SIGNAL VS. NOISE

Upcoming 37signals speaking engagements

Here's where we'll be over the next few months:

November 9, Building of Basecamp III in San Francisco, CA. David (all the way from Copenhagen), Ryan and I will be presenting. Note: Only a few days left to register. Also check out Redesigning Blogger the day before. "37bc" saves you 10% on one or both.

November 17, Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association in St. Paul, MN. I'll be speaking on a variety of usability and interface design topics.

December 6-8, Digital Design World in Boston, MA. I'll be giving two sessions: 1. Interface Design Insights, and 2. Defensive Design for the Web.

January 24-25, Blog Business Summit in Seattle, WA. Session topic TBD.

March 11-13, South by Southwest in Austin, TX. I'll be giving 2 sessions: 1. Blogging for Business, and 2. How to Make Big Things Happen with Small Teams.

March 14-16, O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) in San Diego, CA. Session topic TBD.

Dig!

Dig! (trailer, review), the documentary on the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, is fascinating. The fact that director Ondi Timoner actually followed these acts for seven years (1500 hours of footage shot) is what gives the film so much depth. You really get a compelling look at artistry vs. commercialism, the cost of addiction, the music biz, and much more. And it's Spinal Tap-level hilarious: BJM frontman Anton Newcombe is as compelling a character as you'll see in any film this year. Highly recommended whether you dig these bands or not.

Basecamp case study interviews

We just launched our first batch of Basecamp case study interviews. They include:

Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path, Richard Bird and Joseph Favata of R.Bird, Mike Rundle of Business Logs, Lisa Nalewak of BlueDog Commuications, and Justin Williams of MacZealots.

We have more planned and will be adding them to the Examples and Case Studies page shortly. Thanks to everyone who's participated so far. If you'd like to contribute one, get in touch.

Note: There are only a few seats left for the Building of Basecamp III workshop in San Francisco on November 9th. I don't know when we'll be getting out to the west coast again, and the last two sessions in Chicago sold out, so if you're thinking of attending you should sign up quickly. Plus you can check out Adaptive Path and Doug Bowman's Redesiging Blogger the day before for a special two-day package rate of $745 (normally $395 for each day). Use "37bc" when you register and save 10%.

The importance of fixing "broken windows" in your code

There's been a lot of talk about the broken window theory -- and rightfully so. It's hard to dispute that the evidence of decay leads to more decay.

This theory also applies to your HTML/CSS. If you let your code get messy, you're a lot more likely to continue to take shortcuts and apply hacks. Inline styles lead to more inline styles lead to more inline styles. And before you know it everything is a mess. It's like your code is rotting -- it eventually gets so bad you don't want to go near it (or you pinch your nose, inch closer, and then just throw it all away).

And bad code spreads like a virus. You end up duplicating pages with bad code. You end up copying and pasting chunks of bad code into other documents. Shattered glass can cause a lot of damage.

So pay attention. Repair those "HTML/CSS windows" quickly. Remove inline styles. Remove unnecessary classes and ids. Keep your code clean from the beginning and it will pay off.

Don needs a hand

Don's moving on. Got advice for him?

The House of Wigs

This copywriter's blog is great. For example...

I mean, whats wrong with treating something as a day job? Day jobs are perfectly respectable. Were all here to make rent money by tricking people into buying things, right, so why try to elevate it? Is it because youve been forced to admit that youre never going to be a writer or painter or CEO because youre not good enough and anyway now you have to fake-tan your disappointed spouse and be emotionally supportive of your ever-growing brood of white gangstas and so a) you need lots of cash and b) youd rather work long hours than go home to that, and c) you need to pretend that making web banners is somehow meaningful or else the weight of a lifetime of failure and shame will crush you right to death? Yes of course it is! Ahaha I figured it out.

(via CP)

Stock: Google vs. Yahoo

Do you expect Google to come down to meet Yahoo or do you expect Yahoo to rise to meet Google? Or neither? Oh, chart here. And, doesn't Google's market cap (51.19B) seem a little inflated next to Yahoo's (49.24B) -- a company that basically does the same thing just as well plus a whole lot more? Or is it the "whole lot more" that's keeping Yahoo down? Is diversification bad for Yahoo?

One thing is for sure -- the 5-day wait to run Overture ads along side Yahoo's search results is ridiculous (especially considering that the competition, Google Adwords, gets your ads up within minutes).

Hmm... Are Google and Yahoo really competitors?

Interface Laundry

Douglas Bowman's Pushing Your Limits presentation on CSS discusses the deconstruction phase of the Blogger redesign. It consisted of these steps: "Take everything away. What do we need to add back in? What can we get away without?"

It reminded me of Life Laundry, which PBS has been playing the heck out of lately. The show helps people streamline their lives by cleaning out home clutter. It's amazing to see the way some people hoard things and the emotional baggage attached to possessions.

What I really like about the show -- and what Bowman's bit reminded me of -- is how it makes people choose which items to keep. Instead of going into the house and picking things to eliminate, they take everything in the house outside to the closest outside space.

It's a simple yet brilliant idea. Now everything is outside the home and must be dealt with -- and quickly. Now it's easier to get rid of something than keep it (instead of the opposite). If you want to keep an item, you'll actually have to put forth effort and make the choice to keep it. It's a powerful shift.

Here's one of the show's hosts, Dawna Walter, on letting go:

You should surround yourself with things that bring you pleasure and serve a useful function. Everything else is extraneous. That is the litmus test. If you use it then you must appreciate it and look after it.

You can see how this concept extends to interfaces: Show respect to the elements that really matter by eliminating the ones that don't.

Firefox on a roll

Wow, just checked our browser stats for the month. Here are the top 5:

No IE 5 in the top 5! I know this isn't representative of the net as a whole, but it's really nice to see Firefox making a move for the top spot.

The best albums

Ever notice how the best albums don't blow you away immediately, you just find yourself playing them again and again?

The latest to sneak up on me like that is Ataxia - Automatic Writing. (iTMS)

Crash Ballet: The winners

Coudal has announced the winners of their one two-day contest to take NASA airplane crash footage and set it to music. The winner, Ethan Mitchell, took home a Jewelboxing 20-pack. Congrats Ethan! BTW: Apologies in advance to anyone getting on a plane in the next few days.

iTunes Affiliate Program

It'll be interesting to see what the new iTunes affiliate program will do for music discussion/linking online. For example, Jamie at AsianMack.com has turned that site into an iTunes Music Store filter ("a fancy term for a list of good music on Apple's iTunes Music Store"). Tunes there range from cool old school rock (T. Rex, NY Dolls, Big Star) to new indie hipsterism (Bright Eyes, Le Tigre).

$805.9 million

What are the 2004 Q3 revenues for both eBay and Google?

Wait, we didn't mean that

A novel new blog that reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in North American media. The blog format really works well for this one.

Go Socks

Congrats to the Red Sox.

Does this mean we will never again hear: "No team has ever come from a 3-0 deficit to win...blah..blah...blah"? Or will announcers simply qualify it with "in the World Series" or "in the NLCS"?

An exercise in clarity: Explain the Creative Commons

I dig what the Creative Commons is doing, but I still have a hard time explaining it to other people. I've tried the line from the top of their site -- "Creative Commons is a nonprofit that offers a flexible copyright for creative work" -- but I still get blank stares. I've also tried "We have built upon the 'all rights reserved' of traditional copyright to create a voluntary 'some rights reserved' copyright." Same response.

I do think that the line "Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work" on this page is the closest to an "ah ha" line, but people still keep saying "so what?"

So, I usually ask people to explain things in 10 words or less, but let's try to explain the Creative Commons in 20 words or less. Extra points if you can do it in 10. Who's the audience? Well, let's say it's the target they're going after: authors and artists -- especially ones who don't know anything about Creative Commons, but have heard a thing or two about "how copyright is broken." Make the sale.

Search Marketing Tips

Debbie Weil is at MarketingSherpa's B2B Lead Gen Summit in DC and offers these bits from the conference:

On search marketing
The longer the phrase you use in selecting keywords (3 words or more) for your Google AdWords campaign, the higher the conversion rate. Search engine crawlers love site maps because they contain keywords and information about your entire site. Don't use the words Click here as a hypertext link if you can be more descriptive (e.g. Link "More information about business blogs"). And for better Google AdWords results, capitalize your URL in your listing (www.TravelCenter.com, not www.travelcenter.com).

On breaking content into chunks
200 - 300 words of visible copy works best on a Web page. A year ago, the wisdom was 700 - 800 words. So if you've got a lot to explain about a topic, break it up into chunks. One page (one unique URL) per sub theme.

The Car Blog

I dig cars, so I really dig The Car Blog, new from the team at Business Logs (Mike writes up the design process). It's nice to see some style hitting the corporate blog scene. Look out Denton and Calacanis, they're gunning for ya.

Brainstorming new business models for small software companies

While this post has Basecamp-related content, it's not really about Basecamp. It's about considering alternate business models for small software companies looking to capitalize on a success without imploding or losing the spirit of what made them able to produce the success in the first place. I believe that as more small teams start producing the killer Web 2.0 apps this is an issue they are going to run into. So let's be proactive about it. Here goes...

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how to open up new markets for Basecamp, and I wanted to share a few things and also ask for some feedback. I believe there's an interesting discussion to be had here.

We've had a fair number of requests for an installed version of Basecamp (Basecamp is currently only available in an ASP-model hosted environment). A version that people can run on their own servers, behind their own firewall. Some people just aren't comfortable with hosted software. We can appreciate that.

Now, there's a lot of money to be made selling installable enterprise-ish software like Basecamp. Similar products like Socialtext or eProject can sell for thousands of dollars a year once you buy a license for just a few employees, and over ten thousand a year for medium sized companies. The problem for us is that even though the revenue is there, we don't have the manpower to service a wide and varying installed base. And -- even more fundamentally -- we don't want to. I'm afraid that a large installed base will divert our focus away from progress and more towards management. We want to create and build, not manage. We're trying to avoid unproductive human scaling at all costs.

So, I've been thinking. Thinking of ways to offer an installed version of Basecamp that benefits our customers and also benefits us. Something that we can manage with the team we have. Something that lets us be who we are and also gives our customers what they need to be who they are.

What I think we'd like to do is limit the number of installed copies to something we could manage and also, at the same time, give those limited customers a super-high level of personal service. A system where everyone wins.

There may be a dozen or more ways to get there, but I've put down a few thoughts below. I'd love to hear what you think:

1. We could set a public price, accept refundable deposits from those who are interested in buying a license, and then pick 10 companies randomly and sell them an installed version. We'd do this every year so we could grow slowly with our installed base. We think 10 is a manageable number for our current team to handle in the first year.

2. We could auction off copies in dutch auction style. Start at a certain price, and the top 10 bidders get it at the 10th highest bid.

3. We could set the price at X and then increase the price 50% for each copy sold (making this transparent, of course). This would probably set a natural ceiling. And, if it didn't, we could surely afford to bring an extra person on or two to service these accounts and also help make the product better.

4. We could set the price high, but also let people who buy in share in the profits of the hosted version. So, they're getting the product and also getting a piece of the action. An investment in what they use. Something they can believe in on both sides.

5. We could sell it cheap as-is -- no support. Use at your own risk. It would be a solid working product, but what you buy is what you get. You have the option to buy a new version with all the new stuff when it comes out, but there are no incremental versions.

6. Pick the 5 (or 10) companies that have both shown interest and that we admire and want to work with and just sell it to them. Amazon.com, for example.

7. Have companies that really want a license "apply" for it by writing up their reasons, how they'll be using it, how it will benefit them, and why they are the best choice. Sort of like a college admissions process to pick 10 "students" for a specialized program. We'll pick the ones that we think have the best story and need for our product.

8. Simply not offer an installed version at all and focus all our energy on the hosted version. We don't have to be all things to all people.

I recognize that some of these models may be flawed, some impossible, and some have real potential, but they are just the beginnings of business model ideas. And I do think it's time to talk about alternate pricing models for installed software above and beyond the old "seats" model.

So, what do you think? Have you thought about this yourself? Have you tried any of these? Let's hear it.

Spread Firefox: A novel approach to advertising

Interesting approach... Ask your customers who don't pay for your product to pay for your advertising instead. The smart hook is that not only do you get to see your favorite open source browser in the New York Times, but you get to see your own name in the ad as well. I do wonder, however, what's the end game? Is putting money towards an ad in the Times the best way for a fledgling browser to spend precious money?

Undecided?

Anyone out there still undecided about who you're going to vote for? If so, what will determine your vote? Anyone who's decided not to vote at all? If so, why?

Plug: Feedburner, burn those RSS feeds

So, last week we handed over the management and serving of our RSS feed to the folks at Feedburner. It's not just that we like to keep it in the family (the Chicago family, that is), it's that this is a damn fine service. And, the best news is that nothing on your side has to change -- you don't need to change the Signal vs. Noise RSS feed URL or anything. It's all transparent to the people who subscribe to our feed.

So, what do they do? Well, for one, they host our feeds which reduces the strain of our server. Secondly, their "SmartFeed" service converts our single feed to all the popular formats (RSS 1, 2, Atom, etc) and serves the proper feed to the proper newsreaders. Third, they'll automatically insert our Amazon ID into any link we send to Amazon. Fourth, they give us stats on how many people are subscribing to our feed (hovering around 2500), how many times the feed has been read, which SvN entries are the most popular, which newsreaders are being used to view our feeds and plenty more. It's quite cool and there's plenty more I haven't even covered.

So, if your site has RSS feeds, get on over to Feedburner and let them handle the dirty work for you.

Update: Building of Basecamp Workshop San Francisco

There are only a couple of weeks left to register for the Building of Basecamp workshop in San Francisco on November 9th (the workshop will be held at Hotel Monaco). Seats are going fast and the last two workshops sold out, so if you're considering attending you should get on board quickly.

And don't forget to check out Adaptive Path's Redesigning Blogger session the day before (also at Hotel Monaco). You can attend either workshop for $395, or both Redesigning Blogger and the Building of Basecamp for only $745.

Save 10%: Use coupon code "37bc" when you register and you'll save 10% on one or both workshops.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Comments from people who attended the last workshop in August:

"One of the best, most useful workshops I've attended"

"It's inspiring to see what 4 talented individuals can accomplish"

"Excellent - I'd recommend the workshop to all of my colleagues"

"You guys were really forthcoming in sharing your practices - it was really appreciated"

"Worth every penny. Was skeptical prior to workshop - more than pleasantly surprised and would recommend to EVERYONE and ANYONE"

"I am very pleased to hear a NEW approach to web application development that challenges the 'standard' way of doing things. Great job!"

"I would highly recommend Building of Basecamp to anyone who is looking to sell their software as a service."

Sign up today!

Flood my inbox

A lot of folks seem to despise email newsletters, but there have to be a few good ones out there. In this day and age of instant gratification blog this and blog that, what do you still look forward to receiving in your inbox at ir/regular intervals? Umm, and let's keep it clean.

I'll start. I still look forward to receiving the Good Experience Newsletter and Archidose (a weekly dose of architecture). Daily Candy seems to be getting a lot of play lately.

Design is in the details

The New York Times offers up an interesting analysis comparing the graphic design of the Bush and Kerry stickers. Politics aside (if that's possible), what do you think? [via Camworld]

Happy birthday David

37signals would like to wish our main man David Heinemeier Hansson a happy birthday today. David's not only scary talented, but he's also a swell guy to boot. Most of all, he's always positive and optimistic which makes working with him a real pleasure. We owe a good chunk of our recent success to his involvement. Looking forward to what's next, David.

True Romance

Thank you to the 37signals folks for a chance to post on SvN. I hope I can live up to the standards set by the owners and other guest posters.

I'll start with a little junket on what could be my favorite movie and that I'm surprised doesn't get more air time: True Romance. I was one of the few to see it on the big screen back in '93 which could cloud my judgement. But it never seems to get the attention or accolades that Res Dogs and Pulp Fiction do.

First, I challenge you to come up with a finer cast: Christian Slater, Rosanna Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer, Bronson Pinchot, Samuel Jackson, Michael Rappaport, James Gandolfini, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Kevin Corrigan & Saul Rubinek. Jack Black was left on the cutting room floor so check out the new DVD for his performance. OK, it's lite on actresses.

Second, the Walken/Hopper scene is among the best in all of film.

"Come again" you might say? Yes. Slater/Oldman is also exquisite. Pitt's 5 lines, supposedly the only ones not in the script, steal the show. Kilmer's character is terrific despite being unseen. And Alabama...er...Arquette is adorable. I know Slater brings mixed emotions but he's pretty good here.

Three, Tarantino's script rates with his other best efforts but I appreciate Tony Scott's direction. Tarantino's can be a bit clubby for me, as if you're missing a bunch of stuff if you're not in the know. I like Scott's injection of a little Hollywood into it. Sure, the language and violence are tough. Leave mom at home.

And it's a good DVD to own. Practically every scene can be watched on its own. If you haven't seen it, throw it on your queue, or better, buy the new edition DVD.

Addendum: the [email protected] thing was more convenience than anonymity. For the record, I'm Patrick Breitenbach and am a developer evangelist at PayPal. Reach me at pbreitenbach at gmail dot com.

1 GHz 17" iMac G4 and G4 dual 500MHz tower for sale

We have a 1 GHz 17" flat panel iMac G4 with an 80 gig drive and 768 megs of RAM for sale. It's in excellent condition. The latest version of OS X is installed along with all the other stuff that comes with an iMac. Asking $750/obo.

We also have a PowerMac G4 dual 500 MHz tower with 1 gig of RAM and a 40 gig hard drive for sale. OS X installed. Video card has a DVI port (not ADC). Asking $375 for this one.

Get in touch if you are interested in either machine.

On further inspection it's twice as freaky

I have my desktop set to randomly load up the photos from my recent road trip to San Francisco. I hadn't looked that closely at them before, but now that they're the desktop on my big monitor I'm starting to notice things. Including this (not aracnophobic safe). The fact that this was taken at a cemetery in the middle of a corn field in Iowa makes it even creepier.

Steve Jobs on innovation: Gives me chills

From a new Interview with Steve Jobs in Businessweek:

Q: How do you systematize innovation?

A: The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Amen Steve! Always say no default. Make features and ideas beg to be made, beg to be included, beg to be pursued. You'll know when they need to be.

Whenever we talk about "Say no by default" at our Building of Basecamp workshop we get strange looks. I'm glad we're on Steve's side on this one.

Don't make me think — yet

Please make me think! at Design by Fire is seeing some action. These quotes sum the article up:

Should everything be so damned obvious all of the time?

I still drink the dont make me think kool-aid. And I find myself wondering sometimes: Is it the right thing to do?

Yes, it is absolutely the right thing to do. But for each design there is an important consideration: when is effortless use so important?

For example, an advanced programmer wants to get complex things done lightning speed in their text editor without thinking. Two weeks of thinking and learning up front may pay off when the programmer can then slip into the "don't make me think" zone day-in and day-out over many years.

But on an 'Order' page for a web app the "don't make me think" zone is immediate and critical. There is no pay-off down the road for figuring out a complex order interface. It must be clear. It must be obvious. Or you won't make the sale.

I suggest thinking about it this way. "Don't make me think" refers to two things, how easy an interface is to use, and when that ease of use matters. Some interfaces, like an airliner cockpit, deserve a thinking investment. Others, like that self-checkout at the grocer, should be obvious.

There is no hard and fast rule. Think about the design problems in front of you and make the call: should this be effortless now or later?

Sign up for the 37signals mailing list

Subscribe to our free newsletter and receive updates on 37signals' latest projects, research, announcements, and more (about one email per month). We won't sell or trade your name or anything evil like that, so just chill.

eBay's quarter

Just heard about this: 25% of all consumer dollars spent online are spent at eBay properties (eBay, PayPal, Half, etc). Yowzers.

Web 2.0 Review: Don't forget there's another kind of scaling

I really enjoyed presenting and learning at Web 2.0. If they put on an event like this again next year you really need to be there. This was a good week for everyone involved (especially for our pals at Flickr who seem to be the deserved darlings of the internet these days).

Thanks to Jeffrey Veen, Jason Kottke and Marc Canter for allowing me to be part of their panels (although Marc certainly did most of the talking, as he usually does ;). And, special thanks to John Battelle for inviting me to speak.

Now, the hot themes at Web 2.0 were open APIs, RSS, and Wikis (and to some extent "the power of the tail," which is what I believe Web 2.0 is really all about). Some cool tools were announced including Rojo and Jot. I suspect there will be a lot more coming around the bend. Our fellow Chicagoans at Feedburner got some high profile shoutouts as well. Bill Gurley's presentation blew me away.

But, I've gotta say, it felt a lot like 1999 again (and the only people who benefitted from that near future were the short sellers). Tons of VCs floating around. Tons of talk about Round A and Round B funding. The word "millions" was overheard in more conversations than was comfortable. Looks like the overhang is eager to spread itself. Too many smiles and not enough skepticism. "Revolutionary" and "next generation" were tossed around carelessly (as Jason alluded to). But, it is exciting seeing the industry regain some footing and start innovating again. Innovation is alive and that is a great thing.

This all brings me to the point of my post.

I keep hearing about "scaling" issues. Will this scale? Will that scale? Our software is scalable. Etc. But there's another kind of scaling -- human scaling. And that's the expensive kind. A lot of these new companies that are springing up already have 10, 15, 20 people on board (or are headed there soon). Those are big payrolls for companies generating little to no revenue. And when you have little to no revenue and you have 10, 15, 20 people on board, you have to start borrowing. And when you start borrowing you start going into debt. And when you start going into debt, you can't continue to innovate or take chances. And then decisions are made that aren't in the best interest of your customers. It's a slippery slope. A slippery downward slope.

Aren't big payrolls and large head counts Web 1.0? Nothing is worse for a start-up than big fat fixed costs. They are like trying to sprint with 50 lb ankle weights. Isn't Web 2.0 in a large part about agility and flexibility?

So, my advice to these new companies with their new products and fresh-faced enthusiasm... Keep it small. Start small and stay small. Borrow from yourself before you borrow from someone else. You can have an impact with just a few people. You can build great products with a small team. You can do it on your own. You can.

I know you can because we are (and we're not special). We built Basecamp in four months with 2.5 full timers (and our .5 is 7 time zones away). Our customers don't seem to mind our small team (and isn't Web 2.0 about making sure they're happy?). We've been pretty tight lipped about sharing numbers, but in half a year we've seen tens of thousands people in over 40 countries make Basecamp a part of their day. And while the product continues to grow, we haven't had to add a single person to our team. I don't need to tell you how that affects profit margins. And all this is on top of running our consulting business. That was one of the goals from day one: Build a product that doesn't require organizational scaling. And so far so good. If you want to learn more about how we did it, attend the next Building of Basecamp Workshop (San Francisco, Hotel Monaco, November 9, 2004).

It requires steady discipline, but it can be done. It is being done. And I believe you'll make better decisions and build a better product if you drape yourself with a few constraints -- a small team and your own money being two of them.

Good luck to everyone in Web 2.0.

A boatload of useful Basecamp features launched today!

We've checked off a few of the top feature requests in this latest batch of goodies. Most of these features are squarely pointed at increasing people's productivity and overall view of what's going on across all their projects. Have a look at the list. If you're a Basecamp customer we hope you enjoy them! If not, sign up already, will ya? It's free to try!

Update: David has a nice write up of the thinking and original concerns behind some of the new features we added today.

What about yesterday's weather?

This just dawned on me... Weather sites always show you today's weather and then the future predictions, but wouldn't it be helpful to know what yesterday was really like? Then I'd like to know how yesterday's reality compares to today's prediction. You know, is it going to be about the same, a little warmer, a little colder, a little wetter or drier? Wouldn't that be helpful? Thoughts?

Tom Waits On Getting Unstuck

Here's a Tom Waits feature from The San Francisco Chronicle. He offers a songwriting tip that might also apply to stuck designers:

Waits did offer one piece of songwriting advice that he tries when he finds himself stuck. "Take out your favorite line," he says. "It's hard to do. What you're doing is, you've only got one line and you're trying to hang everything on it. What you need is a better line."

On how to balance family and career:

"Family and career don't like each other," he says. "One is always trying to eat the other. You're always trying to find balance. But one is really useless without the other. What you really want is a sink and a faucet. That's the ideal. Sometimes you do want it to fill up. Other times you want it to go down the drain. You usually don't get that luxury."

TextMate: Cya BBEdit

On OS X? Completely mystified by the popularity of BBEdit? Wish there was a simpler, better, smarter text editor built for real-world web development? Look no further than the shiny new TextMate. Our very own David Heinemeier Hansson helped develop it and has been using it to code Basecamp. Check it out for yourself.

An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design

The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don't think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.

There is a better way to manage this vast complexity than by making big decisions up front and hoping for the best. To make better sites — sites that are functional, beautiful, and "usable" — we have to break our design problems up into small independent chunks based on the real issues within our requirements. Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns.

Read the rest, including a fully worked-out example...

Gawker Media Expands

Gawker Media launches three new blogs today: Jalopnik, a car site; Kotaku, for video games; and Screenhead, for 'funny shit'.

The sponshorship model of Jalopnik is interesting too. Instead of selling a variety of ads, the site is starting out with Audi as its "exclusive launch sponsor." Publisher Nick Denton says, "Rather than clutter the page with banners, [designer] Patric King has integrated Audi into the design of the page." Note the Audi imagery, logos, and text in the header and elsewhere on the page. It's an interesting new model for site advertising.

One thing though: The Audi tagline and URL seem perilously close. I presume "Never follow audiusa.com" isn't the intended message.

Count Ferdinand Graf von...

"Hey baby, want to come back to my place?"

"Sure, did you drive?"

"Yup."