Living Digital 017: New Year. New Apps.

This episode of Living Digital takes a look at the app development process.

Need help staying on track with your New Year's Resolution? This episode highlights a few apps to help you reach your goals. You got this!

This interview with Kareem Taylor touches on personal branding, positioning and success in the digital age

You know how some apps spike in popularity? Before you know it, your timeline is flooded with the newest way for people to express their digital identity. Here's my take on the Motion Portrait app.

An online persona is a carefully and sometimes not so carefully crafted identity one establishes online. This includes everything from your profile pic to the people you choose to retweet. Are you getting the most out of yours?

Living Digital 013: Online Behavior Intro: Freedom of self expression is one of things that makes America great. We are taught from young the virtues of freedom of speech. But we also learned that actions have consequences. In an age long ago before we blogged about everyday experiences, consequences weren't nearly as severe... (or expensive) as they are today. For example, we had binded paper contraptions called journals. I kept one through out my entire childhood. But back then, your worst fear might be that a few unwanted eyes might come across it. But even then there couldn't be more than a handful of people that really care what happened that time Amanda Taylor scratched your Spice Girls CD, AND journal pages were disposable, so it was essentially a 1000 times easier to "cover your tracks" so to speak. Today?...not so much. everything you do or say online is visible in one way or another. I'm sure many people already know this, but that still doesn't stop people from say, freely disclosing unfair pay in Hollywood, or bragging on facebook about crimes they committed...which I still can't believe people do. Of course there's the conversation about web privacy and surveillance but I'm going to address this from a relatively politics free angle. Today I am going to review some online best practices. Starting with Work emails. Whether you're emailing within a company or from a personal account keep in mind that whatever you say can be visible to others Email travels through many servers and it only takes one without adequate security to put you out of a job. You may be better off cutting out the digital middle man all together by using 4 little words. "Call me to discuss". Great advice that I originally heard on KCRW's Martini Shot podcast. Take a topic that can veer into rowdy/blunt territory and take it off line. Instead of, in their words "telling the truth to each other in unvarnished language in a way that is searchable forever and easy to break in to." Then there's social. Snapchat's October 2015 privacy policy update has once again called attention to information gathering. Particularly location and photo collection. Some people said "well, I'm deleting snapchat". and while that curbs one form of information collection, keep in mind the camera on that same phone can be hacked into. And don't forget your laptop. Whether it's a trojan horse email or some other method, there's more one way for hackers to get what they're looking for. Long story short, don't fall into a false sense of security or the illusion of privacy. Take a longer look at those social media privacy policies, know what's possible, and protect yourself. If you don't want it read in a courtroom, don't type it. If you don't want you boss to read it. Don't tweet it. It's all up for grabs folks. And I say this based on how things are and the trend of where they're going as opposed to where we'd prefer it to be. But until we reach a point where our personal musings are contained.. like pen and paper. I say use caution.

Have you ever been on Instagram and said to yourself, "I'd like to see some photos from Fiji", or some other beautiful place? Seems like a reasonable request.

Technology has proven itself magical enough to let you virtually immerse yourself in all kinds of experiences. Of course, beautiful imagery is a YouTube/Google search away. But it's missing the realtime element that makes you feel connected to other people's experiences.

 

 

Until Instagram's most recent update, you could search locations by hashtag (#Fiji), but inevitably find a million unrelated things. Thanks to hashtag abuse, many of the images were either spam or photos of Fiji water bottles. 

---

But now...

The update, implemented on June 23, 2015, gave the Explore tab a complete overhaul. Features include:

Trending Tags

Like Twitter and Tumblr, you can see which hashtags are trending, which is great for those who aren't seeped in every meme or current event. It's a form of curation that has been missing for too long.

Trending Places

Not only is there a spotlight on relevant topics, but places and events as well. The culling of images and video for current events is very Snapchat-esque. You're able to see popular locations and landmarks (local as well as national). You can see what the L.A. locals are up to, catch every costume at ComicCon, and view how other people live in general. 

Curated Collection

Curation is one of my favorite words. It breaks through the noise and brings organization to chaos. In this section, Instagram chooses a topic and brings the most beautiful photos related to that topic (categorized by location of course). Current examples include Towering Rocks and Extreme Athletes (see above). These currated collections are akin to some of the vibrant travel photography on Tumblr. 

Place Search

Which brings us back to Fiji. Only this time, the results are way more relevant. Instagram users have been adding photos to their maps for years, but none of it was searchable. Until now.

Whether or not you have virtual wanderlust, this feature is definitely worth exploring.

Social media is great, but we're often insulated by what/who we already know. This feature opens up opportunities for discovery and an incentive to leave our timelines.

 

Makeup apps are a great way for makeup addicts to get a fix. The latest and most innovative among them being the MakeupGenius App, from L'Oreal Paris.

Memes and gifs are everywhere! This episode breaks down the basics of memes and gifs, and highlights some great sources for those that love sharing and creating memes.

Living Digital chats with app developer, photographer, entrepreneur, and all around great guy Vaughn Dabney. In this episode, Vaughn shares a few of his projects, tells us what brought him to the world of app development, and gives advice to those aspiring to follow a similar path. To learn more about Vaughn, go to http://mrdabney.com/.

---

Projects mentioned on this episode include:

Soundr

Collectiv

Social Note

Resources mentioned include:

 

Codecademy

Udemy

And as a bonus, check out Ted Blog's 10 Places Where Anyone Can Learn to Code

 

Follow and Subscribe!

Living Digital RSS

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on SoundCloud

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Instagram