Dear Columbus,

by J.D. Amer Posted on 09/27/2011

I moved to Columbus a little over three months ago. My second stint in Ohio’s largest city. My first since having moved to Chicago. I’m enjoying my time here, don’t get me wrong, but some things just don’t seem right… especially on the roads.

I’ve been reading the Dispatch quite a bit and recently came across a couple of articles about Allstate’s motorist safety reports. The shock to me is that people actually seem surprised that Columbus ranks as low on the list of safest cities as it does. I’m surprised it’s not lower.

I know, I’m officially an old man. But, hey, I am turning thirty some time next year. I don’t like to just whine though, so I have some suggestions:

  1. Ban non-hands-free talking on your phone. Seriously, I think there may be a quota on the amount you are required to talk on your phone while driving.
  2. Enforce the texting while driving ban. Your car is not your mobile office. It’s a method of transportation. Use it as one.
  3. Stop adding more capacity. May seem counter intuitive, but I honestly think Columbus’s roads are too open. There’s very little traffic on 270 (which I’m on a lot, so maybe a bit narrow of a view) which results in no one being on the same page… some people are flying, others are going at or under the speed limit… there’s no consistency and it adds to the danger on the road.  If the roads weren’t so open people would have to get on the same page and slow down, there would be no choice. Now we have three open lanes and someone that is willing to cut across each one without looking.
  4. Make sure that driver’s don’t merge onto the expressway until the solid lines stop! There’s (usually) plenty of time to merge, don’t jump the gun, it just adds to the difficulty of others trying to merge.
  5. Do something about public transportation. The system is weak and unappealing. Make it better, take people off the roads. And while you’re at it make more areas bike friendly for the same reason.
In other words…

Dear Columbus,

You can’t drive.

Love,

J.D. Amer

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Motask

by J.D. Amer Posted on 09/22/2011

Motask - simple mobile to-do lists

It’s sad really. I can hardly remember when motask launched. I rarely peak at its analytics, I don’t monitor mentions of the name… I didn’t even notice when an iPhone app of the same name launched. In fact, I myself hardly ever use it anymore. I use Evernote and (as of last week) Trello as my to-do lists of choice…. but some people can’t stop using it. And it costs the price of domain renewal, plus a fraction of my minimal hosting costs which are spread across 5 sites (yeah… I really still have five sites) to keep it going. So, for now it stays. It was mobile before mobile was cool, and somehow it lives on.  I’m thinking of shutting it down, though. Thinking that it should be like Lopico. If I can’t dedicate myself to it, I shouldn’t leave something out there that I am not 100% happy with.  But then again, that was the point of motask… it wasn’t supposed to be a 100% site… it was supposed to be a 10% site. Only a couple of functions, no frills, nothing fancy. But if I keep it going, maybe I should at least change the logo.

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The end of think.

by J.D. Amer Posted on 09/18/2011

This post may be a result of the fact that I am reading Super Sad True Love Story right now… but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking that people really seem to have stopped thinking.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I think the world now has a new sort of intelligence. We are all over-informed, but under-challenged. No one really has to think anymore. Originality is incremental. Everything you could every need to know is online. There’s no more need to think, and if it’s not necessary, we don’t seem to do it.

There’s no where that this is more evident than on social networks. Facebook in particular. I can’t remember the last time I logged into Facebook and saw something of any intellectual value. Instead, it’s all pictures of food, cats, and children with some complaints about poor quality service, football teams, and employers thrown in. Twitter is just an information overload, dumbed down to 140 characters so that more info can be thrown at you.

The issue that Facebook has, if you ask me, is that it’s too big. There’s too much info coming in from too many sources. And people are sending out the info to everyone – even if they don’t have to – so the information that is put out is mostly inoffensive, non-opinionated, safe information. No one’s challenging anyone else. We’re all friends and we like everything.

It’s just not reality. Anonymity may be a way to get rid of some of that… if you didn’t know who was going to see something you wrote, and no one knew that you wrote it, you might be more willing to say something of some substance, not having the fear that you would offend one of your 500 “friends.”  But the internet is headed in the opposite direction. Facebook, Google and the like are campaigning to get rid of anonymity online.

Instead we’re being corralled into circles, which makes some sense, actually. There are things I’d rather not send out to my work colleagues, but wouldn’t mind sending to my friends. But even that solution isn’t really a solution to the essential issue. Social networks have taught us to think in terms of information, not ideas. So when we send out messages to just our friends or just our co-workers, I imagine they will still lack substance.

Even Quora, a social network that seems to have thought provoking questions as a part of its premise, is mostly just another way to get information.

So… it’s September. This is usually the time of year when I tend to have the most ideas, and the most motivation to act on those ideas. I don’t know why that is, it just works that way. I acted on an idea today by reviving my blog (even managed to bring in some old posts and all of my posts from jda.tumblr.com) in the hopes that I can contribute something of value. I know the truth. I know I’ll stop blogging again soon… but for the times I want to write, I don’t want to tweet or tumble… I want to start a conversation, I want to think.

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Spotted: Bloomberg – Queue it up

by J.D. Amer Posted on 08/04/2011

New thing… I’ve been doing this offline for a while, now going to start posting interesting feature I spot as I navigate the Interwebs.


By adding something to your queue, you have a couple of benefits 1) take the stories with you… get your queue on a mobile device or anywhere. 2) New suggestions based on what you have in your queue.


I like it, because it provides multiple benefits and a different take on how to make recommendations / drive people to related content. 

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/

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