I saw this fun contest on Twitter called PerfectBusiness. The rules were simple: Boil down a great business idea into a single tweet. Now here is a contest that I could do well with. Here was my idea tweet: @PerfectBusiness #micropitch : Pandora for unsigned bands. Seed real artists, listen…
I need your help. It will just take a second. Problem: I think people are sending me mail which is not arriving at GMail. It’s not in the spam folder either. Could you help me? Send me a mail to glen {at} kokopop.com. No content needed. Subject: can be any…
What you call things is incredibly important. The words you choose carry baggage and implications that people will adopt. The words help people remember and frame an idea. Take for example the current Healthcare debate in the U.S. There is so much complexity and so much riding on one single…
I have been reading this great book called Made to Stick. (Great so far) In it, they talk about Proverbs. Proverbs are short phrase-like ideas that encode a much deeper meaning into them. They are much easier to remember because of the encoding. Examples: A bird in the hand is…
I currently flip flop between TrillianAstra and Digsby as my Instant Messenger of choice. Trillian is a beautiful looking application, but some of the interaction design is lacking that I find really smooth in Digsby. The little widget on the right of my blog is ingenious and one of the…
Yesterday, I was introduced to this product called Balsamiq Mockups. After seeing Flash Catalyst and Microsoft Expression Blend 3 in action, I was hoping for something easier, simpler and more fun. I got all three. Using Balsamiq required no training or anxiety. Part of the reason is the limitations (constraints)…
I received an email about attending a Microsoft demo of their product Expression Blend. Specifically this part called SketchFlow. I spent a little under an hour trying to use it to see if it would help me communicate designs better. A little under an hour was all I could take…
Clearly, the band on the Titanic under-reacted. Many government officials are under-reacting in response to the threats of global warming. Under-reaction is to either do nothing at all and ignore the issue or to do something toothless and symbolic. Under-reacting usually results in the problem festering until it gets so bad it…
Google detects an enormous amount of spam coming into my inbox. They segment it and put it in the Junk folder. Literally hundreds a day and thousands a month. I am sure some “good” non-spam email gets caught in there, but I really can’t spend the time to check. I…
Jared is going through a phase where he is extra nice. It’s great that phases like this exist. He is giving me extra hugs and cleaning up after himself and even cleaning up for Matthew. We often say about children, “Oh, they are just going through a phase.” I wonder…
I saw this on Bill Scott’s blog. It’s a presentation about the culture and values of Netflix. To me, this is a huge issue for most companies. They don’t understand their own values and don’t articulate them even if they exist. Most mission/vision statements are just happy talk. Netflix just…
I asked Ethan to tell me about his day and he got frustrated and annoyed. It is not natural to be able to tell a story and it takes practice. So I started Ethan’s education on The Art Story Telling. Disclaimer: This is highly simplified. Ethan is 9. A good…
The last 5 days I have been on a family trip to Lake Tahoe. We stayed in a cabin with about 15 other people. Some of them were family, some of them were friends of family. When going on a trip, what you are really buying are interesting memories. You…
In Harry Potter, all of the newspapers have pictures that move by magic. The reality is that this magic is pretty much here now. My inexpensive digital camera takes photos or short video clips. You can take video clips with your iPhone too. These short video clips are downloaded off…