Posts from Web/Tech

The Convergence Of The Phone And Laptop

The Gotham Gal wanted to get a new laptop. Her late 2015 Macbook has started to fade on her.

So yesterday we made a visit to the local Apple Store and checked out the options. We looked at the Macbooks, the Macbook Airs, and we also looked at the iPad Pros. We debated the choice and she ended up deciding to go for the iPad Pro. We work with a few people who have iPad Pros and love them. And she noticed how much I am using and enjoying my Pixel Slate.

One of the most interesting things about these hybrid tablet/laptop devices is that they run operating systems that are designed for the tablet or phone. They are touch devices like our phones vs mouse devices like our laptops.

A good example of this is how I do email on my Pixel Slate. I could run Gmail in the browser on my Pixel Slate. But I have found it much more pleasing to do email in the Gmail Android App on my Pixel Slate. I swipe emails away like I do on my phone. But I also have the keyboard when I want to write a long response. It is literally the best of both worlds.

I am writing this post on my Pixel Slate (in the WordPress web app in Chrome). When I want to go back up to the start of the post and re-read/edit it, I just swipe up. No messing around with the touchpad, up button, or down button. It is so much more natural, although it took me a while to get used to it.

I am helping the Gotham Gal set up her iPad Pro this morning and we are downloading all of the mobile apps she likes to use on her iPhone. I think that is how she will want to use her new “laptop”.

So if this is the future we are heading into, where the user interfaces and applications our computing devices and our phones use start to converge, it suggests that there is a bit of an opening for new applications that are designed from the ground up to work in this way.

#mobile#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

The Free And Open Internet

I realize that publications need to have a business model to stay afloat. And the past month has seen a number of online publications (and offline publications) layoff a large number of employees. So it isn’t even clear that all of these hard paywalls, soft paywalls, and advertising based models are going to make the online publishing business work.

But the cost of all of this business model exploration and extraction is a continued degradation of the clean and fluid user experience that made the early free and open Internet so compelling.

A few days ago I saw a link on my phone that said “John Dingell’s Last Words For America.” I thought it was worth reading what a lifelong public servant had to say on his deathbed. So I clicked on the link and got this:

I never got to read what a lifelong public servant’s last words for America were. Sure I could have purchased a subscription to the Washington Post, but I don’t believe opinion pieces should be behind a paywall and I certainly don’t believe that something like Dingell’s last words should be behind a paywall. So I’m not going to reward the Washington Post for bad behavior with my money.

The truth is Dingell’s family should never have asked the Washington Post to publish his last words. Even the Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos knew to publish his words that he wanted everyone to read on an open platform like Medium.

The mainstream publications, like Washington Post, have ceded their role as the public square to places like Twitter and Medium that remain open and free.

That further limits their relevance. In search of a business model they cede the very thing that made them what they once were.

So what is my point? That paywalls are bad? No, I think subscriptions have their place in the publishing business. But the way paywalls are implemented today stinks. Some content should never ever be put behind one. And paywalls should federate, like the early ATMs did, so that joining one means joining them all.

That won’t get us all the way back to the free and open Internet that sucked us all in twenty plus years ago, but it will get us a lot closer to it.

#rants#Web/Tech

Pixelated

Google had its big event yesterday and announced two new Pixel phones, the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3XL. I’ve been using Google phones for quite a while now, first the Nexus phones and now the Pixel phones. I love my Pixel phone but I will be upgrading shortly, probably to the larger form factor 3XL.

But even more exciting to me is the Pixel Slate. I’ve been using a Pixelbook at the USV office for the last month and I like it quite a bit but it badly needs a biometric login to the device. The Slate apparently comes with a fingerprint unlock. 

So I will probably swap out my Pixelbook for the Pixel Slate and see how that goes.

I will let you know once I’ve got the new devices and have been using them for a bit.

#Web/Tech

Conversations Versus Interviews

I’ve been interviewed many times and while interviews are OK, what I enjoy a lot more are public conversations between two people.

Listening to two people talking as friends and peers is more enlightening to me.

My friend Chris Dixon was in NYC a few weeks ago and he came by my office and we talked about stuff for about an hour.

I told him it would be fun to do the same thing but record it and put it up online.

So I went over to the A16Z offices in NYC a few days later and we did that.

And this is an hour-long conversation between the two of us about what we are thinking about right now.

I hope you enjoy it.

#crypto#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

Pixelbook Reactions

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was getting more interested in a Chromebook.

And I got a ton of great feedback from all of you. Thank you for that.

I purchased a Pixelbook and have been using it at the USV office for the last few weeks.

Here are my initial thoughts on it:

1/ I quite like the lack of a desktop OS in the computer. The Pixelbook boots right into the browser and you do everything there. That is great for me and the way I work.

2/ The keyboard took me a bit of getting used to. I am used to the keyboard shortcuts on the Mac and it’s hard to switch away from them.

3/ I still use a Mac at home so it is a bit strange going from one computer to another and back during the day. But it is not terrible.

4/ I would really appreciate a biometric login, like a fingerprint or a face recognition. Having to enter my long and strong Google password every time I wake the computer back up is a challenge. I have heard that the next Pixelbook will come with biometric login. If so, that would be a big improvement in my view.

5/ The size, shape, screen, and weight are all great. It feels roughly equivalent to a MacBook to me.

I plan to continue to use the Pixelbook at the USV office for the foreseeable future. If Google makes one with biometric login, I will get that one instead.

However, I am not yet ready to move my entire computing experience away from the Mac. That is going to take me getting a lot more used to the Pixelbook and ChromeOS. It could happen, but not yet.

#Web/Tech

Chromebook

I’ve been thinking about moving from a Mac to a Chromebook as my primary computing device.

I have not used desktop software for probably a decade now. The browser is how I do all of my desktop computing. Paying up for a full blown computer when all I need is a browser seems like a waste.

And there are some security things that appeal to me about a Chromebook. I like the ability to do two factor authentication on signing into the device, for example.

I am curious what advice those of you who use Chromebooks have for me.

I like to use a desktop style setup vs a laptop unless I am traveling. So the Acer Chromebase and Chromebox look interesting to me.

But I am hearing great things about the Pixelbook and am wondering if I should start there.

I am also curious how one uses a Password Manager on a Chromebook. That’s the one desktop app that I regularly use.

If you have any advice for me as I consider this move, I would appreciate hearing it.

#Web/Tech

Why Decentralization Matters

So the news over the weekend is that Microsoft is buying GitHub. Many companies and developers are thinking “do I want my source code hosted on a service owned by Microsoft?”

Fortunately, the protocol that GitHub is built on, Git, is open source and there are other Git hosts, like GitLab.

There are also a number of proprietary Git solutions offered by companies like Atlassian and BitBucket.

Moving your source code repositories from GitHub to GitLab or somewhere else is not a simple thing, but it can be done. Kind of like moving your email from Outlook to Gmail.

Lock-in is a bitch. And everyone who has ever been locked into a shitty piece of software over the years knows, there is often no easy way out.

Software built on decentralized protocols offers a different and better way. You can move your data out if you don’t like where things are going. And that is what some developers are doing right now with GitHub.

#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

GDPR Is Upon Us

As we all know from the flood of emails coming into our inboxes explaining that privacy policies have changed and more, the dawn of the GDPR era is upon us.

Technically companies have until tomorrow, May 25th, to get into compliance with GDPR.

USV portfolio companies have been working on getting compliant for more than a year and we have been active in helping them do so and advising them on best practices.

I blogged about GDPR here at AVC last September in hopes that all of you would also start working on getting compliant.

If you have customers or users in Europe, you must comply with GDPR. But many companies are taking the approach that they will be GDPR compliant with all of their customers, regardless of geography.

For this reason, GDPR is the biggest user data privacy regulation to hit the Internet, at least in the last decade, and possibly forever.

There are some good things in GDPR. The basic notions that users have the right to control how their data is used and to opt-out of that usage seems right to me.

But like all regulations, the implementation and compliance details are painful in parts and there certainly could have been a lighter weight way to get to the same place.

My hope is that the US and other countries copy some of the better parts of GDPR but go without the overwrought elements.

The other thing to note about GDPR is that we should expect revenue headwinds from it for the next few quarters. Less emails will be going out. Less engagement will be going on. And less revenue will be generated.

I am OK with that. It’s a price to be paid for a step forward for user’s rights. No pain, no gain.

#Web/Tech

Email, Twitter, Blog

I exchanged emails today with someone who wanted to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I told him that “I don’t do LinkedIn.”

I have a profile there and I use it regularly as a resume database to check out people. I keep a profile there so others can do the same.

But beyond that, I don’t do LinkedIn.

So to everyone who is sending me messages via LinkedIn, please know that I am not reading them. I suspect that is obvious to anyone who has tried that approach more than a few times.

The same is true of many social platforms. I have profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and a bunch more social platforms. But I don’t use them.

For me, the trifecta is email, twitter, and this blog.

That is a pretty large surface area via which folks can connect with me.

Email is hit or miss. I get hundreds of emails into my “Important” inbox on Gmail and hundreds more than don’t get into “Important” and thus don’t get read by me. Though I try to read every message and actually do respond to hundreds every day, I don’t get to all of my email.

I am better with Twitter. I read every notification that I get and respond to many.

And this blog is yet another place people can reach me.

I understand that it is frustrating to reach me and that I can be unresponsive.

But if you stick to email, twitter, and this blog, you have the best chance of getting a response from me.

#Web/Tech