• Ethan’s email from school

    Ethan is learning a poem for talent show and is so coachable on it. I love it. Apparently, he gets his own email in his classroom. He responded to Katie from his classroom. dear Mom, I love you more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UMMMM o yeah I’ put on sunscreen.Mom I want to play…

  • The UX of Enthusiasm

    How often have you been in the situation where someone near to you is excited about a project.  They are enthusiastic and productive in their project, working hard and happy to do so.  They are in Flow.  But there is a problem. You think it’s the wrong project. This is…

  • The UX of Disruptive Teenagers

    The boys and I were at a Bat Mitzvah, which is a religious ceremony for a 13 year old girl.  She reads in front of everyone, pray pray, sing sing, go have a giant party afterwards with music too loud.  At the ceremony, there was an interesting phenonmenon.  All of…

  • The UX of Virgin America

    First of all, Virgin America’s website kicks ass.  It blew my mind.  I put in the origination and the destination and it gave me the lowest prices that day and several days ahead and behind.  That clued me in to the right day I should fly to save literally thousands…

  • The UX Manifesto v1

    Very often, I think people do not understand what I mean by User Experience (UX).  They think its paint that goes on AFTER a product has been defined and possibly built.  Maybe it is deciding where the button goes.  I think UX is different.  UX is about looking at the…

  • Mac vs PC in the Office

    Quick history lesson: Apple Mac was easier. Windows 3.1 was more successful.  Apple System 7 were easier/better then Windows 3.1.  Windows 95 was as good as Mac System 7-8.  Windows 98 was a little better, maybe.  Windows 2000 was multi-threaded and was MUCH better than Mac System 9.  Windows XP was a…

  • Google Reader Link

    Somebody at Google is trying to confuse me.  They keep moving the Google Reader link. Sometimes, its in the menu and sometimes it’s at the top.  I can’t deal with buttons moving.  Is that lame?  Ok, maybe. I wish Google would consider some more advanced UI for stuff like this. …

  • WordPress 2.5

    Of course, I couldn’t help myself. I need my new beta software fix. Must use new software. The upgrade went flawlessly AS USUAL for WordPress. The UI is cleaned up and so far, I like it. I haven’t used it enough to really get a feel for it. Right now,…

  • P-CAMP Unconference for Product Managers

    I went to a conference today at Yahoo.  Nice campus.  It was P-CAMP Unconference for Product Managers. I took alot away from it.  Some learnings: There is a huge chasm between what serious Agile practitioners proscribe and what most companies who say they are doing agile actually do.  One guy…

  • A New Idea about Time Tracking

    I’m up early again.  I get ideas in the middle of the night and need to wake up and record them. Anyway, this is a follow-up from the last post.  I think I have a new idea how to manage predictions in a software project.  This would fit in nicely…

  • The UX of Time Tracking

    Project management is hard work.  I feel for anyone who has to do it in the software industry.  The problem is simple.  To do any kind of prediction in project management, you need to be able to guess how long something will take.  Let’s say you want to build a…

  • Jets

    The Jets have made some great free agency moves.  My general philosophy is that a team lives and dies on the line.  O-line got improved with Alan Faneca.  I expect D’Brick and Mangold to improve dramatically with Faneca in between them.  They need his veteran presence.  This will lead to…

  • Internet Explorer 8

    I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 to install.  It gave me an error saying, “IE8 is not supported on this operating system.”  I am running Vista.  Seriously?  It doesn’t work on Vista??  What OS are they using over there?  Vista is the latest.  Are they really using XP? Man, Microsoft needs…

  • Growing pains

    I can hardly remember the growing pains from Koko.  We had 30 people at the peak.  I remember agonizing over organizational charts.  I remember thinking about communications lines.  I remember how hard it was to get engineering leaders to communicate effectively (at all) to account managers.  I remember isolated incidents,…