Tag Archives: TLDR

Epresso for Buying Espresso Online

Epresso for buying coffee online
Epresso for buying coffee online

For me Wednesday is the worst day for buying coffee on the way to work. It is the day I usually run out of change entirely, or struggle to find enough small change for a takeaway coffee.

This is why Epresso sounds like such an awesome idea. Epresso is a service where the users set up a prepaid account, and top it up online, which lets them order coffee online, from either a computer or smartphone.

With this service, the customers pay for coffee without cash, and without slowing down service at the cafe. By ordering before they arrive, their coffee will already be waiting once they get to the cafe. The business won’t miss sales because the customer has no cash.

The idea is very simple, and solves a small, but persistent and annoying problem, and that is why I can easily see myself using this, given half a chance.

TL;DR

  • Pre-order and pay for coffee using the Internet
  • Not having change is not a problem
  • Saves time for cafes and customers

Elixir Coffee in Stafford

Elixir Coffee HQ Espresso Lounge
Elixir Coffee HQ Espresso Lounge

One Saturday morning, I stopped off in Stafford on the way to the city. I had been told that there is a cafe just off Webster Road, next to an Ultra Tune, that’s well worth checking out.

In a few ways Elixir is a bit like the Merlo store on James Street. It also stocks a lot of coffee makng paraphernalia, including percolator seals, espresso machines, filters, etc. They also sell their own coffee beans.

Arriving at Elixir Coffee, I ran into David, someone I know through Twitter. Once I ordered my long black, David told me a little more about the place. It turned out that he knew the owners.

Elixir Coffee does not look much like a cafe, and it wasn’t one at first. David told me that Elixir Coffee began life as a small coffee roaster. The owners had always been involved in cafes, starting with the one their parents ran, and so it seems natural that they would have a real enthusiam for coffee, which shows in their product.

They offer a range of different blends, and at least one single origin on offer at any given time. The coffee is the focus, with only a small but varied food menu. And every coffee is served with tasting notes on a small, laminated card.

Espresso and Ice
Espresso and Ice

David suggested that I let the staff choose what I was going to have next. That is how I ended up with a ‘con hielo’ as my second coffee. The crema was impressive, and it was great to try something I hadn’t even heard of before and probably wouldn’t have selected for myself.

TL;DR
Elixir Coffee is worth visiting, assuming you love coffee.
If you don’t, that’s your problem.

Elixir Coffee HQ Espresso Lounge
www.elixircoffee.com.au/
12 Hayward Street
Stafford, 4053
On Facebook

Diaspora, Disrupting Social Media & Delivering T-Shirts

The Diaspora T-Shirt
The Diaspora T-Shirt

When you only have ten invites for a new social network, to whom on Earth do you give them? It is an interesting question, and in a way, unintentionally similar to another shiny new tech thing, Path, which limits you to 50 connections. This week I got my Diaspora t-shirt, as part of my backer’s rewards. A few days later I also got my Alpha invite. With the 10 invites.

Diaspora is not limiting its users to just 50 connections, or even to just the ten that they give you invites for. Understandably as it is in Alpha, they are limiting scale, at least until things move forward some more. Whatever the reasons, I am still left on the wrong side of the network effect and with the question of whom to give one of the ten invites.

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

  1. Populated by purported ‘social media gurus’ or bored IT staff. That’s it.
  2. Early adopters can find their immediate circle of friends.
  3. That guy who made primary school miserable for you wants to become your friend.
  4. Ignoring your coworkers’ friend requests becomes harder to sustain.
  5. Boomers are commenting on their kids’ party photos, thanks to friends tagging them.
  6. Traditional media is reporting on all of those off-colour pages your profile links to, as funny as they were at the time.

Obviously I would want to give them to people I already interact with, and of course I would like to give them to people who would actually use them, but who are they? It is like Google Wave all over again. Not everyone even looked at it after they cemented their geek cred by acquiring an invite.

Diaspora Alpha
Diaspora Alpha

In the Diaspora Alpha, you can manage your updates by groups called ‘Aspects’, post photos and even publicise your own content through Facebook, Twitter and, even more cool, as an RSS feed. Comments on photos and posts are there, as is the ability to reshare posts across aspects after publication. I am interested in seeing if doing this makes all comments visible too, but unfortunately I can’t test that right now.

TL;DR

  • Looks cool
  • Is a pretty good fit
  • Guarantees geek credibility
  • The Diaspora Alpha looks cool too.

Cool Shirt, Cool Search Engine

Blekko T-Shirt
Blekko T-Shirt

I just got a new t-shirt sent to me by Blekko, the new search engine. Blekko has a lof of cool stuff that I have written about on my other blog, at Contoleon.com.

Aside from sending me a really cool new t-shirt, Blekko is cool because it introduces a few new tools in an easy to use format. As cool as the SEO tools are, there are a lot of cool things there just for everyday use. A few of these features are:

  • Being able to create groups called Slashtags and limiting your search to just them. For popular searches that are overcrowded, like blogging or music, this restricts the search to known credible sources, cutting the spam.
  • The ability to edit and manage Slashtags can be shared, making it easier for you to collaborate to create groups of sites that are credible and useful for later use.
  • Searches, including terms and slashtags, can be ordered by relevance or date, making it easy to find the most recently updated content. This search can then be subscribed to as an RSS feed.
  • They also sent me a cool t-shirt, because I emailed them after this post: Blekko’s Launch Rocked: 10 Thoughts.

TL;DR

  • Create Slashtags of sites and other Slashtags, search only them
  • Share editorship of Slashtags to pool knowledge
  • Subscribe to searches as RSS feeds
  • Cool free t-shirt

My6sense on Android

My6Sense for Android
My6Sense for Android

My6Sense is one of the most used apps I have installed on my phone. It combines Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and RSS feeds in the one place and sorts it based on user behaviour.

The app is good at following links from Google Buzz and Twitter. Facebook and Google Buzz comments are supported, and so are likes. The app can also share any content through Google Buzz, Twitter and Facebook, as well as whatever options the phone can provide.

The biggest problem I had with My6Sense was the lack of good OPML support for importing my feeds on Google Reader. As a result my install of My6Sense is biased towards Google Buzz and Facebook. My6Sense also comes preloaded with a range of ‘Popular Feeds’, which are easily removed.

My6Sense’s ‘Digital Intuition’ and how the app’s learning process is tracked for the user is really cool. The ‘Your Digital Intuition’ progress bar encourages the user to continue to use My6Sense by giving feedback on activity and managing the user’s expectations with the one feature.

It would also be great if it could mark Google Reader feeds as read and if there was a mechanism for dropping Tweets, Google Buzz and Facebook updates faster out of the relevant list as their value drops faster than a blog post.

My6Sense is a very good app for skimming through and managing the large volume of content most people end up being buried in.

TL;DR

  • Makes it easy to quickly browse through feeds, which is great for mobile phone usage.
  • Lets you know how good it thinks it is at sorting your feeds.