Where does your personality fit in? Confidence is good, but it can be taken too far and turn into arrogance. Humility is a virtuous trait, but taken in extreme and you don’t stand up for your design vision. It is extremely difficult to hit a bullseye. Who is humble and confident without being arrogant or…
Every organization I have ever been a part of has a shifting org structure. Despite it changing all the time, people need to know who to contact in other departments and where people work and who they report to. This usually isn’t public information, but it should be available to people who work in a…
Recently Netflix changed their prices, not that radically (in my opinion), but enough to make me reconsider who we are paying for the privilege of showing me a movie. Go to a Movie Theater This is the most expensive way to watch. On the plus side, you have the largest screen possible and great surround…
Last week we went up to Lake Tahoe and had a nice time. It wasn’t as story laden as the last time, but it was pretty good. The highlight for me was doing some geocaching near Eagle Falls on the south end of Lake Tahoe. Check out this picture of Jared climbing up the side…
I am completely boggled by the development strategy of Chrome. Right now, I am trying to collect various Chrome bugs in the application I design. Which version should I use for testing? How different are they? What’s the difference in the various branches? How will I know if the user upgrades? How will I know…
Already Public: LinkedIn: 6.6B valuation Pandora: 2.3B Fusion-IO: 2.2B IPO in the next 18 months: Groupon: 20B? Facebook: 100B+?? I have been hearing more and more news about this company or that company filing for initial public offerings. On the one hand, this is exciting. Lots of money is going to flow. On the other…
I’ve had the Samsung Series 9 for a little more than a week now. It has been a difficult device to review. It is such a mix of awesome, scary and annoying. Disclaimer: I am picky. Really picky. Especially about computer equipment. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, knowing that I am…
There has been an explosion of different form factors on laptops, netbooks, tablets, smart phones and other internet connected devices like xBox, Roku, DirecTV, etc. It’s nearly impossible to compare apples-to-apples. What is someone to do when they have a specific situation and want to try and get the right device? In the past 2…
Next time you are in a meeting, look around the table. How many people are working on laptops? How many are working on their iPhones, Blackberrys or Androids? How many are making eye contact with the person talking and engaging in the conversation? Some meetings are better than others, but every day I am in…
The media has been trying their best to keep changing the subject. It got me thinking about distractions. For example: If you were trying to focus the world’s attention on the Iraq war (2003) then you sure as hell didn’t want New Orleans to be submerged in water. If you were raising money for New…
As an American, I am willing to live with… Reduction of the size of the military by 50%. The cost is enormous and we would be just fine with a reduction in forces to half of what we have today. We would still be spending more on military than most other countries. Reduction of nuclear…
I have been a Microsoft guy my whole life. I used DOS, Windows 3.1 as a kid. I beta tested Windows 95, Windows 98, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. I also beta tested every browser they have ever shipped from the first version of Internet Explorer as well as every version of…
jQuery 1.5 was released today. jQuery was one of the most important breakthroughs for me as a designer. I was an expert in HTML and CSS, but I was not able to program. My career aspirations were pointing towards design and jQuery was the perfect lever to get more out of the web. I spent…
A story from a friend, but it probably sounds familiar to many of you. It is related to the magic triangle of Scope, Resources and Time. You can only focus on one. Trying to focus on two or three is a fool’s game and inevitably leads to failure. Here is an illustration of trying to…