Mantra: Simplicity

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.
• Leaders make great decisions, not groups.

Watch the interview here.

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Add comment November 13th, 2007

Carbon Copy Cloner Goes 3.0

As a Mac user, Carbon Copy Cloner is my backup software of choice. Mike Bombich’s CCC software looks to have just gotten an upgrade to 3.0.

CCC 3.0 features a new interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure more intuitive and more responsive. Users have better control over what gets backed up, and are provided with detailed information about the progress of their backup. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC’s block-level copy offers the absolute best fidelity in the industry!

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later.

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Add comment September 20th, 2007