SIGNAL VS. NOISE

The Sixth Sense

It's fascinating that wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

So do wild animals really have a special, extra sense? Or have we as humans become so disconnected from our environment that we just can't perceive changes in the earth that are obvious to other species?

Be smarter, not bigger

Sony is establishing a new division called Connect Company to try to take on Apple's iPod. Admitting serious steps need to be taken to soften Apple's MP3 player dominance is a cogent move, but here's how they're doing it:

Connect Company was established on Nov. 1 and brings together Sony experts from Japan and the United States. The division will enter into operations early next year and will eventually employ 300 to 400 workers. Engineers will work on new portable audio players equipped with hard disk drives like the iPod or with computer memory chips. The first product is expected to hit shelves by the end of next year. Connect Company will also operate music download services similar to iTunes that will be personal computer- and cellphone-compatible. In the future, the division is expected to offer video and game distribution services.

Staffing up to 300 or 400 won't beat Apple. In fact, it will only lead to a bloated mess that can't move quickly enough to beat the lean and mean digital music leaders at Apple. The original iPod team was probably a dozen or so people. And I think I read that they produced the first iPod in 8 months. Their small size was the main reason they were able to pull it off.

By the time Sony gets their first product to market, Apple will have 20+ million more iPods in people's hands.

Further, Sony's plan to have this division offer video and game distribution services is putting the cart way before the horse. This lack of focus (thinking way far out before their first music product is even on the market) only serves to weaken their immediate efforts to slow Apple's dominance today. Don't think about tomorrow when you have a massive challenge today.

I bet on Apple here.

Celeb Tragedy

80,000+ dead but CNN has the real story: Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays. From tragedy comes "Entertainment" pieces.

Coexist

Combine religious symbols to spell coexist and then start a clothing line (Flash site) based on the logo. Pretty cool.

Why Apple is Apple and you aren't

Apple does it again with the iPod Sock.

It's simple, effective, desirable and memorable. And it's a SOCK! Look at the other iPod Case options on the market. Forget it. They're ugly, bulky, over protective, they try too hard, and they don't have the same "spirit" as the iPod. They belong on a Dell DJ, not an Apple iPod.

A colorful and simple custom sock, on the other hand, is just perfect for the iPod. It personifies the iPod -- it makes the iPod something you take care of, something you keep warm, something you bundle up. It's something you want to show to someone else ("Check this out... My iPod is wearing a SOCK!"). It's something you would wear if you could (unlike a weird neoprene sleeve thing or a stiff leather case). Plus Apple gives you 6 in a pack and they fit every iPod ever built -- including the iPod Mini. One size fits all, and all includes small digital cameras or your cell phone.

Apple continues to make it look easy.

"I don't move fast, but I just keep moving"

Roger Ebert interviews Clint Eastwood about the making of Million Dollar Baby (Warner Bros. original reaction: "we don't think boxing movies are very popular right now").

"I made this movie for the story and the relationships. No computer special effects, nothing to slow things down. We shot it in 39 days, the same as 'Mystic River.' When I look back at the pictures I grew up on, like 'The Grapes of Wrath' -- it was made in 39 days. Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don't move fast, but I just keep moving."

Son Sets

Ahh, sad day. Son Seals passed away. I used to go with some friends to see Son play at a variety of blues clubs in Chicago back in the early-mid 90s. He really put on an amazing show.

And this guy really had the blues. He had a bullet wound on his face from when his wife shot him. Which wife I don't know. He even lost a leg due to diabetes. But he kept playing.

Son is survived by his 14 children. Somehow I'm not surprised.

Wait, what's this?

Weblog Design

Airbag Greg says weblog design has gotten stale and hack personal web design is a dying artform. Meanwhile, some of that post's commenters say the real problem in design blogs is that they have turned into an echo chamber where the same themes are regurgitated everywhere (kinda like this post about a post at another design blog).

Got any positive examples that debunk these views? Any weblogs that you think have cool/different designs or content that deviates from the norm?

Flickr

Flickr is all the rage and with good reason. The site just nails so much right out of the box. And it's encouraging to see the new improvements that continue to roll out. Just recently I've noticed the addition of batch operations and reporting features (see your popular photos by most viewed, most "favorited", or most commented on).

Some interesting data on Flickr: The site has 182,000 members and is growing at 7% a week. There are 2.2 million photos there and that number's growing at the rate of about 30,000 a day. 82 percent of the pictures on the site are publicly available to anyone.

For more on the community aspects of Flickr, check out this Salon article that calls it the Friendster of photo sites. And here's some photo set action (shots from my recent trip to Europe): Prague, Krakow, and London.

Should less cost more? Is less worth paying for?

So, we're working on a new product right now. Well, two actually. One is Writeboard and the other is... a secret (for now). But it's in development and will probably hit the street before Writeboard.

Anyhow, we're thinking about how to price this new product. We know there's at least one other product that is sorta like ours, and a few that are distant cousins, but our product has some twists which makes it unique. Plus, it's dead simple and insanely useful.

We know that the product closer to ours has about 10 times the number of features ours will have, yet we are thinking of pricing ours at almost twice the monthly rate of our competition. The competition actually has a number of different pricing options and packages, but we'll just have two: Free and Pay.

We think that there's a premium in simplicity (yeah, I know I said it was dead). We believe people will pay more for something that has less because, in essence, they are paying for just what they need instead of a bunch of other stuff they don't. Plus, they're paying a premium for clarity -- less features means less clutter and that means a more efficient experience and greater ease of use (in our case, at least). In general, we think pricing should be based on value, not feature count.

What do you think? Is less worth paying for? Have you found yourself happy to pay more for less? I think the iPod is a great example of this -- it doesn't have an FM tuner, built in voice recording, blah blah. It just does a few simple things really well and it's worth more because of that.

43 Things "Hugster" Preview

A few weeks ago we blew the lid off the 43 Things / Twinkler secret project we've been working on with the Robot Co-op in Seattle. Well, here's another exclusive preview at Hugster, the final major iteration of 43 Things before official launch. Click the image below for a full size view:

This is essentially a real version of a Goal Page. A Goal Page lists the goal ("get an apple powerbook" in this case), some of the people who want to do it, other things that these people are doing, and then weblog-comment-like entries from these people about this thing they're trying to do. On the right there's also a list of people who have done it and whether or not they'd recommend doing it. And then there are the... ads.

In the upper right corner there are a couple of buttons: "I want to do this" adds this goal to your own list. "I've done this" marks this as something you've already done. You can also invite people to do this thing with you and even subscirbe to this thing in RSS and be notified when others join this thing or post a comment.

Launch is just around the corner so stay tuned.

Shipping At The Right Time

Wine.com offers two options for shipping during the holiday season: Ship it now or hold it for holiday delivery (the gift arrives between Dec. 20 and Dec. 24). It's a nice way to reduce guesswork for holiday shoppers.

Check out our holiday e-commerce report for more examples of smart holiday thinking.

Free Blogging for Business webcast

Jim Coudal and Anil Dash will be taking part in a complimentary online seminar on Blogging for Business via Live Meeting this Thursday.

If you're into this sort of thing, don't forget about the Blog Business Summit in Seattle on January 24-25. And then if you'll be in Seattle how about sticking around for our Building of Basecamp workshop a few days later.

Some inspiration from Edgar A. Guest

I picked this poem to read in front of the class on "poem day" in fifth grade.

It Couldn't Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

-Edgar A. Guest

Google Adwords time machine

We recently started using Google's conversion tracking tool for our adwords campaigns. We've set it up so Google generates a report of yesterday's conversions and notifies us by email that it's ready to review.

Today I went into the Reports section and saw this pending report:

December 25, 1979 - Dec 31, 1979. I can't wait to see how that one turned out.

Tip: Getting the budget out of a client

Carlos (recent winner of a Red Dot Award -- go Carlos!) gave me a great tip last year about how to get a project budget from a client.

First you should just ask them for it. Be blunt: "What's your budget or budget range for this project?" If you have a good client they'll tell you (and trust me, you want good clients -- finding the right clients is 90% of this business). If you have a reticent client they may say "we don't have one yet" or "we're just looking right now" or "we want you to tell us how much it will cost." Truth is, everyone has a number in their head. They have a good idea of what they can spend or they wouldn't be shopping in public. If they don't then they shouldn't be asking you to invest your time in writing a proposal -- and you most certainly shouldn't provide them with one.

So, how do you get the number when they won't tell you? Try this: When they tell you they don't have a number say, "Oh, ok. So a $100,000 solution would work for you?" They'll quickly come back... "Oh no, probably something more around $30K." BINGO: That's the budget.

Try it.

My Flash iPod prediction: Flip and slide

Since it's easy to make predictions (and artfully tear other's apart "using a little bit of math courtesy of Pythagoras"), I'll make my own form-factor prediction for the rumored Apple Flash iPod.

How about a flip iPod? Or a slide-out iPod like this LG phone? Take some good ideas from the phone world -- a world that hasn't sacrificed screen size even as phones have become smaller -- and bring them over to the iPod.

If it's a slide, I'd guess that 15-25% of the screen would always be exposed so you could see the song title, time, and/or volume slider without having to physically slide the case open. Or, if it's a flip, there will be a little LCD -- just like a phone -- that would always show the vitals.

That's where my money is, if there's any money to put on this at all. Oh, and there's just one more thing. Just because this rumored iPod might have flash memory doesn't mean it has to take on a radically different form factor. Maybe it's just a little smaller and a little thinner than the iPod mini. The simple rectangular form factor is quite usable. Plus, Apple has been cutting back on moving parts ever since the second generation of the iPod. If they're pulling them from their high-end products I'm not sure they'd bring them back via their "less likely to take care of it" low end products.

For beta or for worse II

On May 19th I wrote about how a bunch of sites were running in perpetual beta. Wired even picked up on it. Let's revisit those to see if they've moved on...

Friendster: Out of beta!

Kinja: Still beta.

Orkut: Still beta.

Chicagoist: Out of beta!

And now... Let's start a new batch and see how long these betas last:

Flickr is beta

Feedburner is beta

Dropcash is beta

MSN Search is beta (but their logo doesn't show it -- it's in text)

Froogle is beta

Jotspot is beta

Rojo is beta

Snap is beta

Gmail is in beta

Building of Basecamp IV: January 27, 2005 in Seattle

Announcing the Building of Basecamp IV Workshop in Seattle, WA on Thursday, January 27, 2005.

40 spots are available and the first three workshops (2 in Chicago, 1 in San Francisco) sold out, so if you're interested sign up now. We probably won't be back on the west coast until summer or fall of 2005. The workshop will be held at Top of the Market at 93 Pike Street in the heart of the Pike Place Market. The space has an especially great view of Elliot Bay.

Check out photos and reviews of past Building of Basecamp workshops. We look forward to seeing you in Seattle on January 27th.

Here's the agenda:

Introductions
The small picture
So how did we start?
The Mantras and saying No early and often
From ideas to features
From features to screens
From screens to programming
From programming to user testing
On to promotion and launch
But launch is just the beginning
Support is a good headache
Our mistakes

Clarity vs. Simplicity

Simplicity is dead. It's been dead for quite a while, and mostly because simple doesn't mean a whole lot. To some people simple means sparce. To others it means white. To others it means something else entirely.

What really matters is clarity. Clarity in visual design. Clarity in copywriting. Clarity in purpose, mission, and statement. Clarity allows someone to "get it" while simplicity only allows someone to "see it."

We've been wrestling with this on the Basecamp signup page. This is how the "plan chunk" from the sign up page looked from February 1, 2004 until this morning:

And today we changed it to be chart-based instead:

You can click on each to see them at full size. You can see the actual HTML chart version on the real Basecamp sign up page.

Now, at first glance the one with the big grey badges looks simpler. But is it clearer? The chart version provides additional context, is proactive in answering some frequently asked questions, and brings the Free and Personal plans into focus better than the grey badged version (the Free and Personal plans are small links at the bottom of that version).

So, while the grey badged version may be simpler in appearance, does it give me enough to make a clear decision? Does it give me enough of an edge to see the distinction between the plans? Does it tell me enough about what is the same and what is different between the plans?

We're going to run with the chart version for a few weeks and see how that goes. We also plan on introducing some new features for certain plans so the chart system will definitely allow us to grow more consistently.

What do you think? Are you intimidated by the chart version? Are you turned off by the "that's it?" feel of the grey badged version? Does one version make you feel like the product is more real or serious? What say you?

Seeking venue help for the east coast

We're ready to put on a Building of Basecamp workshop on the east coast (preferrably NYC, Boston, or DC), but we don't know where to do it. We'd like to stay away from sterile hotel conference rooms. Does anyone have any recommendations? Anyone with an office, loft, or gallery space that can handle 40-50 people want to rent out their space for a day? Please let me know. Thanks.

BTW: If you want to be notified when we hold this workshop (or other 37signals events or annoucements), please sign up for our periodic mailing list:

America by the numbers

We count therefore we are gives us the numbers:

Complaints against U.S. airlines dropped to 4,600 in 2003, nearly as low as in 1995... 163,010 bridges were considered deficient or obsolete... 87,525 governments across the nation, including 3,034 counties and 19,429 townships... Some 63.8 million Americans, nearly 29 percent of the population, volunteered their time... Women (32.2 percent) were more likely to than men (25.1 percent)... Potatoes were the most valuable U.S. crop, worth nearly $2.7 billion, followed by tomatoes and strawberries... We had a choice of 1,456 daily newspapers last year... A master's degree netted Americans a median $60,445 in 2002, while a high school graduate could expect about $27,280 -- $21,141 if you were a woman, $22,823 if you were black... Americans gave $30.4 billion to 64,843 nonprofit groups in 2002...

Shop By Look at Liz Claiborne

LizClaiborne.com offers a smart "Shop By Look" feature. There are three categories of looks (Wear To Work, Casual, & Going Out) and each one contains dozens of head-to-toe outfits you can select. Pick the look you want and you can then see (and buy) all of that outfit's items on one page. It's a nice alternative to the a la carte method that requires a separate page for each individual item. I'm not sure the word "look" is the best choice here though (there's a button that says "View Look" which is confusing since both those words usually mean the same thing).

Introducing SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing

Those endlessly creative folks at Coudal, and the incomparable Aaron Draplin politely ask you to shut the fuck up when you are on your cell phone in public (PDF). Introducing SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing. Printer and skizzors required.

Eugene Mirman

NYC comedian Eugene Mirman has some real funny homemade videos at his site (go to the "New by Eugene" section).

From phone to flower

This is the coolest fucking thing I've seen all year.

Sony vs. Blogs

Sony goes after Kottke and now Jason Calacanis, a former Sony employee, is taking up the fight by starting a Sony boycott. "Until Sony drops this, issues an apology and pays for Kottkes legal bills, Im not going to buy another Sony product," he says. "Im very proud of my time at Sony, but right now Im ashamed to be a Sony Alumni." If you'd like to let Sony's CEO what you think, you can reach him at [email protected].

Which bank do you use?

We've been using Citibank for about 4 years now, but I'm growing frustrated with their online banking interface. The site is slow, unpredictable, and feels a few years behind what I've seen other places.

I've considered using a local bank here in Chicago, but I think I want something more national with more ATM access, etc. We're considering switching to Washington Mutual. Has anyone had any business or personal account experience with them? Would you recommend them?

What bank do you use? Happy with them? What about their online bank? Used any good online banking UIs lately?

Hotel room service rant

I'm still waiting for the day when some sympathetic hotel decides to have a reasonably priced room service menu. There's no reason why an average room service turkey club should cost the same as a really nice full slab of ribs at a great restaurant. I know they price it high cause they can get away with it, but I always feel like I'm being robbed when I order room service. And since room service is often the first or only "extra" service you experience at your hotel, this leaves a bad taste in people's mouths almost immediately. And hopefully it's not from the food.

Further, the hotel I'm currently staying at adds a 15% service charge to all room service orders (on top of the already high prices). Then they add a $3.00 delivery charge. Then they say "the delivery charge does not represent a tip or service charge for wait staff, service employees, or bartenders." So, I'm paying 15% for a "service charge" then a $3.00 "delivery charge" but none of this goes to the person delivering the service? What's up with that?

I know, I know, poor me. Go down to the damn restaurant yourself. Or better yet, leave the damn hotel and get some real food. But still, it just strikes me as an unnecessarily bad experience (similar to Mark's experience with hotel phone charges).

Wordcount

Another example of weighted lists is Wordcount. Wordcount is a cool little Flash-based tool that shows you the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality. The larger the word, the more it's used. The smaller the word the less common it is. For example:

[Thanks R.Bird]

Help Don do his civic duty

Everyone's friend Don Schenck is going to be presenting a 90-minute class to some of his neighbors on the topics of Phishing, Spam, Virii (etc.) and how to protect one's computer. If you have any papers, links, etc. pertaining to any of these subjects, he'd appreciate if you'd send them along.

The power of blog marketing and word of mouth

We're currently running a survey (with SurveyMonkey) for current Basecamp customers, and one of the questions is:

If you can remember, how did you first hear about Basecamp?

And here's the response chart so far:

Pretty cool to see that the top two ways people have heard about Basecamp is via blogs and word of mouth. People enjoy talking about the things they love -- and hate -- which is why you need to work so hard on making the customer experience the number one thing you focus your development energy and resources on.

It's never been easier to spread the word, so if you have an idea for something (a business, product, service, book, whatever) get out there and do it. Make it great, keep your team small, keep your overhead low, treat your customers with respect, get it in front of the right people, and the market will take care of most of the marketing for you.

The Spread of Weighted Lists

All items in a list are not created equally. That's the idea behind weighted lists that, via font size, emphasize popular items and minimize unpopular ones. This list of cities at Craigslist, this list of tags at Flickr (excerpt shown at left), and this list of goals at 43things are a few examples.

The cool thing is that by merely altering font sizes, these lists suddenly gain a dimension; You can still find items alphabetically but you can also use visual weight to find the most requested items. My guess is we'll be seeing a lot more of these weighted lists.

The Perfect Song

NPR's online music show, All Songs Considered, offers songs picked by listeners, musicians, and staff as "the perfect song."