Archive for March, 2010:
Balancing Simplicity, Purpose and Incentive
You probably know we think a lot about games and game mechanics here. This is largely Paul’s doing, since he’s done a lot of thinking about what makes games fun and if/how the fun of games can be applied to other typically un-fun activities, namely work. I’ve been playing foursquare for about six months, and [...]
I <3 Geeks
I present the following story not to make a point about social media, the utility of Twitter, the power of the real time interwebs or any of that. The only reason I’m sharing it is that I love the hacker spirit and what geeks can accomplish with the proper motivation. Last night, about 8 PM [...]
On Feedback Loops
It’s taking a while, what with real work and other things (more on that toward the end) getting in the way, but I’m strolling through the key nuggets I took away from SXSW. This installment concerns feedback loops, which is a fancy term for collecting opinions and acting on them. Several of the sessions I [...]
Surround Yourself with Smart People
In a matter of days, the AppsLab will turn three years old. Coincidentally, I’ve been reminded lately just how smart the people around me. So, indulge me for a few hundred words as I brag about my team. The sense of deja vu has been heavy for me lately. For example, this tweet today from [...]
If Maslow Built Software
The moment your software team grows beyond a team of one, you need to communicate. Someone will have an idea on improving a new feature, creating a new product, etc. Immediately the question arises of how best to share the idea. For most people, the conversation moves immediately to tools. Should we use a wiki, [...]
Empathy as Design Value
Probably the most memorable session for me at SXSW, at least in terms of nuggets I can take away and use, was How to Design for the 15 Minutes presented by Rob Goodlatte (@rsg) of Facebook and Daniel Burka (@dburka) formerly of Digg. The slides make a little more sense when read side-by-side with liveblogged notes. [...]
Are You a Design Geek?
Everyone notices the design of everyday objects. You can’t really avoid it. I suppose good design makes an object a joy to use, whereas bad design makes it a pain. Everyone notices, but I think being a design geek means you not only do you notice, but you appreciate and improve. The longer I’ve been [...]
The Open Source Car by Local Motors
The last SXSW session Paul and I caught before leaving Austin was called “No Straight Lines: Straight Line Thinking Stops Here” given by Alan Moore (@alansmlxl). I enjoyed his talk and found his ideas inspiring, and among many other things he covered was the story of Local Motors. Local Motors is essentially an open source [...]
PM Should Know How to Code, Part 2
So, if you’re monitoring the comments on my post yesterday, Product Managers Should Know How to Write Code, you’ll know Bex (@bex) and I are having a bit of a disagreement. This is good. I really like intellectual (vs. emotional) disagreement on the intertubes because it opens eyes to new viewpoints. Too bad Bex is [...]
Smartphone: The Ultimate People Repellent
Last week, I realized that the smartphone is the ultimate anti-social device. Sure, you can be all social, checking Facebook, tweeting and checking in to venues, but the paradox is that your smartphone makes you look like unapproachable IRL. And by you, I mean me. The week before SXSW, I attended a social gathering. There [...]
Product Managers Should Know How to Write Code
I’ve been absent for a while, not sure if this tweet from Chet was related to my silence, but if it was, I have an excuse. Paul and I just returned from Austin and SXSWi, which ran March 12-16. For those unfamiliar, SXSW is comprised of three festivals: film, music and interactive. It began in [...]
Say it Ain’t So Rich, a Palm Pre?
Rich (@rmanalan), a borderline Apple fanboi, told me just weeks ago when I was contemplating my iPhone dilemma, that he’d never give up his iPhone. They’d have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers. Apparently, Rich died, and his alien leaders haven’t done their homework because he told me yesterday he had given his iPhone [...]
Fourface Exposes New Interface Paradigms
Thanks to a tweet from the @foursquare team and a post from TechCrunch, I have a new app for checking in to foursquare, Fourface. Yeah, I know foursquare and location generally have been getting a lot of ink here and other place. Get used to it though because heading into SXSW later this week, location [...]
Is Simple Viable In Enterprise Land?
The tradeoff between simplicity and features has been around for ages, but it was hotly debated on the web by two of the most forward thinking software luminaries: Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky. Their back and forth debate hit a crescendo last year around the time I attended the wonderful Business of Software conference put [...]
Friday Ramblings
I started three different placeholders today that I thought might be post-worthy, but since it’s Friday afternoon, I decided to cram them all into a single post. You understand. Free does not mean open source. Eddie tweeted a link yesterday that caught my eye called “20 Reasons Why Oracle is the World’s Largest Open Source [...]
OK Go’s Epic Rube Goldberg Machine Video
This video is awesome and brilliant, even if you don’t care for the song. There’s so much going on each second that it’s difficult to focus on any one thing. Even more interesting, you might notice it’s a single Steadicam shot, no cuts. Apparently, that shot took 60 takes over two days to get. Wired [...]
Too Much Information Makes People Something Something
When we started this team, three years ago, most people we talked to hadn’t heard of Facebook or Twitter and associated MySpace, assuming they’d heard of it, with something kids do. Some people knew LinkedIn and that often helped get the wheels turning about social and how it could benefit work. It was a lot [...]
Do You Search or Organize?
On a web conference today, I caught a glimpse of someone’s inbox. Protip: Close your email and IM if you’re presenting something. Unless of course, you want me to see your email folders, including the ones where you store “house” email. But I digress. The person’s inbox had probably 40 folders, some of them with nested folders, [...]
Software is Hard
I’m convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is great for enterprise software. I’m similarly convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is terrible for enterprise software. Reading Marc Benioff’s post “The Facebook Imperative” on TechCrunch last week reminded me of these mutually-exclusive conclusions. On the one hand, as Benioff points [...]
