Gym Jones
The Colonel writes: “Simply amazing. These are the guys that trained the cast of 300… brutally.

Tasty bits:

Gym Jones is not a cozy place. There’s no AC, no comfortable spot to sit and there are no mirrors. Stressors are intentionally designed to cause discomfort and apprehension. Effort and pain may not be avoided. Physical and psychological breakdowns occur…

Gym Jones is private and isolated from the modern fitness ideal precisely because we believe that attitude to be poison. We believe that a proper training facility is separated from the complacency of the general public, and has its own set of rules and values. We believe that nothing of value maybe acquired by simply going through the motions; real fitness is earned…

From its birth in December 2003 Gym Jones has followed the Fight Club model of “free to all” though not all are invited. Those who are do not pay. No one may buy their way in or buy anything associated with the project. The original model will exist in a back room under my guidance whether we open other doors to the public or not.

Last but not least, a photo of the original gym.”

Moosejaw
Caryn Rose writes: “Check out the text in this order status update. What a refreshing change from the normal ‘DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL’ bs. All of this merchant’s communications have the same spirit and tone. I’ll definitely remember them, and order from them again.”

Why do so many companies selling cables show you this bird’s eye view…

...when what you really want is this view of the ends:

It’s not the cable that people care about. It’s the plug. The real question that needs to be answered: “Will this fit where I need it to fit?”

Makes you wonder how often web apps miss the point and show people the cable instead of the plug: Showing a list of features when people want benefits. Telling facts when people want stories. Showing screenshots when people want explanations.

Related: We were recently discussing Common Craft’s neat video tutorials that explain complicated concepts in “plain English.” Lots of sites try (and fail) to clearly explain social bookmarking or RSS. But Common Craft nails it.

The videos aren’t fancy. They’re not techy. They don’t show off interface widgets. But they succeed where it counts: They show how these tools fit into people’s lives. They show the plug, not the cable.

High Scalability offers some secrets to Amazon’s success based on interviews and writings of early employees. Some of the choice bits are below.

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Teams are small. They are assigned authority and empowered to solve a problem as a service in anyway they see fit.

Work from the customer backward. Focus on value you want to deliver for the customer.

Force developers to focus on value delivered to the customer instead of building technology first and then figuring how to use it.

Start with a press release of what features the user will see and work backwards to check that you are building something valuable.

End up with a design that is as minimal as possible. Simplicity is the key if you really want to build large distributed systems.

Take it for granted stuff fails, that’s reality, embrace it. For example, go more with a fast reboot and fast recover approach. With a decent spread of data and services you might get close to 100%. Create self-healing, self-organizing lights out operations.

Open up your system with APIs and you’ll create an ecosystem around your application.

I recently had to call United’s customer service department. They have one of those voice prompt systems where you can answer questions by speaking into the phone and have the system automatically guide you to the right answer/representative. The problem: The system sucks.

Every interaction I’ve ever had with these voice recognition services feels like a battle. The system misunderstands what I’m saying. Or it confirms each entry by repeating it snail slooooow: “You said 32530021303. Is that correct?” I wind up feeling like I’m navigating a maze. It inevitably leads to me shouting answers or pleading “operator” in the hopes it’ll take me to an actual human (it doesn’t).

And whenever I hear someone else dealing with one of these systems, the same thing happens. They start out talking calmly but eventually wind up yelling into the phone.

Needless to say, any service that forces customers to scream is a bad idea. Screaming is something that we do when we’re frustrated or angry. But now that’s what I think of: United customer service = screaming. I can’t imagine a worse association for a company to have.

Facebook

Facebook’s “Are your friends already on Facebook?” option is a smart way to connect members of the site. No wonder other sites have been racing to implement similar features.

Ticketmaster

Anyone else finding captchas harder to solve these days?

Virgin America

Virgin America offers fares within the context of a week view so you can navigate easily forward or back to get a better deal.

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.”

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.

Crain’s Chicago Business recently posted a video interview with Jason where he discusses avoiding structure, how interruption is the enemy of productivity, why it’s a good idea to emulate drug dealers, the secret to competing with free stuff, and more. Check it out.

Harry Houdini was more than just an escape artist. He was also a master of self-promotion. I caught a great documentary on him yesterday and it was interesting to see how much of his success was due to his marketing hustle and constant showmanship. Some lessons from the escape king:

1. Focus on the killer bit
When he started out, he was doing a bunch of tricks and escaping from handcuffs was just one in the batch. A vaudeville bigwig saw him do his act and told him that no one cared about any of the tricks except the handcuff escape. Houdini dropped the rest of the tricks, did a show that focused exclusively on escapes, and flew to stardom.

2. Judo big problems into small ones
Handcuff “hacks” let him workaround difficult locks with ease.

If presented with a particularly difficult lock, he might insist it be placed higher on his forearm, then simply slip these cuffs over his wrists once the easier cuffs placed there had been removed.

3. Beat copycats by innovating
Copycats constantly threatened Houdini’s success. At one point, he couldn’t get booked in some areas because there were so many people there already doing his act. His solution? Innovation. He constantly elevated his game and pioneered new tricks. His escapes got increasingly extravagant, from handcuffs to straitjackets to water tanks. That ensured there would always be demand for the real Houdini, not impostors.