Slash7 with Amy Hoy - Home

Scripty2: Scriptaculous 2.0 Alpha is Out

2009-06-26T15:57:00Z

This one's a quickie: Thomas, with a little help from his friends, has put out the first alpha for Scripty2 (aka Scriptaculous 2.0).

While there are lots of things missing (autocompleter, etc.), it's pretty damn stable. That's what we've been using for Twistori, the various Zeitgeists, and of course, Freckle time tracking.

Thomas has written a blog post about the update, to which I'd like to add:

the docs are amazing! animated graphs for each easing function (check this one out)
it's pretty damn stable (worth repeating)
the API is even more friendly than before

Major props to our friends and co-conspirators Philipp "Joe" Markovics on JavaScript and design and Samo Korosec for the incredible custom icons and nifty 3D backgrounds. (Joe's company, abloom, does contracting to build web apps from design to development, and Samo can be hired for illustration!)

Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

In Memoriam: George Carlin, 7 Words You Can Say on Twitter

2009-06-22T16:53:00Z

Hate cuss words? Avert thine eyes! (What are you doing reading this blog, though, I'd be interested to know. Oh right. You already looked away. I'm just holding a conversation with myself. Ladeeda...

George Carlin is one of my heroes: hilarious, self-deprecating, edgy without being bitter, envelope-pushing without resorting to valueless shock, remarkably poetic, a dancer with dirty words, and, of course, in possession of an amazing voice I could listen to all day.

He's also dead. Goddamnit.

Carlin passed away a year ago yesterday. Yesterday was a Sunday, so we're celebrating today... with 7 Words You *Can* Say on Twitter.

This is our riff on his 7 Dirty Words (You Can't Say On TV/Radio), which got him arrested and landed in jail. The resulting court case from one of his performances actually went to the Supreme Court. And he was awarded a Mark Twain award, posthumously.

How many other "comedians" can claim that?

So, without further ado... please enjoy

7 Words You Can Say on Twitter (a Very Special Twistori).

Further links:

George Carlin on Wikipedia
Video of him performing 7 Words
I'm a Modern Man... - his "I'm a modern man" skit (text and video!), which is amazing. His performance on his CD set, "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" is even better (because it's uninterrupted by roaring applause)

Keep digging deeper.

2009-06-11T15:39:00Z

The same thrill, the same awe and mystery, comes again and again when we look at any question deeply enough. With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries -- certainly a grand adventure!

— Richard Feynman, 1955 address to the National Academy of Sciences (full text)

Are you thinking, or are you farting?

2009-06-10T11:53:00Z

Thinking is supposed to be a question mark. But most people treat it like a period.

Headology vs First Sight, Second Thoughts

Terry Pratchett's always written about witches and, by extension, the essence of humanity.

But his Wee Free Men trilogy is the best yet, and the most true to life. He names the fundamentals that separate a fearsome, clever, Headology-wielding, seldom-magic-using witch from a superstitious, ignorant normal person: "First Sight and Second Thoughts."

First Sight is the ability to see what's really there. Most people see things that aren't there, or miss things that are. This sounds cheesy and trite, but remember the teachings of the basketball video.

Second Thoughts are thinking about your thinking. Most people are too busy thinking their thoughts to ask why they are thinking those thoughts. But it's necessary to keep your lying brain in check. (Second Thoughts is a much better name for metacognition.)

By gutter

Real-world Example

I had a Second Thought the other day, myself:

Thought 1: This milk is so delicious! So rich and tasty.

Thought 2: I'm glad I can still enjoy these little things about Austria even though I've lived here a while now.

Thought 3: Wait a second. That sounded awfully self-congratulatory. Is that a genuine thought or am I trying to convince myself of something?

Thought 4: This is a perfect example of that Terry Pratchett thing, and design, I should write about it.

Who thinks the thinkers?

Second Thought is one of the true cornerstones of design, hacking... and everything else in life.

First you have to observe what you're thinking. Then you have to think about it. And then you have to think about your thinking about your thinking.

I think you have to think at least 4 levels deep before you get anywhere interesting.

Most people only think to the first level—in design, but of course, not only in design.

Maybe this is what they mean by "brainfarts"

The problem is that first thoughts are like babies farting. A baby farts, and it grins. Babies love to fart. For them, it's one of life's greatest pleasures.

First thoughts are exactly the same. They feel good, so we like them... and because we like them, we assume that they are good. More importantly, we assume that they are accurate.

This is a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc. "After this, therefore resulting from this." But I prefer to call it farting.

Ohhh, that was a good one! By jolien_valens

It sums up the biggest conceit of humanity. We believe what we think. We trust our own subjective experience to be the real thing—that our feelings are genuine, that our thoughts are unique, that if we believe something, it must be true.

That's because the only subjective experience we can have is our own. We can't take a trip to the brains of others, and come back changed, because we learn that Susie thinks Susie is exactly as right as we think ourselves to be.

Even if we could, our experience of Bob's self-absorption might just confirm to us that Bob is a ditz, unlike our superior self in every way.

We're farting, and we're showing off our pearly whites.

Except that most of us grow up and learn that, no matter how much we want to revel in letting one rip, it's impolite. All those other self-absorbed brains around us would think we were strange and undersocialized... even if they were wishing the most fervent wishes to run around tooting and laughing in public. It's Just Not Done.

There's no such ingrained social prohibition against believing our first thoughts.

In user interface... let's think about forums

Here's a hypothetical but realistic example from design and/or development. Let's call the thinker Alice:

Thought 1: I want to make a forum. Here's how I will make the front page that lists all the forums, making it clean and easy to see the most popular stuff, even if it's older...

Thought 2: But wait. Do I need a front page that lists all the forums? Am I optimizing instead of thinking?

Thought 3: Are forums really the right tool for the job?

Thought 4: How would I recognize the right tool for the job? What does communication mean? How does this change on the internet?

Now, don't get me wrong, a forum resulting from Thought 1 could still be pretty great. I would welcome a new commercial or open source forum that was as good as Thought 1. I haven't found one.

But in Thought 2, things start to get interesting. Alice wonders if the front page design she's planning is necessary, or if there's a better way. She questions the ready made template in her head named Forum. She moves beyond thinking minor tweaks and goes to major overhaul.

She's holding in those joyous, brainless farts.

In Thought 3, Alice then takes the giant leap from "Is the front page necessary?" to "Is the forum necessary?"—that's what most people call design thinking. It's Exploring The Problem Area, etc., etc.

Even most of the best people stop at Thought 3. But I still maintain that 4 levels is necessary for things to get interesting.

In Thought 4, Alice asks the ultimate question: How could I even recognize the answer to Thoughts 2 and 3? How can I know if I know? How can I find out?

This is where breakthroughs happen.

How can I metacognate up some Second Thoughts?

You ever hear some manager, teacher, or inspirational speaker say "Catch somebody doing something right"? It's a nauseating phrase, but the intent is a good one: pay attention to people when they do things right, not just when things go wrong.

That's the way you have to treat your discoursive thoughts.

Most people only pay attention to their thinking when something goes really wrong, for example racing thoughts, insomnia, that awful Internal Critic who spends all day telling you what a shithead you are.

Almost nobody pays attention to their thinking when their thinking is benign.

But that's the trick.

The best way to pay attention is to learn to insert yourself into your discursive (gabby) thoughts, when you're thinking them. If you can't get in where the action is, you can't observe it, and you definitely can't second-think it. It's hard at first, but totally do-able. But you have to practice.

You can start by just sitting for 5 to 10 minutes, sitting in a comfy chair, looking at a blank wall, and just... breathing. When you catch yourself thinking a thought, say to yourself (inside your head) "Thinking" and imagine it dissolving, like a bubble.

This trains you to be aware, not only of how many thoughts there are in your head at a given time (hint: a shit ton), but what they are. Turning your attention to them means you can then analyze them.

It's not a game, there's no high score, you don't need to get your head completely clear and you don't win anything for not having any thoughts at all. Don't even try to insert critical thinking about your thinking into the equation at this point. That's for later.

The whole point of the exercise is to notice. That's it.

Little bouncy thoughts. By ravages

You can read more on this habit in any number of books and blog posts—just look for anything about mindfulness. Pick the ones you like best.

Then what?

Paying attention to your thoughts helps you be a better person, helps you be a better designer / developer / whatever-you-doer, helps you be a better person, helps you pay more attention to your thoughts.

Second, Third and Fourth Thoughts don't make you smarter. They uncover the farty layers of disuse that are keeping you from the smartness you already have.

Thinking about your thinking about your thinking doesn't create world peace, but it does create better work, and better people. And better people create better work. And better people also create more better people, at least in theory.

It's a cycle of awesomeness.

Try it out

Try the exercise a few times when you're not trying to do anything. (Don't just do something, sit there!—those Zen Buddhists are more fun than a barrel of seamonkeys.)

Then, next time you have to tackle a worthy problem, try it while you're working.

Sit down and ask yourself "What is my First Thought?"

Then think about it.

Then ask yourself "If that's my Second Thought, what do I think about that?"

And so on.

Find out how deep the rabbit hole goes. And keep me posted.

Was it good for you, too? Subscribe to my RSS feed here. Follow me on Twitter here.

What I'm reading this weekend

2009-06-06T16:26:00Z

I almost never link blog, but these tabs have been sitting open in my browser for ages because I thought they were truly worth sharing:

The art of Up I haven't seen Up yet, what with the whole Being In Austria thing and whatnot, but this post from one of the principal artists, Lou Romano, is amazing and inspiring and tantalizing. And it's really long. Full of artistic noodling and explanations of how they came up with the look and feel they came up with. Right now? I love the fact that blogs exist. Thank you, internet!
The Better You Program, The Worse You Communicate - no great revelation, but succinctly and usefully (and gently) put
Zombie ideas ideas that will not die. This is brilliant.
Brain study points to 'sixth sense' —there really *is* a part of your brain that incorporates information below your consciousness and leads you to feel the urge to do things. And non-scientists say, "You're just now catching onto the program?"
Why Horst W.J. Rittel Matters you'll find out why—it's a bit thick, but well worth wading through. Failing that, jump to the bullet points—they're good.
Six Questions from Kicker: Jack Schulze designer Q&A. Good stuff.
InspireUX (the origin of the above link), a site I keep losing and rediscovering, but now the author is on Twitter so I don't have to do the work any more!
and lastly, but not leastly, Typing The Letters A-E-S Into Your Code? You’re Doing It Wrong!. This is really not something I need to know about, technically, but the fact that it's a snarky, funny revival of teaching through Socratic dialogue crossed with a faux scifi screenplay... that's worth reading.

Enjoy!

Back to book layouting for me...

Oh, wait, one more thing! Speaking of book layouting, I'm posting real-time updates and screenshots on the @jsrocks twitter account. Follow if you're curious!

And I'm turning my personal twitter account more towards comments on design, business, etc., rather than the typical daily stuff. Although it still sounds like me (see also Amy's Law of Information Filth) and uh, I still curse a lot. You can follow *me* on Twitter, too: @amyhoy, if you're into that sorta thing.

How we tap the Twitter Zeitgeist for SXSW, Internet Week & More

2009-06-04T17:16:00Z

In March, we built the ground-breaking SXSW Zeitgeist for Pepsico. It's no longer running—SXSW is over, natch—but there are some videos, in case you didn't see it.

Pepsi wanted to "do something cool around Twitter/SXSW" and we delivered the concept, design and execution. (And boots-on-the-ground troubleshooting.)

It was a big hit. It got mentioned in a number of places, including Brandweek and VentureBeat, and of course it was all over Twitter.

Fast forward to... now. We put the Zeitgeist thru a visual overhaul & made some technical changes, & now the Zeitgeist is riding again for Internet Week New York, once again very generously sponsored by Pepsico.

Tweet stream view it live

See the Pepsico Zeitgeist live

I wanted to write a little about what makes the Zeitgeist unique, and why and how we made it that way.

Groundwork

If genius is 99% perspiration, we're an Einstein-Mozart mashup. Or just covered in sweat. Take your pick.

We started these projects with... you guessed it... sweating. I mean, research.

Who's going?

We use a combination of keywords and stop words to attempt to identify people who are going to attend the conferences (as opposed to just talking about it, or worse yet, expressing regrets that they couldn't come).

We come by these the old-fashioned way: the scientific method of hypothesis, trial, error, and revision.

What are they doing?

Then we follow them with our small army of benevolent Twitter bots.

We wanted to see what people were really doing, and talking about—flying, landing, getting taxis & hotels, getting badges, etc., etc.

You can't do that if you rely on searches. Searches are just a tiny window into the whole experience of a person. They don't show you what the tweets are on either side.

Tag cloud, Amy & Thomas-style view it live

Timeliness

We changed which topics we selected for / displayed on a daily basis to showcase the conf experience people were actually having that day.

For example, for SXSW, we'd focus on names of big-ticket keynoters, and for Internet Week, on one of the many separate confs that were part of the bigger event.

We follow because hashtags suck

The hash tag usage at SXSW was extremely minimal.

The more fun you're having, the more mobile you are, the less likely you are to drunkenly poke your iPhone to add "# s x s w" to your tweet.

Not that there's an agreed-upon tag, generally, to add to the confusion.

By including an attendee in our bots' friend timeline, we get all their updates, and can then pick & choose from there. We get information and updates that would never show up with a hashtag.

Hash or not? We've learned some interesting things about hashtag adoption and usage rates. Hashtag usage at Internet Week NY is much more regular, seemingly because: the demographics are older; people are attending for work; the demographics are more in the marketing/advertising world; these people are tweeting from laptops; they are less mobile, and less drunk, because IWNY is loose grouping of smaller, simultaneous conferences that have single all-day tracks, and few official events run late into the night.

Context-sensitive

The Zeitgeists are hand-tuned for each event, to squeeze out the best possible result.

For SXSW, we hand-picked upwards of 100 locations around the conference where we knew people would go, where parties would be, where people love to eat and meet up, dance and get sloshed. We came up with keywords that people were likely to use: not just Moonshine Bar & Grill, but just plain old Moonshine. Let's face it, people are lazy.

And they will misspell Buffalo Billiards after the first few margaritas.

From the SXSW Zeitgeist

For Internet Week, we do select for words that indicate locations for the geographically spread-out events, even unofficial ones. And we update the keywords list every day for what's going on that day.

Where they are, or where they're going?

Through keywords, we identified where people were talking about, rather than attempting to geolocate them. What they're talking about signals intent (e.g. "headin 2 buffalo billiards for the rails meetup!") vs simply where they happen to be("on the corner of 6th and whatever").

How people move—or don't move

For SXSW, we built the animated map, because people move around a lot in the downtown area around the conference center.

For Internet Week, because there was no single unifying event, and the city is so large, we skipped the maps.

Judging by the tweets we're getting, this was the exactly right move. These folks aren't partiers and roamers in the way that the SXSW attendees are.

What people really care about

It seems like more people attend SXSW for the parties than the talks. That's cool with us. We are all about giving the people what they want.

We built a special Party Watch, to monitor tweets about the parties and the party venues during the time around the parties.

On top of that, we did some rough & ready natural language processing to find—and share—the answers to such questions as:

Does the Facebook party suck?
Is this or that party empty?
Where is there a line? Where is there no line?

(Not that we needed much to tell you that the Facebook party almost always sucks. And our tuned app reflected that.)

And we tuned it based on the topics, too. I've attended SXSW for 3 years running, so I've got the feel of the event.

Rather than doing charts & graphs of tweet volume, for instance, we focused on the things people do: meet, greet, attend, drink, eat, watch shows, and travel.

Rating tweets & locations for mood

Party watch from SXSW

The secret to our success

The phrase "by hand" is our watchword.

To squeeze the absolute best data, you can't rely on automation. It's just that simple.

But tweets are small, short, and knowable. People tweet in predictable ways... and people who attend one conference behave, en masse, differently than people who attend a different conference.

There's a distinct flavor difference, and we did hours of research to ferret that out.

Our keyword lists are huge. We tuned them. We unfollowed or followed people manually. We massaged the bots.

We even got a database of the SXSW tweets from last year and ran simulations on them.

It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Our visualizers are top-notch.

Compelling design with awesome JavaScript effects

Thomas, of course, is the author of Scriptaculous and a JavaScript god. I'm definitely an expert, but it hardly bears mentioning when I'm in the same room as my husband.

With our powers combined, we took:

carefully chosen people
the information/insights that people are truly interested in

and made them into surprising, and mesmerizing, with animation, transitions, and effects.

We also tried to add elasticity and fun to the effects, not just cold, hard, mathematical exactness. And we tried to use them to support interest, mystery, suspense, and playfulness.

Moving pictures

We came up with two entirely new screens for Internet Week: one that shows just the tweets of their Twitter street team, and another that pulls related pix from Flickr. They look like this:

Just the street team view it live

Moving pictures view it live

Animated bar charts are the awesome

And on one of the other screens, the topics (SXSW only) on the left convert to an animated bar chart. We have a video of this particular effect.

Bottom line...

People didn't believe that it was JavaScript.

People assumed we were using hashtags.

But it is, and we aren't.

So I thought I'd share.

Check out the videos and see it for yourself.

And if you're interested in JavaScript-driven web apps, snazzy visual fx, and generally confusing people into thinking your site is Flash—but oh-so-much better—you should buy our JavaScript Performance Rocks! book while it's still in beta. We cover everything from The Most Ridiculous Performance Fix Ever (and it *is* ridiculous), to serving strategies, DOM diets, loop unrolling (for those really extreme cases), how to play nice with the garbage collector, and everything in between. And it comes with our custom profiling tool, The DOM Monster, which analyzes your pages and suggests fixes. This package is only $24 now but will be $29 as soon as it's done... but if you snag your copy today, you get the final version by email just as soon as it's ready.

10 things I learned from screwing up my first ebook launch

2009-05-29T13:58:00Z

... The Short Version.

I promised short, and dammit, I'm gonna deliver.

Very Brief Backstory

JavaScript Performance Rocks! is my first ebook, written by me and my husband, Mr. Scriptaculous (legal alias: Thomas Fuchs).

We launched the beta at the end of January, and the final version is going to drop in the next few days. (All the changes and additions are done, and now I'm typesetting. Again.)

It's been a true learning experience. Translation: I fucked up a lot but I grew as a person!

I fucked up, then I learned stuff

Although some of the lessons weren't directly descended from fuckups. Some of them are even positive. Le horreur!

Here we are:

People are absolutely willing to buy beta books.
People are absolutely willing to pay for quality, a topic that will really help them solve problems, and personal guarantees.
If you launch your beta book just to feel good about yourself, without a plan for how to deal with a (surprise) influx of customers, you are going to be stressed out.
If you are doing a beta of your ebook, do not lay out the beta version beautifully in InDesign (or other Real Page Layout Engine). Managing updates, and worse yet deciding if/how to share those with your customers, will be hellish.
Have an update plan in advance. You do not want to look at a surprisingly huge list of customers and feel the crippling fear that if you email them anything but the final book, they will consider you spam.
It's never a good idea to publicly promise to ship on X date, unless you're already done. (I came down with an intestinal infection—whoops, bye bye deadline, hello worshipping the porcelain god.)
Give big discounts to your loyal readers. They deserve it, and they'll pay you back in love.
A personal opt-in email list just for your readers is a great way to get the word out, especially if you combine it with the previous step and offer big discounts. People who like your stuff will want to hear about more of your stuff, especially if you treat them nice like they deserve. Stands to reason.
The types of folks who buy beta books are very involved, and will send you all kinds of helpful emails about typos, errors, or suggestions. Have a system set up for this. Also, remember, they're actually taking the time to help you. That's awesome. Relax.
Even if you screw up somewhere, it's not the end of the world. Act like a decent human being and most everyone else will return the favor. Apologize sincerely, respect that you have upset others, but don't make excuses.
Writing an ebook that you care about, for your readers that you know & love, with only your passion to drive it, is quite a different experience than writing a Real Book with an editorial process. I like it so much better.

OK, that's actually 11 things. Consider it 10% more free.

Stay tuned?

There's more, of course, but I'm trying to practice brevity.

So, my dear readers... What do you think? Was this interesting to you? Should I write more about it as things progress?

By the way, that bit about slipping on the deadline? Well, version 1.0 hasn't shipped just yet. That means the price hasn't gone up. You can still snag yours for $5 off the final price. If you do any kind of rich web app development, you want a copy. You don't need to use a huge amount of JavaScript, or even be a JavaScript expert.

It works like this: You'll get the beta version today—for less!—and the final version will go BING! in your inbox just as soon as I hit Export to PDF.

Which will be in the next few days, but I'm not naming dates this time. I'm taking my own advice!

MacUpdate Promo Bundle with Multiplex

2009-05-28T18:02:00Z

Have I mentioned Twistori Desktop on here yet? I don't think I have. Well, consider it mentioned: Twistori Desktop is a not-quite-1.0 app for you to have your very own Twistori on your (you guessed it) personal Mac. That means custom word clusters, with themes, live search, and other goodies. It's not at 1.0 yet and I didn't want to pimp it hard until it's ready, thus not talking about it much except on Twitter. But it's still cool, even if it's not done.

TD is being developed mainly by our very good friend & beer videoblogger, Dave Martorana.

We know Dave thru Indy Hall, the Philadelphia coworking community started by another friend, Alex Hillman.

Now here comes the revolutionary part. We collaborate with Dave on Twistori Desktop through the totally innovative Indy Hall Labs, an independent LLC founded around coworking to help facilitate shared software development projects.

Indy Hall Labs is not just a small company, not just a software delivery infrastructure, it's a completely different way of doing business that I think is going to change the world.

This is a lot of backstory. Sorry about that.

The point, Amy!

The point is, Dave's main project is called Multiplex. Also an Indy Hall Labs project.

Multiplex is awesome, but that's not the point...

Multiplex is totally freakin' awesome. Multiplex is perhaps the biggest reason we chose to work with Dave.

Multiplex is... well, I shudder to call it "DVD management."

It's like Front Row mated with that wicked interface from Minority Report, had a baby, and that genius offspring devoted itself totally to organizing your DVDs.

Like I said: totally awesome.

The point is... SAVING MAD MONEY OMG

Multiplex is a good price normally at $35, but at the moment you can get it in the MacUpdate Promo bundle along with a bunch of other great apps for the freakin insanely low price of $49.99. That's just unbelievably good.

Other highlights include:

RipIt, another Indy Hall Labs app & the best DVD ripper out there for ripping your DVDs
TechTool Pro 5—ordinarily very expensive at $98. Normally because you only buy it when your Mac's broken, I guess! But it's a true lifesaver.
MoneyWell, an app that syncs with your financial accounts and helps you keep track—basically like mint.com but without the chance that they're going to, I dunno, SELL YOUR DATA (as has been allegedly lately)

And there are a bunch of other apps. These are the ones I'm interested in (+ Multiplex of course).

But go check out the list, because you might jump for joy for other apps entirely.

Buy the bundle, support indies, & Indy Hall Labs

Unlike certain other Mac app bundles we could name, the MacUpdate people love software developers. I've got it on good authority that the deals with the devs are very fair, and everybody's happy.

I just bought the bundle myself.

If you're interested, please consider buying through this link. That way, Indy Hall will get an extra percentage of the sale which will go towards maintaining Philly coworking and co-software-developing.

Check out the deliciousness of this bundle and, if you buy, share the love with Indy Hall

Even if you have zero interest in software bundles, click here and take a look. Then, on the off chance that you change your mind when you start drooling at all those useful little apps, Indy Hall will still get credit :)

Or, if you have friends who are interested, I would consider it a personal favor if you'd pass on this link:

http://tr.im/IHLabsMUPromo

The referral fee is not a lot of money by any means, but every little bit counts. And these are folks that give a helluva lot back.

Thanks on behalf of Indy Hall Labs!

Design: Ease of Control, or Challenge of Relationship?

2009-05-27T12:57:00Z

You'll have to forgive me, cuz I'm trying hard to find a way to wrap my head around a concept in my head so I can express it.

The test everything trend in design bothers me. Or to make every decision based on the numbers. Or to focus on problem-solving. Or patterns.

I'm trying to formulate a good way to express *my* approach to design, but when I try, people don't understand. I'm aware this is a problem on my end, not yours. But I'm gonna keep trying.

This is a quote from a comment on an article on BoingBoing:

[Projects] are all different. The only thing you can be sure with when you start out on the journey... is that you need to get to know this [design challenge]... taking statistics seems to me to be an obsessive-compulsive way of trying to gain control, not starting what ought to be a conversation.

This is really getting close, I think...

Statistics can provide insight, and they can be extremely useful—at the right stage of the design process.

But add them earlier, and instead of shedding light on a problem, they give you the illusion of understanding. They give you concrete handholds in the misty, ethereal world of possibility. That sounds good. But if you want handholding in the mists of possibility, you have to follow the path where the handholds are. That reduces the whole thing to one possible trajectory. You'll never know what you could have been capable of.

It gives you an entirely false sense of knowing. But once you get ahold of that false sense, you will not want to let it go.

Developers call this "premature optimization," but that's not quite right for what I'm talking about.

Rather than tuning something unneccessarily early—possibly wasting time, possibly risking that you will end up tossing that bit out anyway—you test your way out of mastery. Most people don't mean "your whole thesis is wrong" when they accuse you of premature optimization. They just mean you're putting in too much time up front before you have to.

But in design, this premature optimization for statistics can obscure the fact that your entire approach is wrong, uncreative, driven by "well nothing else will work."

You end up tweaking, instead of rethinking. You end up smoothing out the edges on what you've already got, rather than coming up with a new shape altogether. It's incrementalism, and fear, backed up by "science."

By the way, the quote above is actually about babies. I changed two words to make my point.

But it sounds right to me.

Slight delay

2009-05-26T23:49:00Z

Sorry, kids. I came down with an infection of the lining of the intestine (oh BOY!) and it's really slowed me down. In fact, I think it was pretty much my body telling me to slow the fuck down.

JavaScript Performance Rocks! v1 is coming this week for sure, so you can still get it at the lower price if you're sitting on the fence.

By the way, do you use Twitter? If so, you might be interested in following my main account (@amyhoy) or my "pro" account where I only write about UI and design ethnography (@webnography).

Plus updates on the book at @jsrocks.

Catch ya later.

As in motorcycles, so in design

2009-05-24T09:09:00Z

There probably aren’t many jobs that can be reduced to rule-following and still be done well. But in many jobs there is an attempt to do just this, and the perversity of it may go unnoticed by those who design the work process. Mechanics face something like this problem in the factory service manuals that we use. These manuals tell you to be systematic in eliminating variables, presenting an idealized image of diagnostic work. But they never take into account the risks of working on old machines. So you put the manual away and consider the facts before you. You do this because ultimately you are responsible to the motorcycle and its owner, not to some procedure.

— Matthew B Crawford, highly educated motorcycle mechanic and author

The whole essay's really worth a read and I'm going to trot out and buy his book immediately. (Metaphorically, at least—doubt it's in stock in Austria.)

Last chance to save $5 on JavaScript Performance Rocks

2009-05-22T14:49:00Z

Subtitle: Where the heck has Amy been!?

Long and short: I been around, baby!

Take 2 months of international travel (including 3 continents), working all the while, 2 conferences, and several biz collaborations. Add moving offices immediately upon return. Add finding, acquiring, and moving to a new apartment a couple weeks after that. Add to that trying to work on 2 in-house products, plus a couple client gigs.

Set it to Blend and you get... my life the past 3 mos. Holy crap, mayhem, tears, the works.

I am NOT going to do that again.

Anyway, I've been cleaning house. I've buckled down and changed the way I work, for the better, and it's really taking effect. Lately we've been hard at work on Freckle, doing some stuff that you would hardly believe (that I hope we can announce rrreaaaall sooooon nowwww).

And Thomas and I are now wrapping up our JavaScript Performance Rocks! ebook. Finally. Yes, for real!

But enough about me, what about you?

Existing owners of JavaScript Performance Rocks!

You have waited long, and for that I will be forever grateful. You will be getting v1.0 by email the very second it's available. Details will be sent to the email address you paid with.

If you need to have it sent to another address, no problem! Email me.

And, it might not be right away, but I am going to come up with an awesome thank-you present for you guys.

People who don't own JavaScript Performance Rocks! — yet

Slow web apps suck. They suck... customers.

Most people will never bother to write you if they quit using your service, and you may never know why. If you're not staying on top of such things, it could be your app's performance. And you'd never know.

There's nothing worse than losing customers and having no clue why. (Trust me on this one.) Or how to fix it. (Ditto.)

But, of course, there's a solution. Learning how web app performance works means you'll learn how to monitor it, assess it, and—perhaps most importantly of all—fix it. And save the customers, and possibly also the day. Yay!

JavaScript Performance Rocks! is the best damn book out there on maximizing the performance of your rich web app.

Learning to spot and solve problems

You'll learn everything from the Most Ridiculous and Effective Performance Fix Ever (you'll laugh) to how to optimize memory usage in Firefox. Seriously.

Even if you don't use a load of JavaScript, the first half of the book alone will pay for itself with ideas and implementation details you don't come across elsewhere.

And if that weren't enough, JavaScript Performance Rocks! comes with our very own custom diagnostic tool, The DOM Monster!

DOM Monster checks out page performance issues that no other tool does, and it gives you concrete suggestions on how to fix them.

Plus it's got a monster icon, and who can beat that?

Oh yeah, and bonus: you're supporting my & Thomas' bid for freedom, to continue working on open source and other free efforts to teach people and give them excellent tools.

The authors (pssst: you know them)

Thomas Fuchs, as you probably know, is distinguished not only by the fact that I married him. He's one of the world's top experts on JavaScript performance. You may not have known this because he's not nearly as good as extolling his virtues as I am.

And in the JavaScript Performance Rocks! ebook, I basically opened the magical Austrian hinge in his skull, removed his brain, and juiced it.

The book is just full of performance insights—almost 150 pages—all wrapped up in my writing, and adorned with my shiny graphics.

You should buy now

Now is the best time to buy.

You can save $5 off the "cover price". That's my way of thanking you for being an early adopter. And you'll always be on my primo discount announce list. (Unless you don't want big discounts on any future Amy Hoy productions, of course.)

On Sunday, we'll ship the final version of the book—the Big 1.0—and the price will go up to $29. Right now it's only $24.

So, let's review the process:

Buy the book + DOM Monster today for just $24.
Download the beta.
On Sunday, get the final version—1.0—emailed right to you, at no additional cost, with no extra effort.
Gloat like the smart mofo you are to the poor SOBs who pay full price and don't get on my primo discount list

Make sense to you?

Return to our regularly scheduled programming

Soon.

Just wait til you see what I've got planned! :)

Love you guys. Thanks for your support. I know that sounds canned, but it's so very, very true.

Felicity.

2009-04-20T11:45:00Z

But some other writers seem to know that it takes more than [blamelessness] for a sentence to cohere and flourish as a work of art. They seem to know that the words inside the sentence must behave as if they were destined to belong together—as if their separation from each other would deprive the parent story or novel, as well as the readerly world, of something life-bearing and essential.

These writers recognize that there needs to be an intimacy between the words, a togetherness that has nothing to do with grammar or syntax but instead has to do with the very shapes and sounds, the forms and contours, of the gathered words. This intimacy is what we mean when we say of a piece of writing that it has a felicity—a fitness, an aptness, a rightness about the phrasing.

Gary Lutz, The Sentence is a Lonely Place

Google Checkout still unfit for business: I got my money, but would you?

2009-03-28T20:02:00Z

After my rant about my Google Checkout fiasco and its subsequent mass exposure, Google has restored my Checkout account. I received two emails: one, a very 'typical Google' form letter:

And another, later, that was clearly written by hand by a real live person, who thanked me for my feedback. Kind Google employee, I appreciate your letter, and I'm sure you are a fine person. My ire is not directed at you personally.

But, dear reader, my blog post wasn't feedback. It would have been feedback if there was any way to contact customer service listed on that evilly worded termination page.

My thanks to individuals at Google

I'd like to say that I am very glad to have my account back.

I owe a big "thank you" to the kind and gracious people inside Google who advocated for me and investigated the situation. As far as I know, none of you have the job of handling Checkout stuff or even customer service, but you cared and went beyond your job description.

For that, I thank you.

Why you still shouldn't use Google Checkout for your business

But even though I get my money back, I don't plan to use Google Checkout again.

I can't risk that it will disappear again with no notice and no one I can contact.

If you're considering using Google Checkout for your business, you have to ask yourself the same question: Can you risk it?

It was only because I was angry enough to write about it publically, and that there was a community who supported & propagated that post, that I got this resolution.

I have no doubt that if I just emailed Google, it would have gone ignored... I would have received empty form letters in response, and no action. Based on other people's experiences (just search for 'em), this seems to be the standard MO.

UPDATE: This is exactly what I'm talking about. From a couple minutes ago, on Twitter, when I posted the link to this article:

I'm not a wounded fanboy

Don't get me wrong: I don't hate Google or people inside Google.

I hate the way Google, as an abstract corporate entity, has treated me.

Or rather, the way Google's abstract, corporate algorithms have treated me.

Financial systems, which people rely on for their businesses, require human review

This is, in fact, the crux of the issue.

As far as I can tell, no human being looked at my account and determined "That account is fraudulent."

It was a "technical error," not a judgment call.

On the face of it—yay. Nobody in Google hates my guts. Or the guts of anyone else who's had earned money disappear inside the vast company, via the automated termination of their Adsense or Checkout accounts.[1]

And I don't think anyone has instituted a corporate policy of landgrabbing.

But if it's no one's fault, that means it's no one's responsibility

But on the flip side, with no human intervention, things can get wrecked automatically and it's no one's responsibility to fix it.

There was no individual I could reach out to, no one whose job it was to ensure that accounts were disabled for a reason, no one to lend an ear to an upset and confused customer... with missing money.

The closed account message, in fact, seems constructed to strongly discourage any contact, appeal, even hope.

If you're thinking it's all just a little innocent misunderstanding, go read that message again and think about the intent behind the way it is worded.

Surprise, you've been terminated! We're keeping your cash.

There was no chance for me to address the (erroneous) problems that triggered the account closure, before my account was terminated and my money seized.

I never even got any notice that that my account had been terminated.

How much business did I lose?

I have no idea how many potential customers tried to buy our JavaScript Performance ebook through Google Checkout and saw a message that our account was disabled.

How many sales did we lose because of that?

I don't even know when it happened. Because Google didn't send me a notice, even then. The last email I got from Google Checkout was about "Helpful tips," on February 9th.

Consider this familiar scenario

Imagine if some erroneous fraud detection metrics disabled your business checking account. Your money was totally inaccessible to you. I travel a lot, so it's happened to me.

When that happens, you may be annoyed... but all you have to do is call your bank, give a few data points that prove your identity, and your access to your money is restored.

Now imagine that there is no one you can call, and no one you can email, and the message you see when you try to access your card is basically "Nope, there's nothing you can do."

Now imagine this message also claims that you can never find out why your account was terminated, because it's a security risk.

That, in a nutshell, is what it's like doing business with Google Checkout.

Solutions

At this point in the story, I, as an author, have to provide a solution or risk being called a Whiny McWhinyPants with a pathetic little vendetta.

So, Google (abstract corporate entity), I'm sure you already know this, but for the sake of the Internet, here's what needs to happen:

A formalized and transparent process for terminating people's accounts and claiming their money for your (Google's) own
Human review of "suspicious" accounts... before they are terminated
Contact with the account administators... before they are terminated
Email (or telephone) notices upon termination.
A formalized and transparent review and appeal process for terminated accounts
A dedicated customer service team, with phone numbers, to handle the responses from customers with flagged accounts under review and also for post-terminated accounts with appeals
Messages that indicate what action can be taken, at what step, by whom, and whom those actions steps will reach inside Google, how long to expect those steps to take, etc.
A customer agreement that specifies clearly—so customers are aware—that when accounts are closed, Google seizes all assets in those accounts... (although changing that boneheaded policy would be even better)

Google, that last item is about helping your customers make an informed choice... to not use your service.

Because your definition of "terminated" means "I keep all your money!"

If I had understood that by that line "restrict access to the Service," your lawyers actually believe they can mean "...and we keep all your money," well, I never would have risked it in the first place.

In my world, "restrict access to the Service" means that you don't let me make any more orders.

Not that you get to keep, forever, without review, without appeal—without even an accusation—everything that's in my account.

A bank couldn't do that. A credit card company couldn't do that. An employer couldn't do that. A publisher, paying royalties to an author, couldn't do that.

A search engine can't do that either.

In conclusion...

Even PayPal has a phone number you can call and customer service teams. Even they have a review process.

PayPal is supposedly the bad guy in this industry. Google needs to—at the very least—be as "good" as their competitor with the worst image.

I feel really sad that it's come to me writing that kind of message, but there you go.

[1] Like Thomas Fuchs, my husband, who lost over $2,000 in ad revenue from his open source project's homepage. Yes, even prominent open source projects are not immune... nor are they even able to get a review process started to potentially recover their money. Apparently this is not that unusual. Just Google for it.

I had no idea.

Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

2009-03-26T17:42:00Z

The whole saga is worth reading, but just to let you know: here's the latest.

Wanting to offer an alternative to PayPal, we set up a Google Checkout account for people to buy our ebook.

The last email we received about our Google Checkout account was "Helpful tips regarding your first Google Checkout orders" on February 9th.

But a few days ago, I logged in, and this is what greeted me:

And if you click that link, "I had pending payouts for charged orders. Will I receive these payouts?", you'll see that the answer is "Nope, you're screwed."

So, to sum up our experience with Google Checkout:

they did not try to contact us to resolve any issue
there's no way to find out why they closed our account, due to "security reasons"
there was no notice (we found out by accident, when we tried to pay for something with Google Checkout)
they kept over $200 of our money
there is no appeal
there is no one we can contact
we cannot open a new account
our money is gone, even though people have received their products

And I don't know if you noticed, but that agreement section doesn't actually have anything to do with this situation. It's clearly just there to cause a sense of despair & make readers believe they have no legal recourse.

Crime Does Pay

This is on top, of course, of their theft of over $2,000 for Adsense revenues for the web site for script.aculo.us, which happened in similar circumstances (no warning, no appeal, no replies, etc., etc.).

So, despite any number of ads I've clicked in my life using Google search, they've also made a cool $2300 at least from us by stealing our cash outright.

Translation: Google is even worse than PayPal.

Do not use Google Checkout for your business.

PayPal, as a company with financial services that have caught the eye of the government, is subject to a lot more regulations... and, surprisingly, acts better.

'Don't be evil' my ass.

Lest you think we're an exception, we're not the only ones who have been robbed by Google; this guy sued and won in court, but he was lucky to reside in the correct district. For us, it'd be a bad business decision based on the costs vs possible reward. So it is with most people, which is how Google can get away with it.