technology

I will if this rumor is true.

Jason Fried decided to part with the “Getting Real” presentations he’s been giving for a while and focused on why the details matter and how 37signals thinks about the details of their products. His talk was sprinkled with tons of application demonstrations and interface development experience.

Fried started with a high level discussion on the building Seed 3 was being held in, S. R. Crown Hall, by Mies van der Rohe. This building is a great example of how paying attention to details yields a product beyond the base components. You can feel the details before you even see them. For instance, one of the things that Crown Hall is most well known for is its floating ceiling, something you don’t necessarily catch when you walk through the door - it’s too subtle for that. It’s only upon deeper reflection and analysis that you see the thought behind the design; you notice the gap between the edges of the ceiling and the windows running the entire perimeter of the building. Van der Rohe really wanted a feeling of floating to permeate the space and it does. Light changes moment to moment, altering the entire mood of the interior. The roof is suspended from the building frame above. None of the interior walls or posts are structural.

Also noteworthy, in Crown Hall, is the alignment of all the building materials - the roof tiles line up with the floor tiles, which line up with the building frame and windows. Everything is perfect. Even smaller things, like the sprinkler system, are made to fit within the overall design concept, they’re not afterthoughts.

These observations are what led Fried into discussing the development of software. One of the nice benefits to working in software, rather than building masterworks of architecture, is that you can build and tweak iteratively and quickly at very low cost. For Fried’s software, “building IS designing.”

37signals tends to use pretty low resolution designs. In fact, if it can’t be drawn with a sharpie, they feel there is too much detail. It’s only by building in this way that you end up focusing on actual user experiences with your applications rather than thinking in terms of artsy screens. The products 37signals builds try to think through people actually using them for repetitive workflows. For instance, task entry using Ta-Da Lists is as simple as title -> return -> task -> return -> task …

Writing copy

At 37signals, they consider copy to be part of the design and not just a means of explaining their product. When you write copy, “it has to make sense to read out loud,” says Fried. Explain your features in ways that your audience will understand, not in techno-babble.

“If you wouldn’t say something in conversation, don’t say it in your app.” - Jason Fried, 37signals

Make your app have “photographic memory”

One of the other UI concepts expressed in Fried’s talk was about remembering what your users are doing so that you can make it easier for them to repeat it. User preferences are a horrible way of doing this. It’s much better to look at what your users are doing and have the application be smart enough to guess it the next time.

An example of this in action would be adding tasks to a to-do list. If you have multiple to-do lists, it’s not a good idea to have a default list and then require customers to always move items from that list to other lists. Instead, have the application be mart enough to know which list a task was added to and remember that to suggest the next time the user adds a task. Chances are good that your users are repeating tasks if they’re using your application - they’re in a particular mode and it’s best not to break their concentration.

Time is the new vector of interface design

How you time activities that occur on your site and in your application has an enormous impact on how responsive and intuitive your application feels to users. If a user deletes an item from a list and the object just disappears or the page refreshes the page, this time without the item, it might be difficult for the user to figure out what happened. If you instead, show the deleted item fading out over the course of a quarter second and then the items below it sliding up the list to replace it, you’ve done something more visually intuitive and noteworthy while making the user more comfortable the action they just completed.

Other Jason Fried:

• BusinessPOV Video from June 2008: Jason Fried explaining how his work is like that of a museum curator or a chef with a request to add bananas to his lasagna.
• BusinessPOV Video from April 2007: Jason explains how 37signals builds software with tiny decisions.

[Disclaimer: What you have read in this post is my recollection and my notes from the event. I make no claims to 100% transcription accuracy and if I botched something, I'm happy to fix it - just drop me a comment.]

The skinnyCorp Guide to Doing What You Love for a Living
(and whatever else we end up talking about)

The business

The second presentation of the day at Seed was from Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, who discussed the “perfect storm of awesomeness” known as Threadless. Threadless is basically an online call for t-shirt design submissions where the winning shirts get printed and sold for 1-week on the site. Designers are paid for their winning designs and gain reputation points within the community for influence over future design choices. Actually, the kind of cool thing is that anybody in the community who votes, comments, and purchases from the site, gains influence via reputation scores which feedback into a more loyal customer-base and better product selection. This sort of radically open feedback loop is known as “crowdsourcing.”

How it works

“Crowdsourcing is not a business plug-in, IT IS THE BUSINESS. Crowdsourcing means the CEO no longer has control.” - paraphrased from Nickell and Kalmikoff

The 4 laws of crowdsourcing, as proposed by Nickell and Kalmikoff are as follows:

1. Allow your content to be created by its community
2. Put your project in the hands of its community
3. Let your community grow itself (but nurture the growth)
4. Reward the community that makes your project possible

Picking your passion and what I’ll take away from this presentation

“Find your own perfect storm. Ride the excitening” - Nickell and Kalmikoff

Veering into a a hilarious vignette, Nickel and Kalmikoff spent a little time talking about tote bags. Many people have suggested that Threadless is the perfect solution for the custom-printing of tote. Why not just reproduce the community tools, fire up the crowdsourcing, and start making money hand over fist on tote bags? Because Nickell and Kalmikoff can’t get excited about tote bags. Please don’t suggest that they make tote bags. There’s obviously a huge opportunity in tote bags. You should go make tote bags.

Here is why they say you should pick something where you have passion, and not just where you see a business opportunity:

1. Passion inspires trust
2. Work harder (in a good way)
3. Be more inspired
4. Failure is less sucky

After talking about crowdsourcing and following your passions, the guys switched over into question and answer mode. What I found particularly interesting was where crowdsourcing didn’t tend to work and how there was still some amount of moderation and control that was required on behalf of the head guys at Threadless. Basically, the voters don’t determine 100% of the designs that get chosen. This is because the when voters determine the entire content, it tends to echo. The head guys are always using the crowd as their first filter but they ultimately select t-shirts that they’d buy and they weigh the votes of other members who have also bought more heavily.

Something else I thought was really cool was how reactive Threadless is in their business. They don’t do practically anything - in fact, they’re inherantly lazy - unless the demand for it is fairly obvious, where the method of doing things is just causing too much pain. For example, Threadless was getting to a point where they were buying out a color t-shirt from Fruit of the Loom for the year, for the entire world. Rather than be beholden to a single supplier, they decided to get into the t-shirt production business on their own.

“You’ll know that you’re at a growing point when shit just goes crazy.”

The last thing that they went over was the need to be patient. In the beginning, Threadless was really just a hobby. Success did not come over night but through a long series of tweaks with a product that they loved.

[Disclaimer: What you have read in this post is my recollection and my notes from the event. I make no claims to 100% transcription accuracy and if I botched something, I'm happy to fix it - just drop me a comment.]

If you’ve been waiting for the price to lower on Kindle before you pick one up, wait no longer. Amazon has just dropped the price from $399 to $359 (and it still ships to you free via 2-day air). It may be a while before you see any further price drops…

I picked up a Kindle about a month and a half ago. While I have not yet written a comprehensive review, suffice it to say that I love mine so far. I’ve read a couple of books, peruse the New York Times daily, and have downloaded a couple of samples from new authors I may try out. It’s all integrated quite nicely and reading is very pleasant.

As I sat organizing hundreds of books at home yesterday, I actually decided to get rid of the vast majority of them since I could always get them for the Kindle; inexpensive much of the time and free for others. Any book that’s part of the public domain, and most of the older classics are lumped in that category, I can get for free via Project Gutenberg.

Any of you folks planning on purchasing a Kindle? What’s it going to take for you to switch?

This is my first experience reading Vinge and I’m excited by the possibility of picking up a few more of his books. “Rainbows End” opens fantastically, intertwining thoughts on politics, scientific research, psychology and technology into an unholy amalgamation which sets the story cranking. While not quite the frenetic pace of the opening scenes in “Snow Crash,” it was darned close - a slightly dystopian vision of technology-enabled society and its impact upon our collective consciousness. This society is one never-ending stream of interruptions and threats. Real-world protests occurring for millions of fans while a small group of government spooks investigate the possibility of a terrible new weapon.

The July 18 Pseudomimi and the advertising at the football match - together they amounted to an extremely well disguised test of a new weapon concept. In its developed form, such a weapon would make the Sunrise Plague look like a malignant toy. At the least, biological warfare would become as precise and surprising as bullets and bombs: slyly infect a population with the slow random spread of disease, all but undetected, and then bam, blind or maim or kill - singly with an email, or by the billions with a broadcast, too quickly for any possible “defense against disease.”

Unfortunately, after about the first 100 pages or so, the story becomes a bit derailed and tired, eventually chugging to a stop after a lackluster climax. The characters all have Dickensian quirks but lack depth. The plot is an artificial structure made only to hold the ideas which are indeed dazzling. The writing is lyrical and sharp. While this is all good enough, it’s not great. It’s recommended only for those singularity/futurist types who really lap this stuff up.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to which Vinge I should try next? They’re all open game… If you do, please post it in the comments.

I just got my Kindle last week and I think I need a bit more time with it to really gather my thoughts and make any real review of the device. I will, however, cop to the fact that one of my first thoughts when I saw the “Whispernet” connectivity and a browser was, “I really wish this thing had RSS.” Thankfully, it does. Kind of…

For all you Kindle-folk out there, and I suspect we’re a growing legion, here are the things you need to do to use Google Reader as your RSS Reader on the Kindle. I was excited to discover I could do this. While there’s nothing overtly tricky, this may be able to save you few exploratory and incorrect clicks.

1. Get an account on Google Reader if you don’t have one yet and add your rss feeds.
2. From the “Home Page” on your Kindle, click on “Menu > Experimental”
3. On the “Experimental” page, select “Basic Web.”
4. From the browser page, click “Menu” and select “Advanced Mode”
5. From the browser page, click “Menu” and select “Settings.” On the “Settings” page, click to “Enable” JavaScript.
6. Type the Mobile Reader URL (http://www.google.com/reader/m/) into the “Enter URL” bar at the top of the browser.
7. You’ll have to log-in to Google Reader on your Kindle now, which is kind of a pain the first time. You’ll probably want to ensure that the box is ticked to remember your settings so that you don’t have to do this frequently.

Voila! You can now use Google Reader for free from anywhere you get the “Amazon Whispernet.” Woohoo! Admittedly, navigation is a bit clunky and the speeds are not dynamite on the stripped mobile version of the reader, but I found that the act of reading the entries was quite pleasurable.

I have to use the Kindle roll and click navigation to get around on the reader site while using Kindle. Has anyone out there been able to get any of the keyboard shortcuts to work?

This is an excellent and detailed presentation on the quick rise of social applications and changing consumer behavior.

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Discovered via TechCrunch in this post

The Kindle is finally back in stock at Amazon. The flood gates are open.

Watch the promo video for more information on the device.

I’ve now ordered a Kindle twice and canceled my order prior to shipment, both times after waiting more that 4 weeks. I was really close to a delivery on one of those shipments. It’s difficult to decide whether or not this is the device I want or whether I should wait for a v2. Thoughts? Any Kindle owners out there want to weigh in in the comments? Your help and knowledge are appreciated.

Walt Mossberg speaking on a panel about the barriers to delivering true broad-brand video over IP to any number of devices. I like the no-nonsense way he speaks on behalf of consumers. It’s as if he’s saying, “you want to know why TV sucks? We’ve now trained people that advertising can be better than 8 minutes of mass produced crap for every 30 minute watching period. We expect targeting. You’re just going to have to get more sophisticated.” He also cuts to the chase on the meaningless debates between downloads and streaming. And finally, the thing that’s being flogged for all it’s worth on the blogs at the moment - he also states that the 3G iPhone will be out “within 60 days.” Booya!

How many of you have I pressured to read “Perdido Street Station,” by China Miéville? It’s been more than a few of you and everyone I know of has dug it, some as much as I did. Artist Gordillo has taken a stab at a new visualization of the titular station. If you haven’t read the book yet, consider this artwork a reminder that you should.

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