One of the benefits of sharing an office with Coudal Partners is that I get to read trade pubs like Nation’s Restaurant News while I’m having lunch. Coudal has food industry clients so they get food industry news.

I like reading industry trade pubs from industries I know nothing about. It opens your eyes to all sorts of new things. I find articles about trans fats, point of sale displays, digital menus, seasonal high-margin menu items, restaurant designs, premium vs. standard items, romaine salads vs. spinach salads, and fast food kitchen automation fascinating. I really do.

While I was paging through the paper today I spotted an ad for McCain’s Sweet Classics. These tiny “desserts by the bite” help “turn a $1 coffee into a $3 dessert.” The full ad spread makes sure you can tell that these tiny desserts fit neatly near the edge of a saucer with a cup of coffee. I fucking love this idea.

I’ve got a sweet tooth, but I don’t like ordering a 1/2 pound slice of cheesecake or a 6” tall piece of pie for dessert—especially after plowing through the huge portions that are so popular at restaurants these days. Give me a couple of small cookies or a tiny piece of cake or a little brownie and I’m more than satisfied. I suspect I’m not alone.

Ordering dessert also comes with a dose of guilt. McCain Foods knows this too. They know a little dessert is an easy sell when a big piece of pie could turn someone off completely.

McCain cites a survey that says 82% of casual dining customers said they were too full to order dessert. That makes sense, but I bet a good chunk of that decision has to do with the perceived dessert size. They are too full to order a massive piece of cake, but they’d probably enjoy something 1/8 the size.

That ties nicely into their “turn a $1 cup of coffee into a $3 desert” angle. Give the customer the option to have just a little dessert and the restaurant can extract some easy incremental profits. Instead of “just a coffee” the restaurant has the opportunity to value-add the coffee with a bit of dessert for only a couple of bucks more. It’s likely an easy sale and a win-win-win for everyone.

While this isn’t brand new thinking (mochi or biscotti or a piece or fruit come to mind), McCain is revitalizing it. And it’s a great example of offering less to create more value. More cake, more pie, more dessert isn’t an easier sell. Less is. I think they’ll benefit hugely from it. It just makes sense.

YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim on How YouTube Got Viral.

1) related video recommendations
2) one-click emailing to spam a friend about a video
3) more social networking and user interaction tools like video comments
4) an external video player

Re: #4, the external video player did have an amazing impact. In a matter of months, YouTube seemed to go from nowhere to everywhere due to that slick and easy to embed player.

A big reason why the external player was so effective: Play buttons are seductive. When people see one, they instantly know what it does and want to click it.

Similarly, Coudal’s technique of showing showing video toolbar buttons in its Jewelboxing ads is also a great way to attract clicks.

Some more musings on YouTube’s interface:

YouTube's Interface: If You Build It, They Will Come

So, in a space with plenty of big players, but no real successes, how did start-up YouTube manage to get so big, so fast, and why was it successful where other big players were not? It’s the interface, stupid! While the technological and bandwidth barriers to getting video online easily have only just recently ebbed away, YouTube managed to be the first to take advantage of this new opportunity in a way that, quite simply, works.

Harmonization of the interface

Streamlining and harmonizing the interfaces people need to use to get to you makes good sense. YouTube offers a way for its users to search, navigate and mark favourites that each user knows how to do instinctively after the first few times. As Steven Johnson says in his book Interface Culture: “…knowledge becomes second nature to most users because it has a strong spatial component to it…” And so it becomes easier for people to find my videos on YouTube, because they don’t have to learn the user interface of my own website.

Worth noting: Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder, comes from a design background (he started his career as a graphic designer and worked on PayPal’s logo and its user interface in his pre-YouTube days).

Iterations, focus groups, and failing fast — as seen from a comedic perspective:

Ze Frank discusses his show and says he doesn’t worry about writing things down for it. Instead, he iterates often and lets that process pare the content down to just the good stuff.

I don’t write these shows. I just say them. But I’ve usually said everything 15 times. While I’m doing it, all the extraneous garbage comes out.

The Humor Index discusses movie audience research and shows some of the problems you get when you try to base a product on focus group results. Example: Fart jokes test through the roof but how many people really want an entire movie with nothing but fart jokes?

Flatulence jokes tested really well, too. [“School of Rock” writer Mike] White may have little problem with a certain amount of gross-out humor, but when is too much too much? “Any time someone rips one, the audience goes nuts, and that’s slightly depressing,” White says. “Even when they like it, you’re like, I didn’t make the movie for you. I don’t want the audience to tell me what I want to do. I want them to like it, but I want to lead it.”

Steven Wright says he expects 80% of his new jokes to fail.

The audience still won’t laugh at a joke unless they think it’s funny. I know that because I try out new jokes within my show, I slip some in here and there, and ever since the beginning, I’ve had a one-in-five, or one-in-four ratio. For every four or five I write, one will be good enough to stay in the act, and that’s still true even now…It’s a little awkward, but the only way you can get the new stuff is to go through that. It’s not horrifying, it’s just awkward, and you’re disappointed it didn’t work.

Sound Opinions is a Chicago Public Radio show about rock ‘n roll. The show’s site does a terrific job of bringing the program’s contents to the web with the detailed footnotes that accompany each episode (example). Everything discussed or played is presented and there’s a bevy of links to related content at Amazon, YouTube, Wikipedia, lyric sites, etc.

It’s easy to focus exclusively on gas mileage when making an environmentally conscious car choice. But there’s more to the story.

CNW Marketing Research Inc., an Oregon-based auto research spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage. They call it a dust-to-dust analysis of the environmental impact of a car.

You may be surprised if you thought hybrids were the obvious winners.

The Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the “Dust to Dust” lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version, CNW claims.

And you may do a doubletake after reading this:

For example, while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 cents per mile, the Hummer H3 (among most SUVs) was only $1.949 cents per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civics at $2.42 per mile.

Basically, when considering all relevant variables such as materials, fabrication, plastics, carpets, chemicals, shipping, and transportation, gas mileage turns out to be significantly less relevant than many people assume.

Continued…

David, Marcel, and I had an interesting design-related discussion yesterday. But it wasn’t related to designing graphical UI’s — it was abut designing developer UI’s in code.

I was sharing some code I’d written related to the new data export feature we’re adding to Basecamp. The Export model supports a set of distinct states, “pending”, “processing”, and “completed”. I found myself iterating over those states in a few different places so I added a custom iterator to the model. This allowed me to centralize the work needed to do that loop:

  class Export < ActiveRecord::Base
    PENDING    = "pending"
    PROCESSING = "processing"
    COMPLETED  = "completed"

    STATES     = [PENDING, PROCESSING, COMPLETED]

    def self.each_state
      STATES.each { |state| yield state }
    end

    # ...
  end

The custom iterator is then used something like this:

  class ExportPresenter
    # ...

    Export.each_state do |state|
      class_eval "def #{state}?; @export && @export.#{state}?; end"
    end

    # ...
  end

Some discussion ensued:

The result was much cleaner, and allowed for the full gamut of Array operations to be performed on Export.states.

  class Export < ActiveRecord::Base
    PENDING    = "pending"
    PROCESSING = "processing"
    COMPLETED  = "completed"

    def self.states
      @states ||= [PENDING, PROCESSING, COMPLETED]
    end

    # ...
  end

  class ExportPresenter
    # ...

    Export.states.each do |state|
      class_eval "def #{state}?; @export && @export.#{state}?; end"
    end

    # ...
  end

I recently read that NBA Hall of Famer Dave Cowens left the Celtics mid-season one year to go drive a cab (he was suffering burnout and took the time to “clear his head”). That story reminded me of two tales of internet vets who left the industry to work decidely different jobs:

Frank Duff wrote A Coder in Courierland.

Once upon a time, I was a coder not unlike yourself. My day consisted of coffee, perl and java hacking, meetings, and e-mail. I had a cubicle with fluorescent lighting, my own bookshelf and two computers. And I traded it all in…

I can easily say that couriering is the best job i have ever had (and I have more than a few eclectic jobs on my resume). It is fun, the people are friendly, the stress is almost non-existent, it keeps you in excellent shape, and you spend most of your time outside (although this isn’t really a year-round plus in Toronto). And, even considering the fact that my pay as a courier is between half and two thirds what it was as a coder, it is a rare day that I seriously consider going back.

Scott Heiferman, now CEO of Meetup, wrote i was a 20-something dethroned dotcom ceo that went to work the counter at  mcdonald’s.

i spend a lot of time with bankers, lawyers, internet freaks, corporate wonks, and other people living strange lives.  as a good marketing guy, that’s a bad thing.  and as a practicing anti-consumerist, that’s a bad thing.  i got a job at mcdonald’s to help get back in touch with the real world.  also, after over 6 grueling years in the internet whirlwind, i wanted to experience a profitable, well-oiled, multi-billion-dollar machine. and  i deserved a break today…

i’ve been taught countless times the value of a leader/manager showing appreciation for people’s effort.  however, my instinct has often been that showing appreciation really isn’t too necessary for good people.  they just take pride in a job well done — and, anyway, they can read my mind and see the appreciation.  well, from day 1 at mcdonald’s, i was yearning for someone there to say “thanks”.  even a “you’re doing ok” would suffice.  but, no.  neither management experience — nor reading about management — teaches this lesson as well as being an under-appreciated employee.

With Ford and GM losing billions and millions respectively, one might think competition is turning the car game into one of slim pickings for profits. Not so, says Porsche, and posts profits of 2.7 billion dollars.

What’s their secret? One overarching design that’s been stable for 40 years and just three current lines: Cayenne, 911, Boxster/Cayman. That simple recipe has made Porsche the most profitable (per unit) car maker in the world.

They’re doing so well in fact, that this “little” sports-car maker has just increased its stake in the German giant VW to 30%. Not too shabby from a niche company that sold just ~2,500 cars in October for North America/Canada.

I recently discovered Vinnie’s Sub Shop. I’m still partial to Bari down the street, but Vinnie’s is a worthy choice. They put this homemade basil oil on the subs that is just perfect.

I was in there a few days ago for a late lunch around 2:45. I didn’t see the hours posted so I asked the woman behind the counter when they closed. She said, “When we run out of bread.”

I said “Oh yeah?” She said “Yeah. We get our bread from the bakery down the street early in the morning when it’s the freshest. Once we run out (usually around 2 or 3) then we close up shop. We could get more bread later in the day, but it’s not as good as the fresh baked bread in the morning. There’s no point in selling a few more sandwiches if the bread isn’t good. A few bucks isn’t going to make up for selling food we can’t be proud of.”

I just loved that. Authentic, genuine, passionate, opinionated. Freshness determines when they lock the door, not a little plastic sign with some numbers on it. The food version of context over consistency (context as in variable good bread inventory, consistency as in a steady closing time).

Today we have some exciting Basecamp API-related announcements.

Blinksale, a web-based invoicing tool from the creative minds at Firewheel Design, now integrates with Basecamp.

Now it’s super-easy to import client names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses directly from Basecamp in your Blinksale account for painless invoicing. Simply add your Basecamp account details to your Blinksale Settings page, and we take care of the rest.

Harvest (a web-based time tracking tool) + Basecamp = easy like Sunday morning.

If your organization currently uses Basecamp in conjunction with Harvest for time tracking, things just got a whole lot easier. Harvest admins can now avoid any form of double-entry when it comes to setting up users, clients, or projects. Simply pick the people or projects you’d like to import from Basecamp and you are ready to go. Imported users will receive an automatically-generated Harvest welcome message along with their temporary password.

Phonified has just released a beta mobile version of Basecamp. Phonified Basecamp currently supports Nokia S60 (Series 60) phones, Blackberries, and Palm Treos running PalmOS.

Phonified Basecamp is an application that allows you to access your Basecamp account from your mobile phone. You can download a copy of your To-do list to your phone and update information without having to use a computer. You can also check milestones and configure an alarm on your phone when a milestone is upcoming. Phonified Basecamp lets you read and edit messages and comments, and even upload and download attachments all from your phone. For Premium and Max account holders, you can track time conveniently from your phone as you start and complete tasks, rather than having to remember and update information later.

Headquarters is the first Basecamp widget for the Yahoo Widget Engine. It’s read-only at this time (you can’t modify your Basecamp data). It looks like this:

And our friends at FreshBooks also recently announced that Basecamp integration is coming soon.

It’s really exciting to see rapid uptake and third-party integrations via the Basecamp API. Check out this list of the most popular Basecamp integrations and add-ons. We’ll continue to add to this list as more integrations and add-ons hit the market.

Thanks to all the developers for spending the time on these integrations!