Wow, this is such proof that Chrome rocks. When you delete tabs from the left, Google Chrome doesn't resize its tabs until you move your mouse OFF the tab area -- that way you can just keep clicking X without retargeting.
This is the kind of interaction design attention to detail I can really really appreciate.
Google Chrome is so svelte, it makes me feel skinnier.
Looks like Square went public today. Hot. Its a device and service that lets you take payments from any credit card anywhere via iPhone.
Rumor has it that the device (that hooks into the iPhone audio jack) should be super cheap too.
I think they have the potential to totally change personal payments. Isn't this what PayPal was supposed to be originally?
FINALLY someone will solve that dreaded "How do we split the bill?" issue. I can't wait to get one.
It’s tempting to look at any dot com success and assume that all the features they have today are what made them take off. It’s almost never the case.
In fact, most of the success stories launched with what seems to be an impossibly small set of features. For example, when Basecamp launched in 2004, it didn’t support file uploads. Their solution was to let you upload a file to your own server, and then hotlink it. Sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it? Nor for that matter could you receive notifications by email, edit a comment that has been posted, reply by email, or assign a date to a to-do item. Put simply, they didn’t start out the way you see them today. They were just getting started.
Similarly Amazon launched in 1994, but only added book reviews in 1996; they focused on getting users first. They didn’t add CDs until 1998, and it was 2001 before they even posted a profit. It’s easy to ignore this, and look at their success from this point onwards, but you’re not starting out where they are today. You’re just getting started.
I need to remind myself of this sometimes. We are just getting started. There are must-haves and there are nice-to-haves. And the things that are burning in your heart to get into the product may not always fall into must-have.
That being said -- keep rolling.
A 10 percent increase in the number of firms per worker in 1977 is associated with a 9 percent increase in employment growth between 1977 and 2000. An abundance of small, independent firms is, along with January temperature and share of the population with college degrees, one of the best predictors of urban growth.
The answer at an intuitive level seems relatively obvious. Smaller firms are more competitive and more efficient, and focus on growing sectors of the economy.
Large organizations become less about serving customers and more about people protecting fiefdoms and territory within a larger realm. It becomes the king's court, instead of a well-oiled menace to one's competitors. With complacency comes inefficiency, and inevitably lost profits and downsizing.
There's no time for that at small firms. Turns out sink-or-swim is good for everybody. Well, except for office slackers. ;-)
Really amazing analysis of business, interpersonal communications, and life coming out of ribbonfarm.com.
In particular, this latest piece on capital is brilliance.
My conception of money completely changed in the years and months leading up to work Posterous. The bargain when working as an employee is completely different. Its very easy to spend money like water when times are good and you've got a steady, reliable, and more than adequate. Its a renewable resource that in the moment seems to be infinite.
But if you want to make it on your own, you can't look at each dollar as something to be spent on your own happiness. That latte won't really make you happy. The only thing that may really make you happy is to be able to reinvest the money into yourself. It is, as Venkatesh points out above, building material for your dreams.
The joy your nerd finds in his project is one of problem solving and discovery. As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High.
I think a lot of hacker/entrepreneur types are going to find this line very applicable. Every time I sit down at a computer, I'm seeking The High. And that high only happens when I fix a bug, write a feature, or do something that adds to Posterous.
It's an addictive cycle that actually creates value. Didn't know addiction could be a critical part of success...
OK, let me get this straight. I can get VMware Fusion on its own, or I can get it with McAfee VirusScan. Tell me again why it's 3X the size? Does it come with a copy of Halo 3?
If this isn't a case study in code bloat, I don't know what is. Whatever happened to doing one good thing, doing it well, and letting everyone get on with their day?
Excerpt from Biz Stone's 2004 book "Who Let the Blogs Out?" -- back when he was working with Ev on Blogger at Google.
Biz was creator of Xanga, which is where I first cut my teeth blogging in a community in 2002. Before that I always wrote my own perl scripts to blog, the vestiges of with are partially memorialized in archive.org. My xanga on the other hand remains online.
Had no idea we would end up building our own take on things, but we certainly stand on the shoulders of giants.
The latest much ado about nothing on the Internet: Blogger Joshua Blankenship has written a pot-calling-the-kettle-black diatribe against Dustin Curtis's apparent lack of humility in criticizing American Airlines. He seems to think that Dustin should be a little more humble in his criticisms of such a large, immovable corporation whose complexity seemingly exceeds that of a very good designer.
I call bullshit.
A humble designer is one who affects no change indeed. Designers should be less humble. When engineers or business guys or management or *anyone* makes a product lousier, they should get up and shout, and raise hell. Designers should NOT 'know their place.' Because if the powers that be keep their power, then we will continue to live in a barely working cesspool of compromises and bad experiences. Apple wins because the guy who cares the most about user experience happens to run the show. And last I checked, humble wasn’t really a word you could use to describe him.
We're impressed by teams that get things done, and unimpressed by teams haven't even started to build something. I've often found myself thinking, "If you think this is so great an idea, why haven't you spent some weekends building a version 0 prototype?"
Seriously, whether you're raising pre-seed from YC, seed from angels, or Series A from VC's, you've got to get moving.
This is not college admissions -- nobody is here to pat you on the head. If you want to get ahead, you've got to build, build, build. A great idea on its own is worthless without a team that can make it real.