Posts Tagged: press

Noticed — 2 Comments
23
Sep 09

New York Times mention

Pretty exciting – my work was featured in a New York Times article on productivity tools.   Farhad Manjoo writes:

“One Mac app that has found a way to solve this problem is called Freedom, which blocks all of your computer’s networking functions for a pre-determined number of minutes. In other words, once you set it, you’ve got no Web, no instant messaging, no e-mail — and the only way to undo Freedom’s block before the time runs out is to restart your machine.”

Freedom also garnered a mention on Mashable, in a post on 20 productivity tools for Mac users:

“Sometimes the Internet is more of a distraction than it is a productivity aid. For those times, the best solution is just to unplug. Freedom will turn off your Mac’s networking card for up to 8 hours, so you can get what you need to get done done, without the distraction of Facebook, Twitter and the latest viral videos.

Obviously, as a web writer, this doesn’t really work for me during the work week, but it’s great for when I’m on a deadline — like trying to finish an article of 20+ Mac productivity tools!”

This was cross-posted to the Freedom blog (http://macfreedom.com).

Noticed — 3 Comments
1
Feb 09

Post-Gazette on 35+ Facebook Adoption

This morning’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a trends article on adoption of Facebook by older users, featuring a quote from yours truly.

To friend or not to friend: That’s just one of the many vexing challenges confronting baby boomer Facebook users — the fastest growing demographic on a site that has exploded in popularity in 2008, growing 127 percent to 222 million visitors and ranked as the top social networking site worldwide.

Facebook has not released statistics detailing the ages of those new visitors, but nearly a third of Facebook users are between the ages of 35 and 54, according to Comscore, an online audience measuring company.

via OMG Mom’s on Facebook And so are a lot of boomers.

Software — 8 Comments
12
Aug 08

Freedom in the Telegraph

Following yesterday’s excitement regarding Freedom’s appearance in BoingBoing and Lifehacker, the Telegraph (UK) has an article about the software.

A new tool promises to help computer users lacking in willpower by banning them from the internet and email for set periods.

Freedom, which is free to download, disables a computer’s internet connection for up to three hours at a time.

The only way to over-ride the block is to re-boot the computer, a time-consuming task that should deter users from breaking their self-imposed bans.

The programme is designed to help procrastinating computer users, particularly those who work from home, to resist the temptation to constantly check sites like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia, as well as their email accounts.

Fred Stutzman, the developer behind the programme, said that he was motivated to build Freedom by his own lack of self-control.

…other people have been dismissive about the internet addicts who feel unable to go cold turkey on their own.

“There is already a product available to eliminate online distractions from your work time: it’s called ‘willpower’, wrote a commenter called Brownie on the Lifehacker blog.

Mr Stutzman’s response to the critics? “I don’t disagree with them – in a perfect world we’d all be able to limit our Internet use, TV watching and chocolate-chip-cookie consumption. The reality is that when we’re faced with a deadline, something like Freedom can help, and there’s no shame.”

This is officially too funny. I love the internets.

Noticed / Software / Thoughts — No Comments
21
Apr 08

Freedom and Close Networks

On Friday, I released Freedom, software that fights the oppression of the internet. Incredibly, through the power of del.icio.us, Reddit, Twitter, blogs and endless Tumblr’s, Freedom has spread widely, with tens of thousands of views. Even more incredibly, I received a donation for my efforts, proving that Freedom is truly on the march. Here’s some of my favorite Freedom coverage:

And while most traffic to Freedom came in from the web or blogs, a substantial bit of Freedom’s traffic and buzz came from Twitter (which I was able to track via Tweetscan’s great, real-time analytics).

Techcrunch and I agree that smaller, more personal networks are the next wave. This has large implications for social (viral) content distribution. First a caveat: By volume, blogs are still king. However, compared to blogs, with their monolith long-post form, and invisible audience, these “closer” networks better fit social content. What do people want to do on the internet? They want to share links. Twitter and Tumblr are precisely tailored to link-based message passing (the fuel of viral traffic), aligning perfectly with our desires.

The real value of “close” networks, in my opinion, is knowledge of one’s audience. Being able to look at one’s Twitter followers and know who is reading you is incredibly powerful, if for no other reason than the milieu of sharing is pre-established. Ever notice how people on Twitter don’t adopt personas? Knowing one’s audience frees users to create as themselves, which is the ultimate sustainable model. The fact that viral content has moved into these close networks is very significant – and we’ll only see more of it going forward.