Bill Gates walks into a biker bar, and why clustering is always better than averaging…
Not only are [mean] averages misleading, but even medians and modes don’t give you all the insight you need into your data. It’s all about clustering…
Why we had to deprecate social login support
Social logins seemed like such a great idea, until there were too many options, users couldn’t remember their private relate address, and we tried to become an OAuth provider.
The gift of attention, and respecting the giver
A recent New York Times article titled Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention struck me with an important message around being able to essentially “turn off the world” for a few minutes. But I found the most profound thought of the article not in the practice of meditation, but in the quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: …
What is “Blog Neglect”?
Blog Neglect is, unsurprisingly, exactly what it sounds like. And there’s a list below of (with reference) of some of the tests. I’m sure it’s a manifestation of some procrastination paradox, or perhaps the fear of actually building a following and becoming an influencer. But in my heart-of-heart, that’s exactly what I want to be. …
Is the feedback you give to users understandable?
This is a part of a series of posts around “-able” software, which will eventually grow into an evaluation rubric. Today I want to talk about understandable software. Is your application giving your users something they can understand? And better yet, is the feedback actionable? Is it even useful? Here’s some feedback, along with a …
Is the feedback you give to users understandable? Read More »
iPhone Camera Fix, and a Found / Repair Feature
My rear-facing camera failed on my iPhone 5. It was past the 1-year warranty date, and I didn’t buy AppleCare. Historically Apple had usually taken care of me if I had a Genius Bar appointment and was reasonably nice, but not this time. Frankly the manager was a little too smarmy for me, saying “your …
The Future: Self-powered wearable tech
I’m enamored with my FitBit, but one thing that makes this wearable tech slightly less wearable is the fact that I have to charge it. Yet we have self-winding and solar-powered watches. If the movement of my arm is enough to cause an accelerometer to detect a change, should it also be enough energy to …
Building able software and systems.
Great software is a function of how “able” it is across a range of areas, from usable, to scalable to supportable and even sellable. I think a lot of these areas get missed by product managers and developers. Having been on the vendor and customer side of software, I’m developing these categories into a rubric …
Paperless Billing – How to not solve my problem, only yours
I’m underwhelmed with the amount of mailings I get, and pop-ups every time I log into a vendor’s site, encouraging me to use paperless billing. But they don’t actually solve my paperless billing problems. The universally offer me terms like: We’ll tell you when it’s ready You log into our site and can download it, …
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When should you use a BCC in email
When should you use the BCC feature of an email program? I only permit three uses for myself: Never; it’s bad form. I mentioned that in my last post. When I am CC’ing a task tracking application like Asana (which I love). When I want to spare some of the recipients any future follow-up …