It is fairly easy for you to follow my writings on GigaOM if you visit this page. You can easily get ahold of my recent posts. Nevertheless, here are some posts from last few days I wanted to highlight, incase you had missed them.
New York is one place where I get a break from the routine and get some time to contemplate. Ironic, considering that New York City is the urban equivalent of Twitter – constant distractions, noisy and full of spectacles and spectacular. The obvious benefit: walking five miles a day results in me losing between 5-7 pounds per visit. But for me the opportunity to walk the busy Manhattan streets has two obvious benefits — a lot of alone-time and a chance to hone my skills to ignore the noisy-ness that is our online world.
It was one of these walks (which co-incidentally took me by the offices of Forbes.com) I got a chance to reflect on how I have changed as a writer. From a frantic newswire reporter to an online writer to a magazine writer and back to the frenzied world of blogs, it has been an evolution that has mimicked the stage of life I find myself in.
Lately, I have been slowly tweaking my writing to a new approach, something one of my mentors and former editors, David Churbuck said. In our countless dinners when we worked around the clock on Forbes.com, he would say that at some point in life you have to become the mirror for people and the industry you write about. It is less about an opinion, but it is about able to show them, themselves. Often, what they see isn’t pretty and sometimes it is ugly. On other occasions the mirror shows a wonderful image.
It was good advice and it has made writing more fun and meaningful for me. Sure, I have been more pensive than usual on occasions, but it has also brought me a different kind of satisfaction. This week, when I saw David in New York, I was reminded what a great editor can do: long after he stops editing you, he can still nudge you in the right direction without as much trying. I hope I can really pay-it-forward.
John Gruber invited me to his podcast, The Talk Show this past week and we talked about a whole bunch of things. Amongst topics discussed:
Facebook Home (the faux-app/OS hybrid.)
Facebook and its mobile OS (why I believe there is one in the works and is coming.)
Why Andy Rubin left Android behind
Apple’s challenges.
Of course, there is a lot of digest but the biggest point I wanted to make was about Apple and its one shortcoming – its inability to come to terms with the notion of connectedness. I have not written about it, not because I didn’t want to. I just have not been able to find a block of time to write. Soon…when I get on a plane again!
This past weekend I ended up having coffee with Craig Mod, who in my mind is one of the best thinkers about world of information, publishing, content and its interplay with human senses, especially on the new mobile devices and digital platforms. He ran a publishing company in Japan and worked for Flipboard and is now working on a plethora of projects.
We ended up talking about a whole range of subjects, but the one I thought was worth sharing was the notion of home. Home, in the connected age is such a fluid concept, given how much we are always moving from one place to another, like proverbial free agents. While I grew up in New Delhi, I feel New York is home. Craig who is from Connecticut moved to Tokyo when he was 19 and thinks of the Japanese metropolis as his home. And the reason, he put so eloquently, we think of these two cities as home is because of our formative experiences. Those experiences define how we view the world.
Our physical interaction with a place defines how we feel about that place. New York’s streets and corners have a story attached to them and I guess that gives a sense of belonging, and in the process act as a markers on the timeline called life. I don’t feel that same way about San Francisco, even though I have lived here for 10 years. I guess, it will always be a place where I live, just not home.
The Details magazine talked to Steven Alan (a well known men’s fashion designer who makes some high quality shirts) and asked him to share his Rules of Style. They are really good and really helpful for someone who is looking for help.
Allen Stern, a blogger and a great human being passed away this last week, according to an update from his sister. The cause of death is not clear. I learned this when I woke up early in the morning. It wasn’t how I wanted to start my day and it has sent me into a deep funk.
Stern was a stand-up guy and always spoke his mind. He never took to fools and as a result always found himself defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. I met him once, briefly at a Techcrunch 50 event, but we were internet friends and often exchanged Facebook and Twitter messages. He was always in good cheer, ready to share a moment of sadness and spread the happiness. As a fellow Yankees fan, he and I would often talk baseball during our exchanges. The world just got a lot less nicer because of this one subtraction.Give heaven a taste of your heaven. Allen, you will be missed by me and thousands of others whose life you touched.
PS: My colleague Mathew Ingram has collected thoughts and comments of others who are equally saddened by the passing of this young man.
Yesterday, after an early dinner, I ended up near the Golden Gate Bridge and later walked down to the Baker Beach, just as dusk was starting to envelope San Francisco. Fog, clouds, the ocean and the bridge were playing hide and seek, and while I wasn’t carrying one of my better cameras, my iPhone 5 came in handy. Here are some photos from this picturesque detour.
