February 2012
4 posts
“They [made] the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can...”
– That’s from Joel Spolsky’s classic essay Things You Should Never Do.
If you’re a product developer you’ve probably had the urge to rewrite a working product from scratch. I certainly have.
Us developers get a warm, fuzzy feeling when we imagine the opportunity to start...
Today Microsoft Announced the new logo for Windows 8. Dropping the iconic rainbow-flag is a bold step for them, and I think it’s an improvement. However, there are a few reasons I think the new logo falls short:
Microsoft should drop the “8” from the logo. Tacking on the version number detracts from the Windows brand itself. I understand it’s there to help consumers...
Canada debates bill would allow electronic... →
In a dictatorship, freedom is immediately displaced through force. In a democracy, civil liberties are gradually eroded through fear-based legislation.
Saying this bill “targets child porn” is simply a rhetorical attempt to negatively frame & dimiss anyone opposed to unchecked electronic surveillance.
“I WOULD DEARLY LOVE TO BUY SOME SHIT BUT THESE MOTHERFUCKERS WON’T SELL IT...”
– Yarrr. A spot-on article about the reasons people pirate TV & movies, and why the content distributors themselves are to blame.
January 2012
1 post
“… creativity is a function of two underlying factors, enthusiasm and...”
– From Marc Andreessen’s Age and the entrepreneur. It’s a great exploration of how age is (and isn’t) correlated to creativity.
December 2011
4 posts
Responsive Web Design: Standard or Feature? →
The folks at Paper Leaf have put together an overview of the things web agencies must consider when determining their approach to responsive web design.
It’s a tough question, and one that agencies need to ask themselves. Are responsively-designed websites a standard feature included in all website projects (which necessitates an increase in price), or are they an add-on that clients can...
"Facebook's "frictionless" sharing doesn't enhance...
The quote above from The end of social totally sums up how I feel about Facebook’s new frictionless sharing: automatically posting read news, watched movies, or listened-to songs.
Facebook’s real value comes from Likes. When a friend shares something, it means they’ve put their seal of approval on it. “This is a good thing.” And, in todays world of...
Writing an Interface →
A great checklist of things to consider when writing microcopy — buttons, help text, and success/error messages — for your website or application.
Microcopy is an often neglected aspect of user interface design. It’s tempting to provide generic button text (“Save”, “Cancel”) or form labels (“Blog title”, “Email”) and leave it at that.
But...
November 2011
4 posts
Is there glory in startups?
We’re in the middle of a second interweb bubble, where young, green developers are being pie-piped into working insane hours, sleeping under their desks, and living off Ramen noodles. This shitty, unsustainable lifestyle is glorified by much of the VC-funded startup scene. It’s viewed as a badge of honor.
Amy Hoy just posted a great article, Fuck Glory – Startups are One Long Con,...
Features & Physics Envy →
Customers won’t value all the development you do on a project. Some necessary tasks such back-ups, re-factoring, optimisation, improving infrastructure offer little immediate reward. This doesn’t mean you can ignore those issues. The trick is to plan your roadmap so there’s never long periods where customers feel the application has been abandoned.
Scheduling & releasing features is...
Google Reader redesign: a step in the right...
The former project manager for Google Reader (Brian Shih) posted a harsh critique of the recent design changes to the Google Reader web interface. Judging by the comments and other posts, it seems many people agree with him. But (as often happens on the internet) people are getting overly upset about the negatives and failing to see the improvements the new design offers.
Brian complains that...
October 2011
8 posts
“If you’ve started a small business, and it seems like an uphill battle to...”
“Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while, you...”
– Who said it? Nobody knows for certain.
Are you capable of reflective, constructive... →
think about a proposition you believe as true. It can be anything, for example …
Apple products are superior to Microsoft.
Human carbon emissions are increasing global temperature.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
The New York Yankees are the best team in baseball.
Herbal remedies are better than industrial pharmaceuticals.
Lower tax rates increase economic development.
Now, the...
In 1987, Apple predicted touchscreen & voice...
From Waxy.org:
In 1987, Apple released this concept video for Knowledge Navigator, a voice-based assistant combined with a touchscreen tablet computer. Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011.
So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a...
Is Groupon's allure fading? →
The New York Times published an interesting article about how the appeal of Groupon (and other copycat coupon sites) is waning for merchants.
The consumers were being told: You will never pay full price again. The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable.
In fact, it gets worse for merchants: research...
"One important thing" for startups →
At a little company there’s no time for small changes achieving small goals. Increasing conversion rates from 0.9% to 1.1% doesn’t matter if only 100 people come to the website every day. Much more important is getting 1,000 people to come to the website every day […] Little incremental things can come later, when you have the extra time. Today, it’s just big needle-moving things.
September 2011
9 posts
Splendid Chrome Theme
The fact that the Splendid theme for Google Chrome has ~700,000 users crushes my belief that good design will prevail.
Microsoft Bing has lost $5.5 billion →
Bing is losing nearly $1 billion per quarter, and has lost $5.5 billion since it launched two years ago. That sucks.
It sucks for the team behind Bing, who have put a ton of effort into building a pretty good product. But it also sucks for consumers; as much as I like Google, they need stronger competition. The web has too many monopolies, and that’s not good.
Luckily, Microsoft...
Sitting and Standing at Work →
There’s been a lot of hype around standing desks lately, due to the amount of research indicating that sitting at a computer all day is bad for your health. But, it turns out, standing all day isn’t any better for you.
Cornell University Ergonomics published an article based on their research, which states:
Sit to do computer work […] then every 20 minutes stand for 2...
Make things. →
There are so many conferences these days, so many voluble, charismatic leaders, and so much noise. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs in their 20s who are knowledgeable about the valuations various Y Combinator startups have attained, know the names of all the angel investors in the Valley, have in-depth knowledge of the Facebook diaspora and their doings, have opinions on various Zynga...
How I use RSS
Marco Arment recently posted about sane RSS usage, and it pretty much sums up how I use RSS feeds. I subscribe to ~100 different blogs and check my feeds almost daily (using Reeder, which is awesome). Most of the feeds I subscribe to publish less than one post a week, and some significantly less than that. Only a few post new content daily.
I don’t subscribe to major websites like...
How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages? →
It turns out you have 10 seconds to convince someone that your website is valuable to them. If ever there was an argument for brevity in design, this is it.
Jakob Nielsen posted about a research project that studied how long users were likely to remain on a web page. The fascinating conclusion was that 99% of Web pages had a “negative aging effect” — the longer a user has been...
“People will use anything if it’s free. We want people to use it because...”
– Garrett Dimon on pricing strategies for web-based software. There’s a whole lotta insight in his excellent Bootstrapping a Software Product slide deck, so go flip through it. He also reports that for his product, Sifter, the lowest price points have more rapid turnover and often more demanding...
Boingo Wireless: what a scam!
I’ve never been a fan of Boingo, but in many airports they are the only WiFi option. I recently had several hours to kill while waiting at LaGuardia, so I decided to cough up the $7.95 fee for 24 hours of access. I was online for roughly two hours, then powered off my laptop for a few minutes (I mistakenly thought my plane was boarding).
When our plane got delayed further, I turned my...
August 2011
4 posts
“Broken windows are the reason most large software projects suck to work on. A...”
– Kyle Neath applies the broken windows theory to product development, and explains that cultivating a culture of relentless quality is one of the key ingredients to building amazing stuff.
“Telegraph to the world that you are just too dumb to make smartphones.”
– How to kill HP in one year.
“Chops” can be learned. A point of view must be discovered.”
– Jack Cheng discusses what matters when hiring junior designers. Check out the rest of the interview on the shiny new Carbonmade blog.
Is design an expression of art?
That was one of the questions posed to Charles Eames in this Q & A video from 1972. His reply:
“I would rather say it’s an expression of purpose. It may–if it is good enough–later be judged as art.”
A concise summation of the distinction between art & design.
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
Nokia N9: UI demo →
The Nokia N9’s interface is pretty cool. The first thing you notice is that there are no buttons on the phone — everything is done through the massive touchscreen.
I’m particularly impressed with their riff on multi-tasking (1:14 in the video). Switching between apps on the iPhone is a bit of a chore. You need to double-tap the home button (which lately seems finicky to me) and...
May 2011
6 posts
Perspective
CompanyMarket CapAmazon
$90 billion
Yahoo
$21 billion
Adobe
$18 billion
LinkedIn
$10 billion and climbing!
AOL
$2 billion
This means LinkedIn’s approximate “worth” is:
10% of Amazon.com
50% of Yahoo and Adobe
5 times AOL.
“Honestly, at $1,000/mo, I would argue that running a web app by yourself simply...”
– Garrett Dimon’s answer to an interesting Quora thread, Is it hard to build, market and maintain a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?
Campfire
Jason is building a Campfire bot for Carbonmade. Hilarity ensues!
“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is...”
– A quote from Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer. I had never heard of her until today (the Google logo for May 11, 2011 is in her honour), but I think these particular words apply to most people who create, in any medium.
Twitpic can sell your images
Twiptpic’s Terms of Service grant them unlimited rights to sell and use images you’ve uploaded:
“… by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and...
April 2011
3 posts
Recreating the THX Deep Note →
Amazing. Batuhan Bozkurt, a computational sound-art genius, has reverse-engineered & re-created the THX Deep Note. The original was created in 1982 by Dr. James Andy Moorer and required 20,000 lines of C code. Batuhan has obtained a similar (though not identical) sound in ~25 lines of code.
Fascinating to learn the subtle complexities happening in that short sound bite, and even more...
“Keating [the architect] did not care so long as his clients were impressed, the...”
– An excerpt from The Fountainhead describing Peter Keating’s sycophantic, self-seeking approach to architecture.
This book is full of stuff that’s just as applicable to web design as it is to architecture. If you’re in any sort of creative-services industry and approach your work...
March 2011
11 posts
WatchFascinating (though painfully produced) video about how our economy relies on the exponential & perpetual creation of debt, and how it’s literally unsustainable in a world of finite resources.
The gold-basis system used in the past is easy to grok: the value of paper money is directly affixed to a physical amount of gold. But I’ve never fully grasped the concept of how, in modern...
iPad haters
I was going through some forgotten notes in Evernote and came across this list of Tweets I bookmarked the day the iPad launched. I remember being surprised at the amount of doubt, pessimism & hostility directed towards Apple (and it’s fans) that day:
All I see is another user agent to deal with when making a web app…
#iPad looks cool, but not exactly groundbreaking. Here’s...
