🚀 co-founder of urspace (this thing)
🥝 maker of baby food (Yumi)
🎓 RIT dropout (sorry mom)

Donald Morton

hey! This is day 5 of the 14 day urspace blog challenge. The prompt for today is: How are you working from home (or school)? What tools are you using, how yard you scheduling things? Got any tips and tricks? What’s your daily routine?

I decided to take this prompt a little different and turn it into a focused look at a software I’ve been using to work from home lately - Tandem.

<a href="https://tandem.chat/">Tandem</a> is a company that enables people to collaborate with their coworkers in an environment that almost simulates an office. They describe themselves as: "A virtual office for remote teams." Tandem graduated from Y Combinator, had an explosive launch on Producthunt,(#3 Product of the Week and #1 Product of the Day) and then raised a very impressive seed round from a16z ($7.5M).&nbsp;

The company I work for, Yumi, has been using this software for the past couple weeks and I can say it's been a hit. Being able to chat with anyone during the work day with a click removes the barriers of trying to schedule a call over slack and inviting them to a google hangouts/zoom.&nbsp;

I have used sooo many "work together" apps. Some of these apps have a user experience that makes it almost too intrusive to the employee. Others have the opposite problem, making it too hard to contact anyone.&nbsp;

Tandem is good because it bridges the gap between allowing for your privacy/focus time (flow) and making it easy to connect with your co workers. The system they have adopted almost reminds me of Discord. Discord is a company I truly admire, they have created a safe space for friends to hangout and play games. People will sit in discord, chat, and wait for friends to get online even if they are not playing games. Tandem reminds me of that. It promotes a collaborative environment and allows people to sit in community chats. This culture is great to build for remote companies. I’ve been getting in calls with one of my co workers and doing work - this has made it really easy to bounce ideas off each other and collaborate on projects.

If you are apart of a remote company, Tandem is the app for you. Tandem is really great for teams that are online on a regular schedule.

At Yumi, we had tandem installed before we were remote and it seemed unclear when to use it. For most calls during this period, we relied on slack or google hangouts. We were not taking advantage of all the features Tandem had to offer which was a shame. To get the most out of it - I recommended remote companies use it.&nbsp;

Tandem’s pricing is pretty straight forward. They start out with a 14 day free trial - and then it is $10/per active user/per month after that. It also looks like they have a free plan if you are in their beta program which is a great offer.

I’ve loved using Tandem over these past couple weeks and will continue to use/recommend it to remote teams. Their superior collaboration modes and community-like voice chat promote a productive, friendly, and open culture.

<a href="https://tandem.chat/">Check out Tandem here!</a>

Donald Morton blog

The software I’m using to work from home

I write down most ideas I've had. A lot of them (most) are not so great. Thinking through ideas is always a great exercise, even if it's not the greatest idea. Below are just some ideas that I have had over the past year/two years.&nbsp;

I have this weird obsession with buying domain names. I think of an idea - and want to purchase the domain immediately. I think this comes from the fact that I've had so many great domains that i've wanted taken from me before. Another thing I am passionate about is preserving history. In this case - game history.&nbsp;In my opinion, Pong represented a breakthrough in technology and in video games. For some reason - making this fact known was very important to me. While wikipedia exists, and yeah- i guess people could just look up pong and read about it. I wanted to build a site that shows a playable version of pong in all it's glory and include history/pictures/etc.

Some ideas are intentionally dumb. iwillreadanything.com is one of those. I wanted to create a site where you would upload an article, piece of text, etc. and someone (probably me or some guy) would either read it out-loud and send it back to you or stream it. The idea is this person isn't an amazing reader or anything, just a normal guy, reading some stuff... ahah&nbsp;

I guess there might be a usecase here - I get headaches if I read anything in a moving car but i'm always trying to read short posts/articles. Text to speech is a good current solution but it would still be nice to hear someones voice.

At one point I thought it would be a good idea to make a service to send people memes everyday. Basically you pay a fixed amount - and send memes to yourself or someone else, for a year. Pretty dumb but would be kind of a fun build. This one is not about the money - would be for the community, and the laughs.

That's all I've got for now. There's tons more ideas I have but I might actually build them one day so 🤫stay tuned. Till then, you can check out the idea I have been working on for the past year and a half right here!! Literally this thing you are reading the blog on. <a href="https://urspace.io/">urspace</a>&nbsp;- actually a good idea. It's great to see people using the platform, and this 14 day blog challenge is one of the best ideas we have had thus far.&nbsp;

If you have any thoughts on these dumb startup ideas - it would be great to hear from you in the comments.

a site where I will literally read anything outloud, a site that constantly texts you memes, and more 

My dumbest startup ideas

hello! This is day 2 of the 14 day urspace blog challenge. The prompt for today is:&nbsp;What are you binging?

I'll break it down into a few different sections. I've been watching a lot of TV, Movies, and have been listening to a lot of podcasts!

When I was commuting to work (before all of the craziness), I would listen to a podcast on each part of my train ride. I still listen to podcasts every couple days but not as often when I am just at home! When I look for a podcast, I have a few different tastes. I either look for news (Tech/World/Investing),&nbsp; good story telling (mostly investigative journalism pieces), or stories from other founders working on their own companies.

Ever since I binged The Office in middle school, I have had a love for TV shows. The character development that can happen over dozens of episodes and several seasons is something that I have fallen in love with and definitely a major reason why I prefer TV shows to movies(mood based).

Yeah.. As you can notice, my media consumption is very audio heavy. I love being able to listen to something while I clean, work, doze off, etc. I've replaced most music in my life with podcasts. While I'm definitely out of touch with the current music scene, I feel really good about my trade off. My consumption of podcasts allows me to constantly be learning new things / lessons - which I love! Listening to smart people talk about things they love is something probably the best way to learn anything. I recommend it!

Thanks for reading. I'll save my movie list for another day ~

Podcasts, TV shows. What I consume - why you should consume it.

What i'm binging

hello! This is day 4 of the 14 day urspace blog challenge. The prompt for today is: What are your thoughts on internet culture? (Memes, Tik Tok, Gen Z, Zoom)

I'll be honest - it's been a long time since I have browsed meme economy and it's changed so much since then. But i'll try to break it down for you.

MemeEconomy is a subreddit. These "traders" buy and sell shares, invest in each-other, and create investment firms; and their currency is memes. memeEconomy is the largest underground economy that you have never heard of. Their total users currently sit at 1.3 million people, and at this moment (11 PM at night) there are "1.2k investing their life savings".

Here is a short description of meme economy (their subreddit description):

/r/MemeEconomy is a place where individuals can buy, sell, share, make, and invest in memes freely. You'll also get updates on the meme market, and be able to collaborate with other fellow meme traders analyzing the new memes on the block.

This subreddit runs a bot they call the "meme investor bot" and this is what facilitates the custom actions they support(buying, selling, etc.) Besides the normal actions you would expect from a subreddit economy - meme economy is backed by a very complex system that has built in taxes(short term gains), tax brackets, firm upgrades (upgrade size of firm), and much more. Their <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/wiki/index">wiki</a> is very in-depth, kind of an interesting study for economists. If there are any&nbsp;economists out there - I would love to know what you think about r/MemeEconomy(is this thing smart? dumb?).

M¢ is their currency and is how they track balances. The subreddit holds all of the information/bots you would need to participate in meme economy. However, there is a <a href="https://meme.market/">website</a> as well that tracks the central bank balance, leaderboards, etc.&nbsp;

If you are curious - the centeral bank balance is currently 998,263,565.74 M¢ ahah.

People invest in memes for different reasons. Sometimes they like the template/form of the meme, sometimes they presentation is funny, other times they are buying into the hype - just like stocks. Below is a meme that is trending for the past week I found on the subreddit. It's currently worth 108.83 M¢.&nbsp;

The thread is filled with people buying, selling, and checking their balances. To do anything on memeEconomy, you have to comment on a post. This generates dozens (if not hundreds) of comments on each post. Each trade contains an order number, stock name, number of shares, required bank fee, and total charge. See the full confirmation below.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure why anyone is doing this - or would do it. I can speculate though. It seems like a fun way to make bets/discover memes/play with an economy. There is definitely a niche group of people that this subreddit attracts (1.3m - maybe not so niche?) that enjoy the environment that the subreddit creates. 

After looking at meme.market some more - I was amazed at the leaderboard of investors.&nbsp;poopo0stinky is currently in first place with a balance of 6,399 M¢. According to the wiki, you start with 1000&nbsp;M¢ and with a debt of&nbsp;1000 M¢. It's unclear what this payback period is but after checking his profile I can see he paid back the debt. This totals his return to&nbsp;639.9% (since Feb 2020). 

At one point in time (I'm not sure if this still happens) memes would go corporate. Meaning, a large company would post in a common meme format. The subreddit would lose it's mind and people would tag the post as "SELL SELL SELL" causing some fake, but funny panic.

It's funny to think about who these people are, what their day jobs are, and their reason to browse the subreddit. memeEconomy is a surprisingly advanced economy, with a very active subreddit, and loyal users. I linked to the subreddit a few times but you can find it <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy">here</a>&nbsp;if you are interested. Thanks for reading and let me know what memes you invest in!!&nbsp;

imagine a world where you could buy memes... oh wait...

Meme economy

Hi there! This is day 1 of the 14 day urspace blog challenge. The prompt for this week is:&nbsp;What's something you wouldn't normally tell a stranger but can put on the internet?

Ever since I was little, games have taken up the majority of my free time. Super Smash Brothers, Starcraft, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Counter Strike, Minecraft, the list goes on and on... I was inspired by these great games. While the play style of each of these games is quite different - they all had one thing in common:&nbsp; the ability to allow you to escape.&nbsp;What looked like pixels on a screen or a poorly edited cut scene to others, was raw story and emotion to you. 

Listen to a gamer talk about a great time or memory they had in a game. Most tell it as if they were really there, in the body of the character. That emotion is a huge reason why I want to create a game. World building is so inspiring and I can only imagine the feeling of seeing someone so immersed in a world you created.

I have a full time job, work on urspace all the time, play games too much. Damn. My goal for the next year is to start on a game and at least get the basics down.

I actually have made a game before. For valentines in 2018, I decided it would be cool if I made a game for my girlfriend. She was traveling down from Santa Barbara. I wanted to make a game where she was the main character, and each step of her travel was a level. I booted up unity a few days before Valentines day and decided to get to work. To nobody's surprise, this turned out to be a huge undertaking. After a few sleepless nights - I had completed part of the first level and that was all I had in time for her to see it. Regardless, this was a great experience and I learned a ton about game development and Unity. 

Here are some sprites I made for the game:

This is weird. And definitely not the content you consume on Youtube. But - for the past couple years (and it has picked up this year for sure) I have filled my watch time with many game developers. Game development logs/Devlogs/Game update video/etc. there are many names for these but they are essentially all the same. Usually a lone indie developer that is working on a game posting semi-regular updates.&nbsp;

These videos are beautiful to me. I've noticed many of these developers share my love of world building as well and it's inspiring to see them work on something they love. I'll put some links below to different developers I have been following.

This is the part where I tell you i'm sorry... and that I have no idea.

I want to make a platformer game. I really admire the style of Celeste and the world building of that game. I don't know what exactly the story would be ~ but it will be centered around space and definitely be made with pixel art.

Anyways, that's the end of this. Would love to hear your thoughts on games/this post/anything in the comments! (I stayed up last night building the comments feature so pls give it a try c:) Thanks for reading!

Coming soon.. or not? My love for games, why I want to build one.

I'm going to make a game...

making the internet a better place, one personal site at a time.

Co-Founder

Working on both the frontend and the backend of multiple systems at Yumi. Utilizing languages and frameworks such as Javascript, React, Node, Express, MySQL, Redis

Full Stack Engineer

Interned at Willow Tree Apps Inc. in the Software Engineering department worked on client projects while utilizing frontend and backend technologies.

Software Intern

Worked with frontend technologies to make create a new website that showcased the app, team, and other relevant data.

SysCoding is a website that teaches aspiring System Administrators how to utilize their resources to setup, configure, and develop servers. I manage routine operations, and continue to work on projects at SysCoding.

Syscoding was founded with a partner. Together we have been able to grow SysCoding's network to a miraculous thirty thousand followers along with a few thousand monthly website visits.

Crafted Shack was a web hosting and server hosting company dedicated to clients that needed services to fulfill their server needs. I was the CEO of this company and oversaw major day to day operations till it was sold/shutdown.

An access learning application that helps special needs students break down daily actives into simple tasks. 

Blueprint

React Native

my retro-windows inspired personal website! 

don.gg

Javascript

React

HTML

👘 gitFitted creates outfits from your own or other user's clothing items.

gitfitted

github-login

👀 Provided with an imgur album URL, this program will upload each picture to Kairos.

imgur-kairos-trainer

📸 This is a simple Instagram scraper. It returns the followers, following, and posts for a certain user.

instagramScraper

🎶 Rebeatal turns your math questions into music!

urspace

Co-Founder • Aug 2018

Yumi

Full Stack Engineer • Aug 2018

WillowTree

Software Intern • Apr 2018

Pluto Money

Software Intern • Jul 2017

SysCoding

Co-Founder • Nov 2014

Crafted Shack

Co-Founder • Feb 2013