Recently, Kyle posted a beautiful new Fluid Icon for Tender. Lighthouse users need not despair! Get your Lighthouse Fluid Icon here.
Signal vs. Noise—QUOTE: 'Rock Star' is perhaps the most abused phrase
‘Rock Star’ is perhaps the most abused phrase in the history of job listings. Nobody should be looking for a “rock star” accountant, HR recruiter or janitor. Whomever is posting these jobs is grossly misinformed as to the nature of rock stardom. Or accounting. Or both.
—AvoidThisJob.com on the differences between a Rock Star and a Planet Funk Store Manager
Signal vs. Noise—Product Blog update: New Basecamp features, Highrise/Harvest integration, etc.
Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Basecamp
New File Uploading features in Basecamp
We’re excited to announce a batch of improvements to File Uploads in Basecamp. Now it’s easier to attach multiple files at once, we’ve improved our progress bar to show you as each file is uploaded, and you can click thumbnails to zoom image attachments without leaving the current page. These new features make it faster and easier to attach, review and discuss files in Basecamp. Here’s a demo video to show you all the improvements.
New Basecamp feature: The Daily Digest
We’re excited to announce a great improvement to Basecamp. The new Daily Digest feature makes it easier than ever to track the progress of your projects. The Daily Digest is an email that Basecamp sends you once a day. The email tells you about any to-do items or milestones that were checked off or added in the last day. Daily Digests are per-project, so you can subscribe to the projects you really care about without being distracted by any unnecessary information. Now you’ll always know day-by-day as work is completed or new work is assigned. It’s a really powerful feature.
Timy: “An easy-to-use desktop application to fill out your Basecamp timesheet”
Timy is “an easy-to-use desktop application to fill out your Basecamp timesheet.”
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me
No doubt all my savvy readers remember the Wicked Sick BMX as was sold on Ebay. Turns out it was a project designed by a couple of creatives at the Advertising Agency George Patterson Y&R. And all I can say is kudos.
Sure creativity takes courage,takes clients and businesses that ‘get it’ and when well executed, creativity wins. The added bonus of creativity is that usually comes at no extra cost.
Giles Bowkett—How I'm Writing An Automatic Video Portal Uploader
I need to write an automated uploader to put videos on a consumer video portal - something like Hey!Spread. Writing an uploader is a pain in the ass. It's a lot like writing a screen-scraper. However, if you automate all the annoying parts, you can make the process less painful. In extreme circumstances, this means you even automate the process of writing the code.
First I created a couple accounts on the video portal. Then I turned on an HTTP monitor called Charles and did the uploads while recording the process in Charles. I signed in as one user and uploaded one video; then I signed in as another user and uploaded another video. Both times, this generated literally hundreds of HTTP requests, so I cleared both Charles session files of obviously irrelevant requests - Google Analytics, QuantServe pixels, images, external JavaScript files, and formatting.
I did it twice for the sake of comparison, and it was a good thing I did, because when I exported the session files as XML, I found that they did not match. One had 29 different HTTP requests, after I deleted all the QuantServe bullshit and all the DoubleClick bullshit, as well as all the CSS, JavaScript, and image files. After removing the same bullshit from the other session, however, that session had 39 different HTTP requests - ten more.
So I wrote some code to extract the HTTP request methods and paths, minus the query strings (which would have made the paths too noisy to read). Then I had my code auto-format its findings in a nice readable HTML template via
Doing this made it easy to compare the requests side-by-side. Since both upload processes succeeded, and neither did anything unusual or different from the other, I discarded as noise any HTTP requests which were unique to either file. Then I ran my analysis again and took another look at my nice, readable, auto-generated HTML. I discovered a few more garbage HTTP requests in each file, so I deleted those requests, ran the analysis another time, and kept going, re-running the analysis and re-checking the readable template, until I had a nice, safe, matching set of HTTP requests.
Then I wrote some code to automatically generate a series of
In the original, in-browser uploads, I had used a different username, password, and file to upload in either case. This meant that I could now obtain the differences that changing these characteristics would create throughout each entire sequence of HTTP request/response cycles. All I had to do was run a diff on the two auto-generated Ruby files. Using
So I wrote a project-specific diff using
This sucked. It took forever, it made me feel stupid, and my client thought I was "having fun" and therefore refused to pay for it. I finished it anyway. With this tool, it became much easier to see what in the uploader code mattered, and what didn't. There's a lot of irrelevant noise in there which you can set either way - most areas of difference between the two files, you can resolve by flipping a coin. By highlighting the changes in detail, it's easier to find the few differences that mean something.
With this information, I'm planning to copy one of the auto-generated Ruby
You might guess from my whole strategy - code generation from real-world session files - that my uploader will make a bunch of unnecessary HTTP requests. Correct. That's a feature, not a bug. It's a very deliberate design decision. Instead of finding the parameters, headers, and for that matter even HTTP requests that you need to duplicate - all tiny needles in giant haystacks - you instead just assume that you're duplicating everything, and then find the few things you don't want to duplicate. It's still a needle/haystack problem, but there are fewer needles, they're bigger, and the haystacks are smaller.
If you needed to repeat this process several times for several different video portals, or if you needed to do it over again a few months down the line, after the portal changed its form parameters, you could do so while writing much less code than you would write using any other method I'm aware of. You could even use this process without clearing out the image files, if you were in a hurry. Your resulting uploader would waste a few processor cycles downloading unnecessary CSS and GIFs, but you'd save time.
Automated HTTP requests are cheap. Developer time is expensive. You write automated analysis and code generation tools because hiring a programmer to do such tedious, repetitive work is pointless when it's so much easier to write a programmer to do it.
First I created a couple accounts on the video portal. Then I turned on an HTTP monitor called Charles and did the uploads while recording the process in Charles. I signed in as one user and uploaded one video; then I signed in as another user and uploaded another video. Both times, this generated literally hundreds of HTTP requests, so I cleared both Charles session files of obviously irrelevant requests - Google Analytics, QuantServe pixels, images, external JavaScript files, and formatting.
I did it twice for the sake of comparison, and it was a good thing I did, because when I exported the session files as XML, I found that they did not match. One had 29 different HTTP requests, after I deleted all the QuantServe bullshit and all the DoubleClick bullshit, as well as all the CSS, JavaScript, and image files. After removing the same bullshit from the other session, however, that session had 39 different HTTP requests - ten more.
So I wrote some code to extract the HTTP request methods and paths, minus the query strings (which would have made the paths too noisy to read). Then I had my code auto-format its findings in a nice readable HTML template via
ERB.Doing this made it easy to compare the requests side-by-side. Since both upload processes succeeded, and neither did anything unusual or different from the other, I discarded as noise any HTTP requests which were unique to either file. Then I ran my analysis again and took another look at my nice, readable, auto-generated HTML. I discovered a few more garbage HTTP requests in each file, so I deleted those requests, ran the analysis another time, and kept going, re-running the analysis and re-checking the readable template, until I had a nice, safe, matching set of HTTP requests.
Then I wrote some code to automatically generate a series of
Net::HTTP requests duplicating these series of requests (which, again, I had already run via the browser). I ran this code, and it generated a pair of Ruby files which each duplicated the HTTP requests in sequence, for each upload process, with my normalizing modifications. These auto-generated Ruby files were each about 500 lines long, including whitespace.In the original, in-browser uploads, I had used a different username, password, and file to upload in either case. This meant that I could now obtain the differences that changing these characteristics would create throughout each entire sequence of HTTP request/response cycles. All I had to do was run a diff on the two auto-generated Ruby files. Using
diff from the command line was unreadable, however.So I wrote a project-specific diff using
ERB, Diff::LCS, and a very simple HTML template.This sucked. It took forever, it made me feel stupid, and my client thought I was "having fun" and therefore refused to pay for it. I finished it anyway. With this tool, it became much easier to see what in the uploader code mattered, and what didn't. There's a lot of irrelevant noise in there which you can set either way - most areas of difference between the two files, you can resolve by flipping a coin. By highlighting the changes in detail, it's easier to find the few differences that mean something.
With this information, I'm planning to copy one of the auto-generated Ruby
Net::HTTP request sequence files and re-write parts of it, generalizing it to handle any combination of username, password, and/or video file. Most of that is just a matter of variable interpolation. I'll probably have to grep one response for a session ID, but of course I already have it in the project dir, extracted from the XML, so I can write tests against it, which is a luxury you don't often have with this type of work.You might guess from my whole strategy - code generation from real-world session files - that my uploader will make a bunch of unnecessary HTTP requests. Correct. That's a feature, not a bug. It's a very deliberate design decision. Instead of finding the parameters, headers, and for that matter even HTTP requests that you need to duplicate - all tiny needles in giant haystacks - you instead just assume that you're duplicating everything, and then find the few things you don't want to duplicate. It's still a needle/haystack problem, but there are fewer needles, they're bigger, and the haystacks are smaller.
If you needed to repeat this process several times for several different video portals, or if you needed to do it over again a few months down the line, after the portal changed its form parameters, you could do so while writing much less code than you would write using any other method I'm aware of. You could even use this process without clearing out the image files, if you were in a hurry. Your resulting uploader would waste a few processor cycles downloading unnecessary CSS and GIFs, but you'd save time.
Automated HTTP requests are cheap. Developer time is expensive. You write automated analysis and code generation tools because hiring a programmer to do such tedious, repetitive work is pointless when it's so much easier to write a programmer to do it.
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me
Firstly – I’ll start by saying I think Chris Anderson is an incredibly clever guy. I thought his book ‘The Long Tail’ was and is the future of business. But when it come to ‘free’ he has got it wrong this time. As has Seth Godin and all the other ‘free’ converts.
As Malcolm Gladwell correctly points out, they are forgetting many of the fundamentals in business, by getting caught up in the stale newspaper argument, which in the new digital economy, is the easy and soft target of who will disappear. The irony of this ‘newspaper’ argument is certainly lost in the broader economy. The non digital economies are a lot bigger than newspapers and other beleaguered digital industries.
So why is it that ‘Free’ is not a business model. Quite simply, any business without a revenue generation model wont exist over time. We only need look at the the dot com bust of the late 1990’s to see this reality. It’s also much too easy to get caught up in the success of Google and others which ’started free’ to build demand. But many of the subsequent ‘Free’ offers like Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr may have been successful for the owners, only because they sold to a business with a large chequebook – not because the business itself was financially successful. The Google business model is not too dissimilar to that of Network TV – generate eyeballs, sell advertising….. Nothing new here.
The real question in the so called ‘Freeconomy’ is how many businesses can be supported by the advertising sales model? So why the idea of ‘Free’ is being touted as new is beyond us here at Startupblog.
Here’s what ‘Free’ really is – it’s part of the marketing mix. It’s the 4th P – Promotion. It always has been and always will be. Anything a company gives away for free is a promotional tool to sell something. If these businesses who use the so called ‘free model’ fail to sell something there are only two options for them as time passes:
- Go broke & run out of cash
- Get bought by large company who values what they have created, albeit ‘non-financial’
Whether it be Proctor & Gamble, giving free shampoo in letter boxes in 1957 or Google giving free search and maps in 2009. It’s part of the mix to attract potential customers, who will be converted into on going revenue. It isn’t free. Free is not a business model, moreover it’s sampling & promotion for associated revenue generating activities. So to call it the future of business as ‘free’ is absolute folly.
Sure Anderson can argue that digital stuff is becoming so cheap it may as well be free – as per the transistor example he uses. But the thing that really costs money is building demand and infrastructure – the kind of stuff that’s really expensive. The other point to consider is the example of some things which previously cost money (a newspaper) is now available free on line, doesn’t mean everything is heading down the free path. Rather it means that certain industries are dying – not that ‘paying’ will be a thing of the past. In fact there are just as many examples of items which were once free, consumers are now being charged for Education, Toll roads, Water, Seeds.
The advice I’m giving here is simple.
No business can survive without revenue. Free, isn’t free, but a promotional expense, the 4th P. If your industry is getting flooded with free – it’s on it’s deathbed – look elsewhere. Industries die all the time when the revenue dries up just like those trying to cope with the current digital conversion. Don’t assume you can build something awesome and give it away with the ability to sell it (the business) or something associated later – chances are you’ll run out of money before that.
The future of business isn’t Free, and the idea isn’t new, it’s part of a complex marketing mix. And if you want to own a startup to thrive, my advice is simple. Have a price which isn’t all zeros.
FlowingData—Who’s Going to Win Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest?
It's July 4 this weekend. You know what that means, right? It's Independence Day, and really, there's no better way to celebrate than to stuff down as many hot dogs down your throat as you can in ten minutes. Or if that doesn't sound appetizing, you can just enjoy watching the annual Nathan's hot dog eating contest on Coney Island.
Joey Chestnut won the hot dog crown for a second time last year. Will he win again or will Takeru Kobayashi take back the crown? Punch your ticket in the poll below. Take a look at the full version of the graphic above to make a fully educated decision.
Who will win the 2009 Nathan's hot dog eating contest on Coney Island?
Jono @ Mozilla Labs—jonoscript
What do you call emails which are not spam — because one did, technically, ask for them when you signed up for some mailing list or other — but which one nevertheless deletes without reading?
As in, “My inbox is half full of spam and half full of ________.”
It seems like a word that we should have.
Jono @ Mozilla Labs—jonoscript
When I find a map on the web and I want to take it with me, I take a pen and copy the map onto scrap paper, because I have zero trust that the map would print out correctly.
I use the default font for everything, because I have zero trust that any font I choose would be reproduced correctly by the time my words reach the reader’s screen.
I don’t use bold text in email, because I have zero trust that it would show up right in the recipient’s email client.
I don’t take pictures with my phone, because I have zero trust that I’ll ever be able to get at those pictures in a usable form.
Is it just me, or does the behavior of computer systems rarely inspire trust?
Signal vs. Noise—Oldie But Goodie: Sketching with a Sharpie
I’ve always preferred sketching UIs with an as-thick-as-I-can-find Sharpie over a thin ballpoint pen or finely sharpened pencil.
Ballpoints and fine tips just don’t fill the page like a Sharpie does. Fine tips invite you to draw while Sharpies invite you to just to get your concepts out into big bold shapes and lines. When you sketch with a thin tip you tend to draw at a higher resolution and worry a bit too much about making things look good. Sharpies encourage you to ignore details early on.
If you sketch, try a thick Sharpie next time. You may find you’re better able to focus on the concept and less on the drawing. That’s a good thing.
FlowingData—X-Men Universe Relationship Map
Contrary to what a lot people might think they know from the movies, the X-Men universe stretches out quite a ways with lots of characters and lots of relationships. This super detailed relationship map for all X-Men characters from UncannyXmen shows just that.
Connections are color-coded to show the type of relationship between a pair of characters. For example, green is a one-sided infatuation, pink is a flirtation by both parties, and a dashed line signifies one of the characters is from an alternative reality. Wolverine sure gets around.
[via VizWorld]
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me
I had the pleasure the other day while in Sydney to be taken to the Deus Ex Machina workshop. For the uninitiated Deus (as the in crowd call them) are re-built old motorbikes – think big 400cc 1970’s Japanese motorcycles, which are re-built with the greatest retro feel ever and style which is all it’s own. Apparently one of the owners is an Ex Mambo founder and you can see that they certainly have a flair for design and all things super cool. As the pics below show – these guys really understand ‘Theatre at Transaction’.
In summary it’s a great ‘Re’ business. A ‘Re’ business is where we take something old / second hand and make it full of awesome. My words – can’t do Deus ex Machina justice. So maybe this photo journal below can – enjoy!
This last one is my personal favourite – I can see myself buying this Deus and strapping my Surfboard in the surfboard carrier and cruising down the Great Ocean Road searching for a few secret tube rides.
Pastie—The Little Things
Isn't it always the little things that end up taking your time before launch?
Pastie—Invoicie: Blinksale for the iPhone
The recent launch of Logpost motivated me to build my own API-driven only app. That and my shiney new iPhone 3GS is just craving for me to build some apps for it. So here we go. You'll need a Blinksale account to try it out - but that is the entire point after all.
Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
I actually forgot the URL, but here you go:
https://go.invoicie.com/
For the security conscious: Invoicie doesn't store anyone's password. They are only used to access the API for your current session and are actually sent (securely over SSL) with every request. When you aren't using Invoicie it has no idea what your password or account is.
Rails Spikes—Testing HTTP Authentication
If you ever need to test HTTP Authentication in your functional tests, here is how you do it:
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
def test_http_auth @request.env['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'] = ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Basic.encode_credentials("quentin", "password") get :show, :id => @foobar.id assert_response :success end |
This is much like testing SSL.
Hat tip: Philipp Führer for Functional test for HTTP Basic Authentication in Rails 2.
Jono @ Mozilla Labs—jonoscript
Firefox 3.5 is released today, representing almost a year’s worth of hard work and improvements over Firefox 3.0. Key features include faster Javascript, <audio> and <video< tags that allow media to play as part of a page with no plugins; and private browsing mode (Sing it with me: “The int-er-net is really really great…. for porn!”) Download Firefox 3.5, try it out, and spread the word!
Signal vs. Noise—Design Decisions: Results from the Basecamp account screen redesign
Just about two weeks ago we launched the a redesign of the account chart in Basecamp. This is where people can upgrade or downgrade their accounts.
The goal was to increase overall upgrade conversions and encourage people who are on Basic plans or lower to upgrade to the Plus plan (our lowest priced full-feature plan).
Results
I’m glad to report our design hunches appear to have paid off. We’re only about two weeks in, so we don’t have a ton of data yet, but we can compare the 14 days since the upgrade with the 90 days prior to the upgrade.
- Average upgrades/day: up 13%
- Average Plus upgrades/day: up 33%
- Average $ value increase per upgrade: up 8%
We’re thrilled with these numbers. We’ve moved the new design to the Highrise account chart as well. We’ll watch and see if we see the same improvements with Highrise as we have with Basecamp.
Signal vs. Noise—Working at 37signals
It’s been several weeks since I was hired here at 37signals so I thought it might be interesting to share some of my experiences so far.
Ready, set, go!
One of the best things has been how quickly I’ve been able to jump in and start contributing. The very first project I worked on was a refresh of the Account screen in Basecamp. What started as an exercise quickly escalated to a new design that we wanted to actually put into the app. So it wasn’t long before I moved from Photoshop right into the app code to integrate the new design. This required me to build on my limited experience with Ruby on Rails, setup my computer for development, learn enough Git to be dangerous, and get a feel for application structure and conventions. None of this could have happened without the patience of my co-workers and the solid development structure/process that is in place here. Here are a few general observations:
- The 37signals community is huge! Every change is noticed — sometimes within minutes of being launched. Receiving instant feedback to your work is great (at least so far :)
- Git has been a surprisingly nice addition to my workflow. The ability to quickly switch branches and compare my version to the original has saved me countless hours
- There are new things being added to the apps constantly. It’s exciting to see all of the new features and improvements every day. It can be hard to appreciate all of this activity from outside the company, but we’re working on that
- No longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 is liberating!
In the first ten days or so I was able to design and implement a single screen redesign, get it deployed and write it all up at Signal vs. Noise. It’s pretty great to feel like you’re contributing and making a meaningful impact so quickly.
Working remotely
One of the biggest changes for me when joining the company was working 100% remotely. 37signals is based in Chicago, but half the team works outside the office — even the Chicago crew isn’t in the office every day. So it has been great to join a company that knows how to work with a widely distributed team. As you might assume, communication is the key to making the team effective and productive. Here are a few ways we stay connected:
Campfire
I have to admit that I didn’t get Campfire before I started working here. I’d been a long time user of Basecamp and Backpack, but Campfire never clicked for me despite a couple of attempts to bring it into a team workflow. What I was surprised to see is that Campfire might be the most important app that we use.
Our “All Talk” Campfire room is where the entire team gathers each day — we all stay logged-in anytime we are “at work”. Throughout the day we post questions, share screenshots, get feedback, collaborate on copy, and troubleshoot code. Campfire also talks to our apps so we get notifications when they are updated as we develop. It also serves as a way to quickly note to the team that you’re heading to lunch or will be away from the computer for a short time. But it’s not all business. We also find time to talk about the latest gadget/news/link/app/controversy and generally have a good time. Campfire is where all the typical conversations that happen in a physical office occur, but the difference here is that everyone can hear them, anyone can pay attention to what they want to, and it’s all archived so we can search through it later.
Campfire is also used along with instant messaging for the one-on-one and sidebar conversations when we want to chat, but stay out of the noise of the All Talk room. Jumping into our Small Talk room to work through a bit of code lets me work directly with a co-worker AND allows me to save a link to that conversation for future reference. This has been immeasurably helpful for me as I dig more into the tech side of our apps. Screen sharing via iChat is another great way a couple of us can quickly work together on a tricky bit of code.
In/out
Another key part of knowing and sharing what is going on with the comapny is with Backpack’s Journal screen. The journal lets everyone on the team set their current status (e.g., “Reviewing design comps”, or “Out to lunch”) and log the last few things that they have recently completed. There is no forced structure to it, we typically just update it a couple times a day as necessary. It’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of what is going on, who is working right now, and what they’re working on.
Of course we also follow project updates in Basecamp and keep an eye on external communications by checking into our Highrise account. Everything is out there for us to keep up with as we need to or want to.
Perfect balance
At 37signals I really feel more connected and current with what is going on than in any physical workplace I’ve been a part of. It is effortless to keep up with what my co-workers are doing and how what I’m doing contributes to the whole. I’m free to keep up with projects and learn new skills as they fit my interests. We collaborate how and when it makes sense, and stay away from each other when that’s the best way to work. That makes for a really effective working environment.
Signal vs. Noise—PHOTO: Elbo.ws puts a special message at the top
Elbo.ws puts a special message at the top of the page for visitors who wind up there via Google.
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me3
As published in Australian Anthill this week.
I was thinking about business and at what point it becomes possible to believe you have a good chance of winning. I came to the conclusion that four elements pave the way to start-up success.
The four elements are:
- Your concept has been validated in market.
- You know what to do.
- You know how to do it.
- You are actually doing it – right now.
If you work through these four elements, then success is inevitable. Of course, all of these elements need some explaining.
1. Your concept has been validated in market
Firstly, let’s look at the last two words in this sentence – in market. This means you have launched, you are live, and you have customers and revenue. We have gone beyond the idea (the easy part) and launched something, which makes the original business launch plan a historical and irrelevant document. Until this point, there is no proof that anyone actually cares about your idea; that anyone will buy your thing.
Concept validation – this occurs when people are buying what you sell, as well as any positive coverage you receive. Positive coverage includes people and media talking about what you are doing – not what technology you have used, or how you bootstrapped your business (which is not concept validation, but method validation), but talking about the benefits your business is providing customers and the problems you are solving. This coverage is about them, not you. At this point, you know the business has potential and isn’t a stupid whim.
2. You know what to do
You’ve been doing what you do – selling what you sell – long enough to know the crappy parts of your business. You know what you must improve to make your semi-broken yet still alive start-up better. You’ve worked out where the original model and plan was terribly wrong. You’ve also been around long enough to gather feedback from the market, which gives you a good indication of how to improve your ‘thing’. Until this point, innovation, location, good people and lots of saying sorry has kept you alive. But time has nearly run out, and you’ve learned what must be done to grow and eventually thrive.
3. You know how to do it
Not only do you understand the above conceptually, but you actually know how to make this stuff happen. You’ve gone beyond ideas for improvement, such as make the website more usable, reduce the price of the widget, create national brand awareness or increase distribution. Now you actually have an executable plan in place.
So what is an executable plan? An executable plan is a set of projects that are achievable with the immediate resources you have at your disposal, in a reasonable timeframe. Financial resources, human resources, organisational infrastructure – an executable plan that you can deliver to the market, not a pipedream of appearing on Oprah or getting funding from Sequoia Capital. You have the team with the skills to bring the improved offer to market. It may not require huge financial resources, it may involve more creative solutions, but you know you can do it.
4. You are actually doing it – right now
The plans have been put down as discussed in parts two and three. In fact, you won’t even need to look at them again. They are now ‘historical documents’. Instead, your team is fully engaged in implementing what you have agreed is the correct strategy. The steps to completing the projects are known. They are live projects the team is actively engaged in on a daily basis, which will fundamentally change the marketing mix of your business. The projects have budgets and deadlines and you will not rest until they have been completed. Only then will you need to go back to part two again, and work out what to do. Then go through the process again. In fact, this process never ends. In continues in perpetuity. The important thing is that you implement strategies before re-viewing them. There is nothing more counterproductive than constantly re-assessing what to do. The only way to know what works is to experiment and do it.
When we do this – we are on the path to success. This should perhaps be defined as: “Success = the progressive realisation of a worthwhile ideal.”
FlowingData—Infographic Provides a Twitter History Lesson
Manolith, in collaboration with InfoShots, tells the story of Twitter. The graphic starts at Twitter's humble beginnings and ends at present day where you pretty much can't go a day without hearing about that little bird. I wonder what this Twitter tree will look like next year.
[via Techcrunch]
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me3
Talking to my business partner today he made a simple statement:
‘Your task list and calendar should reflect your overall goals’
And it’s statement worth assessing in a methodical fashion. We should think about where we want to be in 5 years, and see if any of the tasks we are doing today are moving us closer to our goals. Our entire day doesn’t have to be filled with task that lead to achieving long term objectives, but there should be ‘direction evidence’. If there isn’t any directional evidence of where we and any business we are involved in wants to be – then quite simply, we need to review our task list and make sure things are aligned.
FlowingData—Workshop: Visualization on the Web – Join Me at VisWeek
Visualization on the Web is growing, but a lot of the really good stuff is just sitting around on someone's computer. So to get a discussion going about how we can get more visualization out there - theory and application - Robert Kosara of Eager Eyes, Andrew Vande Moere from information aesthetics, and myself are heading up a workshop at VisWeek in October. It's in Atlantic City.
We'll share some of our experiences, but mainly we want to know what's on your mind. Submit your one-page position statement and tell us about your experiences, propose discussion topics, or ask questions that you're wondering about. We'll review the topics and you'll hear from us by the end of July. Get your submissions in by July 17.
Find more details here.
Dr Nic Williams—Refer us a client for fun and profit
There’s only so many hours in the day and only so many technologies people can be awesome at. So sometimes there are projects that developers can’t do themselves. Either the scope is too big, the timeframe to urgent, or it falls outside their areas of expertise. Or you’ve already got yourself a sexy job and you just don’t need the work. If this situation ever happens to you I would love for you to ask me if I can help with the work you can’t do or don’t want.
Hopefully you can find good reasons to refer clients to myself and the crack-squad at Mocra. For example, we have had two client Rails projects appear in TechCrunch in 2009 (Orchestrate and Imindi). Also, our Oakley Surf Report iPhone app has appeared in Apple’s own TV commercials for the AppStore (first 10 secs of video below).
In the past, we’ve received lots of referrals but rarely have we gone beyond saying “thank you”. We think its time to put a dollar value on all our future “thank you”s. They are incredibly valuable to us, so we’d like to share some of the value.
To say thanks to you, we want to share 10% of the total consulting fees for any new client work as a referral incentive.
If we can help a friend or client of yours and we receive $10k in fees, then we’ll give you 10% or $1k. If we receive $250k, then we’ll give you $25k.
How to refer?
There’s no wrong way to ping us with a referral for a client we can potentially help.
One approach is to email me at referrals@mocra.com or on Skype at nicwilliams. We can quickly check if we’re able to help with the project, discuss anything interesting, and then contact the client.
Alternatively, you can give your friend/client our enquiry emails (rails@mocra.com or iphone@mocra.com), or skype at nicwilliams. Then you claim the referral via an email to referrals@mocra.com.
In the medium-term future, we’ll release a Referral Management system so you can see the status of your referrals, payments etc. Until then, use email to ask questions.
Receiving payments
In order to distribute payments to you, could you please email us at referrals@mocra.com with your contact details and either PayPal address or international banking details. Telepathic transfer of banking details nor referrals isn’t guaranteed to work. Emails are much more likely to succeed.
You are providing us with a valued service of marketing/advertising. We think you are awesome and will invite you to Christmas parties. Australian GST-registered businesses will have 10% GST added to payments.
Basic referral rules
Whilst we continue to draw up the fancy pants, small-print rules, some of the basic ones are:
- We’ll send out payments within a month of receipt of client payments.
- We don’t think you’re a bad person if your referral doesn’t hire us.
- In the event there is a dispute by 2+ claimants for a referral, the decision by me is final.
- You cannot work with or be a family member of Mocra nor the referred client.
- You are providing Mocra with a service. It makes us very happy. So we’re paying you for it.
- You may be required to send us a Tax Invoice for each amount payable (templates available).
- You can give away your referral income to charity or use it to fund open source development.
- We think you are awesome for reading this far, even if you never refer any work to us. Thanks for caring.
Happy developers
It makes us very happy to be contacted by new clients who tell us “I was told I should contact you.” Hopefully we can thank every referrer explicitly from now on. Thanks in advance.
Related posts:
- Easy scheduling by location, tasks and people – a case study of a client application from Mocra UPDATE: Orchestrate was reported in TechCrunch Several years ago...
Signal vs. Noise—The risks Michael Jackson took on Thriller
In Artistic Value of Thriller [via JS], “Scorpeze” writes that many overlook Michael Jackson’s role as a songwriter and producer on his landmark albums and tend to overestimate Quincy Jones’ role. The post includes links to demos (Billie Jean, The Girl Is Mine) that MJ created for those records. Assuming they’re legit, it’s pretty amazing how close they are to the final product.
From a biz/marketing perspective, it’s also interesting to note how many risks MJ took on Thriller. There were so many things on there that people said you couldn’t do on a R&B record. But he did ‘em anyway and created the biggest selling album of all time.
people glaze over it now…but what soul/R&B figure could create a hit rock record that was embraced across the board…AND considered authentic by the rock audience?(the snobs may have been pissed off, but they werent the ones buying the records)…what soul/R&B cat was collaborating with Van Halen….and have it WORK?
it wasnt Prince….w/out Beat It, could you have a Let’s Go Crazy?
what other soul/R&B cat could get one of the Beatles on Black radio in the 80’s?
what soul/R&B cat would get Vincent Price to drop spoken word in the middle a funk/R&B cut cum horror movie?
who was else at the time was incorporating African chants and percussion at a time when everyone was whitening it up sonically(including MJ)…and who would reference Soul Makossa in the 80’s?
listen to the fact that a Black artist who was considered strictly soul/R&B decided to do a stylistic tour de force in one album when it hadnt been done before…
Thriller had: Funk straight R&B Quiet Storm MOR Pop Rock
…all in one album by a Black aritst when such a thing was not only unheard of but frowned upon…..
futhermore, on Thriller he spoke abt teen preganancy, gang violence, challenging the social constructs of manhood, the culture of gossip, emotional blackmail, obsession, false accusations of paternity, and belief in one’s self…
fluff?
these are ARTISTIC RISKS….they could have gone horribly awry, but they didnt….he did the record HIS way….and in a rare occurence that we will only see once in a lifetime, hit the bulls-eye and pleased EVERYBODY…the effects of that had both deep positive and negative effects on his work and the entire music industry after that….
Looking back, it all seems perfectly logical. It’s easy to forget how much of a singular vision it took to pull off that unique combo of ideas.
FlowingData—Review: RoamBi, Seeing Your Data on the iPhone
This is a guest review by Peter Robinet of Bubble Foundry, a web design company that specializes in building websites for Web startups.
What It Is
RoamBi is a free data visualization application for the iPhone by MeLLmo. You download datasets to the app and it creates visualizations so you can drill down into the data. The app is pitched as a mobile business tool for viewing sales reports and the like, but the sample visualizations included with the app suggest another possibility: RoamBi could easily be a killer app for statistics-minded sports fans, such as sabermetrics devotees!
Visualizations
RoamBi gives you several ways to visualize a dataset and they all look gorgeous:
There is the Cardex, which is a Rolodex view of your dataset where you actually flip through cards, with each card being a row in your dataset. I imagine is a useful way to view business reports but it is hardly a sophisticated visualization.
The PieView is a pie chart with slices that can be selected to view more information about the segment.
The SuperList is essentially a spreadsheet viewer: the data is displayed in cells and you have the ability to filter rows and display some or all of the columns.
Finally, there is the CataList. This is perhaps the most complex, and most visual, of RoamBi's options. Like the name suggests, it shows the dataset in lists and grouped by category. For instance, one sample dataset has information for the top 50 grossing films. The categories include Total Revenue, Average Weekly Revenue, Weekend Gross Revenue, and Weekend Gross Revenue Per Theater. Within each category you are presented with the list of movies sorted from highest to lowest with revenue over time line graphs for each movie.
What RoamBi Is Not
Perhaps this doesn't need saying, but the RoamBi iPhone app is not a data manipulation tool. Any data set creation must be done elsewhere and then uploaded to a RoamBi server for access from the iPhone app. Also, there is no complex querying mechanism, so your datasets must be relatively small or easily aggregated. This being said, the app does a very good job of efficiently using the iPhone's screen real estate, so you will be surprised at the amount of data you can navigate using the app.
RoamBi.com
RoamBi servers are a key component in using the iPhone app, as they are the only way to create your own visualizations to download to the iPhone app. While RoamBi sells an enterprise server, I imagine most users will use the free RoamBi.com service (called RoamBi Connect within the iPhone app). To create a visualization on RoamBi.com you create a free account and launch the Flash-based creation tool. Once you select a dataset, whether via uploading an Excel or CSV file or via importing a Salesforce.com report, you tell RoamBi the columns and categories of your data. It selects basic defaults and as you edit the parameters the visualization is updated in an interactive simulation of the iPhone app. As a side note, it is strange you cannot share the simulation, as this would be an easy way to share your visualizations across the web to people who do not have iPhones and it shouldn't require any additional work on MeLLmo's part.
Unfortunately, I found the RoamBi.com visualization process somewhat obtuse and often was unable to assemble and group my data into the visualization I wanted. For instance, I was unable to duplicate RoamBi's sample movie sales visualization, despite importing the same raw dataset into my own CataList visualization. However, I believe someone more experienced with Excel or similar tools will have more success.
Conclusion
I see the RoamBi iPhone app as a tool to view datasets, rather than examine data visualizations. Perhaps this is peculiar distinction, but I mean that you are never far from the original dataset and cannot do sophisticated things to the data either mathematically or visually. However, for simpler data visualizations RoamBi is a well-executed and free product that let's you easily drill down into your data from your iPhone. If you have a dataset you're looking to share on the go, perhaps at a trade show or conference, and you have an iPhone, you should give RoamBi a try.
Have you tried RoamBi on your iPhone? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
Start Up Blog—twitter-follow-me3
It’s one thing to be clear and succinct in our copy writing, and it’s another thing entirely to create language which means something to consumers. Language which paints a clear picture in the consumers minds that you can solve their problems. The best way to do it is to relate numbers to something we are all very familiar with…. ‘Join for the price of a coffee a week.’
In recent times some of the world leading websites have done this beautifully. Web businesses where scale matters to the end users, websites where this type of language can be the difference between a click out, and instant confidence.
Seek.com.au – A new job loaded every 30 seconds (Great this’ll have the job for me for sure…)
Elance.com – $201 million in provider earnings. (Wow, I will make money using this site…)
Flickr.com – 2744 uploads in the last minute (This is a safe place to store my photos…)
As soon as we read information like the examples presented above we know we are in the right spot. That we can do our business right there, right at that moment. And I know what you are thinking, this is the type of language that is limited to the successful few – not so, all it takes is a little bit of creativity to find some numbers which mean something….
We just need to work out what we are the most, best, biggest, quickest at, and there will be something. Maybe your site is the hyper local expert. Has more X from your city. The most members in Y community or the lowest click out rates for the industry? Even a micro website does something the best. And as soon as we work out what we are the ‘most’ at, we need to put it right there on the home page, no better yet, the top of every page on our website.
Signal vs. Noise—Design Decisions: Redesigning Basecamp's global milestone view
Yesterday we pushed an update to the Basecamp global milestone view. This is the calendar-style view of all milestones on all projects over the next 3 months. The goal was to make this screen cleaner and more useful.
The old milestone calendar looked like this:
It did a great job of effectively using the space with empty days that collapsed to a very small size. This made it easy to get a good quick view of the whole picture. But it was hard to dig-in further. You couldn’t tell which project each milestone belonged to or who was responsible for completing it. The pull-down at the top right did filter by person assigned, but even in that view it was hard to see which project the milestones applied to.
So, one of the first things we knew we wanted was to add the project name and person responsible for each milestone. Each milestone now shows both without adding a lot of visual clutter. We think this instantly makes this screen more useful, but wanted to explore more ways to make it better.
When we thought about how people use this screen it became clear that the empty days could be just as important as the days that have milestones. One reason to check this global view was to find the holes — the places where new milestones could fit.
So we explored sizing each calendar day to an equal width — much like a more traditional calendar. This had the added benefit of making the whole screen more understandable simply because it looks like a traditional calendar. It is more clear what you’re looking at and what you can do here. This is the revised look with equally-sized days and some small visual tweaks:
We added a subtle visual style for the days that fall on weekends to differentiate from weekdays. It then occurred to us that some businesses operate almost exclusively on a regular Monday–Friday schedule. For them it was a waste to have almost 30% of the available space each week used to show empty weekend days. So we brought back some of the table collapsing for weekends. If there are no milestones on any weekend day in the current view they simply shrink to a minimal width, allowing more space for the weekdays. However, if any weekend day has a milestone, then weekends become full-fledged citizens again. Here’s what it looks like when weekends aren’t being used:
One more thing…
While re-working the CSS for this particular screen, we noticed that we hadn’t defined any print styles. So we spent a little time adding some CSS to our print stylesheets for the global milestones calendar. Now when you print it will look something like this:
Signal vs. Noise—New Jobs on our Job Board: iPhone Developer Jobs, Apple, Trek, Wall Street On Demand, etc.
Here’s a sampling of available Design and Programming jobs.
iPhone Developer Jobs
Big in Japan, Inc. is looking for an iPhone Developer in Dallas, TX.View all iPhone Developer Job listings
Design Jobs
Apple is looking for a Creative Director, Information Architecture in Cupertino, CA.Rocket Matter, LLC is looking for a User Interface Designer / IA in Boca Raton, FL.
Harvest is looking for a Visual Designer in New York, NY.
Trek Bicycle is looking for a Visual Designer-Web in Waterloo, WI.
Southern Poverty Law Center is looking for a User Interface Designer/Developer in Montgomery, AL.
Engine Yard is looking for a Senior Interaction Designer in San Francisco, CA.
View all Design Job listings
Programming Jobs
Wall Street On Demand is looking for a Web Developer in Boulder, CO.Kickball is looking for a Product Engineer in Palo Alto, CA.
Modernista! is looking for a CRM Supervisor in Boston, MA.
Cramer Production Business Trust is looking for a Technology Manager in Norwood, MA.
TutorSource is looking for a Software Developer (Ruby on Rails/OO/web) in Santa Monica, CA.
CivicPlus is looking for a .NET Software Developer in Topeka, KS.
View all Programmer Job listings
Are you hiring?
The 37signals Job Board attracts the cream of the crop because it’s featured prominently on five industry-leading sites: Signal vs. Noise, A List Apart, Kottke.org, Coudal.com, and the Ruby on Rails site. And not just anyone reads these sites. The people who build the best of the web read these sites. People who value beautiful design, beautiful code, high standards, and doing great work. The kind of people you want to hire. Post a job (or internship) and find the right person today.FlowingData—Michael Jackson Billboard Rankings: the Man, the Legend
Say what you want about Michael Jackson, but there's no denying the great effect he had on the music world. In honor of the pop king's passing, practically half of The New York Times graphics department stayed up late last night building this graphic. It takes a look at his majesty's Billboard rankings over his career compared to other popular music artists.
Decade after decade Jackson produced numerous hit albums. Click through time to see the mountains of each. Timeless.
To the man, to the legend, who no one will ever be able to replace:
[Thanks, Amanda]
