I’d be thrilled to Grandma-sized morsels if you’d support me by checking out the demo on my new Spiffing Apps site, spreading the word, and buying the app if you like the look if it.

Did someone say cake?

You’re back already? With questions? How lovely. Help yourself to cake and take a seat. I’ll go ahead and make some wild assumptions about what you might ask. I’ll also share my thoughts on the process of building and launching an iPhone app. Feel free to follow-up in the comments if I’ve missed anything.

Q: What’s Put Things Off for iPhone?

It’s an electronic todo list for people who hate electronic todo lists. It helps you focus on what’s important today and put off the rest until later. It’s the second most laid-back way of organising yourself (after pencil and paper, of course).

Q: Who’s it for?

It’s casually optimised for procrastinators and the upwardly bone idle — Put Things Off has a special function that allows you to forget about unimportant tasks for the time being. Any tasks you defer get filed in the “Put Off” tray. They’ll sit there until their due date (which you can optionally decide yourself), then automatically move back to the today tray, allowing you to mark them as done (or put them off again).

Of course, it works great for busy people who aren’t complete layabouts, too.

Q: How’s it different?

If you check out the video on the Spiffing Apps site, you’ll see that I’ve designed it to look and feel very different to other iPhone todo lists; it’s built for easy task filing in a way that’s fun and fast. No more drilling down through multiple screens to add or file a task.

Not only does it look very different to other todo apps — it handles differently too. I was once an aspiring animator, so I’ve peppered in some subtle animations when filing and deleting tasks to round the experience off.

Q: You built an electronic todo list? I thought you despise them?

I used to — it’s why I designed the app. After writing Todoodlist last year — my electronic book about paper lists —  I thought it would be poetic to design an electronic list that looked and felt more like paper.

More seriously, though, I’ve exchanged a lot of email with people who love the idea of paper lists, but wouldn’t go back to them over their dead iPhones. So I started designing an electronic list I’d be comfortable using every day.

Q: What was the plan?

The brief was a simple one: it had to make me smile every time I used it. It also had to be faster to add, edit, and file tasks than the other software I’d used. Finally, it had to get out of the way; the best software is normally designed so you don’t have to think about how you’re using it.

Q: Who’s Spiffing Apps?

Right now, it’s just me wearing a monocle. I set up the moniker because I wanted a brand to grow into and a platform to launch other apps from if I get around to it. Given the name of the app, I should probably have integrated the brand more cleverly with this site, but not everyone likes kittens that much.

Q: Are any updates planned?

If enough people upgrade to iPhone OS3.0, I plan to add reminders, which will make it a bit like having a nagging girl- or boyfriend. Except that you’ll be able to turn the sound off.

I also have plans to add a filter-by-context or filter-by-tag system so that you can display only tasks that are related to work, for example.

No exact due dates for these, of course — I’ve put them off for now.

Q: Is anyone buying it?

Yes, thank heavens. I only know because they’ve told me, though. I won’t have the actual figures for a while, but if you’re interested to know what they are, then sign up to the Spiffing Apps mailing list (right column, halfway down). If they’re worth boasting about, I intend to share them there.

Q: What was building an iPhone app like?

Pretty tough, but thoroughly rewarding. Originally, I’d intended to design the app and outsource the coding part. When I couldn’t find anyone who’d accept a half-licked Twix as payment, I decided to learn to code myself.

I’ve been coding for the Web for about 10 years now (PHP, ColdFusion and Ruby), but coding for iPhone is a different cliché altogether. It took me about two-to-three weeks to get up to speed with Objective-C, Cocoa, and the iPhone software development kit, then another four weeks to design and build Put Things Off.

I took out a subscription to Safari Books Online and trawled their archive of iPhone-related stuff, which is fully searchable online. When I got stuck, I headed to Stack Overflow to pick the brains of people far smarter than me.

Despite the horror stories I’d heard, it only took 8 days for the app to be approved first time. I spent the time contacting iPhone review sites, building the website, and nervously wondering whether or not it had all been a terrible waste of time. Fortunately, the opportunity cost is quite low when building apps yourself, so I’ve not lost too much sleep over it.

If you’re interested in building your own app, I’ll have a post titled “iPhone Development for Beginners in a Terrible Hurry” on the Spiffing Apps blog soon.

Q: Will you shut up about iPhone stuff now?

I’ll do my best. For those of you interested in more of it, I’ll move most iChatter to the Spiffing Apps blog.

For everyone else, thanks for your patience. I’ve got some lovely non-gadget-related posts lined up later this month.

In the meantime, I sincerely hope that you enjoy Put Things Off for iPhone, and please do buy it and help me to spread the word!

I deeply distrust all forms of technology, none more so than the microwave oven. In the terrible event that I must use one — say, to dry wet socks or reheat my dampened enthusiasm for British tennis players — I do so only after glancing away, grimacing awkwardly, and shielding my testicles with a bread board.

Such healthy disrespect for all things buzzing is what keeps me alive, despite a niggling urge to try cleaning our blender in the bath; I have a long-standing theory that electricity and water would mix just fine if you did it fast enough.¹

The part where I confess

It may surprise you, then, that I’ve liquidised my scruples by doing what everyone in my position fears will one day come to pass: I’ve bought an iPhone. Even as a part-reformed nerd who’s wary of getting suckered by hard tech once more, it’s impossible to watch one of those Apple ads without stopping to consider whether, this time, the New Thing, this Holy Grail amongst handheld thingamibobs, this Golden Apple in an otherwise rotten bunch, could finally be The One.

The One that proves that tech can be fun instead of faulted. The One that makes you thank your sock drawer full of discarded shiteboxes for leading you to this moment. The One that changes everything. The One that doesn’t disappoint quite as eagerly as a Hugh Grant film.

The question you’re asking too

Perhaps you have noticed an iPhone billboard and paused to admire the object in its svelte, come-hither casing, designed in California, land of sun and sand, but made in China, land of pandas, pork ribs, and exciting retail opportunities.

Or, worse still, maybe you’ve visited an Apple store and been wooed by the sheer theatre of it all: the almost irritatingly helpful yet never knowingly attractive sales people; the array of over-polished products on small marble pedestals; the hallowed Genius Bar; the gathering hordes updating their MyFace accounts. Perhaps, at the exact moment you noticed that the staircase is fashioned entirely from glass and floating on the sighs of angels, you uttered the same question I did:

Will this bingling box of crap you’re trying to flog me solve any of my problems?

Well, after 2 months with mine, I’m delighted to tell you that it does.

The verdict

The iPhone is the first unnecessary overpriced pocketbox I’ve owned that lives up to more than 14% of the lies I was sold. Not only is it far easier to use than the crap I’ve been tricked into buying before, but it’s one of the few gadgets that solves multiple real world problems. Problems like “What’s the capital of Narnia?”, or “Where did we park the golf buggy?”, or “What’s that terrible music?”, or “What can I throw at a civic leader that isn’t a shoe?”

Did you know, for example, that there’s an app which lets you take pictures of a book or CD cover, then automatically checks to see if it’s cheaper on Amazon so you can contribute to your local bookstore’s rapid demise? Another one, which I hasten to add you must install on your shiny new phone before you can use it, will tell you where your nearest payphone is. Presumably in case you need to seek shelter during a hailstorm.

Silliness aside, some apps are quite useful — take the National Rail one, for instance, which tells those of us in the UK where our nearest station is via GPS, what time the next train home is supposed to arrive, and how many minutes after that time it might actually be at the platform.

The mobile revolution

So, I’ve started to realise that there’s little point in resisting. The mobile revolution is here, and it’s time to make a half-arsed effort and pretend we’re on board. Paper, while I shall always cling to it lovingly, is being left behind. What’s more, so is the desktop computer.

The mobile phone is gradually overlapping the realm of the desktop PC and Mac. Not enough to replace them entirely just yet, but enough that there is now a growing generation that accesses the internet exclusively by cell phone; they have never even seen a PC². For them, the Mobile Web is the Web.

The next big thing

More exciting still is the next big update, iPhone OS 3.0, which promises to connect willing goons with even more costly gadgets in ways they’ve never experienced and probably don’t feel entirely comfortable with. On the plus side it means, for example, that you could control your bluetooth-enabled microwave using your iPhone from a separate room where it’s safer. Better still, it means that the phone could do genuinely useful things, like monitor a diabetic’s blood sugar level and alert her overly concerned parents by text message should the fruit of their loins rapidly consume 16 Snickers bars to spite them.

It also has some more sinister implications in the realms of national security. From July this year, various inebriated world leaders will be launching nuclear missiles via iPhone with a dedicated interface that looks every bit as menacing as the closing scene from Wargames.

Crawl out from your caves

And so, my hope in writing this is to persuade the many waverers and outwardly tech averse to join me by crawling from your caves and giving this exciting new wave of gizmos a go. It’s safe to come out now, I promise. The iPhone’s slowly changing the way I feel about gadgets for the better, and I think it could do the same for you.

And, even if you don’t fancy one, I hope you’ll agree to join in by feigning excitement at the possibilities up ahead — even if, like me, your heart will always be happiest rendered in doodles.

Footnotes

1. Please don’t try this. You’ll break your blender.
2. Tim O’Reilly, Daddy, Where’s Your Phone?

When paid content became free and easy to access, ad revenue dropped like a shrink wrapped goose in a hailstorm. Ask the average blogger how much they make by giving their content away. Then ask your local newspaper editor the same. Both will sheepishly display their net worth: some crusty epidermis from the pit of their belly buttons topped with an economy-sized serving of Polyblend.

Change is in the air

But bloggers and hobbyists who long to write for profit as well as pleasure are slowly coming to the same conclusion as big publications: to build a healthy business with their slaved-over content, they need to start selling some of it. Sadly, there are two cracks in this otherwise rose-tinted dream:

1. It’s tough to set up a paid subscription service.
2. It’s even harder to get people to subscribe.²

Faced with the reality that most readers would rather take up the French Horn than pay a monthly subscription for stuff that was once free, many bloggers and corporations are falling back on two tried-and-tested models:

1. The advertising model
2. The cross-selling model

Sure enough, some have found success with these, but there’s a different and much underused way to make money with content that I’d like to air today. It’s one I’ve been considering myself, and that I think could prove to be a great option for you too.

The truth about earning
a living online

The reality is this: while many people are building profitable businesses by leveraging their content, hardly anyone is profiting directly from the content itself. To me, that’s a real shame. More importantly than that, though:

Traditional online business models force a conflict of interest: they must accommodate advertisers and spin-off product offers whilst attracting visitors who care about neither.

If you don’t think that building a business around your output instead of with it is odd, stop and think for a second. If you go to Apple’s site today, they’ll sell you a Mac. If you visit John Varvatos, they’ll sell you a suit. If you go to Hotel Chocolat, they’ll sell you their fancy choccies. Then visit The Guardian, who’ll happily give you all their output for free and then try to flog you a solar powered torch.

When it gets really silly

Weirder still are the sites that try to flog you a metaproduct from the top shelf of the Irony Store: Brian Clark sells a course about selling courses; Alexis Dawes sells an ebook about how to sell ebooks; Yaro Starak makes money online by selling access to a site that teaches you how to make money online; I even have the audacity to sell you a book about paper trumping technology that’s only available as an electronic download.

It’s pretty harmless to poke fun at these things, but — in truth — leveraging your content to draw an income through other products and services is probably the best option available to anyone hoping to build an online business right now, which is why we’re all trying it. If only there was another way…

The other way

Isn’t it time that people in the business of content creation started selling content?

I’d like to see online publishers building businesses with their content — not on the back of it. I have a lot of respect for any online publisher who can make a living using the regular models, but I can’t help wonder:

Why not just sell some of the content that people are already coming to your site to read or download?

The new model: micropayments

The new model is simple. Continue to provide free content just as you are, but sell your more unique content for a small one-off fee or ‘micropayment’.

You choose what you sell, your audience still gets a stream of free stuff, plus they get to support you by buying paid content if it’s relevant to them. Hopefully, everyone wins.

With me so far? Read on to learn how to make it work.

Micropayment Q&A

Hang on! Does micropaid content as a business model work?

Sure! The truth is that it’s already catching on fast. Micropayment is the same concept that’s rapidly turning Apple’s App Store into a billion dollar business,³ and it’s been trickling down to other forms of content for a while.

A great case in point is Peepcode, which sells video and PDF tutorials for programmers at $9 a shot. They’ve chosen to only market paid content, but I think it’s a model that would work well with free content mixed in too.

How do I sell content online?

There are a wealth of services that will help you sell downloadable goods online and automatically deliver them to your customers. You’ll need a bit of patience to set something up, but once you do, it’s usually plain sailing. Here are a few worth exploring:

1) E-junkie offers a cheap, standalone service that includes an affiliate scheme, anti-fraud measures and automated delivery.⁴
2) Shopify lets you list electronic goods, and Fetch can help you to distribute them automatically.
3) Magento is a powerful open source e-commerce solution that lets you sell electronic downloads and much more.
4) Shopp for WordPress is a beautiful option that’s designed to be quick and easy to setup and manage.
5) WP e-Commerce for WordPress is a popular solution that offers electronic downloads, though I’ve not tried this one myself.⁵

The bad news is that selling downloadable goods is still much harder than it needs to be to become ubiquitous. The good news is that, with more people taking an interest in selling files online, I think we’ll start to see other solutions emerge soon. (If you use and love a different one, feel free to add a note in the comments.)

What might a micropaid content site look like?

I can’t say how yours will look, but here’s a quick and dirty mockup of how I might approach micropaid content if I were to add it to Put Things Off (click for larger image):

The mindset to adopt when redesigning your site for a micropayment model is to start thinking of it as a business instead of a blog or brochure.⁶ You’ll notice straight away that the ads are gone! Hurrah.

What’s in it for me?

• Potential to earn more;
• Spend more time writing;
• Fewer (or zero) ads;
• A stronger bond with your readers;
• You’re helping to cultivate a content economy.

What’s in it for my readers?

• No subscription fees;
• Fewer (or zero) ads;
• They pay for the valuable content they choose;
• They’re helping you to build and improve your site;
• The warm fuzzy feeling that they’ve made your day by supporting you.

Isn’t there a chance that some of my readers will go elsewhere?

Sure. It will probably happen. Kevin Kelly argues that you only need 1,000 true fans to build a business, and I think he’s right.

Some of your audience won’t want to pay for stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you can build a core fan base who truly value your output, you’ll do OK by selling content.

Isn’t the Web supposed to be about free content?

It’s a lovely myth, isn’t it? Turns out that Ted Nelson, who invented hypertext in the 1960s to link Web pages, originally intended them as a way to take micropayments for content.⁷

I believe that paid content and free content can peacefully co-exist online — the answer isn’t to adopt an all or nothing business model. As such, I’m not proposing an end to all free content. Just some of it.

What about search engines?

Some people will be put off by protecting content because they’ll lose search traffic that they might have got. My advice is not to worry about it too much. Just provide a summary of your paid content openly in a dedicated page about that product.

Besides, search engines have been piggybacking your free content to make money for years.

What type of content sells best?

From my experience so far, the content that people will pay for falls into one of these categories:

• It solves a problem. (How-to guides, tutorials, screencasts, video info…)
• It entertains. (Music, poetry, short stories, novellas…)
• It provides current, valuable, inside information. (Reports, survey data, tips…)
• It helps people to make money. (Without being too trashy.)
• It makes people look better in the eyes of their peers or customers. (Project management web apps, for example.)

How much should I charge?

It’s up to you. I suggest between $1 and $10 per article or report, but you’ll need to tailor the figure to your audience. Tim O’Reilly sells regular targeted PDF reports for as much as $399 a copy.

How do I get people to buy my stuff?

Provide something of value. Then simply ask them. Failing that:

• Limit the number of steps between page load and checkout.
• Try not to force people into cost-value decisions with multiple purchase options.
• Highlight your paid content in a site-wide sidebar and page footer as well as on your homepage. Many of your visitors will arrive at your subpages first, and a lot of them will never see your homepage.
• Give people something to take away — downloads are probably better bets than selling access to content with passwords and logins.

Why didn’t you sell this post?

Ha! This time, I’d prefer to spread it among as many people as possible rather than sell it. You’ll have to make the same choice with your content too.

Closing thoughts

Of course, there’s no great harm in continuing to develop your own products and services and sell them alongside your free content,⁸ but I think there’s a strong case for building an economy based on content too.

After all, if Joel Comm can sell over 39,000 copies of his iFart application in one day,⁹ there must be some hope for the rest of us.

Footnotes

1. BBC News, Crisis in the US Newspaper industry, accessed 18/03/09
2. It hasn’t stopped some from trying, though. The Wall Street Journal charges $1.99 a week to access much of their content, and the New York Times is reported to be thinking about subscription again.
3. Venture Beat, Is the App Store already a billion dollar business for Apple?, accessed 18/03/09
4. I use E-junkie to sell Todoodlist and have a love-hate relationship with it. It works well and is astonishingly cheap, but I find their user interface a little clunky, it’s tough to customise the checkout and download process, and the sales reports are hard to analyse.
5. There’s a good comparison of Shopp and WP e-Commerce here.
6. And no, I don’t intend to branch into ukulele tuition.
7. Time, How to Save Your Newspaper, accessed 18/03/09
8. Read as: I’ll probably flog you more of my crap before the year ends.
9. Ars Technica, Flatulence has never been so profitable, accessed 18/03/09

The science of padding

When it comes to report writing, give someone the choice of waffling their existence away like a sad dough boy in a hot grill press, or expiring in front of their Word document, and most will choose option three: they will stick a chart in it.

Charts are everywhere these days, and few of them do us much good. But the most abominable thing about charts is this: creating a good one when you need some quality document padding in a hurry is impossible.

A graph and a half

Like me, you probably spent years scribbling all manner of pointless line graphs and bar art at school, but you’ll now find it tough to rule two lines, plot some points, and stick a best-fit curve through the whole merry lot without making it look like a car crash in flatland.

And so, without further ado or feeble trumpeting, I’ve created a bunch of mostly useless graphs, charts, and slightly sideways document fillers for you to employ in your own tedious reports, essays, and other dull grey nonsense. I hope that they prove both useful and serve to highlight the cosmic pointlessness of writing cabinet padding that no-one will act on anyway.

The emergency stick a chart in it kit

Nobody looks at these things closely, so feel free to use them wherever you like. Bonus points for getting all of them into one report without a) getting fired or b) running out of cyan ink.

For the adventurous

It’s funny how quickly taking your clothes off changes your world view.

For Python fans

“What do you mean? An African or European swallow?”

For the memories

I don’t care who you are. 16 penguins is pretty cool.

For the good of mankind

Message to pork pie virgins: you have been warned.

For aspiring authors

It’s a shame that fiction is so much harder to pitch and sell.

For people who like shouty music

Actual number of hated things listed in the song: 10.

For Eddie Izzard fans

If you haven’t seen Definite Article, buy it today.

For the sake of pointless vegetables

Turns out that celery is the sixth best selling vegetable. Who knew?

For hopeful entrepreneurs

Actual forecasts presented to venture capitalists don’t look anything like this, but they should.

For aspiring bloggers

It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?

For theoretical physicists (and Trek fans)

As bagel toasters go, it’s not a bad effort.

For no good reason at all

I’d love to do this for real. It’s not very high up my list, though.

Final notes

In truth, there’s only one rule when it comes to sticking charts in things: do it only when you’ve run out of socks.

The loo roll hall of horrors

You can tell if a company values its customers by the quality of its toilet paper. That rough stuff you have to fold 16 times before grating across your rump like twisted metal on a block of 30-year old parmesan speaks as much about the company’s disregard for your custom as it does for their undeclared war on your bottom.

Good customer service trickles from the shiny sales people and free coffee right down to the bathroom floor, suspicious puddles and all. And, while many will be tempted to cut costs by downgrading or neglecting to replenish such minutiae as toilet paper in these troubled times, my hope is that the following exposé on loo roll horrors will deter you, lest we all have to carry a monstrous arse rash in addition to our other varied troubles.

Oh, and yes — there is a lesson at the end of all this nonsense, in case you thought I’d misplaced the brighter half of my antique spoon collection over the New Year.

So called because it doubles as an emergency kit should a tradesperson misplace a tool of their craft; a belt sander or electric buzz saw, for example.

Pubs normally use this to encourage you to hold it in until you get home. Sadly, the tactic’s becoming more popular at other venues too.

Closely related to The Builder’s Friend, The Carpenter is a slightly refined version that’s perfect for smoothing paint between coats. You’ll find it in public libraries to discourage people from reading on the loo.

The king of false economies, economy paper is based on the idiotic notion that dispensing sheets in ultra-thin single ply units will use less material overall. Instead, the companies who use this thrice-cursed roll have outsourced the labour of toilet paper manufacture to their customers by providing you with the raw materials to make your own.

Faced with the sad notion of having to assemble your own bog roll, you’ll happily take three more sheets than you need just to spite the cheap bastards, which only serves to augment their exercise in futility.

There isn’t even a holder there, let alone any loo roll. As you frantically wave your arms around hoping for a solution to appear by the same witchcraft that powers those new fangled flushers, you’ll realize that this company couldn’t give two shits about you. Which is lucky, because you’re in enough of a quandry as it is.

The previous occupant was the type who leaves the final biscuit in the packet because they think it makes scoffing the previous 19 perfectly acceptable. As such, there’s just enough paper on the roll for you to carry out your business, but not enough to make any mistakes.

This reeks of bad washroom management. If the company can’t cope with basic hygiene, I dread to think what else was in that burger you just ate.

Ah, The Quilted! Possibly the only thing on Earth that makes it worthwhile eating bran flakes. Pure bliss on a roll, and the choice of bears everywhere. This belongs in a separate list away from the horrors, but I include it here for balance. And because I don’t intend to blog about toilet paper ever again.

You can see a huge roll of blue paper in a fat perspex box, but you’ll be a llama farmer before you can get at it. You’ve tried everything you can think of but it’s practically caged in. Just when you were about to give up and use your left hand, the infernal contraption snaps open and drops the entire 50 metre roll into a puddle on the floor.

To business owners worldwide: if you must buy oversized rolls in bulk to cut costs and reduce maintenance, at least make sure the giant dispensers they require were designed to serve loo roll, and not to prevent lizards from escaping at high security zoos.

It may surprise you to learn that the toilet paper in British private schools is atrocious. This, of course, is by design: nothing quite prepares young minds for the harsh realities of adult life like attempting to mop your bott with tree bark nailed to paper. I’ve only ever seen this stuff in one other establishment, which went out of business last year. I put this entirely down to their choice of toilet paper.

The message in this madness

The moral is a simple one: think twice before you cut the small stuff.

Think you can drop your advertising budget to save some cash? Think again. You might not notice it after the first month’s sales, but it will hit you around month three. I know this first hand: I stopped advertising Todoodlist for three months last year and sales almost dropped off completely in the final month. Your business needs to be in people’s faces, or they’ll slowly forget about you and give their money to someone else. (Yes, I know, I’m sorry, and I’ll try to start posting more often.)

Think you can stop innovating and just coast along with your existing products and services? Maybe. But don’t expect to be able to hold your position in the next downturn. Apple increased their spending on research and development in the previous recession. The outcome? The iPod. The company made net profits of over a billion dollars in the last quarter; investing wisely in the previous dip is what will get them through this one. When your competitors are cutting their spending, it can be a great time to boost yours if you can.

Think you can swap your luxury loo roll for a strip of Builder’s Friend? For the love of bottoms everywhere, think again. A friend confessed to me that she never goes back to a local restaurant because “the loo roll they use is naaaasty”. I asked her what the food was like: “oh, it was great — I’d go every week if they did takeaway”. Lesson learned: when it comes to repeat business, bums trump tums every time. Insert your own joke about bottom lines here.

So what do you cut out?

Cut stuff that your customers won’t notice first. Then — and only then — cut the rest. Instead of just giving you a list of codswallop from the College of Empty Advice, I thought it might be more helpful to tell you what I’ve done to reduce costs this year:

• I cancelled the subscriptions to all the online software that I use less than once a week.
• I ditched my monthly phone contract for a pay as you go SIM card. (full disclosure: I also bought an iPhone with the goal of building and selling apps this year to make it pay for itself and boost my income.)
• I moved all the images and scripts from Put Things Off onto a content delivery network called SimpleCDN so I could run the site on a cheaper server without worrying too much about downtime, sluggish performance, or excess bandwidth charges.
• I negotiated better advertising rates for one month for some banner ads that I frequently renew.
• I upgraded only the one piece of software that I use almost every day (Fireworks), instead of the whole suite of applications.
• I started checking retailmenot.com for discount codes when I buy anything online. This saved me over £100 in January alone.

Your business will be different than mine, but there’s no doubt about it: if it matters to you, you’ll find ways to save money without your customers noticing. If you’ve got your own tips, feel free to share them in the comments below.

But, whatever you cut, guard the posh loo roll with your life. Your customers might not thank you out loud, but at least they’ll be back for more.

The revolution

15 years ago a revolution started in people’s homes. Practically overnight, it began to shape their daily lives, remove any hope of a spare half hour, and transform public holidays into an excellent excuse to buy a laser-guided circular saw and use it to open baked bean cans.

I am, of course, referring to the international superbug called “home improvement” which seems to have infected us all like a sad kind of collective sniffle.

The woodchip blues

There is a dark well of irony to be found in dedicating every free hour to stripping 40 square metres of woodchip wallpaper, only to replace it with something much more ‘fashionable’; in our house, this means endless reams of fearsome black birds, every last one of which would perch more comfortably in a celluloid aviary from Alfred Hitchcock.

Personal feelings about wallpaper fashions aside, many of us continue to delight in refining our warped interior visions and in tweaking our living spaces, forever terrified that a fussy friend may shriek in disgust at the light fixing in the coat cupboard that we’ve neglected to ‘update’ since last Wednesday, when — between the hours of seven and eleven only — Tiffany shades were once again in vogue.

Worse still is the unique breed of man who always seems to possess more power tools than me. “What do you mean you don’t own an angle grinder?” he’ll say.  ”It’s no wonder your taps are dripping.” Bemused and dejected, I’ll slink into a corner and search for the meaning of life in a discarded Rawlplug, while Mr Tool Guy thumbs excitedly through a copy of Arc Welders Weekly, blinded by the superheated air of promise at the thought of joining two bits of discarded metal together.

The joy of the new

Silliness aside, when the sawdust settles and the off-white paint finally dries, the results are often glorious: our homes are transformed from their dingy grottoes of yesteryear and we can rest at last, content that, while we may have spent tens of thousands on ‘improvements’ and are still not sure about the purple cushions, at least the people we sell the house to will writhe in sweet ecstasy at the prospect of ripping it all down and starting again.

So why does the simple cyclic act of redecoration cause such addiction and create such contentment? Without even looking, I found answers in the words of the late Oscar Wilde, delivered in a podcast by the great Stephen Fry.

Ugly wallpaper

On a visit to the USA in the 19th century, not long after The American Civil War, Oscar Wilde was asked why he thought America was so violent:

“I can tell you exactly why,” he said. “It’s because your wallpaper is so ugly.”

While many would venture that this was a pretentious remark from a man who wore velvet with an air of unholy abandon, Stephen Fry advises otherwise. In his third podgram, he suggests that Wilde was hinting at something more:

“If you’re someone who is surrounded by badly made, ugly things, then you think ugly thoughts of yourself and the world; you think ugly thoughts of your whole species. There is nothing for you to do to but to crap in your own nest. It’s what we do when we don’t believe in ourselves.”

Crapping in the corporate nest

And so, we come to the point:

The idea that our environment shapes our health, happiness, and our quality of life is not a new one, but the desire to decorate our surroundings seems to have fallen short of the dull grey walls of the workplace. While our homes have undergone a radical revamp and our neighbourhoods are blessed with gentle gentrification, our office environments haven’t changed much for 30 years.

Today, most of us are putting up with badly designed, ugly excuses for working spaces. And yet, many of them stable us for our entire adult lives. In accepting the sad, dull, boxed-in offices — the workplace woodchip, if you will — we’re crapping in our own corporate nests. It’s affecting our health, personal wellbeing, and job satisfaction, and it’s about bloody time for a change.

Deliver us from woodchip

I’m not suggesting that repainting your office alone is enough to transform your working life and make you fall in love with you job, but, for heaven’s sake, it couldn’t do much harm. If home improvement can transform our lives and build a thousand supporting micro-industries, imagine what “work improvement” could do for us all. How about an office that perked you up instead of put you down; bosses who cheer instead of chastise?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be mixing in some hints and tips to start a workplace revolution, using examples from companies and small businesses who are already free of the dreary workplace woodchip: the cubicles and other hopeless clichés. You’ll see how it’s changed the way they work and how it’s made some of them fall in love with their jobs again. You’ll also get some tips for talking your way around difficult bosses or budgets. 

Whether you work at home or in a corporate megaplex, I’ve got something lined up for you that will boost your productivity and happiness, so subscribe for free and see you again soon.

If you’ve ever fantasised about hiring a sorcerer to magic your home or office into shape, but were put off by the perfectly valid concern of waking up with three noses in a bed full of rabbits, then this group test of personal outsourcing options is for you.

Outsourcery: magic without the bunnies

The days when outsourcery required an old crone with a cauldron are over. There are now hundreds of affordable personal assistants scattered across the Web, each offering to manage your email, spy on your competition, or update your Facebook profile to help you feign a social life.

So, if you’re looking to hire virtual help, where on Earth do you start? Most people who need a virtual assistant don’t have the free hours to test some. In an effort to save your sanity, I’ve subjected myself to the ordeal of trying three popular choices side-by-side.

Before we start the group test, a quick note about why you might consider personal outsourcing by hiring a virtual assistant in the first place.

Why hire help?

If you want to work smarter instead of harder it makes sense to hire help. With a virtual assistant you need never worry about long-term contracts, renting an office, or struggling with the dismal idea of paying a fortune for your drinking water, only to house it in a miniature plastic temple five steps from the dripping tap in the staff kitchen: a sad offering to the ever-grinning gods of irony and small pointless artifacts.

Whether you’d like to rustle up the email addresses for the world’s top literary agents, reserve meeting rooms and restaurant tables, submit your website to the hottest 20 blog networks, or outsource your online dating, having a virtual assistant on hand can be invaluable. If you’d like some more ideas about how to use virtual assistants, the websites of the three corporations below all feature samples of the requests they receive.

LongerDays vs GetFriday vs AskSunday

I chose three popular companies who provide full admin and one-off project support, each with a one month rolling contract ranging from light use to full-time assistance.

This test is completely impartial. Like all the reviews on this site, I don’t get paid in cash or credit if you sign up with anyone. It’s not a great business model, but it is the only honest way to do it, and I hope that it makes my thoughts all the more valuable to you.

LongerDays: perfect all-round support

Good

• Friendly and personal service.
• Attentive and enthusiastic staff.
• Billed by the minute with accurate timekeeping.
• Mac and PC literate (specify your preferences on sign-up).
• Discounted rates for education and non-profit users.
• Take an active interest in you and your business.
• Have an in-house graphic designer ready for your requests.

Not so good

• Working in Eastern US time only (UTC-4) may be an issue for some non-US users.
• Would be nice to see a simple figure showing the time remaining on your account in the web-based admin panel, although a detailed timesheet is kept up to date in the same secure login area.

My LongerDays requests

1. “Please spend 2-3 hours researching the competition in the WordPress themes marketplace.” [SUCCESS: I received a detailed list of information as Mac Pages and Numbers documents, which helped us set our prices and features when we launched WordPrezzie.]
2. “Kindly create a spreadsheet showing the number of Todoodlist ebook sales per day, week, and month based on the data in my PayPal and e-junkie accounts, including the percentage of direct sales, affiliate sales, and ad-driven sales. Please update it every Friday for me.” [SUCCESS: I received a well-thought-out spreadsheet containing my sales information, and I’ve since used it to help me track and boost my income.]
3. “Please research working hours around the world and create two charts: one showing the average working week from around 1997 to the latest data, and another showing the average hours worked per week in 2006 around the world. Keep the style simple and colourful.” [SUCCESS: LongerDays trawled through some very complex data from four separate sources and compiled it into two graphics I'm aiming to make use of in a future post.]
4. “Please submit Put Things Off to the top 20 CSS and website design showcases.” [SUCCESS: A burst of traffic, links and subscribers within a week.]

AskSunday: don’t sweat the small stuff

Good

• Great for quick tasks like restaurant booking, reminders by phone, and simple research chores.
• Only company of the three to offer a courier service within New York City (Manhattan only), extending virtual assistance to physical help too. Would be great to see this rolled out further afield.
• Only true around the clock worldwide service in this group test.

Not so good

• Main assistants and “project team” are in separate offices, requiring you to contact a different team to handle jobs that take more than 20 minutes.
• Company appears set up to handle large quantities of small requests: great for busy socialites and high-fliers, but not so hot for the average user, who would probably rather book their own dinner reservations and airline tickets and save $17 a month.
• I was uncomfortable with the idea of having 10 requests of up to 20 minutes a month, instead of having 200 minutes to spend how you please. A request is currently billed at 20 minutes whether it takes 19 or three. If you pay $17 a month for 10 small jobs taking three minutes each, the effective hourly rate jumps to $34 ,which is suddenly much less of a bargain, and is sure to dissuade the more wisely economical.

Signup page and plan info

Sign up with AskSunday here: https://www.asksunday.com/signup/

My AskSunday requests

1. “Please spend 2-3 hours researching the competition in the WordPress themes marketplace.” [FAIL: I sent this to the projects department and never heard back. SUCCESS: AskSunday have recently contacted me with a copy of the completed Excel and Word files they sent to me shortly after my request to their project team; both are detailed and very useful. My apologies for misreporting that I'd never heard from them; more likely that I never saw their return message due to Gmail's aggressive spam filters!]
2. “Please book a table for 4 at [Lovely Little Local Restaurant] at around 7:30pm on Friday” [SUCCESS: Restaurant was booked at 7:30pm. It's normally very hard to get through to them, so I was pleased.]
3. “Kindly find the cheapest online source for these 8 books including delivery to my home address.” [SUCCESS: Full price including shipping and links were reported. Couldn't find it cheaper elsewhere myself. One book was reported out of stock. Great attention to detail.]

GetFriday: victims of their own success?

Good

• Come recommended by Timothy Ferriss in The 4-Hour Workweek
• Their parent company, Your Man in India, has been providing VA services since 2000.
• Offer speciality services such as paralegal support

Not so good

• Come recommended by Timothy Ferriss in The 4-Hour Workweek (result: they’ve got more new customers than they can handle)
• Slower response to emails than the others in this test
• Frustrating “gatekeeper-style” sign-up: no online joining process.
• Signup security is questionable, as they currently ask you to print out a membership form, fill in your address, personal data, and credit card details, and fax it back. I’d prefer to see a secure online signup process with card details processed by a third party.

Signup page

Sign up with GetFriday here: https://getfriday.com/inquiry.htm

My GetFriday experience

I didn’t sign up with GetFriday due to my own security concerns and frustration with the delay between responses. I dropped a note to the owners to offer my thoughts, and was told that they aim to have a secure online signup option available before the end of the year, which would make them a more attractive option for many if they can also overcome their current scaling problems.

Put Things Off recommends

I recommend LongerDays above the rest for their attention to detail, quality results, and for bringing a friendly face to a faceless service. Their free report on how to use virtual assistants (download it here) had me hooked from the start, and their service feels far more personal and focussed than the alternatives I tested.

While AskSunday were helpful for smaller jobs, I felt uncomfortable with the 20 minute limit they impose on their requests, and would prefer to have 200 minutes to be split as I choose, with a single point of contact for all projects — big or small. That said, they’re a very competitive option for those with a large number of small requests, and some may even prefer having a dedicated team for their more time-consuming projects.

If you’ve only got time to try one company out, sign up for a trial with LongerDays here.

Final notes and advice

Here are some other titbits to mentally chew on as you dabble with personal assistants.

Security

All the sites I’ve listed have their own pages detailing the security measures they take. I think it’s important that you evaluate these for yourself; your personal security is in your hands. If you don’t feel comfortable with a company having your card details on file to make one-off purchases at your request, don’t hand them over and handle your shopping yourself. Likewise, you may be perfectly comfortable with sending your credit card details by fax; as ever, please use your own judgement.

Request format

The way you present your initial requests will have a large effect on the results you get back. It may help to ask the company how they prefer your requests to be made. LongerDays were the only one to offer this information without me having to ask.

Initial time/results curve

At first it may feel like everything would be faster if you did it yourself, especially with smaller jobs. This is perfectly normal, and rest assured that it balances out once you get used to working with each other. Getting used to delegating is a challenge, especially if you’re a control freak, but learning to trust people and offload the small stuff will do wonders for your stress levels and your business.

Alternatives

There are a wide range of alternatives to the three companies I tested. If you’ve used someone that you recommend, feel free to drop a note in the comments below. If you are a virtual assistant, kindly keep any self-promotion to a minimum.

Know the limits

Naturally, I considered outsourcing this entire post and making the whole process somewhat less laborious. Sadly, doing so would have made it rather dry and free from slightly sideways jabs at the idiocy of office watercoolers. It would also have had far more pie charts in it and, frankly, they don’t do anything for me except make me feel hungry.

So, while I thoroughly recommend that you try virtual assistants for yourself and know that they will change the way you work for the better, I recommend them only with the knowledge that you continue to say please, thank you, and generally treat them like human beings. By all means, delegate jobs you don’t want to do, but don’t turn them into pet toads to be trodden on.  

After all, sometimes you have to just sit down and bloody well do the work yourself.

 When Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, he could have charged for admission.

He didn’t. Yet the Web remains an exclusive cruise ship, its decks riddled with girls with Martinis, men in mankinis, games machines, and 24-hour shopping arcades: a kind of witless pleasure cruise for the world’s richest few. 

But joining is so easy, isn’t it? Sign here. Plug in. 24-hour access is yours on a plate. Sprinkle on a dash of iPhone vinaigrette and the world’s in your pocket. Even your less hygienic friends are on board. Sheesh! These days, they let anyone in, right?

The 22% club

The “World Wide” Web is far more exclusive than it seems. Today, only 22% of the world’s population have internet access. Congratulations! Spray on some sun cream and grab a lounger next to the vol-au-vents. Isn’t life at the top fun?

I used to care deeply about things like the “Open Internet”; about preventing the Web from following a paid-for subscription model; about stopping it from becoming a gated community; a home to all but the richest few. But then I woke up to the fact that it already is.

If it wasn’t bad enough that 78% don’t share the same access to an imponderable stream of free video, live news and Yo Mama jokes, consider this: more than 70% of the world’s population have never even heard a dial tone. And that upsets me even more, but perhaps not for the reasons you think.

Look what they’re missing!

I’m not so worried that the 70% without phone access will never get to experience the joys of 27 missed calls and 14 garbled voicemail messages. I’m not concerned that the 78% without ‘net access will miss the chance to watch a morbidly obese man with highly animated chins dance to the Birdie Song on YouTube.

After all, for those areas where internet adoption is currently as low as 5% — like Africa — uptake is growing by over 1000% a year. They’ll catch up faster than you think. And, sadly, when they do, YouTube will still be there.

Plug in and switch off

So, while I think that it’s important to provide internet access for all as soon as we can, the real issue I’d like to raise today is this: if 78% don’t have Web access — something you and me consider a simple privilege — how many of those same people don’t have access to even more basic needs? Like food.

852 million.

That’s how many. While we’re living our online lives, there are hideously large numbers of people fighting tooth-and-claw for theirs. People who share the same planet and breathe the same air and who really need our help. And The 22% Club distracts us from that. By plugging in, we’re switching off.

Blog Action Day exists to help us all wake up to the reality.

All aboard the pleasure boat

For every billion dollars that the 22% Club spends on helping the world’s poorest people, they spend the same on pornography. We’ve got the spending power and means to end suffering faster, but many are too busy aboard their personal pleasure boats. The 22% Club isn’t just exclusive: it’s sick.

If George Orwell were on board, he’d remind us that “it is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.” What’s sad is that there aren’t enough thinking people on deck. Perhaps it’s time to change that.

Pass the muesli

I know. It’s tough talking about poverty when we’re facing a global recession. I’m still munching on the credit crunch too, and it’s pretty bitter muesli. But, the truth is, dips in our own economies only make concepts like extreme poverty easier to grasp. People are losing their jobs. Food prices are rising. Combine the two and add a dash of pessimism and people like you and me might not be able to feed ourselves or our families.

Imagine that.

You can help

Even in the face of bank bail-outs and repossessions, we’re a lucky bunch. After all, most of us can still feed ourselves. And, if you’re in the US, you’re suffering with less than 4.5% food price inflation instead of the 46.9% Ethiopians have to contend with.

The world’s most desperate are living with less than $1.25 a day, something the World Bank calls “extreme poverty”. In more human terms, it means that they’re chronically hungry and fighting for their lives.

The good news is that, while the Web is certainly exclusive, it connects those people with the power to help and lets us spread the word. As a member of The 22% Club, that means you.

What you can do

Please take positive action and read about the four ways you can make a difference today over at the Blog Action Day site, or scroll down on that page and check out their video.

I’ll be donating all of today’s proceeds from Put Things Off and Todoodlist to Oxfam.

Syndication used to be simple.

10 years ago, if you wanted to keep up with the neighbourhood gossip, all you had to do was twitch a curtain, peer down the street and get on the phone. With a bit of luck, the sight of Dorothy rolling in the bushes with Dirty Bertie from number 32 might raise your heartbeat just enough to count as exercise, but not sufficiently to suffer the terrible indignity of having to wear a bright green shell suit and call it a workout.

These days, our neighbourhoods are much larger: an ever-rolling landscape of blogs, news sites, social networks, podgrams, videocasts and other strange streams of interbabble. And so we are forced to battle with such inhumane concepts as feed readers, a dreaded kind of curtain twitching 2.0 for the over-connected generation.

The truth about feed readers

Feed readers are failing us. What started as an idea to push new content to interested readers has now become a giant time suck: a pull on our energy and resources. Feed readers are attention-seekers, time-hoggers, virtually benefit-free, hard to promote or evangelise, and almost impossible to scale and keep up with as our subscriptions and interests grow.

Even the phrase feed reader conjures up images of a kind of deranged parasitic creature–half vampire and half fortune teller–each cursed with the utterly joyless but self-inflicted task of sucking on an ever-pulsing artery of incoming news and user-generated drivel, just like the kind you’re reading right now, but with less naff humour and biscuit jokes.

So why on Earth do we use them? And what’s the alternative?

Ditch your news reader today

The RSS and Atom junkies, along with The Leaders of The Grand Association For Making Everything More Complicated Than It Needs To Be (TLOTGAFMEMCTINTBABC) will hate me for this, but I’d like you to consider taking a small challenge:

Ditch your news reader for one month.

Instead of all that digital curtain twitching, satisfy your itch for news and content by subscribing to your very favourite blogs by email. If they don’t offer email updates, use the BlogAlert service or drop the site owner a link to this post.

If you’re not convinced yet, stop frowning and read on to learn why I’m calling for this. If you already subscribe by email, read on anyway to discover just how jolly clever you are.

The case against feed readers

I used feed readers for over 4 years. In that time, I switched between about 5 different ones, because skimming new posts alone wasn’t putting things off enough for me. In March this year, I gave up on all of them for good. To understand why, you first need to know that I went on a one-man crusade to convince my friends and family to try news readers.

I sent a frightfully helpful mailshot explaining the key benefit as I saw it back then–that your news arrives every morning collected in your own digital newspaper–and linking to the RSS in Plain English video. Here are some of the responses I received, unedited:

“Cheers Nick. I knew about RSS and feed readers, but I’ve never really understood the advantages. What do they do better than email updates?”

“I thought you said we should all have ‘one inbox to rule them all?’ I do subscribe by email, though. Honest!”

“Yeah, I had a Google Reader account but I stopped checking it after a while. I dread to think how many new posts are waiting for me…”

What benefits?

The replies went on, but the theme was clear: nobody saw the benefits of using a news reader. I began to wonder whether there really are any. I decided to subscribe to my favourite blogs by email for a month to see how the experience differed.

After only a fortnight, I had to concede that news readers offer very little benefit over email subscription. In fact, I’d even go further and suggest that, in most cases, news readers make the experience of reading updates worse.

Not only are news readers harder to keep on top of than email, but they provide a distraction from your workflow that’s tough to resist, and they actively encourage you to subscribe to more than you can comfortably read. Plus, whether you’re managing 30 feeds or 300, the process of checking a news reader feels like a terrible chore.

Whenever something that should be fun–like reading or sex–becomes some kind of dull duty, it’s usually a sign that you need to change something.

What’s more, because the benefits are so few, they’re incredibly hard to promote. Boosting uptake becomes a real challenge, and the choice between subscribing by RSS and email continues to confuse many today. The solution is simple: offer email updates only, and let feed reader users subscribe with the buttons in their browser’s address bar.

But why are email updates any better? I’m delighted you asked.

Email updates: better for everyone

Having the writers you love deliver new posts directly to your inbox makes a whole world of sense, and has oodles of advantages over news readers. Here’s a list.

1. It scales naturally
Email has a built-in scaling system; you know very quickly if you’re receiving more mail than you can productively handle. For exactly this reason, it’s ideal for managing blog subscriptions. 

Receive email updates for your favourite blogs alongside your usual stream of email, and you’ll soon get a feeling for how much you can realistically handle, then find yourself cutting back to the ones that really interest you. 

2. It builds a healthier community
News reader junkies will tell you that they’re able to manage 300+ feeds comfortably by skimming the titles and deciding what takes their fancy. They’ll tell you they could never do the same by email. I used to think this way too. 

The sad thing is this: news readers breed disinterest. After a short time, you don’t care very much about the actual content of the sites you’re subscribed to. Instead, it becomes a crude kind of video game: you play the role of Duke Nukem, randomly clicking on new items to kill the unread post counts before finding some actual work to do, your role as Chief Eradicator of The Great Unread fulfilled.

…

I’m sorry — I just can’t write a list any more. It would scroll on forever. Instead, here’s a pretty diagram that illustrates the current feed reading ‘workflow’ to show in the flesh how absurd it really is.

Goodbye feed readers

My prediction is simple: feed readers will never reach critical mass among casual web users, because there just aren’t enough benefits in using them. So why are we still rallying for their uptake when email works just fine, everyone understands it, many feed reader users are struggling to tackle their workloads, and most of us already have an email account? It certainly beats me.

Goodbye feed readers. I’ve run off with an older model.

Goodbye orange buttons

Do we really need RSS buttons on our websites? Isn’t it enough that browser address bars have them? Can’t we wave goodbye to “click the orange thing to get updates in your news reader” prompts, followed closely by “what’s a news reader?” or “what’s RSS?” links? 

Update: apparently not! I removed the RSS button from Put Things Off and had my inbox flooded with how do I subscribe? requests. I’ve now reinstated them for the feed reader junkies amongst you…

Email updates: the new subscription standard

I feel that it’s time that more site owners championing email updates alongside their feed buttons. They’re simple. They don’t require another application or web interface. They’re easier to manage and control. They’re much quicker to stay on top of. They don’t need video explanations or heavy promotion. Compared with the mess of news readers, they’re an utter joy.

After all, if you can say get free email updates, show visitors a one-box form, and have every single soul understand exactly what you’re offering them while removing another acronym and application from their lives, isn’t that the best type of news for all of us?

Except for feed reader developers, of course. Sorry guys.

Get free email updates to Put Things Off by clicking here, and ditch your digital itch today.

Visit 44forks.com

Thanks for both of your emails asking whether I was dead or not and urging me to write more often. The good news is that you now have 3 posts to catch up on over the weekend at 44 forks, which serves you right for fretting so much.

44forks: from etiquette to netiquette

If our lives are needlessly complex, it’s probably our own fault.

As unwilling netizens of the Digital Age, we’ve inflicted a bizarre and unhealthy variety of rules and regulations upon ourselves, many of which are unwritten and known only to a select group of infuriatingly smug bastards. These curious customs silently shape our success and happiness every day of our lives at work, in our homes, and in social circles ranging from mosh pits to The Ritz.

Until today, there’s been no dependable source to look to for advice on such terrible dilemmas as whether to poke or not to poke and how to behave when meeting your girlfriend’s parents. Oh — and if you’ve ever been mortified at the sight of 44 over-polished forks aligned by your plate with inhuman care, you’ll find a solution to that on the site soon.

If only people were kinder

The goal with 44forks is to provide a central place to answer all your etiquette and netiquette queries (ask an etiquestion here), whilst poking fun at strange old customs, promoting good manners and fine taste, and giving you a chance to read me rattling on about something other than productivity. Which, in all honesty, is a blessing in itself.

Do head over to the site, drop a note in the Launch Party post to say ‘hi’, and please make my day by subscribing via email or your feed reader. Frankly, it would be rude not to.

Why am I launching this now? 

I’m pleased to be able to say that, this time, it’s not my fault.

The women you can blame are the wonderfully roguish Taylor “Tei” Lindstrom of Rogue Ink, and the ever-enchanting Kelly Erickson of Maximum Customer Experience. 

I took part in a discussion in the comments on Tei’s blog regarding the correct way to drink espresso, where I uttered the words:

“Some days I consider starting one of those social etiquette websites that shows the exact angle to tilt one’s head when passing a fellow Lord on your way to the races. Sadly, I fear that doing so would be terribly bad form.”

Tei and Kelly were both foolish enough to egg me on, and 44forks was born less than one month later.

Much more than a simple childish dare, starting 44forks perfectly demonstrates my shotgun approach to finding happiness in business and in life. I love writing, and this is just another outlet for me. I encourage everyone to experiment with projects, hobbies, and activities as much as possible, and then to fall back on the ones that make you happiest.

How you can help

Few things would please me more than your kind help ensuring that 44forks is a success. If you could take the time to blog about it, tell a friend, or phone your entire address book to tell them you’ve found someone else who cares about promoting good manners in a light-hearted way, I would be forever in your debt.

Diggs, Stumbles, and whatever else the kids are doing these days to spread their virtual seed would also be deeply appreciated.

What about Put Things Off?

I love Put Things Off to a degree that teeters ever closer to the brink of insanity. I continue to promote it (it’s now part of the 9rules network) and tinker behind the scenes. I have various posts in what I shall choose to call “refined stages of unfinishedness”, all of which will go live soon, including:

• Advice on feed reading and online subscriptions from your Gran
• The Web’s only dependable head-to-head comparison of virtual assistants 
• A glorious guest post on maximizing your ecological footprint

Stay tuned and know that I’m more grateful than ever to you for putting up with me and for pretending that you care about my little projects as much as I do.

Habari: the future of blogging

Finally, it would be cruel and senseless of me not to end this post without mentioning a free, wonderfully simple product that has made my online life a pure pleasure in the last three weeks.

The eagle-eyed and interminably geeky amongst you will notice that 44forks isn’t running on the WordPress publishing system. Instead, it’s using a breathtakingly brilliant solution called Habari, which I have absolutely no doubt will one day prove riotously popular.

Try Habari today

If you’re a blogger or website owner who’s used to navigating the great meandering tab cascade that calls itself the WordPress administration area, Habari is a breath of fresh air.

Popular publishing systems commit several crimes against human interface design by crapping every single possible option across the entire width of your screen, like some kind of giant pixel-powered blunderbuss. Habari simplifies all those options–without sacrificing usability or power–into a single, breathtakingly elegant list (click for larger version):

Want to start a new post? Hit Q and then 1. Want to edit an existing one? Q and then 3. See a list of your plugins? Q and then P. You can also click the list to select an option too, of course. Habari is free, faster, easier to use and more elegant than every other publishing platform I’ve used. It has already saved me hours with 44forks, and I suspect it would do the same for you too. 

If you’re a developer or web nerd, there are a heap of other reasons you’ll love Habari, most of which stem from the fact that it’s not linked to a multi-million dollar corporation with commercial interests in having their wicked way with its future. Many of the plugins you use with WordPress have Habari alternatives here, and more are being written every day. Get involved now and have the chance to shape the future of blogging.

http://habariproject.org

[N.B. We aim to port some of our themes at Wordprezzie over to Habari, and will continue to be involved with WordPress too: we recognise that it's popular for a reason -- we just think it's great to have such a strong alternative out there. Competition is good.]