Q2 Writing

In Q2, we published one article and six weeknotes. We maintained our newsletter schedule with a full ◍ Quarternotes issue per quarter and a ⪮ Good Morning episode each month.

Network Plumbing
https://optional.is/required/2024/06/25/network-plumbing/

⪮ Good Morning Newsletter Season 3

Project Progress

This quarter, we've been heads down on at least 10 different external projects. While they've been fun and rewarding, we can't disclose too many details. This is a big challenge: promote our work, show our expertise and set ourselves up to win the next project when the case studies are full of redactions!

Externally:
• Built a web & iOS prototype for ███████████ in Miami.
• Researched and spec'ed out a ████████████ workout app.
• Has a UI/UX roll on a grant proposal about ████████████ podcasts for ███.
• Connected sales and inventory control systems for ██████████ in Australia to streamline their data and dashboards.
• Built a "data bridge" for ██████████ in Australia to convert their P&L from a CSV export into something Fathom could visualize.
• Explored some new Spatial Computing prototype apps for ██████████.
• Prepped data analytics for two new ██████████ games.
• Put together a mockup for a cipher word game for █████████.
• Pitched an idea for another new ██████████ game.
• Cleaned-up Trello, closed down servers and prepped a summer task list for ████████.
• Met with old coworkers and new friends for a potential █████████ reboot. It's been super fun to prototype and revisit some old ideas we know were successful.
• Worked on some better dark mode HTML emails.
• Translated a survey into Arabic and now working on updating templates for right-to-left text layouts.

Internally:
• We ran another print-on-demand test and have been shopping it around to publishers here in Iceland. Everyone we've shown loves the idea, but no one has committed any support (yet).
• Around the office, we continue to improve our networking and backup strategies.

📅 July 17th, World Emoji Day

July 17th is World Emoji Day. https://worldemojiday.com

To celebrate, some sleuths have uncovered the earliest known hardware device that could add emojis in text. It was the Sharp PA-8500-01, a Japanese PDA or 'pocket PC', from 01988.
https://blog.emojipedia.org/new-earliest-emoji-sets-from-1988-and-1990-uncovered/

@ "at a rate of"

This is a newspaper clipping of emoticons from 01909. It isn't the earliest known emoji or emoticon, but one modern-day commenter immediately asked "Did they have @ in 01909?".

Well, the earliest symbol that looks like an @ dates to 01345. The symbol has been used to represent quantities, weights, dates and more. Pre-email and social media @ was an accounting and invoice abbreviation meaning "at a rate of".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign

Subscriber Badges

These emails are sent individually, by us, with no tracking, using our own template designs. This allows for each one to be unique based on your subscriber information.

You know we love projects that combine art and technology, so we've been experimenting with subscriber badges to celebrate how many years you've been with us. For some of you, that's been 14 years (since 02011)!

In this newsletter, we've added your subscriber date to the email footer. If all goes to plan, by next quarter, you'll have your very own subscriber badge to celebrate your newsletter anniversary.

🏢 🕰 Office Hours

Over the last year, we’ve made use of people’s gracious open office hours. We’ve booked sessions with people we admire and had some amazing and informative chats.

Our open office hours are:

• Monday evenings: 21-22:00 UTC for the Americas
• Friday mornings: 9-11:00 UTC for Europe

Hopefully, we’ll be able to reconnect with more old friends, meet new folks, and have more interesting and engaging conversations.

Merch