Toluu

Signal vs. Noise

Signal vs. Noise

QUOTE: Rather than survey a bunch of users on everyDecember 2

Rather than survey a bunch of users on every decision, the Mac team decided each issue among themselves, invariably going for the option that might amuse a user the most, that would give a user the most pleasure, and therefore imbue the Mac with personality.

—Why Apple is great at interfaces when others are not. I like how Nick draws a connection between good UI and ‘fun’. We don’t talk much about fun in usability circles, and I’ve been thinking about it more since I tried Spore on the iPhone.

The two guys at 2D Boy know a thing or two about fun as well. Just moving the mouse in their game World of Goo is a blast thanks to the way your cursor blob stretches and squashes with velocity and inertia. Check out David Rosen’s tour of the game for a nice analysis of the game’s design details.

There’s another nice quote from the TechRadar article: “absence of pain isn’t the same as pleasure.” In other words, it’s not just enough to strip away all the complexity. There should be some frosting in the mix to also make it a pleasure.

Announcing our new book dealDecember 2

This has been a hard one to keep to ourselves, but the time is finally right: We’ve signed a deal with a publisher to publish our next book.

The process

Even though we had tremendous success self-publishing Getting Real, we decided that this time we wanted to write a best seller. We want to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. We couldn’t do this on our own, so we decided to work with a traditional publisher.

To help us find the right publisher, and to help us navigate the process, we enlisted an agent. We hired Lisa DiMona on Seth Godin’s kind recommendation. Lisa had the connections that made the meetings that made the deal happen.

With Lisa’s guidance, we wrote a proposal which she distributed to about eight different publishers. Proposals were sent to big New York publishers, small indie publishers, and a couple in between.

We received positive feedback from almost all of them, and received a preemptive offer. We were planning to go to auction with the book in a few weeks, but one of the publishers wanted to make us an offer so we didn’t go to auction. After careful consideration we thought it would be best to go to auction instead of take the preemptive deal. In the end I believe this was the right decision.

Off to New York

A few weeks later David and I were in NYC for the

Put a dent in the universeDecember 2

To truly be inspired for great work, you need to know that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something that’s making a difference and that your role in that something is significant.

This doesn’t have to be grand at all. You don’t have to be looking for the cure for cancer. It could be done by a waitress at a neighborhood cafe that’s the gathering point of local artists. The key is that your efforts would be missed, your customers would have a sense of loss, if you stopped doing what you’re doing.

If you’re void that sense of purpose, the pleasure in your work will eventually wane and ultimately feel hollow. I’ve lived that sensation more than once. Working with tools and techniques and even people that I enjoyed, but where the end did not justify the journey.

You can only hide in shadows of the circumstantial for so long before your passion begins to fade. You can only excuse your lack of impact on the world with “but it’s great money” or “at least we’re doing agile” or even “this way I get to use Rails” until the playlist of stories repeat and it just all sounds the same.

Remember that your time is limited. By the time you discover that you’ve been coasting on empty calories, the pale face staring you back in the mirror might be hard to recognize.

I remember waking up to such a face on day long ago and thinking “th

Pick discontentment with the things you can changeDecember 1

There’s a fine line between being indifferent with the state of things and using Reddit to express your every displeasure with all facets of life. In between is the discontentment you can use to light a fire under your productivity.

The key is to focus on the discontent with things that you can actually change. Get riled up about your programming environment and submit a patch. Become annoyed with how the text flows on your company homepage and rewrite it. Feel guilty about the UI of a common action in your application and redesign it.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
— Reinhold Niebuhr

When you find people who embrace this idea, you’ll usually find people with exactly the pointed drive that gives them the power to Get Things Done. Hire them.

Backpack: Some things you may not have knownNovember 25

We recently conducted a survey of our Backpack customers. We got some great feedback — including that 97% of our customers would recommend Backpack to a colleague, friend, or family member. Thank you!!

We also included some open ended questions and comment boxes. I recently finished reviewing every response and noticed some suggestions about things that Backpack already offers. I thought I’d pull out some of the more common suggestions and show you where you can find these features in Backpack.

SSL on Solo

A few people mentioned that they didn’t have SSL on their Solo Plan. The Solo plan does include SSL, but it’s possible that it’s turned off. To check, click the Settings link in the top right corner. Then you’ll see this option:

Difficult to upload multiple files (or a folder) at once

A good way to handle multiple file upload (or uploading an entire folder) is to zip or compress the files or folder into a single archive. Then you can upload that single file instead of trying to upload all the separate files separately. Both the Mac and PC have zip/archiving/compression tools that allow you to do this. On the Mac OS X 10.5, for example, you can select multiple files or a folder, right-click, and select “C