Blogging

/ Me, Tech

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One of my buddies, Kent, was interested in starting a blog like mine and he asked me what I used. So, let’s cut right to it.

Here are the sites/tools I use:
• WordPress (blogging platform)
• Dreamhost (for hosting my site and some images)
• Godaddy (for hosting my domain)
• Flickr (for hosting most of my high quality photos)
• Marsedit (my OS X native client for blogging)
• IA Writer (for drafting longer form posts)
• Tweetfeed (for auto publishing my posts to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Dreamweaver (kind of embarrassing)
• Coda (yep, keeping’ it alive)
• Macbook 11″ Early 2010 (I use either this or a Macbook Pro 15″)

So, what’s the best way to blog and share photos? Well, this blog was created using WordPress. You can do a ton with WP, but I’ll warn you—it’s a serious pain to customize the design. In addition, posting and publishing with photos isn’t super efficient… unless you have an special client for it.

Blogging Alternatives
If you created a blog today, I’d say Tumblr would be decent. They definitely make it easier to post, and their mobile client was dead simple. I’d also say Medium would be an excellent alternative. In fact, if I were to start a blog today, I’d probably go with Medium first. There’s a little stigma tied to it, but honestly, they make writing and posting dead simple.

Photos
As for hosting photos, there’s really no winner in this department. For me, I’m still using Flickr. It works with my OS X client, MarsEdit. If you only post photos, Instagram would probably be the best way to go, but the downside is that the photos are low-resolution. Unfortunately, there’s no great answer here.

Blogging for the Long Term
If you’re deciding to start up a blog, just know that you won’t get as much reward as posting content on Facebook or Instagram. There’s a good chance that you’ll stop because there are no engagement/reward loops. For example, you’ll start up a blog, and then after 3 months you’ll grow tired of it.

Now that you know the draw backs, go out there and start blogging. And let me know if you guys can recommend any better tools for me to use. There are days where I would love to move to another blogging platform, but I always end up coming back to wordpress. *sigh*

The Origins of jeffwongdesign.com
I’d like to thank Foo for getting me into blogging. Jeffwongdesign.com is about 8 years, and sharing here has been refreshing. Foo always described a blog as being a playground with no real rules. It’s nice to have a place where you can write and post whatever/whenever, without anyone looking over your shoulder. It’s also kind of cool walk down memory lane and browse through old posts on occasion. ^_^

My Commute to Work

/ Cali, Me, Photo

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My commute to work is roughly 30-40 minutes, and I just wanted to share some of the things I typically see.

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The day starts with me walking to the bus stop. On my way there, I see the highway backed up with traffic.

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And of course, an artsy photo of the fence for no reason at all. Look at that bokeh. ^_^

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There’s an insane hill that I walk down to get to the bus stop.

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Seriously insane.

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This part of the neighborhood is kind of grimy, but there’s a softer side.

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Lots of homeless folks live under this bridge. You’ll usually see them set up camp with a full set up.

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Another artsy photo. Check out that sharpness. ^_^

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Here’s my bus stop. It’s kind of nasty… I really don’t like to think about what all the black stuff is on the ground, surrounding the area.

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I typically take the 9 or 9R into the city.

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Typically I don’t get a seat for the first half of the ride, and then somewhere along the way some spots open up. Unfortunately, there are usually crazy people on the bus in the morning. *sigh*

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Here’s the path I take to get to work.

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And this is what my stop looks like. There you have it—my daily commute. Some days I’ll take in an Uber if I’m running little behind… and hopefully in the future I can ride in on my boosted board. ^_^

My Wallet Evolution

/ Me

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Over the last few years, I’ve gone through several kinds of wallets. In my journey to find the perfect wallet, the form factor has become smaller and smaller each time.

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My current wallet is just a money clip. So far, I love how compact it is. The only problem I’ve found is that you can’t really carry cash along with the cards—it just doesn’t quite work. The other problem I’ve discovered is that any cards that I swipe over RFID readers doesn’t seem to work. I believe the metal clip has something to do with it, so I may try getting another clip made of carbon fiber instead in the future. For now, I’ll continue to use this clip.

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One of my buddies, Justin, gave me this wallet last year. It’s the same one he uses. I would say that this probably one of the best wallets I’ve ever used, except for the fact that it’s not that durable. You’ll pretty much have to buy a new one every year if you go this direction. The good news is they’re they’re pretty cheap on Amazon. This wallet carries cards, cash, and it plays nicely with RFID scanners. I also love how compact it is.

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What’s interesting about this wallet is that it’s actually micro compact flash card holder. I bought it two years ago when I was in Japan town. At that time, I was using a similar wallet made of metal from urban outfitters. I believe they were metal cigarette holders, resold as metal wallets. I used those style wallets for a long time, but the biggest flaw was that you had to open and close them, and sometimes they would open by accident on their own. The micro compact flash card holder was one of my favorite wallets for a while because of its low profile, but it was kind of a hassle to get cards out of it.

Anyway, these are some of the wallets I’ve used over the last couple of years. What are you rocking?

Bunch 1.1

/ Me, Product

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Bunch beta was released a month ago, and since then we’ve made a couple of tweaks based on user feedback. Thanks to all our beta users for providing us insight, and kudos to the Bunch team for making the updates. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you can download it here.

I’m incredibly proud of the app, and I love using it with Annie, Vinny and my friends. The question is whether the app is useful and appealing to other people around the world.

The biggest bit of feedback we got when interviewing users is that they didn’t know how to message. We spent time improving the first time experience, hopefully to show users how messaging can be done easily by pressing and holding. This is the #1 issue we’re hoping to address in this update.

We’ve also made it so that you can add more than 8 people. For users that initially joined and had a ton of friends message them, this was a huge pain point. I know for a fact that I was having trouble messaging people that were outside my top 8.

Anyway, I’ll share more on lessons learned soon. Until then, try the app and let me know what you think. If you don’t have anyone to message, just add me as a friend. Search for “Jeff Wong”, and we can message each other. ^_^