If you’re interested in easy invoicing for your freelancing racket, try out the beta of Folk Art Creative’s new product, Tasksy. We’ll try to let as many people in as the current server space will allow.
Give it a go! It’s designed to be as easy is invoicing can reasonably be.
Fuel another postComputer World just ran an article asking this very question — and responding with an emphatic yea. I am less convinced, although I am an avid user myself.
Also, just so everyone’s aware, I’m comparing Ubuntu to Windows directly. Where Macs are concerned, I advocate them for anyone who cares to use one and who can afford it — neither of which applies to me particularly, although I’m awfully tempted to get a Macbook on account of music production software running so much better on Macs.
Anyhow, there are many types of users who can benefit from installing Ubuntu:
Group number 1 is the basic-to-clueless computer-user. A child, your grandma, anyone that’s going to be floundering a little bit regardless of their OS. This comes with the caveat that you, or someone above this tier of computer literacy, install the system for them.
For someone brand new to it, Ubuntu may actually be easier than Windows. The graphical repository system and “Add Programs” menu, the latter of which is basically a dumbed-down version of the former, make it fairly easy to add and remove software. This is certainly easier than finding the right program online, downloading the .exe, and then going through the setup pages.
These are also the folks who are likely to click on a link to install FREE! new smileys, in which case they will enjoy the benefits of having some user/root separation, and not ending up bogged down with malware.
Let me start by saying that this is my group. It’s not that I’m too cheap to buy Vista, it’s that I’m too cheap to to buy a computer that will run Vista happily. I love the fact the Ubuntu runs on any machine made in the last 5 years or so. Often, older is even better, since the drivers have already been written. Switch to Xubuntu and you can go even further back. After that you get into even more specialized small-distribution territory - a land where even I am not cash-poor enough to venture.
Oh yeah, and you might as well lump Grandma in here, too. She’ll prefer having a computer that will be good for a decade without changing up the hardware.
Alright, this is sort of me too. I’m an advanced computer user, but somehow I couldn’t consider myself such without learning Linux. I’m happy to say it’s been a solid year, and I’ve emerged a convert. Us too-computer-savvy nerd types, who can overcome the technical problems associated with switching, and think Beryl is totally sweet, are in clear Linux territory. Not much needs to be said of us.
The vast majority of computer users, however, are the third type: the kind who have been using Windows for years without caring what’s going under the hood, and are happy paying Norton to keep their computer safe, and Valve to provide them with games. There’s no reason for my dad, for instance, to start using Linux, except possibly so I can set the root password to something he doesn’t know so he won’t call me up to help him fix the wireless internet because he suddenly got on some weird security kick and installed a bunch of software that proceeded to mess everything up.
Maybe “shouldn’t” is the wrong word. “Won’t” might be better. If Windows is working perfectly well thank-you-very-much, they’ll be hard to convince, especially when you tell them that, no, Word won’t run on Ubuntu. OpenOffice.org will, and indeed has a lot going for it, but you might as well save your protestations, because it’s just not the same.
I love Ubuntu. I use it at work, with Beryl and all those delights, and I make my Vista-using boss jealous. I’m so used to GIMP and Inkscape that I can’t even use Photoshop or Illustrator. I enjoy having the freedom to install whatever package I want without thinking about it, or to open a command-line to copy a bunch of files because it’s faster, or to watch my windows burn down when I close them. But for most of the populous, switching just isn’t worth it. The solution is to get Ubuntu for your kids and grandma, so that in ten or twenty years you’ll have a bunch of Linux users for whom switching to Windows just isn’t worth the effort.
Fuel another postWhat happened in Piedmont? It’s a viral marketing campaign set up by A&E to promote their remake of “The Andromeda Strain.” There, I just saved you 5 minutes of browsing.
I’m getting sick of these stupid viral campaigns. I appreciate the effort, but I find it somewhat patronizing, and more than a little irritating.
Come to think of it, so is regular advertising. So, carry on, I guess. I’ll just get back on the internet, where the advertising is more easily ignored.
Oh yes, and I am well aware that it’s spelled “Piedmont”. I misspelled it in an attempt to save the percentage of people who will certainly make the mistake while googling.
Fuel another postSo I signed up for Eyespot the other day, just to try it out. Eyespot is an online video editor, and it’s really spiffy (although I like Jumpcut a bit more). But, online video editing is not what this post is about; rather, this is about how a legitimate email newsletter from Eyespot, in an ironic twist, managed to disguise itself as spam so well that it took a bit of detective work indeed to discover that it wasn’t so.
Pretty much the entire message body is available at http://shootmixshare.blogspot.com/2008/04/build-your-own-site-w-eyespot.html, which is a decent warning sign in itself. There were a few noteworthy differences, however.
In a world where hot black snow falls up, spam would look like the email I recieved from eyespot; completely legitimate info with what seems like deliberate touches to make it look like spam, to me and to gmail alike. First off, all the links were rewritten. Here’s an example:
http://x.jngo1.net/y.z?l=http%3A%2F%2Feyespot.com%2Fmixables%2FThieveryCorporation&e=1055&j=103500431
The domain of that link, x.jngo1.net, is a huge red flag. At this point, I was fairly convinced it was some sort of phishing attempt, and I was gearing up to write an angry email to eyespot for handing over my email address. However, since I am young and foolhardy and also using a Linux machine, I went ahead and clicked it anyway - and it brought me to the Eyespot site.
I looked all around for evidence of foul play, but nothing came up. So I did a whois in jngo1.net, and a company called Silicomm.com came up. Curious, I went to their site, and was presented with a link to Jangomail.com. Jangomail? That sequence of consonants and an ‘o’ sounds familiar. And sure enough, jangomail.com is a newsletter app that is apparently used by Eyespot to send highly ignored newsletters. Evidently the url rewriting is nothing more nefarious than some tracking code.
We learned that GMail registers weird urls as spam, or is possibly blocking this jangomail domain for non-Eyespot-related spams, or is blocking all mail with recieved-from jangomail.com headers (mine was magellen@jangomail.com). It’s hard to blame jangomail.com for this. They seem to be a legitimate company, and having worked for a company that does email newsletters I can tell you that it’s not easy to keep your domains off the blacklist, or to keep your users legitimate. x.jngo1.net is probably just something they though was obscure enough that google wouldn’t block it.
What could Eyespot learn from this? Maybe tracking your clicks isn’t worth your emails getting dumped in the bin. As for Jangomail, I have no real advice; better, more profit-motivated minds than mine have wrestled with this problem before. However, maybe they could take a trick or two from Freshview’s Campaign Monitor, they seem to be doing ok. In fact, I know one Matthew Patterson from Freshview has stumbled across this blog before in his technorati-fuelled meanderings, so maybe he has some insight on this. To comment on. Because I’m actually really curious now.
Fuel another postHere’s a powerful way you can harness the infinite whining potential of the internet and turn it into something useful. When you’re faced with a major purchase, questionable job offer, or any other interaction with some google-able entity, just go to your friendly neighbourhood search engine and enter the name of the company you want to check up on, followed by ” sucks.”
Booking a flight? Test each of your options for carriers in turn, and pick the one with the least vitriolic pages that come up. Be sure to read the comments on blog posts as well, there might be some sort of refutation.
Whether you’re buying a laptop, applying for a job, trying to find somewhere to vacation, or just want to hear something negative, “Company name sucks” is like having a friend that you keep at arms-length, because every time you talk to him he’s complaining at length about how bad Royale paper towels are compared to Bounty — except you never have to talk to him to gain his surly wisdom.
Fuel another postSproutwire is a small-business aggregator which has just escaped from the clutches of a prolonged beta. It puts up about 2-3 high-quality business-related articles daily, all of which are good reads for anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations of any size.
Yes, they have a feed, and they even do daily email newsletters if you’re not the feed type. It’s really pretty, check it out.
In other news, freshly into beta we find Aviary’s web app suite, which is frankly amazing. More on that later.
Fuel another postI heard rumors that Google was planning on, or already does, execute javascript, so I thought I’d test if it would index keywords found in content that is generated from javascript. The page is: Snarphuphen Cloobdle Hglagshei .
My hypothesis is no, but let me know if you’re interested in the results.
Fuel another postHappy Creek Sawmill specializes in custom millwork, including flooring and moulding. They also provide top-notch wood-drying with their kiln, and can even manufacture products for homeowners from trees cut down while building their house.
They are located in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island — specifically in Duncan, BC.
Fuel another postUsers get a lot of flak, both deserved and otherwise. Sometimes, it’s really easy to blame the user for making mistakes on application features or websites that you’ve developed. However, they are your users, and you need to accommodate them. Luckily, there’s a really easy way to do this. First, though, some preamble.
80% of users will make the same subset of mistakes for all the same reasons, almost every time. The remaining 10% are either relative experts like us, or completely computer-illiterate technophobes — neither of which is likely to be your target audience.
These are the users that usability tests are designed to help you with. It doesn’t even have to be a formal usability test in a controlled setting, either - just having someone other than yourself, the person who designed the thing you’re testing and knows it inside-out, is an enormous step, and an essential part of the process for creating any interface, be it a website or an operating system - or, for that matter, a telephone or an F-16 cockpit. Furthermore, since 80% of users are more or less alike, it’s easy to find someone appropriate to volunteer.
If the user can’t find the product, the sale is lost. If the user can’t find the appropriate information about the product, the sale is lost. If the user can’t figure out how to add the product to the cart, check out, pay, arrange for shipping, and then confirm their order, the sale is lost. The same applies to an application — if the user can’t use it, they won’t. Usability is arguably the most important aspect of a successful website/application.
So we’ve established the usability incredibly important, but also remarkably simple to gauge. What does this mean?
Fifteen minutes spent watching your mom use your interface can be worth thousands of dollars in the long run.
Your mom is the ideal user for you to test on. Why? Because 1) she’s probably a good demographic, an average user on the lower end of the bellcurve in terms of computing ability, and 2) because if your mother gets stuck checking out, you’re not going to dismiss that as an idiotic user mistake and forget about it.
Don’t listen to what she says, she’s biased. Instead, just watch her use the interface. Take note of which screens she spends a minute or two clicking around, trying to find an escape. Write down when and where she gets stuck. Watch what she does, and you’ll be rewarded.
Budget for Testing
Try this: for every project, budget an hour or two for testing, and use it to take your mother, or someone else you know who fits the typical-user bill, out to dinner in exchange for their valuable input. Make sure it’s someone who you can’t possibly just gloss over as a simpleton, this is important. As put by advertising maven David Ogilvy: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
Plus, I bet she’d really like to see you.
Fuel another postI spent a few hours last night browsing whois records, searching for a domain name for my latest project. Let me tell you, it is a tough tough thing to name a startup based on a domain. I think the guys at 37 Signals got it right, getting the domain after the fact.
Anyhow, my stubborn refusal to learn anything from anyone but myself has resulted in my naming the product tasksy. Easy to remember, I hope, but hard to say (try it!).
What is the product, you ask? Well, if you were smart, you’d go to tasksy.com and see, because I ain’t gonna tell you anything else until I’m good and ready.
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