Author: Robert Schouwenburg

DuckDuckGo

A few weeks ago, I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Google has been tone-deaf for a while now towards privacy issues in general and I was wondering if I could wean myself of Google’s services. I thought I’d start with search. DuckDuckGo’s main selling point is that it is not tracking […]

Facebook “unbundled”

Around two years ago, I deleted all my social media apps and just visit through their websites. I stopped posting or otherwise engaging with any of them. This also changed my visiting behavior. I settled for once per week for Facebook and Instagram and just use Twitter and LinkedIn when I want to look up […]

Laptop and traveling

I find technology and how it influences and changes human behavior very interesting to observe. I’ve been doing some heavy traveling lately and I noticed that I’m actually not using my laptop as much as I used to do. My laptop and me used to be tied to the hip, but nowadays I sometimes notice […]

10,000ft captchas

Every time I use Gogo inflight, I’m puzzled by their use of captchas. Are hackers bored enough on flights to try to circumvent their authentication system? There are gazillion other and more consumer-friendly ways to solve that problem like introducing progressive increasing cool-off periods after failed login attempts. They even let you solve a captchas […]

5G

Last week, Verizon announced the launch of their 5G service in 4 US cities. There has been discussions around if it was really 5G or the “world’s first” which I don’t really find that important – it’s just marketing. What makes me excited about it, is that it’s the first step to an all wireless […]

Weekcal

One of the first apps I install on any IOS device is Weekcal. It’s a calendar app which has  all the features you’d ever want and more, but it also has this unique week calendar layout which I absolutely adore. Here’s a screenshot: No other calendar app offers this option. I like having a good […]

To upgrade or not

iPhone X(s) [Max]

The annual refresh of Apple’s iPhone line-up makes me think of what I think of my current iPhone – I currently use a iPhone X. Before I upgrading, I rocked a iPhone SE – the most iconic iPhone in my opinion. When I got the SE, it was also the first time I skipped a […]

Cold emails

Yesterday, Hunter Walk wrote about cold emails and that they can be better than a luke warm email. It reminded something a friend told me a while ago. We were talking about cold emails from various SaaS companies offering their services. I told him I routinely just deleted them. He had a different strategy. He […]

Marketeers’ relentness efforts for your attention

Notification spam

One of my pet peeves is notification spam. Yesterday, I got one from Apple TV reminding me to watch a baseball game. I don’t watch baseball and never watched a game on TV in my life. I’ve no idea what prompted Apple to send me that, but I immediately disabled notifications from the TV app. […]

Growing your startup

Ownership

Yesterday I had a good discussion about how to manage teams and people inside fast-growing organizations. One effective way I favor is making sure every team and person has clear ownership in their own domain. Assuming people are onboard and aware of the mission and vision of the company, ownership gives everyone – person, team […]