Topics in ‘Home’

Doing the Work, with lessons from Magnum PI

Introductory interface talks are boring. More importantly, by neccessity, they are the same old content recycled. And recycled uselessly, to no end. Because if the audience members were interested in interface design, they would already know the content of the talk. Or, to put it another way, if they didn’t already know the content of […]

Nearly Sold Out – Berlin JavaScript Master Class

A quick note for our European friends—especially ones who we’ll see at JSConf Europe. Become a JavaScript Master Our one-day JavaScript Master Class is coming to Berlin, November 9, right after JSConf. If you feel like you’ve got some room to improve your JavaScript when it comes to understanding the hardcore-iest parts of the language, […]

24-hour tweet drive to #beatcancer

I’m helping to raise funds to#beatcancer, by blogging, tweetingand posting Facebook statusupdates.Click here to join me! Quick note: This week, Thomas and I helped build this Ruby-driven site. Yep, that’s right, it’s the first drive that earns money by tweets, Facebook status updates, & blog posts. (Hence my post!) It’s legit. I know, because we […]

How to Write Your Sales Page

It’s Time to Redesign The Sales Page! Part 2 (Part 1) So, last time on “It’s Time to Redesign The Sales Page!” we talked about why I decided the Freckle Time Tracking sales page had to be totally redone. Namely: We weren’t proud of the design, so we didn’t promote it We didn’t believe it […]

Pimpin’ [Software Projects] Ain’t Easy

I spent this weekend at CURUCamp—that is, Central European Ruby Camp—here in Vienna. It totally kicked ass, I got to hang out with friends, make new friends, and learn stuff. (Plus, thanks to Jürgen the organizer, I now know a place where I can get a decent mojito in stodgy old Vienna. Good thing, too, […]

Oh yeah, there’s a sugar pill for that.

Everybody knows about The Placebo Effect™. That’s what happens when you think you’re taking a medicine that will help you, and it does help you—but it turns out that it was a sugar pill, not a medicine at all. It was discovered by a clever, desperate nurse during World War II. She was running out […]

It’s Time to Redesign the Sales Page, Part 1

Before the Redesign So you’ve got this product. So I’ve got this product. It’s totally unique, the only entry in its field, and everybody knows it. It’s a rookie entry into an extremely crowded (if not particularly well-differentiated) field. Almost nobody knows it exists. It’s a time tracking application, and it’s called Freckle Time Tracking. […]

The Fine Art of Opportunism

No, this is not the start of a post where I point and cackle evilly as I explain how the whole “training course” thing was a sham calculated to help me harvest and sell your email addresses to spammers in Katmandu. But, you know how I keep dancing around this whole “it’s not about PROBLEMS” […]

Sept 12th in DC: JavaScript Master Class!

First things first: Thanks for your input, folks. You’ve helped us shape the class… and by expressing interest (however tentative), you helped me feel brave enough to do it. 🙂 JavaScript is White Hot, with Few Experts JavaScript has been the up & coming language for the past 3 years, even more so than Ruby. […]

Screw Interface Patterns

Allow me to begin by saying that this is an opinion piece. I’m not doing research into the matter, but rather boiling down trends—the good and bad—as I see ’em. And they’re mostly bad. Otherwise it’d be boring. A Pattern Language Pattern obsession has come to user interface design by way of software architecture, by […]

Hey, why not get a shiny
Freckle Time Tracking
account?