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“Object Value Pricing,” by Dan Mall
“Here’s a system I use to help qualify my gut reaction. Ask yourself what object you would barter for this project.” Clever.
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Fraser Speirs: ‘We Need to Talk About Android’
Grreat piece answering the question “what’s wrong with Android.” i have friends who love their Android devices, but I think Speirs hits the nail on the head when he notes that Android devices are probably fine as long as you’re not thinking beyond the length of your contract. With iOS, you’re buying into a platform, which is more of a long-term decision. With Android, you’re buying a device with a two-year lifespan. The distinction may not matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of folks in a lot of industries (including education, where Speirs is).
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Most Web Design Agencies Suck
If there were ever a blog post that suffered terribly by not being written by a journalist who knows a thing or two about proper sourcing, this is it. If everything Andy has to say is true, its a shame. But the constant stream of unnamed sources really makes you wonder — especially when you add in the fact that Andy runs an agency himself and has plenty to gain by saying all the others suck.
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Jam Tracks and Black Keys
As a jazz student turned web designer, I’m a sucker for articles that draw parallels between music theory and our industry. This one is simple, but it makes a great point.
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Getting Airlines off the Ground
Khoi Vinh wonders aloud what a business pitch for a product akin to today’s airlines might sound like. Funny because it’s true.
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Should social media be paying you?
Back in 2006, my buddy Mike Davidson left ESPN.com to launch a citizen journalism product called Newsvine. Newsvine encouraged folks to write articles for the site, and in a novel twist that differentiated it from most blogging and community-oriented sites of the time, it actually paid its users to do so. In fact, it still does. Newsvine was acquired by MSNBC.com in 2007, and it continues to pay 90% of the advertising revenues on pieces written back to their authors.
I thought it was brilliant, and since that time, I’ve always had a feeling deep down that all social media ought to work this way. Think about it: what would Twitter be without your tweets? How useful is Yelp without your reviews? Maybe — just maybe — as social media companies become profitable, they should be sharing some of it with their users. After all, without them, they’d be nothing as companies.
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Wil Shipley: Success, and Farming vs. Mining
Really, really great piece on the two main route people take when writing software (especially web software) these days
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‘Like an Army of 41 Shades of Blue’
Terrific piece on the business model for Google’s Android, and especially what it means to Google’s OEM partners,
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Notes on “how to clone delicious in 48 hours”
A good reminder that the whole, “I could build that in a weekend” thing is usually a fallacy. Sure, the frameworks and libraries we have today make building the core of most web apps fast and painless. But there’s a lot more to productizing and launching an app than that core. You’ve got to deal with design, user experience, scaling, merchant accounts, legal docs (terms, privacy, etc.), scaling, SSL, security, scaling, lost password flows, error messages, copywriting, deployment strategies, scaling, backups, APIs and API docs, unit tests, scaling, and so much more. So, when your programmer tells you the app you want is “simple” and he can build it in “no time,” realize he probably just means the core functionality, not everything that is required to productize and launch your project.
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Are web agencies design-heavy?
Since I couldn’t fit my thoughts in 140 characters, this is a short post prompted by a discussion on Twitter today about development resources at web agencies. First, let’s define “agency.” When I say “web agency,” I mean a company that does web work for clients. This does not include internal teams, such as the web staff at a newspaper or university, nor does it include companies that build apps for themselves, like 37 Signals or Alamofire.
My impression, which I’ll admit is entirely speculation and not backed up by any real facts, is that web agencies today may be under-staffed on the development side of things.
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Note & Point
Nice design inspiration gallery for people making Keynote/Powerpoint presentations.
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31Three
Lovely redesign by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. I also like the way he markets himself as a designer for developers.
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Creativity Loves Blowing Constraints out of the Water
Entertaining and inspiring video on what happened when someone teaching an entrepuership class at Stanford gave small teams five dollars and two hours to make as much money as they possibly could.
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Daring Fireball: Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline
Gruber has an insightful piece on Microsoft’s position in the market. There’s no debating it anymore: Microsoft is irrelevant (at least in the PC world — it still has plenty of relevance in video games, for example). Sure, they’re still selling a bazillion copies of Windows every year, but they’re lost any semblance of the mindshare they once had. No one believe Windows PCs are better than Macs, anymore. Some still buy them, because they’re cheaper, but no one argues that they’re better. And when everyone in the world believes Apple makes a better product, the difference in price is much, much easier for people to swallow. And even though Microsoft still sells plenty of Windows every year, they’ve just reported quarterly results which revenue fell $1 billion short of projections and declined 17 percent year-over-year. So even the argument that they’re still relevant because they being in so much cash is falling apart. No ones cares anymore. No one.
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An Apology from Amazon
In four short sentences, Jeff Bezos shows why he is probably the most effective C-level exec of our time. Seriously, can you imagine most other CEOs offering this kind of hnest, transparent, and straightforward apology? Never. Way to go, Amazon.
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Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
Terrific piece about the difference between a manager’s schedule and a maker’s schedule (i.e. a designer, programmer, writer, etc.). I find this so true, personally. One hour-long meeting really does pretty much blow me up for at least a half-day. Managers, take note.
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Startups: Keep It In Your Pants, by Ted Dziuba
Good advice.
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Charging (a lot!) for news online: The Newport Daily News’ new experiment with paid content
The Newport Daily News’ innovative new strategy to profit in this digital world? Focus all their efforts on print, of course. They’re not only charging for online content, but they’re charging a lot. Like, more than twice what their print product costs. And the online product offers no additional content, it simply duplicates the same content that has built the print newspaper to a whopping 12,000 circulation. To steal a line from my great friend Nathan Borror, this feels a lot like watching a Christopher Guest movie — only they’re not joking.
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The “How Are You Different” Question
Over at the Blue Flavor blog, Tiff talks about the importance of understanding your competitive difference, and talks specifically about what makes Blue Flavor different from a lot of other agencies.
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Fuck the foundries
+1
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Measuring the Design Process
A really thoughtful and insightful post on the relationship between engineering and design, as a follow-up to Doug Bowman’s post wherein he described his reasons for leaving The Google.
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Jacob Kaplan-Moss: It’s time for a change
My buddies Jacob and Frank Wiles have started a new kind of Django company: they’re focusing on supporting and maintaining your apps after you’ve written them. We all know Django makes writing apps very easy, but if you have some success, you might find yourself stuck on scaling, optimization, obscure bugs, and the like. Jacob and Frank want to be your go-to experts on these issues. Good idea.
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Andy Budd: Don’t treat your website like a commodity
Although there may be nothing new or revolutionary here, Andy reminds us that focusing on user needs and user experience instead of conversion rate almost always wins, when it comes to create a successful online presence.
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5 options when website budgets get slashed
Good stuff from Mr. Boag.
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42 Web Design Companies
Hits most of the HTML/CSS/Javascript-focused ones I’d seriously consider.
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George Oates: Not quite what I had in mind.
George, the great designer that is responsible for the easy, fun, and beautifully simple work that has made Flickr what it is, has been laid off by Yahoo and company. This is her account of how that transpired. I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of business, but I don’t get how, even in the face of needing to lay some people off, you’d choose the high-profile, well-spoken, community-loved designer that gave your product its face. It’s a bit baffling. I’d trust that Yahoo knows what they’re doing, except, well — they haven’t shown they know what they’re doing for years.
I met George in London in 2007 and found her to be smart, funny, and downright sweet. And, of course, she’s incredibly talented, to boot. Good luck, George. You’ll land on your feet somewhere — and soon.
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Zeldman: 20 signs you don’t want that web design project
Until you’ve worked at an agency, these all sound very funny. Once you’ve worked at an agency, they all sound very true.
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A List Apart: Working From Home: The Readers Respond
A lot of really great tips for us WFH types, here.
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John Allsopp: Ubiquitous web font embedding just got a step closer
John Allsopp has some really great thoughts on the trickier issues around embedding fonts in web pages. As you probably know, the real isn’t isn’t the technology, but rather the legalities and licensing. The reality is that font embedding is here (it’s supposed now by a few of the cutting edge browsers), and font foundries are just going to have to deal with it. There are several ways they can make money off it, if they’ll just get a little creative with their business model.
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Andy Clarke: Time to stop showing clients static design visuals
I totally agree with Andy that it makes a lot of sense to show clients HTML/CSS/JS prototypes rather than static visuals, but I’m not sure how to reconcile this with the needs of our clients, as well as our resources at Blue Flavor. For us, the trouble with interactive prototypes is twofold:
- Clients tend to want to see constant updates along the way. If we don’t show them anything until we’ve got an interactive prototype, they’re not going to be very happy.
- Getting all the way to an interactive prototype is a lot of work. If we get there, show it to clients, and it turns out they’re not happy with the direction, we have to re-do a ton of work. This is one of the main reasons we like to show a lot of progress along the way. If at any point the client isn’t satisfied, we can’t quickly change course without redoing a whole lot of work.
In short: I totally agree with Andy, but saying “we should do interactive prototypes instead of static design visuals,” is the easy part. Figuring out how to actually make that work within your business model is harder. If you can pull it off, awesome.
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WSJ: How to Create a Successful Web Site
Wow. It’s absolutely astonishing — and frankly, appalling — that the Wall Street Journal, a respected business publication, would pushing such a steaming load of shit as this article. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something so incredibly stupid in a serious publication in my entire life. Wow. This really sums up everything that sucks about our industry.
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Don’t work in your underwear
Matt’s got some great tips on freelancing. Many of them apply to me, as well, even though I’m not a freelancer. Now that I’m working from Kansas City, at home and away from the Blue Flavor office, I’ve found many of the same things to be true; in particular, “dressing for work,” and have a clean, organized workspace. I admit I don’t really dress in work clothes, but I do get up, shower, shave, and put on clean, fresh clothes. It really makes a difference, compared to sitting around in your boxers with greasy hair the shadow you got at five ‘clock — a week ago.
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A List Apart: The Survey, 2008
A List Apart has posted the second annual Survey For People Who Make Websites, an attempt to gain and analyze information about web professional’s demographics, qualifications, salary, and more. I took it, and you should, too.
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Derek Powazek: 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments
Although I wouldn’t consider any of these revolutionary (we did almost all of the at the Journal-World, they’re definitely good tips for any newspapers adding comments to their sites.
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Richard Rutter: The future of web font embedding
Richard puts out a call to font foundries to stop fretting about web font embedding and find a way to make it work in their favor. Noting that by the end of the year, around 30% of web users will be able to view embedded typefaces, Richard says:
> Font foundries could license their fonts for embedding and serve those fonts only to registered websites, using their own hosted system or via a trusted third party.
Word.
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Blue Flavor: How We Decide What To Charge You
As a follow up to her post earlier this week, Tiff has a new blog post that details how we estimate potential projects. It also goes hand-in-hand with a pricing guide page that Keith posted today.
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Report: Google talks $200,000,000 acquisition of Digg
If this is accurate, I can only say a big congrats to all my awesome friends at Digg. You guys totally deserve it. Woohoo!
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Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
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