What I read online #19
Road Trips, London, Reading List, Pandemic, Social Media, Mental Health, Teenagers, Text, Messages, Email, Scheduling, Writing by hand, Analytics, Sports, OSS, Data Tools, Survey, XaaS, as-a-Service
If you find this newsletter interesting, follow @whatireadonline on Twitter, consider sharing it with your network, or subscribe if you haven’t already.
The best road trips from London that take 2 hours or less
With some lockdown restrictions lifted in the UK lifted last week and support from the weather, now it’s the perfect opportunity for a quick road trip out to the countryside. For those living in London, check this post with suggestions for road trips that require travelling 2 hours or less.
The reading list that got me through the pandemic
If you didn’t get a chance to do much reading during this last year, you are not alone - I’ve failed reading as much as I said I would, including listening to audiobooks. If you need some inspiration, Julio Vincent Gambuto put together this list of “great reads if and when you can find the time”, including titles, links, and quick notes - check it out.
Maybe Social Media Isn’t Making Us Depressed, After All
A widespread belief about modern technology relates teenager’s mental health to social media use. A recent study found that teens experienced reduced rates of depression last year while spending the same amount of time on social media now as before. The study attributes this finding to two factors; teenagers getting more sleep and spending more time with their parents and siblings. Read more
How to schedule emails and texts to send anytime you want
There can be all kinds of reasons you don't want to send a text message or an email straight away and be strategic about when your recipient gets them. Check this article on how to schedule texts and chats on iOS and Android systems, plus emails on Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook.
The power of writing by hand
I love an app that allows me to automate and make everyday tasks faster, easier, and be more productive. But when it comes to taking notes and prioritizing smaller tasks, I’ve found that doing it the old-school way with pen and paper, works much better than typing using a keyboard. The author of this article seems to agree with my personal observation.
The importance of analytics in sports, marketing and financial strategies.
There is a reason high school football Coach Kevin Kelley has won five of the last six Arkansas state championships. Kelley was the honoured guest of the sixth USF Sport & Entertainment Analytics Conference. He and other key speakers discussed the importance of analytics in not only sports strategy, but also marketing and financial strategies as well. Read more about the USF Sport & Entertainment Analytics Conference (SEAC) here and hopefully, recordings or videos from it will be available soon.
Data Council 2021 OSS Data Tools Community Survey
Data Council’s 2021 OSS Data Tools Community Survey results are in; more than 500 individual responses from more than a dozen countries later, here are the results for the top OSS data projects of 2021 by order of popularity.
The Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) phenomenon
While most people are already familiar with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Everything-as-a-Service or XaaS is fairly new term. XaaS refers to the delivery of anything as a service and it recognizes the vast number of products, tools and technologies that are now delivered to users as a service over a network (typically the internet) rather than provide locally or on-site within an enterprise. This article discusses the history of SaaS and what it can tell us about business in the new era of Everything-as-a-Service.