me. My short stint in that biz was as interesting as it was crazy frustrating.

       1. so two favourite podcasts right now — nerdist writers panel (everything about TV show runners and so many great stories of how they made their careers etc.) and The Q & A with Jeff Goldsmith – that’s everything about filmmaking (vs. TV). Podcasts are great for long car drives and walking the dog. 🙂

          1. Thanks–suffering for content inspiration big time lately.

    2. There’s an amazing Patton Oswalt bit about this book. Oswalt says, “It’s like listening to Lucifer dictate his memoirs on a Sunday afternoon lying on his couch in his bathrobe with a martini.” Later in the bit he goes on to talk about Evans’ gig as a spokesperson for ESPN which is hilariously outrageous and inappropriate.

       1. omg that quote is sooooo perfect. there’s also a great youtube video of Wes Anderson filling in for Larry King on CNN interviewing Robert Evans. Worth a watch when you have the time.

18. My home screen is a B/W Windows console window with a command line. There I have fast access to many programs plus 433 scripts and macros.Most important program: Favorite text editor with 175 macros.

19. So much pimping.

    1. part of his job 🙂

       1. Yup! Just one of the many reasons I dig Buster.

    2. i knew you would be pleased about that

    3. Vaguely reminiscent of the USV portfolio page. ;)Buster = Fred? Ha!

       1. Buster Olney, the ESPN baseball analyst, and Fred look a like. Hence the nickname.

          1. Does Buster root for the Mets?

             1. Sadly, yes

             2. lol

20. Neat horizontal organisation 😉

21. Blimey, that’s a veritable smorgasbord of apps!

22. seems like a lot of redundancy…e.g. why the gallery when you can get to that with one right swap in the camera? why contacts, when that’s right there when you open your phone? why docs and sheets, when drive will open those when the time comes? why settings, when you can get to most everything via the top drawer?for my home screen (and been thinking about this as i’m just getting moved into a new phone), i find i’m willing to do occasional maintenance to keep it fresh.if i were to travel to paris, i’d be willing to promote these special circumstance apps — airlines, uber, etc.if i were beta testing apps, i’d move those out of their stale betas folder (not usually on my home screen).i also tend to keep new apps on the homescreen while i fiddle with them, and then either delete or move to a more permanent location if they don’t meet the regular use threshold.

    1. i will work on learning these power user moves. thanks!!!

23. I bet this is NOT your home screen. In fact this is screen 3 of 5 (you can tell from the pic). Wonder why you uppishly promote your flawed products

    1. the last point is a valid critique. but the first point is not. this is my home screen. i would not lie about that

       1. You need to refund the price of the ticket that he bought to access this blog then. (Less a handling fee of course.)

24. That r2 app to control home automation was a hard one to track down in a web search.http://www.huffingtonpost.c…https://play.google.com/sto…

25. I find the bit about search and Chrome interesting. It’s a usage pattern I’m seeing a lot now.

26. Have you used your coinbase app to buy any goods? or is it mostly just to buy and hoard?

    1. i’ve used it to buy things peer to peer and i also use it to give bitcoin to friendsi don’t hoard bitcoin. i buy it and then spend it and give it away

       1. bitcoin is fun to give as gifts especially to niece and nephews

          1. yupppppp

27. what *is* that snapchat logo?

28. No Yo?

29. MacHead here – what are the middle 3 icons on the dock bar?Nice organization for a non-organizer!

    1. from left to right:gallery – that is the photos appall other apps – takes me to all the apps that are not on the home screen play store – to download more apps

30. Is maps a newer addition? One thing that struck me the time you asked us all to share our home screens was the absence of a navigation app for many of the NYCers. Understandably.

    1. no. maps has always been on my home screen. i use it more than almost anything else

       1. Ah… guess that makes sense given the amount of travel. Do you use it much in NYC?

          1. all the time. to figure out the best subway to take, the time it will take to get to a meeting, etc, etc

             1. Then you already are a power user 🙂

31. I have a suggestion. Create a Google folder by putting together at least two of the least accessed apps icons and add then add DuckDuckgo app to diversify your search results.

32. How’d you remove the search bar? Custom launcher or rom or a solution where you need root?

    1. i use the nova launcher

       1. dude, so do I… but you’re home screen is so crowded… less is more. take advantage of the swipe function at the bottom of the screen to open up the app drawer and use it to open all those 1/day apps.

33. The semiotics of our soul.

34. i’d be really interested to know what mobile and OS avc participants use as their primary device, and what their top three apps are by usage.

    1. iPhone-depends on where I am. When I was in NYC, I used Maps, used Foursquare, used Twitter, and they have a local app to download to find out when public transport is around. I am in Denver today. Will use Foursquare and Maps, and probably Twitter.

       1. thanks. will you upgrade to a 6 handset?

          1. right now iPhone 6, but I objectively will look at it. battery life is very important to me

       2. So you have the iphonefred has the nexusarnold has the iphonewilliam is a Xioami convertiOS 2 – Android 2…..

    2. iPhone 4 but moving to Moto G soon. Apps usage will remain same: Twitter, BBC iPlayer Radio, FlipBoard.

       1. thanks Carl.the G is on my list too, although i was told last week by motorola.co.uk webchat that the new G (2nd generation) is only a 3g handset. disappointing news as the 1st generation mark II G handset *is* LTE. milking time never seems to end…

35. For anyone interested these are Fred’s last two home screens from 5/3/13 and 6/13/12.2012: 16 apps + search bar2013: 30 apps + search bar2014: 35 apps – search barhttp://avc.com/wp-content/u…http://avc.com/wp-content/u…http://avc.com/wp-content/u…

    1. Thanks for doing that. I wish I would have thought of it

       1. surprised to see soundcloud and DDG removed from home page

          1. SoundCloud is there

36. I’m sticking with aviate. This is just too much.. 🙂

37. Speaking of pimp’in…here’s my home screen shot (2 of these apps are still ‘in dev’ and not actually available in app stores YET)…

38. I don’t see any grocery / food delivery apps? BTW, Any thoughts on instacarts business model, factoring time, gas, labor …. can food delivery from within a market make a profit.

    1. I’m not a fan of that market

39. I use folders.

40. When I scanned the post this AM…I thought this was going to turn out to “show me yours…I will show you mine”.I was saddened to come back later in the day and read the comments…Did not find any one post screen shots of their home screen.

41. What’s the point of having a home-screen if you can’t see it? All those icons makes me itchy (but then I have to stack tea cups and wine glasses “a certain way”.I’m also not a fan of folders, but push apps across several home-screens and then use the search functionaily to find the rest.

42. What’s the point of having a home-screen if you can’t see it?I’m also not a fan of folders, but push apps across several home-screens and then use the search functionaily to find the rest.

43. What’s the point of having a home-screen if you can’t see it? I just push them out across multiple screens (based on usage) rather than use folders.UPDATE: Sorry, Disqus seems to have gone mad and republished my comment (which I thought I had deleted) along with versions of my photo which it had said hadn’t worked.

44. My favourite avatar is in middle of my screen 🙂

45. fred, we need to get these folks around more often … @fakegrimlock @kidmercury @andyswan

    1. i agree

46. I am curious why do you have Google Play, Camera and Gallery at the bottom of your home screen. Are those your most used apps on your phone?

    1. not sure, but i do use them a lot

47. May I recommend ‘hello’ for texting? I’ve found it superior to chompSMS. It’s also much, much faster than Hangouts, but that’s a low bar.

    1. thanks!i really don’t like chomp but i do like it better than hangouts

48. Bribe a teenager to turn it into something prettier, cleaner. For example:

49. I am keeping my homescreen really simple these days.

50. I am trying to keep things very simple these days: