Yahoo is looking for a Design Prototyper in Sunnyvale, CA.

Apple is looking for a Mac OS X Web Developer and a Mac OS X Desktop Software Engineer in Cupertino, CA.

Northwestern University is looking for a Software Engineer / Systems Administrator in Evanston, IL.

Planned Parenthood is looking for a Web Developer in NYC.

Judy’s Book is looking for a .NET developer in Seattle, WA.

The Nation is looking for a Web Producer in NYC.

Casper Star-Tribune is looking for a Web Developer in Casper, WY.

ISITE Design is looking for an Information Architect in Portland, OR.

Lightburn is looking for a Web Designer in Milwaukee, WI.

Crossbow Studio is looking for a PHP/Web Developer in Philadelphia, PA.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is looking for an Interactive Media Specialist in Minneapolis, MN.

Crate and Barrel is looking for a Senior Information Architect and an Internet Project Manager in Northbrook, IL.

More jobs…

These are just some of the recent jobs posted on the Job Board. The Job Board is linked up on over 1,000,000 page views a month on some of the industries most highly regarded sites. If you’re looking for a design, programming, copywriting, or IT executive job, the Job Board is worth a look.

I recently tripped over some fields on this sign-up form:

“If no, please type DNA” so naturally I start typing ATCG AATT CCTC TATT GTTG GATC ATAT… (rim shot!)

I figure DNA means “Does Not Apply,” but it’s also strange that answering “No” to the form question above still requires manual entry into the field below. This “No” then “type DNA” sequence shows up twice on the form. It’s odd, unfamiliar, and confusing. If anything, “n/a” would probably be recognized by more people than “DNA.”

When you build your forms be clear. Think about what you’re asking, why you’re asking, how you’re asking for it, and where you’re asking for it. All these little things matter—especially on long forms. Minor issues on long forms begin to stack up pretty quickly. Remember, copywriting is interface design.

Yesterday we posted about how we prompt for an upgrade when someone hits the 5 page limit on their free Backpack account.

Old vs. New

The old version of Backpack always had the upgrade notice. We felt that was a little too in your face. The new version of Backpack only prompted when you hit the page limit. We felt that was more polite.

New too abrupt?

However, some of the feedback suggested that only prompting when someone hits the page limit was a bit startling and abrupt. There’s no warning, it just hits ya. No more pages for you!

New new

We agree that the abruptness can be a little harsh. But we also don’t like the way we used to do it where the upgrade notice was there all the time. So what we’ve done is implement a “you’re close” notice.

This shows up once you’ve created your third page. “You’re close” lets you know a limit is near, but you’re not there yet.

Funny story… When I asked the guys if they could hook this up we realized that we already had it hooked up but we never turned it on! So we tweaked the language a bit and flipped the switch. And now we’re live.

Metcheck

Melissa Fehr writes: I always use Metcheck.com as my preferred weather site (better than the BBC and all the American sites combined) and I discovered a new feature today that’s so practical that I thought I’d send it over to you. It’s their BBQ forecast, which checks the temperature, cloud cover, and precipitation for the next few days and tells you the likelihood of having a good BBQ (with a nice option to email invites around to your friends, with helpful suggestions like “bring loads of beer”).

Prime Time Window Cleaning

Prime Time Window Cleaning has a nifty quote calculator built right into the sidebar.

It’s cool how Apple’s design language keeps evolving. One product design follows another. There’s a continuity this way, yet things continue to feel new. And it’s interesting how their small designs influence their large designs.

Take a look at the back of the iPhone. It’s silver on top, black on the bottom. Then take a look at the new iMac. It’s is black on top, silver on the bottom. The top of the iMac looks like an iPhone rotated to horizontal orientation.

The iPhone design has influenced the new iMac design just as the widescreen iPod influenced the previous iMac design:

The old iMac basically looked like a huge iPod and the new iMac looks like an iPhone. I love watching them iterate and evolve. Each product playing off the next. Each new material finding its way into new products. Even the iPhone onscreen keyboard, the MacBook, and new slim keyboard keys have related shapes. This is design at its best.

Just one more thing…

Absolutely stunning.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Web Worker’s Daily: Time to give Backpack another look
“The new Backpack now lets you dump text, images, links into a single ‘Collection’ page when you’re in a hurry, and then relocate them item by item to organized pages when and how you prefer…It’s the primary reason I have now come back to the service.”

Basecamp messages now include year of posting
Do you have a project in Basecamp that has been running for a year or more and need to know exactly when a message was posted? Now you can. On the permanent/comments page for a message, we’re now including the year in the date stamp as per popular request.

Now you’ll always know the year a message was posted.

Highrise hits 2,000,000
Highrise was released less than five months ago and today turned 2,000,000. Huh? Collectively, our Highrise customers have entered over 2 million contacts entered into their accounts. We’re thrilled to see such rapid uptake and thank everyone for their continued support.

Save time with To-Do List Templates in Basecamp
Are you a Basecamp customer who performs the same tasks regularly for different projects? If so, save time by using To-Do List Templates. This handy feature lets you create to-do lists and then add them easily to any project.

A big chunk of our paid customers start out on the free plan and then upgrade to paying plans. It’s a bit of an art to figure out when, where, and how to suggest an upgrade. Too often and it’s irritating. Not enough and your customers may never see it. Too big and it’s annoying. Too small and people may miss it.

Before

Here’s how Backpack used to let people know they could upgrade to get more pages, etc:

This message was always displayed right under the “Make a new page” button. It worked pretty well, but it was always there. It was too in your face.

The first time you go to click the “Make a new page” button you’re hit with a sales message right below the button. That’s not an impression we wanted to make.

After

A big part of the new Backpack upgrade was a focus on the experience. We wanted to make things smoother, more elegant, and more streamlined. This included the upgrade pitch. We think it’s more polite now.

Here’s the new free account sidebar with a few pages:

You’ll see there isn’t an upgrade pitch under the “Make a new page” button. The free account includes 5 pages. This example account has 3 pages. We don’t need to tell people about upgrading to get more pages until they need more pages.

Now here’s the new free account sidebar after they’ve hit their 5 page limit:

Since they’ve hit their limit we replace the “Make a new page” button with a yellow “sticky” notice. We delicately explain they’ll need to upgrade (or delete pages) if they want to add more pages. We give them a link to upgrade or find out more.

Manners

Before it felt like you were walking into a store and a salesperson immediately came up to you and told you about today’s sale. That’s an unpleasant experience.

Now it feels like a helpful suggestion when the time is right. We think that demonstrates better manners. It’s how we’d want to be treated while evaluating something new. A quick sales pitch feels rotten. A natural pitch when it makes sense feels right.

Nick Gonzalez from TechCrunch posted about a “great iPhone chat application” by a company called Mundu.

Then he slings this at his 500,000+ readers (many of which are calling bullshit in the comments):

“So why in the world will they eventually charge $11 for it? There are way better ways to monetize software. Offer a free version and drop an advertisement into the conversation every once in a while, for example. But if Mundu wants to get a lot of users fast before Apple adds their own apps, they can’t be screwing around with charging customers. The marginal production cost of software is zero. That’s what the price should be.”

This is typical of the sensational tech/media/business press: an obsession with all things free, all things inflated, and all things unsustainable. Sustainability doesn’t mean going back to your investors for another round because you don’t have enough to pay your employees because you don’t have any income because you don’t charge for your products.

They forget that not everyone has Google’s search subsidies, Yahoo’s traffic, or Apple’s hardware revenues making up for their “free” bundled software. The rest of the companies in the world have to put a price tag on their wares and sell them on the public markets. And surprise!... The public is happy to pay for great products. Advertising-subsidized product revenue is just a teeny tiny sliver of the overall economy. Most of the rest is buying and selling of goods.

“The can’t be screwing around with charging customers” and “Why in the world will they eventually charge $11 for it?” and “Offer a free version and drop an advertisement into the conversation every once in a while” are toxic suggestions. That is unless you want to go broke. And to suggest that software should be free because the marginal production cost is zero is about the most bizarre proclamation I’ve heard in a while.

With a few obvious bigco exceptions, I’d like to see a count of successful and sustainable software companies that are surviving and thriving giving everything away for free. I can point to hundreds of examples of small software companies running in the black by selling their products to their customers. The shareware industry, for example, puts much food on many tables for many families because the software builders price their products and put them on the market. People try it and people buy it. People are happy to pay for things they find valuable.

So don’t think for a second that you’re “screwing around” if you charge customers. What you’re doing is saying “This is our product, we believe it’s valuable, and we think you will too.”

There are few things more satisfying than having people find enough value in your ideas and products to trade their earned money for what you’ve produced. It’s primal and wonderful and every vendor should experience it. It’s great business and it makes your business great.

Bike shed – a discussion that pointlessly dwells on details and wastes time

Example: Someone posts a variation on a screen and one person offers .02 on the copy, another wants the header color changed, another wants a different image used, etc. Too many chefs on something that doesn’t even matter much.

It’s something we have to watch for in our Campfire chat room where it’s easy to have pile-ons that don’t really accomplish much. Someone has to blow the whistle every once in a while and say, “Is this conversation really helping?” Calling out “Bike shed” is a quick way to do that.

About the term
Poul-Henning Kamp used the term in “A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass…” and gives credit to C. Northcote Parkinson, a management guru who compared building an atomic power plant to building a bike shed. Kamp’s summary:

Anyone can build [a bike shed] over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here.

More Parkinson wisdom
Parkinson is also the namesake of Parkinson’s law: “work expands to fill the time available.” He observed that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”

Some more interesting quotes from C. Northcote Parkinson:

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

Expenditures rise to meet income.

The Law of Triviality… briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.

Billy Collins action poetry: Former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, reads his poetry with accompanying animations. Forgetfulness is a good one to start with.

South Parkers animate words of religious expert and philosopher Alan Watts:

Trey Parker, one of the creators of South Park, was raised in Colorado, where his father attempted to teach him Buddhism. Now, years later, Parker and his animation pal Matt Stone have brought to life the teachings of Alan Watts, the comparative religion expert and philosopher. Under the FurryCarlos Productions banner, the two tapped South Park animators Chris Brion and Todd Benson to keyframe three of Watts’ recordings…

Related: Animation of a Samuel L. Jackson Pulp Fiction speech in type