Laptops designed by 7-9 year-olds

“Both heartwarmingly personal and frighteningly tied to pop culture. A close study reveals keyboard buttons assigned to ‘Barbie.com,’ ‘best friends’ next to ‘friends,’ ‘HP [Harry Potter] trivia,’ and ‘werd games’ as well as ‘rily werd games.’”

How to write magnetic headlines

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece. The better the headline, the better your odds of beating the averages and getting what you’ve written read by a larger percentage of people. The Magnetic Headlines series will provide you with concrete guidance that will have you writing better headlines in no time.”

New Scientist: Top 10 bizarre experiments

“Here are 10 of the bizarrest experiments of all time – which, it must be said, mostly fall closer to madness than to genius.” #1: Elephants on acid.

Why I hate Twitter

“There’s more of a chance that my dog will type Ulysses than that I’ll get an intelligent Twitter message… Why? Because WRITING IS THINKING. Good writing reflects good thinking. It’s why we go through multiple drafts of anything… to get to what we REALLY want to say. (And, for many writers, to discover what it is they really want to say… most of us don’t know what we think until we start writing.)” [via zk]

Getting started with IMAP for Gmail

“IMAP offers a more stable experience overall. Whereas POP is prone to losing messages or downloading the same messages multiple times, IMAP avoids this through its two-way syncing capabilities between your mail clients and your web Gmail. If you’re trying to decide between using POP and using IMAP with your Gmail account, we recommend IMAP.”

The case against hyperblogging

“Words have relative values. Someone who talks a lot has less value to their words than someone who rarely speaks. But when that quiet person speaks, people listen. When you publish 20 posts a day, your individual posts lose value. And when you finally do have something important to say, it gets lost among the clutter. Your signal to noise ratio is too low.”

This is the third in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots shown are from real usage and were taken during one week in September.

This time we’ll take a look at how Campfire is an integral part of our sysadmin and development efforts.

Discover and fix a code failure
Whenever someone checks in a piece of code, CIA (Continous Integration Agent) automatically runs our test suites and reports on any failed tests.

Analyze a server problem
David and Mark discuss a server issue.

Subversion shows changes to the code
Subversion tracks changes Ryan recently uploaded. Jason offers kudos on the copy edit made.

Tell everyone about a server change
Sam deploys changes to Backpack and details what was changed.

Along with Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Carlos Segura of Segura Inc. and T.26, we’re back with a one-day conference on design, entrepreneurship and inspiration on Chicago’s IIT Campus. The date is Friday, January 18th. The last SEED conference sold out quickly so don’t miss this one. For more on what it’s all about, check Mike Rohde’s illustrated notes from the first SEED and these reviews: one | two | three. We look forward to seeing you on January 18th.

Mike asks:

...I imagine that there isn’t much of a hierarchy [at 37signals]. But in situations where you arrive at an stalemate, and a decision needs to be made, who makes the call? I am referring more to design decisions rather than business decisions.

We’re rarely find ourselves in a design decision stalemate. A stalemate means someone has to ask permission to do something and the other party says no. A battle ensues with neither side backing down.

Getting real breaks stalemates

We don’t get into those battles. If someone feels like a change should be made they usually either just 1. make it, or 2. mock it up to show it off before making it. Once it’s real we can all make a more informed decision about it. At this point a stalemate is the least common outcome. Stalemates are often the byproduct of abstraction or illusions of misunderstanding. Getting real breaks stalemates before they even happen.

Diffuse through responsibility

However, when we do run into two strong opposing viewpoints on a particular design decision, we usually diffuse the tension by making the person championing the progressive idea responsible for any issues related to their decision.

For example, if Ryan wants it this way, and I want it that way, I might acquiesce say “Ok let’s go with your solution, but you’re responsible for any support emails, confusion, or questions that are directly related to your implementation.” Ryan can accept that responsibility and move forward, or he may say “It’s not worth it right now, let’s just go with your solution.” Or maybe we’ll both agree to not do anything right now. That’s a reasonable decision too.

Decisions are temporary

Since we believe decisions are temporary, we’re open to revisiting, repairing, or replacing a decision if it doesn’t pan out. No one at 37signals is personally invested in a bad decision. If it’s bad, we know it’s bad and we do what we can to make it better. Instead of throwing good money after bad, we get rid of the rot and try something else. You can usually tell pretty quickly if something isn’t going to work out. We don’t pretend we can get it right all the time.

So if you hit an impasse, ask one party to step up and take ownership of the implementation, support, and customer feedback loop. They may feel it’s worth it and move forward. Or they may have second thoughts. Either way, it’s a great way to move past a stalemate if that’s where you find yourselves.

Keep the questions coming

Got a question for us? Please send it along to svn [at] 37signals dot com and use the subject “Ask 37signals”. Thanks again!

Come January, Jeffrey Hardy will be joining the team here at 37signals. He’ll be working alongside Jeremy, Jamis, Sam, and myself on the programming side of things. We’re terribly excited to get him on board.

This also marks the return of the multi-country workforce label that we lost when I moved from Denmark a few years back. Jeffrey is from Toronto, Canada.

Jeffrey blogs at Quoted-Printable and is a co-author of Beginning Rails. Say hi to Jeffrey everyone.

Most of the time you should be working on The Next Most Important Thing. Whatever that is, large or small. But there are times when it’s okay to depart. Times when you need to depressurize after completing a dive in the stressful, complex pool of Big Problems. Nobody can stand to be all fire, all the time.

So think about layering your priorities accordingly. Don’t schedule one Herculean task after another and leave all the coasters for the end. Sprinkle some of the easy stuff like pit stops over the course.

It’ll give you a time to breathe and to make progress without wringing out every drop of smarty smarts from your overcooked brain.

The Guardian reports on an interesting study that suggests police should skip photofit composites and go with exaggerated caricatures of criminals instead.

A study at the University of Central Lancashire found that over-emphasising prominent features on people’s faces made them twice as easy to identify than before… On average, a photofit face was correctly identified 20% of the time, compared with 40% for the caricature, according to a report in this month’s Visual Cognition journal.

That’s really interesting. Getting closer to the truth by warping reality. Point out what’s different, what’s obvious, what’ll really help to identify someone. After all, positive identification — not photorealism — is the ultimate goal.

If the guy has a distinctive chin, play that up in the sketch. If he has distinguishing eyes, highlight them. If he has a unique crook to his lips, draw ‘em so you can’t miss ‘em.

A photorealistic sketch is an exercise in accuracy, but an exaggerated caricature is an exercise in identity. Of course this is just one study, but it’s an interesting look at what really matters to get a job done.

Nice design on this three-fold antiobiotic card: big statement on top w/ three key points, side effects listed in the middle, and the pills with clear labeling on the bottom.

[via RS]

Related: The perfect prescription bottle [SvN]

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Campfire keeps Eli Duke in touch with friends/family while in Antarctica
“[Campfire] is completely idiot proof and SO easy to use. I can’t stress that enough. When people (mainly my parents) clicked on the URL for the chat room, all they had to do was type in their name and click ‘Sign In.’ That’s it! They didn’t have to download anything, they didn’t have to learn how to use new software, they just typed in their name, clicked one button, and they were ready to chat.”

The view from Antarctica.

New Highrise features: Quickcard, rename tags, bulk import delete, and more
1) Quickcard. 2) Bulk import delete. 3) Rename a tag. 4) Add contacts to a case without having to write a note about them.

Hovering over the Quickcard icon will reveal that person’s contact information.

SimplifyThis and Basecamp: Easily invoice your customers and get paid faster online
1) Allows users to invoice Projects and To-Dos. 2) Extends the Basecamp data model by keeping an hourly rate for Projects and To-Dos. 3) Allows users to add time entries in SimplifyThis or from SimplifyThis Google Gadget and sync them back with Basecamp.

Learn more about SimplifyThis’ Basecamp integration.

Yesterday Amazon released an eBook reader/service called Kindle. Yesterday a lot of people wrote reviews of Kindle. Yesterday barely anyone on the planet had actually used Kindle, but they just couldn’t wait to tell you how much it sucked.

There’s a lot of premature hating going on. Hypercritical negativity is in season among a large set of the web’s independent tech observers.

Most of the 300 reviews on Amazon’s Kindle product page were overwhelmingly negative. Most of the blog posts on the web were overwhelmingly negative. Much of the tech news/review sites were overwhelmingly negative. Again, few people had actually used a Kindle. And none of the reviewers had a chance to live with one yet.

One thing we have all had a chance to live with are books and newspapers. They’re stacks of dead trees. Bulky blocks of words. They take up a lot of space, need to be pushed around by plane and truck, and quickly fill up your carry on if you want to take more than a couple with you. When you buy a book, you’re buying a tiny piece of furniture that you usually carry with you the rest of your life. Moving? Time to pack up the books!

I know book lovers like to talk about the permanence of books, but I think that’s overrated and over-romanticized. Some people love to build extensive physical libraries to house their books. Not me. I’d prefer to read it and move on. Sure I could buy a book, read it, and sell it or give it to a friend or a library, but I’m just looking for the knowledge, not the inventory or an exit strategy.

That’s not to say books are bad. Books are wonderful, important things. But they’re also terrible at a lot of things. You can’t search paper. You can’t bring that many with you at once. They suck up valuable resources in production and transportation. They take up a lot of space. They leave an artifact when you’re done with them.

I’m not suggesting we get rid of books as we know them. Ever. I’m suggesting there’s plenty of room for another model that shines the spotlight on convenience rather than the legacy attributes of print.

The Kindle sounds like a really interesting device with an interesting value proposition. It’s not tethered to a computer. That’s big. It’s more about the convenience and benefits — your books, small size, instant new books, morning paper delivery — than the physical product or the technology.

Kindle isn’t the first eBook reader, but it’s the first portable bookstore. That’s novel. A book in 60 seconds whenever I want it at used-bookstore prices. And the daily push newspaper feature sounds like one hell of a bonus. I love getting the paper, but I hate getting the paper. What a complete waste of resources just so I can get yesterday’s news. I like that there’s some genuinely new thinking behind Kindle. We should embrace this, not tear it to shreds before it even has a chance.

So I’m going to withhold judgement. Our Kindle arrives today. We’re going to live with it for a while and then we’ll write an honest review. Until then…

Full Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37signals.