Tony Bacigalupo's Blog

How I would transition from iPhone to Droid

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:56:00 -0500

Get apps to make your Android more like an iPhone
Android 2.0 still doesn’t meet the iPhone as a logically organized, pleasurable to use operating system, but the fact that it’s open source allows developers to close many of the gaps. For instance:

aHome: Customize the hell out of your home screen, including lots of skins to make it more iPhone-like.

Better Keyboard: Skinnable, customizable replacement to the default Android keyboard.

TuneWiki: A media player that better matches the iPhone’s iPod interface than the rudimentary media player that ships with Android by default.

HandCent SMS: Skinnable SMS/MMS program that, unsurprisingly, offers iPhone-like skins.

Twitdroid: Let’s be honest, leaving Tweetie on the iPhone may hurt more than any other one thing. Soften the blow by using a pretty damn good Android stand-in, Twitdroid.

Do things the iPhone can’t do, and love it

Stream Pandora while running other apps. Use Astro to access the file system directly on the phone. Love Google Voice’s full integration. Bask in the turn-by-turn navigation on Google Maps. Install G-Backup and have all of your texts, photos, calls and more automatically backed up to Gmail, and suddenly everything you do on your phone is backed up and searchable forever. Install Locale and customize your phone’s behaviors based on where you are in the world, using GPS and background processing (a killer combo that iPhone can’t match).

What other apps am I going to get?

- Foursquare
- Wapedia
- OpenHome
- Amazon
- Power Manager
- Ringdroid
- ShareBoard
- NESoid
- RoboDefense
- ShopSavvy
- Qik

Now that I’ve compiled this list, I’m pretty excited about picking up a Droid. I might need to spend a little more time with it in the store, but these apps are making the Droid look better than ever.

Fun with Google Voice

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:13:18 -0400

What I said:

“I said hip, hop, the hippy, the hippy, to the hip hip hop and you don’t stop a rockin to the bang bang the boogie said up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogedy beat. Om nom nom nom.”

What Google Voice heard:

I said it. Hi up and they did. It’d be a hip, hip, hop and you don’t stop elected to and able to set up something because of the book, the debate. I don’t know. I’m not involved. Com.

Let's think this through

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:54:35 -0400

I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Sure, there are the predictable reasons— it’s Monday; I’m getting up earlier than usual; I have to travel from Philly to NYC to start my week; I just had a great weekend. But I also knew that getting out of bed meant having to face all of the responsibilities of my “real” life, and I would much rather put them off for the length of just one more snooze button.

But if I’m to have a properly balanced life, I have to find a way to be happy not despite the work I do, but because of it. Ideally, I should wake up on a Monday morning excited for the opportunities in front of me.

So what’s got me stressed?

I have a huge to-do list.
This is true. I have a ton of things to do, Things I’ve been putting off, things that will be difficult, things that will be risky, things that will be time consuming.

But my to-do list will always be long. I wanted it that way. When I had few things on my list a few years back, I got really antsy until I could find things to put on the list to keep me busy. I like being busy.

So let’s take another look. There are a lot of things I want to do, a subset of things I have to do, and a smaller subset of things I really ought to do as soon as possible.

Then there’s the set of things I can get done today. While several portions of my day have already been allocated, it’s only 9am and I don’t expect to go to bed until about 1am. That’s 16 hours of time, which even after subtracting obligations should be an ample amount of time to have a perfectly satisfying day of crossing off to-do list items.

Which is why, when I get to NWC today, the first thing I’ll do is make a list of the things I want to accomplish today, and limit the list to the tasks I think I can complete within the time I have available to me.

So I’ve got that covered. Why else don’t I want to get out of bed?

I’m going through a life transition.
A lot of changes are coming, in various aspects of my life. There’s a lot of uncertainty and there are some big decisions to be made, and I don’t feel prepared to address them.

All the uncertainty is stressing me out, so let’s address it. I’ll dedicate more time to thinking through the questions I don’t have the answers to yet, even if just to get a better understanding of them.

In New York, there is a tremendous and constant pressure to achieve. To win. To succeed. To make money. At least, that’s my perception.

The reality, though, is that everyone just wants to be happy, and I’m getting better and better at understanding what makes me happy.

Happniess is in constant transition.

The to-do list will always be long.

There will always be uncertainty and big changes looming.

Mahna, mahna.

It’s time to stop hitting the snooze button.

Let’s do this.

Posted via web from CoStructure | Comment »

Corporate Mobile Working

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:00:07 -0400

- Employees seem to like working from home, at least when it’s only on occasion

- Big concerns about using shared workspace about confidentiality

- Emphasis on restoring and reinforcing well-being— we’re not just letting you work from home to save money, we want you to do laundry and go jogging

- More open space makes higher cost per seat, which motivates companies to cram as many people as possible in

- Constant concern about being able to know if people are working

- Does telecommuting help the environment? More complicated than it seems. Decreasing energy usage in offices but increasing energy usage in homes

- In flex work space, is corporate using technology & social networking to improve intercommunication among employees?

- Accenture uses fully unassigned space, and has lots of structure for how to go about reserving space and who gets to work where

- Desk-to-people ratios range from 4:7 for lower level to 9:10 for executives who are there all the time

- Deutsche Bank: 1.4 people per seat, looked at peaks and valleys. Mondays always busy. Had to plan for peak occupancy.

- Everybody wants to be in the office when the CEO is in town.

Double Accountability Works

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:17:39 -0400

Something remarkable happened today. For the first time since I can remember, I finished all the items on my day’s to-do list.

It took 14 hours (with ample breaks in between), and I only inched forward on some of the less desirable items, but I made forward progress nonetheless. The winning formula? A combination of a 9am/5pm CoStructure call with Whitney, and use of the Pomodoro method.

Accountability to someone else and accountability to myself. Between the two, I managed to find sufficient motivation to get done both the top-of-mind items on my list as well as a few things I had been avoiding.

Even if there is something of a placebo effect here, if I can be more relaxed and satisfied with my daily life and maintain the same level of productivity, I’d consider the effort a huge success. But, just like getting one’s body in shape, getting one’s mind in shape entails an ability to sustain the fitness over time.

If I can continue to improve and continue to get undesirable things done and be happier doing it, then I must be doing something right.

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I Have More Control Over My Time Than I Realize (And You Probably Do Too)

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:43:35 -0400

I’m taking a keen interest in mapping out my week. I’ve avoided trying to impose more structure in my week in the past because I believed there were too many extrenal variables outside of my control that would preclude me from doing so.

But when I sat down today and sketched out what my weeks look like, I realized that’s not nearly as true as I believed.

In a given week, I might do a dozen meetings, mostly over the phone, at widely varying times of day. Sometimes the conflict, sometimes they are stacked right on top of one another, and sometimes they’re just inconvenient.

But I accept those times when they’re proposed, or, worse, I set the times myself with only a passing evaluation of how it might affect my day’s flow. If I don’t agree to a meeting time that isn’t optimal for me, then the meeting doesn’t happen.

It takes two to make a meeting.

There are, of course, many external forces that impose things upon us. The most obvious external forces are usually the ones that pay our bills, whether a single employer or many clients. Myself and others have used this big external force as an excuse to not try to better structure our time, because we perceive ourselves as having very little control.

But it’s often not as true as we lead ourselves to believe. When I took a critical look at how my time gets scheduled, I found that I had much more control over what happens when than I realized— not total control, mind you, not even close— but more control than I was giving myself credit for.

Identify the external forces

I realized, too, that my days follow a fairly consistent pattern— the mornings are quieter, when not a lot of people are at New Work City yet and I’ve only received a fraction of the emails I’m destined to receive for the day. After lunchtime, more people show up, more emails arrive, and more tabs are open on the browser. I can say with near certainty that my ability to think and work lucidly on creative “maker” tasks at 9am is far better than it is at 4pm.

I can work on changing that dynamic, but I can also learn to work with that dynamic. If I know I’m going to end up distracted after lunch, then that’s when I should be setting my meetings— when I know I’m going to be dealing with communicating with other people anyway. It’s probably not that hard to do, either, because shifting suggested meetings to the afternoon from the morning is rarely a problem for others.

And it’s not about absoultes— if half of my 12-ish meetings are currently in morning time slots in a given week, reducing that from 6 to 2 would open up my creative pre-lunch time considerably.

Speculative meetings

As described in Paul Graham’s great post, speculative meetings are those which aren’t directly related to things on your critical path. Usually the phrase “grab a coffee” or a drink is involved. These meetings, while useful in aggregate and in the long term, can be a terrible distraction from your day-to-day obligations, when not scheduled properly.

So often I’ve had a call or meeting with someone, just to get to know them better, at a time when it was horribly inconvenient and I felt that I could not give that person my full attention. Same goes with catching up with a friend. I hate feeling like I want to avoid hanging out with friends simply for fear of being too distracted when the time comes because of the events unfolding that day.

So I either avoid setting speculative meetings, which makes them pile up, or I schedule those meetings and hope it works out. If, instead, I can identify an ideal time to have these meetings, and schedule everything I can into those slots, I might be able to improve this situation.

I’ve noticed that, once I hit 5pm, odds are that whatever anyone is expecting of me is going to be able to wait until tomorrow— so a lot of built up pressure from the day is relieved. I may likely not be able to return to a creative mode, however, so right at this point is an ideal time to schedule low-priority meetings and calls.

Make a plan

Given my evaluation of my week’s structure, my plan is as follows:

- Creative “maker” work before lunch. Aim to accomplish 6 Pomodoros before lunch, and be happy if I actually pull off 4 or more.
- Meetings after lunch. If it’s up to me to decide, the meeting will be at 2pm.
- Do speculative and personal phone calls and meetings at 5 or 6pm, when I am in full social/”manager” mode and the pressure is off.

I’m starting with this, and I’m accepting that I’m not going to be able to stick to it 100%. If I try to do that, I’ll fail and give up.

I’m aiming for 80%. If I can enforce the above structure with 80% efficacy, then I have to conclude I’ll have a much more efficient, manageable daily life.

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It's Only 10 Damn Minutes

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:34:00 -0400

In my bedroom this morning, I sat on my chair to put on my shoes as part of my regular morning procedure. While sitting there, I noticed my hand-drawn log of pushups I’ve done as part of the One Hundred Pushups program. I’m overdue for my next round of pushups.

But I’ve got so much work waiting for me at work, and I’ve already killed too much time reading policial blogs in bed on my iPhone. I don’t need to be at my desk at a particular time this morning, but feel the weight of the huge to-do list I wrote out yesterday weighing down on me.

But the pushups take ten minutes. What difference is that ten minutes going to make in my day’s productivity?

Break the cycle, I tell myself. Stop hiding behind your to-do list as your excuse for not doing everything. Getting in shape. Cleaning my room. Going to the dentist. I can avoid damn near anything if I’m “too busy.”

So I do the pushups. Ten minutes later, I’m feeling invigorated, and head off to work.

And I put another ten minutes into sharing the experience with you, because it’s worth the ten minutes to share it.

And now for that to-do list!

Posted via web from CoStructure | Comment »

"Urgency is most often an illusion."

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:59:44 -0400

“Urgency is most often an illusion.”

- , he told himself.

X10

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:51:03 -0400

Came out of the Canal Street station and saw the X10 roll past me down Broadway. It’s a Saturday and I’m rolling a huge bag for a weekend trip. As per usual I’m running later than I should be. The traffic is predictably bad, the next bus likely won’t be coming for another 30 minutes or more, and I’m in a sporting mood. So I chase the bus. About five blocks later, I’ve overtaken the bus, which is stopped at lights and navigating a merge due to construction. I make it to the Worth Street stop just as the bus is catching up to me. I made it! Or so I had thought— the bus rolled right past me, apparently ignoring the stops affected by the construction. I keep walking, defeated, watching the bus lumber down Broadaay just fast enough that I probably wouldn’t have been able to beat it to City Hall. So now I wait— sweaty.

"Welcome to New Work City, thanks for signing up! Ana will be in touch with you about the New Member..."

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:17:28 -0400

““Welcome to New Work City, thanks for signing up! Ana will be in touch with you about the New Member Lunch; we also have a happy hour next week, and sometime this week we’ll be doing Beatles Rock Band here in the space. I’ll keep you posted on that.” “Cool, sounds great!””

- Me, to our newest member, and feeling really good about it.

12/13/14 - The end of the numbers game

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:40:06 -0400

Today is September 9th, 2009. Or, 09/09/09. As people around the world celebrate this chronological happenstance at, when else, 9:09am, I can’t help but wonder when this is all going to settle down. Well, we’re in for a long haul as far as I can see. Next August 9th will be 08/09/10, followed by 10/10/10 in October. The following year we’ll have 09/10/11 and 11/11/11, then of course 10/11/12 and 12/12/12. We’re done then, right? No, because the year 2013 holds the earth shattering date of 11/12/13 on November 12th, only to be topped 397 days later on 12/13/14. On that date, we will truly have something to celebrate, as the coincidental dates finally draw to a close thanks to the fact that we have only 12 months in a year. At least until Groundhog Day of 2022 or so, where 2/2/22 awaits us! What are your plans for 2:22pm on 2/2/22?

Sensationalism: The rationality killer

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:39:00 -0400

The advent of blogging has put us all in the position of the newspaper editor, and as bloggers large and small have quickly learned, big splashy headlines sell papers and pageviews.

News: Microsoft releases an MP3 player. Does the headline read, “Microsoft releases an MP3 player,” or does it read “Microsoft Launches iPod Killer”?

When Microsoft built the Zune, did they really expect to “kill” the iPod? Did anyone?

What would it mean to “kill” the iPod? To force Apple to halt production of the iPod altogether? To compel Steve Jobs to issue a statement declaring that Apple had been so blindsided by the violent and abrupt success of the Zune that he decided the only prudent thing to do would be to purge all iPods from existence?

Is Twitter the Facebook killer? Is Facebook the Friendster killer? Friendster is not dead. It may be a zombie, but the reality is not nearly as cool as the headlines. Death sells.

The latest sensationalistic headlines declare that “RSS is dead.” Does anyone actually believe that RSS technology will no longer ever be used by anyone?

The reality, perhaps, is that RSS is declining in its overall usefulness, but will continue to be used by lots and lots of companies for many years to come for an array of purposes. Every single WordPress blog that gets launched comes with several RSS feeds baked in. RSS isn’t going anywhere, even if it becomes less cool to write articles about.

RSS is not dead, and neither is rational thinking— but both have seen better days.

Pair Structuring

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:27:45 -0400

Today, Whitney and I tried a “pair structuring” concept. At 9am, we got on the phone and discussed three things we wanted to get completed by the end of the day:

Tony

- Finish preparations for a contract meeting tomorrow
- Get fitted for a tux for friend’s wedding (will do this after hours, but will find location where I’ll get fitted during daytime)
- Schedule a dentist appointment

Whitney

- Clean out closet
- Complete a persona deliverable
- Revise a sitemap

At 6:00, we got back on the phone to discuss whether we got our stuff done. I didn’t get to scheduling my dentist appointment before the office closed, and I knew that I would be accountable not just to myself but to Whitney for it— so now I’m more likely to stick to it.

Now, if I don’t schedule my dentist appointment tomorrow morning, I have to buy Whitney lunch.

That appointment’s getting scheduled!

One of the most interesting findings of today’s excercise was just how much fun our morning and evening calls were. When we got on the phone, we didn’t just rattle off three tasks. We conversed a bit about our day and what’s going on. We gave each other some context and, in the process, compelled ourselves to think about our days in that context a little bit as well.

This is an interesting finding. I wonder whether just talking about what we’re going to do in a given day helps us structure it better.

It reminds me of a quote that I may or may not have made up: “Start every day as if it were on purpose.”

Do you start your day with a plan of attack, like it’s on purpose? Or do you let the day’s events dictate what you do? Who’s in control of your day?

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Announcing CoStructure

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:49:00 -0400

Reposted from the CoStructure blog.

Independents have it made, right? Being in charge of one’s own schedule is both a blessing and a curse— while one is no longer compelled to go to an office when the boss says so, one is also left with the responsibility to self-impose proper balance. Without an external force being applied to help structure one’s life, the balance is hard to achieve and harder to maintain.

CoStructure is an effort to achieve that balance by working towards it together. Learn more about the original idea on this wiki page: http://nwc.wikidot.com/costructure

Below are the first posts from our first set of participants: myself, Mark Burstiner, Greg Palmer, and Whitney Hess. Each has their own unique personal and professional background, but each shares a common need to improve the structure of their lives.

Check out our first posts, which we all wrote after our first meeting last week:
“Co-organizing CoStructure” by Mark Burstiner
“I Wish I Knew How to Quit You” by Whitney Hess
“Accountability Game” by Tony Bacigalupo
“Keeping CoStructure Challenging” by Greg Palmer

This is very much an experiment, one which doesn’t yet have all the ingredients and certainly isn’t fully baked. But as we explore how to help one another stay sane and get our stuff done, we thought we’d share and have you along for the ride so you can help us figure things out as we go.

How do you achieve better structure in your life?

Every town has a public library

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:05:11 -0400

Public libraries are everywhere, all over the world. Odds are, wherever you are, you’re within a short distance of one… perhaps even walking or biking distance.

When one thinks of a library, one might immediately think of stacks of books— still useful, but becoming increasingly marginalized in today’s digital world.

But libraries serve all sorts of functions. They organize free events. They let you host your events. They almost universally have free internet. They even have computers to connect to that internet, in case you don’t own one (and millions of Americans don’t).

Any town of a decent size in America has a public library, and they’re all paid for with tax dollars.

Why do we pay taxes to keep library doors open? Paying taxes to things like police and fire stations, transportation, infrastructure, security, all make obvious sense— but what critical function does a library serve that makes it such a staple of every city?

It’s historically played an important part in bridging literacy gaps, and has helped make information more accessible to the masses. While not formally part of a public school system which has its own buildings and libraries, the public library seems to exist as an optional, open public service for those who elect to learn more on their own. The non-compulsory part of public education.

The discussion on the future of the library is a fascinating one, for certain. What I am more curious about, personally, is the potential of new constructs which might follow in this path.

If it weren’t yet obvious, I’m thinking about where this intersects with coworking.

Right now, countless coworking spaces are popping up all over the world. They’re not publicly funded, but they do exist because of the largely altruistic ambitions of their founders— independent, passionate individuals who, for the most part, don’t expect or seek to take personal profit from their efforts.

One of the challenges for coworking space owners is finding a sustainable model for the future. Without the ability to generate enough revenue to pay people to run the space, spaces must continually depend on the good will of someone willing to donate their time to keep things running and breaking even.

This may be a sustainable model unto itself, if we presume that a good healthy coworking community should be predicated upon a minimum amount of passion and good will.

But for many it’s a struggle. Coworking spaces need to generate enough revenue to, at the very least, pay the bills, and that means a significant amount of work has to be put into marketing, accounting, management, maintenance, and more. A coworking space that had enough money to pay for those services, I believe, would be truly sustainable.

Getting a coworking space to the point where it generates enough revenue to pay the salaries of the people who run it, however, is a high bar to set— perhaps requiring a size or price point high enough that it compromises the needs of the community.

Where, then, might coworking spaces find a sustainable model to follow?

What if we started thinking about the public service coworking spaces provide to their area? The economic development they facilitate, the flexible, affordable workspace they provide, the community events they host (often for free), the sanity they provide for lonely people working form home— these are a true public good, and increasingly important in our current world.

What would a coworking space look like if it were publicly funded? What if it were thought of as serving a similarly critical public service as a public library?

Could they be free? Could they help underserved and unserved communities? Could they be established in suburbs to encourage people to telecommute and save on carbon, gas, traffic, and aggravation?

These and so many more questions are still outstanding. I’m looking forward to figuring out how to answer some of these questions.

Libraries are changing, the workplace is changing, and education is changing. How and when and how much for the better they change is up to us to figure out.

Non-Hurricane Party at House 2.0 Tonight!

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:52:00 -0400

house2:

As summer begins to wind down, the members of House 2.0 are reconvening after their holiday travels, including a wedding, trips to Sri Lanka and Slovakia, and a cross-country karaoke road trip.

Now that we’re back, we’re ready to get partying!

Join us tonight for tasty drinks, dancing, and good times. Bring drinks or money and share around!

10pm at 56 W 39th St, Floor 4.

See you then!

Pent up

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:23:00 -0400

I’m seeing it show up more and more. In the voices of people who are bright, young, talented, and motivated.

People want to make the world a better place. They want to feel like the work they are doing contributes to a higher purpose— something more emotionally and morally satisfying than simply having produced something that makes money.

The problem is that most people don’t know how to act on that inclination and still pay their bills. Truth be told, there’s no shortage of unpaid ways to help people. Given the philanthropic nature of organizations dedicated to making the world better, they are inevitably focused on purpose over money.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get paid to change the world.

Some of the largest, most successful nonprofits pay tons of employees full salaries, and the people at the top aren’t hurting either. But do you think of nonprofits as places where you could make a living? I don’t.

That’s in part because corporations do their part to make it clear that they’re the ones with the money. They’re the ones with recruitment programs hooked into the universities from which impressionable young adults spill into the real world.

But they don’t have all the money, and they don’t ultimately have control over the direction of their businesses.

In Saving the World at Work, Tim Sanders posits that the millennial generation is increasingly demanding jobs that involve creating a positive impact on the world, even if it means working for less money. My generation, for all its faults, seems to be highly motivated to make the world a better place— and might even be willing to give up some extra money to do it.

But the infrastructure isn’t in place to show these people where to go and how to make a difference. Countless friends work in gigs that pay the bills but don’t satisfy their need for something more.

This is a problem.

So how do we go about solving it?

Do you want to do more than what you’re doing now?

Social Movements

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:23:39 -0400

“Social movements are not eternal. They have a life cycle: they are created, they grow, they achieve successes or failures and eventually, they dissolve and cease to exist.

Finally, the birth of a social movement needs what sociologist Neil Smelser calls an initiating event: a particular, individual event that will begin a chain reaction of events in the given society leading to the creation of a social movement. For example, American Civil Rights movement grew on the reaction to black woman, Rosa Parks, riding in the whites-only section of the bus (although it is important to note that Rosa Parks was not acting alone or spontaneously — typically activist leaders lay the groundwork behind the scenes of interventions designed to spark a movement).

… a social movement is often created after a large number of people realize that there are others sharing the same value and desire for a particular social change. “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_movement

Flashing signals

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:31:00 -0400

11:20: Full stop seconds after leaving 34th St Herald Square on a Brooklyn bound B.

Engineer to center: “The signals ahead of me turned to green back to red, back to green.”

“All the signals now are clear.”

“Number 5092 proceeding with caution.”

We start rolling again, slowly.

11:22: See flashlight ahead. We pull up to a lone MTA guy on the service platform along the track. Engineer stops to talk to him. Can’t hear their conversation but engineer mentions he reported the incident.

Engineer radios: “I passed some signal maintainers by the automatic signal… All clear.”

We are still proceeding with caution. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of a horriffic beast.

11:25 Back to full speed.

WTF! If this is happening to you, ask OpenDNS to change it now:...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:44:00 -0400

WTF!

If this is happening to you, ask OpenDNS to change it now: http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=4146