Recent Articles
Fun Video Saturday #1: Go-kart Chased by Bronco
Apr 19, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
I’d like to see if I can’t get into the habit of posting an entertaining video clip each weekend. Hopefully that will turn some of my casual visitors into MLYMI addicts 
.
Let’s start it off with this clip of Jake Nickell (founder of Threadless) trying to outrun a Bronco on his go-kart. Unfortunately, a snow bank seems to have foiled his plan (as they so often do).
[vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/148137]
MyLoki Scared the Crap Out of Me
Mar 14, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Ok, I was officially weirded out a few minutes ago. First a little background.
Since I’m in Boston on business and had some time to waste, I decided to try to get caught up in my blog reader. In a post by UX Magazine, I read about a service called MyLoki. The concept is that you can share your location with friends through an RSS feed. So I got curious and bopped over to their site to learn more about it.
Here’s where it got freaky, when I landed on their homepage, here’s what I saw.
Okay, that’s too weird. No that’s not a Google map (at least not a live one). It’s just an image of a map. I’m pretty sure it’s just an amazing coincidence…but I’m still not positive.
Hey NotchUp – Don’t Copy Other Websites!
Jan 28, 2008 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Just a quick thought. If you’re starting a business and want to be thought of as “new and innovative”, don’t copy your website design from someone else. A friend just invited me to try NotchUp, a new career networking site. When I arrived, I instantly though that it looked strikingly similar to the page layout of GrandCentral. After browsing over to GrandCentral to do a comparison, I realized it was way more similar that I had anticipated. In fact, it’s almost a carbon copy. Take a look.
Come on people, I don’t know how many millions you spent in VC funding to come up with the latest “Web 2.0″ “social networking” service. Now just fork over the other $5k and get your own site design.
Hey NotchUp – Don’t Copy Other Websites!
Jan 28, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Just a quick thought. If you’re starting a business and want to be thought of as “new and innovative”, don’t copy your website design from someone else. A friend just invited me to try NotchUp, a new career networking site. When I arrived, I instantly though that it looked strikingly similar to the page layout of GrandCentral. After browsing over to GrandCentral to do a comparison, I realized it was way more similar that I had anticipated. In fact, it’s almost a carbon copy. Take a look.
Come on people, I don’t know how many millions you spent in VC funding to come up with the latest “Web 2.0″ “social networking” service. Now just fork over the other $5k and get your own site design.
Here’s one for the engineers
Dec 10, 2007 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Oftentimes, engineers seem to get stuck in the mindset that if they just create a product/website/software/etc. that does everything it needs to do, it’ll be awesomely successful. Oftentimes the rest of us think of designers as being “nice to have”, that they can make things look nice but that they’re not entirely necessary. Not so.
I just stumbled across an article called “In defense of Eye Candy” that describes the supremely important role that designers play in the development of any product. Watch the slide presentation, it’s fascinating.
If you’re still not convinced about the power of good design, check out this article at UX Magazine. Apparently the companies that invest in design also have the best stock performance.
Here’s one for the engineers
Dec 10, 2007 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Oftentimes, engineers seem to get stuck in the mindset that if they just create a product/website/software/etc. that does everything it needs to do, it’ll be awesomely successful. Oftentimes the rest of us think of designers as being “nice to have”, that they can make things look nice but that they’re not entirely necessary. Not so.
I just stumbled across an article called “In defense of Eye Candy” that describes the supremely important role that designers play in the development of any product. Watch the slide presentation, it’s fascinating.
If you’re still not convinced about the power of good design, check out this article at UX Magazine. Apparently the companies that invest in design also have the best stock performance.
Adobe.com redesigned
Dec 8, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Okay I know I just barely posted about major sites that have redesigned but here’s another one to chalk up. Adobe.com. Problem is…they’ve screwed everything up. First, lets take a look at their old site.
Now there was nothing spectacular about this design, but it was clean and open. It offered lots of whitespace and felt balanced. You could get where you wanted to go and all the internal pages matched the homepage in personality.
But take a look at their new page. It’s large and imposing, it feels off balance, and you have to scroll way down to get past the huge video if you want to access the content.
Add to that the the internal pages each have their own style and you get a mishmash of disunity. C’mon Adobe, you’re supposed to be the masters of design. You can do better than that.
A new Top-Level-Domain (TLD)?
Nov 27, 2007 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Okay, I’m an internet junkie and I usually hear about stuff like this but this one took me by surprise. I was watching TV a couple of weeks ago and saw an ad tempting people to visit Utah. At the end of the ad it said, “Visit us at ‘utah.travel‘.”
What?! Who’s ever heard of .travel? Have I been sleeping or what? I’ve seen sites that use foreign country codes in odd ways (del.icio.us) but this is actually a whole new top-level-domain.
My 30 second search found ‘idaho.travel‘, ‘pennsylvania.travel‘ (under construction), ‘alabama.travel‘, ‘florida.travel‘ (forwards to ‘visitflorida.com’), ‘arizona.travel‘, and ‘montana.travel‘. This is a seriously underused TLD.
What other ‘.travel’ sites are you familiar with? What other top-level-domains are out there that I’ve never heard of?
Time for a website redesign? GigaOM, Amazon.com, and MSNBC are doing it.
Nov 26, 2007 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Lots of big sites are getting makeovers right now. Is there something in the air? What’s going on?
Off the top of my head, I can think of MSNBC.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Freelance Switch, GigaOM and Web Worker Daily that have recently redesigned (or realigned for those in the know). I’ve also heard rumors that Del.icio.us is redesigning.
Who else has redesigned lately? Add other sites in the comments.
