Iterate Weekly - Issue 157
This week we're celebrating 20 years of Gmail, childcare benefits are good for everyone, weather insurance is getting popular, karaoke inventor dies, and the "Stick the Landing" podcast!
Welcome to issue 157 of Iterate Weekly.
Hope you’re all doing well. This is just a friendly reminder that you can always reply directly to these messages or leave a comment on the Substack post. Feedback is highly encouraged and I’m happy to answer any and all questions that come up.
Thank you as always for reading!
🤖 Tech
20 Years of Gmail
Google may be known for killing off plenty of great products (right now I’m cursing them for turning my amazing Nest Secure security system into a paperweight this month). But here is a birthday worth celebrating.
Google has been continuously operating Gmail for the past 20 years!
That’s an eternity in the life of software, especially for Google. If you can remember way back to 2004, Gmail launched with an unheard of 1 GB of storage for all those emails you’d be receiving. This blew the competition out of the water. Who could even fathom filling up that much storage with email?!?!
Oh, and you couldn’t just sign up either. It was free, but you had to have an invite. This has become fairly common these days in the world of software launches, but Gmail was the first digital product where I remember feeling like an exclusive member of an invite-only club.
But what really separated Gmail from all previous inboxes was the ability to instantly search through all of your emails. This is something we take for granted these days, but at the time it was a real game-changer. It was now okay to have a huge inbox filled with thousands of emails if you could just search for exactly what you needed at any given time.
Twenty years later, Gmail doesn’t look all that different. Sure, it’s gotten a bit sleeker and more customizable. There have been some new smart reply and quick-unsubscribe features amongst others, but nothing all that groundbreaking. It’s just become an indispensable piece of modern life for most people. And these days you get 15GB of free storage and can purchase more if you’re so inclined. Essentially, you can never delete an email and just keep an archive of your digital and physical worlds. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is to be determined.
Here’s to the next 20 years Gmail!
🎓 Education/Productivity/Work
Childcare benefits are good for employees and employers
In case you weren’t aware, child care is extremely expensive. And yet, child care as a work benefit is still relatively rare.
The data comes from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and nonprofit Moms First. Only 12% of American workers have on-site childcare or a stipend to help pay for it. That number seems far too low. I can personally attest to the fact that child care is typically the second highest expense for families outside of housing.
The truth is that this investment seems to be paying off for the few employers who offer it. Knowing that your company is behind you as a parent is very empowering. It helps establish trust and loyalty between employee and employer. And more importantly for the company’s bottom line, it seems to decrease absenteeism and employee attrition rates.
It’s a relatively small sample size of companies who are offering these benefits, but it seems like there is something here worth replicating. Remote work has upended a lot of traditional work arrangements and offered more flexibility in terms of childcare. But kids still need in-person care and attention and the shortage of options has driven the costs up. Until our child care system gets a major overhaul, companies should continue to test these benefits to see how they can improve the experience for employees.
♻️ Health/Environment/EVs
Should you buy weather insurance for your next trip?
If you’ve ever had a trip ruined by a hurricane or blizzard, you may be in need of some weather insurance.
Yes, you’ve heard that correctly. With wacky weather caused by climate change becoming the norm, companies are looking to profit by selling you vacation insurance just in case mother nature didn’t get the memo that you wanted perfect weather during that expensive trip.
California-based Sensible Weather will allow you to book weather insurance for your next trip. How does it work? When booking your next trip through a Sensible Weather partner, you’ll see an option to add a “weather guarantee” for roughly 5-10% of the cost of your booking. Then if the weather turns sour on the day of your trip, you’ll get a text from Sensible Weather. More than 3 hours of rain on that day? You qualify for a reimbursement! You don’t have to prove anything or submit a claim. Sensible Weather monitors the weather for you and can transfer your reimbursement amount to your bank account of choice.
You may not be able to go outside and do what you had planned. But you do get some extra spending cash to make the best of your indoor day or save for a future trip. Not too bad right? I could see this industry really taking off especially for niche locations where the weather is pivotal to the experience.
It reminds me of the time my Great Barrier Reef dive got canceled due to a storm. I asked a hostel employee what he recommended doing instead. He said there was literally nothing else to do in town except get drunk at the hotel bar… At least if I had weather insurance, those drinks could have been covered!
🛍 Grab Bag
Karaoke Inventor Dies
If you’ve enjoyed some nights at a karaoke bar (and who hasn’t?) you were probably sad to hear the news of the death of Shigeichi Negishi.
Whether you’re a fan of singing in public or not, you have to admit that the karaoke machine has fundamentally changed they way that people interact in public places. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that karaoke bars have probably been the location where the most team-building/colleague camaraderie has taken place for me. Yes, sometimes they can get a bad rap if the singing talent isn’t up to snuff, but it’s hard to find a place that gets people further out of their comfort zone even if alcohol isn’t involved.
The invention itself is pretty darn clever. Negishi was able to connect an additional microphone to a car stereo in order to sing over the music that was playing. It’s a simple concept really. And as video technology improved, it became easier to see the lyrics to the songs scrolling on the screen in front of you. I’m still partial to flipping through the giant binders of numbered songs, but obviously this can all be done through digital databases these days. And green screens and special effects can take things to a whole new level if you’re feeling so inclined.
The point is that this was actually a pretty important technological breakthrough that influenced decades of social interaction. That’s a big deal. Whether you’re a karaoke fan or not, let’s take a moment to appreciate Shigeichi Negishi.
💬 Quote of the Week
"Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever."
-Charles Lamb
🎧Content Recommendation
Stick the Landing Podcast
Here’s a podcast for all the pop culture fans out there.
It’s called “Stick the Landing” and it analyzes the final episodes of iconic television series to see if they properly ended the series with a bang or a fizzle.
Andy Greenwald hosts along with a variety of guests from the world of TV and film. There is something particularly magical about the finale of any beloved television show. And many of these episodes just come and go without proper analysis (especially some of the ones they cover from the 80s and 90s).
Go check out season 1 of the show, and I’m hoping they come back with a second season soon. I’m also gearing up for the finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” this week. I may need to give it my own personal review in the coming weeks in the style of “Stick the Landing”.
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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Love that quote about April, haha!