From Bokardo, popular since 1 weekRobert Scoble has a nice piece on “passionates”, people who are early adopters of technology. He says that companies need to focus on passionates in order to drive their business forward, as non-passionates just don’t care enough to share and [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 weeksI received an email that was supposedly from Slideshare. I don’t know if it really is from Slideshare, but it’s a devious email either way. Here is a screenshot: As you can see, there is a single link in the [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 weeksThis Thursday we’re holding the next North Shore Web Geeks Meetup, our monthly meeting for web geeks who live up in in Northern Mass/Southern New Hampshire. This month we’re changing to a new format. So far we’ve been completely unformatted…everyone [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 4 weeksBoston.com has a nice story on the growing trend of companies keeping real-time tabs on what their customers say on the Web: Hurry up, the customer has a complaintBy using services like Twitter and Google blogsearch, companies can quickly respond [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 1 monthI heard a term the other day that I really liked: co-evolve. It was said in the context of humans and technology…humans and technology co-evolve together. In other words, we change technology by creating it, and then it changes us [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 1 monthThis is just too juicy to not share with everyone. Here’s a 2003 email from Bill Gates in which he vents his frustration with the Windows interface…in quite excruciating detail. Epic Bill Gates email rantMy favorite bit: “This time I [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 1 monthOf all the social software built on the web in the last two decades, none are as important yet as little talked about as reputation systems. Reputation systems have driven the entire business at eBay.com, much of the business at [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsAs more and more companies “go social” (as the NYTimes just did), we’ll see a growing need for well-designed reputation systems. Reputation systems can be defined as systems that help people judge the reputation of others in order to make [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsThe mere threat of social interaction changes our behavior…if you know your work is going to be put on public display, you’ll be much more motivated to make it good.There is a moment in every blogger’s life when they realize [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsIn September, I’ll be speaking at the dConstruct Conference in Brighton, England. The conference is billed as the affordable one day conference for people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications.Last year, dConstruct sold out in 6 [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsIt’s happening slowly, but surely. Design is becoming news. Take the example of Facebook’s recently redesigned Profile pages. Huge news both for the users of the site as well as the developers Facebook is trying to court. The design decisions [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsThere is a lot of “social” talk these days, whether it’s social media, social marketing, or social design. Frankly, it’s hard to keep track of it all. When I get into a discussion with someone on one of these subjects, [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsWell, Designing for the Social Web has been out for about a month and I’m happy to report that the early reviews are positive. I can’t tell you how nervewracking it is to have a book out there…it’s such a [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsOver time, I’m having more and more conversations about the similarities between interface design and writing. Here’s a great quote from George Orwell, who wrote 1984 and Animal Farm, that made me instantly think of interface design. “The great enemy [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 2 monthsIt has long been known that savvy restaurants use a bag of tricks to build buzz and interest. One trick is to seat early customers near windows so that people passing by will think the place is full. This has [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 monthsA great example of the Usage Lifecycle in practice.The other day I wrote about the idea that people go through a progression as they use your software, what I call the Usage Lifecycle. I described how Tripit.com was doing a [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 monthsThe Usage Lifecycle describes how far a person has progressed in using your web application, helping to identify the hurdles someone needs to overcome to become regular, passionate users.Babycenter.com has a really great newsletter. Once you tell the site when [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 monthsAs anybody who has ever read anything knows, the most important part of a book are the quotes sprinkled throughout it. Yes, if you are able to pick the perfect quotes to start your chapters with, then you’ve done the [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 monthsBootstrapping your niche is easier if you leverage existing motivation.How do you bootstrap your social site if you’re targeting a group that doesn’t yet use software (or doesn’t seem interested in using software)? While software designers can often see how [...]Read more
From Bokardo, popular since 3 monthsJust ran across an interesting site the other day: Ravelry.com. Ravelry is an online “knit and crochet community”. A site for knitters? What will they think of next…a site for dog owners? The reason why these sites seem so alien [...]Read more