October, 2009

Design — No Comments
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
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 [↩]
Design — No Comments
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
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
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 — 3 Comments
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.