How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

I heart Google spreadsheets...mostly

Not like it took much to beat Excel for a less than shitty spreadsheet but it’s the first time I’ve willingly given up a native app for a web app. But..as you can imagine I have a request:

Make the cells drag and drop’able. Allow me to grab a bunch and put them somewhere else. Seems doable to me.

Oh….and fix the plethora of no brain design mistakes made in the UI. The worse offender is the tab system…they all behave differently, many don’t necessitate being a tab, there are two sets of tabs (der…), and the ones on the right are the worst. Explain the Share tab to me…it takes over the whole sheet…which Publish and Discuss don’t. :-P

Checking email is so fun, I do it twice

Facebook did in fact arm many folks with an address book they might never have had - basically, they opened communication lines to people via “networks” and also created another walled garden by which people search actually (for now) provides reasonalby usable results.

But lets notice the problem it created: This morning I received 3 emails in my Yahoo! Mail account inbox from Facebook letting me know that a friend from Facebook sent me a message. The nice part is that I can read it. The not so nice part is to do anything else, including “mark it as read” I need to visit Facebook and…yep, you guessed it - CHECK MY EMAIL AGAIN. Not sure where to draw my conclusion here, I appreciate being connected to more folks but I think Facebook has significantly underthought the problem of internet based communication and their role in it. In someways I think someone has to look at email much like Flickr did with photos - turning the usage of the technology on it’s head. I don’t think email innovation is going to come from the rendering of text blocks. It’s going to tackle networks and message delivery systems; the crux of the technology itself.

The scary thought is…if Facebook offered the ability to pop3 your other accounts into their service, would you? Perhaps Facebook = AOL 2.0

Last call with Carson Daly

Pillow Hunt

If you know me you know it’s my MO to take things too far. i.e. finding the worlds best bicycle light. Building the trickest looking city bike known to man, etc. etc. Anywho. My latest hunt is the pillow hunt. Due to a recent doctors explanation that I carry all my stress in my neck which pulls my upper vertebrae out of whack thus giving me my chronic headaches I’ve decided to make some modifications to try to alleviate some of my neck strain.

• Stretch my neck more frequently at work
• Use a neck traction device at home
• Get regular massages (once or twice a month if possible)
• Pay attention to my stress levels, watch for those super long work weeks that tend to just happen.
• Lastly, find a pillow with a few characteristics that will align with MY spine/neck/head.

As it turns out most folks use pillows that are too high and don’t offer much if any neck support.First I went down the “neck pillow” route. Basically these are pillows that have a higher front than back with the theory that elevating your neck will support it. While this theory is true the pillow makers take it too far. Most of these style pillows have 3-5” of rise. Way too much for my body anyway. Ideally, from my understanding, is that you want to being laying down in as much of a natural position as possible while supporting your neck. For me that means a pillow of maybe 1” in the back and 1.5 near the neck. That is super thin in comparison to the pillows I’ve seen. Thus, I hunt. I will conquer. :-)

Cable TV Buffet plan

I’ve always been annoyed with the cable companies. It feels like they just don’t understand their users. Not that I have really studied the business or anything but I don’t think anyone that watches all of their channels. Flipping channels is an undesireable behavior if you think about it. The Guide will never suffice - we’re visual people. ok, wait, losing focus.

My idea: Let me choose the channels I want and price them indivudually, like a $1 a channel for regular ones and $2 for premium channels. Chances are I’ll spend more or the same amount as before but be 10 times happier. You can pitch me products better based on my choices (TV channels don’t seem to be able to do that very well). You can pitch me new channels, movies, music, etc based on my selections.

Cable companies are like voice providers (mobile and landline); they just hold innovation down. They are slow and can’t move at the speed of technology. I rather enjoy watching the internet crush each one at a time.

Versus - the meathead channel, sans the Tour

Dear Versus-

You suck. Why couldn’t you have let someone else cover the Tour De France? I ABSOLUTELY cannot stand (well that’s not true) the commercials you force me to watch. Don’t you understand that just about the entire audience you have for the tour is very very different from the meatheads you are marketing towards? Here are most common 3 commercials - Enzite, male enhancement with porn quality talent. Cage fighting promo’s. Ya, I love watching people kill each other…it’s as though we haven’t evolved since the Roman Gladiator fights. Lastly, the secret encounters commercials where apparently you can meet friends for humping over the phone. Sure, right, exactly. Love it. Thanks. Please give the tour to anyone….anyone that won’t make us cycling fans suffer through your atrocious commercials. Or at least change your line up to things that pertain to cycling fans. Do your research you puds.

Losing the podium one release at a time

I was thinking about Microsoft the other day and wondering why they don’t start another brand and build their products from scratch. With every subsequent release it becomes a bit more obvious that their problem is code. Deeply rooted old code. I can almost guarantee that every designer working there spends all their time trying to create mediocre designs with the tools they have. I commend them for giving it a shot. I can see the poor martyr saying “wait, wait, wait, the system currently works how?”. Followed by an explanation of an incredibly limiting system that was built 6+ years ago - which is much like dog years in the computer industry. So what gives? Too much MS koolaid in that place? I suspect so. My thinking is Microsoft should spawn a new brand to build new products and do the following with the seedling:

1. Start from scratch. New code from the ground up. Go AWAL and don’t look back.
   
2. New people. Most of the organizations I’ve come into contact with get bogged down by the folks that have hung out too long. Sure, they are loyal, smart, hard working, etc. But the fact is they want to work the same way they did yesterday and that’s not going to cut it. Find engineers who are passionate about writing beautiful code and not only trust designers to do great work but understand what designers do.
   
3. Hire a designer to run this new business unit. Here is my theory; Steve Jobs is a design tyrant, but a designer nonetheless. He gets beautiful things made because at the end of the day that is what he cares about. That is what sells consumer goods and that is what drives people to become passionate about a brand. No one will ever…ever…say that they love Microsoft Word.  Microsoft has a done a great job of building tools and when computers were new this was amazing, just like the Model T was in its day. But we’ve evolved and now we want something beautiful and usable. It’s now the era of design (in the computer industry).
4. Do it all internally. Don’t outsource any part of this new venture. Get people to build the brand, design the brand, and most importantly buy into the brand themselves.
5. Recruit talent under the new name. Most talented people don’t want to be trapped underneath the machine that is Microsoft. From the outside it’s seen as an unsurmountable constraint.
6. Drive fast. Ship and iterate.
   
7. Open up. Start off open, engage the developer community from the get go and most importantly build the system with this intent.