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When I wrote earlier this year about not using free products, one of my major points of friction was Dropbox. I don’t use more than the free 2GB tier so space wasn’t an issue, and to make the jump to the “pro” level was steep, $100 for 100GB. Not to mention that I don’t need to sync that much stuff.

That layered with a new personal interest in privacy and personal data security (thank you NSA), I have been more determined than ever to quit my Dropbox usage. I own my data, and if I own how they sync, then I don’t have to worry as much about someone letting a three-letter-agency get at my data. Yes, it means that I have the burden of protecting my data and backing it up, but that is a trade off I am willing to make.

I have settled on using BitTorrent Sync to ferry my information across my computers and to and from my phone. It is not perfect yet, but it is perfectly usable.

I have given up on Dropbox sync’d apps for one of two reasons:

1. I don’t use them nearly as much as I would have thought
2. The data is too valuable.

An example of item 1 is Text Expander for iOS. In my mind, I would use it all the time. Every app would use my Text Expander snippets and I would be a productive machine. In reality I hardly use it, I don’t have too many apps on my phone that use it, and more often than not, auto-correct kills the snippet abbreviation. Writing apps are another example. I think that I would write on my phone, but I’m no Patrick Rhone.

The perfect example of item 2 is my 1Password database. I know it is wrapped in copious layers of protection, but if Dropbox leaves the barn door open again or more comes of this I don’t think using Dropbox for my most valuable data is worth the risk. I am now syncing my 1Password database over USB every couple of days. It isn’t like the passwords that I am using are changing that regularly.

The nice thing about using BitTorrent Sync is that I can create my own version of the FileTransporter for significantly cheaper. I can build them cheap enough that I can send one to my parent’s house, and my mother in law’s house to provide myself an off site synced backup.

During yesterday’s post, I had to confirm whether the Warwick Cheese Shoppe and a similarly named restaurant in Williamsburg were in fact a local chain or two similarly named businesses in the same region, with an eerily similar menus.

In searching the Facebook pages of both of these restaurants ranked high in the search results. The thing that was interesting is how much more frequently updated the Facebook pages are as compared to their web sites. Sure there is an ease of use, but the implications left me wondering.

Yesterday, Marco wrote about Medium with respect to writers, but the point is still relevant:

You can use someone else’s software, but still have your own ’platform”, if you’re hosting it from a domain name you control and are able to easily take your content and traffic with you to another tool or host at any time. You don’t need to go full-Stallman and build your own blogging engine from scratch on a Linux box in your closet — a Tumblr or Squarespace blog is perfectly fine if you use your own domain name and can export your data easily.

I find it shocking to watch TV and see major corporations use “facebook.com/”. Why do companies give away their identity to other companies like Facebook? They can’t control how they are found, they can’t control who they appear next to. This makes no sense.

Today, I was going out to lunch with a friend and we decided that we wanted to get a sandwich from a locally owned deli, extemely close to my office. The Warwick Cheese Shoppe has been around for 30 years, and going inside you can tell that they have been working at their craft everyday since opening.

Everyday, except Mondays.

When I lived in Germany, stores were closed on Sunday. Restaurants were open but to make up for being open on Sunday, they were closed on Monday. It was the way of the world and it had been that way for generations.

While I lived there, a cultural shift started. The local governments started to allow businesses to be open on Sunday, to keep up with public demand, to keep pace with the “modern” world. But it was weird, they were giving up a culturally defined understanding of the importance of not giving in to convenience, a long held belief that it was okay to take a day and not be a consumer.

So, today at lunchtime when we walk up to the door of The Warwick Cheese Shoppe and both realized, my friend said “I don’t know why I didn’t remember that, it has been that way for ten years.” That, right there, is why I will continue to gladly buy a sandwich from there. I’ll probably make them my deli, and wine and beer merchant of choice. Firstly for their love of the their trade, but also for their adherence to tradition, for not giving into convenience.

I’ll gladly buy a sandwich from there, except Mondays.

The kids have been watching the Star Wars Clone Wars series and at the beginning of each episode there is a very “Jedi” phrase. Not exactly and inspirational quote, but something along those lines. Today’s episode had the moral:

Attachment is not compassion.

Normally I have to read these out loud for the kids, and today when I did, Esther retorted:

Worrying is not love.

I married a really smart lady. This is one phrase to remember.

I subscribe to Tonx Coffee. Every two weeks they send me some delicious, fresh roasted coffee. Each shipment they send a little card describing the coffee and a letter from the team.

This shipment’s letter was to good not to share:

One of the big myths we try and bust again and again is the absurd notion that you need a professional barista with expensive gear to make a decent cup of coffee. No disrespect to our colleagues who make their living perfecting the brewing craft, but we strongly believe that a good cup in your kitchen is simply about starting with great beans and the just a bit of care.

But we can understand that even as the coffee you’re making at home starts beating the pants off the coffee from those baristas, you might still be missing some of the familiar atmosphere of a hip cafe. So here are a few suggestions for adding some authentic coffeebar ambiance back into your kitchen.

• Instead of making your coffee right away, why not wait an extra 5–15 uncaffeinated minutes, shuffle around awkwardly, and maybe fiddle with your smartphone a bit.
• Put on some music — the more obscure the better! Bonus points if it is music you dislike.
• Let your bathroom get really messy! Put a big lock on it and keep the key sitting on your kitchen counter attached to a spatula or golf trophy.
• Leave dirty dishes and sections of the newspaper in random places.
• In lieu of flyers for events and shows, just tape some your junk mail up on the wall.
• Randomly turn off your wifi
• Buy some unhealthy pasteries from a fancy bakery, but let them get nice and stale before you eat them.
• And don’t forget to give yourself a dollar tip!

Of course great coffees like this current release feel like they transport us to another world, bringing their own beautiful ambience and inspiration to our mornings. No trick or redecorating required. As always, we love hearing from you with any comments, brewing questions, or tall takes you want to share.

Enjoy

THE TONX TEAM

One of the things you’re supposed to work out some time in your adolescence is that though you’re the star of your own life, you’re not the star of anyone else’s. Some companies never work this out.
 
 A few years ago I worked on a project to make a video-on-demand service for a big UK supermarket chain. All of the supermarket execs kept saying things like ‘our customer’ or ‘the Sainsco customer’. After a while, I worked out what bothered me about this. I do indeed go to one of their shops — or at least I think I do. I’m actually not 100% sure if it’s a Tesco or a Sainsbury. I buy food there every week, but I don’t consider myself their customer — at least not in the sense they meant it. Rather, it’s one of 10 shops I go to in a week, and one of 20 errands I might run.
 
 In other words, your customers’ relationships with you are the only relationships you have as a business and you think a lot about them. But you’re one of a thousand things your customer thinks about in a week, and one of dozens of businesses. And they probably have their own ideas about how they want to engage with you (though they wouldn’t put it in those words) — assuming they think about you at all.

Benedict Evans on Google and Facebook

I think this can be expanded to almost every business and institution. I can speak this from my experience at a University.

A university is important to people for about a year before they attend. It is almost all consuming of their life while they are studying. But then when they leave, they leave. Sure they might think about a fun time they had, remember a quip from a professor in their new post college life, but for the most part a college education is a means to an end.

One of our core principles, although emphasized less and less, is “Students first”. It explains almost everything on campus, from our parking to our move in, to our residence halls. And I think that it is a good guide. It also makes us complicit in the complete failure of preparing our students for life after college.

There are very few established organizations where the all of ideas of a 22 year old are considered let alone accepted. This is not to say the graduate has bad ideas or that the organization is rigid, but that an established organization has churned through people and their ideas regularly. People come to an organization, they gain experience, they provide a few good ideas, they eventually move on. Circle of Life.

But if students are treated with kid gloves, always told their input is highly valued, and given what is usually earned with experience, why would they want to leave?

I am confident in saying that my university is the largest single employer of our graduates, which I find horrifying. Not because the graduates we produce are incapable of work, but because we are reinforcing a mindset. Students should leave university and go on to bigger and hopefully better things (that they earn). But if we continue to expose them to the culture they were familiar with as students, they never think outside of the experiences they have had.

I have been in higher education for almost a decade now and I find people who I consider to be overly connected with an institution they attended to be peculiar. Not those who continue to follow their alma mater’s athletic teams, but those who clearly are attempting to hold on to their nostalgic past, these are the people who Benedict is referring to. They spend all their time thinking about the university, so why doesn’t everyone else? Solipsism, indeed.

Seth Godin writes:

More people are doing marketing badly… than any other profession I can imagine. What an opportunity…

If we were building bridges this badly, the safety of our nation would be in doubt. The local sub shop makes a fine sub, but has a dumb name, a typo in their sign, no attention paid to customer service and on and on. Same for the big hospital down the street and the politician you wish would get a clue.

In my new job, my boss and I have had lengthy discussions about how every interaction that someone has with our University, that it is an experience to market the University, good or bad. Social media has been a blessing and a curse for the marketing department. It helps us reach our potential students, current students and alumni, but every department on campus thinks that they need to have a Facebook page and Twitter account (and LinkedIn organization, and Pintrest page, and … ). My issue with all of this “social”izing is, why? What value does the Library provide by having a Facebook page? What does the School of Business marketing department need to pin on Pintrest? When does a tweet from our Parking Services provide value?

Seth again:

Learn to see, to discern the difference between good and bad, between useful and merely comfortable.

And after you learn, speak up. Noticing doesn’t work if you don’t care and if you don’t take action.

That pretty much sums up my job.

Sometimes, I wish I was back in high school. Not because I want to do things over, but because of my lack of options. I grew up a military brat and lived near the base. My choices for almost everything was limited. Limited by the exchange rate, by what was carried in the base exchange, by what was being done on base during the weekends, or by my lack of understanding the native language.

This weekend I remember the lack of choice in going to the movies. We didn’t get a go to the mega-plex, pick one of 17 movies currently playing, select from a dizzying array of snacks, including nachos and at least 20 different beverage varieties.

In high school, there was one movie per week. If it was popular, it would be shown for two weeks. There were two times it was shown, early and late. They were always the same time, every night. The options for snacks was limited to two sizes of popcorn, three sizes of drink, available in 6 varieties. For a sweet treat you could select from, if memory serves, 10 options for candy and nachos were an unthinkable luxury.

This is the paradox of choice, by having more options, I am less happy. Being forced to watch a movie that I didn’t chose and then select from a fairly limited menu was liberating. I didn’t have to worry about if my selection was “wrong” or if I was “missing out” on some unrealized option left unselected.

This past weekend I stumbled on an App.net converastion about podcasts, what people listen to, how many subscriptions they have, etc.

(adn: 6551982)

I have gone back and forth, listening to more podcasts that I can handle and then parring way back. Having to comb through multiple hour-plus long podcasts doesn’t leave me much time to find great content. As an example, I love the 5by5 network, but the volume of their output is greater than the amount I can have input.

In the discussion, the service HuffDuffer was mentioned for saving “one off” episodes. I enjoy HuffDuffer, but ended up rolling my own. Mostly though, I was left wondering how do people find good “one off” podcasts? How do they know if they are listening to the best episode?

This left me thinking and formulating, and after a few hours I decided and setup This Episode. It is a blog. It is a podcast. It is a curated list of the best individual episodes of any podcast.

The slugline “Time is short, listen to the best episodes.” is the guiding focus of the site. In my many hours of listening, I would hear about once a week Dan Benjamin asking people who were listening at double speed to just stop listening. I used to be bothered by him saying this, but now it makes sense. Why rush through such delicious audio? Because your playlist is overrun with long episodes and you are worried that you might miss the best one?

The real slugline is a little longer and not quite as catchy: “Time is short, listen to the best episodes[ such great content doesn’t deserve to be listened to at 2x speed. Seriously].”

The idea behind This Episode is that listeners can have their standard fare of listening, but if they was excellent content without all of the listening and searching they can subscribe to one place and get a variety of fantastically produced shows. It is not a “best of” of a particular podcast, but the “best of” of all podcasting.

It is going to be a lot of listening to a lot of podcasts, but I am willing to listen to any suggestions. Send them to me at http://this-episode.net/suggest.

Today, a coworker asked how I managed to have a Red Teams patch. I could have sworn that he had asked about how I had a someting patch, but not a Red Teams patch, who else knows about my friend’s site.

Turns out he was asking about my very unique Red Teams patch. My coworker is a reader if the site. So I explained that I designed the logo and my payment was a patch.

Crazy small world.