Hi friends 👋
First, sorry I’m late. So I was writing the opening piece of this issue, and I realised that creation needs a different type of attention than curation… and since I’m making some changes to both my website & this newsletter, I thought I’d go a step further and change things a bit more…
Hopefully, it’s a positive change. That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
See you soon
Last Week in the News
E3 2021: all the news and announcements [link]
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin auctions off a seat on first human spaceflight for $28M [link]
China's Mars rover took a selfie [link]
McDonald's hit by data breaches in US, South Korea and Taiwan [link]
US against big tech monopolies, Facebook’s next VR step, and Apple Design Award [link]
More hints at Apple Car, EA’s hack, and Netflix’s merch store [link]
More ransomware attacks, Facebook’s smartwatch, and how Apple Silicon matters [link]
Instagram’s opening up, Google’s search problem, and ProtonMail’s new design [link]
Apple’s WWDC21, Facebook’s shot at Apple, and some 64 bitcoins news [link]
Apple’s $M settlement, Google’s $M fine, and Twitter’s Super Follow [link]
✍️ a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
The Shirky Principle by Kevin Kelly
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
now, add the Peter Principle to it: a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence.
this is an old, but fantastic post worth reading — and re-reading multiple times.
Your Brain on Ads — Tim Wu on Hidden Brain podcast
Have you ever opened your computer with the intention of sending one email — only to spend an hour scrolling through social media? Maybe two hours?
In this episode, Tim Wu and Shankar look at how media, tech, and entertainment companies hijack our attention. Plus, how the commercials we saw as children continue to shape our behaviour as adults.
Chart of the Week
In 2022, Global Emoji Count Could Grow to 3,460
2022 will likely see the release of 107 new emojis including beans, the pregnant man and finger hearts, a hand gesture popularized by K-pop stars. The update would grow the number of popular pictograms to 3,460 next year. The Unicode Consortium has recommended the emojis for release, but a final decision is still outstanding…
Read more on Statista.
& more stats
TikTok is forecasted to reach 37.3 million Gen Z users this year, surpassing Instagram’s 33.3 million; still trailing Snapchat’s 42 million Gen Z users [link]
The iPhone's top apps are almost 4x larger than five years ago [link]
Gmail app grew 1,797 percent — or more than 18x — over the past five years, from about 19 MB to just over 355 MB. Facebook’s Messenger has remained the most lightweight over the past five years.
The World’s 100 Smallest Countries [link]
ThanAverage: See how we value and compare ourselves to each other [link]
How it started; how it is now…
Tools & Apps
Colors: Dive into the world of colors, and get excited
Typomotion: Just add text and get kinetic typography video in minutes
Button for Google Calendar™: See your daily schedule and join meetings in one-click [Chrome/Brave Extension]
Tweet Hunter: Get Twitter content ideas in seconds
Health Icons: Free, open source icons for any healthcare project
Quick Tips
Clubhouse/iOS: when in a room, swipe down on the right side of the ‘leave quietly’ button to minimise the room and see the hallway.
Instagram: on any photo in story mode you’re creating, choose the brush or the highlighter, select the colour, and then tap and hold on the screen to either have a solid colour background or a coloured overlay.
Snapchat: you can pull down the colour bar to give yourself more colour options.
Spotted
Instagram keeps working on end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chats by adding the ability to compare keys with someone [link]
Instagram is working on new brush colours [link]
Instagram is working on the possibility of tagging products in Rooms [link] & scheduling Rooms [link]
Instagram keeps working on the Story Drafts feature [link]
Instagram keeps working on the possibility of adding multiple audio tracks to a Reel [link]
Instagram is working on “Activity Center” [link]
Instagram is working on “Visual Search” [link] & “Camera Search” [link]
Instagram is working on the ability to search in conversations [link]
Instagram is working on a redesigned tabs for the search music screen [link]
Instagram is working on a shortcut in the #Reels tab in the profile to create a new Reel [link]
Facebook is working on the possibility of adding a Status that will be visible to friends for 24 hours [link]
Twitter is working on “Reply Later” [link]
Twitter is working on “See Top or Latest requests” options for sorting Message Requests [link]
Twitter is working on “Super Follower” profile labels [link]
Twitter is working on bringing Bookmark Folders to the Android app [link]
🐦 Tweets of the Week
Fun Stuff
and now we’re done for this week
What did you think of this issue? No polls, just words — if you felt like it. There’s a ❤️ button for you too…
Things are changing… slow & steady.