Products I loved in 2018

How do I use it?

I hang my hammock during Spring/Summer/Autumn months while out walking and playing with my family. Typically, that means enjoying the Cleveland Metro Parks.

Why is it good?

• Ease of carry. It's super light and small. I can add it to a small day pack and it's not going to fill the bag.
• Ease of setup. This is where you feel the value of the Atlas™ Suspension System. You don't have to know any knots, you just wrap the straps around 2 trees, and clip on the hammock to the loops on the straps. Done 👍
• Kids love it. Need an impromptu swing? Hammock. Want somewhere to wrestle with your toddler? Hammock. My kids even play hide and seek in it!
• Without kids, a hammock is super relaxing! Is there any better way to read a book?

Drawbacks

Finding 2 good trees is the hardest part of hanging this hammock. Sometimes you'll be faced with tons of good looking trees only to find they are too big i.e., the circumference of the tree is too large. If you have "fat trees" then your hammock straps will not be long enough. To solve the issue you either need Atlas XL™ Suspension System or great cordage and some handy knots.

Feature requests?

In this case, I think less is more. More features would likely mean trading off weight and pack size.

How do I use it?

The Sonos One lives in the master bedroom. I play music with it using the Sonos App. I get weather updates with voice controls while I'm getting dressed. Sometimes I tell Alexa to play white noise when I'm struggling to get to sleep.

Why is it good?

I love Sonos, let's get that out of the way. There is something very luxirious about multi-room music. It's massively convenient to walk from room to room enjoying the same music or podcast. You can enjoy all these features using a regular Sonos speaker.

The Sonos One adds to the Sonos experience by letting you talk/shout at your speaker in order to play/stop/pause music, adjust the volume, learn the weather etc. If you're used to the Amazon Echo or Dot then you will think the Sonos One is the best sounding Alexa device by a mile.

Drawbacks

While Sonos may be the neutral party in the smart assistant market place, Amazon has skin in the game and influences the amount of value you can enjoy with the Sonos One. For example, you cannot listen to Google Music or Pocket Casts with voice commands. That is super annoying for me. The good news is that Sonos is working with Google to make Google Assistant work with voice controlled Sonos products like Sonos One and this should solve the main drawbacks.

Feature requests?

• Work with Google Assistant
• Make voice commands work with Google Music
• Make voice commands work with Pocket Casts

How do I use it?

The Wyze cam is in our nursery and permanently set to "night vision" mode. This allows us to keep our eyes and ears on our little one from our mobile phones. It's even easy to setup and mount.

Why is it good?

The key differentiator for the Wyze cam is price. $20 is totally insane compared to the competition with the same feature set. I frequently talk to parents who have spent more than $150 on a video enabled baby monitor.

Drawbacks

I've got no complaints with the camera itself. Having an indoor IoT camera can be unsettling because IoT security best practice is still a developing area (read: it's a dumpster fire for most devices) but thankfully Wyze make frequent over-the-air updates and I trust the company to produce a secure device.

Feature requests?

• Picture-in-picture view for the app would be awesome. I want to read the news and keep an eye on the baby at the same time

How do I use it?

My job involves an unusual hybrid of skills. From day to day I might be interested in different things: UX best practices, API design, product pricing, wireframes, managing team conflict, Design Thinking, Agile at scale, microservices, or content strategy. Your standard HR/training/professional development department is not going to cater to 99% of those needs so what do you do? For me, a large part of the answer is Safari Books Online.

I use Safari Books Online as rocket fuel for my personal and professional development. If I need training for work or hobbies, one of the first places I look is Safari Books Online.

Why is it good?

This product feels like super powers. Can you pay a bigger compliment? Having access to this library is just so much more efficient than Googling and Stack Overflow. You find high quality content quickly and it's presented in a very consumable way. Books and video courses are awesome.

The desktop web experience has always been good, and the mobile app keeps getting better.

Drawbacks

Cost is likely the biggest concern when I tell people about this product. $39 per month or $399 per year is not cheap. I justify the cost in terms of time saved and comparable costs of professional development. I think in those terms the product is reasonably priced.

Top tip: watch out for deals on social media. I got a crazy deal at Thanksgiving. $200 per year, for life!

Feature requests?

I feel as if their discovery process could be improved with better recommendations for what to read or watch next. I imagine the typical use case is search, and their search is pretty good, but I do think it would be awesome to have more of a Netflix-type experience. For example, "you read about automated testing in Python so you might like X, Y, Z other things about the topic".

How do I use it?

I got this book because I like a lot of the videos by the book's author on the Serious Eats YouTube channel. I use the book primarily for big dinners and family cooking.

Why is it good?

You get yummy food! In particular, this book has helped me with a few meals that I have traditionally struggled with. For example, burgers, brats, and roast chicken. In addition, there are a bunch of recipes in here which are new to me and I love to try. I love the section on vegetables and salads. The kale salad is great.

The author makes a point of explaining why a particular technique works or not. This is fascinating reading if you start to wonder more deeply about cooking technique.

The author's style is light hearted and fun. I like it when authors show a bit of humor and Kenji does a great job.

Drawbacks

See feature requests below.

Feature requests?

• I wish there was a ring binder version to go along with the book
• Metric measurements and weights please!