After Manton’s Nissan Leaf lease expired, he’s going “car free,” to an extent. How many cars per person does a typical family need? He and Daniel consider Italian scooters, electric bikes, and other forms of local transportation.

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Links:

• Nissan Leaf – Manton’s most recent automobile.
• Central Library Windows – Manton’s post about the new Austin Public Library.
• MetroRail – “There’s only one train in Austin.”
• Faraday Bikes – Electric assist bicycles with pedals.
• Van Moof – Another electric assist bicycle company.
• Fortified Bicycle – Boston-based anti-theft bicycle company.

Manton launches a new iOS beta for Sunlit, redesigned with support for Micro.blog. Following up on Manton’s support burden. Daniel talks about ambition to follow up with customers after fixing bugs they’ve reported.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• Easy Books: Bookkeeping Made Easy.

Links:

• Sunlit 2 Beta – Manton announces a new Micro.blog oriented update to Sunlit.
• Boomerang – Instagram’s micro-video publishing app.
• Layout – Instagram’s photo-collage layout app.
• @Dialog – Micro.blog account for an Android-based Micro.blog client.
• Micron – Alternative iOS Micro.blog app by Chris Lopez.
• Manuscript – The bug-tracking service Daniel uses.
• Forget Feature Requests – Old advice from Basecamp (née 37signals) about dismissing customer feedback.
• A New Approach – Basecamp revisits the question of how to handle feature requests.

Manton and Daniel talk about their recent experience discovering that they owned an obscure crypto-currency, and the process of learning how to convert it to Bitcoin and then cash.

This episode is available exclusively to members. Become a member today to gain access to this and other cool stuff!

Links:

• Stellar – The non-profit cryptocurrency organization behind Lumens.
• Binance – One of the exchanges that trades Stellar Lumens for Bitcoin and other currencies.
• Coinbase – One of the most established Bitcoin exchanges, offering links to USD via bank transfer.
• GDAX – Coinbase sister-service with a much less intuitive interface, and far lower fees.
• Hilariously Rich – NY Times article about cryptocurrency enthusiasts in San Francisco.

Daniel and Manton talk about digging oneself out of customer support debt, and strategies for improving the efficiency of support mechanisms. They react to Apple’s disabling of free In-App-Purchases, and speculate about whether it was intentional or not. This leads them into a re-evaluation about the risks of selling on the App Stores, and the lure of selling directly to customers.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• Linode: Cloud Hosting for You.

Links:

• Zendesk – Customer support service used by Manton
• Replies.io – Customer support service suggested by Daniel Alm
• Timing – Daniel Alm’s Mac-based schedule and workflow observing app.
• TextExpander – Mac and iOS based macro expansion utility.
• Manuscript – Formerly known as FogBugz, used by Daniel.
• Micro.blog Help – Manton’s blog-based knowledge base.
• No Free IAPs? – Markus Müller-Simhofer reacts to changes in iTunes Connect.
• MindNode – Markus’s brainstorm and mind-mapping app.
• Acorn – Gus Mueller’s Mac paint app, offering free IAPs in the App Store.
• Ulysses – Mac and iOS writing app offering subscription pricing.
• Setapp – Mac-based subscription service for a fixed set of commercial apps.
• Dash’s Year in Review – 2017 turned out to be Kapeli’s best year yet.

Manton talks to Daniel about just missing jury duty during a busy work week. They talk about the virtues of differentiating a product by both features and personality. Finally, they react to the Stellar cryptocurrency’s surprising value, and the potential for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to change the world.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• Linode: Cloud Hosting for You.

Links:

• Micro Monday Launches – Jean MacDonald announces a new convention for sharing microblog recommendations on Mondays.
• Books on Micro.blog – Manton introduces the idea of tagging posts on Micro.blog with Emoji.
• Stellar – Non-profit cryptocurrency which has seen its value spike recently.
• Long Blockchain Tea – Ars Technica story about the tea that renamed itself and captured Bitcoin mania.
• What is Bitcoin? – Late Night with Seth Myers takes on the task of explaining it, sort of.

Daniel and Manton react to Intel’s “really bad bug.” They talk about Manton’s recent surges of PR, and balancing the desire to capitalize on that against the importance of preserving site stability. They talk about Apple’s acquisition of Buddybuild and the inherent risks of relying upon fully-hosted services.

Many thanks to our sponsors this week:

• PDFpen: Edit PDFs with Ease.
• Linode: Cloud Hosting for You.

Links:

• Intel Security Bug – Article on The Verge about the newly revealed security issue.
• 5 to 30 Percent – The Register article that tries to estimate performance impact of workarounds.
• Amazon Echo Show – Manton’s latest Echo device.
• Linux Page Table – Analysis of the Intel bug’s applicability to FreeBSD.
• Micro.blog – Manton’s microblogging service.
• Just for Fun – John Gruber talks on Twitter about Micro.blog.
• I’d Love to Try – Kevin Rose helping to spread some social buzz about Micro.blog.
• Now Part of Apple – Announcement from Buddybuild that they have been acquired.
• CircleCI – Another hosted continuous integration service.
• Consultingware – Joel Spolsky’s essay breaking down his analysis of different software markets.
• From $50K to Free – IT World report from 2005 about the lowering of WebObjects’s price.
• fastlane – Popular suite of tools for building and deploying apps to iOS and Android.
• Workflow – Popular iOS app that was acquired by Apple last year.