In no particular order:

1. Fix the UI for checking in! Imagine I visit the atm and the bakery and the drycleaners. That trip will take me 5 minutes and I want to check in quickly. I do not want to share the place with my friends. Just checki-in. So why is it, that after I hit check-in and hit “back” I get to the friends view, not the list of place offered to check-in? I know it’s a social software but to me that user route is flawed.

2. Fix the algorithm for determining which places to present when I hit “Check-in”. I don’t understand that the place that is only 1meter away and which I have been to before is buried three scrolls down so that more popular places that are 200 meters away can be listed. so annoying. If you use the GPS then let the GPS have a higher importance in the algorithm.

3. Fix the damn translation. We’re not both in 1st place. We’re tied in one place. “<user1> und <you> seid jetzt gleichauf. Nur noch ein Punkt zum überholen!”

4. Timing. Unless it’s a restaurant “two hours ago” isn’t really helpful. There’s always this tiny bit of excitement when I see that another Foursquare user is at the venue I am checking in, only to be dissapointed because that person was there so long ago.

The shortlist for this year looks as follows at the end of the post and as always you can keep track of my progress on this page.

In the last couple of years this would also mean changing my twitter background, but the shelf hasn’t really changed. Now what? I’ll find something

What are you reading?

1. PLI/Abby Marks Beale – 10 Days to faster Reading
2. Georg Franck – Die Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit
3. Thomas Klupp – Paradiso
4. Nick Hornby – Juliet Naked
5. Siri Hustvest – Enchantment of Lily Dahl
6. Chris Brogan/Julien Smith – Trust Agents
7. Jack Falla – Home Ice
8. Minette Walters – The Breaker
9. O’Reilly – Your Brain: The Missing Manual
10. Charles Frazier – Thirteen Moons
11. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (*)
12. Hanif Kureishi – The Buddha of Suburbia
13. Richard Powers – Generosity
14. Charles Bukowski – Ham on Rye
15. Chip & Dan Heath – Switch
16. Steven Levy – In the Plex
17. Walther Isaacson – Steve Jobs Biography
18. Eric Ries – The Lean Startup
19. Thomas Pletzinger – Gentlemen, wir leben am Abgrund
20. David Halberstam – Playing for keeps
21. Jonathan Lethem – Chronic City
22. Don DeLillo – Underworld
23. Gavin Menzies – 1421
24. Jostein Gaardner – Sophie’s World
25. Andreas Eschbach – Eine Billion Dollar*
26. Jaron Lanier – You’re not a gadget
27. Lee Child – Reacher No. 17
28. Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Der Schwarze Schwan+
29. Howard Jacobson – No more Mr. Nice Guy+
30. James Altucher – I was Blind but now I See + (Kindle for iPhone)
31. Tom Peters – Re-Imagine +

1. Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events
2. Amos Lee – Mission Bell
3. Trivium – In Waves
4. Symphony X – Iconoclast
5. Whitesnake – Forevermore
6. Mac Miller – Best Day Ever
7. TesseracT – One
8. Jupiter Jones – Jupiter Jones
9. Adrenaline Mob – EP
10. Adele – 21

My alltime top 5 guitarists are probably Paul Gilbert, Nuno Bettencourt, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, who can ever tell. There was a time – when I started to get serious about playing electric guitar – when I spent 3-8 hours a day practicing, working mostly through scales, songbooks by Extreme and Mr. Big, and improvisation. Ear training was done by learning Satriani’s melodies (remember the times when you couldn’t look up everything at aztabs.com?). Vai’s crazy stuff I learned from my guitar teacher, as well as some Dixie Dregs just for fun.
Later Dream Theater entered the fold and Petrucci’s lines became the training material, until the Under a Glass Moon solo became somewhat bearable.
So this was a time where everything was about guitar. I read every issue of Gitarre&Bass (think ‘Guitar’ in German), collected every issue, listened to records, chatted with friends about this solo phrase, that tone, and every detail you could imagine.
A time when you think you saw it all (Van Halen and tapping was old news in the early 90s) and string skipping (Paul Gilbert) and bending a string off the fretboat to play it percussively (George Lynch) were the rage.
My best friend was a Malmsteen maniac, so all those songbooks were available as well. It became apparent though at that time that he and I were following different paths. He was recreating the original, often with the greatest attention to detail, pick overtones in The Audience is Listening come to mind. I was more interested in rocking the song, getting aquainted with the guitarist’s chops and trying to take what I can for my own style.
And I’ll get to Steve Lukather now, just in case you were wondering. The year before I graduated high school Steve published the Candyman record. Rocking, grooving, bluesing away, with an ultimate band feeling. I had listened to Toto before of course, though not quite with the passion my three year older band mates did. I actually liked Africa and Rosanna, but was more of the Hold the Line and Home of the Brave kind of person. We covered Home of the Brave with the band and it was always the instrumentalists own tiny moment right then and there. Kingdom of Desire and Tambu were also cool, those were the days.
We had seen the Candyman tour once already in Hamburg’s Fabrik, getting a somewhat uncomfortable but perfect view crouched down on the second-floor floor directly above the band. Then Simon Phillips had an appearance scheduled at the Frankfurt Music Fair which ended up not being a workshop, instead he started playing and never stopped for 45 minutes – musician’s bliss at that time. On the day after my graduation party we saw Lukather again in Hannover. Slightly hungover I got my last live fix for 17 years, until finally, in late October of this year our schedules matched when he came back to Hamburg and rocked the Markthalle, including parts of my favorite, Party in Simon’s Pants. After seeing some other bands playing to half empty stands it was great to see that he seemed to have sold out the venue.

The thing most people don’t know about Steve Lukather is that he is not just the guitarist and face of Toto but also one of the most accomplished studio musicians, lending his chops to the who-is-who since he was 19 and you can hear it when he plays and in his compositions. He can play, for sure, but there is this melting pot of style that enables him to pull off a lengthy ballad plus solo as credible as a faster rock number. He’s 54 now, but that means in the business for more than 35 years…

Coming off age as a guitarist from 92-95 there is one quote of his that deeply influenced me. He freely imagined that his style was the result of taking a pinch here and a pinch there, sort of “stealing” from other guitarists. That it was almost impossible not working like that. I took that to heart and but looking back at reading the interview and taking the advice it feels like an epiphany. Because it obviously is great learning advice that works for everything, life and business. You look at things, judge what you like and what seems to work and emulate it, adapt that part into your own life, work and guitar playing. The other thing he embodies is that you need to surround yourself with the best people in order to grow. He plays with great musicians on his records and live (boy did he have a great band in October) which in turn make him better and make him record stronger songs. Looking forward, always.

(Read more info about him on wikipedia, his website, follow him on twitter and listen to his latest record – it’s really good.)

The point is though, that 50$ worth of credit gets you only a third of the way after the recent change from rentals to “buy-only”. What was 0.99$ is now 2.99$, a 3-4$ evening becomes 9-12$. I would guess that – if you still want to watch ‘your’ shows this leads to an increase in spending but I would like to see this notion confirmed. Although I actually would like to see that spending has decreased, maybe leading to TV studio execs relenting to go back to the old model – I just can’t afford the 10$-nights that often…

Update: Back at home I found this beautiful version of I and Love and You

Seriously, if you can’t wait for the Encyclopedia Britannica to update their section on The Early Days of the net, give this a listen.

I am no economics major, but what I have seen in the demo is enough for me to believe they will succeed. Because they already offer one of the features I am flabbergasted nobody has done yet, and from the looks of it will no doubt offer the other pretty soon. Because they are focused on the customer side, not the “how can we get more money from the customers at a small interest rate to invest it at a high interest rate to make us rich”.

1. (this they have): Have budgets
In online banking so far, you have one (!) big basket. But what if you have quarterly or yearly payments which you want to plan ahead to? In Bank Simple you have something called Goals which let’s you do exactly that: no matter if it is car insurance, vacation or mortgage – make it a goal and you have planned ahead. Your available balance changes accordingly, Bank Simple calls this “Safe-To-Spend” balance. Brilliant.

2. (I want this): plus 3% for saving/health/pension fund
Any time I use my credit card for sums under 500 Euros, I want 3% added that go directly into a cause I specify, e.g. my pension fund. Enough said.

3. (noteworthy): Simple
While I am not so sure I care about the search, the truly revolutionary part is the “send money”-feature. Bank Simple puts all the account data in the background. ‘I want to send money to Adam’ – Done!
Truly, this puts the simple into Bank Simple.

BankSimple Demo from BankSimple on Vimeo.

Groovebug solves the iPad factor very nicely, but has issues when it comes the other two parts. Videos via YouTube can sometimes be very, let’s say, demanding on the eyes and ears. And the important serendipity stuff – I like this, so I’ll probably like that – should be done with one of those music finders that is already out there, e.g. Music Map. I suspect that they offer curated lists at the moment, for suggesting similar artists they have vetted, put affilliated tracks against and chosen appropriate videos for. That makes sense to ensure a good first experience, but has it’s limits. There are most likely more than the 23 bands listed in the genre Nu Metal, more than 21 in Funk Metal. Chances are that I already know the mainstream answers to the trivia question “name a funk metal” band and am looking to expand my horizon.

But, I am hopeful that future updates will solve some of the issues, this could be a fun app for the couch surfing