Hi there! It’s been a minute. If you’re new to Just Curious, welcome aboard. If you were here in the Mailchimp days, it’s great to see you again and I hope you like the new coat of paint. I wrote a little ditty about the new direction here, but I won’t bore you with that.
Instead, let’s get right into The Weekly Roundup: a handful of nuggets that sparked my curiosity this week.
1. Quibi Qualms
The mobile-first entertainment platform, Quibi, launched recently in what was arguably one of the most hotly anticipated launches in recent memory. This, in large part, due to the fact that they’d raised a cool $1.8 billion...with a B... before they even launched. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually like it so far—but it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to convince the masses that it’s worth sticking around.
Here’s a quick thread of my initial thoughts on the service, some of the genuinely original UI features, and a couple shows you should check out first.
2. New Tab, New Me
Owen Williams (OW on Twitter) recently launched a super clean and simple Chrome extension that turns your new Chrome tabs into a quick preview of your upcoming calendar events. I change my new tab interface frequently, but this one might stick around for a while. What’s yours set to? Momentum is an oldie, but a goodie, too.
3. Coffee, But Make It Cute
If you're a fan of black liquid gold, then I have a treat for you. Jot is a brand new direct-to-consumer product that’s completely changed how I coffee. It won’t replace your romanticized 20-minute Chemex routine, but it makes that quick afternoon cup of coffee something much more. In short, you receive a small glass bottle filled with 14-cups-worth of hyper-concentrated coffee. You take just one tablespoon of the liquid (get it?) to your drink of choice and voilá! I take mine with frothed oat milk or cocoa.
4. Hey!
Email has long been the darling of many tech suitors. Few products garner such massive daily active usage, yet much of that usage is endured vs. enjoyed. Today, the three most popular email clients are iPhone Mail (37% market share), Gmail (28%), and Outlook (9%)—data via Litmus Labs. In the past few years, a number of entrepreneurs have ogled at the prospects of capturing and monetizing even a tiny sliver of that pie. The current frontrunner in that race is Twitter-fan-favorite Superhuman. The email graveyard isn’t pretty with Mailbox, and more recently, Consider failing to clear the early hurdles.
Jason Fried, of Basecamp, seems eager to enter the race. His unlaunched service is called Hey, and as part of their pre-launch manifesto, he and his team put together a list of 25 issues they have with today’s email that are pretty spot on. If I get into the beta, I'll report back my thoughts. Finally, what’s over/under $1M for that domain name? For now, try this extension that simplifies your Gmail.
5. What’s In Your Fridge?
I love seeing other people's fridges. The weirdest part? I'm not alone. There are entire books written about it. Recently, a friend of mine let me peek inside his and I caught a glimpse of Fly by Jing—a new suite of sauces & dips made in Sichuan and branded in some groovy packaging. It even caught Sam Sifton's eye who recently wrote an entire recipe around it here. Stay tuned for my first firey foray.
6. Design in the Dark
Ever heard of dark design patterns? Chances are you’ve seen them at work, and even more likely that you’ve fallen victim to their subconscious tricks. The most apparent examples are things like ‘2 Seats Left!’ or ‘1 Minute Remaining’ on checkout pages. Hotel booking sites are notorious for these. They’re sly design elements that are built to sway us psychologically—often further down the purchase funnel. I wanted to share this lovely video from Paul Boag. He’s a UX expert who does a fantastic job of explaining, critiquing, and ultimately offering up alternatives for dark design patterns. It’s a great watch.
7. You Can’t Stop Culture
Museums’ resilience is being tested in unimaginable ways due to the coronavirus. With their physical doors bolted shut, museums around the world are finding creative ways to re-open their doors digitally. This week, I came across an incredible guide from the Museum Computer Network (MCN) aggregating digital efforts of museums worldwide. A few of my favorites are the virtual tour of this sculpture museum, this stroll amongst the Cherry blossoms, and this archaeological repository of NYC.
8. Krisp: An ‘Early Adopter’ Preview
As part of this newsletter relaunch, I’ll be introducing an additional mini-series called “Early Adopter” (final name TBD—naming’s never been my strong suit). The purpose of the series is to, every so often, share a new app or product that I’m currently trialing. As something to whet your appetite, check out Krisp. This app uses artificial intelligence to remove background noise from your phone or video calls. Now, there are a few of these out there, all with varying levels of efficacy, but this one is the real deal. Pre-pandemic, I walked by an entire drum band in Union Square while talking to my parents on the phone (with Krisp activated) and they couldn’t hear a sound except for my voice. Oh, and it works with Zoom, too.
9. Making Sense of the Meta
Before I let you go, I wanted to hint at a larger thread I’ve been curious about for some time—the concept of studying meta elements of humanity that were previously overlooked or fell outsides the bounds of traditional disciplines. Two great examples are complexity and progress. Studying these in their own right has been the focus of some of the brightest minds around. For now, I’ll leave you a primer for each.
For complexity: read Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop on the Sante Fe Institute.
For progress: watch this interview between Mark Zuckerberg, Patrick Collison, and Tyler Cowen. Patrick (founder of Stripe) has been leading the charge and has more resources here.
More to come on these soon…
If you’ve read this far, wow—thank you! I hope you’ll stick around and if you liked what you read, a forward to a friend or a nice tweet would be amazing. Finally, if you have any feedback on format or content, I’m all ears. You can either respond to this email or leave a comment on the Substack post.
And last, but not least, big shoutout to Nathan for inspiring me to get on Substack after I read & subscribed to his newsletter, Divinations. Go check it out.
See you next week.
-Jack