Like many of you I’m working with computers most of my adult life (and even before that). My first monitor was a monochrome black and white 12” CRT CGA. The computer was a Hyundai with an Intel 8088 CPU and a whopping 20MB hard drive. I believe I was the first kid at school to have a hard drive.

Ever since that first computer till today, my #1 complaint was always this: The monitor and it’s resolution are too small. Eventually I went on to get a new computer with a new monitor many times until today. I have used monitors of all sizes up to this day. 12”, 14”, 17”, 19”, 21”, 24”, 27”, 32”. Having used virtually all sizes from tiny 12” to whooping 32” I believe I am qualified to offer my advice.

Current setup

Today I’m using a 32” Samsung 4K monitor and I’m here to tell you that for the first time in my life, my monitor is way too big. The resolution I’m using is a “feels like”  3008×1692. This means that MacOS takes the 4K-3840×2160 resolution and renders it as 3008×1692.

Why is that? Simply because even on 32 inches the 4K resolution is way too big for computer use. If you use 4K as is, everything looks tiny. Therefore I’m using the 3008×1692 which is the equivalent of a 6K retina display like the Apple Pro Display XDR. Of course the retina display has a PPI (Pixels Per Inch) number of 218 while my 4K monitor has “only” 138 PPI.

Is it the same? No way. The retina display is super crisp and you can’t see pixels no matter how hard you try. Does it matter though? I don’t think so. In a normal working distance of 40 to 50cm from the monitor I can’t see pixels either. And the difference in cost is huge! The Apple Pro Display XDR costs $6000 while my humble 4K Samsung costs a mere $400.

How big you can go?

Ok. So the resolution is fine. But what about the size of the monitor? Here my friend lies the problem and the reason I’m writting this post. You see, when you are reading code on the bottom left side of the screen, you can’t see the top right side of it. The reason is that it’s physically too far.

You would have to move your head to the top right corner of the monitor to read what is there. And the problem is that you can’t change the resolution because that defeats the whole purpose of a big monitor. 

The other problem is that if you work with a computer like most of us do, you are expected to sit at least 8 to 12 hours a day in front of a computer. So here comes the other big problem. Eye strain. All the time you work at your computer you have a 32 inch surface emitting brightness at you. How much can you take in a day?

What about multiple monitors?

Multiple monitors you say? Been there, done that. In that case the above mentioned problems multiply. There is a lot of head moving and much more brightness in a dual monitor setup. Below you can see my previous setup with the 32 inch Samsung 4K, a Dell 30 inch 2560×1600 and my 13 inch Macbook air on the side.

People like Wired’s Simon Hill are huge fans of a dual monitor setup. However, read a bit into the linked article and you’ll find the following lines: “But sacrifices must be made. I am slowly training myself to swivel my chair rather than twist my body”.

The point being here is that if your main monitor is big enough you don’t need a second/third monitor.

The “sound” problem

Another problem with way too big monitors or dual monitor setups is sound. If you like to listen to music while you work, like I do, you need a decent pair of speakers. This means speakers with at least 5 inch woofer. This brings the speaker size to about 20cm wide. You simply can’t have speakers of this size with a dual monitor setup.

For all the reasons mentioned above I’m not considering some “exotic” configurations such as 40 inch: 5120×2160. 

What is the best size for productivity?

After all that back and forth between monitor sizes I have concluded that the best monitor setup for productivity is a single 4K 27 inch monitor. It’s big enough so that you can work comfortably and at the same time it’s not causing the problems we mentioned above.

I have two great recommendations depending on your budget. The first one is Dell S2722QC which is a very affordable 4K IPS monitor. Much better than the Samsung I’m having. It retails for $400 or less depending on the retailer.

The other recommendation is Apple’s Studio Display. It’s a 5K true retina display with 218 PPI. And if you’ve seen one in person you know you can’t beat that image quality. However it starts at $1600 and I understand that it’s not for everyone. 

Personally my next purchase is the Dell mentioned above which retails for €280 in Greece.

Keep a small monitor available

However if you want to have maximum productivity, I recommend also keeping around a laptop with it’s small screen. The reason being that many times you can get tired of the larger monitor. Other times you need to focus more. The small laptop monitor helps with that.

The ideal laptop for a variety of reasons would be the Macbook Air. It comes in 13 and 15 inch configurations, it’s relatively affordable, and has passive cooling making it completely silent. I kept around my 13 inch for remote work and to keep my ability to focus and rest.

I recall 37signals’ DHH and Jason Fried praising the focus they get out of the (now defunct) 11 inch Macbook Air. It’s very interesting that Jason Fried had to say this about the tiny laptop:

“I originally purchased an external monitor because I thought I’d need the extra space, but I’ve found I like the smaller screen of the 11”. I don’t use the external screen at all. The smaller screen keeps me focused and it’s the right size to run full-screen apps.“

Concluding

Some people swear on dual monitor setups. Indeed there are some workflows that require multiple monitors. This includes video editing, image editing etc etc. However if you know that you require multiple monitors then this post is not for you. 

This post describes the ideal monitor setup for productivity of people doing relatively simple work. Like software development, email, some office suite etc etc. For them/us the best setup is a single 27 inch monitor. So don’t rush to buy a 32 inch although you can afford it. You might find yourself with more real estate than what you need.

The post What is the ideal monitor setup for productivity? appeared first on Bibakis.com.

For those of you that don’t know, there is a range of tools aimed at testing responsive websites. They are called “Responsive testing tools”. By far the best looking is MobileTest.me. It’s a tool I created more than 10 years ago, long before responsive testing was possible in a browser.

The idea behind this tool is very simple. You select a device. Type a website URL. And voila! You can see how your website looks on this specific device.

While the majority of its users are developers who want to test the websites they are making, there are more uses for MobileTest.me. For example, since it’s a web app, you can send the link to the test to a colleague or client. Therefore it’s a great way to demonstrate your work to customers.

The need for change

Unfortunately as it was created many many years ago (back in good old 2011) the codebase became quite dated. The major problem however was the app’s inability to support secure connections (https). Therefore it lost lots of SEO juice despite the fact that it’s got lots of inbound links.

Also people who visited the site were greeted with a very hostile message that this website might steal your passwords etc. Of course the reason for not supporting https was purely technical. You had to be able to test localhost links. That is, links to websites that you create on your local computer.

The development process

In order to get away from the antiquated PHP framework I was using before, I had to resort to the reason the project was created in the first place. It was created as a way to showcase what can be done with pure frontend coding (aka HTML, CSS, JavaScript) without any backend server scripting or databases.

And indeed the end result has no database connectivity or backend business logic. It’s a pure JavaScript SPA (Single Page Application). The entire codebase is about 600 lines of code split across HTML, CSS and JS. The reborn version of MobileTest.me was created over the course of a week as a side project, mostly at night.

There are three “pages” in the app. The phone selector, the website selector and the test page. The JavaScript purl library is used to parse the active URL and determine which step should be shown. A small JS function runs the test itself and presents the result in the browser.

Future plans

Another problem I had while trying to monetize the app was the endless horde of bots. The database got huge shortly as thousands of bots auto clicked every part of the app. I plan on implementing the best bot protection on earth. A credit card form! 

I plan on keeping the cost the same. $9.99/month. However it would be great to also add a yearly plan for $99/year. Does it sound expensive for a small niche tool? I believe so. But I believe that if you get the value off a tool, the cost of two cups of coffee is self-explanatory.

The next step is to add many new devices which were in use in the pro plan. And then some more. Although it’s a responsive testing tool and what really matters is dimensions over looks, it would still be great if people are able to present their websites in the latest and greatest.

Final words

Working on an old, semi-abandoned project again feels like meeting a very old friend for a cup of coffee. You got so much catching up to do!

Now that you know all about it, why not give it a try and see what it’s all about?

The post MobileTest.me is reborn appeared first on Bibakis.com.

In this post I will share with you 10 amazing ideas you can start building right now.

Website/landing page, builder for a niche

There are millions of small businesses in need of a website or a landing page. Think of a small hotel for example. Most likely they take their reservations from some big player like booking.com but still, they need a small website to show their contact info to existing customers and provide credibility to their business.

Very simple, right? However the key point here is that they have absolutely no idea how to do it. There sure are many ways to build a simple website (and this is the customer’s problem here). You can use wordpress or wix or anything similar really. But which one is the right choice here ?

That’s the problem you will be solving with a website builder for small hotels! If your product is made for small hotels then it’s certain it will be the right fit for our imaginary customer. The same is true for all niches you can think of. Your product can target small hotels, hair salons, dry cleaners, you name it.

Your target market is small making this easy to promote. You only need to build a few features since you will be serving a small niche. This means it will be a simple product at start which is easy to make and you can get to market quite fast.

Web hosting for a small framework

You’ve probably heard of Ruby on Rails and Laravel, right? They are two of the most popular backend frameworks in the programming world. But what about Sinatra, CakePHP or Flask? They are smaller, less known frameworks. Despite their lesser popularity they are in use by thousands of developers around the world.

There are great options out there to deploy and host apps made in one of the popular frameworks like heroku is for Ruby on Rails apps. However if you are using one of the less known frameworks, the options are often very limited.

Sure you can deploy Sinatra in a generic Ruby server, but wouldn’t it be great if there was a specialized Sinatra hosting company that supports  just your favorite tech stack? Having them take care of all the right settings and default configurations would be a huge time saver. Plus all the performance tuning on the server would be much more effective versus a generic Ruby hosting platform.

As a developer you probably already have experience tuning your server environment for your framework. This means you can buy a server on Amazon or Digital ocean and set up a way to practically resell that hardware in small chunks. As you will be selling specialization and customization you can charge more than the average hosting provider. And that’s what makes this a great idea.

SaaS website as a service

As a developer it’s quite likely that you spend a lot of time using websites of SaaS products. Have you noticed how they all look alike? It’s only natural since they have in common that they sell software on a monthly basis.

They all have pricing pages, case studies, a ‘features’ page and so on. With the notable exception of Gumroad, you can use a SaaS website for a couple of minutes and immediately tell it is indeed a SaaS website.

Where there is repetition there is opportunity for automation. And automation can be a product you can create and provide to the market. Why spend money and time on creating a SaaS website, if there is a product on the market which does just that.

Besides, with the rise of no-code tools many people with no technical background are creating SaaS products, mobile apps and web software. All these people need a website that presents the product and allows people to rent it or buy it.

Most chose no-code tools because of their lack of coding skills. It’s this characteristic that will lead them to effectively rent a website for their product.

Stock image marketplace using AI generated images

Most business websites rely heavily on stock photography. All those generic “smiling women using a laptop” pictures you see on websites are bought from stock photo marketplaces. There are some core problems in this type of service.

It’s very hard to find the exact photo you need. It appears search “intelligence” is not yet on par with the way we humans think and communicate. The search engine of the average stock marketplace cannot help much when you need something very specific.

Stock photos are all over the web which means that your website looks very similar to lots of other websites. What’s even worse is that there seems to be a race over who will get the best pictures first.

What if I told you that AI is now advanced enough to generate realistic images. Imagine a service that will generate a stock photo based on your exact and specific requirements. And on top of that, each photo will be unique and totally different from all other AI generated images.

This is exactly what the Stable diffusion project offers. It’s up to you to make a service that will make use of it, to generate and sell stock images. 

Support chatbots

Chatbots are not a new thing at all. There have been many efforts in the past to create an AI powered bot that will help customers of your business. Unfortunately results have been average at best and this trend never caught on.

The reason was that the tech behind it was not ready for prime time. However this changed very recently. With the introduction of chatGPT, AI is now ready for you to create software that can have conversations with humans without much difference from traditional human operators.

The description in the chatGPT homepage will give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

The best part is that the market is huge and unexploited. Every e-commerce website is your potential customer.

Build a programming course

As a developer you probably have specialized yourself in a few programming languages so far. However there are lots of amateur developers out there, not at your level yet. Lots of people are just starting programming and are thirsty for learning material.

You could create courses for other software developers which you can sell or rent for a fee. There is competition on the market but the barrier to entry is very low. You can easily be inspired by your favorite programming books to create similar training material with a personal tone.

You are probably already part of some developer communities where you can promote your work. If you have a personal brand on top of that, things get even better. A large twitter following can help you easily spread the word that there is now an easy and cool course about X language or framework.

Tools/helpers for video games

I don’t know if you have been a professional gamer at some point of your life, but unless you’re living under a rock you should know that esports are huge nowadays. Millions of people play video games or watch gaming “matches” on twitch.

And the thirst for gaming goes beyond the tools provided within each video game. Professional (or just above average) players have a need for stats, comparison tools, leaderboards and so on. You rarely find those in the familiar, basic UI of a video game.

For example let’s say you play Diablo or World of Warcraft. How do you know which item sets are the best? There are websites which can give you information about in game items and make you a better player.

The best part is that most games will give you an API with which you can build your tool of choice. The complexity of creating a stat tool for example is quite low. You mostly only need to fetch data and parse them to create nice looking tables.

If you are already part of a gaming community, you probably know by now the needs and wishes of other players. If not, you can start playing some video games and discover business opportunities on the way.

The Stair Step Method

Idea inspired by Rob Walling. (The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping)

All those side project ideas we’ve seen so far are quite large undertakings. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The easiest approach to side projects is to start small.

For people in their 20s it’s easier to quit their job and pursue their dream. But for the rest of us it’s not a wise choice. People with a day job have limited time and cannot easily build a large product.

That’s why sometimes it’s best to do something small. For example a design system for figma if you’re a designer (like Molly Hellmuth). Or a WordPress plugin if you are a software developer. And if you are wearing many hats, a micro-SaaS product.

This will give you a small cashflow. Depending on your initial success you may be able to quit that day job. And this is your ticket to be able to devote all your time and attention to the real goal. 

Then you can either choose to expand your mini product into something bigger or you can start a real project from scratch. 

Mobile game with in-app purchases

This is the largest project on this list and for a good reason. In order to create a game, you will need to do coding yourself and partner up with a great illustrator. Which means it’s the only project that requires at least two people.

By why a game, and what about in-app purchases? Why is this important? 

The reason is that the market for this type of games is huge. According to Business Of Apps:

• In-app purchases account for 48.2% of mobile app earnings.
• Users are spending $380 billion worldwide on in-app purchases.

It’s easy to dismiss the potential of this type of product as something you can’t see yourself doing. I’ll have to agree with you on that. I can’t see myself spending money on fake game currency either but… 

As the numbers point out, there are many people out there with less financial concerns and plenty of time to burn. People buy entertainment with their money and that’s what is important to you as a founder.

This is a great project for younger people who are more comfortable quitting their day job and devoting their entire workload on this.

Create some content

For the end I’ve left perhaps the best side project idea of all. It’s the simplest one and most tried. Also it’s the approach we are following here at Deskhot. And that is, create content before you get to the point of creating a product.

And by content I mean one or more of the following: Blogging, video blogging, podcasting, starting an email newsletter, writing ebooks etc. 

Producing quality content is very hard. It took me 3 sessions of 8 hours each, to write this single post. You have to do lots of research, editing, polishing and of course producing the content itself.

But it’s way better to spend time on creating content rather than working on a product. You know what they say about digital products? Build it and they’ll come. Well they are so damn wrong on this one.

There is nothing more damaging to your psychology and ego than spending 6 months creating a product only to have nobody use it. It’s far better to spend your time creating a following with a blog and growing your mailing list.

Final words

We’ve discussed many great side project ideas in this post. Some involving web development, some including AI and some involving content creation.

Please note that most of those ideas are not validated. This means that I cannot guarantee you they’ll work. It’s up to you to set up a validation method and get a better view of the effectiveness of each idea.

The post 10 awesome side project ideas for software engineers appeared first on Bibakis.com.

• Super simple to use.
• Password generation takes place on the client, not the server.
• This means no passwords travel over the network.
• Easy to choose your ideal settings. Remembers them across visits.
• Runs in all browsers, desktop and mobile.
• Free to use with no ads.

If you need a way for your customers to create truly secure passwords this app is for you. It’s something even non technical users can easily use. Just click the red button. The default recommended settings are perfect.

The post Introducing RandomPasswordGenerator.app appeared first on Bibakis.com.

Why you should start a side project.

Side projects are usually small undertakings which take place outside our work hours. However many times if a side project is successful enough it can grow into a real product/business. For example Gmail, Twitter and Slack were started as side projects and grew into the huge products they are today.

Learn new skills.

When starting a new side project, you call the shots and decide about everything. This allows you to use the tools you get to use for your project. A side project is not big as a “real” product but it’s real enough so that you can have real experience from the tools you will be using.

Have you always wanted to learn Ruby on Rails but never had the time? Now it’s the best opportunity to give it a go. Have you always been a Photoshop person but felt envious about Figma? Now is the perfect time to use it.

Side projects raise mental health.

Not all jobs are interesting and rewarding. Many times employees are stuck in a daily reality of boring and repetitive tasks. Taking a break from work may raise your mood but unfortunately that’s not always an option.

If things turn out for the worse you may be on the verge of burnout. Consequences of burnout include excessive stress, insomnia, sadness and more.

What you can do to immediately raise your mood is to take on a fun activity where you are in control. Choose a side project which you will really enjoy and watch your mental health improving day by day.

Increase productivity and creativity.

Trying new things in your side project increases your creativity at work as well. You learn to think outside of the box and try new things. This new way of thinking is unconsciously applied to your day job as well.

When you had a break from work by working on your side project last night, suddenly it’s easier to take on (what was previously) a boring task. Whatever you have to do at work, there is now always your fun side project waiting for you at home. Even if you still dislike your day job, it’s no longer something you are stuck to or trapped in. This will make you in turn more productive.

Escape from a job you don’t like.

There are many signs that your job sucks. First and foremost you bring negative energy back home. Do you find yourself complaining constantly to your loved ones about your day at work? Do you need a few glasses of wine to cool off from the stress at work?

What if there was a work environment designed by you and for you? You can work on a project when mood strikes at your own hours. You can also set the goals you decide and give yourself just enough pressure to be motivated but not that much to make you stressed.

Many people dislike their day jobs but quitting is not always an option. There may be not enough money on the side to make you comfortable quitting. Also you may be cautious about a new job where you don’t know what inconveniences await.

Working on a side project gives you a way to escape from your day job without actually quitting. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

It’s ok if you fail.

Let me tell you an uncomfortable truth. Your side project has a high risk of failing. Stats show that most new businesses fail. New businesses are built from founders which are dedicated full time in their venture. On top of that they often have a good amount of money on the side. Either from a loan or from an investor. Your side project has only your extra time off work and quite likely no funding at all. This means that the most probable outcome is for it to fail.

But because of that, in your case, failing is an option. You have nothing to lose actually. You have no loans to pay off, no investors you should be accountable to. You have the financial security of keeping your day job. You have only invested a small amount of hours with nobody to answer to. Nobody will blame you for not going big with a small side project.

However if you are fortunate enough to succeed with your project you will get a unique opportunity very few people have. You will get the option of leaving your day job and work daily, full time with something you really love and enjoy. Something like that does not happen everyday but is totally worth going after.

How to get started.

Most people think that the best way to start any project is with a business plan. A plan with bold statements and big numbers. Quite the contrary. When you start a side project you have to think small. Your side project is a one man show. Since you most likely will work it on the side and keep your day job, it should be considered a half man show.

I will share with you the technique that worked for me in the past and that I suggest that you take on as well. Small steps at first but with great outcome.

1. Make a marketing website.

The first thing your project needs is a message for the rest of the world. A way for you to get people excited about what you will be making. So first of all get some pen and paper or open a new text file at your computer.

Think about all the things that make your project unique. What will you be doing better than other products out there? What are the reasons people should take the time to try your product out. Try to describe your project in a way that you would speak to a friend over a cup of coffee. Business parlance is not useful here.

Then search Google for free website templates. Get a template you like and start replacing it’s text with what you previously wrote. The goal here is to create a website that looks as if it is the real website of a company. I know you don’t have a product out yet. But the goal is to have a website that pretends you do.

Put a call-to-action button in a few places around your site. A call-to-action is a button with a color that stands out and allows the user to perform an important action. In our case we want that button to take people to a form that collects their email.

This form should have some text that
a) Describes once again in a few words what your project is about.
b) Inform people that they are joining your email list.
c) Assure visitors that you won’t ever sell their email or spam them. (and keep that promise)

6 months from now, when you will have finished the first parts of your project, you will need beta testers. This is exactly what this whole story about collecting emails is about. The first users of your project are essentials for validating your idea.

This idea validation takes place in two parts. The first time is when you make your marketing website public. You will of course need to install google analytics in your website. This will let you know if you are driving traffic to it. So if you got traffic on your website but don’t get any email signups, maybe you should try something else instead. Maybe your idea is not appealing to people.

The second validation to your idea is when you have a sizable email list and release your MVP to the public. MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product and is the absolute minimum that you can have with it still being called a product.

When the first people start using your product, this is the moment of truth. Does it solve their problems? Does it meet their expectations? Be smart and add a feedback form in your app. This will give you precious intelligence.

2. Get an audience.

Once you’ve built your marketing website, you will need visitors to start collecting their emails. There are various ways to build an audience which other people have covered in detail in their writing. Therefore I will only scratch the surface of the topic.

Facebook groups/reddit

Instead of having people come to your website, sometimes you should reach out to them. There are online communities for just about anything these days. Do some research to find out facebook groups and subreddits that your potential customers hang out.

Are you building a bookkeeping app ? Reach out for communities where accountants hang out and talk about your project. Don’t be spammy though. Don’t just post a link and disappear. Become an active member of each community and engage in conversations with other members.

Present yourself and your project in an honest way with a friendly manner. Don’t pretend you are a huge company. Being an independent developer is an advantage. People love to help underdogs.

MVP-share with website owners.

Depending on your project type and your craft you may be able to create an MVP quite soon. Can you hack a micro app in a week ? Can you create some designs of what your app will look like when it’s ready ?

Do that work and reach out to people. Back in the days I developed the first version of mobiletest.me on a weekend. I then cold emailed owners of websites and forums related to mobile website development. Some of them added a link to my app and helped get the momentum going. This led to the first users coming and visiting my app. They spread the word and before too long the app had a sizable crowd.

3. Make a list of sub-projects.

Now once you got the audience building mechanisms in place it’s time to get to some practical tasks. Time to break the work ahead into smaller chunks. The ideal form would be groups of work that can each be completed in a weekly sprint (considering you will be doing this part time).

For example if you are building the bookkeeping app we mentioned before, the list of sub-projects will be the screens of your application. Let’s check out some imaginary sub-projects in our imaginary app:

User authentication
Create invoice
Edit/delete invoice
Print invoice
Add customer
Edit/delete customer

Remember! What we are building here is not a full blown product. We just need an MVP to validate our idea and get feedback. Your goal should be to launch an MVP and get feedback from real customers. You may have a million features in your mind right now. Write them down of course but don’t add them to your sub-projects list.

The post Why you should start a side project – and what are the first steps appeared first on Bibakis.com.

Why Series 3 ?

The Apple Watch series 3 is Apple’s affordable take on the smartwatch. I chose it over the series 5 for the sole reason that I was experimenting with this whole smartwatch thing and the price difference was quite substantial. Series 3 starts at $200 while the series 5 starts at $400.

Perhaps the best feature of Series 5 is the always on screen. At the time of purchase I didn’t think that was something I needed. After using the Series 3 for 3 months I’m certain that this is a feature I need. The sole reason being that raising your wrist to see the time does not always work as promised. An always on screen would solve that nuisance.

Other than that the Series 4 & 5 have a larger screen but does that even matter in a smartwatch? You will always reach for the really big screen of your smartphone.

Apple Watch unlocks your Mac

This is my favourite feature of the Apple Watch. You just got to have the same AppleID both on your iPhone and Mac for it to work. Every time your Mac goes to sleep and brings up the lock screen it unlocks automatically without you needing to type a password.

Your watch must be near your computer for it to work. It won’t unlock if you are across the room. This is very handy in situations where someone else may try to wake your Mac with you being in the room. He won’t be able to.

Your Mac will require a password only during the initial login after booting. This has the positive side effect that you can now create a more complex password. You will only enter it once every few days. Meanwhile, every time you want to reach out to your computer you can do so, instantly. This is great user experience on Apple’s part.

Better notifications

When you wear your first smartwatch, the first think you’ll notice in the first few hours is the huge amount of notifications. Those are exactly the same in number as the ones right before in your phone. But the fact that they are now in your wrist makes them much more obtrusive.

I’ve put up with the annoyance for the few first days. At some point when I got a notification from my bank about a purchase I made, I got a great idea. I said to myself: “Hey, I don’t need to be notified about that. It can go into a label in Gmail and I’ll check it later if and when I got the time.”

Fast forward a few days and 90% of my emails were set to be stored automatically into labels, skipping the inbox entirely. The rest 10% were essential emails I had to be aware of right away. The next step was to cut notifications from apps. Even seemingly important ones like incoming PayPal payments were eliminated.

The result was a new digital lifestyle. I used to do things mostly because of external events which arrived to me in the form of emails and notifications. I now plan my day the way I choose. I reach out to my computer or phone for data only when I deem it important. In a way I became master of my digital self.

The rings habit

I will make the assumption that you are not aware of the concept of rings in the Apple Watch. As you can see in the picture above there are three rings in the activity app on the watch. Move, Exercise, Stand.

Stand 12 times in separate hours within a day. Exercise 30 minutes in a day. Move enough to burn 450 calories. While you make progress towards those goals the rings fill up slowly. Once you hit a goal the corresponding ring closes.

When you got your activity data and goals all available anytime, anyplace at the comfort of your wrist, it becomes extremely easy to get in the habit of working out.

When you complete all your rings, a nice animation acts as a reward. The next day you get coaching messages from the watch like “Great work yesterday, I bet you can do it again today”.

Since I got the Apple Watch I have increased the number of times I workout on the treadmill or the walks on the countryside. Furthermore there is a companion activity app on the iPhone which allows you to view your progress over the course of weeks or months.

The small things

There are other small details in the Apple Watch that make it a great experience. The breathe app for example asks you to take deep breaths for a minute (or more) and helps you reduce stress.

Heart rate alerts come up when your heart beats at more than 120bpm or less than 50bpm for 10 minutes. This can help in case you have irregularities in heart beating. I have heard of many cases where people found out they have a condition because of the Apple Watch.

It works in conjunction with Apple Music bringing the most important controls at your wrist. Turning the digital crown is the (very intuitive) volume control and of course you get to see the artist/song info in the screen. It’s very convenient while laying in bed listening to music to avoid reaching out for your phone in the dark.

Do I recommend it ?

I have to say I wholeheartedly do. From working out more, to a better digital lifestyle or even typing less passwords, the Apple Watch had a totally positive effect on my life. I will watch the virtual Apple event this September to see what new features the series 6 will bring and perhaps I’ll get the new one mostly for the always on screen.

Oh! It tells the time as well.

The post 3 Months with the Apple Watch appeared first on Bibakis.com.

You may have heard about the no-code movement these days. It’s a new paradigm which “threatens” the jobs of million of software developers around the world. Lead by companies such as Webflow and Zapier the no-code movement promises abilities formerly reserved for the few wizards of coding.

Zapier

Zapier allows you to create workflows called “Zaps”. They consist of a trigger and one or more actions. For example: When I get a mention on Twitter send me an email and also add a new task on Basecamp. The trigger here is the Twitter mention and the rest are the actions.

Now, the way you can do something like that using code involves something like the procedure below:

1. Create a basic app and host it somewhere on the internet.
2. Create code which connects every few minutes to the Twitter API and checks for new mentions.
3. Send an email to a pre-configured address.
4. Create code which connects to the Basecamp API and adds a task.

At first, you have to admit that the code version looks a little bit more complicated. You bet it’s more complicated. Even with a very productive framework in place (like Ruby on Rails for example) you have to deal with technicalities like API credentials and so on.

In conclusion: Time to build using code: 2 to 5 hours. Time to build using Zapier: 1 to 5 minutes. But this comparison is just the visible tip of the iceberg. The real question here is how much time an individual must spend, in order to get to the point where it takes 2 hours to code this workflow.

At best you need to have at least a few months of programming experience in order to build this workflow into an app. And this is at last the real value of a no-code platform like zapier. It allows people without a software engineering background to “code” workflows and solutions to business problems.

Site builders revisited

Site builders have existed for almost as long as there are websites. If you are old enough you may remember Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver. Those were essentially HTML editors with the ability to code and also create interfaces using “no-code” visual tools.

These tools were essential tools for web developers of the 90s. However going to the new decade they became less and less popular as they were known to produce bloated code which performed poorly in W3C validation tests.

In the hosting industry there have been a lot of tools that allowed users to create websites without writing code. Those tools have been generally been called just “site builders”. However they never really caught on and as time went by, they faded out into obsolescence.

Fast forward into today and we find a new generation of Software As a Service platforms which allow people to easily create websites. You may have heard of Wix or Squarespace or even Webflow. All these products allow you to create websites with little or more functionality.

However you still have way more capability with websites crafted using code. Will this new generation of tools have the faith of its predecessors? There are a few key differences this time around.

First of all these new web apps are heavily marketed. They have attracted large amounts in VC funding and launched large marketing campaigns which include TV ads among others.

The target audience this time, is not web developers but everyday casual users. What if Wix or Webflow will never match WordPress or custom code in features and functionality? What if they never become the favourite tools of web developers? If they can get all average Joes then we are looking at a huge number of customers. And this should be called success, shouldn’t it?

The metric that matters

Back in 2007 the iPhone was released. Steve Ballmer (then CEO of Microsoft) said that “it’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard and that makes it not a very good email machine”.

Fast forward into today, iPhone-style multitouch phones (iPhone & Android) have 99% of the market and Windows Phones are not produced anymore. It also turned out that multitouch phones appeal to business users and they are pretty good email machines.

The iPhone was a revolution because it scored high in the metric that matters the most. That is user friendliness among regular users. If you can get the masses to follow your revolution the power users and the developers will follow.

Back then the business customers were mostly Blackberry users. And indeed Blackberry didn’t vanish overnight from the market but eventually… it did vanish. I’m not saying web developers will vanish overnight but you know… eventually they may vanish.

Check out the image above. It is from an upcoming update to Webflow. This is one of those features that can make technical users adopt a SaaS platform such as Webflow. It is similar to flowcharts. A technique all programmers learn at the university.

Similar revolutions happen all the time. WordPress did it itself when it allowed people to update their WordPress code and plugins without uploading files using FTP but instead by just pressing a button in their control panel. It also did it when it allowed people to search for new themes from within WordPress without having to search around the web.

Is the timing right?

Besides the timing has never been better for a revolution in the way web sites and web apps are made. I remember back in the 90s it was fairly easy to create a website. All you needed was HTML knowledge & some PHP. Now the bar is very hight.

Now in order to call yourself a web developer you have to know 1 or 2 JavaScript frameworks, CSS, preprocessors, deployment tools, a few backend frameworks and the corresponding languages underneath and the list goes on.

The competition has made interfaces way more complex with new requirements such as being responsive, fast and real time. The backend has become more complex as well with requirements to connect to various APIs, apply some form of machine learning to generate things like related products in a store.

Of course those high requirements won’t go away anytime soon. Quite the opposite. However there is great complexity involved which creates equally great demand for simplification. And this is exactly what this new generation of no-code tools brings to the table.

Conclusion

This is one of those times when something gets democratised. Like ebay democratised commerce. Like the iPhone democratised (portable) computers. Like WordPress democratised blogging.

It’s very rare in the history of technology and computing for some simpler approach to fail. It’s up to this new generation of no-code tools to rise up to the challenge and offer a simpler way to do previously complex things.

No, traditional software development won’t go away overnight but it will surely transform to something simpler and more modern.

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