May 2012
12 posts
Scan Introduces Scan Pages For Businesses
QR codes, the almost barcode like black and white squares, are one of those amazing things that you never have any idea what to actually do with. Companies have been playing around with the idea for some time and, guess what, I’m betting you’ve actually never scanned one.
Garrett Gee and his San francisco-based Scan is looking to change that. They have released today, what strikes me...
4 tags
Faux-founder (in a good way)
A little while ago, we hired a CTO named Otavio. He joined us during a really interesting time in the business. In some ways much of the action had already been seen: I had been living in Brazil for over a year, we had launched the ecommerce store over 7 months previous, and we had over 80 employees.
Yet, in other ways, we couldn’t be a less mature technology startup. We hadn’t...
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Want To Know What's Cool? Ron Johnson Knows
If you want to know why I’m writing about JCP it’s because one of the most brilliant retail executives in the world is it’s CEO and was the head of retail for Apple up until a year or so ago. I’ve been watching with eager eyes as they’ve began the transitioned from a bargain basement to a fashion retailer.
Well, the early results of their first big, new pricing...
Zappos's New Product Page Is All About the Photo
I was pleasantly greeted this morning by a new product page on Zappos.com. As someone neck deep in Scrum right now I immediately started to reverse engineer the story narratives behind this amazing development.
First I needed to figure out who Zappos considers to be their user (the primary actor within the narrative). We can rule out men or women, because clearly Zappos caters to both. We can...
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Launching Dinda
Launch day. It’s a funny feeling and a funny experience. It’s basically a self-imposed date that you have to hold yourself to or otherwise no website would ever, really launch.
That’s because a website, at least all that I’ve been involved with, are never finished. Never done. Even getting to a point where you feel you’ve got an MVP (minimal viable product) is...
I Only Know One Thing For Sure: Mashable Is Wrong →
“The iPhone 5 is rumored to be coming later this year, with an official announcement expected in June around Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).”
This from a Mashable article posted a couple hours ago. What self-respecting Apple enthusiest is expecting an iPhone hardware announcement in June? It has officially and permanently been moved to October. The WWDC this year...
People And Our Lives, As Observed At Starbucks
Office space is a tricky situation for startups in general, but I feel particularly here in São Paulo things are complicated. We have found ourselves in the very fortunate position of needing to hire a large team within 6 months of launching and as a result, we’ve needed to expand our space earlier than we anticipated.
We did a few things right from the beginning, which is making it...
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Here's $10! Now Take The Ads Away Already →
Facebook Made $9.51 in Ad Revenue Per User Last Year in the U.S. and Canada. I have wondered what that number was before. I knew it couldn’t be all that much because I have been buying performance ads for a while and know how hard it is to actually make a buck.
Now that we know this number we can ask ourselves, would you pay $10 a year for an ad-free version of Facebook? I would. 100%. And...
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Apple To Only Have 45% Tablet Market Share In 2085 →
I’m seeing this headline (or something like it) a lot lately. Is it really news? Is it really even analysis? I’m not a statistician, a market analyst, or surveyor, but I’ll tell you that it won’t surprise me if Apple loses it’s monopoly on the tablet market it created over the next 60 years. I’ll be dead, actually, and therefore not surprised.
Platforms...
April 2012
12 posts
“Thus: capitalism raises each generation alongside a revolution in “the...”
– From Mills Baker’s The Aporeticus discussing the natural balance between capitalism and youth rebellion and revolution. The entire article I found to eve highly enlightened and true to my beliefs. Source link.
4 tags
iOS Development For The Programmer Inside You →
I haven’t written that much about it, mostly cause its slow going and I feel I should be further along, but I’m making my way through the JavaScript lessons in CodeAcademy as part of Code Year.
As is true with most people learning to code, the light at the end of the tunnel is the hope of building something you actually use. And of all the things I use, my iPhone is at the very top of...
3 tags
Are 'Add To Cart' Buttons Large and Colorful...
I hit a wall a few days ago on a section on Baby.com.br. The section presents a short, curated list of products that can be purchased together or individually. As I was organizing the page, I placed the site’s large, red “Add To Cart” button next to each product in the list and then I created a special extended red button that read “Add All Items To Cart” and placed...
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Twitter's New Patent Policy Could Be Huge For... →
If you haven’t heard, Twitter has made some changes to the way they will view and use patents. The big point is that the person who invented the patent, the engineer or designer, now has say in the matter and the patents can only be used defensively (I’m paraphrasing and simplifying, so go to the link in the title to learn more).
There has been a lot of talk about what effect this...
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The 4-inch iPhone: Fo' Reals, Yo →
John Gruber just ignited the argument for a larger screen. In a big way.
For a long time people have openly desired a larger screen for their
iPhone, yet it never really made any sense to me or anyone whose
opinion I really respect. A bigger screen means new sized apps and
that’s a big ask on developers.
Yet, Gruber has rummaged up a comment on a forum on The Verge that
walks through...
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The Abandoned Middle →
I downloaded an app earlier today called Everyme. I took the time to properly set up the app which includes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn authorization. I actually love apps that require a very specific sign up process because I feel like they are telling me that they can do more than I can currently with my established networks. On top of that, I have been reading about this app for sometime...
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Moving The Human Race Forward and Weightless →
In what is the natural next step for the space exploration company SpaceX, they now have scheduled dates to dock with the International Space Station, marking the first time a private company will have done so.
Elon Musk is behind this startup. He’s somewhat of an outspoken person with all kinds of ideas about how the future will look. And he’s aloud to say basically whatever he...
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Mike Daisy Hired Into Apple's PR Department →
Shocker: In a strange twist, it has just been made public that Mike Daisy, the monologist who caused a media storm around Apple’s manufacturing practices, has been hired by Apple’s PR department.
Mike Daisy hit the limelight when his shocking stories from Apple’s manufacturing plants in China were played out through nearly every major news source in the US. News was made again...
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Internet Privacy: What To Be Passionate About →
The Atlantic has a story detailing what effect the Do Not Track feature within browsers is having on advertisers (linked in the title). The answer is actually none at all. They will stop showing you targeted ads, but they will still know everything about your browsing behavior.
This is the latest evidence that legislation, executed in measured wisdom, is needed to help protect the users of the...
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Welcome To The New Blog Design
I have just finished changing my blog design to something a little more browser friendly, eye friendly, and over-all more visually clean. My last design was something I hacked together as more of a lesson in programming than in blog design. It’s frameless paragraphs were never as readable as I wanted and it’s narrow 500 pixel width limited the effect photos could have.
The new...
March 2012
18 posts
4 tags
Is Giving Away The Store a Real Strategy? →
There has been more noise on this than I can really believe. Google will be directly selling co-branded and possibly subsidized tablets. This strategy has recently been tried by another tablet manufacturer and the blogosphere crucified them for it. The company: HP. The tablet: The TouchPad. These were tablets that had a hardware value similar to that of the iPad, and a similar price tag as well....
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Let's Make An Agreement, You And I →
I read a warning this morning (linked in the title). It was jolting to me. The warning was one of destruction for distracting other’s attention for reasons not worthy of it. It made me think of this blog, here, and the few of us that engage together around it.
When I first started blogging it was more a way to share links with people than it was to record opinions and ideas. In fact my...
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Snapguide is Pinterest For Reality →
I recently downloaded an app called Snapguide (now available in the App Store). I wasn’t sure what to think as I read about it as an app for creating how to guides. Yet, after having used the app and consumed some of its content I am convinced that it plays to a similar audience as Pinterest. Lots of recipes and home arts. However, there is no simple way to play something off as your own.
...
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Pairing For The Future
We humans have a complicated relationship with technology. We have people who defend it in nearly every way. And we have those who fight against it vehemently. And then we have billions of people who sit in front of their computers and hear out each side of the argument.
However, like it or not, ignore it or not, technology, in varying forms, helped create our very species. Back in the day (and...
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The Creator Of "Pull To Refresh" →
Nothing exists that wasn’t first designed. That’s something I say now and then to remind myself and others that the world we know today didn’t design and create itself. The car is a great example. It’s easy to look at the car and say that Henry Ford and his assembly line brought us the car we know today. But what of the steering wheel and the grooves of the dashboard and...
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What is a "Like" Worth? →
It’s a funny question for the lay-user, but to businesses, Facebook and their communities on Facebook, it’s a big question and can be a complex one. At Baby.com.br we have a Facebook community that has nearly topped 500,000 people and we are constantly trying to make the most of it through things like photo frame apps, contests, and daily posts which are designed to elicit shares,...
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The Designer Disease →
This article discusses a disease found in designers in all industries and of all experience levels. The article calls it the user designer disease and he’s right that it’s rampant.
I had the disease chronically for my first few years as a designer. I would make something, it could have been anything, and I would say “I designed it.” T-shirts, logos, even websites....
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Landing Pages & Design Transparency →
Many design articles I read emphasize esoteric points or dramatize the effects of certain methods. This one, however, stays pragmatic and uses several very effective examples of landing pages from the web, many of which have converted me in the past. So, pretty effective.
Lately I feel more and more that it is important for citizens of the web and of mobile apps to know the methodology behind...
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Apple to issue both a dividend and buy back →
I was wrong. I can admit it. But I so much wanted to be right. Apple now provides amazing value through growth AND dividends. I don’t know the facts on this, but this has got to be a first.
It’s interesting to note that this will end up being one of the largest dividends in the US. When Apple does something, they do it big.
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Apple May Just Build a 4G Network
I was talking things through this morning with Kimball and a spirit-of-Steve idea hit us. Apple should build a 4G network. Every consumer hates their current carrier, Apple hates partnering with companies as the world’s foremost integrated company, and it is a profitable business.
There are huge barriers to this, not the least of which is bandwidth (where would it come from?), Apple had...
4 tags
Three Options For Apple's $100MM →
Henry Blodget has an article up with what the finance community is saying are Apple’s real options. Stock buy back, dividend, or nothing. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but nothing is what they should do. Companies have an obligation to provide value to their share holders through, basically, one of two ways: growth or dividends. Companies offer dividends when the stock...
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Apple Will Not Introduce a Dividend →
Well, that’s my bet anyways. It just doesn’t make sense that company providing so much value through growth would also give their money away. Plus, it’s always fun to bet against the crowd and win. We’ll know by tomorrow at 11:00 SP time.
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What Feels Successful From The Inside
If you’ve somehow missed the biggest news to hit the tech and mommy world over the last 6 months, let me do a brief recap. I’m the designer and co-founder over product at Baby.com.br. We launched our ecommerce store October 1st, 2011 to an anxious group who had been extremely patient through 5 months of waiting for launch. Very simply put, ecommerce is where a website sells a product...
3 tags
Path As A Tumblr Editor
Path is my favorite Tumblr editor. My only wish is that you could add paragraphs. With paragraphs you could share links. And properly compose posts. However, the current interaction design would breakdown if a “Return” button were added- due to Path’s two step posting process.
Typical posting tools have a one step posting process where all options are omnipresent with the...
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Discernment And The Consumer →
An interesting article on The Aporeticus by Mills Baker on a statement made by Jonny Ive stating that consumers are able to discern the effort behind the creations they use, and specifically his creations at Apple.
Baker posits that discernment comes from knowledge and that consumers are no more empowered to discern what goes in to something than they are to create something.
I completely...
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The Emotional Power of The Past
I have experienced an interesting transition over the last few months and although it started small, it has grown in to something that has shaped the way I interact with both life and technology.
The transition is with the check-in feature, a prevalent part of nearly every app going right now. It started with Foursquare, an app that lets you share your location with friends and win badges and...
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Memories Float Away, Character Remains
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.”
I remember reading that in high school as my teacher explained to me something so self-evident and obvious that my mind and heart very...
2 tags
Be Excellent To Eachother!
February 2012
5 posts
Truckers, Look For A New Job...
There has been much hype over these self-driving cars over the last year or so. It was all kicked off by Google’s success in the space, which prompted many to ask, “Is it safe?”
Nevada set out to answer that question and the answer is yes. They have been testing these cars for a while and have passed a provision allowing them on the streets legally.
Although typical drivers...
1 tag
Tesla Model S Gets Pricing
Smokin Hot Cars At Smokin Prices
Amazing how “affordable” the base model is of the Tesla Model S. When you consider that fact that these are basically the 1.0 versions of electric cars and there is a large amount of America that can already buy them. It’s amazing to consider where electric cars will be in 5 years or even 10. We’re witnessing something here that will...
Reading more about Facebook’s S-1 and feeling amazed. I love Zuck’s leadership through this whole thing. I love “the hacker way,” the manifesto he released in conjunction with the filing. Facebook is a phenomenon and it’s cool to be a part of it with the rest of the world.
parislemon: Fathoming Facebook →
Great title and a pretty good post. I’m also very bullish on Facebook. Not that that is saying much, but they have a way of nailing it time and time again.
parislemon:
Amidst my snark, there are a few high level things about Facebook’s numbers that I find interesting.
First:
So Facebook had nearly double the profits of Amazon in 2011…
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) February 1, 2012
...
January 2012
1 post
2 tags
High Schools Are Step One Of Two →
MG Siegler in his latest TechCrunch article posits that although Apple’s new iBooks strategy is admirable in its effort to fix problems in public high schools, that it’s not realistic and that their market strategy should revolve around colleges and college textbooks.
On the surface, which seems logical enough, his argument is sound. But It ignores the one, HUGE driving force in...
December 2011
3 posts
SOPA Will Hurt The Internet. You Can Help.