July 2010
32 posts
“It’s human, and haptic, in a category dominated by features and...”
– The Future of Self-Service Banking, by BBVA and IDEO, courtesy Al3x
Charlie says: “I don’t like that ‘functionality’ is laid out as the foil in this quote, but the gist is nice: focus on a humane interface, rather than a features arms race.”
“A practical, bug ridden, bad implementation of something trumps a theoretical,...”
– Jacques Mattheij (although I’m sure others have said similar things before)
Tobin Schwaiger-Hastanan on Startup Metrics →
I should just start a sideblog about cohort analysis.
“You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people...”
– Paul Graham, The Acceleration of Addictiveness
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-25) →
Ben Gibbard (9)
The Mountain Goats (4)
Owl City (3)
Jason Mraz (1)
Amos Lee (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
How to measure if users love your product using... →
More on cohort analysis. From Andrew Chen.
So … I’m in NYC for a few days. (Sorry for the late notice!)
If you’re in Manhattan, I’d love to connect. Let me know? Send me a note on Twitter: @charliepark.
Thanks, home slices!
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-18) →
The Postal Service (23)
Donavon Frankenreiter (6)
Alberto Lizzio: I Musici Di San Marco (6)
Jack Johnson (6)
Matt Costa (5)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
How to estimate Lifetime Value; Sample cohort... →
The Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog on how to use a cohort analysis. I’m still working on getting my admin dashboard to create these on the fly.
How to Maximize Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing... →
They frame it as maximizing pay-what-you-wish pricing, but it’s also insightful regarding the causium model we were looking at the other day.
The absolute bare minimum every programmer should... →
A field guide for aspiring nerds.
ATTN MGMT BLOG
I wanted to mention a side blog I started a little while ago. I wasn’t going to say anything until I had a decent number of posts. They’re in place now, so I thought I’d share.
One of the things I’m interested in is attention management. How do we prioritize our action? How do we stay productive and free from distractions? Personally, I’m terrible at managing my own...
1 tag
Calculating Color Contrast for Legible Text in...
Back in 2008, Kevin Hale (at Wufoo) published Calculating Color Contrast for Legible Text. In it, he goes over how to determine the best contrasting color (that is, either pure white or pure black) when given a random hexadecimal color (something like “#851B03”).
For example, that “#851B03” with black text looks like this:
#851B03
With white text, it looks better. Like...
You’ve either shipped, or you haven’t. You’ve either poured weeks, months or even years of your life into bringing a product or a service into the world, or you haven’t.
If you have, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You’ll have flicked a switched, cap deploy‘d, or flipped your closed sign to open, and just waited – holding your breath for whatever happens next.
And at that moment...
1 tag
A few random thoughts on beta testing a new site
Somebody recently asked for beta testers for a new site. I said I’d give it a shot. In signing up, I had a few thoughts about the process, and just wanted to capture them, as Tony and I are about to start our own beta test soon.
I really want a simple, inline means of dropping feedback. A text box that’s sitting right there on the screen, inviting comment.
I’d actually be open...
Me, getting annoyed by Microsoft's abuse of...
If you’ve spent any time in the information visualization world, you know Edward Tufte. If you’ve spent any time with Edward Tufte’s work, you know sparklines.
Here’s a sparkline:
In Tufte’s words, sparklines are “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics.” He’s been talking about them since the early 2000’s. You can see them in a...
Monocle smile!
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-11) →
Faded Paper Figures (8)
Electric President (7)
Jens Lekman (6)
Immoor (6)
Freelance Whales (6)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”
– Tim O’Reilly
(I reference this all the time. Might as well have a copy of it up here.)
“Jesus shouldn’t be making your life easier.”
– Zurik, via At Once Good and Imperfect
Dear Tumblr, It’d be nice if I could customize my “post by e-mail” address. That’s all. Thanks, Charlie
The whole LeBron James decision depresses me. Not because of where he decided to go (or not go), but because so many people could (apparently) be so wrapped up in something so fundamentally trivial.
There’s a Neil DeGrasse Tyson interview where he talks about how we’re only 1% different, genetically, from chimps, and how most people are shocked that it’s such a small amount....
Tl;dr: Social consumption can be a very good thing. Foursquare is not the good kind of social consumption.
So, Foursquare.
I think Foursquare has a lot of (good) potential within a number of uses (“I’m in the East Village, I’m wondering which bar in the area has a good number of my friends”). But without more granular default controls (“only share with people who...
iPod update: My “wallpaper”, by the way, is a 1px x 1px black PNG. So when I wake the iPod up, it’s just got a black background with the time/date and a slider. And then when the Dock shows up, there’s no transition, since the background is, again, all black. If you want the black png for your own iPod, you can download it from here: [ here it is! → ← that was it!].
...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-4) →
Kurt Masur: New York Philharmonic Orchestra (57)
The Mountain Goats (20)
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (16)
Regina Spektor (9)
Yo-Yo Ma, Rudolf Firkusny (9)
Imported…
Why did so many successful entrepreneurs and... →
A good primer on startup leadership.
“That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.”
– Thomas Paine, via Trent
Park’s Law of the Inbox Half-Life: If it takes you N minutes to cut the size of your inbox in half, it’ll take you another N minutes to cut that smaller inbox in half again.
Example: If it takes you two hours to cut your inbox from 80 messages to 40 (resolving 40 messages), it’ll take you another two hours to resolve the next 20. And another two hours to deal with the next 10.
