February 2012
2 posts
keen io: Don't just make a technology, make a... →
keenio:
A common struggle faced by founding teams is understanding the distinction between creating a technology and creating a business. History’s entrepreneurial graveyard is ripe with brilliant, unappreciated inventions — technologies created by talented engineers who, sadly, didn’t know how (or…
keen io: The Early Early Stage →
keenio:
Hi!
I’m Dan.
I have two co-founders. Here’s Kyle:
Here’s Ryan:
We’ve known each other since high school (we’re still good friends with the dude on the left. hi Nate!):
And now we’re keen.io.
We’re a new startup (and I want to heavily emphasize NEW). We’ve…
December 2011
9 posts
The GoDaddy victory is a red herring.
This post is a response to a (rightfully) celebratory post written by Chris Heald on Google+. If you didn’t see it, please first read his original post here.
That GoDaddy reversed its SOPA stance (or at least its PR stance) about SOPA in the wake of our boycott is good news, but it’s also distracting news. While it does demonstrate that we, the citizens of the righteous internet,...
Klout's Score Decay Problem (Do I really have...
Klout is a service that tries to distill your online influence (mostly your Twitter influence) down to a number.
But I believe their scoring algorithm is profoundly broken, because it puts an undue emphasis on recency. With Klout, it’s not “what have you done?”, but “what have you done lately?” I believe recency should be weighed much lower than they weigh it...
How to make Command-G behave sanely in the new...
On a Mac, when you press ⌘G, it normally means Find Next (the next occurrence below my current location), and when you press ⇧⌘G, it means Find Previous (the next occurrence above my current location .
In iTerm (as of the iTerm2 Beta 2 release), the direction is reversed: to “Find Next” means to search upward and to “Find Previous” means to search downward.
If this...
Alfred Extension: Copy the Apple command symbol...
I occasionally find myself wanting to enter the symbol for the Mac “Command” Key into something I’m writing, such as documentation, tweets, IM conversations, or this blog post.
I got tired of googling or having to launch a separate app.
Enter Alfred for Mac!
I made a simple extension for Alfred called Copy Command Key to Clipboard, which you can download here.
Once...
Adobe AIR (Write Once, Suck Anywhere)
If you’re deploying a consumer-facing app with Adobe AIR, you’re making a mistake.
AIR makes it look like either (A) you don’t have the taste to distinguish good UX from bad, or (B) you can tell how bad/mushy/laggy AIR feels, but you don’t care enough about your users to give them something better.
I’m looking at you, HipChat.
Hacker News and negativity vs. productivity
Recently I released a Python library called dstruct, and I submitted it to Hacker News in the middle of the night.
In the morning, I awoke to find it had achieved enviable frontpage status on HN, but to unenviable reception: every single comment was negative!
I was pretty bummed! Then I realized dstruct had something like 5x as many watchers (and lord knows how many checkouts) on GitHub as...
The Venmo app is SO good
I just wanted to throw some love to the people behind Venmo. It’s rare for a company to find someone who understands design at the intuitive level. It’s rarer still for the company to recognize this and grant the person(s) true authority.
I’m notoriously picky when it comes to the interaction design of the products I use.
Venmo for iPhone is the rare app that triggers...
6 tags
Is Venmo sustainable?
Venmo is a beautiful service. It lets me send money to a friend or charge him/her money with just their mobile number. It allows groups of two or more friends to settle up debts over things like rent, utilities, movie tickets, bar tabs, and restaurant bills, all without the need for an IOU service as a middle-man.1
In SF, most of my friends have been accomplishing this via Square for a year or...
October 2011
1 post
Jobs
When I was 15, I met you through a Noah Wiley role in “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. Within minutes, this character named Jobs began a pattern that the real you will continue forever, a pattern of inspiration that only a kindred spirit could ignite.
By the time I was 25, you had ascended to the top of my list of personal heroes, because you combined so many of their traits: A limitless...
September 2011
1 post
A rational defense of the new Facebook homepage...
I happen to like the new FB homepage quite a bit, because I believe it solves a major problem for all of us.
The old layout forced people to choose between these behaviors:
In Top News: See only what The Golden Algorithm denotes as worthy, and embrace it as a benevolent and wise lord.
In Recent News: See everything Twitterstyle, in a time-oriented firehose, without any benefit of the...