May 2012
7 posts
1 tag
“The biggest mistake in projects is confusing ‘getting started’ with...”
– Drew McManus, Pivotal Labs Lecture
1 tag
“There goes the guy with the funky sound.”
– Beastie Boys
1 tag
“Revenue is a beta feature”
– Ted Roden
1 tag
“Only when the design fails does it draw attention to itself; when it succeeds,...”
– John D. Berry
1 tag
“Collaboration without commitment is just talking.”
– Neil Denny, Do Lectures
1 tag
“You don’t have to do it first, you just have to do it right.”
– Jack Dorsey
“A million guys walk in to a Silicon Valley bar. None of them buy anything. The...”
– Quora
April 2012
3 posts
1 tag
“You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not...”
– Tim Cook, Apple
1 tag
DIBI in one slide
My review of DIBI is this slide by @seb_ly summing up what DIBI was all about. Every talk had this theme involved at some degree or level. The middle for us all is where creativity is and we should all strive to reach that synthesis.
3 tags
You wanted to talk about business in the North East?
Yesterday I spent a few hours sitting around a table of thinkers and doers. We were invited by Simon Hanson, working for the Federation of Small Businesses to meet MP Ian Wright, to talk about business prosperity for the North East. I met Simon at a Codeworks Event and then another time during a NENT talk of mine.
I also had the pleasure of...
March 2012
10 posts
“Our goals are very simple — to design and make better products. If we can’t make...”
– Sir Jonny Ive of Apple
“Work on stuff that matters. Work on stuff that you’ll look back on and be...”
– Tim O’Reilly at SxSW
2 tags
“I don’t think it took us so long. We just had priorities. Had we tried to be...”
– Kevin of Instagram
2 tags
“Solve a real pain point, and don’t be afraid to charge for it.”
– Danny When, co-founder of Harvest
2 tags
“The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. I don’t know if...”
– Paul Graham
3 tags
“ “The actual customer has a completely different mindset than the early...”
– SxSW with Eric Ries
2 tags
“ @ethank hah. startup plan: find something with 200 buttons and replace it with...”
2 tags
Two sweet months with the Larderbox
The startup entrepreneur Tristan Watson put together a product with amazing potential. It’s called the Larderbox. A subscription model where Love Your Larder , his company, goes out and selects four to five items you’d normally never think to buy and delivers it to your door the first Thursday of the month. That’s it. So how’s it been...
2 tags
Get a clue from history
Reading the news about Apple having difficulty securing acceptance from media companies about content distribution on Apple’s upcoming Apple TV juggernaught is somewhat humorous. If you just look back at something called history you should all be laughing right now.
Apple is very good at something called the halo effect in business. You garner attention around one...
2 tags
Never let anyone confuse you otherwise
I was at TEDxGateshead yesterday. The quality of talks always surprise me. Consistently TED delivers talks that get to the heart of the matter that make you think and trigger constructive and creative thinking. Two quotes from two talks stuck with me.
Small teams with passion and strong focus can do anything.
If you remove the fear of failure the...
February 2012
12 posts
1 tag
“ @joshuatopolsky @parislemon I think I’ve cracked the code on the...”
– @axian
2 tags
“Talking about ‘users’ is totally wrong. As long as you keep talking about users,...”
– Mikael Hed of Rovio
3 tags
Make a great product and users will upgrade their browsers for it
I’ve been working in the web industry for a few years. The constant is always about browsers. The issue with browser compatibility, graceful degradation, and progressive enhancement when services like JavaScript are disabled in browsers while providing the “bare bones” for lesser browsers are regularly occurring...
2 tags
“ “A product shouldn’t be targeted at people or demographics; it...”
– Key differences between mainstream and early adopters
1 tag
Basecamp hack for email messaging
Clients love to email. When you have project governance in Basecamp, it’s very easy for team members to have correspondence in email with clients as well as Basecamp. Suddenly you have to check both apps to find the right answer. It can topple over very quickly. This is where Basecamp’s dropbox email comes in handy.
When you’re logged into...
3 tags
Surmising the Product Paradox
To me there is something more important than art and science. It’s in understanding how these two things intersect. For me, understanding the above makes for a better project and product manager. Great teams don’t hire for a role and skill set, they hire for the attitude and responsibility of delivering the whole product against quality. I think this...
2 tags
1 tag
Why social item-rating apps will never make it or will
The two apps in the wild that I speak of are @Oink and @Stamped. These two apps are of course incubated and launched from Silicon Valley, which over the last four years, thanks to Gavin Newsom, includes San Francisco. These two apps simply aren’t going to make it (crossing the chasm) because for two reasons: people don’t know...
2 tags
Your product is foremost content
Working with a startup you learn which roles the team critically needs and which roles you don’t. You trim the fat. You want to have a focussed mindset. I spoke about this in @happiest’s latest blog post: Lean. One critical element the team needs that isn’t a role itself but is paramount is to understand that your product is foremost...
2 tags
There’s no time for product failures, yet they still happen
I’m really proud about my latest talk I gave at @nenewtech. So I uploaded it to @speakerdeck. I attempt to draw a connection between how to best make products by distilling the ideals of rising popularity from Lean Startup by @ericries and Behaviour Driven Development by @tastapod.
One should learn, build, and...
1 tag
Turn Twitter for Mac into a TweetDeck
I thought I’d share this discovery. I’m surprised I’ve seen no one talking about this yet. Simply set your current view in Twitter for Mac (e.g. replies, search topics, hashtags) and then ‘click-and-hold’ the Twitter for Mac icon. From the list select ‘Open in New Window’.
January 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Apple’s Design Conundrum
Apple is known for its design chops. Specifically this article regards Apple’s industrial design prowess. There have been articles already written about the importance of user experience around the Aesthetic Usability Effect.
As any fanboy would note, this would be a strength for Apple; however, this strength is also Apple’s biggest weakness. An...
3 tags
Hello—Starbucks iPhone app for mobile payments and more?
I read over twitter the @thenextweb news that @starbucksuk was going to launch the mobile payments iPhone app starting in January 2012 for the UK. The app launched last week, but I had the opportunity to test it earlier than that when I flew out to San Francisco, where the app has been out for quite a while.
While in San Francisco I...
2 tags
Using the British Airways app for iPhone
During the holiday break for Christmas and New Years—or what have you—I got a chance to use the British Airways app for the iPhone during my travels. I wasn’t sure what to expect: will security let me hold a phone in areas that have ‘no mobile signage’ or the alien aspect of handing a stranger my phone to scan my boarding pass.
Sure...