April 2012
2 posts
Announcing LayerVault 2
layervault:
Allan and I are happy to announce the release of LayerVault 2 today. This release represents several months of work. We focused on our core product even better along with new great features.
What you’ll see at layervault.com now is something we’re proud of. We went through dozens of possible designs before landing on the one you’ll see now.
Let’s dig into what’s new.
(Any press...
Big Things in Store
layervault:
We’ve been quiet for a little while.
On April 24, that changes. We’re finally ready to show you what we’ve been working on for the last few months. Please join us for the announcement at 11am PST.
We’re really proud of what we’ve created. We hope you like it.
Mark your calendars.
January 2012
1 post
LayerVault Blog: Announcing Unlimited Storage and... →
layervault:
Let’s get right to the point — We’re building some pretty amazing stuff here at LayerVault. We’ve iterated on nearly every aspect of the product, made huge improvements to things like user experience and reliability. Today, we’re releasing the next iteration of the LayerVault pricing.
We’re…
December 2011
1 post
November 2011
2 posts
The Churn Burn: Bulletproofing against...
LayerVault is lucky in that the majority of customers love the service, but cancellations happen. And when they do happen, your mind races — what went wrong? Where did we fuck up?
I haven’t been able to find a straightforward, bulleted checklist that a SAAS business can use to deal with and prevent cancellations, so here’s ours. We’ve defined the three areas responsible for...
WatchHey, Back Button — Watcha thinking about?
August 2011
2 posts
The Importance of Small, Go-Nowhere Projects
I’ve built more things for the web than I can remember (luckily, no one else can either). If your goal is to one day launch something of your own, small go-nowhere projects are the best way to cut your teeth. A few notes on the lessons you’ll learn.
1. Learning to launch/quit/fire
Especially if you’re working with others, you’ll quickly learn that weeks or months without...
June 2011
1 post
The End of Facebook.
Given today’s headlines about the beginning of the end of Facebook, I thought I’d do a quick Google search. Presented without comment:
Jun 14, 2011 - Has Facebook Peaked?
Jan 7, 2011 - Facebook hype will fade
Aug 17th, 2010 - Facebook May or May Not Be Growing As Quickly This Summer, Third Party Measurements Show
Aug 17, 2010 - The End of Facebook?
May 21, 2010 - End of Facebook...
May 2011
3 posts
Saving this for later
Posting this ASCII nyancat I made so that I don’t lose it.
+
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`-,-`-,-.`-,-`-,-.`._,'| ` `.` |\`-/|
`-.-`-,-.`-.-`-,-.`-.-'|`. . `( ^ . ^)
`-.-` `-.-` `-.-'',,---,,`-,,'`
+
.`. .`.
` `
+ ...
1 tag
DHL Express: 108% Improvement on Landing Page
This cracks me up. DHL Express saw a material improvement in landing page conversions by replacing a photo of a man with a woman.
April 2011
2 posts
Jon's ReVisualizer for Tumblr
Blip coworker Jon whipped up a neat bookmarklet for tumblr called ReVisualizer that visualizes a post’s notes.
The irony is that I’m not reblogging his original post.
Factotum 1.0.5 is out (includes Amazon Cloud...
Good news!
An update to Factotum is available. It contains the following goodness:
Support for: Amazon Cloud Player, 8tracks (my new favorite music site), Purevolume, and the Mog Chrome App.
Menu options for increased awesomeness.
An instruction screen that appears the first time you run the app.
March 2011
1 post
1 tag
February 2011
3 posts
1 tag
The Godless Constitution
Deist, Infidel, “opposer of Christianity”, Atheist, and Devil are among the names Jefferson was called by his adversaries — most of them being conservative Christians. (A Reverend had warned that electing Jefferson as president would “destroy religion, introduce immorality and loosen all the bands of society.”)
and
In a staggering historical flip-flop, it [the Christian right] now celebrates...
January 2011
1 post
1 tag
August 2010
1 post
4 tags
Using Twitter For Increased Indexation
Twitter Only Launch
GoogleBot averaged its first visit within 78 seconds of the first tweet.
Tweets with more than 3 RTs were indexed 325% faster, along with 125% more of its products and post indexed than tweets with no RTs.
Average indexation of the post or product was different depending on number of RTs
(via SEOmoz)
Twitter links may be nofollow, but there’s definitely search value...
July 2010
1 post
Wireframing is not a religion
52weeksofux:
The UX community is certainly divided on this point. There are those who will defend the lo-fi wireframe to the death, swearing off high fidelity wireframes as visual candy and premature over-designing and emphasizing the importance of not getting “design” mixed in with Information Architecture and functionality at this stage.
And then there are those who swear by the hi-fi...
June 2010
3 posts
Stop saying 'innovation' by Scott Berkun →
Ask people who say innovation what they mean. If ever anyone says the word in a meeting, ask “Can you give an example of what you mean by innovative?” If they can’t, you’ve just saved everyone in the room hours of time. Using the i-word is often a cop-out for clear thinking. They are trying to signify creativity, without actually being creative.
The Enterprise Software Opportunity
Found in a hacker news thread, this reply echos my thinking on the missed opportunities in SaaS. It’s also why it upsets me to see so many smart people working on so many social products.
Enterprise software sucks.
We don’t talk about it much here at hn, but think about it. Every man-made object you encounter every day was manufactured somewhere. And moved, more than once. Now add...
May 2010
4 posts
UX Lisbon: Killer Content or Content that Kills? →
Three bad reasons to innovate: to differentiate your product; to be different; or to satisfy your ego. There is only one reason to innovate: to solve a problem. Otherwise, you are creating problems. Innovation should build on best practices.
(via Instapaper)
1 tag
New York Nightowls Goes Global. →
EXCITING NEWS! In just 4 weeks, we’ve witnessed late-night co-working take off not only in New York but around the world too! San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Tel Aviv and Stockholm are among the newest sister cities to join the Nightowls network!
This late night coworking thing is spreading and, after a few of these meetups, the reason is pretty clear.
The atmosphere is friendly...
April 2010
13 posts
ABtests.com →
cameronmoll:
See examples and statistics from actual A/B tests, and upload your own to share with others. What a killer idea.
Hey Blippy, law requires that credit card numbers...
There is no reason why blippy should have been able to expose credit card numbers to Google’s crawler. Any person who’s handled credit card numbers knows that this type of security problem is impossible to have if you’re PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant.
Basically, it’s illegal to store credit card data unless you comply with PCI guidelines. In order to be PCI...
1 tag
Good Read: Making Geometric Type Work →
theleagueofmoveabletype:
Making Geometric Type Work
Excellent post over on Typographica about designing geometric sans-serifs, and how to make them more readable. Fantastic work, Mr. Moore.
Great stuff.
The NY Nightowls first meeting is Tuesday.
I just sent something out to everyone who emailed me this week about the New York Nightowls coworking group. If you’re interested, head to http://www.meetup.com/NY-Nightowls/calendar/13255755/ and quickly RSVP. The venue is New Work City and the maximum number of people we fit is 30.
It’s unreal how fast an idea can go from tweet to execution when twitter and tumblr are involved. In...
bijan sabet: Freemium backlash? →
rafer:
It’s easy to kick someone when they are having trouble I guess. Ning announced a significant layoff and the critics pounced.
I guess I wasn’t surprised at this point. But the thing that surprised me was the negativity about freemium.
Just because some companies struggle with freemium doesn’t…
Rafer sez: Agreed. I’ve started to refer to it as the Conversion Bubble.
I disagree. The...
1 tag
“Spam is unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk…”
– (Seth’s Blog: Cannibalism and spam)
aka why I think Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, buying email lists etc etc are complete bullshit.
That’s nice that advertisers can pay very little to send a “targeted message” at a segment of people who meet their needs. What I ask of you dear advertisers is to...
1 tag
5 tags
Apple, Adobe, and Indianhead Mills
Almost 40 years ago, James E. Robison, of Indianhead Mills, published the following in the company’s policy manual:
The objective of our company is to increase the intrinsic value of our common stock. We are not in business to grow bigger for the sake of size, nor to become more diversified, nor to make the most or best of anything, nor to provide jobs, have the most modern plants, the...
SimpleGeo Blog: iPhone OS 4, Background Location... →
kylewritescode:
Thanks to GDGT for the photos of the keynote.
At SimpleGeo, we’ve been very excited for what Apple was going to announce today. There has been all kinds of speculation as to what features were going to go into iPhone OS 4, but now the rumors are over and there are some very big changes…
Certainly some exciting stuff ahead.
Kelly Sutton was the first to turn my attention...
March 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Dear Tiffany & Co., Thanks for noticing.
I remember distinctly the conversation that led to the Wall Street Decision Cube. It was during a car ride in New Jersey that a joke sparked an idea that led to the production of the first batch of Decision Cubes.
Early in the days of Zontik Games, it was one of the only products we created outselves. The Decision Cubes sold and, like lots of our products, enjoyed a good bit of press from blogs...
5 tags
5 tags
Tumblr is a particle accelerator for SEO
SEO and cooking search results
SEO is still a dirty word among technology professionals, and that’s a good thing. It’s good for people who understand the power of SEO and compete with people who don’t, and it’s good for Google. Were people ever to learn that the mantra “if you build something good, SEO won’t matter” is pretty much nonsense, there would be...
3 tags
Increasing conversions and decreasing cart...
Lessons from the purple notebook
I keep notes about conversions in a purple hardcover notebook, and the checkout tweaks below are a few of them. Normal conversion rates vary among types of products and industries. My experience is with luxury games whose conversion rates are usually pretty low, so optimizing the site is key to the store’s success. A few of basic mistakes are listed below,...
1 tag
Why you're not getting jobs on RentACoder
The Backburner
Since I lack the resources and bandwidth to pursue all of my ideas at once, I have to keep a queue - often referred to as The Backburner. As of now, The Backburner has 8 projects in it and, if the project is small enough, I’ll write the code myself - otherwise, I’ll look for help.
Early in March, I listed a job on RentACoder hoping to find a developer to help with one...