Consider the Product

More Essays & Links from the Cahier

• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Removing Features

  The single most important skill a product manager/designer/guy/girl can have…

• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Sony's Marketing Translated From PR-Speak to English

  Worth it for the punch-line.

• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Facebook Introduces HipHop for PHP

  Borne from a hackathon project, Facebook’s engineering team is now throwing their PHP through their new HipHop framework, which effectively transforms the easy-to-write PHP they’ve always used into much faster C++.

  This is pretty huge for a site like Facebook — it allows for the productivity of writing in a scripting language (PHP may not be quite as productive as Ruby or Python, but it’s miles better than Java), with the speed of a compiled language.

  After all, for a site that relies on users viewing many dozens of pages per day, largely while procrastinating, speed is user experience priority number one.

• Links — January 28, 2010 — Permalink

  Never Dupe Your Readers

  Jason Calacanis pretended to know iPad specs first-hand, and duped a lot of people. Why anyone would trust anything that man says is completely beyond me, but many bought it hook, line, and sinker.

  Mike Davidson has some sage wisdom to share, and provides some perspective about people in our industry who are increasingly filled with hot air.

• Links — January 22, 2010 — Permalink

  Realism in UI Design

  Fantastic article on fidelity in interface design:

  The trick is to figure out which details help users identify the UI element, and which details distract from its intended meaning. Some details help users figure out what they’re looking at and how they can interact with it; other details distract from the idea you’re trying to convey. They turn your interface element from a concept into a specific thing. Thus, if an interface element is too distinct from its real-life counterpart, it becomes too hard to recognize. On the other hand, if it is too realistic, people are unable to figure out that you’re trying to communicate an idea, and what idea that might be.

• Links — January 21, 2010 — Permalink

  Pen v keyboard v Newton v Graffiti v Treo v iPhone

  Phil Gyford:

  For some time I’ve been meaning to test my small collection of PDA/smartphone gadgets to see which of their methods of input was quickest. The iPhone’s software keyboard? The Newton’s handwriting recognition? Palm’s Graffiti? With the possible imminent arrival of a tablet from Apple that will save the world, it seemed a good time to get round to the test.

• Links — January 21, 2010 — Permalink

  Posthumous Hosting and Digital Culture

  Zeldman opines on options for our content after we’re long gone.

• Links — January 19, 2010 — Permalink

  Jessica Hische on Humble Pied

  “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”

• Links — January 19, 2010 — Permalink

  A Look Back at the Beginning of OS X

  John Siracusa looks at his reviews of the OS X preview releases and the first 10.0 release.

  What’s most amazing is how gracefully things seem to have improved in those ten years. The old screenshots now look dated and sometimes downright ridiculous, and Siracusa’s evaluations were nothing short of dire in the beginning, but it’s slowly and steadily become the clear market leader.

  One of the best things about Apple is their willingness to put something out that might be a bit of a reach, and then to go back and iterate and fill in the gaps. They pay a boatload of attention to making it a great experience in the first place, but they are always willing to acknowledge that improvements can be both subtle and major.

• Links — January 15, 2010 — Permalink

  Yelp Enables Check-Ins On Its iPhone App

  Huge blow to the Gowalla and Foursquare camps.

  Yelp has boatloads of venues already, they obviously have an even larger number of legit and useful reviews, and they most importantly have existing relationships with these businesses (at least on the order of Yelp window stickers). Soon to come, deals for having a Regular badge at a given bar, or special happy-hour specials if you check in with multiple friends.

  I’m a huge Gowalla fan, but these updates leave only one feature necessary for the Yelp app to really put the future of both Gowalla and Foursquare in jeopardy: contact import from facebook/twitter/etc. At that point, Gowalla will look like a “not as powerful, more game-like” version of Yelp’s offering.

• Links — January 15, 2010 — Permalink

  Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own Consumer Internet Dogfood - Master of 500 Hats

  Dave McClure:

  If investors don’t have operational backgrounds in design, development, or marketing from proven consumer internet companies, you probably don’t want their money.

  Agreed.

• Links — January 15, 2010 — Permalink

  Defending Against Patent Trolls

  Brad Burnham, from Union Square Ventues, describes the problems faced by small companies whose independent inventions overlap with established patents:

  Our companies are being attacked by companies that were not even in the same market, very often by companies they did not even know existed.

  And proposes a solution:

  If, on the other hand, the troll was required to show the startup had some prior knowledge of their technology, the burden would be shifted to the attacker, and this blatant abuse would come to a grinding halt. If you believe as I do that innovation is key to social progress, please support patent reform.

• Links — January 14, 2010 — Permalink

  A Conversation with Anonymous Facebook Employee

  A fairly wide-ranging conversation with a Facebook employee about infrastructure, privacy, security, and culture. A lot has changed since the beginning, and none of this should be terribly surprising.

  When I visited the new Facebook HQ a few months ago, the receptionist shared a couple stories of people trying to force their way in there, so there’s an element of physical security that is becoming increasingly important around there.

• Links — January 14, 2010 — Permalink

  What’s Wrong with Wireframes?

  Christina Wodtke on why she’s over wireframes:

  I haven’t heard much lately about why wireframes are so awesome. I know they are incredibly useful as a thinking tool. I can’t work through an idea without getting out a pencil and scribbling out some wireframes on a pad of paper. I’m not sure they are good as a communicating tool.

  The article itself has a reasonably articulated argument, but the discussion is probably more valuable.

  Wireframes are just a tool, and all tools can be used inappropriately just as easily as they can be used well. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that in certain situations, wireframes aren’t particularly valuable, and Christina may exist in one of them. I think most folks, however, find themselves in scenarios where there remains a legitimate need for the wireframe, both as a thought aid and as a communication tool.

• Links — January 14, 2010 — Permalink

  The Founder Factor

  Fred Wilson:

  I’ve long noticed that the most innovative, decisive, and risk taking companies are led by founders or at a minimum have their founders actively engaged in all key strategic decisions.

  There are probably times when it makes sense for a founder to leave, but it seems like it’s usually after an exit. That driving vision is super-crucial, even if there’s a little craziness mixed in.

• Links — December 23, 2009 — Permalink

  Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month

  That’s the widget that social media expertards loved which showed the faces of other users who visited their blogs. It was yet another of the slow and annoying widgets in the sidebar. In that respect, I’m happy to see it go, though I frequent those kinds of blogs less and less these days.

  As Marshall’s article details, though, there was potential for this kind of thing with respect to analytics. I’m sure a better implementation of the same kind of idea will win out someday.

• Links — December 22, 2009 — Permalink

  Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem | Magazine

  While most entrepreneurs would like to have as much cash on hand as possible, it was a double-edged sword for the Duke Nukem Forever team:

  Yet the truth is, Broussard’s financial freedom had cut him off from all discipline. He could delay making the tough calls, seemingly forever. “One day, Broussard came in and said, ‘We could go another five years without shipping a game’” because 3D Realms still had so much money in the bank, an employee told me. “He seemed really happy about that. The other people just groaned.”

  The pursuit of perfection these guys displayed is certainly admirable, but in the end, it was completely foolish. Duke Nukem Forever became the poster child for vaporware, and it was all because they didn’t know when to call it a day and ship some software.

• Links — December 17, 2009 — Permalink

  There is No Page Fold

  Hah, indeed.

• Links — December 14, 2009 — Permalink

  The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas

  Worth reading from A-Z.

• Links — December 14, 2009 — Permalink

  Browser Market Share Visualization

  Great circular visualization. As for the numbers themselves, they’re from W3Schools.com, which clearly has a standards slant, so take them with that grain of salt.

• Links — December 10, 2009 — Permalink

  RCA student radically improves the UK plug

  I’ve always wondered why there wasn’t a better design for that awfully large plug. Now I’m wondering why no one else thought of something like this years ago.

• Links — December 10, 2009 — Permalink

  The Nook according to Pogue

  One day, the Nook may be a much more usable, more capable bit of gear. Of course, Amazon and Sony won’t be standing still; 2010 sure will be an interesting year.

  Looks like David Pogue wasn’t too impressed, and B&N didn’t spend enough time refining and polishing their product.

• Links — November 30, 2009 — Permalink

  The End Of The CrunchPad

  It’s a sad day at TechCrunch HQ. Hitting the publish button on this post, which makes all of this so…final…is a very hard thing to do. I’m enraged, embarrassed, and just…sad. The CrunchPad is now in the DeadPool.

  Strange ending. You’d think that a lawyer like Arrington would have been a bit more careful when it came down to the contracts here.

  I don’t believe for a second it was quite as close to launching as he claims, but I do wish it had seen the light of day, just to see if Arrington can actually produce something in line with the size of his mouth.

• Links — November 29, 2009 — Permalink

  How I Hire Programmers

  Aaron Swartz:

  There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them? Someone who’s smart but doesn’t get stuff done should be your friend, not your employee. You can talk your problems over with them while they procrastinate on their actual job. Someone who gets stuff done but isn’t smart is inefficient: non-smart people get stuff done by doing it the hard way and working with them is slow and frustrating. Someone you can’t work with, you can’t work with.

  Good advice to start, and he’s got more where that came from. Some of it would be different for designers, but a lot of it holds for any position, at least in our industry.

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  You Get What You Pay For

  David Thorne to his least-favorite client:

  Disregarding the fact that you have still not paid me for work I completed earlier this year despite several assertions that you would do so, I would be delighted to spend my free time creating logos and pie charts for you based on further vague promises of future possible payment. Please find attached pie chart as requested and let me know of any changes required.

  And that’s just the beginning. This is par for the course when you’re having designers do work for you on spec.

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  Microsoft's Saks window displays hijacked by Apple fans

  Seriously:

  It didn’t take long for that plan to backfire. Apple fans reportedly have hijacked #holidaywindows and are writing tweets such as “Get a Mac” and “Windows is lame.” And they’re showing up in the Big Apple.

  How dense do you need to be to realize that putting up a live Twitter feed in a very public space is rarely going to yield great results?

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  Customer Feedback Not on elBulli's Menu

  The case also highlights the distinction between understanding and listening to customers. “Adrià’s idea is that if you listen to customers, what they tell you they want will be based on something they already know,” Norton observes. “If I like a good steak, you can serve that to me, and I’ll enjoy it. But it will never be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To create those experiences, you almost can’t listen to the customer.”

  Don’t take this the wrong way — Adrià most certainly pays a lot of attention to his customers. It’s at the core of what he does. But what he doesn’t do is listen to their input, he instead works to understand their needs and desires, and creates his own experience to satiate them.

  You can listen to customer feedback all you want, and it might give you an okay product. It’s when you understand your customers and forge your own pathway based on that understanding that can lead to something really special.

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  Danah Boyd's Spectacle at the Web 2.0 Expo

  Danah Boyd’s talk went seriously awry when the twitter backchannel, projected behind her as she spoke, started to turn the audience against her:

  The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience to pay attention the backchannel. So even audience members who want to focus on the content get distracted. Most folks can’t multitask that well. And even if I had been slower and less dense, my talks are notoriously too content-filled to make multi-tasking possible for the multi-tasking challenged. This is precisely why I use very simplistic slides that evokes images for the visual types in the room without adding another layer of content. But the Twitter stream fundamentally adds another layer of content that the audience can’t ignore, that I can’t control. And that I cannot even see.

  I feel awful for Danah. Conferences aren’t places to treat speakers like lab rats. I’m just not really sure who benefits from backchannels at all.

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  Gladwell vs. Pinker - Useful knowledge vs. Accuracy

  There’s been an ongoing spat against Malcolm Gladwell by the scientific community:

  To try my hand at Gladwell’s technique: Conventional wisdom suggests that if getting Gladwell’s level of popular traction means sacrificing aspects of both science and journalism, it might be better to have no Malcolm Gladwells at all.

  Gladwell is great at communicating fairly complicated issues to normal people by simplifying, and it’s led to an incredible level of popularity for him. In the course of doing that, sometimes things can be over-simplified, much to the chagrin of the archetype scientist.

  We often have the same issues on the web. The web is a complicated place, and there are lots of moving pieces, most which a given client has no chance of understanding. So clients often understand and rely on the simplest of rules, many of which simply aren’t sturdy enough to rely on. See Jakob Nielsen.

• Links — November 25, 2009 — Permalink

  Twitter launching paid business accounts

  So they’re going the freemium route in 2010, it seems.

  I think the described featureset makes sense — if you’re a large company that requires a lot of technical feedback and support like Comcast, Twitter as a support mechanism can become unwieldy quite quickly, so a UI that helps manage this inbound traffic would be of great value. Additionally, for these companies and a lot of smaller ones, having good statistics around your use of Twitter, your reach, etc. will probably be worth whatever fee is charged.

  Who is this bad for? Social media monitoring tools.

• Twitter — Feb 08, 2010 — Permalink
  Happy [actual, for real this time] birthday, @talbs :)
• Twitter — Feb 07, 2010 — Permalink
  @moniguzman you should meet @otakuchick. You share similar chicken sentiments there in Seattle.
• Twitter — Feb 07, 2010 — Permalink
  @meaganfisher bummer - it’s far more natural and much healthier than forcing a straight tone.
• Twitter — Feb 07, 2010 — Permalink
  @neagle pen tool?
• Twitter — Feb 06, 2010 — Permalink
  @lizaard I’m watching your Viget HQ cam. Just waiting for the cars to disappear from view entirely — where’s the ruler? crazy winter in DC!
• Twitter — Feb 06, 2010 — Permalink
  My new apartment came furnished with lots of great stuff, but I wish it came with more heat, and without the photos of NYC & the WTC.
• Twitter — Feb 05, 2010 — Permalink
  @talbs awesome! Have a blast and happy birthday!
• Twitter — Feb 04, 2010 — Permalink
  @greghoyboy I dare say the shoes are the most powerful thing I’ve experienced in any museum ever.
• Twitter — Feb 03, 2010 — Permalink
  @stefsull I only connect with folks I know and of whom I have a positive professional opinion. You’re a fine example.
• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Removing Features

  The single most important skill a product manager/designer/guy/girl can have…

• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Sony's Marketing Translated From PR-Speak to English

  Worth it for the punch-line.

• Links — February 03, 2010 — Permalink

  Facebook Introduces HipHop for PHP

  Borne from a hackathon project, Facebook’s engineering team is now throwing their PHP through their new HipHop framework, which effectively transforms the easy-to-write PHP they’ve always used into much faster C++.

  This is pretty huge for a site like Facebook — it allows for the productivity of writing in a scripting language (PHP may not be quite as productive as Ruby or Python, but it’s miles better than Java), with the speed of a compiled language.

  After all, for a site that relies on users viewing many dozens of pages per day, largely while procrastinating, speed is user experience priority number one.

• Twitter — Feb 02, 2010 — Permalink
  Punctuality need be nothing more than correctly guessing how late everyone else will be.
• Twitter — Feb 01, 2010 — Permalink
  @kitengia I have two AT4033s and a pair of AKG C1000Ss
• Twitter — Feb 01, 2010 — Permalink
  @kitengia I could probably get rid of one of mine if you needed one :)
• Twitter — Jan 31, 2010 — Permalink
  @mikeindustries c’mon, even you have to know that Dreamhost and “robust” are awkward in the same sentence at best.
• Twitter — Jan 30, 2010 — Permalink
  @OneTokenBlack he wants a black friend, rove does…
• Twitter — Jan 29, 2010 — Permalink
  @anjalimerchant copycat ;)
• Twitter — Jan 29, 2010 — Permalink
  @hswo happy birthday :-)
• Twitter — Jan 29, 2010 — Permalink
  @notasausage really? crap, guess I’m gonna have to tell a few people we aren’t friends, then… figured the unfollow thing would cover it.
• Twitter — Jan 28, 2010 — Permalink
  Coworkers are about to drink very expensive coffee harvested from animal dung. Questioning this whole new city/job thing about now.
• Twitter — Jan 28, 2010 — Permalink
  @ayemarr obelisk. lemme know if you need more, but that’s a must, must, must.
• Links — January 28, 2010 — Permalink

  Never Dupe Your Readers

  Jason Calacanis pretended to know iPad specs first-hand, and duped a lot of people. Why anyone would trust anything that man says is completely beyond me, but many bought it hook, line, and sinker.

  Mike Davidson has some sage wisdom to share, and provides some perspective about people in our industry who are increasingly filled with hot air.

• Twitter — Jan 27, 2010 — Permalink
  @rsoule we actually purposely scheduled meetings around Tablet Day festivities. Couldn’t believe it, but…
• Twitter — Jan 26, 2010 — Permalink
  Anyone have a Compete Pro account? Need to find a number I can’t get with the freebie.
• Twitter — Jan 26, 2010 — Permalink
  Looks like @refreshdc will get off to a great start in 2010! @desandro on color theory for the colorblind: http://bit.ly/4HLXjm
• Twitter — Jan 25, 2010 — Permalink
  @themattharris @cindyli I started with a TI-99/4A and good old TI Basic
• Links — January 22, 2010 — Permalink

  Realism in UI Design

  Fantastic article on fidelity in interface design:

  The trick is to figure out which details help users identify the UI element, and which details distract from its intended meaning. Some details help users figure out what they’re looking at and how they can interact with it; other details distract from the idea you’re trying to convey. They turn your interface element from a concept into a specific thing. Thus, if an interface element is too distinct from its real-life counterpart, it becomes too hard to recognize. On the other hand, if it is too realistic, people are unable to figure out that you’re trying to communicate an idea, and what idea that might be.

• Twitter — Jan 21, 2010 — Permalink
  @otakuchick there’s a punch line there somewhere…
• Links — January 21, 2010 — Permalink

  Pen v keyboard v Newton v Graffiti v Treo v iPhone

  Phil Gyford:

  For some time I’ve been meaning to test my small collection of PDA/smartphone gadgets to see which of their methods of input was quickest. The iPhone’s software keyboard? The Newton’s handwriting recognition? Palm’s Graffiti? With the possible imminent arrival of a tablet from Apple that will save the world, it seemed a good time to get round to the test.