RAD'ST

Not only are we becoming accustomed to this behavior and perhaps prefer it in certain situations, but a second point also reigns true. We have many tools now so as to retrieve and save threads. IMAP, for one. Gmail provides archives. All current, popular mail clients allow some sort of filtering and thread views. A third and important reason bottom-posting needs to die a fast death is the increasing access of email on small devices. It becomes absolutely senseless to have an entire novel sent when the message is simply “yup, I’m on the task” or what have you.

SPOT ON, Molly! I’ve been top posting for years and have been told not to by every single slashdot/BBS/weirdo out there! It doesn’t make sense to have to read the whole conversation on every message on a thread! If someone wants to catch on the context, just reading the other freaking posts/mails. Seems obvious, no? :)

App Store A: Simple, shallow games and apps with mass-market appeal. These live and die by the App Store’s “Top” lists, so success is difficult to achieve and is short-lived at best, but with the largest potential payoff for the lucky few at the top. These apps are developed quickly and cheaply, and are rarely updated once their initial popularity (if any) dies down. Very few are priced above $0.99. Impulse-buying is king, with most purchases happening on the phone itself, and most buyers don’t know or cares whether you’re an established developer unless your name begins with “MLB”. Nearly every best-selling app falls into this category.

App Store B: Apps and games with more complexity and depth, narrower appeal, longer development cycles, and developer maintenance over the long term. These tend to get little attention from the “Top” lists, instead relying on the much-lower-volume App Store features (e.g. “Staff Picks”), blogs, reviews, and word of mouth. More of their customers notice and demand great design and polish. More sales come from people who have heard of your product first and seek it out by name. Many of these apps are priced above $0.99. These are unlikely to have giant bursts of sales, and hardly any will come close to matching the revenue of the high-profile success stories, but they have a much greater chance of building sustained, long-term income. Due to the likely lower revenue cap, these are usually developed on small budgets by individuals who can do most or all of the work themselves.

Marco is, once again, spot-on! Developing popular iPhone apps requires much more than a great design/interface: it requires adequate marketing and targeting; target the wrong market and you’ll be in for disappointment.

To paraphrase Colin Wheeler, it’s OK to proselytize to those who have not switched to a distrubuted VCS yet, but trying to convert a git user to Mercurial (or vice-versa) is a waste of everyone’s time and energy. If you want to switch to a DVCS, then here are five easy steps:

1. Evaluate your workflow and decide which tool suits you best.
2. Learn how to use your chosen tool as well as you possibly can.
3. Help newbies to make the transition.
4. Shut up about the tools you use and write some code.

Best part of a pretty good article comparing Git vs Mercurial.

Yes, just like Dan Benjamin (et al), I’m considering a switch from Git to Mercurial. No, I won’t argue about it. :)

Jason Fried, from 37signals writes:

If there was an airline that flew more passengers than anyone else, but lost money on each one, would we call it a success? If there was a restaurant that served more people than anyone else, but lost money on each meal served, would we call it a success? If there was a store that sold more product than anyone else, but took a loss on each one, would we call it a success? Would the business press hold these companies up as business model successes? Would anyone? Interesting, maybe. Promising, sure. But successful? Then what the hell is going on with the coverage of our industry?

In that same note, I always wonder when I hear “Company X got $99M in funding”: do investors ever get their investment back?? Can any of these heavily funded startups really generate that much revenue?? Even the “free” ones? Advertisement? Really?

Gahh… too. many. questions… doubts? Conspiracy? Corruption? -.-

It’s tempting to think that adding a feature like this is just about adding the functionality — but there’s a bunch more to it than that. It’s not enough just to write the basic functionality and add a menu item that runs it. Even a feature as simple as this one requires some up-front thinking, some design.

Really awesome article by Brent Simmons on a new feature (finally) added to NNW!

Error handling and feedback is a must on any feature… Don’t even think of releasing anything without them!! Not even a beta…

And when we do take the time to rest, we discover all sorts of things that help us perform better when we’re working. Inevitably my best ideas come to me when I get away from my computer and go for a walk or run or simply engage in a casual conversation with a friend.

This is the kind of advice that comes with the “manual”, yet many insist in ignoring it… to their loss!

Many users, myself included, visit YouTube on an almost daily basis. Ever since Firefox version 2.0 implemented the session restore function, when you are watching a video on YouTube (perhaps on other video sites as well, I haven’t really tested that), you may notice a tiny freeze-up of the video every 10 seconds or so. This happens because the session restore is by default set to save all open tabs every 10 seconds. This is especially noticeable if you happen to have a lot of tabs open at once.

THANK YOU!!!! :D

(via @hmrbarros)

When I’m using the computer, I’m not just working. When I’m using the phone, I’m rarely talking or answering work emails. I’m having fun, I’m reading, and I’m learning. I love knowledge and information, and my ubiquitous connection to the rest of the world gives me an infinite supply. Most people imagine their personal paradises as something like sipping drinks on a beach and doing nothing. To me, that would be hell. I’d rot into boredom and depression from mental atrophy. I don’t even drink a lot because I don’t like my mind to have reduced capacity for very long. I get bored and want to go back to interesting things, but then I get frustrated if I’ve had more than about 2 drinks because I can’t concentrate on anything. Too many people never use their brains after they’re done with schooling. They go into boring jobs doing boring things that never challenge them, then they go home and melt in front of the TV or mentally sedate themselves (from what?) in a bar. It’s a tragic waste of life.

Oldie but goodie.

And the reason why I’m posting this right now? I’m feeling the same way about next week (going computer-less… but taking my iPhone). :p

Oh the joys of an internet addict… :)

This is pretty darn big news for the web(design) world: Happy Cog and Airbag Industries just announced their merger.

They both have been leading agencies in the web world, pushing the envelope of standards-compliant, beautiful web design. This merger outputs what could arguably be the most influential agency ever seen in the web world.

And no, they’re not the ones getting the multi-million dollar government contracts, unfortunately (those are usually won by companies doing everything in .NET and Visual Studio, that run perfectly on IE6). Let’s hope that changes sometime soon…

(via @ilovetypography)

Today I got an email from NewsGator saying:

You spoke and we listened: in response to customer demand, NewsGator’s best-of-breed consumer RSS applications now work with Google Reader. Google Reader will become the online companion to and the synchronization platform for our award-winning RSS reader applications – FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. (…) NewsGator’s other individual end-user applications will not continue to be supported for free consumer users after August 31, 2009. Again, all of NewsGator’s individual end-user applications will continue to be supported for paying Enterprise customers. (…) As part of this transition, NewsGator Online users will need to migrate to Google Reader by August 31, 2009.

Later, Brent reported on his NNW “Development Diary” twitter account that a beta build of NNW for Mac, with Google Reader sync is available to download.

I finally got what I’ve been asking for months… =D happy

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple’s retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.”

This makes complete sense. Market researches are huge innovation stoppers. Why would you hire consultants to tell you what to do when you’re know to do the best products ever? Sure makes you think.

I’m linking to a post with great links to other articles on this subject. Really cool ideas/concepts.

I’ve used the term a few times, and now it’s time to officially coin it: Hate Driven Development. It’s when you come to hate working on something so much that it inspires a surge of productivity that leads to completion. Most projects that involve this methodology include a procrastination phase.

This fits my stages of development perfectly:

1. Excitement
2. Development
3. Stall
4. Procrastination
5. Frustration
6. Hate Driven Development
7. Completion (or Toss)

(via @alcides)

Pterodactyl Squad, a video game music netlabel, released a compilation of Weezer covers done by video game musicians, in 8-bit.

Really cool idea and sounds awesome! :D

(via @andreanjos)