The potential of unencumbered communication between people, real people, was mind blowing. In those days we had “long distance calls” – you had to pay per minute to reach people outside of the arbitrarily placed boundaries (they were intentional, but created as a toll by telcos). This meant you really only called people that weren’t in your city when there was some sense of urgency, or you had business reasons.

Along comes the web, which gave those that cared to learn how, the ability to publish anything we wanted to – for anyone on earth to read. The history of the web is covered well elsewhere so I’ll spare you that rollercoaster. At the time, say 1995, big news media and publishers controlled the narrative, and people were simply one-way consumers – reading magazines, newspapers, and watching TV as the sole sources of information inputs. There were exceptions of course (the BBS, Usenet, FidoNet, Compuserve, AOL, etc.) but most people didn’t know about them.

The sense of wonder and possibility that accompanied this new Information Age has materialized in my world in the form of technology startups. I use the term startup, though it’s not really the best descriptor. It’s more like tests, or more commonly MVPs: I have an idea for a thing, dissect it, build it, then let a few people use it and see what happens. If there’s enough interest, I’ll add a revenue model and test/iterate.

By the way, this is a terrible approach for most founders and will result in a lot of lost sleep and relationships. If you’re looking for the quickest path to MVP, please pick up the Startup Owners Manual and read every page. I do not recommend the “build it and they will come” approach.

I digress. I’ve been reflecting on this ability to make things quickly quite a bit lately. It feels a little like a superpower. I can take something that exists as a simple idea to the computer screen in all of its glory. It may be ugly, but it will work. There’s a term in web development called “full stack” which means front end (browser/client side using HTML/CSS/Javascript etc.) and back end (server side databases/scripting languages, etc.). Today most people are trained (or choose) to specialize in one or the other. There are technical and non-technical founders, single founders in search of co-founders to fill some gap or even help formulate the idea itself.

I’ve been working on a few ideas and will present them here for your scrutiny and feedback. With the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro, one of these ideas has been occupying more time in my brain than it has in a while. It may be the first to materialize… it’s a new take on the web in 3D with no changes required to the web itself. It works with existing websites and infrastructure. More on that soon.

How about you? What’s your superpower?

Choosing to remove the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn apps is going to be somewhat controversial. I say that with one caveat: I’ll still be on those platforms and engaged, but only through the web browser, and only with certain controls.

One control is the use of the DuckDuckGo browser for iOS/Android. If you don’t know what that is, you do now. Explore it, see if it feels right for you. Read about the ratings feature for each site as it relates to tracking, privacy, and permission.

Another control is the use of the DuckDuckGo plugin/extension for all major browsers. It provides the same features, but for your browser of choice. Mine is now Firefox.

Another goal here to to regain control of my content. Posting on owned media first feels better today than ever before. Long forms, short, photos, all of it will be rooted here – on a site I own and control, where I get to choose privacy and permissions settings.

If this sounds overly complex or “too hard,” here’s something to consider: these changes are all one-time. It’s a matter of changing habits, and that’s a matter of turning priorities into action. To me, especially these days, the reality is that my data is valuable, and I’m nothing more than data points to sell ads against for the platforms I mentioned. Yuck.

If you have thoughts and feedback, let me know. This is going to be a fun experiment. I hope we all learn something from it!

As always, thank you for being here!

How many of you remember what the gaming ecosystem looked like in 2007? There were consoles, PC gaming, Macs were practically a no-show except for “light” games, and mobile gaming was ports of 8 bit gaming engines and evolved versions of snake.

No one cared about playing games on the phone, that’s not what they were for, they were for email (Windows CE, Blackberry), messaging, and phone calls. Nokia’s N-Gage platform notwithstanding

Fast forward to today, iOS and Android (phones) own the market that was created when the iPhone was released… that market is called “Casual Games.” There’s been no shortage of debate about how powerful the phones are, and how well they can play games, but without a doubt, nearly everyone plays games on their phones.

These games aren’t typically using the latest whiz-bang graphics, or VR, or or even team play. They’re nothing like what a “gamer” would play. They’re far to uninteresting. The gamer wants wicked refresh rates, absurd FPS, and the latest and greatest GPUs and CPUs with as much memory as possible. Add a VR headset and the requirements increase further.

The casual gamer wants to be able to enjoy themselves, play puzzle games, grow farms, checkers, peer to peer backgammon, and so on. Things that run perfectly on their mobile devices.

What’s happening today is a very similar revolution. Oculus released the Oculus go, powered by what amounts to a mobile phone’s core. They’ve stripped the non-essential software and hardware and put it in the market.

What’s different this time? The Oculus Go leverages a well tuned app store ecosystem, developed with their partners at Samsung while building Gear VR. Why does the app store matter? Says Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of iOS, iPad and iPhone marketing, in a Rolling Stone story called “Apple: How iPhone Gaming Revolutionized Video Games”

“We thought maybe we’d get 50 apps to start, but on the first day we had 500, and we thought that was an omen. But I’d be lying if I said we thought it would be as revolutionary as it would become. It’s changed the world. It’s changed the way software is written and distributed. It’s changed the gaming industry.”

Simply? Consumers want an easy button. The Oculus Go is incredibly simple, and easy. The Oculus Go is not for the “gamers” among us. It’s a very simple and elegant entry into the consumer VR space. It provides exactly the same experience that the current casual games do on iOS and Android, but in VR. You can play with friends, watch movies and TV, and of course you can do most of it in real time with friends.

Here’s a quote from a friend of mine, and new Go convert/evangelist Elie Finegold: “Got another one today for my wife so we can hang together while I’m traveling.” This comes from our first experience in Oculus Rooms. He and I spent the better part of an hour just chatting and catching up. He was so taken by it, well, you see what happened.

We’re on the edge of something great here. I hope you’ll follow along for more as it unfolds.

Previous Go stories:
New to the Oculus Go? Here are 10 apps to get you started.
Wireless consumer VR: slip it on and Go. Anywhere.

I live in 350 sq ft. with my wife, daughter, and two dogs. It’s nice to be able to zone out and be in my own space without having to be tethered to the PC and the Samsung HMD Odyssey. I’ve even used it outside in a camping chair.

My current usage patterns suggest that it’s a replacement for using Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Flipboard, and so on on my iPhone X. I set up a couple of web based Google Mail accounts too. It’s remarkably usable for these things. I have bookmarks set for all of them, so they’re just a click away.

As far as VR experiences, there are several things I keep going back to. Wonder Glade has several mini games. For some reason, I really enjoy the basketball and mini-golf.

Proton Pulse is a great breakout/bricks type game apparently made for Gear VR as it uses head motions, not the controller. I expect that’ll be updated, but it’s well worth the $2.99.

A couple of other interesting things: Mondly (interactive language practice) and MelodyVR (360° live concerts with multiple camera positions).

I also love that Altspace is here. That brings the promise of social VR to an untethered, inexpensive headset. I haven’t tested all of the games, but being able to play with others, cross platform, is intriguing.

I haven’t test the party feature yet. I have a few friends with Go, but if you’re ever online at the same time I am, I’d be happy to give it a shot.

Of course the consumption experiences are great too. Hulu, Netflix, Amaze, Gala… they all do exactly what you expect.

There are some things that would make the experience better, but they’re certainly not show stoppers. Copy and pasting text, a “right click” somehow in the browser, pairing of other Bluetooth devices (keyboard, mouse, headphones), and a way to view a computer’s screen interactively. Think Bigscreen, but two way.

Imagine setting up a virtual server at Digital Ocean with Ubuntu, and being able to control that machine from your Go, anywhere with WIFI. I’d love to use this for work, but like with VR in general, this is still a wide open area for devs to tackle.

More soon.

You can pick one up at Best Buy, or follow this link to Amazon. It is an affiliate link, so if you make a purchase there, Heather and I will receive a small percentage of the sale.

Thirty years later, computing has moved from a silo on a desktop to a globally disbursed, always connected network. Sure we still have machines in front of us, but they’re used largely to do things with the internet.

Consumers have never had more choice in platforms – all most people need is a way to access the things they’ve stored somewhere in “the cloud.” More and more, the consumer desktop/laptop is being cast aside in favor of smaller and lighter devices, like tablets and large screen smart phones.

It’s with this realization decided that I’ve decided to transcend the idea of an operating system, and move even further toward platform independence. Over the next several years, computing will go through another massive change, moving away from LCD displays placed 16 – 24 inches from your nose to displays resting quite literally on it.

As importantly, the resulting ecosystem will be, by necessity, platform independent. To use the social VR spaces and to participate in the future of work, you’ll need a machine capable of rendering the environment and a headset. There is no place for vendor lock-in in this space.

Great work is being done for the next generation of human computer interaction. Oculus, Vive, Samsung, Pimax, and many others are working on their best versions of VR displays. Room-scale VR is more than a sci-fi feature, it’s available today. The VR market is heating up, with competition in every space – input devices, displays, head and motion tracking, and even in world building. Apple is also on board, and that in itself should serve as notice to the market that a major shift is coming.

But VR is the future, right? Kind of.

On Wednesday of this week, I’ll be assembling my first Windows powered desktop PC in dangerously close to 10 years. It’s a workhorse, with plenty of power for the future. Today it’ll allow me to edit 360° video with ease, and of course edit traditional video as well – all in the name of Epic Mini Life.

It’ll also allow me to use any VR software title on the market with no frame skipping or delays what so ever. I won’t have a “monitor” attached to it, it’ll be “headless.” I’ll be using Virtual Desktop and Leap Motion VR instead of a mouse/trackpad.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment, and it may not work out exactly as I expect, but doing anything worth a damn is filled with the unexpected isn’t it? This is my sweet spot… doing things that have never been done, working on technologies that aren’t yet mainstream, and creating things that most don’t even know they need. Yet.

In case you’re wondering, I’ll be using the 4k Pimax headset instead of Oculus or Vive solutions. I’ll lay out more of that decision as the experiment begins.

You read it here… I’m building a PC, powered by Windows 10. I’ll keep my iPad Pro for portability, and I’ll hand my 2012 MacBook Pro down to my daughter, keeping it in the family.

Here’s to the future.