Weekly Radar 08.08.2015
Here’s what caught my attention this week:
Had the opportunity to try out this workplace lunch delivery service this last week. Each morning you get an MMS showing you the daily lunch offering. Text back ‘YES’ to lock in your order. Around noon you get another text letting you know your food has arrived. Overall the experience is great. Simple SMS-based interface, they really remove the hassle of figuring out lunch and going somewhere to get it. I bought lunch from them 3 days in a row, taking advantage of a $5/lunch special. Had the meals been regularly priced I might have been more picky about purchasing, but I can see myself taking advantage of the offering once a week or every two weeks maybe.
A web-based 3D printing focused 3D design tool available to use for free via Autodesk. This tool is simple to use while being capable of building precise and complex 3D structures. The offering impresses me more than the 3D features in photoshop, especially with the ability to subtract shapes from other shapes and merge shapes together to build more complex components.
I’ve been on and aware of Skillshare since they launched, but I have to admit it had been a few months since I really looked around the site. Things have grown, and they’ve moved entirely to a subscription model. At first I was wary about this, but after seeing the types of classes it was enabling — more, shorter, focused courses — I got right on board. I think the problem with the pay-per-class model was that it really felt like you needed to offer a substantial, well-produced course in order to meet your target value, and from a consuming perspective I think people expected as much. Decoupling the profit from each specific course gives the content creators the freedom to just put something out there, good, bad or otherwise. In the long run this will really enable great content to emerge onto this platform.
