What If Money Was No Object?
July 26, 2015Profound advice by British-born philosopher Alan Watts. What would you do, if money was no object at all?
Associated Press opening their archives
July 23, 2015Associated Press announced that they will make their video archive public and will upload more than 550’000 historical video clips to YouTube.
The YouTube channels will include more than 550,000 video stories dating from 1895 to the present day. For example, viewers can see video from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, exclusive footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941,Marilyn Monroe captured on film in London in the 1950s and Twiggy modeling the fashions of the 1960s.
This is great. Tons of historical video material right at our fingertips.
Web Design: The First 100 years
July 22, 2015So the world of the near future is one of power constrained devices in a bandwidth-constrained environment. It’s very different from the recent past, where hardware performance went up like clockwork, with more storage and faster CPUs every year.
And as designers, you should be jumping up and down with relief, because hard constraints are the midwife to good design. The past couple of decades have left us with what I call an exponential hangover.
(Maciej Cegłowski)
Jason Calacanis Tweetstorm
June 23, 2015Excellent tweet storm today by @Jason pic.twitter.com/DoCuP8DkIO
— Jon Atack (@jonatack) June 20, 2015
A tweet storm by Jason Calacanis. I especially like #5:
5/Teach everyone around you everything you’ve learned, then go find more knowledge to give away! Now you’re acting like a CEO/founder.
Brainpickings Legendary Designer Charles Eames
June 20, 2015In addition to all of the “good goods” that they produced, the Eameses were prolific as educators, making many important contributions to the world of ideas.
Underlying all of their work is the principle that design should not be an act of creative self-expression but rather a process of problem solving.
Great article on brainpickings about Charles and Ray Eames. Now i want to read “an eames anthology” even more.
A great article about growing revenue as a Startup, especially with a SaaS product. He talks about a lot of points that many startups get wrong or struggle with, from being too cheap (or free) to early split-testing, what metrics to use and missed marketing opportunities.
And, above all, how important it is to charge for your product as soon as possible:
Charging is a powerful indicator that you’re building something people want. If you’re not charging, you’re likely spending money (development time = money) building features your users don’t really want. People who pay you have opinions about what to build next. Making them happy will lead to more people like them paying you (with this caveat: Don’t build a Galapagos product)
It’s a very refreshing post which debunks some of the popular truisms about pricing or startup business in general. Worth a read.
Code Like A Girl
June 14, 2015Seth Godin: Overcoming the extraction mindset
June 12, 2015Thirty years ago, I asked the fabled rock promoter Bill Graham a question that I thought was brilliant, but he pwned me in his response. “Bill, given how fast a Bruce Springsteen concert sells out, why don’t you charge $100 a seat and keep all the upside?” (In those days, $100 was considered a ridiculous sum for a concert ticket).
“Well, I could do that, but the thing is, I’m here all year round, and my kids only have a limited budget to spend on concerts. If I charged that much for one concert, they wouldn’t be able to come to the other shows I book…”
Bill wasn’t just spreading the money out over time. He was investing in a community that could develop a habit of music going, a community that would define itself around what he was building.
(Seth Godin)
Another great post by Seth Godin about short-term decisions and what he calls the extraction mindset versus long-term thinking.
TED Talk: Tony Fadell
June 7, 2015Tony Fadell talks about habituation and how it can prevent us from noticing the problems around us, because we get used to them.
Totally Free – An homage to rollerskating
June 3, 2015Rollerskating used to be everywhere, but these days it’s nearly impossible to find people on roller skates. ‘Totally Free’ is a short documentary that explores these weirdly wonderful roller skaters, how they got into skating and why it keeps them alive.
A nice short documentary about the joy of rollerskating.