Dan Shipton.

"I remember the first time I saw a piece of paper come out of the laser printer prototype we had. It..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:58:53 -0500

“I remember the first time I saw a piece of paper come out of the laser printer prototype we had. It was running this very sophisticated printer from Canon, this very sophisticated controller we had designed and Postscript software from Adobe. An amazing amount of technology. The piece of paper came out and I looked at it and it was so beautiful, I thought, “We can sell this. Because we don’t need to tell anybody anything about what’s in this box. All we have to do is hold this piece of paper up and go, Do you want this? If you do, buy this box.” That’s our whole marketing strategy.”

- Steve Jobs at 44 — TIME

"YouTube nor Facebook or any of these other companies aim to be an alternative to journalism and much..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 23:13:05 -0500

“YouTube nor Facebook or any of these other companies aim to be an alternative to journalism and much of what they facilitate or do doesn’t look like journalism at all. A good chunk of it contains written or spoken words, but sometimes not even that. It’s not journalism. But you’d be naive if you thought their services aren’t often consumed instead of news. It’s the same kind of functionality in a different package, after all, and that new package happens to be rather attractive a lot of the time.”

- stdout.be | Fungible

"When small start-ups I’ve spoken with do make money, they often find it difficult to recruit..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:02:23 -0500

“When small start-ups I’ve spoken with do make money, they often find it difficult to recruit additional investment because most venture capitalists — and often the entrepreneurs they finance — are not interested in building viable long-term businesses. Rather, they’re interested in pumping up enough hype and valuation to find a quick exit through an acquisition at an eye-popping premium.”

- Disruptions: Start-Ups Keep Revenue at Zero to Cash In on Acquisition - NYTimes.com

Oh shit, we’re doing it wrong.

"It took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years..."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:08:38 -0500

““It took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones.””

- Tim Cook Spells Out the Rapid Growth of Apple’s iPad - NYTimes.com

"Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:56:43 -0500

“Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.”

- The Top of My Todo List

Time and taste

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 07:06:01 -0500

Time and taste:

marco:

All of the money, web traffic, and cheap cardboard boxes in the world can’t buy time or taste.

Spot on.

"I was focused on trying to make the usability of editing data as easy and functional as it could be;..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:05:31 -0500

““I was focused on trying to make the usability of editing data as easy and functional as it could be; Mint was focused on making it so you never had to do that at all.” In other words, from all the things that Mint did, there was one thing that mattered the most and made a huge impact. Mint just brought in all your data and organized it for you automatically. That was the poison on the tip of the arrow. Finding this poison is the real job of the real designer.”

- User Experience And The Poison On The Tip Of The Arrow | TechCrunch

Finding that designer who can identify and solve the real underlying problem is key.

"A new version comes out, some random behavior has changed, and either you suck it up, or you go play..."

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:06:56 -0500

“A new version comes out, some random behavior has changed, and either you suck it up, or you go play whack-a-mole in the minefield of preferences checkboxes. But but, you say, when Apple changes the UI they usually don’t even give you a checkbox to change it back to how it was before! You are absolutely correct. However, Apple doesn’t change the UI very often, and when they do, they usually get it right. Anyone who truly understands UI design realizes that every preference option is an admission of defeat: it’s there because you couldn’t just get it right the first time.”

- Why I use Safari instead of Firefox | jwz

Read between the lines and you’ll see how “one-codebase-to-rule-them-all” thinking across mobile platforms falls short.

"Disaster is many times the prelude to success. You just have to get through it."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:16:52 -0500

“Disaster is many times the prelude to success. You just have to get through it.”

- JLM, the master of commenting

A VC: The Board Of Directors: Board Committees
(via fred-wilson)
Weathering the storm is the hardest part of entrepreneurship / startups.

Hatchlings Blog: Don't Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:58:46 -0500

Hatchlings Blog: Don't Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup:

hatchlingsblog:

After trying to go through the “proper channels” for almost a year now it’s time to share this story of how Google screwed over our startup with the world.

Hatchlings is the world’s largest Easter Egg hunt. We have over 3.5 million users spanning all 50 states and almost every country on…

"I would argue that one of the most fundamental failings of “design thinking” education..."

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:11:25 -0500

“I would argue that one of the most fundamental failings of “design thinking” education is the _lack of craftsmanship_. Students don’t appear to learn a honed, tacit, and careful “innate” sensibility for making, and simultaneously, they don’t appear to have developed an intimate understanding of the medium they are responsible for shaping. Instead, they are equipped with a toolkit of methods.”

- Jon Kolko » Interaction design and design synthesis.

So true.

Charlie’s vocabulary now includes Battlestar Galactica.

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:04:53 -0600

Charlie’s vocabulary now includes Battlestar Galactica.

Pixar's Storytelling tips from Andrew Stanton

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:09:41 -0600

Empathize with your main character, even if you don’t like all of his/her motivations or qualities. (For example, Woody in Toy Story initially masked his selfish desires as being selfless.)
Unity of opposites. Each character must have clear goals that oppose each other.
You should have something to say. Not a message, per se, but some perspective, some experiential truth.
Have a key image, almost like a visual logline, to encapsulate the essence of the story; that represents the emotional core on which everything hangs. (For example, Marlin in Finding Nemo, looking over the last remaining fish egg in the nest.)
Cast actors with an appealing voice, and whom the microphone loves. Test their voice performance with animation to see if it fits.
Know your world and the rules of it. (Such as in Monsters, Inc.)
The crux of the story should be on inner, not outer, conflicts.
Developing the story is like an archeological dig. Pick a site where you think the story is buried, and keep digging to find it.
Animation should be interpretive, not realistic.
“Just say no” to flashbacks. Only tell what’s vital, and tell it linearly.
Consider music as a character to anchor the film. Music is a keeper of the emotional truth.

Killing your startup while looking smart: Half Measure Syndrome

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:32:49 -0600

Killing your startup while looking smart: Half Measure Syndrome:

tutorblog:

HMS allows a founder to continually list things that have not been tried in total, to believe in the savior lodged around the corner which they’ll get to before they run out of time. Paradoxically, that faith means that you will likely never uncover that secret - if it does exist (and very rarely is there a single silver bullet for any company). Committing halfway fundamentally means that you will not fully understand any piece of that halfsies strategy. It means that, should the strategy fail, you will not fully understand the reason for it. While, in some instances, that may mean you avoid a number of bad roads, it will also mean that your ability to identify the right road will be materially decreased.

"DO THING YOU LOVE MAKE YOU MORE AWESOME. GIVE THING YOU LOVE TO OTHERS MAKE YOU MORE AWESOME. YOU..."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:59:24 -0600

“

DO THING YOU LOVE MAKE YOU MORE AWESOME. GIVE THING YOU LOVE TO OTHERS MAKE YOU MORE AWESOME. YOU MORE AWESOME MAKE YOU BETTER AT DO EVERYTHING.

THIS YOUR AWESOME ENGINE. WHEN IT TURN, YOU WIN.

”

- FAKEGRIMLOCK via CNN Tech Tumblr

"However, death isn’t an option, it’s an inevitability. And before I die, I want to take as many..."

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:56:36 -0600

“However, death isn’t an option, it’s an inevitability. And before I die, I want to take as many swings at the fence as I can.”

- When Death Feels Like A Good Option | benhuh!com

"Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know..."

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:01:05 -0600

“Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know it. BoingBoing knows it. But, the Internet hasn’t been told yet — we’re going to get blown away by the end of the year. The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law.”

- STOP SOPA, SAVE THE INTERNET - Boing Boing (via fred-wilson)

How Google+ Business Pages Work

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:14:52 -0600

How Google+ Business Pages Work:

To the point write-up on the Change blog of what you need to know to get started with Google+ Business Pages.

"Works Fine"

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:11:29 -0500

"Works Fine":

parislemon:

When discussing whether or not there should be apps built specifically for tablets, Android chief Andy Rubin noted that “the Twitter phone app works fine on a tablet.”

In this case, I can’t determine if “works fine” is code for “looks like shit” or “‘meh’ is good enough”. Either is absolutely the wrong attitude and perhaps speaks a bit to why Android is doing so poorly in the tablet space.

iPhone apps running on the iPad also “work fine” but I think everyone will agree that they look like shit. If the iPad only ran iPhone apps scaled-up, there’s no question in my mind that sales would be a fraction of what they are. It’s the apps that are custom tailored for the new form factor that make it magical.

While the ability of a tablet to run any app is a nice fallback, it’s more of a marketing ploy. It was a genius way to get people buying the iPad originally (“look, I have all these apps that already work!”), but Apple was quick to make sure that developers got on board with building custom iPad apps as well.

Again, those are the key. It sure doesn’t seem like Rubin gets that. Of course, he’s in a tough position since there are so many different form factors for Android. Big tablets, small tablets, mini tablets, big phones, small phones, huge ass phones. How does one custom tailor for all those sizes?

They don’t.

But I’m sorry, “meh” isn’t good enough. “Works fine” isn’t good enough.

Stand out, not still.

kirps: My personal hell… Hope to avoid this every single day.

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:17:33 -0500

kirps:

My personal hell…

Hope to avoid this every single day.