Author: patmcg

The World

How efficient are you at reading this article? 🧐

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Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times on how many companies digitally monitor their employees’ time in some pretty invasive and distrustful ways.

This includes taking screenshots and photos randomly in 10-minute chunks and actually docking pay if you don’t appear productive. So every trip to the bathroom is possible lost pay. 🤦🏻‍♂️

And hospice workers being paid by productivity points. 😳 “A visit to the dying: as little as one point.”

And social workers being penalized for not typing on their keyboard while actively counseling patients in drug treatment facilities. 🤨

But the brilliance of this article is how they present it.

To let you appreciate how annoying this kind of digital surveillance is, the article tells you as you read it if you’ve been “idle” for too long. It ends with a summary of your reading efficiency stats, which will inevitably make you feel weird. 😂

Also, I wonder how these companies would feel about the The Ship Repairman Story.

creativity · entertainment

Missed Fortune 🗻

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What does it take to pull you into a new podcast? Or a book? Or really anything?

With so many great podcasts out there and already not enough time for them all, the bar can be pretty high for anything new. But the first few lines of the Missed Fortune podcast pulled me in right away.

Did you ever find yourself in one of those situations where if it goes well, there’s a huge reward? But if it goes bad, you look just unforgivably stupid? Like what were you possibly thinking?

I’m in a car with some guys I don’t know on the way to somewhere we’re not supposed to be. And this is one of those situations.

They go on to explain that this is the story of a real-life treasure hunt in the Rocky Mountains with the only clues being a short poem.

I’m already hooked. 😲 Well played, new podcast.

Apps · Practical · Software Dev

UX teardown: make your own guides in  Maps

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I always found the “favorites” feature in Apple Maps to be too general and dissatisfying. I quit using that feature once I had 48 places saved all across the world. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Before that, I saved specific lists of places in Google Maps, but found their mobile app to be cluttered and confusing. 😖 So I gave up and started using Trello.

Trello is cool for some things like trip planning and small projects, but it did not scale well and didn’t handle lists of places well. So I gave up on that. 😢

 Maps guides

I’m happy to have just discovered that you can save your favorite places as “guides” in Apple Maps. Finally, this is genuinely useful!

I just set up my own guide for coffee places open early for when I’m looking to get our early. Quick and easy and right to the point! 🤩. I can immediately see all the places I saved and their hours. Check it out for yourself! (This is my own personal guide, so it’s focused on Austin, TX.)

Of course this guide automatically syncs to my iPad and Mac as well. ✅

Rechecking Goole Maps

Forgive me if I sound like an  fanboy, but out of genuine curiosity I went back and I did the same thing in the latest Google maps. It was a bit painful. 😢

Notice how the “main” screen is oddly not a map but more of a picture of a cup of coffee and therefore not useful to me.

And even when I drilled into an actual map view, the places I care about are unlabeled in favor of (1) a notification that HEB has an offer and (2) the Texas Capitol and Congress Ave. Bridge exist. Again, not useful.

I just want to know where a coffee shop is open at 7am! Now that would be useful. 👆

But where are all the coffee shops and their hours?
But which ones are the actual coffee shops?