Yahoo! is shutting down Yahoo! Photos in a week. It’s tough for a company to paint a pretty picture with that sorta information but I think the way they’ve handled this touchy situation is impressive.

1) They sent an email 2+ months in advance so customers had time to prepare for the closing.

For some time now, we’ve supported two great photo sharing services: Yahoo! Photos and Flickr. But even good things come to an end, and we’ve decided to close Yahoo! Photos to focus all our efforts on Flickr — the award-winning photo sharing community that TIME Magazine has called “completely addictive.”

We will officially close Yahoo! Photos on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. Until then, we are offering you the opportunity to move to another photo sharing service (Flickr, KODAK Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket), download your original-resolution photos back to your computer, or buy an archive CD from our featured partner (for users of the New Yahoo! Photos only). All you need to do is tell us what to do with your photos before we close, after which any photos remaining on Yahoo! Photos will be deleted and no longer accessible.

Of course, we hope you’ll join us at Flickr (you can even use your Yahoo! ID), but we also realize that Flickr may not be for everyone. In the end, we want you to find the service that’s right for you, and we hope you take some time to learn more about your options before making this important decision.

2) They provide a list of alternative photo sites: Flickr, KODAK Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket. This way customers know their options and don’t feel left up a creek without a paddle.

3) They offer to do the heavy lifting and move photos to any of these other photo sharing services. No need for customers to go through a downloading and re-uploading hassle. They also do a good job explaining exactly how the transfer works, down to the number of emails to expect and how long it will take.

4) Just want your photos back? You can download hi-res photos individually or buy an archive CD at a reduced price. Too bad there’s no way to download all your photos at once though (they don’t “technically support” this).

5) They offer clear FAQs about the closing and how to move photos elsewhere.

6) They understandably pitch their own related service, Flickr, but also acknolwedge it may not be for everyone. “In the end, we want you to find the service that’s right for you, and we hope you take some time to learn more about your options before making this important decision.”

No one wants to shut down a service. But if you’ve gotta do it, Yahoo!’s approach offers some lessons on how to do it thoughtfully and in a way that minimizes customer frustration.

My brother-in-law Brian Lyons died in a motorcycle accident last week. He was 42 years old. 

I’ll spare you the personal side of this tragedy and focus instead on some workplace perspective I gained from the reaction of colleagues to his death.

Leading by teaching
Brian and I didn’t really talk much about work. Kinda odd perhaps since we worked in the same industry (he was the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Number Six Software). But during family gatherings, it seemed more appropriate to discuss food and fireworks (he was a big fan) than “The Mythical Man Month.”

I knew he was what you’d consider an “expert.” He grew his company from a small startup to a 150+ employee operation. He wrote books, papers, and articles. He spoke at conferences. He was considered an authority on the Rational Unified Process, Eclipse Process Framework, Service Oriented Architecture and Agile.  

But you don’t really know what someone is like at work if you don’t work with them. So the emotional reaction of his colleagues surprised me a bit. They showed up in droves at the funeral services and tearfully recalled the impact he had on their lives.

They didn’t talk about him as a boss or an expert. They talked about him as a mentor and a friend. How he always had time to answer the questions of even the newest employee. The calls of support he’d make before and after someone took a certification exam. The way he reached out to compliment someone on a thoughtful blog post. And they chuckled at his everpresent sense of humor, like the time he showed up at a team-building cooking class in a chef’s outfit. Several people told me the same thing: “He led by caring.”

Ryan’s lightbox post sparked a lively debate about the feature, influence, opinion, and contradiction.

After one person pointed out that Matt said he liked something that was sorta “Lightboxy” and Ryan didn’t like Lightboxes, another commenter said:

I’d honestly love to see a post on how you guys handle some of the contradictions you make in public.

I’m really glad he asked because this topic has been on my mind for a long time.

The answer is simple: People are contradictory. You are, I am, he is, she is. People from all walks of life, work, and belief contradict themselves, their leaders, their mentors, and their friends constantly.

We’re all human and we all change our minds—hopefully. Those who don’t change their minds, or who aren’t influenced by other minds, are frozen in time. They’ve declared: “Learning is over, I know all there is to know.” That’s sad.

My sixth-grade science teacher, Mr. Blackburn, once told me “Never believe yourself to be completely certain of anything.” The only thing I’m certain of is that he was right.

So what if Matt may says one thing, Ryan says another, and a few months later Matt or Ryan changes their mind or perspective? They may agree today and disagree tomorrow. I may believe something today that I don’t believe in 3 days. And 3 days later I may go back to the original belief. That’s how it should work. That’s normal.

As a company, we don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that publicly or privately. We believe it’s healthy. Adaptation based on new information or perspective is a healthy part of learning and growing—as a person or collectively as a company. Continuing to refine your opinion is A Good Thing. It’s all part of figuring things out over time.

Statements are about now, not about forever.

Resist the urge to be afraid to say something today because you said something else yesterday. Say what you want to say. Don’t be afraid of those who are ever-armed with the critical spotlight ready to call out your contradictions. Be proud that your mind is still open to new discoveries and possibilities.

The Morning News has a a great piece on Martin Klimas, an artist that uses sound to capture movement.

I drop the figurine from the same height in complete darkness while the lens of the camera is open. When the figurine hits the ground, the sound triggers the lights to go off for a fraction of a second.

The moment of impact is poetic:

Read more and see more at The Morning News.

My patience is wearing thin on this one. There’s a new image editor called Acorn, and it looks pretty cool. So I click on one of the screenshot thumbnails in the lower-right of the home page. And then it happened. The sky turned black, the lights went out, and a giant gleaming polaroid slammed me in the face. That’s right, I got lightboxed.

Here’s a time lapse of my experience on the Acorn site:

You know what that looks like? A strobe light. And it felt like one too.

There’s more than the headache. Lightboxing kills context, and worse, it kills personality. Every image in every lightbox is the same, floating in the same generic universe, cut off and disconnected from your site, your style, and your design.

So next time, save us the eye strain and think twice before you start playing with the lightswitch.

We’ve been writing software at 37signals since 2004. About a year later I bought a new place that came with a little backyard garden. Over the past few years I’ve seen patterns in curious places. Growing plants and building software have a lot more in common than I ever thought.

Plant spurts

When you have a garden one of the things you start to notice are the seasons. I mean really notice the seasons—and micro seasons. Instead of winter, spring, summer, and fall, you notice hibernation, sprouting, prolific growth, rest, growth, rest, flowering, rest, reproduction, transformation, rest, hibernation, etc. If you watch closely you can tell when it’s working on its roots or its flowers or its leaves. If you watch closer you can tell if it’s passive, aggressive, stubborn, clever (vines are really clever), etc.

Software spurts

It recently dawned on me that software grows much in the same way that plants grow. New features are the flowers of the software world. And just as most plants aren’t flowering all year long, software isn’t sprouting features all year long. There’s flowering season. There’s new feature season. There’s infrastructure season.

Sometimes software is working on its roots. Bolstering its infrastructure. It’s growing underground where the public can’t see it. It looks like nothing’s happening, but there’s really a lot going on. Without those roots new features can’t sprout.

And sometimes it’s rest time. Plants rest in the winter. Software often rests in the summer (it’s too nice to work too hard in the summer). Everything can benefit from a deep breath, relaxation, and sleep. Chaotic constant growth and change doesn’t make room for order and organization. Growth requires new energy and new energy requires rest.

Cycles

It’s the downtimes that make you appreciate the uptimes. Winter gives way to spring which leads into summer. When you start to see shoots, new leaves, and nascent blooms you start looking forward to bigger flowers, more growth, wider coverage.

When software’s been resting for awhile, and something new blooms, you look forward to more updates. Development season takes hold, attention gathers, and things start happening. This week there’s improved search, next week there’s a brand new feature, and next week there’s something great that’s entirely unexpected. Software gains momentum and change rolls into more change.

Then the whole cycle begins again.

Kiva is amazing. It’s a site that lets you make microloans to working poor entrepreneurs in the developing world. Farmers, shopkeepers, builders, textile workers, and shoe sellers in Azerbaijan, Samoa, Togo, Kenya, Ecuador. Kiva helps you help them for as little as $25 at a time.

It’s a loan

This isn’t charity, it’s a loan. Amazingly, 99.7% of loans are repaid. When your Kiva loan is repaid, you can choose to withdraw your funds or re-loan to a new business. It’s a wonderful idea well executed.

One-to-one lending

What’s especially cool is that you are helping one person (and their family). It’s a laser-pointer approach to helping people. Pick one person to help, watch their progress, get paid back, loan them more if they need it.

It’s a refreshing alternative to donating to a mega-charity that blurs the connection between your help and a specific human being. Instead of tossing a dollar in a pile to be mass distributed at a later date, Kiva lets you “look someone in the eye,” hand them the dollar, tell them you’re behind them, and wish them good luck. That’s extra special for the giver and receiver.

The lending process is beautifully simple which is a big part of the appeal. Here’s how simple:

Browse business owners in need

We’re happy to announce the addition of three new sites to our targeted ad network, The Deck. This brings the total number of affiliated sites to 21 and also brings a wealth of talent and smarts to the network too.

Darius Monsef’s COLOURlovers has taken a simple and critical part of design and grown it into a thriving destination for the discussion and analysis of colors, palettes, theory and meaning. Veerle Pieters’s site has always been a great resource for illuminating examples of layout, code and above all, impeccable taste. Our third new affiliate is A Brief Message, a concept developed by Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico that aims to become the “Op-Ed” page for design on the web, by publishing short weekly commentary on matters that matter.

If you have a product or service that could benefit from being in front of millions of web, design and creative pros each month, ping us at The Deck. Limited inventory is available for the fall.

The worst strategy is whining

“Whining is rarely a successful response to anything. Instead, start by acknowledging that most of the profit from your business is going to disappear soon. Unless you have a significant cost advantage (like Amazon’s or Wal-Mart’s), someone with nothing to lose is going to be able to offer a similar product for less money. So what’s scarce now? Respect. Honesty. Good judgment. Long-term relationships that lead to trust.”

All about hummingbirds

“Hummingbirds while in flight have the highest metabolism of all animals, a necessity in order to support the rapid beating of their wings. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute, a rate once measured in a Blue-throated Hummingbird. They also typically consume more than their own weight in food each day, and to do so they must visit hundreds of flowers daily. At any given moment, they are only hours away from starving.”

You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem

“Screw your plans. Work on your skills. Apply them to a problem that is biting you. Flush and repeat until people believe you had a plan.”

7 futuristic interfaces

Listed at the recently launched Oobject (“like Billboard charts for gadgets”).

List of next generation acronyms

GI — Google it, MOP — Mac or PC?, FCAO — five conversations at once, IIOYT — is it on YouTube?, DYFH — did you Facebook him/her?, etc.

Italian Futurists

“At the beginning of the 20th century a small group of artists set out to ‘destroy cultural institutions and create new ones.’ This group became known as the Italian Futurists and their beliefs encompassed many areas of politics and culture. Within literature and visual arts the artists expressed their beliefs in visual poems. These poems took the traditional elements of type, color and page and recombine them in a radical new way through creative typography.”

Webistrano: “Capistrano deployment the easy way”

Webistrano is a Web UI for managing Capistrano deployments. It lets you manage projects and their stages like test, production, and staging with different settings. Those stages can then be deployed with Capistrano through Webistrano.

The kind of help wanted ad you write can help determine what kind of applicants you get. Write an honest, thoughtful, clear ad and you’re more likely to hear from candidates with those qualities. Spout a lot of buzzwordy nonsense and you’ll attract people fluent in bullshit.

We talked about this a year ago in A tale of two job ads and I was reminded of it again when Guy Kawasaki posted How to Not Hire Someone Via Craigslist. He remarks about the need to keep it real in job listings…

Write honest job descriptions for honest job titles. Don’t try to entice candidates with promises of greater responsibilities or opportunities than is true. And don’t delude yourself: If the cat drags in over-qualified candidate, are you really going to expand the job?

An example of a thoughtful, honest help wanted post: Software company Jackson Fish Market’s Four Realizations about Hiring. An excerpt:

As much as deep technical skills are critical for us, the most successful working relationships we’ve had over the past few months have been with folks who are incredibly professional, disciplined, focused, and leave their egos at the door. Attitude comes first.

The whole post is written in that tone. The first comment in response: “Wow! You guys sure know how to write a job ad!”

Kawasaki also wisely points out the job search works both ways, and that ads should reflect that.

Sell. Almost every help-wanted ad focuses on buying, not selling—that is, the qualifications that candidates have to meet and the fences that they have to jump over. However, in the war for talent, this is ass backwards. This ad, for example, should mention things like “award-winning shop,” “work alongside famous designers,” “interesting projects for Disney, Apple, and Audi.”

An example of a good (and amusing) sell job: Meetup’s doc on Working at Google vs. Working at Meetup.