Published 25 August 2025
e526 with Andy and Michael M – stories about focus – finding things that are missing, reducing distractions with apps like Focus Friend and Brick, viewing photo collections and a whole lot more.
Andy and Michael M get things rolling while Michael R is away, starting with an update from Andy’s recent presentation at FrOSCon 2025. Then the pair focus on an always on AI smart glasses concept, replete with all of the privacy and security considerations. Next up is an AI powered image search that resulted in the discovery of a long missing hiker. This reminded Michael of crowdsourced image searches powered by humans for search and rescue, and found the story of Jim Gray which was part of e44 back in 2013. Next in view is Vivo’s announcement of their mixed reality headset, followed quickly by a Vison Pro photo viewing app called PhotoDome.
Continuing on the concept of focus, Andy and Michael take a look at the Focus Friend app, which has a friendly bean shaped avatar that knits and unlocks prizes while the user remains focused on their task, and gets sad when interrupted. This reminded Andy of the Brick app, which he learned about from the hiro.report. The Brick app and physical tile creates the necessary friction to have the user bring the phone close to the Brick tile to “unbrick” the phone. The lengths required to create such friction to improve productivity spark a further discussion on the challenges that immersive software create for person to person connections and the increase in loneliness.
The team wraps up this episode with a callback to 2023 for software restricted Polish train repairs and software enabled subscriptions to increase automotive performance.
What apps, systems or techniques have you used for creating focus? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!
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Selected Links
FrOSCon 2025
media.ccc.de Decentralising Freedom: Open Source for Sovereignty
AI
TechCrunch article: Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation
Wired article: A Hiker Was Missing for Nearly a Year. Then an AI System Spotted His Helmet
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences UC Berkley technical report UCB/EECS-2010-142 : Searching for Jim Gray: A Technical Overview
Games at Work e49: Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding
AR / VR
9 to 5 Mac article: Vivo’s Vision Pro clone costs $1,400 and weighs 398g
Vivo press release: vivo Unveils First Mixed Reality Headset and New Imaging Strategy at 30th Anniversary
PhotoDome on Apple Vision Pro is a delightful way to revisit photos and albums. Combining XR concepts and interfaces with the rest of my computing life is why I'm so excited about visionOS. The developer of this app did an amazing job
Focus: Beans and Bricks
Tedium post: Me And The Bean
Focus Friend by Hank Green
IMDb: Mr. Bean
BBC Research and Development feature: Where is the social internet taking us?
Repairs and Upgrades
TechDirt article: Train Maker Sues Hackers For Exposing Dodgy Efforts To Make Train Repairs More Difficult
Games at Work e444: Glitch in the Matrix
BBC article: VW introduces monthly subscription to increase car power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:24 — 49.2MB) | Embed
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