Max Friedrich

Konferenz 28 mit den aufwändigsten ersten zweieinhalb Minuten,...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:28:36 +0200

Konferenz 28 mit den aufwändigsten ersten zweieinhalb Minuten, die ich je produziert habe. Mehr dazu wie immer im Meta-Podcast!

Weiterhin auf dem Balkon, aber zwei Biere später haben wir dann...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:03:00 +0200

Weiterhin auf dem Balkon, aber zwei Biere später haben wir dann direkt die nächsten Folgen aufgenommen. Thema: Vornamen.

Jan, Philipp und ich gestern Nacht auf dem Balkon.

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:49:38 +0200

Jan, Philipp und ich gestern Nacht auf dem Balkon.

Girls (HBO)

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:10:49 +0100

tl;dr: Ich bin Experte für amerikanische Kultur, weil ich etwa 8 US-Fernsehserien verfolge. Ich nehme OCD dort als “hip” oder “trendig” wahr. Ich fand die Serie Girls bisher uneingeschränkt gut. Seit sie OCD thematisiert, finde ich sie nur noch zu 80% gut.

Aus der Reihe: Rants, die ich lieber nicht ausschreibe.

Photo

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:36:00 +0100

Daniel vs Max

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:07:00 +0100

Daniel vs Max:

I built this site in order to prove that I’m superior to Daniel at casual endless games.

Re: Media Weights – As Timo pointed out, two- (or...

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:26:00 +0100

Re: Media Weights – As Timo pointed out, two- (or 1.5-)dimensional weights make more sense than my one-dimensional approach. The media types’ combined visual and auditory weights still match my general thesis, though. Also, charts are cool.

Radio Fritz Trackback

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 02:51:00 +0100

Radio Fritz Trackback:

Ich gab also ein Radiointerview. Die ganze Trackback-Episode findet ihr hier.

Cables mess will not happen if you have it in hand which will...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:06:19 +0100

Cables mess will not happen if you have it in hand which will bring you happy feeling.

Podcasts are my media sweet spot

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 22:29:00 +0100

tl;dr: Podcasts are awesome.

I love podcasts. Not video podcasts, not television or radio shows that somehow made it into a podcast feed, just plain old audio podcasts. All it takes is some interesting people that are talking to each other.

First, some history about me and my listening habits: a couple of years back, I listened to some tech-news shows on my iPod. I relied on them to curate and deliver news to me so I wouldn’t need to read gadget and Apple rumor blogs. Last year (now finally owning an iPhone and the excellent Instacast), I discovered the 5by5 network and with it, some new talk shows that still deliver news, but focus more on the hosts and their interests. My podcast subscription count has increased ever since then.

(Audio) podcasts weigh more than text or pictures, but a lot less than video. I like talking about media weights. I probably didn’t invent that concept but it makes a lot of sense to me. I’ll explain it for you:

Looking at images is the lightest form of media consumption. You can look at an image for two seconds or five minutes, it’s entirely your choice at what parts of it you look in which order, and you can flick between images at any speed. Text is a little bit heavier, but still pretty light: you chose your own reading pace, you can re-read passages with ease or jump back and forth just by moving your eyes¹.

Audio demands way more of your attention. It plays back at a given speed (ignoring some podcast clients’ 1.5x and 2x options), you need to use some kind of UI to fast-forward and rewind, and you can’t really concentrate on anything else while listening to speech. You can, however, ride a train, run, or work out while listening, which is the best thing ever.

Video is audio and visuals, so you can’t really do anything else while watching. It’s the heaviest media.

None of these types of media is, by definition, superior to any other. They can’t even be ordered by the time it takes to create an instance of them. However, since they don’t rely on visuals, podcasts are my personal favorite.

60-to-90-minutes shows (most of the ones I listen to are roughly “about tech”) are my media consumption “sweet spot”. I don’t listen to podcasts entirely for news but for the hosts’ opinions and all the little stuff between the lines one can’t pick up from written text.

I still listen to music at home while working, I still watch TV shows and I still read on my computer and on my Kindle. Podcasts can’t replace other forms of media for me, but they make all my previously boring train rides and workouts a lot more fun and interesting. If you own a smartphone or an iPod, you should absolutely give podcasts a try.²

Also, creating your own podcast isn’t that hard. I basically call Daniel on Skype once a week, we talk about things we like, and post-production takes half an hour or less. People seem to like our show. Today, I realized that Konferenz 28 is, of all the online content I created throughout the years, the first piece that I’m actually proud of.

Update: I made a chart about two-dimensional weights.

This is true for both printed text and text on a computer screen. Scrolling through text is so natural to us nowadays that we don’t even notice we’re using a mouse or touch screen. ↩
Just skim through the iTunes Podcast Directory and find something you think you’d enjoy. It’s that easy. If you’re a tech nerd like me, take a look at 5by5’s shows and start from there. ↩

Running playlist, Nov 2012

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:38:00 +0100

Running playlist, Nov 2012

Perfektion und Erfolg

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:05:00 +0200

Diesen Artikel schreibe ich auf Deutsch, weil Konferenz 28 ein deutschsprachiger Podcast ist und es ein bisschen um ihn geht.

Ich spiele seit 12 Jahren Klavier. Es macht mir Spaß und ich setze mich fast jeden Tag für ein paar Minuten (manchmal auch deutlich länger) ans Instrument. Ich habe nicht den Anspruch, Konzertpianist zu werden, dutzende Seiten lange Brahms-Stücke zu lernen oder große Mengen Geld damit zu verdienen.

Ich bin seit vier Wochen Co-Host eines Podcasts, in dem es um Technikkram und das Internet geht. Ich habe nicht den Anspruch, den besten und beliebtesten deutchsprachigen Podcast zu machen und damit reich zu werden.

Das sind zwei meiner Hobbys.

Sowohl beim Klavierspielen als auch beim Podcasten versuche ich trotzdem, ordentliche Leistungen zu erbringen, aber nur soweit, wie es meinen Spaß fördert.

Ich schlage nicht wild auf die Klaviatur ein, sondern versuche (mehr oder weniger) sinnvoll zu spielen, weil ich dann mehr Spaß habe. Würde ich mir Stücke aussuchen, für die ich täglich mehrere Stunden lang üben müsste, hätte ich keinen Spaß mehr. Aber ich bin auch so fähig genug, um ab und zu Leute zuhören zu lassen oder Stücke auf YouTube zu stellen.

“On air” kritisiere ich keine abstrakte Kunst, weil ich davon kaum Ahnung habe, sondern rede über Dinge, die mich im Alltag interessieren. Gerade ist das vor allem Technikkram. Ich will mich aber nicht vor jeder Aufnahme mehrere Stunden lang in Themen einlesen müssen, um dann im Podcast möglichst klug zu klingen. Ich will keinen zusätzlichen Stress.

Klaviermusik und Podcasts ergeben für mich auch Sinn, wenn man nicht nach Perfektion strebt. Ihr könnt Podcast-Abos kündigen und YouTube-Tabs schließen, wenn euch etwas nicht gefällt. Konferenz 28 soll nicht der einzige Podcast (zum Thema) sein, den ihr hört. Wenn ihr nur einen Podcast wollt, dann sucht euch einen aus, der von Profis gemacht wird, die davon leben. Wir haben nicht den Anspruch, euch über alles zu informieren, was gerade wichtig ist – wir wollen uns nur unterhalten, unsere Meinungen austauschen, euch vielleicht doch den einen oder anderen Tipp geben, den ihr noch nicht kanntet, und ein wenig lachen.

Scheinbar finden das viele Leute okay, denn jede Woche bekommen wir Replys, in denen ihr euch für die Sendung bedankt. Das ist lieb.

Noch kurz zum anderen Thema: Wer sagt, dass ihm Statistiken und messbare Erfolge völlig egal sind, lügt. Ohne Ausnahme. Wir schauen alle ab und zu auf Followerzahlen, auf die Blog-Analytics und aufs Reddit-Karma. Wenn ich keine Twitter-Follower hätte, würde ich da auch nichts posten. Aber ich behaupte, dass mich Statistiken eher wenig interessieren. Wenn ich alle paar Wochen mal wissen will, wie es meinem Blog geht, und “analytics” in die Adressleiste meines Browsers tippe, ist der letzte Aufruf meist schon aus der History verschwunden. Wenn ich Unsinn bastle, vergesse ich es sogar komplett, eine Statistikfunktion einzubauen. Die absoluten Konferenz-Zugriffszahlen spielen für meinen Spaß an der Sache keine Rolle.

Solange jede Woche ein paar Leute den Podcast hören und uns das sagen, lohnt sich für mich der Mehraufwand, unser Gespräch aufzunehmen und zu veröffentlichen.

Five years

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:23:00 +0200

Yesterday, I listened to this Talk Show episode¹ at the gym. About 70 minutes into the show, Gruber and Marco started talking about the new iOS 6 Maps and the Apple/Google divorce. At that moment, I had an idea for a blog post – turns out, twenty minutes later, they kind of said what I wanted to write here, but I’ll try this anyway.

In 2007, when Apple revealed the original iPhone, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt joined Steve Jobs on stage and made a joke about merging the two companies.

Ten minutes earlier in the keynote, Jobs made a prank call to a Starbucks store. There’s no way Apple would do anything even remotely similar today. It’s not only about Jobs and Cook, it’s about Apple’s change from an underdog company to the world’s most valuable brand.

Five years is an extremely long time span in tech. Five years ago, you probably didn’t have a Facebook account. MySpace even had more visitors than Facebook back then. Your laptop looked like this. Second Life was still a thing.

I can’t even imagine where we’ll be in 2017.

Yes, I seem to write about The Talk Show a lot. It’s easily my favourite podcast and you should listen to it. ↩

Konferenz 28

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:51:23 +0200

Konferenz 28:

I’m co-hosting a new German tech podcast!

Twitter Clients, Part 3

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:07:00 +0200

I’m continuing my rant about Mac Twitter clients because my computer setup changed a week ago¹ and I couldn’t get Tweetbot, my then-main client, to run on my new machine (here’s why). I was forced to go back to the still official, but apparently dead Twitter for Mac.

Yesterday, I booted up my old laptop and opened Tweetbot to check my facts. This was going to be a rather whiny blog post, but to my surprise, most of the little annoyances I had were fixed in the 0.8.0 beta. Still, that doesn’t excuse Tweetbot’s weird UI and general sluggishness.

I’m not too unhappy with Twitter for Mac right now, but it’s of course still missing pic.twitter.com support, mute filters and lots of other features.

So, I don’t love any of the currently available clients. I’m however really looking forward to Twitterrific 5, which, according to Craig Hockenberry in this Talk Show episode, is supposed to have some revolutionary secret features, and will be released “soon”.

I decided not to write a blog post about my new MacBook Air 13”, but I might publish some thoughts about screen resolutions, pixel density and portability of laptops later. ↩

Hi there Max! First off, your last post about you sudden realization... made me die of laughter. Secondly, I saw your piano vids with your brother. You were both soooo awesome! Finally, your post about not being the youngest in the room anymore... well, thanks for it. You made me realize lots of stuff with it. It might sound stupid but I became an adult after I read it. I am really thankful. I hope you succeed with whatever project you have. Have a good day. Sie sehen

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 13:17:00 +0200

Thanks. Awesome.

Re: Stupid realizations

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:12:22 +0200

Stupid realizations I had since I moved out of my parents’ house

»If you’re at home alone, it’s still a smart move to put on pants. You’re the only person to answer the door.«

diskursdisko recommended this article from maxfriedrich.de

Here’s why I’d like some kind of “Don’t let people recommend this because it’s stupid” button on QUOTE.fm. My post from last week has been the most popular English “story” on their Discover page for a couple of days now, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it.

Stupid realizations I had since I moved out of my parents' house

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:02:00 +0200

Dust gets on EVERYTHING
I’m in desperate need of more clothes – it takes me about seven or eight days to wear every good item of clothing I own.
It’s actually not the worst thing to have no ceiling light in your room for three weeks.
If you’re at home alone, it’s still a smart move to put on pants. You’re the only person to answer the door.

Hey, please stop recommending this article on QUOTE.fm since it’s intended as a joke and it makes me really sad to see it as a top “story” on their Discover page!

TIL (well, actually, the day before yesterday): the only way to display a heart character on iOS...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:31:47 +0200

TIL (well, actually, the day before yesterday): the only way to display a heart character on iOS is setting the font to ArialMT. If you’re wondering what I’m doing here – it’s a new, kind of secret project with my friends over at Codein and we’ll tell you more about it soon(ish).

Creating a global New Tweet keyboard shortcut for Tweetbot (Mac)

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:45:43 +0200

I gave Tweetbot for Mac another try. I still don’t love it, but it’s certainly moving in the right direction. One of the features I’m missing most though is a global New Tweet shortcut. My solution/workaround is not perfect but it made Tweetbot much nicer for me, so I decided to share it on my blog. If you found a better one, please email me and I’ll update this post to include it.

First, if you haven’t already, go download and install FastScripts. It’s a quite useful utility that allows you to quickly access AppleScripts and assign keyboard shortcuts to them.

Then, download this small AppleScript. Feel free to look at its content, it’s really nothing fancy. Move it to /Library/Scripts/ so it’ll be accessible from FastScripts.

Open the FastScripts Preferences, select the “Script Shortcuts” Tab, find tweetbot-newtweet and assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Boom. Done.

So, did this make your day?