Programming/Tech Jobs

EyeWonder is looking for a Flash and Actionscript Software Engineer in Atlanta, GA.

Rally Software is looking for a Software Engineer – Java Web Application Developer in Boulder, CO.

D P Review is looking for a Web Development Engineer in London, UK.

Farstar Inc. is looking for a Rails Developer (Part-Time) located anywhere.

Cobra Creative is looking for a The Best Web Developer, EVER (Flash/HTML) in San Francisco, CA.

Cornell University is looking for a Webmaster in Ithaca, NY.

The University of Iowa is looking for a Rails Developer in Iowa City, IA.

ConsumerSearch.com is looking for a Manager of Search Technology in New York, NY.

Nemean Networks is looking for a Software Engineer in Madison, WI.

Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

Design Jobs

Omniture, Inc. is looking for a User Interface Designer in Orem, UT.

Cars.com is looking for a User Experience Manager / Producer in Chicago, IL.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is looking for an Interaction Designer in Boulder, CO.

Billups Design is looking for an Interface Designer in Chicago, IL.

VersaTables.com is looking for a Web Developer / Designer in Los Angeles, CA.

New York University is looking for Part-Time Faculty in New York, NY.

Sling Media is looking for a Design Director in Foster City, CA.

Sweetwater is looking for a Senior Web Designer in Fort Wayne, IN.

Kavi Corporation is looking for an Product Design/ UI Engineer in Portland, OR.

Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

More jobs!

The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.

Innovation requires a fascination with wonder

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Larger design businesses don’t allow good design to happen

“The problem is that the structures of most larger design businesses cannot effectively facilitate the transmittal of ideas. They don’t allow good design to happen, because they are overburdened with the organizational overhead of running a business: org charts, jurisdictions, inconsistency, poor communications, etc. All the complications that large groups of humans create for one another when they work together, complications that are not about doing design.”

Pixar’s Brad Bird on fostering innovation

“Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.” [via JK]

Must-see photo project examines death and dying

“This exhibition features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death.”

A new spin on the RSS reader

“Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.”

Continued…

Never have a limit on your income

“if you make a living only providing an in-person (hands-on) service, you are limiting your income. If you were in a ‘while you sleep’ business, there is no limit to how much you can make.”

Business vs. academia

“In business you learn at a faster rate, and there’s a lack of bureaucracy and better pay. I tell associates you don’t really know bureaucracy until you experience academic institutions.”

Architecture astronauts take over

“Between Microsoft and Google the starting salary for a smart CS grad is inching dangerously close to six figures and these smart kids, the cream of our universities, are working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy because these companies are like cancers, driven to grow at all cost, even though they can’t think of a single useful thing to build for us, but they need another 3000-4000 comp sci grads next week. And dammit foosball doesn’t play itself.”

Gel 2008 recap

Notes, photos, blog posts, etc. Sample: “All in all I highly recommend Gel for anyone looking to expand your understanding and awareness of what makes a great user experience. Whether it’s visiting a website, making your own food, building a catapult or attending a conference it will open your eyes in a lot of new ways.”

After three decades, Tom Petty reassembles his old band

“At an age when most stars are content to cruise, he seemed thrilled to have a new challenge. ‘Really it makes no sense,’ said Warren Zanes, a musician and educator who edited the oral history companion to ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream.’ ‘It’s completely at odds with the self-mythologizing tendency you see in a lot of rock stars. But Tom Petty is a guy who likes to have fun playing music, and he continues to explore different ways to do that.’...Diarmuid Quinn, chief operating officer of Warner Brothers Records, compared Mr. Petty to unconventional musicians (and label mates) like Neil Young and Jack White. ‘With this kind of artist, you go with their instincts,’ Mr. Quinn said, ‘because they’re usually right.’”

National Small Business of the Year: SnagAJob.com

“A lawyer-turned-entrepreneur was the recipient of the title National Small Business of the Year…Shawn Boyer, the award recipient, started SnagAJob.com in 2000 after a friend asked for help finding a summer internship online. When Boyer noticed the absence of websites geared toward internships or hourly jobs, he researched the business, left his job as a lawyer, found venture capital and started the company. Eight years later, Boyer’s business has grown from just two employees to 110 full-time employees. The company grossed sales of $11 million in 2007.”

Soda can synchronization

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Case studies
Baltimore Sun uses Basecamp to manage “a million moving parts”
“My Department operates as a mini creative agency within the greater organization of The Baltimore Sun Media Group. We do design and development work for clients both internally and externally. This work spans most media and includes: web sites (big and small), banner ads, e-mail newsletters, admail, video production, logos, illustrations, print ads, tradeshow signage, etc. This keeps us pretty busy and we use Basecamp to manage all of our projects from start to finish.”

Entrepreneur Mom uses Basecamp to manage all her client “schtuff”
“I’m training all my clients to use Basecamp instead of sending me multiple emails so rather than sifting through Gmail to find the latest correspondence or searching my computer to resend a file that they don’t remember receiving, we can communicate through Basecamp and upload all the files related to a given project.”

Shaw Builders creates multimillion dollar homes with Basecamp
“The biggest problem we have is communication and avoiding the he said/she said syndrome. It seems that everyone has selective memory and most homeowners are overwhelmed with the number of decisions that have to be made when building a custom home of this caliber. Basecamp has saved the day numerous times by simply providing a document trail. I can easily use Basecamp’s search capability to isolate documents or massages that relate to a particular task. This has saved us a tremendous amount of aggravation and money. On a past project I had a homeowner who insisted that the railing of his 2nd floor deck wasn’t built correctly. When I pulled up the meeting notes and the AutoCAD drawing through Basecamp within 2 minutes of his ‘brain fade’ I was able to quickly put his argument to bed. That helped to enforce our credibility and saved us from having to rip the railing out at our cost.”

Author and conflict resolution consultant uses Backpack as “business home-base and sanity tool”
“Backpack is my business home-base and my sanity tool to manage it all. It’s set to load when I open my browser each day because I do almost all my administrative work from Backpack. I love that I can access my project files from any Internet-connected computer and from my iPhone. And I love that everything I need for a client or business project is in one place. When I’m busy or on the road, that helps keep me organized so I can give my full attention and energy to my clients.”

Continued…

Q&A with Khoi Vinh at the New York Times

“We draw inspiration from what’s happening in digital media at large, regardless of whether or not a news organization is explicitly involved, and often regardless of whether a given digital product deals in the news at all. That means that sites of miscellaneous classification like YouTube, Wikipedia, Craigslist and Facebook — and countless others, many of which might have only recently emerged from their founders’ garages — are of as much interest to us as top-shelf competitors like The Guardian and our other peers.”

Do you focus on bad luck?

“Remember that whatever you pay attention to grows in your mind. If you focus on what’s going wrong in your life—especially if you see it as ‘bad luck’ you can do nothing about—it will seem blacker and more malevolent. In a short time, you’ll become so convinced that everything is against you that you’ll notice more and more instances where this appears to be true. As a result, you will almost certainly stop trying, convinced that nothing you can do will improve your prospects.”

You weren't meant to have a boss

“Another thing you notice when you see animals in the wild is that each species thrives in groups of a certain size. A herd of impalas might have 100 adults; baboons maybe 20; lions rarely 10. Humans also seem designed to work in groups, and what I’ve read about hunter-gatherers accords with research on organizations and my own experience to suggest roughly what the ideal size is: groups of 8 work well; by 20 they’re getting hard to manage; and a group of 50 is really unwieldy.” [tx Sean]

Is Apple creating some kind of a virtual world environment?

“[One of Apple’s latest patents] would clearly indicate that there’s a store front involved here in order for a user to know that it’s a sunny day in the fall in this virtual world. Something a little outside of the box I’d say and definitely far beyond anything known by any of us shopping at the Apple Store today.”

Continued…

I love typography, the typography blog

“All too often, articles on typography are rather bland and, although informative, do little to elicit feelings of wow. So, iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it’s everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online…the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.”

Techniques for designing with type characters

“Examples of great design using little more than typography are virtually numberless. Some of the favorites I’ve spotted recently include designs by John Arnor G. Lom, Coudal Partners, and NB:Studio, linked respectively…”

Why “FAIL” makes Andy Baio sad

“I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, ‘Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.’ In the modern age, we’ve found a much more efficient way to express disdain, distilled into only four letters: FAIL.”

“Sometimes greatness comes from not having resources”

“To illustrate his point, [Director Doug Liman] recalled a commercial he was shooting for Nike in the late 1990s starring golfer Tiger Woods. Liman noticed Woods bouncing a ball on the edge of a club during breaks from shooting. Liman grabbed a shoulder-held camera and, away from the crew, asked Woods to bounce the balls while being filmed…The shot, which became a classic, was natural, unrehearsed, and driven by imagination rather than millions of studio dollars, Liman said.”

Why product managers reject simplicity

”’Imagine the product comparison grid on the back of the box: our product has to have more check marks against more features than Quicken. Even if they never get used…’ And there you have it. The high-tech product managers believe that in order to sell to consumers, they must first seduce the major reviewers. And to do that, most believe they have to offer ‘more check marks in more boxes’ than their competitors.”

Too many choices — good or bad — can be mentally exhausting

“Each day, we are bombarded with options — at the local coffee shop, at work, in stores or on the TV at home. Do you want a double-shot soy latte, a caramel macchiato or simply a tall house coffee for your morning pick-me-up” Having choices is typically thought of as a good thing. Maybe not, say researchers who found we are more fatigued and less productive when faced with a plethora of choices.”

Continued…

Online tool for creating graphs

“NCES constantly uses graphs and charts in our publications and on the web. Sometimes, complicated information is difficult to understand and needs an illustration. Graphs or charts can help impress people by getting your point across quickly and visually.”

Why Chipotle does less than other chains

“Chipotle also avoids the frills that pad other chains’ bottom lines. ‘Desserts and other sides are all profit for these chains,’ says industry analyst Clark Wolf. ‘The whole infrastructure’s already there, so they can make a 90% margin on extras.’ But founder and CEO Steve Ells staunchly refuses to expand his menu beyond four options (burrito, burrito bowl, taco, salad). ‘We want to do just a few things better than everyone else,’ Ells says. ‘We just do things we think are right.’” [via BL]

The quietest place on earth

“Silence is a truly rare thing. All reverberation is removed… all sounds that aren’t coming from your own body disappear. After a few moments in the anechoic chamber, you’ll begin to feel a touch jumpy. Hearing your heart beat, your blood pulse, the sound of your own ear buzzing and your body functioning like you’ve never heard before has a tendency to be a bit unnerving. And in complete silence, you lose all sense of space and surroundings. The absence of reflected sound and reverberation makes ‘feeling out’ the room impossible.”

How to meditate

“The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness; but if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best conditions. If we train in meditation, our mind will gradually become more and more peaceful, and we will experience a purer and purer form of happiness. Eventually, we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances.”

Continued…

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

New features
Highrise tasks revamp and improvements
We launched a major revamp and set of improvements to the Highrise tasks feature. What’s new: 1) Setting tasks with dates/times is significantly faster, 2) iCalendar feed for dated/timed tasks, and 3) New tasks calendar layout.

New Basecamp Features: Reply to a message via email and more
You can now post comments to a message via email. Prior to this update, you had to log in to Basecamp to post a comment on a message…Also new: a revamped message/comment screen and Clarified email notifications block.

New Highrise Feature: Advanced search
Now you can search contacts by city, state, zip/postal, and phone…Now, next time you head to San Diego on business, you can find all your contacts who live in San Diego. Or, if you want to find all the contacts you have in the near-north Chicago suburbs you can search by area code 847.

Case studies
[Case Study] Swimming pool company uses Backpack to track equipment, send reminders, and more
“I use Backpack to inventory all their equipment, model numbers, serial numbers and any odd parts that facility has. Now when a client calls us all we need is what that piece of equipment operates. I then can log into Backpack via my Blackberry and get all the information I need to pick up parts on the way to the job site. The minimal amount of money we pay for Backpack has returned itself many times over in productivity.”

Backpack is “an invaluable tool” in fighting ADD
“I used to write this stuff down on post its, and carry a PDA or a binder with a calendar that I’d color code by hand with highlighters, as well as any important documents that I’d need to complete a project. Backpack has become a central repository for this information and has literally taken a load off of my back. My to-do lists, memos, projects files, address book, even things like the meals I’m planning on cooking for the week and my household budget are all in one place.”

“I love that Backpack’s calendar is color-codeable.”

Continued…

Pre-release “blogger-bashers” are terrible predictors of a product’s success

David Pogue: “Every now and then, a couple of messages come in that really irk me. These messages tell me how wrong I am about something I reviewed, which is fine — but they come from people who have never even tried the product. It was that way with the iPhone, in the time after it was announced but before it was available. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube,” went the critics. “No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing.” Etc. The blogs were full of this stuff. As it turns out, they were massively, humiliatingly wrong. Four million iPhones were sold in the first 200 days. Its sales surpassed Treos, Windows Mobile phones — everybody but BlackBerry. So what’s the lesson here? Simple enough: those vocal pre-release blogger-bashers are terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure.”

Cordell Ratzlaff discusses ux management at Cisco

“One of my pet peeves is with the specialized labels that have evolved within our profession. We have user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience specialists, visual designers, interaction designers, etc. The distinction between these many roles is fuzzy and confusing to those both inside and outside the design profession…I encourage designers to get as broad a range of experience as possible. Design products for as many markets, demographics, product types, and technology platforms as you can. Don’t be afraid to take on tasks outside your traditional role. The best designers I know are good at many facets of design. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know about branding, marketing, business models, and technology as well.”

How to disagree

“If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy…”

Sign up forms must die

“When planning a customer’s initial experience for your web service, think about how you can avoid sign-up forms in favor of gradual engagement.”

JetBlue on Twitter

“I learned that Morgan is behind JetBlue’s tweets, and not a bot, and that Morgan is very well informed on social media ethics and aware that corporate use of Twitter can be tricky. I am impressed that Morgan was watching Twitter closely enough to sense an issue, responded quickly, apologized, and removed the two of us from @JetBlue’s list. This served as a demonstration of the company’s active participation in the Twitter conversation, its willingness to course-correct, and of the new speed of social media with which corporations have to contend.”

Continued…

Very short stories

“We’ll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words (‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’) and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.”

“How I Blew My Google Interview”

“Another form of web literature is emerging: stories of job applicants rejected by Google (GOOG). Google makes all applicants sign NDAs, of course — can’t have future applicants boning up! — but unlike the standard Googleplex NDAs, these apparently don’t bar tales of office furnishings, candy banquets, and interrogators who look like Chewbacca.”

Revisiting “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering”

“Simply reciting the various facts and fallacies feels like a zen koan to software engineering. Even without any of the background discussion and explanation in the book, it’s therapeutic to ponder the brief one sentence summaries presented in the table of contents.”

Ron Paul’s grassroots graphics movement

“What is intriguing about this fervent grassroots response is how graphic styles designed to appeal to a youthful constituency have been built around Representative Paul’s grandfatherly appearance. Even some of the stylized poster portraits look more like those found on souvenir T-shirts commemorating someone’s retirement, or ‘the world’s best dad,’ than a political icon. Nonetheless the passion behind such an outpouring of good, bad and kitschy art and design cannot be ignored. So I tracked down a few of the artists and asked them to explain their work.”

Visualizing Fitts’s Law

“I thought it would be nice to go over Fitts’s Law, a staple in the HCI diet, with a few visuals to explain both the concept and why it’s ideas are a bit more complicated than most would have you believe…The challenge of software application design is so complex and filled with so many variables, that blanket solutions derived from Fitts’s Law should be used cautiously.”

Faces in Places

A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places.

Continued…