Metamuse

By Adam Wiggins, Mark McGranaghan

Tools for thought, product design, and how to have good ideas.... more

· Technology

4.9

3333 ratings

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FAQs about Metamuse:

How many episodes does Metamuse have?

The podcast currently has 170 episodes available.

Metamuse episodes:

February 03, 202249 // 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
...more
49min
January 20, 202248 // 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
...more
1h 13min
January 06, 202247 // 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
...more
1h 5min
December 23, 202146 // 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
...more
1h 1min
December 09, 202145 // 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
...more
1h 1min
November 25, 202144 // 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
...more
55min
November 11, 202143 // 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
...more
41min
October 28, 202142 // 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
...more
59min
October 14, 202141 // 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
...more
1h 3min
September 30, 202140 // 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
...more
49min

FAQs about Metamuse:

How many episodes does Metamuse have?

The podcast currently has 170 episodes available.

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