Your Price “Your Price” is the optimal price after factoring in contractual (i.e. equipment discount), business and consumer pricing based on a one or two-year service agreement. This price is independent of eligibility requirements.

With Discount “With Discount” is the discounted amount given should you meet eligibility requirements.

Promotional Discount ($ displayed) This is the discounted price available for the device should you meet eligibility requirements.

No-Commitment Price The no-commitment price is the price you will pay for a phone/device without a service commitment. No contract extensions are required for existing customers, and buying a device at the no-commitment price does not affect your future upgrade eligibility. When you purchase a device at the no-commitment price, you are not eligible for any phone/device discounts or rebates; however, you will continue to receive any service discount for which you qualify.

Riddle me this: Why can’t phones just have a simple price?

Time: 15:34 | 05/11/2010 | Download MP3

Summary
Jason and David respond to criticism of REWORK. Is it a rehash of previously covered ideas? Is it irrelevant for traditional businesses? Etc.

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We’ve been talking about designing blank slates for a long time. In fact, here’s a post from September 2003 about blank slates that pre-dates Basecamp (the web-based application being developed/discussed in that post was, in fact, Basecamp).

What’s a blank slate?

The blank slate is a screen you see when a data-rich app has no data. For example, if you’re using a tool to manage your projects, but you don’t have any projects in the system yet, you’d be looking at a blank slate. It’s important that the application designer consider this state carefully — you don’t want people staring at an empty screen. A blank slate should help someone get started.

Basecamp’s blank slates have been through many iterations. Here are some screenshots from March 2004 (just about a month after Basecamp launched).

Blank slates, redesigned

A few weeks ago we decided to redesign the blank slates inside each Basecamp project. Each section in Basecamp (messages, to-dos, milestones, time tracking, etc.) has a blank slate. The blank slate lets you 1. know there are no messages, to-dos, milestones, etc. in a project, and 2. gives you an option to get started by adding the first one.

This is what the Milestones blank slate looked like before we rolled out the update last week:

I think this design served us well, but it’s also pretty loud. In fact, it doesn’t look blank, it looks full which can be a little confusing. There are quite a few elements on the screen including:

• The shadowed page
• A “Milestones” header with today’s date
• A yellow bar saying “Create the first milestone for this project” along with a brief list of features/benefits below the headline.
• A second headline that says “Learn more about milestones…” with another line below that.
• A big image with a “Click me to start the video” button.
• An “Add a new milestone” button at the top of the sidebar.
• A link to “Add ten at a time” below the button.
• A “subscribe to iCalendar” link with a paragraph of text below (also containing four more links).

Nine links, lots of images, a main section, a sidebar, multiple headlines, a pile of different colors, numerous font sizes/treatments, etc. That’s a lot going on. There’s a lot to consider and absorb just to get started. All these elements make milestones feel hard. That’s not the message we want to send.

What we really want to do here is quickly let someone know 1. what milestones are, and 2. how to add their first milestone. There’s a better way to do this than to hit them over the head with a lot of visuals, headlines, descriptions, and links.

So we started with a sketch.

David speaking in Episode #13: Addressing criticism of 37signals (Part 1 of 2) of the 37signals Podcast (transcript):

Everybody is so quick to do to the congratulations game whenever somebody gets acquired: “Oh, that’s so wonderful. You got acquired.” I mean, it is wonderful that somebody made a lot of money, I guess.

But in many ways, we should be offering condolences. Condolences on the future innovation of that product. Condolences to the customers who are just going to be sucked into this thing that is now way more likely to go stale. And condolences to the poor acquirer, who will probably not see a return on investment for this pickup…

I think there are tons of great companies who could have been million dollar companies that get killed in the process, in the pursuit of trying to become a billion-dollar product. And I think that the VCs are part of that. They are part of killing great million dollar companies because they infuse all this money, they blow up the idea way too early…

Everybody wants to be Michael Jordan. We look at Google and eBay, and a handful of vastly profitable billion-dollar businesses and people think that the road to that goes through the VCs. If they want their shot at being the Google, they have to go that path and that is really appealing.

They forget that the odds of that happening are vanishingly small. They forget the fact that they could just aim to be a million dollar business and they’ll probably be a lot better off. They’ll probably have a lot higher odds of success, but it’s just not as sexy.

It’s really sexy to swing for being a billion-dollar business and I can totally see the appeal of that. But just like we don’t encourage schoolchildren everywhere to think they’re going to make it into the NBA, we shouldn’t be encouraging startups everywhere to think they’re going to be the next fucking Google.

A reader asks:

I have a question that I hope you can help me figure out. I am actively looking for a developer that I can team up with to continue updates, etc. on my web-based application.

You mention in ‘Getting Real’ finding people via open source and I was wondering if you used a particular website for finding open source developers or how you do go about finding someone reputable. Thanks!

GitHub is a good place to find people based on their open-source contributions. Typically, if you want to find an open source developer, you need to follow one or more open source projects and see who is committing actively. It’s not really a smorgasbord affair — at least, not if you want to find quality contributors. (And there’s always our Job Board if you want to place an ad that reaches out to developers.)

Highlights from this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter.

@37signals: REWORK is the third most “heavily highlighted” Kindle book right now: http://kindle.amazon.com/popular_highlights/books

@jamis: One thing running has taught me is that real change comes slowly, and that’s not a bad thing.

@dhh: Awesome visualization of the first five years of Ruby on Rails commits: http://bit.ly/bRdrSd

@jasonfried: Money doesn’t make you smart, it just makes you rich.

@kiranmaxweber: BBC: Global Visual Language – http://ow.ly/1Hzkr and http://ow.ly/1Hzvn. via @research_london

@mattlinderman: NPR streaming new albums from The Dead Weather, The National, and LCD Soundsystem. Good stuff. http://n.pr/15yNnh

@37signals: RT @nsls: Sarah’s interview with @dhh, co-author of Rework RT @librarybeat: Longshots 232: Rethinking Your Work http://bit.ly/c1tizn

@asianmack: It’s easy to go overboard with fancy CSS and JS just like it was easy to go overboard with fancy Photoshop filters in 1997.

@rjs: I snuck a peak at “HTML5 for Web Designers” and it is short, pithy, fun and exactly fits the bill http://bit.ly/awMW5G

@uptonic: It’d be nice if Twitter included the person’s bio in their new follower emails, when available.

@jamis: I’m really loving the iPad as a writing platform. Using @mywritingnook and liking it, for the most part.

@rjs: Bullet lists with more than seven items probably shouldn’t be bullet lists.

@mattlinderman: Pioneer Zephyr = gorgeous 1934 train. Details: http://bit.ly/c4iach Cool pics: 1) http://bit.ly/bsV0Iv 2) http://bit.ly/947clU. (via SM)

@dhh: Won the Cayman Interseries enduro race at Road Atlanta this weekend. Highlight reel: http://bit.ly/dAVomM

@sstephenson: I.e. = in other words. E.g. = for example. Viz. = which is to say. N.B. = I’m a jackass.

An excerpt from Jason’s latest column in Inc. Magazine: “Why Is Business Writing so Awful?”

When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you’re saying, “Our products are like everyone else’s, too.” Or think of it this way: Would you go to a dinner party and just repeat what the person to the right of you is saying all night long? Would that be interesting to anybody? So why are so many businesses saying the same things at the biggest party on the planet—the marketplace?...

Unfortunately, years of language dilution by lawyers, marketers, executives, and HR departments have turned the powerful, descriptive sentence into an empty vessel optimized for buzzwords, jargon, and vapid expressions. Words are treated as filler—“stuff” that takes up space on a page. Words expand to occupy blank space in a business much as spray foam insulation fills up cracks in your house. Harsh? Maybe. True? Read around a bit, and I think you’ll agree.

Read the full piece.