My 2009 New Year’s Resolutions
It's that time of the year to write a list of stuff you probably wont get to within the next year, but I'm as big of a sucker as the next guy so here my New Year's Resolutions.
I, of course, have the standard resolutions like: get into better shape, spend more time with friends and family, learn something new, date Jennifer Aniston, but I feel that the following 3 resolutions are the most important.
Find a Hobby - It's not as easy as it sounds. I have the shortest attention span in the world. In fact, I'm almost sure a bar of soap has a longer attention span than I do. This causes a problem when trying to stick with. The only thing that has been able to keep my attention over the years is anything design related and as a result of that - it's all I do. I think it might be a good idea to venture off and find something else that keeps my attention. This leads me into my next resolution…
Get a Pilot's License - Ever since I was a young lad I've been into planes. When I was much younger I was absolutely obsessed with them, but gave up my dream of flying once I learned you need to have math skills… I have none. I've talked to a few pilots since then and I've been told that it's not as hard as I think it is. In 2009 I hope to at least begin schooling (since it may take longer than a year to complete).
Freelance More - I know this may be a contradiction to my previous resolutions, but since I've become an in-house designer I've had next to no time to work on any projects of my own. That's typically how it goes, but I'm determined to find a balance between the being a freelance design and an in-house designer. When you're an in-house designer you often focus on a single project for large amounts of time. When you're freelancing you're often working on numerous completely different projects at a single time. I believe being able to live in both worlds will keep me for becoming bored with any one project and force me to push myself to be more creative.
Steve Jobs Isn’t Dead… Yet.
Today Gizmodo posted a story repeating the popular rumor that Steve Jobs canceled his Macworld appearance due to his poor health.
Steves health is rapidly declining. Apple is choosing to remove the hype factor strategically vs letting the hype destroy apple when the inevitable news comes later this spring.
This strategic loss will be less of a bang with investors. This is why Macworld is a no-go anymore. No more Steve means no more hype. Saying they are no longer needing [Macworld] is the cover designed by the worldwide "loyalty" department.
Since Gizmodo is claiming they heard from a "previously reliable source" the internet went in to a panic. Even Digg's founder, Kevin Rose, tweeted that after reading the article he sold all of his Apple stock. AAPL dropped $0.32 today after the Gizmodo entry had been published.
In the panic, Robert Scoble hit the streets in search of news on Steve's health. He visited places in Palo Alto that Steve is known to frequent such as his favorite yogurt spot, Fraiche Yogurt (it's pretty good).
Gizmodo's post is probably the 1,000,000th blog this week to claim that Steve Jobs is near death. And maybe he is? Either way, it's none of our business. I think it's more interesting to read the reports on Steve's health and see that no one is showing any sympathy for Steve's family or even Steve himself. Everyone's main concern is who will be running Apple after he's gone.
Not that it matters - everyone knows if Steve dies his brain will be salvaged and placed in some sort of sleek looking Apple CEO robot. I can see the keynote speech now, "And one more thing… it's called the iSteve"
Vacations or How Life Should Be
It's the holiday season and Christmas trees and champagne isn't on my mind.
I'm about a week into a 2 week vacation and what I'm enjoying most is the silence that typically comes from my alarm clock in the morning. I'm not up early during the week or anything; I usually wake up a little after 9A.M. The sound of the alarm clock doesn't get any quieter in spite of how low I set the volume - it's the sound of defeat.
Yesterday I forgot what day it was and it felt great. It reminded me of a time when I would wake up on top of an old mattress that was handed down to me by an ex-roommate who was too lazy to pick up his things after being kicked out. He was told to take his mattress, night stand, lamp and computer desk. His reply was, "Give it to the Goodwill." I had nothing except for a bag of clothes at the time; I figured I need it just as much or more than someone that would be shopping at the Goodwill. I still have most of his stuff to this day. I replaced the mattress not too long ago and I swear it's more uncomfortable now than that mattress that was discarded by someone years ago.
Breakfast would take place once I was hungry enough to be able to stomach a bowl of cereal with milk that had expired weeks earlier. If I was really lucky, a friend of mine was ordering too large of a breakfast somewhere and I would be able to pick at the leftovers.
Time isn't as valuable when you have nowhere to be the next day; you always seem to have so much of it. Nights only ended after I watched the sun come up and I would spend my afternoons in Capitola or rushing to finish projects I've been contracted for.
Things have changed, but I suppose I'm still having fun. Every now and then it just hits me that I used live a completely different life with completely different goals. It could just be a coincidence that it only hits me when I'm on vacation.
Maybe it's a fair trade - I hear an alarm clock in the morning now, but the milk never spoils.
Redesigning the YouSendIt Homepage
Before I became a YouSendIt employee, I was a YouSendIt user and as long as I could remember the homepage was a mess (see it archived on Flickr). It featured a large interactive Flash area that was not only useless, but also large in file size. Not to mention, it was using up all of the prime real estate when viewing the site at 1024x768. On top of all of that it didn’t work on your iPhone. (Funny since 90% of YouSendIt employees can be seen using their iPhone as they walk around the office).
Flash aside, the homepage wasn’t very user friendly at all and it didn’t clearly explain what it is we do. It had also become cluttered from years of new features and promotions being added. The result was a slow loading homepage that was overloaded with content.
When the time came to redesign I first sat down with users (one-by-one) and I conducted user test after user test to try to find out what was working and what wasn’t. I found that users typically gravitated toward the send form and didn’t pay any attention to our paragraph of text that we called our “mission statement” – this was expected. Second, we needed to find out what our users typically did once they arrived at our homepage. For this we reviewed our analytical data and monitored users as they used the website (this was apart of my test).
Once we figured out what it was that the user wanted to do; we started to work on our messaging. YouSendIt has the bittersweet problem of being valuable to just about everyone so writing copy can be a challenge. Thankfully, we had a brilliant marketing team on the job. The only thing I enforced was that all copy be trimmed as much as possible to keep the page from being overbearing and to keep the load time down.
The result of all of our usability testing, designing and redesigning is what’s live on yousendit.com right now. It went live last night and while we don’t have the analytical data right now to prove it – I believe it’s a success. I feel that it’s a victory for the UX team here at YouSendIt and a small step in the right direction for the company as a whole. More than anything, it’s a sign that things at YouSendIt are changing for the better.
UPDATE: This entry has been posted on the offical YouSendIt blog!
Pirates of the Amazon Firefox Add-on
Finally, a new Firefox Add-on that I can get excited about.
Pirates of the Amazon is a Firefox Add-on that will alert you whenever media that’s on Amazon is available for free on The Pirate Bay.
It works like this, you’re browsing Amazon and you come across a movie you really like; the Pirates of Amazon add-on will automatically check to see if that media is on The Pirate Bay and a “Download 4 Free” graphic will appear on the page. Simply click the graphic and the .torrent file download dialog will open – run it with uTorrent (or the torrent client you prefer) and you’ll have your media before you know it.
I don’t need to tell you this, but downloading torrents from The Pirate Bay could be illegal, but hey, downloading is like jay walking – you’re probably not going get caught.
Happy downloading.
Pownce Shutting Down After Being Purchased by Six Apart
Pownce, a microblogging service (similar to Twitter) that was created by Digg’s Kevin Rose has announced today they have been purchased by Six Apart. Good news for Pownce users? No. Pownce has given their users a 2-week notice that the site will be shutting down.
According to Six Apart’s blog Leah Culver and Mike Malone will be joing the Six Apart team and Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka will serve as advisers to Six Apart.
Paid Pownce users are reporting that they will be receiving a free TypePad Pro account for a year…. sorry guys. This is the thanks you get for supporting a very small group developers and designers by giving them $20 a year. I have to use a Pro TypePad account at work and I have to break it to you, it’s not worth paying for.
As you can probably tell, I’m a bit bitter about the deal. I don’t use Pownce that often, but I feel offended. I’m not going to say that I’m annoyed that they attracted users to only sell it later because that’s part of the start up game, but to attract a bunch of only to sell the service and shut it down? Ouch.