Loveplum

So clean it shines!

When I did some work on 43Places.com last year, the rats nest of HTML/CSS was a constant struggle. Every HTML mock involved trying to figure out some manner of strange markup and nested styles. Sometimes I spent hours working through the puzzle. I’d often give up on the solving it and add more mess to get it done.

Now I’m doing some work on 43Things.com. The HTML/CSS is wonderfully clean (thanks 37Signals!). The difference is astounding. It’s dead simple to find an existing style I need and there aren’t any surprises when I add in something new.

Best of all, the Robots are paying me to design… not to muddle through code.

Excellent video explaining Web 2.0

Note: This video does not include tutorials for rounded corners or javascript animations.

Found via Cre8d Design.

.Mac is dead to me

I eagerly signed up at it’s inception. iDisk was fantastic. So was syncing between computers. Sure there were performance problems and a lot of the value was in future potential. But it was new. And this was Apple. ...They’d work it all out in due time.

A couple of years later, I’m still waiting for the performance to improve, I’m still waiting for stability to improve, I’m still waiting for customer support to improve, and I’m still waiting for the same user experience I can get with other apps that are free.

On January 10th my subscription expires. I’m going to stop waiting then.

I sub consciously added…

a signature to the bottom of a private Vox post—As if it was an email.

Frustration - A Story in 36 Steps

Read that Google Spreadsheets now support dynamic updates of stock information.
Get excited!
I can have all my stock info aggregated together! In a useful layout!!
(I don’t care about daily info so much. Online portfolio deals do.)
Read the help documentation for GoogleFinance().
Figure out maths involved.
Enlist Lane’s help with maths.
Play around with fields until the layout is optimal.
Add in 9 more stocks.
Adjust design till it’s readable and pretty.
Create next section for mutual funds.
Enter ‘WGGFX’.
Get a “#N/A WGGFX is not a stock symbol” error.
Go to finance.google.com to double check it.
It is a stock symbol.
Get confused.
Wonder what it is I’m doing wrong.
Try entering the symbol directly into GoogleFinance() (rather than referencing it in another cell)
No luck.
Try pulling information other than the price.
No luck.
Try the original way again.
No luck.
Try another mutual fund.
It doesn’t work either.
Search the help for “Mutual Fund”.
Your search – Mutual Fund – did not match any answers in our Help Center.
Search for Mutual Fund in the discussion group
Find two posts from users mentioning that they don’t work.
Realize I didn’t do anything wrong.
Realize Google was too busy hyping features to mention they were incomplete.
Realize how much time I just wasted – Trying to save time in the future.
Go to the international grocery.
Buy a tub of goats blood.
Return home.
Curse Google.

Site feeds are getting the shaft

Google’s Webmaster Blog officially recommends offering gadgets over feeds.

Q: Why is it better to create gadgets rather than create feeds?
A: First, gadgets are much more flexible. As a publisher, you control the format of your content. Second, gadgets are by nature more interactive. They can be built with flash, HTML or AJAX, and are generally much more interesting than feeds. Finally, your users can customize a gadget to their liking, making your content a lot more targeted.

Steve Rubel points out that Yahoo! is launching new sites without feeds (found via: Read/Write Web).

In the past few weeks Yahoo has rolled out three major new web sites – Yahoo! Food, Yahoo! Advertising and Yahoo! TV. They’re great sites, but none of them has feeds.

I can’t say I fully agree with either decision. I also don’t fully disagree. ...It’s something to think about.

Delivering on Support Promises

Back in the states, email based customer support has become the standard. Often times there is no phone support option. It’s pretty good too. It’s safe to assume you’ll get a reply within 24 hours or so.

Here in New Zealand, the option for email support is almost as common. And there’s always a phone option.

Even though email is widespread, it essentially doesn’t work. I’ve found email form black holes across a wide range of industries… from banks and lawyers to people who should know better, like ISPs.

All of these places have excellent phone support. I naturally feel a bit of dread before calling a support number. I’ve been trained, by support in the states, to expect the worst. But here there’s little to no phone trees. Minuscule hold times. And more often than not the person answering the phone can quickly help you.

Which makes me wonder: Why bother with the email*?

You’ll upset some customers who prefer it. That’s minor compared to promising answers in a time of trouble/confusion, then failing to deliver on them.

* Or any support you can’t follow through on. Don’t have resources for email or the phone? Only offer a user to user support forum.

More Twitter Ramblings

Whenever I spend some time thinking about why I don’t like something, I inevitably stumble upon some way it can work for me.

After my last post regarding Twitter, it occurred to me that I could enter the update feeds of friends into Gmail’s Web Clip bar.

This eliminates the interruptions that occur when the updates come to my phone. It also removes the hyper linear nature of it. I only see updates when I check my email. Then Gmail chooses one to show at random. It may be the newest… or it may be from days ago. There’s a bit of chance involved. A bit of chaos. When I see an update, I may have other context to put it in. Maybe from conversations with the person, posts on their blogs, or things other people have passed along. For me, this feels more natural. More human.

Which brings up a question… I wonder if Twitter users subscribe to people they weren’t previously acquainted with? Is the type of content Twitter’s structure encourages interesting without other external context to place it in?

Rambling about Twitter

It feels like Twitter is really starting to make some headway. Which is awesome. It’s great to see a new twist (rather than simply new features) on the underlying concept of Blogging. I’m completely fascinated by it. And yet I don’t use it.

This can be attributed to a couple of reasons:

I’m not a phone person. I don’t like talking on them. Nor do I like sending messages through them. This is a result of a rather fuzzy mix of disconnect (from the person you are communicating with), interruption (receiving of and fear of causing), and the generally piss poor state of interaction design in most (if not all) cell phones.
I increasingly feel the desire to use technology as a means to possess any given moment generally detracts from it by a) removing ones self from that moment and/or b) decreasing the perceived need to reflect upon that moment.
I know folks who are prone to bad Twitter manners – Such as sending and receiving in the midst of a face to face conversation. That’s not something I’d like to encourage through participation.

Clearly I’m a weirdo. Numbers 1 & 3 have nothing at all to do with the product. Number 2 is, at best, merely an esoteric starting point for a feature request.

They do have something in common though. They all revolve around the way I interact with people and my environment. That’s where the fascination comes from…

Twitter is disruptive. Using it (or choosing not to) forces a consideration of things social. To varying degrees you have to re-consider rules and assumptions.

Maybe they change… Maybe they don’t…

This is not unlike the early days of Blogging (or if you want to get all semi-useful semi-cheeky anti-fashion fashionable about it: Blogging 1.0). The re-considering that was caused then left us with little consensus. Instead we have a bunch of related yet often conflicting opinions.

I hope the same holds true for Twitter (and the sure to come offshoots, expansions, and copies). Having it figured out is boring. But the process of figuring out is infinitely interesting*.

* Not coincidentally, that’s also what Blogging is. Put your fingers in your ears when over defined labels like journaling, publishing, cataloging, scrapbooking, reporting, and so forth and so on try to tell you otherwise.

A good time to hold’em

Ev’s “knowing when to hold’em” post has some great observations about the pluses and minuses of selling your small company to a larger one.

A couple posts later he talks about smaller purchased companies forming a separate identity inside a larger company.

I like that people say they work “at Flickr,” rather than at Yahoo!, their actual employer. Blogger people do that to.

Biz Stone ran with the connection... and didn’t shy away from the negative influences that help create these identities.

When you are acquired, ignored, and desperate for more resources what do you do? You form a tribe, hang on to your identity, and rock the indie corporate vibe.

Which makes me think that the most important resource to consider when selling a small company is buy-in.

The really tricky part is that a company offering to buy you does not equate to buy-in.

Consultants run into this all the time. If you know any, I’m sure you’ve heard at least one story about about finishing jobs without reaching the potential everyone envisioned before starting.

Adaptive Path has often pushed that one of the first things UX consultants should do is find out who the true stakeholders are in a company and talk directly to them.

I think the same is true when it comes to selling. Get away from the business guy whose job it is to do the deal. Find out who has the ability to definitively say Yes or No on your project. Talk to them. Over and over. Set solid goals with them that can be measured. Then discuss what happens if those goals aren’t getting met.

Figuring those things out from the outside is hard work. It’s easy to decide they’re better left to later… but you have much more momentum while they’re trying to bring you in. Once inside, inertia is always towards the status quo. As a new acquisition, you are as far from status quo as it gets. If you can’t get real tangible buy-in before you are bought, it’s a very strong sign that you should continue to build on your own.