According to this Gizmodo post, Dieter Rams’ (a designer for Braun in the 50’s and 60’s) work can be seen influencing the designs of one of the most currently prominent industrial designers, Apple’s Jonathan Ive.
Over the past few months, Not Too Stale has become quite the opposite. The frequency of my posts here have been reduced to a slow crawl. I can legitimately use excuses like being busy with work and the holidays, but the primary reason is that some of my posts have a new home. You can find them on my Tumblr blog.
Since most of my posts are links to things I find interesting, videos, images, and quick thoughts, a tumblelog is a great fit. Plus, with mobile posting by email and other quick post methods, Davidville’s Tumblr is also dead simple to use.
From Tumblr.com:
What’s a tumblelog?
To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.
You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still lovin’ the WordPress and this blog will continue to be updated with longer (and hopefully more thought out) posts. But the stream of consciousness posts are best suited for the tumblelog.
Hopefully, this will be a better use of my time and yours!
Because Verizon decided to be greedy with the GPS in the Blackberry Pearl (which, along with many other reasons, has made me suspicious of their recent “Any App, Any Device” announcement), users must pay for Verizon’s own VZ Navigator if they want any map positioning functionality. Yesterday, Google decided to save the day and announced a new triangulation location feature in Google Maps beta that can pin-point your location to within 10 city blocks, even if you don’t have GPS in your mobile phone (or your GPS has been crippled by the carrier). This can be very helpful when looking for nearby business and restaurants. Thanks for making up for Verizon’s shortfalls, Google.
Without intending to throw so much love towards 37signals tonight, I feel this is worth mentioning. Over the last few hours, I was unable to access the 37signals website in addition to our Highrise and Basecamp accounts (both 37signals web-based products). Here was the explanation just posted on their blog and in the top section of Highrise:
Downtime summary
On the evening of Monday, November 12, we experienced a few of hours of downtime due to an explosion at our main data center in Dallas, TX. This event lead to the eventual failure of a backup cooling system. Without adequate cooling, our servers had to be shut down to prevent permanent damage. We have detailed the events that led to the downtime. We deeply apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused and will work hard to make sure we reduce the likelihood of this happening again.
What they did well:
The decidedly non-techie tone.
They told the truth (as far as I know) and provided a detailed account of what happened.
The notification posts were up as soon as the servers were.
37signals did not throw blame directly on Rackspace, their hosting provider. Even though it was obviously a Rackspace issue.
Their apology and offer to credit concerned customers.
Thanks for hanging in there.
Will be using this situation as both a wake-up call and a learning experience. While our systems are engineered to chug through major failure, this “perfect storm” chain of events beat both our set-up and our data center’s sophisticated back-up systems. We will work hard to further diversify our systems in order to make an future downtime event like this even more rare.
We apologize for any inconvenience this downtime caused your business. If you feel you were significantly impacted by this downtime please send an email to support and we’ll credit you for the downtime.
Will I be asking for a credit? Absolutely not, because I was not significantly impacted (now ask me if I would take a credit from Verizon or Comcast that I did not technically deserve). Well done, 37signals.
Don’t be everything to everyone. This is important to remember for people, businesses and in this case, software. Have an opinion. Be loved and hated. Be a strong brand.
This interview/discussion between Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal: Technology) and Jason Fried (37signals) covers a lot of good points. And many of them apply to much more than software development. It is worth watching even if you couldn’t care less about software.
A few takeaways:
It is good to say no. Helps keep your idea/product/business simple.
WWSJD - What Would Steve Jobs Do? Probably say no. This had helped lead to Apple’s success.
A company should have an opinion.
Being hated & loved is better than being (UMA) universally moderately appealing (I just created a new acronym).
Consider your customer’s experience first. Open source projects often fail, in the consumer market, because the customer experience is not considered first. Open source software is built from the code out, instead of the interface in.
America’s Health Rankings™ – 2007 Edition shows Vermont at the top of the list of healthiest states. This is the first year Vermont has been ranked number one. The state has had a steady climb in the rankings for the last seven years from an initial position of eighth in 2001. Minnesota is ranked second this year; it was first in the 2006 Edition. Minnesota has been first for the last four years and for 11 of the 18 Editions of this report. Hawaii is number three, followed by New Hampshire, Connecticut and Utah. Mississippi is 50th and the least healthy state, while Louisiana is 49th. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee complete the bottom five states.
If you are interested in honing your debate skills, I think I have found an effective method:
Join Verizon Wireless and call customer service, they will debate/argue with you regarding any issue. You are considered wrong until you prove your case. Truly an effective teaching method.
“Verizon’s new debate program improved my skills as an orator by 47%*. Thank you VZW!”
*results may vary
Or, if it is more convenient, just drop by a Verizon retail store. In fact, I think they recently launched a competition to see who can provide the most inferior customer service. Retail stores are in the lead by 1 point! Keep a close eye on that race folks, it is going to be close one.
/sarcasm
Verizon is lame. But, then again, so are Vermont’s mobile phone provider options.
[Update] This frustration stems from spending over one pleasant hour on the phone with Verizon customer service this morning on still unresolved issues. The Verizon rep promised she would find a supervisor and call me back within two hours. Well, it is four hours later…and still nothing. Should I have expected anything else?
Having once played football against (and losing to) Millsaps College on this very field, this win holds a special place in my heart. It’s great they made ESPN too. Not my alma mater, but these two teams do play in the same conference.
Looks like IMAP is making it’s way into Gmail, which is exciting and long overdue. Great news for those who use desktop apps to manage their Gmail. Now changes you make in your desktop app are reflected in your Gmail account.
Although, still no love for it’s Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) accounts. Which, actually, is not surprising. Google Calendar and Gmail have great mobile interfaces, but the business app users, who arguably need it more (and pay for it), get nothing beyond the standard Gmail BlackBerry app. Google seems to have it’s priorities backwards. They update their free consumer accounts before their paid business accounts.
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.
