March 2020 Recap

Keenen Charles

31 Mar 2020 — 1 min read

March 2020, the year of a month. Yet I can't remember much about it. When did lockdown begin? Have we always been in lockdown? Did I just imagine a world beyond this?

I've been as distracted by the news as anyone. It's impossible not to be. We're living through a historic event that will shape the future of our world. And we're all forced to abandon our usual lives and plans for the foreseeable future. AND we have no idea when it'll all be truly over. It's a fucking lot.

Through all that I've tried my best to get a little bit done each day. A couple bug fixes here. Improving a design there. It's not as much as I would've liked, but it's a few steps in the right direction.

The most productive thing I've done this month is start a new project. It's called #AtHomeStreams a simple listing of upcoming live streams you can check out. Hopefully it helps someone finding a fun distraction in this difficult time. I still need to add more content and then do a Product Hunt launch this week.

Other Projects

InboxReads: 6.6K pageviews in March. Not the growth I hoped for but of course interest in newsletters dropped. I started writing blog articles as part of a new content marketing strategy but it's too early to know if it pays off.

Wave Radio: Quietly released the 2.0 update and iterating on it as users try it out. Hopefully it'll be ready for a full relaunch in April.

April?

All I need is a sign that this is almost over. Projects will continue along, but that's most important. It'll do wonders for my sanity. Anything else will be a bonus.

Meta is Getting AR Right

It seems that major tech companies are placing two major bets on the "next platform:" Artificial Intelligence and Augmented/Virtual Reality. Meta has dabbled in AI, but it's poured a ton of money into AR and VR in the past decade. They've been tackling

AI is Not a Friend

The following tweet might easily be one of the most unintentionally dystopian posts I've seen. At first, it seems fine. Changes to APIs on iOS can harm the app ecosystem and what's possible for developers. But this part sticks out. Have you seen it yet? a

People Power

For a long stretch of human history, meritocracy would have been a foreign concept. People were born into positions and no one expected to be in a different position at the end of their lives. The promise of meritocracy must have been intoxicating for the masses when it became a

Dark Mode Sucks

There I've said it. The decision by major tech companies to add native dark mode support to their operating systems is the biggest mistake in the last decade. Does it look like you're doing some cool hacks with Angelina Jolie? I guess. But does it look