• Katie and Ethan on a Mission

    Ethan had a week off of school, so Katie decided to go on a road trip with him.  Just the two of them.  They are traveling down the coast of California visiting a couple of different Missions a day.  (A Mission is an old style church built during the colonization of California…

  • The UX of HTC Touch Pro 2 (Week 2)

    Of course, the minute I get my phone, Verizon announces that they are getting the Palm Pre , Android phones as well as Windows Mobile 6.5 versions of the HTC Touch.  Just my luck! I have 30 days if I want to return this one, but I think I am…

  • End of an Era: Moving on from Marketo

    I joined Marketo in December 2006 as the first non-founder and began a wonderful journey that has lasted 3 years.   I learned a tremendous amount from the people here on a cornucopia of topics and I will miss them.  I have accepted a new position at another company (I’ll…

  • Fun is always better – Piano Stairs

    Great experiment showing that you can encourage better behavior by making the experience more fun. (under 2 minutes) What else can be made fun that is good for you?

  • 21st Century Business Model

    Problem: Forever, the content business model has been to control access and force payment in advance.  Then digital transfer (and the internet) arrived.  Anything that could be digitized could be shared for free, blowing away the access controls and the pre-payments.  Blowing away the business model. The problem in the…

  • Must See Software – Oct 6, 2009

    This list is obviously subject to change over time.  However, I was thinking about the software that I commonly recommend. This is the software that WOWs me.  This is NOT in any particular order.  They are all A+.  I numbered them for easy reference 1. ExtJS – I suggest this one…

  • HTC Touch Pro 2 (Day 1)

    I’m so nervous.  My first smart phone.  It feels so fragile.  I am so afraid of dropping it.  Ok, breathe…breathe….Go to my happy place….ahhh OK, the phone feels nice in my hand.  Activating it was kind of a pain.  Verizon’s website is so awful, I can’t even begin.  I should…

  • What I love about Silicon Valley

    I used to live in NYC.  Greatest public transportation in the world.  Tons of different kinds of businesses.  It was a good city to live near. Now I live in San Mateo, Silicon Valley, California.  I miss the great train systems.  However, the profile of the companies here is very…

  • Rex Ryan: Twitter missed opportunity

    After the Jets game, David Clowney, Wide Receiver NYJ, wrote a twitter message. “1 play in the 1st Half, 4 plays in the 2nd half . . . A bit disappointed about my playing time but very happy and satisfied about the win.” For this tweet, he was benched for…

  • Too much CO2 is bad

    I just saw two sites that are incredibly disturbing.  One claims that CO2 is not a pollutant and the other is claiming CO2 is the best thing in the world for plants.  The ridiculousness of these websites is depressing, because I know that some people think that this point of view is…

  • The UX of buying my first Smart Phone

    For the longest time, I have used a cheap flip phone.  The only “feature” it had was the ability to drop it on the floor and it would continue to work.  The main criteria I had for phones was that they had to not drop my calls.  Thus, we have…

  • Microsoft 7 Party Video Disaster

    Sometimes marketers (no offense) are ridiculous.  Here is an example of the worst marketing I have ever seen. This video really makes me want to install Haiku.  Microsoft, you are making me crazy.  The Outlook-Word thing stinks, but this video made me throw up in my mouth.

  • UX and PRDs

    PRDs (Product Requirement Documents) and MRDs (Marketing Requirement Documents) come in many flavors.  My question today is, “What kind of requirements doc is the most conducive to creating great UX and great products?” Let’s assume for a minute that you have a Product Manager that knows their stuff backwards and forwards.  The…

  • GMail and p.MsoNormal

    Note: This post is from 2009. This is no longer applicable. I have one favor to ask of the GMail team. It will help millions of people and has zero bad side-effects. Please put the following line in your CSS. p.MsoNormal {margin: 0px} Why is this important? When Outlook sends…