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Metamuse
By Adam Wiggins, Mark McGranaghanTechnology
Metamuse episodes
- 49 // Software longevity
The great works of human civilization can last for centuries—but software often decays in just a tiny fraction of that time. How much should this concern us in this increasingly-digital age? And as software creators, what can we do about it? Adam and Mark discuss the durability of papyrus vs CD-Rs vs the cloud; open-source Quake and remix culture; flat file formats; and digital preservation efforts like The Internet Archive and MAME. Plus: sometimes you just have to draw the rest of the owl.
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Show notes- Cesna 172
- ForeFlight
- iPad aviation kneeboards
- The Long Now Foundation and Clock
- Buy it for life
- Metamuse episode on pricing
- Internet Archive
- CD-R
- MAME
- arcade game ROMs
- DOOM and Quake as open source
- Text Mode Quake II and DOOM on a pregnancy test
- Python 2 and 3
- farmers fighting to repair and modify their tractors
- How To Draw an Owl
- Ship of Theseus
- CalDAV
- SQLite long-term support
- TIFF extensible file format
- Cambria data lenses
- the Lindy effect
- Arc browser, Not Boring Apps
49 min - 48 // Rich text with Slim Lim
Rich text editing is a foundational interaction in productivity software. Slim joins Mark and Adam to explain how rich text is more than just bold and italics for prose, but also includes math equations, diagrams, slideshows, and sheet music. Their discussion includes WYSIWYG versus markup languages for end users; how block-based editors change our understanding of rich text; and why Pandoc is Slim’s favorite piece of software. Plus: how to choose the best wagon in Oregon Trail.
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Show notes- Slim “Sarah” Lim @sliminality
- UC Berkeley, Notion, Ink & Switch
- 14" vs 16" MacBook Pro
- The Oregon Trail, 5th Edition
- Khan Academy R&D group with Andy Matuschak
- Ply, Slim’s CSS inspector
- Bert Bos (co-creator of CSS)
- Notion’s inline equation editor
- Peritext
- Further Research is Needed
- Welcome to Night Vale
- structured editors
- Lisp and S-Expressions
- Pandoc
- CommonMark, ReMarkdown
- Beamer, reveal.js
- AsciiDoc
- Eternals
- Overleaf
- stan
- Association for Computing Machinery
- ACM switch to HTML from PDF as archival format
- MathML
- MathJax, KaTeX
- MathOverflow
- Jonathan Aldrich
- Bear
- Finale, MuseScore
- Graphviz, Mermaid, Svgbob
- Sketch-n-Sketch
1 hr 13 min - 47 // Designing creative tools with David Hoang
Designing tools for creators is harder than consumer software, but also potentially more rewarding. David leads design at Webflow, and he joins Adam and Mark to talk about mental models, opinionated versus open-ended tools, and being true to the materials. Plus: why complexity is unfairly villainized in design.
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Show notes- David Hoang @davidhoang
- Webflow
- Seeing Spaces
- low-fidelity wireframes
- One Medical
- Quartz Composer
- Black Pixel
- SwiftUI
- no-code tools
- Heroku
- citizen developer
- journey map
- The Big Bed
- Civilization built on Webflow
- Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu
- GeoCities
- Metamuse episode with Maggie Appleton
- Dreamweaver
- Web3
- RSS
- mental models
- Xcode’s Auto Layout vs Figma’s auto layout
- position: absolute
- the box model
- flexbox
- JavaScript minification
- Jobs to be Done
- paradox of choice
- Webflow’s No-Code Conf
- OpenDoc, ActiveX
- Rake task
- Yahoo! Pipes
- low floor, high ceiling
- Obsidian
- React Native eject
- Instagram Stories
- Universe
- BASIC
- sprite
- Glitch
- original vision for the read-write web
- Beaker Browser
1 hr 5 min - 46 // Industrial research with Peter van Hardenberg
Ink & Switch is a research lab inspired by Bells Labs and Xerox PARC. Peter is lab director, and he joins Adam and Mark to discuss DARPA-hard problems; the Ink & Switch academic-meets-web essay format; and how an independent research lab can fund itself through a spinout flywheel. Plus: Mendel and his peas, Thoreau and his ants, and the Arrakis attitude of the knife.
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Show notes- Peter van Hardenberg @pvh
- Ink & Switch
- hydroponic gardening
- computer vision
- knight’s movement in chess
- efficient frontier
- Peritext
- Dynamicland
- Seinfeld calendar
- Zettelkasten
- rich text
- Metamuse episode with Geoffrey Litt
- Metamuse episode with Linus Lee
- “Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife […] It’s complete because it’s ended here.”
- DARPA
- Richard Hamming
- National Science Foundation
- prime number theorum
- Ben Reinhardt on innovation orgs
- Bell Labs list of inventions
- flywheel
- Gregor Mendel’s experiments with pea plants
- “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”
- DARPA autonomous vehicles contest and prize
- DARPA hard
- Gordon Brander
- pre-infusion
- Yjs
- the Hollywood model
- Martin Kleppmann
- Code for America
- no plan survives first contact with the enemy
- “pencils down”
- peer review
- citation
1 hr 1 min - 45 // Native apps
With Muse for Mac on the horizon, the team convenes to discuss the merits of native apps versus web technologies like Electron. Discussion points include the conflict between brand identity and apps that feel true to the OS; “proudly native” apps like Sketch and Nova; and the lost art of designing using system components. Plus: the business case for and against building native apps, and why great native apps tend to come from smaller companies.
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Show notes- The road to Muse 2
- Electron
- DMG file
- URL
- widgets
- GTK
- /usr
- the JVM and write once, run anywhere
- Java servlet, Flash
- React Native, Cordova
- transpiler
- browser quirks
- siren’s song
- Audacity
- Flutter
- Things
- principle of least surprise
- Twitter on iOS non-native share sheet
- Material Design
- Google’s iOS apps retiring custom widgets
- WeChat
- Microsoft antitrust case in the late 90s
- how the web broke Microsoft’s monopoly
- Steve Jobs visiting Xerox PARC
- Alto, Lisa, Macintosh
- Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu
- V for Wikipedia
- Twitter’s custom typeface, Chirp
- ScreenFlow, Sketch, Nova
- Sketch’s proud-to-be-native article
- WebAssembly in Figma
- Sublime Text
- Finda’s 16ms goal
- Microsoft CEO deemphasizing the Windows business
- Obsidian, Superhuman, Linear
- 1Password’s switch to Electron and subsequent outcry
- video games and colorblind mode
- Game Maker’s Toolkit — Designing for Disability
1 hr 1 min - 44 // Media empires with Dan Shipper
Journalism is changing, as newspapers and magazines adapt to being online and internet-native media empires like Vox and Vice upend the status quo. Dan Shipper is part of this as a founder of Every, a writer collective for business writing. Dan chats with Mark and Adam about the paid newsletter boom; the impact of recommendation algorithms on creator mental health; and content platforms like Wordpress, Substack, and Ghost. Plus: the pros and cons of antigravity machines.
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Show notes- Dan Shipper @danshipper
- Every
- John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
- Irvin Yalom
- Substack
- Firefly
- Superorganizers
- divergent mode
- Nathan Baschez
- The Economist, The New York Times, Disney
- Vox, Vice
- the death of journalism
- editor
- dopamine hit
- Metamuse episode on social media
- yellow journalism
- BuzzFeed
- crypto
- Ben Thompson / Stratechery
- Ghost
- Pulitzer prize
- kids want to grow up to be YouTube stars
- Casey Neistat
- YouTube algorithm changes
- The Long Tail
- Harvard Business Review
- Bedrock Capital
- The Athletic
- Divinations
- The Generalist
55 min - 43 // Storytelling
What do the Bible, TED talks, superhero movies, and Steve Jobs’ product announcements have in common? They use stories to share ideas, culture, and worldview. Adam and Lennart discuss this, and the role storytelling can play in product marketing and design.
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Show notes- the smell of autumn
- Muse is hiring
- Metamuse episode on our partnership model
- local-first engineer
- designer & storyteller
- the Bible
- superhero movies as modern myths
- TED talks
- Steve Jobs as a storyteller
- Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone (2007)
- marketing
- marketing funnel
- Muse’s onboarding
- dark patterns
- the medium is the message
- lecture
- copywriting
- hero shot
- html video
- responsive design
- CSS transitions
- scroll hijacking
- Explorable Explanations
- WordPress, SquareSpace
- Notion blew up on TikTok
- vignette
- aspect ratio
- Guy Gavriel Kay
- worldbuilding
- iPhone 1 notes app
- skeuomorphic
- slide to unlock
- BlackBerry
- iPhone 1 commercial “Calamari”
- Muse Pencil toolkit
- iPadOS PencilKit
- Metamuse episode on tool switching
- marketing design
41 min - 42 // Self-made tools with Linus Lee
In a world dominated by mass-produced software, making your own tools is a way to take back agency in your digital life. Linus joins Mark and Adam to talk about his experiences building a personal software ecosystem; tools that are a reflection of the maker’s values and taste; and packaging/sharing solutions like Docker, CodePen, Replit, and Deno. And: is it possible for software to ever be “done”? — Linus thinks so.
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Show notes- Linus Lee @thesephist
- Surface Duo
- Nintendo DS
- Backbone.js
- Spensa (farming technology startup)
- Django
- Replit
- Monocle
- full-text search
- Ink (programming language)
- changing lightbulb meme
- DigitalOcean
- August (Linus’ self-made x86 assembler)
- Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu
- situated software
- stream fusion in mathematics
- reverse proxy
- software erosion aka bit rot
- FileMaker Pro
- newline-delimited JSON
- flat dependency trees
- dynamic linked libraries
- Go static linking
- not invented here
- Hundred Rabbits
- lil apps
- Szymon Kaliski
- An app can be a home-cooked meal
- Lucerne (Linus’ self-made Twitter client)
- TweetDeck
- Taylor Swift
- Go by Example
- multi-tenancy
- Metamuse episode on local-first
- whoami
- game modding
- Deno
- Deno’s sandboxing and permissions
- Qubes OS
- Docker container
- Heroku Buttons
- macOS .app bundles
- CodePen
- xkcd on modern software dependencies
- ProseMirror
- Metamuse episode on filmmaking
- curl maintainer has been at it for 23 years
59 min - 41 // Local-first software with Martin Kleppmann
Local-first is a set of principles that enables collaborative software without the loss of data ownership associated with the cloud. Martin is a computer scientist on the frontier of this movement, and he joins Mark and Adam to discuss how creative people put their souls into their work; a vision for a generic AWS syncing service; and why local-first could be a breakthrough for indie app developers.
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Show notes- Martin Kleppmann
- University of Cambridge
- Debussy four-handed piano piece
- Martin’s previous startup, Rapportive
- Apache Kafka
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications
- Writing a book: is it worth it?
- Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud
- Ink & Switch
- Geoffrey Litt
- Pixelpusher
- the fish says “what the hell is water?”
- “crushing it”
- elevator pitch
- Google Docs
- realtime collaboration
- defrag your hard drive
- self-hosting an SMTP server and spam filtering
- thin client
- Peter van Hardenberg
- Pixelpusher
- Automerge
- “there is stuff you always use; and stuff that won’t work when you need it”
- Slack’s free vs paid message retention
- federation, mesh network
- CRDTs
- How we pay for software
- Swift, Kotlin
- technology transfer
- fuzz testing, Monte Carlo simulation
- local-first Trello clone demo
- end-to-end encryption
- Firebase
1 hr 3 min - 40 // Filmmaking with Maximilian Becht
The Muse team worked with Max and his film crew on the pilot episode of a new documentary series. Max joins Adam and Mark to talk about how making films compares to making software; why creative trust is the core of a great team; and why we should hire based on networks, portfolios, and auditions instead of CVs and interviews. Plus: 40 people stuck on a film shoot in the forest due to a forgotten shovel.
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Show notes- Maximilian Becht of Kosmovision
- shooting day
- post-production
- E3
- set runner
- Film Academy Baden-Württemberg
- Zellenflimmern (documentary on media inside prisons)
- Making Movies
- Create: a documentary series by Muse
- watch pilot episode of Create with Katrin Friedmann
- branded content
- Marcus Hanisch (Create director)
- location scouting
- Jasper Techel (Create cameraperson)
- Moritz Drath (Create sound and music)
- professional network
- After Effects
- The Queen’s Gambit shot in Berlin
- maker biographies
- A Modest Genius (Charles Darwin biography)
- Creativity, Inc. (Pixar founder autobiography)
- Barbie and Ruth (Mattel founder biography)
- film screening
- the Hollywood model
- gig sites
- Christopher Nolan
- wide angle shots
- herding cats
- production manager
- “fix it in post"
- the null hypothesis
- suggest a protagonist for future episodes of Create
49 min
About Metamuse
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Tools for thought, product design, and how to have good ideas.