If you’re not embarrassed - in the consumer internet - by the first version of the product you launched, you’ve launched too late.
Reid Hoffman on Launching
Jun 11 2009
The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection →
With the maturity of tools and availability of friendly sys admins, it’s easy to take for granted the many base technologies that power our applications. Adding HTTPS support to a site is very much a plug and play affair, which is why it’s refreshing to see Jeff Moser peel back a couple of layers to reveal what really happens in those first milliseconds between the browser and the server.
Jun 10 2009
On Everyday Apps
In his latest post, Joshua Porter riffs on the concept of ‘every-day apps’, something I’ve talked about in the past (although I used ‘destination sites’ to describe such properties). In my post, I made some base assumptions suggesting that our capacity to visit sites on a regular basis is finite. It was nice to see Joshua cite a study reaffirming my guess, demonstrating that most people regularly visit only about 10 sites.
I found this description of product design particularly poignant, mostly because I’ve made this same mistake:
In general, most people think they’re building an everyday app, but they’re not. When the actual use patterns are discovered, most apps will be used every few days or less.
The rest of the article is spent postulating on how LinkedIn could bridge their ambitions to be an everyday site. For me, the more interesting problem is acknowledging that you’re not an everday app while still positioning the product to succeed.
May 13 2009
Journal of Information Architecture →
I always dream of referencing authoritative, empirical data when discussing design - a field shrouded in feelings and subjectivity. The trouble is finding academic papers penned by authors with complicated, German names, forcing one to lean on the authority of a blog post regarding the Top 50 Cutest Typography Techniques to justify a point.
The Journal of Information Architecture seems like a step in that direction. Just reading the titles and abstracts left me feeling much smarter.
[via Konigi]
May 7 2009
Chrome Experiments →
Barely mentioning its corporate patron, this Google-sanctioned website doubles as an awkwardly latent promotion of the Chrome browser as well as a showcase of what’s possible using the latest browser technologies. Some of the experiments are genuinely eye-opening.
Apr 28 2009