Facial recognition and encryption can’t be put back in the bottle

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There are two topics that I hear come up repeatedly with groups trying to stop them, but I think it’s too late for both.

First you have facial recognition technology, which privacy advocates are trying to stop. It’s a noble cause, for sure, but it’s likely to impossible to stop at this point. There are cameras everywhere, and software to recognize faces is only getting better. Even if you officially stop public cameras from using that technology, you can’t stop everyone else.

On the flip side, you have legislators continually trying to stop encryption, or at least for companies to leave a “magic” back door in there in case they need it. I can appreciate why they want that to happen, but it’s even a bigger challenge than my previous paragraph. There are always going to be increasingly effective private communication channels, and even if laws are passed to allow backdoors to be put in things like iMessage or Facebook Messenger, anyone needing privacy (including people like terrorists) can easily go elsewhere.

So what to do about those? It’s hard to say. We’re quickly heading toward a world where you can’t be anonymous in public, but people can chat on completely private channels if they want. Those fights are over.

Both have major downsides, but we need to accept them as facts. Rather than coming up with silly laws to try to stop either of those technologies, we need to focus our efforts on what happens next and how best to be prepared for it.

Use URL shorteners for better QR codes

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With the “don’t touch anything” approach to handling COVID, particularly at restaurants, we’re seeing a bit of a resurgence with QR codes. Couple that with the fact that iPhone and Android both read QR codes from the main camera app (instead of needing a separate app) means that they’ll likely stick around to some degree.

QR codes > Bar codes

QR codes are more amazing than you might realize. With most “codes”, like bar codes on products, it simply references a number that the system needs to go back to someone’s database in order to figure out what it means. For example, you might scan a gallon of milk and get the number 123456789, which the system then tracks back to see what “123456789” really means.

QR codes are different. Rather than needing to rely on a database somewhere to translate them for you, the full content of what you want to share is literally in the code itself. It’s a bit complicated how they do it, but when you scan a QR code and it gives you a website address to visit, that website address is literally in that QR code, made up of the various modules — the dots that make up the code itself.

Open = Good

As you might have guessed, I love that approach. I’m a big believer of owning your own content to the extent possible, and no one can ever own the database behind QR codes — because there isn’t one! Every QR code stands on its own, and no one can stop that. It’s excellent.

The downside

This also leads to a pretty big downside. With a gallon of milk, that “123456789” barcode can lead to a database with a ton of information about what you scanned. With a QR code, you’ve got to jam all of that information into the code itself. They can hold quite a bit of information, but the more you put into one, the smaller the modules get and the harder it is to read.

For example, the link to this post is:
https://www.mickmel.com/qr-codes/

That can be show using this QR code:

Really, that one isn’t too bad. However, what if I wanted to put a tracking URL on it? Maybe I add some tracking data to the end, and have a link like this:
https://www.mickmel.com/qr-codes/?utm_source=mickmelblog&utm_medium=website_post&utm_campaign=qr_code_blog_post

Now the QR code uses much smaller dots, and could potentially be harder to read (especially on a greasy menu at a restaurant):

To do it right, though, I can put it through a URL shortener (like bit.ly) to make it super short. Here’s short URL for this post: http://gmm.to/qr

The result? A super clean QR code with nice big modules.

That’s what you want to produce. Using a short URL offers a few great advantages:

  1. As you see, it makes for a much simpler QR code.
  2. Depending on the shortening tool you use, you can change the destination of the link. Back to to the restaurant example, you might start using a different online menu system and need to update those links. You can reprint all of the menus with a new QR code — or just change where your shortener points! That’s often only available with paid plans on shortening tools, but it’s worth considering.

Next time you need to make a QR code for something, take an extra 30 seconds to shorten your link and make it work better.

Also, I used https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/ to create those QR codes, and it’s a pretty simple and solid tool to use.

Side note: I saw this while watching a basketball game last night. Not only are the modules tiny and hard to scan, but they barely left it on the screen long enough to snap a quick photo of it. This strikes as a rather poorly thought-out plan.

The benefits of changing to a new tool

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If you’ve followed this blog very long, you know that I like to try out different tools. I often change what I use for my tasks, planning, email, all kinds of things. I enjoy learning new technology and have fun trying out different tools.

However, there are two other big advantages to changing tools from time to time.

Enjoy the new stuff, but bring along things that worked before

No two tools are the same. When you switch to a different tool, you’ll likely gain and lose a few features. When possible, though, you can often bring along ideas from one tool to the next, making for the best of both.

For example, when I moved from the Full Focus Planner to Notion for my daily and weekly planning (and later to Roam Research), I brought along quite a few lessons and implemented them in Notion and then Roam. I got the benefits of the newer systems, but brought along lessons and ideas from the older systems.

Get the clutter out of the corners

Part of the pain of moving to a new tool is cleaning out some of the cruft, whether that’s old tasks you never got around to, or junk from six years ago in your Evernote. Either way, moving to a new system is a great time to clean that stuff up and give yourself a bit of a fresh start.

When I change systems, I generally do it manually. That creates a lot more work, but it gives me a chance to clean-up, reorganize, and really do it right.

When I moved my stuff out of Evernote a few years ago, it took quite a while to move everything but it gave me an opportunity to put things in the right places. Most stuff ended up in Roam Research, but some things were put in different places. For example, I had foolishly stored some password in Evernote years ago, so those went into LastPass for safe keeping.

Do you enjoy moving?

Part of this comes down to your personality. For me, I like trying out new tools and tend to move frequently. Others don’t, and that’s fine. I’d still encourage you to keep your eyes open from time to time, as a move to a better system might benefit you in a lot of ways, and the processing of moving itself could be great too.

A new idea for messing with spammers

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Spam, both with email and over phone, is becoming a huge problem. There are plans from tech companies to do more to cut down on both, but it’s here to stay for a while.

Part of the problem is that so much of it is automated, at least for some of the initial contact. I enjoy wasting spammers’ time when I can, but it’s hard to know if I’m actually dealing with a real person or not.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten of The Next Web has come up with a simple and genius way to waste more of their time. He’s shared it in full on Twitter, below, but in short he has set up a bunch of email autoresponders to get spammers going in circles. He replies to the initial email, and everything is automated after that.

If you get email spam, ask them to forward their message over to “[email protected]”, as that’s who can “help” them. From there they’ll get a long, twisting series of autoresponders and apologies to keep them busy for days.

I suspect spammers will catch on to this specific example soon, if they haven’t already, but the idea could be easily replicated and used again and again. I like it!

What’s your system for disposable notes?

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I don’t necessarily like having too many separate systems for your notes and ideas, but I have one that is becoming particularly invaluable — a place for temporary, disposable notes.

About five years ago, I heard David Allen mention that “you should only think about cat food once“. You can read this post for more info, but the basic idea is that if you remember that you need cat food, you should put that into a trusted system to get it out of your mind.

Trusted Systems

Nearly 12 years ago, I wrote about the idea of a “trusted system” for your notes. The idea is that you need a system that you really trust, deep down, or else your mind won’t be able to let go of what it’s holding.

Further, you need a system that you know you’ll get back to in time. If you just throw “get cat food” into Evernote with your 10,000 other notes, there’s a good chance it’ll get lost. I think the solution is a disposable notes system.

Disposable Notes

This is really pretty simple; everyone should have a place to take quick notes that does not also hold long-term notes. This system should be completely emptied as frequently as possible. Your notes from there become items for your grocery list, or events on your calendar, or whatever they need to be. Deal with them properly, and get them out of that system.

Personally, I use Google Keep for my disposable notes. It’s easy to access and easy to keep clean, and frankly, isn’t great for long-term storage anyhow. I have a widget on my phone for quick notes, I can speak it in my car (“hey google… take a note…”), and then I have desktop widgets for it. Stuff goes in it constantly, and then comes back out when I have a chance to sit down.

You can use whatever you want for it. Other good options could be Apple Notes or Simplenote or one of dozens of others. Even a small paper notebook could work great.

Tools like Evernote, Notion, and Roam Research are better solutions for long-term notes — those are very important too, but not really for what we’re talking about today.

Ultimately, my advice is to keep those notes somewhere that you won’t forget about them and where the notes won’t get buried, so you can really trust stuff that you put into it and won’t have to think about cat food twice.

Thinking through “A Brighter Web”

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We’ve been running various aspect of A Brighter Web, an educational arm of our agency, for quite a while now. We’ve hosted our Meetup every month (sometimes more) for about nine years now, we have a reasonably active Facebook group, and we’ve played with podcasting and other media.

So what’s next?

To be honest, I’m not sure. We’ll likely be streamlining the website in the coming months — hosting less content on there, and pushing more to the outlets that we use (like Meetup and Facebook).

We’ve had a Slack team going for a while, but we’ve not really invested in it and it’s essentially dead. That’s likely for the best.

We may be firing up the podcast again in the next few months, but we’re still undecided on that.

I’ve been playing with the new TogetherLetters app for the past few months with some small groups, and I’ll likely open it up to the main users of A Brighter Web once they start allowing larger groups to join. If you’ve not seen it yet, it’s a neat concept. Check out the “see how it works” video on their home page.

We have a lot of options in front of us, and it’s fun to start plotting out a path for the future. If nothing else, we’ll keep hosting the monthly Meetups for the foreseeable future, so come check them out and join us!

Add tasks in the middle of your work

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If you follow this blog very much, you know that I play with a lot of productivity tools. A trend I’m starting to see emerge is the idea of having tasks mixed in with your notes, and I really like it.

It can be a tricky thing to pull off. With any task system, you don’t want those tasks to get lost and forgotten. In many cases, if you save some tasks that are mixed in with your notes, they’re likely to be forgotten and orphaned over time.

I’ve seen two good examples of this recently, and there are likely others. The first place I saw it was in Asana, the task management system that we used at GreenMellen for a while in 2014/2015. While we eventually moved away from it for other reasons, the ability to add a task in the middle of a conversation was brilliant, and something I miss now.

The second is with Roam Research.

Roam Research

My current personal task system is in Roam Research. Roam’s task system isn’t great, in general, but the ability to add tasks on the fly is absolutely amazing. Below is a simple example from a few weeks ago; I’ve still been working on my interstitial journaling during the day, and then can just mix tasks in whenever I want:

As I mentioned above, Roam is an imperfect system for tasks, and would be unmanageable for our full team right now. For me, though, it’s a perfect way to deal with personal tasks throughout the day, and I hope other products begin to integrate similar systems in the future.

If you’re interested in using Roam for tasks, here’s a bit more about how I do it:

What’s on the back of your cabinet?

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If you were to pull your chest of drawers out from the wall and look at the back of it, what would you see? In most cases, it’s just a piece of plywood or even some heavy cardboard. That’s not necessary bad (cost savings, etc), but it speaks to the quality of the design.

Steve Jobs put it this way, as told by Michael Schrage in an article on Design Intelligence:

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

Jobs made sure Apple followed a similar philosophy. In the early days of Apple, he insisted that the chips on the motherboard of the Apple II and the original Macintosh be perfectly lined up. His team protested with things like “Nobody is going to see the PC board”, but he insisted. He wanted his products to be beautiful both inside and out.

(fun side note — the device you’re on right now has roughly 4,000,000 times more memory than the Apple II motherboard pictured above)

I don’t think Jobs’ philosophy fits in every situation, but it depends on your goals. If you want to make something truly amazing and beautiful, don’t be afraid to go all the way with it.

How Slack Builds Trust

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A few weeks ago, I mentioned a few companies that I tend to trust. In all of those cases, it was the humans at the companies that helped build that trust.

However, Slack (the chat app that we use) does something automatic that I think is brilliant. If you add more users, they automatically charge you more, as you might expect. However, if some users don’t log in for a while they automatically lower your bill. It’s not huge dollars, but it’s a great thing that they do. Here is an example email from them:

Humans not required

I talk a lot on here about how the human touch can make your business better (don’t use noreply, ease up on the automation, etc), and that is 100% true. However, you can also follow Slack’s lead and try to find ways to help your customers automatically.

With their millions of customers, Slack is likely giving back a ton of money that would have slipped through unnoticed, but the trust they gain instead is likely worth far more.