Month: September 2011

Current Status  →

This evening I’ll be taking my first crack at roasting my own coffee. I’ve got a some Guatemalan Chajulense fair trade organic, my Craigslist-find West Bend Poppery, and this Sweet Maria’s tutorial. I’ll report how it goes tomorrow morning on Shawn Today, and no doubt Ben and I will talk about it a bit on The B&B Podcast.

Current Status

Unitasking  →

Trent Walton:

I have a big monitor that sits on a big desk, which is littered with stacks of paper the same way my iMac is littered with stacks of apps. I see corners of windows everywhere, peeking out and siphoning shreds of attention away from the task at hand. This need to navigate from one app to the next has facilitated my evolution into a multitasking machine. Not since the arcade edition of Street Fighter II have I mastered so many gestures and key commands. Utilities like Mission Control, Alfred App, and Better Touch Tool, summoned by various combos of taps and swipes, have become key to the way I work. Emails get answered while to-do lists are created while graphics are exported while sites get updated. Notifications pop-up, and I suppress them. I am master of my desktop environment, and it’s wearing me out.

Unitasking

A Quick Guide to Common Miscapitalizations of Tech Names

Below are listed the proper spellings and capitalizations of certain tech names which are commonly capitalized incorrectly.

One Word, Medial Capitals

  • LaunchBar
  • TextExpander
  • MacBook (Air/Pro)
  • TextEdit
  • FaceTime
  • TextMate
  • MarsEdit
  • WordPress
  • AirPlay
  • AirDrop

One Word, no Medial Capitals

  • Launchpad
  • Macworld
  • Dropbox
  • Xcode
  • Facebook
  • Typekit
  • Thunderbolt

Two words, not Title Case

  • iPod touch
  • iPod nano
  • iPod shuffle
  • iPod classic
  • Mac mini
  • Home screen
  • Retina display

Product Names That Don’t Even Exist

  • iTouch

TextExpander Snippet Group

Download and import this TextExpander snippet group to help you properly capitalize these names for the times you accidentally miscapitalize them.

A Quick Guide to Common Miscapitalizations of Tech Names

A Back Button Labeled “Back” Is Never a Good Option  →

Neven Mrgan on labeling the Back button in iOS apps:

The Back button should never show the text “Back”. […]

This is redundant and it provides no context. Note that Apple never does this, not in any app. Instead, they provide either the full title of the previous view, or an abbreviated/truncated version of it.

Another way to think of it: why label a button with the word “Back” when the button itself is already shaped like an arrow that is pointing back? If Apple wanted that button to be labeled “Back” then they would have designed it as a square button with rounded corners like the “Edit” button is.

A Back Button Labeled “Back” Is Never a Good Option

Good to Know: ifttt is Pronounced “Ift” (Like “Gift”, But With No G)  →

If you’re still discovering ifttt, Jon Mitchell has a nice writeup at Read Write Web about how to use it to pretty much automate the backing up of your entire online life. I don’t think I would ever take the time or energy to go this far with the service (I’m anti-digital-packratiness), but this does give a nice idea of just how powerful and versatile ifttt already is.

Good to Know: ifttt is Pronounced “Ift” (Like “Gift”, But With No G)

You Can’t Buy Word of Mouth

Suppose that one morning this Fall we woke up to an email from Apple that read: “We have a new iPhone, and we think it’s pretty great. It will be on sale tomorrow at Apple retail stores and on our website.”

No pictures, no description, no Press Event, and no information about the new iPhone other than the fact that Apple likes it and it will be available tomorrow.

There would be lines for that unseen iPhone.

Good marketing may get people in the door the first time, but it’s good product development that gets them in the door the second time and the third time. (Or, in Apple’s case this coming Fall, the fifth time.)

There was a time when advertising was glamorous and brands were built 30 seconds at a time. In those days all you had to do to build your customer base was buy enough television and radio commercials. Getting a new customer was about as easy as getting their attention. Brand loyalty was a two step process:

Discovery → Use

Today, brands are built one conversation at a time. People pay little attention to commercials now and are weary of the new guy who’s selling something. Now people try before they commit:

Discovery → Trial → Use

But it’s not just about using things. We want the best. We want the best lawnmower, the best charcoal grill, the best coffee maker, the best local restaurant, and the best mobile phone. We want to use products and services that we enjoy and appreciate, and we want to tell our friends about them.

Discovery → Trial → Delight → Evangelism

Evangelism is word-of-mouth marketing. It’s the best kind of marketing because it’s honest and personal. We don’t pay attention to television commercials and magazine ads because we don’t trust them. We do, however, trust our friends recommending something to us.

And so, companies want their customers to tell their friends about the product. But try as you may, you can’t force people to talk about your product, which means that the next best thing is to try and get people to at least use it.

Therefore, instead of spending $500 to put their logo and tagline in front of a potential customer, companies are spending that $500, plus operating at a loss, to put their product directly into someone’s hand. They are basically paying us to use their product.

  • It’s why networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook let people use their service for free.
  • It’s what local businesses are doing when they use Groupon.
  • It’s what retailers are hoping for when they sell something on Fab.com
  • It’s what HP accidentally fell into when it sold the TouchPad for $99.

Companies are hoping to skip Discovery and Trial altogether with the dream that their product is sure to delight anyone that touches it. They have seen the power of word-of-mouth marketing and now the thrust of their advertising has changed. Advertising has gone from “look at me” to “try me” to “like me” to “please like me so much that you’ll tell your friends about me.”

But if you step back and look at the successful companies that have grown, you’ll see that their success lies primarily in great product development that lead to natural evangelism.

Companies that choose not to spend money on advertising are willfully skipping Discovery and Trial in the hopes of going straight to Delight. This is doable, but it takes either a lot of time or a lot of money.

You can start small and slowly iterate and improve upon your product while gradually increasing your user base through word of mouth. Or you can grow quickly by throwing a lot of money behind your product and paying for people to use it instead of selling it to them.

Both are risky.

If you’re going to slowly build your customer base then you’ll need another source of income to sustain you during that time of growth. But if you’re the one who’s going to pay for the product your customers are using, then you’ll need another source of income indefinitely.

You Can’t Buy Word of Mouth

The Sad State of Desktop Notifications  →

Thomas Houston hits on that pain point so many of us feel: notifications. It’s not just the various forms and priorities that notifications take shape on the desktop, it’s also the lack of any sort of unification. Some notifications are popovers, some are emails, some are iOS notifications, some are dialog boxes, some are badges assigned to icons. Some are push and some are passive.

  • If I want to know my current site traffic I check my Mint stats in my dashboard.
  • If I want to know the current weather I check dashboard.
  • Growl notifies me of a change to a Dropbox folder, or when my RSS feed download session has completed.
  • The Twitter Menu Bar icon lights up blue if I have a new Twitter DM.
  • My iPhone gets the incoming iMessages.
  • When I have an upcoming event, a dialog box pops up on my Mac at the same time a notification shows up on my iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad.
  • ifttt emails me if it’s going to snow tomorrow.
  • And so on.

But gosh. Right now I’d be happy with a way to keep calendar alerts from buzzing on my laptop, iPhone, and iPad all at the same time even though all three devices are sitting next to one another on my desk.

The Sad State of Desktop Notifications

Caren [Sponsor]  →

My thanks to Caren for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Caren is a free website that helps you plan, organize, and delegate the tasks and appointments that go along with caring for a loved one.

Not to get too personal, but Caren is a website I wish my family had known about a few years ago. In 2008 my mom brought my grandmother into her home to live with her. My grandmother had Dementia, and my mom chose to become her primary caregiver. My aunts and uncles helped out as often as they could, and my parents had a part-time nursing assistant who would come to the house a few days a week. /but even with all that help, taking care of my grandmother was far more than a full-time job.

A lot of the stress was related to the planning and the logistics surrounding my grandmother’s needs. And that is precisely what Caren has been built to help handle. Caren is basically a project management app designed solely for helping with the many logistical details that go with taking care of a loved one. It has a robust website, a native iPhone app, and is completely free to use.

Once you’ve signed up with Caren, you can add the person (or persons) you are taking care of. From there you can easily add events to their calendar (such as doctor appointments, their weekly Bridge Club gathering, a visit to the park, or whatever), post important notes about that person on their main page, and post messages that can be seen by the other caregivers.

You can assign tasks, events, or other things to anyone in the network of caregivers. Those people can be professionals you’ve hired, friends, or family members. Each person has their own profile page which includes their contact info, their own schedule, and more.

All the information can be accessed via the website’s dashboard — which shows a comprehensive overview of all activity taking place — or the Caren iPhone app.

I am personally very impressed with Caren. It’s a web app built for normal people, and they have done a great job keeping it simple and easy to use. If you or someone you know has a family member to take care of then I would highly recommend signing up for a free account on Caren. Moreover, if you are someone who helps manage several caregivers you may want to look into this website as a way to organize all the different people, schedules, needs, and caregivers you work with.

Caren [Sponsor]