Conventional wisdom is tired, upset, groggy, scared, and a pain in the ass to work with. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Jason Fried, Driven to Distraction
[+] Open the Meta Bar Tag: failure. There are 16 posts tagged failure. Open the Meta Bar to choose a different tag.
The New Failwhale: Twitter Homepage
Take Two.
09/08/09
With all of the talent at their disposal, I really don’t understand the new Twitter homepage (you have to be signed out to see it). Apparently, neither did Fred Yates. He put together a thoughtful article pointing out some of the good changes they made, but also took it a step further and made his own changes to the new design. I think he nailed it. Frankly, I hope Twitter simply implements what he’s done for them.
Amen.
BONUS: “Would you take your next paycheck in page views? or users? or followers? or visitors? or eyeballs…?”
Whenever you see someone piling big numbers into made up metrics, it’s a diversion. They want you to think that this time it’s different.
Jason Fried, The bar for success in our industry is too low
09/02/09
If you’ve never heard the story of Coudal Partners, you owe it to yourself to check out this interview.
(via SimpleBits)
If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, ‘What is your greatest failure?’ I always have the same answer—We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!
Jim Coudal, Design Glut Interview
08/16/09
SyFy Idents
Or, as I like to say, "Siff-eee"
07/03/09
Sorry folks, I still fundamentally don’t understand the reasoning behind the change from “SciFi” to “SyFy”—they lost a single letter, gained some symmetry, but entered mispronunciation hell.
Seriously, look at that word: SyFy. What do you hear? In my head I can only pronounce it as “Siff-eee”, like syphilis. So, hey, if that’s what they were going for, great. Otherwise, I feel like this falls under the category of changing shit because you’re bored, not because it really needs to be changed. Heck, if they’re trying to get away from the Science part of “SciFi”, they would’ve been better off just dropping the “C”: SiFi. That would’ve worked for me.
Also, is that Disney’s magic kingdom popping out that RV?
On an at&t Fail.
Andrew Hyde commenting on the horrendous at&t phone service issues caused by the descent of 4000-ish hipster-geeks and their iPhones on SXSWi.
It’s like they didn’t even think this might happen…
I’ve never seen such a failure from a phone company caused by 4000 hipsters. A group of hipsters, on record, has not been able to achieve anything in the past five years (known fact). How did they do so much damage?
Andrew Hyde, SXSWi 2009 So Far
03/16/09
Pepsi Logo - a response
The floating fat man.
02/13/09
Oh dear. I bet that despite all of the marketing dollars they spent on their new identity, Pepsi didn’t see this one coming. Click through to read more on Lawrence Yang’s response.
(via Yewknee)
DesignWeds:
User-Interaction Fail
How not to sell digital media online.
02/11/09
For this week’s design post, another video. I take you through a recent online purchase I made and point out some serious stumbling blocks in the user-interaction design. Do people test these things?
Links from the video:
Mute Math
The Autumn Film’s Free Music
Backstage
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Perspective.
Sometimes the difference between getting something done and feeling paralyzed by circumstance is a bit of perspective.
In case you hadn’t noticed, stuff is falling apart
all around you.
In case you hadn’t noticed, it always has been.
Colleen Wainwright, Get your motor runnin’, Day 21: Endings are also beginnings
01/22/09
7 sins of success
Or “Find Failure in 7 Easy Steps”
01/22/09
Great post by Jeffrey Kalmikoff (@jeffrey) on walking the fine line between being successful and entrepreneurial, getting too comfortable, or getting too little done.
That much? Huh…
I don’t like seeing local businesses fail, but this seems amazing to me. At what point do you get so deep into a project that it’s ok to pay well over 3 times the original amount you budgeted for? And on what level does a contractor become, if not culpable, at least crazy ignorant? I can’t imagine quoting a potential client amount x and then going back over and over again until I’d charged them 3 times my original quote.
SAP, the world’s biggest maker of business-management software, took almost three years to implement the system instead of one year, while costs “ballooned” to $36 million from a projected maximum of $10 million, Shane said in papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Denver.
Rocky Staff and Wires, Shane Co. puts blame partly on software
01/14/09
Why your web startup will fail
(Or, rather, the things to think about and look out for)
01/04/09
An excellent article on the ins and outs of trying to work on your own ideas (particularly while funding yourself through client work).
(via @ryancarson)
Twyla Tharp, on Motivation,
Creativity & Failing Well
11/27/08
“In the beginning, we didn’t work at dance to pay the bills.”
Check out Merlin Mann’s post on this for his thoughts.
(via 43 Folder)
Too Big To Fail
On this new idea that we can’t allow for failure in our industries because, well, it hurts
11/08/08
When did this happen? It really became clear a couple months ago as the financial crisis came to the forefront and the government started tossing around billions of dollars, pushing it into institutions that were deemed too big to fail, but I don’t think that was really the beginning.
This is silly. What about the auto industry is so special? If they’re too big to fail, then so is everything else.
I found this article viaDaring Fireball and Gruber’s quote is worth repeating. It sums up my own sentiments nicely:
“America seems to have an irrational soft spot for its auto industry. It’s a shame that these once-great companies have fallen so far, but the simple truth is that Ford and G.M. make ugly, inefficient cars that few people want to buy.”
The stockholders, creditors, and employees of G.M. do not deserve to be spared the pain of the recession. The rest of America will be taking pay cuts, losing jobs, giving discounts to customers, etc. What is special about G.M. that they should be able to live as though 2008 never happened?
Philip Greenspun, Let G.M. go bankrupt
11/08/08
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