I hate filling out these forms as much as the next guy, but it’ll give me a chance to get to know your project a little bit before I respond.
Work RequestLorem ipsum is so early 2012. Be a real designer and use Hipster Ipsum. Here’s a sample:
Reprehenderit single-origin coffee mustache anim, assumenda aesthetic bushwick qui marfa before they sold out nihil non. 8-bit cardigan proident pinterest, accusamus gluten-free bushwick terry richardson ethnic keytar umami aliquip street art.
Get yours at http://hipsteripsum.me
PS: Why did the hipster burn his mouth eating pizza? Because he ate it before it was cool.
Ha.
Since moving to the heart of Silicon Valley, I’ve been impressed with the world of startups, investors, and the general get er’ done attitude of everyone around. It’s been exciting and adventurous to rub shoulders with some of the top leaders of the tech industry; and I’m sure there’s lots to come.
It seems that the pleasantries exchanged while meeting a new person these days almost always include a few questions about where they work, what they do, and who their investors are.
Every day, each person makes decisions about how to spend their time, their money, their talents, and their resources. Every decision is quantified by the expected return – and in the end, hopefully more is gained than is lost. That time hacking apart monsters in Diablo 3 had better count for something.
Think about your Job: Most everyone will risk eight hours in a single day to that investment. Sometimes twelve or fourteen. Compound the time you spend commuting to and from work, the endless coffee breaks and co-worker chats, and pretty soon half of all your portfolio (time) is risked in a single investment.
If you’re a freelancer, what do your clients look like? How much time are you spending per client relative to your return? Is the a disparate relationship between time spent and return between each of your clients?
These questions are at the heart of quantifying the risk taken each time you throw on your backpack and roll into work. If you have a full-time job, what do your options look like? Are you working by the hour, for a vague pipedream of equity, or can you actually quantify sticking 50% of your eggs each day into a single basket.
During the ebb and flow of life, it’s easy to lose track that a job isn’t just a paycheck – it’s a mutual investment from both parties to (hopefully) make each other copious amounts of money, while furthering the company’s (and if all is well aligned, your own) ambitions.
Be consistently aware when you wake up each day, that over the next twenty-four hours you’re risking X amount of them to a single investment.
Having good investments in place is all well in good, but with something as immaterial and transient as time, how can you take accurate measurements of your investment? Well, the best way is to define what you’d like to see in advance. Write it down. Refer to it often. Use that goal to compare all your business decisions with. Here’s a sample of just one of the goals I created at the start of 2011 while mid-way through a two year run of freelancing:
I want to “Increase lead count from all venues from X to XX per month.”
Through a few measured attempts, I saw a dramatic increase in my monthly requests to the point where I had to set new goals based around filtering out requests, and taking on less work from better people.
Whatever gain you’re using the quantify the risk you take for the job-time investment, make sure that it’s measurable and reported.
On the spectrum of investing, this is perhaps the most ambiguous and difficult to master. When is it time to cut ties and end a relationship? Well, patently, it’s when your measured return is not equal to or greater than the quantified risk. As blatant as the answer is, execution is immeasurably more difficult.
When the moment comes that you know your time is being poorly invested, make immediate steps to correct the mistake you made. Heres a general rule of thumb: if you woke up today, and didn’t want to go to work, you’ve probably made a bad investment.
Here’s to all of us making good investments with our time.
Cheers.
The past two years have been amazing; it’s hard to believe how much has happened since I decided to dive headfirst into the world of full time freelance – it has been a blast. A huge thank you to my awesome clients over the past few years, it was an awesome ride.
My announcement is a bit tardy – but life has been a whirlwind since my decision to switch gears and join The Backplane crew! I’ll be doing UI/UX and Front-end awesomeness to accomplish the simple, succinct goal of changing the world.
Last month I moved with my wife Masha to the heart of Silicon Valley. Coming from the Happy Valley of Utah, it’s been quite a change, but it’s been super exciting transition.
More to come on The Backplane, Silicon Valley, and changing the world. Ready? Set. Here we go!
Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.
I’ve just started to dive into this library – and I gotta say, I’m loving it. At just 5.3kb it really packs a punch, and gives a solid Model-View framework to your app. It comes equipped with an impressive knowledge base, and from the limited time I’ve spent with it, the learning curve is small.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing a lot more on how to organize your front-end delivery with backbone, and create stunningly fast, rock-solid apps using this new(ish) library.
I’m super excited about the changes coming to CSSButton. So far, we’ve had thousands of awesome buttons created, and all with a system that can use a lot of help.
The goal for the site is to create a CSS Prototyping tool, that makes it easy to create, share, and discover awesome code. The UI will be simple, and the software will be powerful. Stay tuned! You can follow the project on dribbble for more previews :-).
Also, Happy Valentines day!
A very wise man once said:
Every time you ask someone to confirm a password, and angel loses it’s wings, a puppy dies, and a kitten is strangled.
OK, so maybe he wasn’t so much a wise man as an arrogant prick, but it was still said on twitter, so… it has to be true, right? Right. Here’s why you should stop living in the past and start removing friction from registration forms by killing password confirmations.
In the not-so-distant past, I wrote an article detailing the need to remove abrasive registration forms from end-users and your products – and in doing so you’d increase leads and exposure. I stand by all that was said there, and want to amend the article with the additional logic put forth below.
At an age when users are confronted daily by a host of new services, apps, and websites to sample, we need to move beyond the traditional approach to get humans actually experiencing the products we want them to use. If walls are put up, demos are too short, or software isn’t fluid, those leads are going to be captured by the enemy! What is first and foremost manning the wall of registration? I’ll tell you what… it’s the redundant password.
OK, so I’m not sure who invented this, but it certainly was before the days of “instant access” and the password reset. I mean, if you’ve created an RIA that’s used by people who can’t even type in their password the same time again and again, then login forms aren’t going to be your biggest problem.
Also, unless you’re in need of a security architect and are protecting the true identity of Batman, you really don’t need to have them include an uppercase, lowercase, digit, symbol, and haiku all in one password. Let’s be honest, it’s just not needed.
Now, I’m not saying this approach will work in every situation. For instance, if you need to authenticate past a simple email address, then you may need some additional credentials here. Another notable exception would be native software for touchscreens and other push devices that don’t use a keyboard. However, in general, your login and registration forms should be near identical, with the exception that one has the option to reset the password.
The whole purpose you’ve brought the user to this point is to let them demo, trial, or use your software – you want to wow them with how frictionless and fluid your process is, and convert them with the speed and agility of your interface. You don’t want to weigh them down and make them sacrifice a kidney for the pleasure of a demo.
The way to do this is simple: after you muster the minimal amount of information required to run the software (in most places this will be email and password), you should log them in immediately and get them involved in your product.
In the outrageous circumstance that a user makes a boo-boo while setting their password, they’ll have to experience the tortuous 49-second inconvenience of a reset; and that might be a good place to ask this singular case to please confirm.
So please, put an end to password confirmations. Let’s all move upward and onward together from this unseemly mark in the avant-garde process of creating stellar UI. If you think I’m dead wrong, let’s hear your rationale!
Even though Nest is old news, the product is still white hot. If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, you should. Combining a Silicon Valley startup with the awesomeness of Mike Matas’ interface design, this company is sure go to places. The interface is stunning, the product is elegant, and the company is breathing life into an all but stagnated industry.
They just have to overcome getting sidelined by Honeywell’s (jagweeds) bogus lawsuit, and they’ll be on their way! I love when great design meets great product.
Coda is a *sweet* app, and I use it almost exclusively for development. The day Panic comes out with a usable version that works for iPad is the day firefighters will break down my door and peel it out of my hands, my motor functions having been overcome from extreme exposure to awesome. Using a little tip from Chris Coyier, I suggest to all my fellow Coda users to create a quick clip that you can easily add gradients. My tab cue is “grad”.
background-color: #FCOLOR; background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#FCOLOR), to(#TCOLOR)); background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #FCOLOR, #TCOLOR); background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #FCOLOR, #TCOLOR); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #FCOLOR, #TCOLOR); background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, #FCOLOR, #TCOLOR);
This will give you on-the-fly, future-resilient CSS3 that should handle all major browser versions and devices. Nuff said.
Last week I was in SF meeting with some of the awesome crew of @launchrock, including co-founders @jaymstr and @thomasknoll. They’re a stellar team, with an awesome product. If you’re releasing a new product or service, they’re a great option for creating buzz, and a viral landing page.
While out there, we had a chance meeting with a few other @500 Startup homies, including console.fm’s @alexbaldwin. After checking out Alex’s app pre-flight, I decided on the plane to change things up a bit with some CSS magic.
Check it out! The speakers, and animation are created with CSS goodness.
Enjoy!
One thing I can never seem to find is a cool jQuery plugin for creating placeholders on input fields that persist after focus, and are totally style-able. Now, I know what you’re thinking… “Why not just use HTML5?” Well, because it’s super lame as-is. Nuff said. iCloud.com actually has an awesome working sample of what I’m talking about, and now, so do I.
I’ve whipped together my first jQuery plugin (it mimics the same functionality as iCloud), and with some time to kill during a flight back to the grand ol’ Salt Lake State, I made a cool working copy.