Archive for September, 2009

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My daily readings 09/30/2009

September 30, 2009

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My daily readings 09/29/2009

September 29, 2009

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My daily readings 09/28/2009

September 28, 2009

  • Elizabeth Gilbert on creative genius | Derek Sivers

    tags: no_tag

    • I promise the 19 minutes will be

  • Fantasy iPhone applications: 20 apps we would like to see – Telegraph

    tags: iPhone

  • The Way I Work: Marc Lore of Diapers.com

    tags: no_tag

    • In a fast-growing company, there’s a constant need for brainpower in varying parts of the business at different times. So Vinnie and I tend to pinch-hit in areas where we feel that we’re weakest. Since we’re constantly focusing on different areas of the business, every day is different.

  • Showcase of Designs Optimized for iPhone « Smashing Magazine

    tags: Design, iPhone

    • Though iPhone’s Safari browser is able to render any website just like you would see it on a desktop browser, the available screen area is much smaller than in common “classic” displays. This poses a new challenge for designers and developers who now can reach millions of users that use mobile Web. Websites that are specifically optimized for the iPhone utilize the screen to the fullest extent, and use less bandwidth (which is necessary, because the connectivity is not always optimal).
    • Screenshot
    • Screenshot
    • Screenshot

  • Hacker News | Clever ideas that failed

    tags: no_tag

  • Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010

    tags: no_tag

    • multiple connections but avoiding “double dongles”) which would enable users to connect a variety of devices into a single Light Peak port, while slightly longer-term plans will mean Light Peak obviates the need for almost every type of connector you use today. Translation: Apple products in the near future could come equipped with only a Light Peak port (or ports) to handle your networking, display driving, and general connectivity.

  • When a co-founder dies

    tags: no_tag

    • Then, out of nowhere, Greg died. Suddenly, scrambling late at night to find an elusive bug seemed like nothing. His death wasn’t nearly the same type of problem. I found myself unable to lift my shoulders, and unable to go on.
    • If a start-up has the foresight to prepare for something like this, they’ll usually do it in a very details-oriented way.  There will be preparations made for roles in the company, tasks to be done, and for shares of ownership.

  • Term sheet tune-up – Venture Hacks

    tags: no_tag

    • “I’ve learned that nothing can replace the entrepreneur’s passion and vision for the product and the company. If you rip that out of the company too early, you’ll lose your investment. I think it’s best to wait until the initial product has succeeded in obtaining a critical mass of users and a business model has been developed that works and make sense for the business and is scaling. Then, if its warranted, you can sit down and have the conversation about bringing in experienced management.”

  • A lesson in strategy, taught by a Cat – Good Experience

    tags: no_tag

    • Put another way: you have to stop and take time to find the direction. You can’t run while you’re reading the map.

      And this is the potential problem with popular methods…

      • iterative design
      • rapid prototyping
      • agile development
      • [add your own favorite buzzword here]

      …which are great and all, except when there’s no well-thought-out direction to go in.

      So be forewarned – it’s hard to be a strategist. People prefer action. “Ready-fire-aim” sounds so much more exciting and appealing. “Do something!” they say – and it can be hard to sit down and say hey, let’s take at least a couple of days to think about who our customers are and talk to them about what they need.

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My daily readings 09/27/2009

September 27, 2009

  • Think the Opposite

    Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

    tags: no_tag

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My daily readings 09/26/2009

September 26, 2009

  • History of education – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Annotated

    tags: no_tag

    • The history of education is the history of teaching and of learning, and the history of what might be described as the curricula: what it is that is taught or learned.
    • In pre-literate societies, education was achieved orally and through observation and imitation. The young learned informally from their parents, extended family and kin. At later stages of their lives, they received instruction of a more structured and formal nature, imparted by people not necessarily related, in the context of initiation, religion or ritual.[4][5][6]
      • What’s the curriculum of middle age education? – post by joel
    • The curriculum of the educational institutions of this period was frequently based around the trivium and quadrivium (the seven Artes Liberales or Liberal arts) and was conducted in Latin, the lingua franca of educated Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
      • An in-line sticky note. – post by joel

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My daily readings 09/25/2009

September 25, 2009

  • The Right Brain vs Left Brain test | PerthNow

    tags: no_tag

    • Clockwise at first sight for me. Then it changes. I am wondering how they did this picture. Did they merge a clockwise animation picture and a counter one? – post by joel
    • Dancer test

  • Gojko Adzic » Top 10 reasons why teams fail with Acceptance Testing

    tags: no_tag

  • Hacker News | Arial versus Helvetica

    tags: design, font

  • Silicon Valley coming back strong and here’s why… – @alexdmoore’s posterous

    tags: Startup

    • New startups need waaaay less cash than before. This means a dearth of VC money is irrelevant. The charts in WSJ showing less VC going into startups is meaningless and outlines this point to a T. This is creating a huge gap in what is going on and what people think is going on. Plenty of companies are being started. Enough are.
    • It’s still uncool to work for large tech companies if you are a CS major at Stanford.  You can do it, but it’s not cool. This leaves the warm embrace of cool startups warm.
      • Technology is going mainstream. 60 year old women are using Twitter. People in the mid-west buy things online. This macro trend pushes all the dollars in our economy online. Over the next 10 years then the dollars could double which inherently makes SV about twice as valuable.
      • SV entrepreneurs are getting really good. Look at the PayPal network. All those guys pumped entrepreneurial iron in PayPal and went on to create multiple billion dollar companies later. They continue to make all the right investments, etc. It’s not all luck. Other groups/networks are doing the same. This didn’t happen as much in the 1980s.

  • Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The Evolution of Overconfidence – Annotated

    tags: personality, confidence

    • If overconfidence leads to global disasters such as the collapse of banks and world wars, how could it have evolved? Now researchers have an answer.
    • The puzzle about overconfidence is its ubiquity. Many studies have shown that most people have an exaggerated sense of their own capabilities, an illusion of control over events and an invulnerability to risk. Most people, for example, believe they are above average drivers, a statistical impossibility. We are all overconfident in one way or another.

    • In fact, if the potential reward is at least twice as great as the cost of competing, then overconfidence is the best strategy. In fact, overconfidence is actually advantageous on average, because it boosts ambition, resolve, morale and persistence. In other words, overconfidence is the best way to maximise benefits over costs when risks are uncertain.

      That’s an interesting insight. Experimental psychologists have long known of the role of overconfidence in conflict situations and yet have been unable to explain its origin.

    • Their model implies that optimal overconfidence increases with the magnitude of uncertainty. So the greater the risk, the more overconfident individuals should become.

      Johnson and Fowler use that finding to predict that overconfidence will be particularly prevalent in domains where the perceived value of a prize sufficiently exceeds the expected costs of competing.

      • The more wit, the less courage – post by joel
    • They highlight several domains but perhaps the most obvious and potentially dangerous are international relations, where events are complex, distant, involve foreign cultures and languages, new technologies such as the internet bubble and the banking industry where complex financial instruments abound. Any of that sound familiar?

  • mikeash.com: The iPhone Development Story: One Year Later

    tags: iPhone

    • A year ago today I posted The iPhone Development Story, detailing all of the insane and largely pointless steps required to build an iPhone application. The article was incredibly popular, seeing tens of thousands of hits that weekend and still generating fresh comments even to this day. Now, a year later, it’s time to look back and see where we stand today.

  • 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine

    tags: usability

    • A study by UX Matters found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. On many forms, labels are put to the left of the fields, creating a two-column layout; while this looks good, it’s not the easiest layout to use. Why is that? Because forms are generally vertically oriented; i.e. users fill the form from top to bottom. Users scan the form downwards as they go along. And following the label to the field below is easier than finding the field to the right of the label.
    • Tumblr
    • eye tracking

    • One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.

      Other factors that influence credibility are: the quality of the website’s content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.

    • Basecamp
      Basecamp makes great use of space. Above the fold (768 pixels high), it shows a large screenshot, tagline, value proposition, call to action, client list, videos and short feature list with images.
    • However, users’ habits have significantly changed since then. Recent studies prove that users are quite comfortable with scrolling and in some situations they are willing to scroll to the bottom of the page. Many users are more comfortable with scrolling than with a pagination, and for many users the most important information of the page isn’t necessarily placed “above the fold” (which is because of the variety of available display resolutions a quite outdated, deprecated term). So it is a good idea to divide your layout into sections for easy scanning, separating them with a lot of white space.
    • This is known as usage patterns. People expect certain things to be the same, such as link colors, the location of the website’s logo, the behavior of tabbed navigation and so on.
    • The study found that the average search box is 18-characters wide. The data showed that 27% of queries were too long to fit into it. Extending the box to 27 characters would accommodate 90% of queries. Remember, you can set widths using ems, not just pixels and points. One em is the width and height of one “m” character (using whatever font size a website is set to). So, use this measure to scale the width of the text input field to 27-characters wide.
    • White space also makes content more readable. A study (Lin, 2004) found that good use of white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20%. Readers find it easier to focus on and process generously spaced content.
    • Jakob Nielsen’s study on the ideal number of test subjects in usability tests found that tests with just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website, whereas 15 users would find pretty much all problems.
    • This means that testing doesn’t have to be extensive or expensive to yield good results. The biggest gains are achieved when going from 0 test users to 1, so don’t be afraid of doing too little: any testing is better than none.

    • Jakob Nielsen reports in his AlertBox entry that most users are essentially blind to ad banners. If they’re looking for a snippet of information on a page or are engrossed in content, they won’t be distracted by the ads on the side.

      The implication of this is not only that users will avoid ads but that they’ll avoid anything that looks like an ad, even if it’s not an ad. Some heavily styled navigation items may look like banners, so be careful with these elements.

  • The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire – BusinessWeek

    tags: personality

    • There are two kinds of employees. Some believe they can make things happen, and the others believe that things happen to them. The first group believes that the outcome of their life and career is more or less in their own hands, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. The other group takes more of a Forrest Gump approach: They sit around and wait for a bus to take them somewhere.
    • Judge and his colleagues have shown overwhelmingly that employees who feel like they control the events in their lives more than events control them and generally believe that they can make things turn out in their favor end up doing better on nearly every important measure of work performance. They sell more than other employees do. They give better customer service. They adjust better to foreign assignments. They are more motivated. They bring in an average of 50% to 150% more annual income than people who feel less control over the fate of their careers. Not surprisingly, these employees also like their jobs a lot more than the Gumps do.

    • After all, if you think you’re special, what happens when your superior or your board tells you about the areas in which you’re falling short? Worse yet, what happens when the self-described superstar finds himself laid off or responsible for a division with tanking revenues? In other words, what happens when people who believe they are capable of controlling the world find themselves in an economy that is out of control?

      It turns out that this is when the true stars shine. Tough times weed out both those with low self-evaluations and those poseurs who only pretend to have a high self-evaluation—the narcissists. Judge finds that only about one in five people with a high core self-evaluation also scores high on measures of narcissism. That’s probably why researchers continually find that those with a high self-evaluation do so much better in turbulent times compared with those with a dimmer view of their abilities, and compared with those narcissists with fragile egos.

    • Confident, Not Narcissistic: There is an important difference between having a high self-evaluation and being a narcissist. Does the employee pitch in when teammates need help, or bad-mouth co-workers they view as threats? Are they receptive or defensive when you give them feedback?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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My daily readings 09/22/2009

September 22, 2009

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My daily readings 09/21/2009

September 21, 2009

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My daily readings 09/20/2009

September 20, 2009

  • Why is Photo Start-up DailyBooth So Hot?

    tags: no_tag

    • Coined as a “Twitter for pictures,” DailyBooth is similar to the micro-messaging site in that users can choose to follow others, and it has adopted the “@” reply function. Twitter is a prime driver of traffic to DailyBooth, according to Wheatley, as users can tweet links to their photos on the DailyBooth site.

  • Climbing the wrong hill — cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog

    tags: Career

    • Local_maximum

      Consider the simplest algorithm.  At any given moment, take a step in the direction that takes you higher.  The risk with this method is if you happen to start near the lower hill, you’ll end up at the top of that lower hill, not the top of the tallest hill.

      A more sophisticated version of this algorithm adds some randomness into your walk.  You start out with lots of randomness and reduce the amount of randomness over time.  This gives you a better chance of meandering near the bigger hill before you start your focused, non-random climb.

      Another and generally better algorithm has you repeatedly drop yourself in random parts of the terrain, do simple hill climbing, and then after many such attempts step back and decide which of the hills were highest.

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My daily readings 09/19/2009

September 19, 2009

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