They totally reminded me of the medicine described in The Host* that was clearly and succinctly labeled: “Cleanse” was an antiseptic, “Heal” knitted wounds and “Smooth” was for scar removal.

These were incredible and I loved everything about them. The packaging was great, the design compelling and the description text on the back (to the right in the above image) was extremely charming. Each of these was a great little experience. I picked them up in turn and read them — ... Read More »]]> One day we were strolling through Target and I just about lost my mind. There was this stand, barely even noticeable, filled with little card stock packages. The display had a handful of different types, distinguishable by its own ring of high-saturated color. I grabbed one; it had a fantastic papery texture and exceptional minimalist design with bold, clear lettering, “I have a blister.”

Image lifted from helpineedhelp.com. The site takes the low-contrast thing a bit too far, though.

They totally reminded me of the medicine described in The Host* that was clearly and succinctly labeled: “Cleanse” was an antiseptic, “Heal” knitted wounds and “Smooth” was for scar removal.

These were incredible and I loved everything about them. The packaging was great, the design compelling and the description text on the back (to the right in the above image) was extremely charming. Each of these was a great little experience. I picked them up in turn and read them — I was completely engaged and their prices were surprisingly good. I thought they were marvelous, I talked to my wife excitedly about them… and then I put them back on the display instead of into our cart.

Why didn’t I buy them?

I found them at the wrong moment, buried deep in the health care department. I still had the rest of the store to go through, other things to focus on, taking me out of my place of passion. I’m sure if I had an actual need for one I’d have put it in the cart, but if I happened upon these while waiting in line then — out of impulse — I’d have bought one of each.

The moral of my story is this: you can sell to a need and find moderate success, but you’ll do so much better by selling to a passion and catching people when they’re stupid over you.

(*Yes, I’m an adult male and I read a Stephenie Meyer novel. I’ve also read the entire Twilight series and I’m only mostly embarrassed to say I had a hard time putting the fourth one down. Despite their popularity and incredible success, they’re not very good books. The Host, on the other hand, is absolutely great and I’d highly recommend reading it, even if you have a Y chromosome.)

As a kid I saw an episode of The Jetsons where Elroy was watching TV on his watch. I can’t say why, but that really stuck with me. The future is here! All I need now is a jet pack and meal pellets because I carry a super-computer in my pocket and it doesn’t even need those dumb aerial antennas.

Fun fact: if held up at gunpoint, I’d hand over my wallet without hesitation but not my phone. How stupid is that?

But wait… if my phone is so great, why do I ... Read More »]]> In truth – my phone is actually pretty damn awesome. It’s indispensable and I feel naked without it. It’s what makes commuting somewhat bearable; I’ve taken hundreds of photos with its camera and it provides a hedonistic amount of entertainment; it’s my alarm clock, my portable internet, and it’s never more than 10 feet away.

As a kid I saw an episode of The Jetsons where Elroy was watching TV on his watch. I can’t say why, but that really stuck with me. The future is here! All I need now is a jet pack and meal pellets because I carry a super-computer in my pocket and it doesn’t even need those dumb aerial antennas.

Fun fact: if held up at gunpoint, I’d hand over my wallet without hesitation but not my phone. How stupid is that?

But wait… if my phone is so great, why do I hate talking on the thing? What makes having a conversation such a terrible experience? Why does it feel so… off?

Sidetone!

Sidetone is that small amount of feedback you get on a landline. It’s what helps you speak at the right volume. (Yeah, the jackass talking too loudly into his phone next to you probably isn’t a bad guy after all. He just doesn’t trust that he’s being heard.)

The feedback you get from sidetone helps the conversation feel warm and intimate — like there’s a connection between speaker and listener. It feels right but mobile phones don’t have it. Why not?

Donald Norman:

Two possible answers come to mind, and my suspicion is that both are correct. One is that modern telephonic engineers have no sense of history, and so they lack all the experience and knowledge that led to the early development of sidetone feedback. The second answer is that sidetone poses more difficult problems in the out-of-doors environment of the mobile phone, where wind noise on the microphone and relatively high-levels of ambient noise pose technical limitations on sidetone.

He’s probably right, but he wrote that 7 years ago and the experience still sucks. Why do I still constantly look at my phone to make sure the connection wasn’t lost? Why does it still feel like I’m just talking into the air?

“Phone” is from the Greek for “voice”, but talking into it is the last thing I want to do. Is it just me or do others avoid talking on their mobile phones?

Well, it turns out that I just haven’t been using Steam nearly enough because it’s been there since last June.

I’m a firm believer that good reports and dashboards start by limiting yourself to the important bits. I suggested that we put this detailed information on separate drilldown screens but key stakeholders insisted on keeping everything on a single page.

To be clear, we’re talking 20 categories, with up to a dozen sub-categories each, reporting on 16 metrics. That’s a ton of information to cram into a single screen, especially when you consider that a very large minority (over 30%) of our customers run their monitors at 1024 x 768.

After some debate, which lead to name-calling, which then lead to a bit of hair pulling, I was happy ... Read More »]]> About 6 months ago we had to add some data to an already overloaded ROI report. We were displaying the aggregated results for about 20 categories and we needed to include some sub-categories.

I’m a firm believer that good reports and dashboards start by limiting yourself to the important bits. I suggested that we put this detailed information on separate drilldown screens but key stakeholders insisted on keeping everything on a single page.

Too Much Information

To be clear, we’re talking 20 categories, with up to a dozen sub-categories each, reporting on 16 metrics. That’s a ton of information to cram into a single screen, especially when you consider that a very large minority (over 30%) of our customers run their monitors at 1024 x 768.

After some debate, which lead to name-calling, which then lead to a bit of hair pulling, I was happy to compromise by collapsing child columns and data rows into their parent categories. (It’s not ideal, but it beats the hell out of the alternative of side-scrolling.)

Long Story Short

We got the new stuff in, collapsing/expanding worked great, but the styling was off. We’d been using the CSS :nth-child pseudo-selector to handle our zebra-striping and it just kept freaking out with the hidden rows. (Examples show content from my dev environment):

tr:nth-child(even) td { background: #ededed; }

Parts Arrival should show the alternate background

But was being applied to the hidden row "Interval #1"

No problem, we’ll just add a class to the parent rows and get more specific with the selector:

tr.parent:nth-child(even) td { background: #ededed; }

Nope. That didn’t do it. I spent some time with Google and I tried a bunch of variations on the selector, including nth-of-type, only to things worse in varying degrees.

It turns out that the selectors just didn’t matter because the browser was only looking at the element itself (TR). (I’m sure I could have worked this out if I was willing to nest the child rows in more mark-up, but I just wasn’t willing to go that route.)

I really, really wanted to handle this with abstracted CSS. There are just a few of us front-end developers to support around 20 back-end guys (tee-hee!), and the more we can make the content design simply work for them the better.

(There’s also the issue of maintaining a 500+ page web application — the more concrete and page-specific the solution, the harder it is to keep up with.)

Stop Fighting It and Fix the Damn Thing

Like so many problems in front-end development, jQuery was the solution:

$("tr.parent:even").addClass("alt");

The backgrounds now alternate correctly

And the child rows were able to get their own styling.

I just know that one of these days an engineer is going to come in and screw this up, but jQuery saved the day because its selector engine is just so, so much better.

Unfortunately for me, a young woman must have had a cat named “Cory”, grew up on “Chase Drive” or something, and happened to go pro.

In case you didn’t know, porn is why VHS won over Beta and and a big contributor to the rapid growth of the internet (CNN Article).

I won’t knock porn — if prostitution is the oldest profession, then voyeurism is the oldest hobby. Unlike prostitution, the adult entertainment industry doesn’t bring drugs or crime into neighborhoods. I’m sure it’s got faults, but I’ve never seen a porn star crawling home at ... Read More »]]>

Toby Sherwood: motorcycle stuntman by day, international spy by night.

Did you ever play that game, “What would your porn name be?” It’s easy: just take the name of your childhood pet (we had a big dog named Toby) and append the street you grew up on (I grew up on Sherwood Circle). Toby Sherwood? Perfect!

Unfortunately for me, a young woman must have had a cat named “Cory”, grew up on “Chase Drive” or something, and happened to go pro.

Pornography is a Big Deal

In case you didn’t know, porn is why VHS won over Beta and and a big contributor to the rapid growth of the internet (CNN Article).

I won’t knock porn — if prostitution is the oldest profession, then voyeurism is the oldest hobby. Unlike prostitution, the adult entertainment industry doesn’t bring drugs or crime into neighborhoods. I’m sure it’s got faults, but I’ve never seen a porn star crawling home at 6am while I drive into work.

I’m largely indifferent about porn — I neither consume nor take offense, even when a porn star goes by my given name.

Namespace Collision

A few months ago, “Cory Chase” contacted me and asked to buy this domain. She was building a new site and, like any business person, wanted a good address for it. I respectfully declined, and she was very cordial despite her disappointment. She even joked that it must be weird that a porn actress shares my name.

Yeah, it’s a little weird, but what’s the big deal? If a client or employer gets put off by the coincidence then we’re probably not a good fit. It’s not like creepy guys are confusing “Cory Chase” the web developer and “Cory Chase” the actress.

Then a Creepy Guy Confused Us

This campaign was the best thing to ever come out of Burger King.

I’ve gotten some weird messages in my gmail account. I guess there are a lot of cmchase’s out there — I’ve gotten birthday wishes from grandmothers, church announcements, university memos and even an account or two registered with my email address. I do my best to let senders (or system admins) know about the mistake and we all move on with our lives. I think it’s kind of interesting — you know, voyeuristic – to get a peak into a stranger’s life like that.

But not so with the message from last Thursday where I got a little too much information about the kind of stuff “Cory Chase” has to deal with. Here’s the message but, out of respect for (and fear of retribution from) the creepy guy I’ll withhold his name:

Hi

i have seen your videos and was wondering if you could smother my face with your ass and squirt all over me with your sexy p***y. i would also love it if you could tease the sh*t out of me by grinding on my d*ck ob me and hand job and blow job but not letting me cum. light ballsqueezes would also be nice

I just happened to be checking my email in a crowded elevator when I saw this. I’m not really one to care what strangers think of me, but I discreetly turned off my phone display.

3 reasons I knew this wasn’t meant for me:

1. I didn’t recognize the sender. I wouldn’t put it past a friend to goof on me like this, especially with a CC to my wife.
2. There aren’t any videos of me floating around, unless you count the ones of me playing with my daughter, in which case this guy’s an even bigger creeper.
3. I don’t have a vagina, putting that second request out of the question.

I showed the message to my wife and we joked about sending a reply, but thinking about the type of person that would send this message gave me pause. What did he expect in response? What’s with the polite greeting? The “i would also love it” (sic) part seems like a sincere invitation — is that his intention? Replying to him, whether in earnest or jest, probably would have gotten weird really fast.

However, my absolute favorite part is that last sentence. It’s so casual and shameless — it almost seems innocent in tone. It’s like when you’re running to the store and someone says, “Oh, and pick up some milk.”

I hope “Cory Chase” has a long and successful career in porn. Sharing names might make for an interesting conversation for me once in a while, but that’s nothing compared to the kind of attention I’m sure she gets.

Of course you have questions, let’s chat and get to know each other. Here’s a list of references.

You’d like to do a background check? Sure, I understand. No, that’s cool, I’m not offended — due diligence and all that.

Facebook account login? You want me to give you my username and password to Facebook?

…

Well, thanks for your time but I really must be going. No, there’s nothing to hide but this crosses a line.

No hard feelings, I’m sure you understand.

For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been paid to talk to people. From college professor to the book lecture thing he does these days, his jobs have involved going up in front of a crowd. Now he’s looking to do it from the comfort of his living room with podcasting.

Let me be up front here — I love podcasts, so my eyes got all big and saucer-like when he shared his plans. I just looked at my phone: Planet Money, The Bombcast, TEDTalks and UIE Brain Sparks are just some of the 17 feeds I listen to weekly. Many come and go depending on mood, but I hover around a core dozen or so. (I listened to far, far more back when I wasn’t in meetings most of the day.)

That being said, ... Read More »]]> My pal Dean is a smart guy.

For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been paid to talk to people. From college professor to the book lecture thing he does these days, his jobs have involved going up in front of a crowd. Now he’s looking to do it from the comfort of his living room with podcasting.

Let me be up front here — I love podcasts, so my eyes got all big and saucer-like when he shared his plans. I just looked at my phone: Planet Money, The Bombcast, TEDTalks and UIE Brain Sparks are just some of the 17 feeds I listen to weekly. Many come and go depending on mood, but I hover around a core dozen or so. (I listened to far, far more back when I wasn’t in meetings most of the day.)

That being said, I hereby qualify myself as an expert in things I find interesting and would like to make a few recommendations to the would-be podcaster:

1) Bring a Friend

Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know are incredible. There’s something familiar about the way they interact that’s comforting — so much so that my wife insisted on listening to their podcast while she was in labor last September.

Their chemistry is fantastic and they’ve got a great repertoire, but I think it’s their ability to make the listener feel like they’re part of the conversation that really makes their show a success.

2) Be Engaging

Duh. However, the truth of it is that I’ve heard otherwise brilliant and interesting people turn into bores on mic. For the most part, it’s not what people say, but how they say it.

Roman Mars of 99% Invisible has this way of making you feel like you’re sharing something with him throughout the episode. He’s also got this kind of amused warmth in his closing that leaves you feeling good about the time spent listening to the show.

3) Keep a Good Pace

It would be criminal if I didn’t mention Ira Glass with This American Life, and here’s as good a place as any. Ira’s one of the best hosts I’ve ever heard for so many reasons, but for here I’ll say that he moves from story-to-story with elegance and his spoken words-per-minute is great, if a little on the high-end. With so many options available, listeners are going to bounce if there’s too much meandering.

4) Edit

Are things rambling along? Going on about something no one would possibly find interesting? Did you have to get up to answer the door because the UPS guy showed up?

Edit shit out. Really, don’t hesitate to trim out inane junk. Time is short and attention spans are even shorter.

To add, you might also consider editing to create mood and pacing. RadioLab is an incredible show that uses creative editing like no other. The amount of work involved isn’t for everyone, but the results are undeniable. (See also A Life Well Wasted by Robert Ashley. It was fantastic, if short-lived.)

There are exceptions. I’ve listened to a few podcasts that put their recordings up raw, but they rarely last long in my queue. The strongest reason I put up with unedited or meandering podcasts? I really, really liked the hosts.

5) Be Likable

Obviously, right? Not really — nothing gets a podcast dropped from my feed faster than disliking a regular host. Go ahead and be a jackass, it might even be entertaining, but keep in mind that the listener needs to connect with you. The short of it is this: people tend to overlook more faults if they like you, this is true at parties, in the office and for voices in an earbud.

An Unqualified Reductionist

Just a minute ago I qualified myself as an expert in what I like — I lied, I’m not. I can tell you what I like and why I like it, but I think I’ve barely scratched the surface of what makes a podcast any good. It’s really not a comprehensive list and I make no claims to its value, but I can safely say this: content can get me to listen to a show once, but the shows I stay subscribed to all do at least 4 of the 5 above.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

Double Fine reached out to their fans directly to help them fund a new videogame via Kickstarter and had their goal of $400,000 smashed within 8 hours. By the end of the first day of putting the call out, they earned over a million.

This is the day of $30 million game budgets, so $1 million isn’t necessarily a lot on its own, let alone $400k, but Tim Schafer and his studio aren’t bound by a traditional publisher.

They aren’t answering to some other company’s business needs and they don’t have to develop a game that’s everything to everyone. They’re in a unique position of working directly with and for their audience and I’ll bet they’re going to change the entire entertainment industry as a result.

Imagine music, movies, books and TV. How would they ... Read More »]]> I firmly believe that history was made today:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

Double Fine reached out to their fans directly to help them fund a new videogame via Kickstarter and had their goal of $400,000 smashed within 8 hours. By the end of the first day of putting the call out, they earned over a million.

This is the day of $30 million game budgets, so $1 million isn’t necessarily a lot on its own, let alone $400k, but Tim Schafer and his studio aren’t bound by a traditional publisher.

They aren’t answering to some other company’s business needs and they don’t have to develop a game that’s everything to everyone. They’re in a unique position of working directly with and for their audience and I’ll bet they’re going to change the entire entertainment industry as a result.

Imagine music, movies, books and TV. How would they be without the limitations of dated business models, studio conglomerates, distribution conflicts or puritanical advertisers?

I’m sure Double Fine will produce a great game, but I’m more interested in how the way they got funded will affect so many industries.

I’ve been knocking around a blog post idea for the past week or so about how much media and information I consume. I wanted to talk about how my consumption compares to people just 20 years ago — books, music, articles, movies, television, advertisements, games, etc.

Well, this isn’t that post. It’s a heady topic and I don’t feel I could do it justice.

So this is the post to say that I had the idea, and it was a good one, but it’s not going to happen right now.

Right in front are the temperature controls for both the fridge and the freezer that are pretty straight forward. Simple up-and-down arrows and a big digital display for each — a child could figure this out, right?

But wait… is the freezer just barely colder than the refrigerator? No, that can’t be right — if that were true either my milk would be freezing or my ice would be melting… and besides, both defaults are 4. Yeah, everything’s fine — that’s a relief!

No. ... Read More »]]> Last year my wife and I bought a new fridge. It’s big, it’s black and it holds a lot of food — it was everything we needed. It’s a single-door bottom-freezer unit and we’re very happy with it, especially when we remember what it replaced, but there’s something that’s been driving me crazy about it since the day it arrived…

Right in front are the temperature controls for both the fridge and the freezer that are pretty straight forward. Simple up-and-down arrows and a big digital display for each — a child could figure this out, right?

But wait… is the freezer just barely colder than the refrigerator? No, that can’t be right — if that were true either my milk would be freezing or my ice would be melting… and besides, both defaults are 4. Yeah, everything’s fine — that’s a relief!

No. This is stupid! I should never have had to go through that thought process and my wife shouldn’t have had to ask me about it.

The designers are encouraging comparison by putting the fridge and freezer temperature controls right next to each other, but they’re using the same scale of abstracted measurement for two very different temperatures. ’4′ shouldn’t mean 32° mere inches from where it means 60°. I get that the designers would have had constraints, but I would prefer it if they either used a fixed unit of measurement (Fahrenheit or Celsius) or split the controls by putting one in the refrigerator and one in the freezer.

One more gripe that might support my latter suggestion, do these controls have to be right up front and in the middle? Do users have to adjust the temperature enough to compromise clearance? Don’t get me wrong, I like my fridge, but the controls are confusing and I can barely fit bottles in the middle — it’s a pain in the ass.

Please don't judge my cluttered fridge