Business — No comments — Short URL
03
Feb 10

Creating Jobs

The Economist is a magazine that goes into great depth about government and economic issues. I was surprised to see Steve Jobs on the cover, rather than Obama, considering both of their recent public presentations.

It got me thinking:

Who has done more to create jobs and improve the economy? Barack Obama or Steve Jobs.

Barack Obama has an $800,000,000,000 stimulus package to hire workers. This creates “work” but it doesn’t create “jobs.” As soon as that money disappears, so do the jobs. Should the government really be worrying about creating jobs, or should they be governing in such a way that they allow entrepreneurs to do the creating?

Steve Jobs has iTunes, Mac computers, the iPhone and the new iPad on his resumé. These products create jobs for the sellers and distributors of these electronics. As a byproduct, they’ve also created an ecosystem of job opportunities behind it. How many people have created their own jobs making iPhone apps? How many independent musicians make a comfortable living selling their songs on iTunes? How many designers are more creative and effective because of what is possible with web apps for the iPhone and iPad?

It’s not the government’s duty to “create” jobs. The taxpaying masses shouldn’t be the ones paying the bill for these few government workers. The government should get its hands out of the pie and let innovators like Steve Jobs do the job creating by making kick ass products that people actually want to buy. The government does a good job of providing a common defense and law enforcement, but it’s horribly inefficient at creating jobs.

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27
Jan 10

iPad vs. Kindle

While it’s fresh on everyone’s mind, I guess I’ll give in to the power of Apple buzz and write about the iPad. I’m excited for its potential as a biggie-sized iPhone, but as far as an ebook reader, I’m not that impressed.

Kid on christmas morning

I was anxious last night because I knew today could have been the day where Apple changed the ebook and publishing business forever. I looked forward to 1pm all day and the 6 hours before that couldn’t go by quick enough. I had hopes that the iPad would be some kind of e-ink, HD-color display hybrid that would make me immediately regret buying a Kindle. I’m relieved and disappointed at the same time.

Relieved that my Kindle isn’t obsolete 3 weeks after I bought it.

Disappointed that reading on an iPad will give me few benefits over reading on a laptop screen.

Kindle vs. iPad – Fight to the death only on Pay-Per-View

Elliot Jay Stocks said that ”the fact that it [the iPad] is going to kill the Kindle is now obvious.” I disagree with him. I bought the Kindle for its e-ink and open hard drive (I can put whatever I want on it). The iPad doesn’t challenge either of those so I think the Kindle will be fine. The iPad will be nothing but a bump in the road for Mr. Bezos.

The iPad will be more convenient to hold while I’m reading an ebook than my laptop because of the absence of the weird CPU/keyboard thing dangling off my laptop. The glowing backlit screen will be harsh on my eyes after 45 minutes of pure reading. I see myself reading on the iPad occasionally, but I bought the Kindle for a couple specific needs and the iPad doesn’t satisfy either of those.

I didn’t buy the Kindle to play games or check my email. That’s what my iPad will be for :-)

Business — 4 comments — Short URL
20
Jan 10

Web Apps I Use Daily

In response to @drawar, I thought I’d share a bit about how I work. I plan on being more open in the future, but this is all you get for now.

These are the web apps I use on a daily basis to manage my web design projects and further my design knowledge.

Instapaper

Instapaper is listed first because I do a lot of reading, and much of it isn’t from books. Keeping up to date with web standards requires almost constant reading and Instapaper makes that much easier to manage. Whenever I visit an article I want to read, I click the “Read later” bookmarklet and it goes to my Instapaper account. I’ll read the articles from there in bursts every couple days. Recently, I’ve been reading the articles (and saving notes on them) on my Kindle and Marco’s new Kindle formatting is a life saver. If I had to choose one web app to take with me to a deserted island, it would be Instapaper.

Gmail

I’ve actually gone so far as to completely replace my desktop application with Gmail. When I used Mail, I found myself checking my email too often. Moving to a web app has helped this because typing in “gmail.com” in a new browser tab is enough of a barrier to stop me from checking it obsessively. Three years I’ve been using Gmail and I’ve never once had an “emergency email” (despite the numerous emails with that in the subject). It took that simple step to make me realize that.

Notable

Notable is an app for getting feedback from my clients on designs I do. Instead of using email to try to describe what needs changed, the client can make corrections and leave feedback right on the design. To see it in action, check out ZURB’s CNN redesign.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks handles all my billing and invoicing. I don’t particularly enjoy that part of my business and FreshBooks makes it super easy to put out of my mind. It does its job well and doesn’t take up too much of my brain’s CPU power. Also FreshBooks has the best customer service I’ve ever seen. They gave their blog readers a chance to get a copy of Entrepreneur magazine when they were the cover story. Inside was a Post It note as a thank you handwritten by the CEO of the company. That simple gesture still amazes me to this day.

Those are the four I use every single day. Notoriously absent from this list is Basecamp because I’ve never had a need for it before, despite following what 37signals does for the past five years. Recently, I’ve been using it for bigger projects with more group work. I expect to start using it on personal and client projects soon.

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13
Jan 10

Little Things

I often wonder how I can make the world a better place. Solve world hunger, educate underprivileged kids to give them a fighting chance, achieve world peace. While these are lofty goals, I’ve given in to the fact that I alone will never fully solve those problems. That doesn’t mean you and I can’t still make the world a better place by doing the little things.

Try these:

  1. Hold the door for someone, even if they are 15 seconds from getting to the door. The awkward eye contact and shy smiles will put you both in a good mood.
  2. Let someone go ahead of you in traffic. People merging onto a crowded highway tend to think they have the right of way. They don’t, but why not be nice and let them go. Traffic is stressful enough.
  3. Thank people. Always, thank people. I find it rude if you hold the door or elevator for someone and they do not thank me. The phrase is two words, but it weighs more than the 8 letters that make it up.
  4. Buy your romantic partner flowers on the way home from work. Or chocolate. Or a DVD. Or a book they’ve been eyeing.
  5. Compliment someone. Guys: You’d be surprised how far a small compliment goes to improve the mood of the women around you. Try “I like how you did your hair today” or “Your eyes look very blue today.”
  6. Start a conversation while waiting in line (queue as they say in Europe).
  7. Pick up a piece of trash rolling along the sidewalk.
  8. Let the mother behind you with three fidgety kids go ahead of you in the grocery line. You can wait another 5 minutes and her being 5 minutes closer to wrangling her kids into the car would mean the world.
  9. Randomly buy your friends something little. My friend bought me a CD a couple years ago and gave it to me straight from the Amazon package while we were checking our mail together. The CD was awesome and the gesture makes me crack a smile to this day.

Imagine the power to improve the world if everyone did one of these each day.

What would you add to this list?

Update: Unit Interactive released a site where people post something that made their day. I’m surprised how many of those things are little things that would take less than five minutes to do. Five minutes for 24 hours of happiness. Sounds like good ROI to me.

Design — 1 comment — Short URL
06
Jan 10

Letterpress

Over the past few weeks, I made my first Tumblr theme. It was an experiment in two ways:

  1. It was the first time I used HTML5 in production.
  2. It was also the first time I used the Tumblr theme language.

I’m used to WordPress and learning how Tumblr does it provided a good segway into learning ExpressionEngine, my next challenge.

HTML5

HTML5 has been an absolute pleasure to use. It’s the first HTML spec that has made complete sense to me. The addition of a few new tags (<header>, <nav>, <time>, etc) make my markup more semantic and useful to both humans and search engine robots. Not to mention the new doctype – <!doctype html> – is as simple as it will ever get.

Using HTML5 has been so great that I will be developing in that language from now on, mostly thanks to Modernizr for backwards compatibility.

Letterpress

Letterpress is the Tumblr theme I designed and coded. It was inspired by a whole array of letterpress prints, but most of all Dan Cederholm’s business card. Over 500 people are using it so far and it is growing steadily at about 30 more a day. That is a modestly popular theme by Tumblr’s standards, but I’m happy with it as my debut effort.

Let me know what you think of it. See it action on my Tumblr blog.

Design — 9 comments — Short URL
18
Dec 09

Cross Browser Checklist

Cross browser testing can be a pain for a web designer, so I tried to make it slightly more enjoyable with a simple checklist. These are all the things I personally check when coding and designing a site.

cross-browser-checklist

Download the cross browser checklist [PDF]

Is there anything you would add to it?

Design / Shorties — No comments — Short URL
12
Dec 09

Spaced Presentation

Inspired by an article by Jack Cheng, I decided to try something a little different during my semester at university. I typed up my notes for every class the evening after the class was over. That way, I would be exposed to the material once in the lecture, forget about it gradually throughout the day, and be reminded of it a couple hours later. This technique is called spaced presentation. By spreading out my learning, my brain retains more information for a longer period of time.

So how has it worked for me? It’s finals time and I’m not stressed out at all, which can seem impossible when you’re up against 5 or 6 tests that are collectively worth 30% of your entire grade. The pressure can be all-consuming, especially when Red Bull is pumping through your veins and you’re stuck at the library at 1am. What I’ve done by typing up my notes is invest in studying ahead of time rather than cramming the night before my test. It helps me perform better in the class and remember more useful info from the class.

Don’t believe me? Try to remember what you crammed for your first semester at college. I definitely don’t remember anything because my brain was on overload. I remembered it for the test and immediately pushed it out.

Work on your passion every day

Spaced presentation is also something I’m experimenting with for making myself a better designer. Every day, I’m reading two of the 100 design principles from a book called Universal Design Principles. It only takes about 15 minutes so I can easily fit it into my schedule.

I even set myself a reminder in my todo list program so I don't forget.

I even set myself a reminder in my todo list program, Things, so I never forget.

I’m at principle #50 right now and I’m going to stop after I’ve gone through the book two or three times. I don’t want to read these principles and forget it. These are something I want to subconsciously think about when designing so I’m working on making that happen a little bit every day so my brain doesn’t get overloaded.

What can you do?

What is one thing you’d like to know more about? It could be anything; design, writing, jewelry making, wood carving or your required bio stats class. Try working on it for 20 minutes every single day (or maybe 45 minutes three times a week). Read an article or do a few practice problems. You’re not only going over the material repetitively, but you’re doing it in such a way that your brain can handle all of the information without overflowing with knowledge.

Writing — 1 comment — Short URL
18
Nov 09

Give Me Some Space

From now on, you’re not allowed to put two spaces after a sentence. Only use one. I know two is what you were taught, but it puts too much space in between thoughts.

One space helps your writing flow better because the reader doesn’t get distracted by the unnecessary white space.

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14
Nov 09

Zone Out Button

I listen to podcasts (Boagworld and Rails Envy to name a few) on my way to school every day. I listen to them when I’m trying to zone out of the mind-numbing traffic. The interesting content makes me think more about web development and less about the 94 Honda that just cut me off (does he really think he’s going to get there any faster?!)

Sometimes my brain wanders off. I hear an interesting statement and think about that for a minute or so. I learn a lot thinking through problems on my own, but the podcast doesn’t stop when my brain stops listening.

Zone Out Button

I was delighted to find this little interface tidbit on Apple’s iPod Touch:

zone-out-button

Tapping this button will rewind the podcast 30 seconds, the usual amount of time for one of my “zone out” sessions. This is a common activity and this button is proving useful time and time again.

Here's the affectionately named zone out button in context of the play controls.

Here's the affectionately named zone out button in context of the play controls.

This button made me think about what common action in my interfaces can be contained in one button. One button, one click, one tap of the finger is such a simple activity and will be infinitely usable if the user constantly does this task or set of actions.

You shouldn’t feel the need to quarantine every possible action into a single button, but think of a few task your users perform constantly and ask how you can automate that process.

Capistrano

Another example of this “single button” concept is Capistrano. It is a command line tool (meaning no visual interface at all) that allows you deploy a new version of your site to a web server by entering one command:

$ cap deploy

Without this easy-to-memorize command, I would have to manually copy the latest revision to my site from my source control repository, upload it to my server and run tests to make sure I didn’t break anything. Capistrano does all that for me. Automatically. With one command.

Capistrano and the zone out button allow me to worry less about stuff I do all the time and concentrate on the thing that actually produces value: learning from the podcast and making my sites better.

Ask yourself

  • What can I do to make a few really common tasks easier on all of my users?
  • How can I take some of the monotonous burden of my interface off of their shoulders and outsource a common set of actions to a single button?
Writing — No comments — Short URL
05
Nov 09

Avoid Generalizations

i-heart-generalizations

Generalizations (as in “Most user don’t know what a double click is.”) are worse than not writing anything at all. They mean nothing and waste the reader’s time. On the internet, having a reader spend time on your site is a privilege. Write wisely.

Common Offenders

  • Research shows that – “Research shows that IE6 is one of the most popular browsers ever.” – If research does actually support your argument, cite it. Otherwise, don’t make it up.
  • Most – “Most users don’t scroll below the fold.” – ‘Most’ is unspecific. It could mean 51% or 99.99%. Use a more specific number instead, even if it’s an informal survey of your friends or your past experiences (I find that 55% of my readers don’t scroll below the fold.)
  • More – “More often than not a user doesn’t even go to a second page.” – If it’s true, prove it. Cite the source or your experience. Make it a more specific statement.
  • A lot – “A lot of wars have happened in the past.” – The phrase ‘a lot’ is relative. Does it mean 5? 150? 700 billion?
  • Some say – The only one who can pull this off is Jeremy Clarkson when he introduces the Stig. (Some say that he’s seen the Lion King 1,780 times)
  • They say – “They say that the swine flu will be bad this year.” – Who said that? The experts did. What experts? Errrr…

It’s okay to use these words and phrases, but don’t base your writing on them. Don’t overuse generalizations. Used occasionally, they can reinforce your point. If they are your point, you might not have much substance behind your writing to begin with. Work on the substance instead of your generalizations and your writing will be more useful and comprehensive.

Design — 1 comment — Short URL
02
Nov 09

Smashing Magazine Redesign

Smashing Magazine recently redesigned their entire site. They produce great content, but this redesign results in a horrible user experience.

For a site that has many articles about usability and user experience, their site isn’t usable at all. People go to their site to read interesting and unique content, but their recent design work takes a step in the exact opposite direction.

Overwhelming Advertisements

smashing-homepage

Their homepage looks pretty but focuses very little on their unique content. No focus on content for a blog = bad user experience. I’m here to look at your articles, not your ads. I understand having ads there to generate revenue for your hard work. I’m not disappointed in the ads existence but rather I’m disappointed by the sheer number of ads.

smashing-article

Their individual article pages are even worse! Fullscreen on my MacBook and this is how much content is displayed. Let me highlight the parts an average reader of Smashing Magazine would be interested in.

smashing-article-highlighted

My rough calculations put the useful content as 89,000 pixels out of a total of 823,880 pixels. That is 11% of my entire screen! It is unacceptable to waste 89% of your reader’s screen on unnecessary elements. Waste 20% at the most with advertisements and anything not absolutely critical to the usability of your site.

You might be able to count the navigation and search as useful parts. That would bring the total up to 193,000 useful pixels. Still a paltry 23% of the screen is useful on an article page.

Buggy Browsers

Not supporting IE6 is okay in my book, but you shouldn’t make their experience completely unusable. Instead of worrying about support for the dying browser, serve up an unstyled version of the site instead. The people on IE6 visiting Smashing Magazine, a blog devoted to pushing the boundaries of the internet, probably have no choice to upgrade. They are the ones browsing Smashing Mag during their lunch break at XYZ Corporation dreaming of greener pastures.

Safari Bug Hunting

buggy-browser

If you’re going to push the boundaries what is capable on websites, make sure your own website displays correctly in modern browsers. Above is a screenshot of my main browser, Safari 4.0.3. There is an error in the CSS that makes it almost impossible to click on the “read more” links.

Not All Bad

good-navigation

The new navigation is great. It’s clear, simple and padded. The category dropdown is easy to use and saves a lot of screen space. This is the best improvement to the new Smashing Magazine.

smashing-footer-illustration

This illustration on the footer gives me a sneak peek at what the guys and girls behind Smashing Mag look like. This helps to make it more personable, memorable and fun.

Overall

The redesign of Smashing Mag is 2 steps forward and 8 steps backward. Their following (170,000+ people!) would benefit more from an increased amount of content on the page (with necessary whitespace) and not an increase in the ad space, especially on the article page.

Will I stop reading their articles and writing for them? Absolutely not. Their authors put out some great content and it’s a shame that the unique content wasn’t the focus of the new design. I’ll be comfortably reading Smashing Mag from my RSS reader from now on.

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27
Oct 09

Instapaper on Kindle

Update: The problem isn’t on Instapaper’s end. Marco already has a similar solution to what I suggested.

“Amazon doesn’t reliably deliver my messages to customers’ Kindles. For some people, it works great. For others, I trigger some filter after a while and Amazon randomly blocks Instapaper emails from hitting their accounts unless they call Amazon’s customer service and have them remove the block.”

That’s a shame because Instapaper would be that much more useful with consistent support from Amazon’s PDF conversion service.


I am constantly reading books, but they are mostly technical ones that I like to highlight and markup the margins. Amazon’s Kindle wouldn’t do me much good there. I read tons of blog articles, usually 20 at a time. This is where the combination of Instapaper and Kindle can become a game changer.

There is one thing that will immediately get me to shell out $259 for the Kindle: Instapaper automatically syncing with the Kindle. Instapaper has become a part of my daily routine. I check my feeds throughout the day, open any articles I want to read and save them to my Instapaper account. After I’m done work for the day, I sit on my couch and read the articles from Instapaper on my MacBook. Reading on a backlit screen isn’t ideal because it strains my eyes (and I’m a pretty young lad). I’ve tried reading on my iPhone too, but that didn’t help much either.

Possible User Experience for InstaKindle1

Not much would change about the way I save my articles. What would change is how I read them. Every night, my unread articles on Instapaper would be quietly converted to a single PDF document and emailed to my special Kindle address.2 It would arrive at my virtual doorstep at 6am and be ready for consumption during my morning tea. It would imitate the experience of a morning newspaper at a much lower cost. It would be targeted to exactly the articles I want to read because I’m the one that picked them. It would be comparably easy to read because of the Kindle’s E Ink.

Having Instapaper and the Kindle collaborate to bring me my ultra-targeted newspaper subscription in the morning would be the ideal experience for me.

  1. I just made that name up. Feel free to use it, although Amazon might not like that. [↩]
  2. Marco Arment already has a great start to this functionality. [↩]
Design — 1 comment — Short URL
26
Oct 09

Be Inspired, Don’t Copy

Coming up with new design ideas is tough work, that’s why designers get paid the big bucks. If you want to be a reputable designer, the absolute last thing you should do is copy someone else’s work. Copying has no benefits.

  • You don’t learn the thought process behind the design.
  • You don’t learn the reasons why a designer made the button a certain way.
  • You don’t know why she put the logo on the left side or why she emphasizes a certain header over another one.
  • Copying is a way for lazy designers to cop out.

All you see in a finished design is that it looks cool. You want that appeal on your page but don’t want to put in the work behind it.

Be Inspired Instead

Seek out posts about why designs ended up as they did. 37signal’s Design Explorations are a valuable learning tool. As is Next Update by Garrett Dimon. Tim Van Damme has inspired quite a few people to make a personal “business card” website like his own.1 He even inspired me. Unfortunately, many people felt that it was okay to copy directly off his design. Tim worked hard to make his design useful and beautiful, but the lazy designers spent no time and effort and just copy and pasted his source code.

Do you want to be a lazy designer or a designer who learns from and is inspired by others?

Latest Offender

I came across one of these lazy designers when Tim tweeted about this fellow’s latest “design.” He thought it was okay to rip off the design of the Ballpark marketing page. See if you can spot the similarities:

bad-designergood_designer

The designer even has the stones to photoshop in his web address into the screenshot and change it to his product name in all of the testimonials.

Copying directly from one of your competitors is not a good way to get your business started on the right foot.

What’s Okay To Do

Be inspired. Seeing a particular element you like and modifying it to fit your site is okay. For example, say you like how atebits has an inset look to its dividers. Look at the code that makes that happen and learn from it. Take what you learned over to your site and change it to fit your design. It might look better with a larger shadow, a darker color, or maybe if you completely change it to green.

Side note: Don’t forget it’s possible to be inspired by something outside your normal line of work. Try going to the park, walking through a crowded street, or exploring what’s popular on Tumblr and Flickr. Something might catch your eye.

  1. See his Hall of Fame [↩]
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25
Oct 09

Bloomframe

Bloomframe window/balcony

The Bloomframe is a window that turns into a balcony on demand with motorized controls. All you have to do to convert your window into a glass-paneled balcony is hit a button on a remote.

This is an incredible engineering feat and I can’t wait to see this in a real life application. The company started production as of September 2009.

It would be great for people in downtown penthouses because it would allow you to get outside while savings a lot of space and hassle. If it starts to rain, just close it up and enjoy the storm.

Business — No comments — Short URL
24
Oct 09

Why Angels Should Charge Startups To Pitch Their Ideas

Jason Calacanis revealed a “scam” in the startup investment market: some angel investors are charging would-be entrepreneurs to pitch them. How dare they? He disagrees with this practice, but I tend to think what those angels are doing is a good idea.

Why Angels Should Charge Potential Entrepreneurs

  1. Eliminates spam. Not typical email spam, but it is a way to separate out the great ideas from the startups that are using the shotgun approach. If an entrepreneur isn’t willing to fork over $10K to pitch their revolutionary business idea, I would start to doubt how truly revolutionary their idea is.
  2. Allows angels to concentrate on the really great ideas. With all the noise deterred by the entrance fee, the entrepreneurs that are left are going to be the cream of the crop. If an angel firm used to see 100 pitches a month, but now they see 20 and still invest in the same number of startups, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
  3. Idiots get shut down immediately. “Entrepreneurs” who are out to make a quick buck while putting someone else’s money wouldn’t even consider paying to pitch. This represents a small number of startups. The one’s with great ideas are going to succeed regardless of whether they pay to pitch or not, but the idiots are going to have a harder time if their money is on the line.

Luckily, if you disagree with this practice, the solution is easy: don’t pitch the angels that charge you money.

The angels who are charging are not doing this to make more money. $10K is nothing when your net worth is in the double digit millions.1 They are doing this to eliminate the entrepreneurs who don’t truly believe in this product in a subtle subconscious way.

Angels who charge for a pitch are going to have higher quality ideas being presented to them and likely have a higher success rate.

Keep in mind that these startups are asking for million of dollars of an angel’s money for a business that might not work. If you’re successful in raising $10,000,000, what is a $10K investment up front?2 To me, that seems worth it.

What if Craigslist charged $1 for a listing by Seth Godin illustrates this point perfectly although using a different example.

  1. If you have $15,000,000 in the bank, you earn $3,300 in interest every single day at a modest 8% interest. [↩]
  2. Literally speaking, $10K is 0.1% of 10 million. [↩]
Shorties — 1 comment — Short URL
24
Oct 09

What If Your Clients Acted Like This All the Time…

Guy: I mean, lunch at the taco stand was what?

Girl: About $12.

Guy: Yeah about $12.

Waiter: Sir, we’re not the taco stand.

Guy: I had beef – same thing.

Waiter: You had the Filet…

Guy: Yeah… cow.

Why do clients try to nickel and dime your design work, but they don’t haggle with people at the grocery store? The work we’re doing is much more valuable to them anyway.

Design — 2 comments — Short URL
23
Oct 09

Do Blogs Need Your Email When You Comment?

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer: The point of having an email field in a comment form is to have a way for the site owner to contact the commenter. I do not believe that field is necessary and adds unnecessary complexity to your form. Complexity discourages people from commenting and in turn weakens your blog community.

Real life example: Imagine you are giving a keynote. After your talk, you strike up conversations with audience members. They compliment you, ask you questions, and suggest alternatives to what you said. All of these are real world comments, but you’re not asking for any email address. At the most, you’ll ask their name to keep in touch.

That same practice should carry over to the blog world. People’s names and comments are most important to the discussion. If the person wants to be contacted, they can leave a link to one of their sites.

Spencer Fry eliminating one field form his comment form encourages readers to leave a comment.

Spencer Fry eliminating one field form his comment form encourages readers to leave a comment.

Always keep your fields down to the bare minimum. Only include basic fundamental fields to ease the burden on your users.

Update: What’s worse than asking for your email when you want to comment?

johnnyholland.org

Answer: Having an email field and a CAPTCHA. This is from a user experience blog nonetheless, the last place I'd expect to see one.