A Twitter feature: Read later to specific list functionality

Today, Twitter added a new feature to it great service; four photo’s to one tweet and tagging people (who than get a notification). It was Sofie Geyskens tweet that brought it to my attention and they seems also to be experimenting with a share functionality. But it’s not what I neccesarily want from twitter. The one I miss most is a simple read later to list functionality. I follow a lot of people who are sharing interesting content but I check twitter mostly on the go, meaning I don’t have much attention or time to read these interesting articles they post. Mostly, I favorite interesting content but I never go back to these to check them when I have more time…

The simple add to list functionality could be a fourth icon in the series of reply, retweet and favorite that opens a choice to add it to specific read later list.

So Twitter, follow me in this request, pleeeeaaaasse! 🙂

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What if the Railways were run as a public/private club? #oipd

I have to admit I’m a real fan of traveling by train to work and back. I’m a forenzer who enjoys those 45 minutes to prepare some work, enjoy the Metro newspaper, catch up on my social media streams, watch people and make up stories around them or simply write this blogpost. Two days ago I took a new 1 year subscription and I was wondering why it did cost me so much. The service is quite often ok but not tremendous. Every now and than, I prefer going by car and not by train because of tight scheduled meetings in several cities. And I take holidays… I also believe i get my tickets inspected only around 30% of my rides.

What if the railways were run as a public/private club?

For the public part of service, everybody could come and get a transport ticket (not a guaranteed seat!) and take the train immediately to the destination of their choice.  The private part however is the subscription formula in which people pay a membership fee for using the services the railways offer (wifi, workspace, waiting rooms indoor, daily coffee …) In return the members of the Railways can reserve a guaranteed seat of the train of their likes and get the invoice of at the end of the month.

Although there are a lot of points to consider in this railway experience innovation, technology and infrastructure are the two main areas to invest in.

For instance; You can work with small screens in the seats or ceilings pointing out a seat is taken by mr(s) x or not at all. A small sensor in the seat notices whether a seat is taken and can be billed. The build-in mechanisme triggers a message to the member asking whether he has missed his train and would like to reserve a seat on the next one. Being a Railways member guarantees you your favorite spot at the bar while you can drink as much or as little as you like in benefitting from the extra services.

I would believe this is the vision Belgian Public Railways (@nmbs) and its new boss, Jo Cornu should aim for.
And I believe @kodel could help them with that!

NoWayGoSay.com: The anonymous bitching status update solution. #oipd

Sometimes you just know that it’s not a good idea to update your social media status with what you really think. Whether it is because your boss or colleague is following you, or you don’t want to hurt the feelings of a particular loved one, like your mom or girlfriend. Or perhaps you want to say to someone that you love him/her but you were too afraid to tell. It works both ways.

NoWayGoSay helps you in ventilating your thoughts and find supporters (commenters) for it.

How does it work? 
You send a private message to NoWayGoSay that anonymously publishes it into a stream on the website. No-one will know you send that status. People can directly interact with your NoWayGoSay status. And everyone is able to follow a particular NoWayGoSay status to be kept up-to-date with all interactions.
The interactions are aggregated and pushed in real time to all media channels connected. (at first, the NoWayGoSay website and app with Facebook & Twitter integration)

No real business model here yet.
Or perhaps blackmailing the users who use the platform when critical mass is reached. *evil grin* (just kidding…)

‘Smart phone, dumb battery’ profile mode. #oipd

Yesterday I had the idea during a bachelor party in which almost everyone had the same problem after 4-5 hours of intensive smartphone use; (almost) no battery.

Since i attended some events lately where I wanted to tweet, post pictures to my instagram  or just check-in, I now pay attention to put myself in airplane mode and only put on data when I want it. The problem yesterday is that the airplane mode makes yourself pretty unreachable…

So the idea is a smartphone life hack: Create a default profile in which you can switch, just as easy as to and from airplane mode, but have text and voice active.

The main advantage is that you could be reached at all times. Another advantage is that you are more focussed on enjoying the event and handling your ‘online sharing urge’ stuff in a time-boxed way (I, for instance, did open my data connection every hour so I was not totally offline and did respond to most of the comments)

Appreciation and things to think about.

It has been one of those days. You certainly have them too. You came back from holidays. You’re happy that the world kept turning and all of a sudden, small things go wrong, they don’t look like small things any more and all of a sudden, you think: What? How did that happen? When? Why? What the … should I do? And why the … do I need to fix this?!

I tweeted the simple question without any context: “What should I do?” and three people returned great answers: