Episode 281: The Mayor of Chocolate Sundaes

TOPIC: Way of the future.

This week, Dan and Merlin continue their discussion on updates to their systems and their productivity worlds. In particular: how have new technologies and critical masses of users led to wanting or needing fewer intermediary communications layers?

For years, email was more than just the lingua franca; it was that one internet communication protocol that every user could be counted upon to have and use.

But, today? Options, baby, options! Sometimes for worse, but, so often, for much better.

Links for this episode:

• Ungainly X-Mann Meetup #14 — Merlin Mann
  MERLIN MANN (Back to Work, Roderick on the Line, Reconcilable Differences, You Look Nice Today, et al.) invites you to drop by Two Cats Comics on the evening of Thursday, August 4th to hang out, talk about comics, and just say, “Hi.”
• Allergic to life: the Arizona residents 'sensitive to the whole world' | US news | The Guardian
  It was decided that the best way to get us straight from the car into the shower, where we could wash the outside world’s chemicals away, was to enter the house completely naked. So we took off our clothes and marched without dignity across the gravel driveway.
• Rocket—faster emoji for your Mac
  
• Critical mass (sociodynamics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  In social dynamics, critical mass is a sufficient number of adopters of an innovation in a social system so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth.
• Network effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people.
• calibre - E-book management
  
• Amazon Alexa
  When you buy music from the Digital Music Store, you can immediately play it from your music library. You can also import songs to your Amazon Music library and play it on your Alexa device. Eligible Prime members can also listen to Prime Music.
• Build and cultivate your own community - Ning.com
  
• Reconcilable Differences #29: Six Fax Machines - Relay FM
  
• Merlin Mann on Twitter: "My Parks & Recreation Primer: Start with: s02e07 (Greg Pikitis) Best Ep: s04e11 ("Get on Your Feet!") Sentimental Fave: s07e11 (Goodbyes)"
  My Parks & Recreation Primer: Start with: s02e07 (Greg Pikitis) Best Ep: s04e11 ("Get on Your Feet!") Sentimental Fave: s07e11 (Goodbyes)
• Free ebooks by Project Gutenberg - Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg offers over 50,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.
• Category:Social networking services - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
• List of defunct social networking websites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
• Warez scene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
• Junecloud
  
• Learning the bash Shell, 3rd Edition - O'Reilly Media
  
• "Parks and Recreation" Greg Pikitis (2009)
  

• Amazon Songs of Summer (Visit the link to checkout the Amazon Songs of Summer playlist).

• Wealthfront (Visit Wealthfront.com/5by5 to get your first $15,000 managed for free).