Lately
I bought a Nexus One on launch day, dropping $530 (+$30 tax), and it has been totally awesome. For the time being, it is the fastest, thinnest, most crisp phone in the world. It is both gorgeous and powerful.
Because of the Nexus One, I’ve been using Google Wave to talk with a couple of friends, since one of them bought one. I’ve been on a wave or two over the course of the day, seeing notifications in my tab bar, or by my Wave Notifier Chrome extension, and responding when new stuff appears. Just picking up keyboard shortcuts and simple familiarity of use has warmed me considerably to Wave.
While I still don’t see its place in my life longterm yet, there is something unique about Wave that I like: it compels me to write a paragraph at a time. Nothing else does this. IM and chat services encourage me to write in sentences, and more often just words and fragments, and email has me write little essays that seem to come with lots of overhead. I have spent evenings writing a handful of emails. And at the same time, I’ve lamented that speaking in IM and chat hasn’t been proselike enough to keep my writing mind in shape. But with Wave, I’m writing real paragraphs at a rapid pace, and I can detect how refreshing that is to some languishing parts of my brain.
Though this predates me getting the Nexus One, I’ve been addicted to Android development lately. It’s sure not because it’s easy; it’s a time consuming and occasionally insanely frustrating endeavor, and each new type of thing you want to attempt can come with a high learning curve. But, putting something of your own out there in front of people, engaging in the feedback cycle, seeing reviews roll in, and putting spit and polish on something you feel proud of – those are rewarding qualities. Developing for the web comes with some of that, but there isn’t the same kind of connection to community.
Or maybe it’s all just novel. I’m not really sure yet. But I feel a lot more motivated on side projects than I have in a while. I worked my tail off over the last half of the holidays to get Campyre out the door, an Android client for the popular web chat service Campfire. Over the last few days, I pulled similar marathon hours to put up a nice update to Congress, the Congressional pocket directory app I put out last fall. “Congress” has actually attained a consistent level of downloads, ~100 per day, for over a month now. It seems to me that that is evident of at least a little word of mouth, and its continued growth is extremely motivating.
I think it boils down to enjoying a feeling of ownership. That, and running away from all of my ambiguous life problems.