Archive for January, 2007
Setting Information Free
Fred Wilson gave a talk entitled “Does Information want to be Free?” in which he talks about the value shift from information to attention. He makes some great points and I would urge anyone in and around the content business to take a look at his presentation which is available on the web. Creating ways [...]
Tour a Boeing 777 flight deck
For fellow flight nuts out there, I came across a cool site (via doggdot.us) which provides an interactive view of a B777 flight deck. Enjoy. watch Harry Potter online
How to make your site better
The best way to figure out what works and doesn’t work in your product is to watch a member of your target audience using it. Prior to our recent release we conducted a number of simple focus groups at Judy’s Book where we had people come into the office for individual 30 minute sessions with [...]
Penny Wise Pound Foolish – Are you focused on the right things?
There’s an interesting article in the WSJ today (As Costs Rise, Whirlpool Makes a Dent in Dings By Ilan Brat) about the cost of damaged inventory vs. the cost of packaging. Basically, appliance manufacturers have been finding ways to trim the cost cardboard and foam used in packaging their products. Sort of makes sense – [...]
Randomness in your product (via Creating Passionate Users)
Kathy Sierra’s post on putting some randomness in your product is a great one. I think she hits on some great ideas about putting something unexpected in the product to delight users while still striving to create a product that is largely predictable and therefore allows the user to focus on their task and not [...]
Kill Features You're Not Improving
If there’s a feature on your site that’s not constantly improving, you need to bury it. This is really hard to do because current users of the feature don’t want you to take it away and internally, you’ve probably got a lot invested in it. Common things that come up: “What about people who are [...]
Interesting, Cool & Useful (via Naffziger's Net)
Dave has a series of great posts on his blog about things that are “Interesting, Cool and Useful” The posts themselves are informative and entertaining – always a killer combination. Highly recommended. tangled disney movie
On failure and success
I was told about two great posts today. The first is by Peter Rip at Crosslink Capital about “failing fast and failing often.” You have to get into the market, see what works and adapt. The classic venture model has been to fund to milestones 12-18 months out. In consumer web services, there are only [...]
A great line in a great rant
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I appreciate a great rant where the author can really make me feel like I was there when things were going south. Here’s a great one on Vista. While¬† reading a section ‘complimenting’ the visual improvements in Vista, I came across this gem: “Sometimes prettier is shittier.” [...]
The truth about Free APIs (via Nat Torkington, O'Reilly Radar)
Nat Torkington has a great post about free APIs. Like, the elusive free lunch, there’s no such thing as a free API. Given Google’s decision to deprecate the Search API and the Alexa/Statsaholic situation, Nat’s post is timely and spot-on. For these reasons, there’s no such thing as a free API if you’re looking to [...]