I just watched this amazing video of this speaker at Ted. He uses animation and charting techniques to really communicate information better. I think this kind of software is just fantastic and has been designed with flair and genius. Take a look. I am looking forward to 2008. I feel…
California is a pain in the ass. They have these propositions and initiatives and special elections ALL THE TIME. Every single time we have to vote, they ask us questions that we can not answer. It is terribly designed user experience. Never ask a question that has significant implications that…
I had a crazy weekend. Funeral in Florida, then holiday preparations. I am so beat. however, I had an interesting conversation with Bill Johnston about the state of technology. Bill worked for Lawrence Berkeley labs, Nasa and the department of energy running a major network, so I always appreciate his…
I had a dream last night. Someone asked what was the coolest thing on the web. I interpreted the question to be specific to a web service like Gmail, Yahoo, Wikipedia, or anything “hosted”. The question to me was, “What is the thing on the web that changes the world…
The last two years has been a major education for me in Marketing. First at Intuit, where I felt the entire organization is run by the Marketing Department. I felt that the main goal of marketing was to project (micro)manage incremental changes in high volume processes. In other words, there…
At dinner, Jared likes to pick a “theme” that we can talk about. I asked the family, “What was your favorite present ever?” Jared looked at me and thought. Finally, he said, “George Washington!” It took me a minute to get it. Matthew had the Croup this weekend. Katie felt…
Just finished watching Superbad from Netflix. At first I thought it was funny. There were some scenes that I laughed out loud. Couldn’t breathe sort of laughing. Katie was laughing too. Then after a while, I started feeling bored. Something else too. I was feeling like, “This is way too…
In technology development, there is a famous triangle. It shows how you prioritize your efforts. By focusing in one area, you mess up another. It is a brutal game that never has a happy ending. No matter what you choose, something suffers. Even the “balanced” approach has flaws. I created…
Marketo is starting to launch into beta, bringing on a few customers at a time. It’s a stressful time for all as there is so much left to do and so many details. I really appreciate how good Katie was at this sort of thing. Keeping track of a million…
Katie and I were in bed talking after a long day. The door was not shut all the way, just most of the way. We had a light on and were chatting. I heard the pitter-patter of little footsteps (Matthew) come down the hall. I mentioned it to Katie. The…
CompUSA is closing it’s doors. Apparently they are being liquidated. So now is the time to purchase electronics if one is near you. Maybe a color printer! It’s amazing to me how long it takes for predictions to come true. In the 80’s they said, “Computers will make a paperless…
I saw an article that caught my eye this morning about how to introduce jQuery to a large organization. Interestingly, on the post there was a link to “Digg this story”. I thought that was pretty cool and tried to Digg the story. Lo and Behold, it worked. That was…
I added print.css to the blog. This is something I hardly ever do, but should. Printing is important. Now commadot.com prints properly. Mostly I hid things. But I found I had to update a few fonts and alignments. #body_left, #hero, #search, a.postToggle, div.item_panel, #header2, #footer, div.navigation, #comm_form { display:none }…
User Experience Architect: “So guys, I am going to go to the user and try the product. Does the basic use case work?” Engineer: “Yes, it works.” Quality Assurance: “Yes, it works.” User after trying it: “No, it doesn’t work.” Engineer: “Must be user error.” Which part of the joke…