We’re often told that we should design our websites and software...
While on a vino shopping spree @ Italian Wine Merchants for a very important man in my life, I...
$3.42 vs 10 cents. The Times is monetizing its time on site 34 times better than Facebook.
definitely click-through to this. social networks are blowing news sites out of the water in terms of time spent on site but, it seems, aren’t doing a fantastic job monetizing it.
But aside from making me really hungry, the video also made me think of how certain media is presented to allow for an experience, to make the technology behind it disappear. That oh-so-smooth transition from “video on a video hosting website” to “Salsa Show!” was clutch to making me view this as more than a 40-second clip about a vegetable I really couldn’t care less about and something I wanted to click away from. Movie theaters are certainly designed to be invisible, and I think physical books are as well, providing only the turn of a page as the sole interruption between the written word and the reader’s imagination. Even then, that interruption is the mark of a good book: a “page-turner.” With the boom of electronic reading devices, it’s important to keep this feature in mind; which device will allow you to have an experience with a book, to make you want that salsa and nothing else, and then give it to you?
my sister is a better blogger than i am.
So how long do you think it’s going to be until they can’t afford to keep up all this ridiculous shit they’ve built and the entire thing turns into a post-apocalyptic wasteland with lawless bandits scavenging for all of the luxury items no one is around to pay for? Should be exciting!
This is a blog deserving of your love, biz+design fans.
tasty.
Seth Fischer on giving your brain a needed break, or “attention restorative theory:”
When you go for a walk in, say, the woods, you’re using a more subtle “involuntary attention” when looking at things like sunsets or squirrels. When you’re in the city, you’re always avoiding that asshole bicyclist, stepping over that pile of human poo, or spending your brain power ignoring the Rottweiler barking at you in the window. Because your “direct attention” is always focused, your prefrontal cortex is always on overdrive, and you end up not being as good at things that you need “direct attention” for, like learning at school or solving problems you haven’t faced before or resolving conflict. In other words, if you don’t take some time to look at a sunset, your brain never gets a break, and that’s not good.Before you take a hike, see also: “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature“ or the slightly less complex, “The Cognitive Benefits of Nature.”
to everyone who asks why i don’t live in new york city, here is my proverbial middle finger/your answer.
Note from the Admin: John’s Duffel Thanksgiving 2009 was selected “Daily Duffel” for 2/18/10. Daily Duffel authors are invited to comment on their experiences for the Duffelup Journal. This is what John had to say:
I created the Duffel to help me visually manage things I wanted to do…
holler.
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Virtually all of the houses with a single occupant or family (as indicated by a single doorbell or knocker) were shoveled clean. Nearly every house with multiple occupants — and most businesses — were unshoveled.
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A common good that requires work to maintain is ignored if there is a diffusion of responsibility.
emphasis mine.
What have you been up to, Jake?
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I build a generalized platform for these buttons and called it Kwisi, short for “Know When I See It”, and started testing on some friends’ sites (like the Photojojo Store). The name referred to the idea that sometimes you don’t know exactly what you want — you just have to look around and see what catches your eye. When you do a Google Search, for example, you have some word in mind, and you’re attempting to go directly to it. But what if you’re just in the mood to shop? What if you want to see something new, something innovative, or strange, or obscure, or foreign? Traditional web search isn’t that helpful. So I thought I would install this platform on other sites, who would change their whole webstore around to accommodate me.
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My philosophy here is that search engines are 20-year-old technology and we need new ways of navigating the endless data that is piling up every day. To that end, I have committed to Hybrowse as a four-month project. I will continue working full-time on it until May 1st (at the very least). This is not a startup company, it is my attempt to make life more manageable for anyone who feels overwhelmed with data. If you feel that is a noble goal then please play with the site and let me know how I can improve it. Very few things are “locked in” and it’s very easy to make changes, so if you have any opinions, please send them to me at jake@hybrowse.com. I want to know your thoughts; it’s hard for me to see the site very clearly anymore, by myself.
But before I go, I will make this more interesting and supply some new ammunition for anyone who thinks I am crazy. The crazy thing is this. By May 1st I will have 1,000 services on Hybrowse. Yes, that’s 998 more than I have right now (Netflix and Etsy). I consider this goal “impossible” and will, by any rational calculation, fail hilariously, but I don’t care — I need an audacious goal that gets my adrenaline pumping, and 100 doesn’t do it. 1000 sites. I’m like a local car salesman on tv. “THESE GOALS ARE INSANE!!!”
I genuinely think the site would be profoundly useful if it had 1,000 services. Picture it. You land on the home page and use the same “overlapping tags” mechanism to discover, say, Swedish housewares stores, then pick one, then browse their overpriced euroshit. Or you sort through Match.com profiles and try to find ones that don’t look like monsters. I don’t know how it will work. But I’m going to do it and I want your suggestions … and this is going to be a very busy couple months and I have to go now, because I suddenly realized I have a lot of effing work to do.
jake@hybrowse.com
(ps: Peter Vidani did the site’s visual design)
this is great, jake. i really hope you reach your goal b/c the approach is absolutely necessary. 1,000 is a smart number too.
…a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.
furthermore. you’ve got thousands of people who follow you on twitter? here’s a sticker.
i used to hate math as a kid but i like it a lot more in the business world because i can count on one hand the people who understand the connection between behavior and action.
crying that no one clicked on your link? well, literally, no one gives a shit.
Delivering immediate effect might not be the best business model for designing long-term valuable marketing initiatives.
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There is a need for long term marketing initiatives; digital concepts and ideas need to carry the longevity of product relationships. Which also implies a different way of measuring value. (What are the metrics identifying the value of a relationship? Are they the same as used for our ability to traffic people back and forth from, and around in, cyberspace?)
