Notices by Jorge Arango (jarango@mastodon.social)

Skimfluencer: someone with a popular social media presence who shares advice & opinions while demonstrating only superficial/theoretical knowledge of the subject. (E.g., anyone in their 20s giving career advice.)

#neologism

@eaton that's how I've been using it too. (GPT 4o Mini is also doing great in the 'good enough but cheap’ dept.)

I've started using Llama 3.1 8B with some command line AI workflows. It's pretty good! Slower than GPT 4o and not as 'smart' — but it's *free* and *local*. (I.e., all data stays in my computer.) Amazing. (Also a reminder that commercial model providers don't have much of a moat — unless they build services around these things.)

@thomasfuchs this was a beautiful device as well. Feels like a thing that would foster focused writing.

@stags @thomasfuchs I hadn't seen that one in particular, but the tiny screen and nonstandard keyboard make me very apprehensive. (I'm not really on the market for one of these, BTW – just saying the Epson computer would've been great for the use case when it came out.)

@naught101 @stags @thomasfuchs I would love to see a modern take on the Radio Shack Model 100. http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

@naught101 @stags @thomasfuchs yeah, I’ve seen those. There’s several like them. They all suffer from the same problem: tiny screens that don’t take advantage of the width of the keyboard. (I understand why product designers do this: they’re using off-the-shelf parts to save costs.)

@lukasfx @naught101 @stags @thomasfuchs yes, someone else just brought that device to my attention. It’s almost exactly what I had in mind!

Pet peeve: “podcasts” that offer no RSS feed and don’t show up in the major podcast directories. Folks, if the show is only available via a closed, proprietary platform, IT’S NOT A PODCAST.

INFORMA(C)TION No. 161: Possible career directions for designers, plus Nathan Shedroff on strategy and other things worth your attention https://mailchi.mp/jarango/osrw4b5llf?e=4b8ff59ee3

@austingovella that's weird indeed. Are they not working in your email app? Or are you also having trouble in your web browser?

@apolaine @austingovella oof, that absolutely sucks. I may have to start exploring other newsletter platforms. 😞

@apolaine thanks. I've considered Buttondown, but the fact that it depends on one person makes me nervous.

@apolaine @buttondown those are good counterpoints for sure. (Not sure I agree about Obsidian, though — they do have a team, albeit small.)

@eaton I know! There is so much potential in these tools. And they're so accessible!

INFORMA(C)TION No. 160: How I used AI to co-curate my 2023 year-in-review podcast, plus other things worth your attention.

#InformationArchitecture #AI #LLM #UX

https://mailchi.mp/jarango/informaction-160

My last podcast of 2023 was a compilation of themes that emerged during the year. I curated them using an AI — an approach that can work for other information architecture challenges. This post explains how I did it: https://jarango.com/2024/01/07/using-ai-as-an-assistant-to-organize-content/

#InformationArchitecture #UX #UxDesign #UxUi

The information architect's greatest occupational hazard is believing that reality really is divided along conceptual distinctions.