Aaron Johnson

Links: 8-25-2010

ajohnson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:47:24 +0000

The 9X Email Problem
In most companies, groupware didn’t solve the problem; it wasn’t that much better than email. … But that’s not really the critical consideration. The critical consideration is brutally simple: are these tools 9 times better than email for collaboration?

Consider how high this sets the bar. Email is freeform, multimedia (especially with attachments), WYSIWYG, easy to learn and use, platform independent, social, and friendly to mouse-clickers and keyboard-shortcutters alike. It’s the ultimate example of what Dion Hinchcliffe calls a ‘comfort app‘ (a phrase I love, and plan to steal (with attribution) shamelessly). It would actually be a pretty tough competitor even if it weren’t the universally-used incumbent, and so the beneficiary of the 9X problem. In short, it’s not going anywhere.
(categories: email socialsoftware activitystreams ui ux )

ajohnson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:47:27 +0000

Buzz Kill : LOL: The Life of Leo
Quote: "It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I’ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing."
(categories: socialsoftware twitter )

ajohnson — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:47:25 +0000

Scaling startups
Wow.
(categories: culture risk engineering entrepreneurship startup speed )
inessential.com: Flexibility and power
Quote: "I don’t expect we’ll make software that looks and feels like iOS apps (we shouldn’t), but I do expect we’ll learn from iOS apps how power is the real goal, and that flexibility is just a tool to use exceedingly sparingly, only when it substantially increases power."
(categories: ux customization design )
What Happened to Yahoo
(categories: leadership culture entrepreneurship engineering )

ajohnson — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:47:26 +0000

ajohnson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:47:28 +0000

Story Mapper by Carbon Five
Nice tool to use alongside Pivotal Tracker for release planning.
(categories: agile tools )
ongoing by Tim Bray · How To Sell Apps?
Some interesting notes on what makes a good app store.
(categories: appstore ecommerce platform plugins )

ajohnson — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:47:28 +0000

ajohnson — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:47:27 +0000

this, is boomerang
boomerang is a piece of javascript that you add to your web pages, where it measures the performance of your website from your end user’s point of view. It has the ability to send this data back to your server for further analysis. With boomerang, you find out exactly how fast your users think your site is.
(categories: performance http browser javascript css speed )
WURFL
Wireless device detection library, like BrowserHawk for mobile except open source and free.
(categories: mobile iphone browser android )

ajohnson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:47:25 +0000

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Harvard Business Review
Great points on company culture and personal life strategy.
(categories: culture life strategy happiness goals )
How to hire a product manager
Helpful article on what makes a good PM.
(categories: product-product-product productmanagement design )
Mobile Browser Cache Limits, Revisited » Yahoo! User Interface Blog (YUIBlog)
More good stuff from the YUI team, this time around mobile.
(categories: mobile performance http html css javascript android iphone )
Solitude and Leadership: an article by William Deresiewicz | The American Scholar
Quote: Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
(categories: thinking creativity ideas )

ajohnson — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:47:29 +0000

ajohnson — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:47:29 +0000