rafifyalda

Hey all, I've been working in my evenings on a Mac app for Instagram with @mirgehtsganzgut that goes away with the social-side and distractions that Instagram throws at you and releases you from the pretty basic web-version that Instagram offers. Edge-to-edge beautiful photos sliding by your screen throughout the day was one of the key ideas of making Flume - it wasn't important to me who posted a photo or how many likes and comments it had - for me it was about the photo. That's what inspired the feed view. Of course, Instagram is a social network, so those details are still available for you there if you want them, but the idea was to highlight photography, not followers.

While working on Flume for Mac, I discovered an opportunity to give a smaller but still beautiful Instagram experience to people who don't have a Mac and for those that didn't want to browse via an app. I open hundreds of tabs a day and I don't want to go to my phone to check my Instagram feed, and that's where Flume New Tab was born. Available now for Safari and Chrome, you can bring some beauty to your blank tabs!

Flume for Mac is currently in beta and I'm taking some limited testers on board - Instagrammers are obviously preferred. Get in touch on the website to let me know.

If you're curious about the name - since it's shared with a famous musician - flume is an old English word that means a river or stream. When new items photo pop into the Mac app, it feels like a drop of water in a stream.

Thanks and happy browsing!

You can press any key ;)

I found this to be a peaceful late-night experience. I put the window to fullscreen to avoid all other distractions, rotated my Magic Mouse 90º, and just smooth scrolled through the story. Really nice.

A colleague of mine wrote that Open in Github plugin when we worked together - it's incredibly useful if your code's hosted there and you do pull-request code reviews.

Working overtime (here and there) and Crunch Mode might not necessarily be the same thing. The problem is it's hard to break the shackles. Imagine when a new person joins this small group of people. They see you are all working until 10pm, how does that make them feel about their responsibilities of being "accepted"?

It's just not healthy for any sustained amount of time. I don't know what kind of lifestyle you are living when your only activities are sleep (less than you need), eating (less than you should, and/or unhealthy food) and work.

It happens in Europe wherever there's a startup city. The author is based in Berlin like myself, and this city has a fairly new and growing startup scene. I have many friends working across different startups, and "Crunch Mode" is definitely happening around the place. You notice it second-hand when your friends don't come out on the weekend with you because they're so exhausted they need to rest, or they're still at the office.

*per year, just in case people were confused :)

Why are you guys working past 1am? Get some sleep, feedback can wait in the morning!

English will get you by in Berlin. If the startup has international employees, then English will be spoken heavily inside the startup (usually).

Outside of your startup, you'll want to at least learn enough German to be able to ask for things in a shop, order at restaurants. Though even if you were to speak in English, you'll find most people will be able to respond in English and help you out, but that depends on how far you travel. Once you start getting out beyond the ring (metro system), you'll find the level of English degrade.

One tip when you start out here: Genuinely apologise to someone that you do not speak German in German, ask if they speak English in German, and they will almost always be happy to speak in English. Start blurting out loudly in an American-English accent and you may not receive the same level of hospitality.

Source: Live and worked for a few startups here in Berlin, speaking from anecdotal evidence based on experiences from both German and expat friends