Solomon Giles Design

It started off, like most trips I take online, in a meandering fashion.

A few weeks back, I’d somehow weaseled my way into an invite for Kyle Bragger’s latest pet project, Streak.ly. It’s a fun & straightforward app that lets you record day-to-day streaks of life’s little mundane goals. Mine was Yoga.

Well, my colleagues could tell you, it’s been a hectic week. And so Yoga fell through the cracks one day after another. Undeterred, dear Streak.ly kept sending me emails to help me remember to record my non existent streaks. I came to realize that I was starting to resent our cheerful, aforementioned application.

Feature request!

So I got on Twitter, to fire off a request to the effect of, “how bout you let me put things on hold?” And now we’re nearing the actual point of this here blog post, because at that moment I noticed the following tweet from @playstreakly:

“totally took a page from the fork.ly playbook and added a way to speed up your chances of an invite. enter your email at streak.ly to see.
6:49 PM Sep 28th via Tweetie for Mac”

Eh? What’s this? An innovative, invite only service that I am not part of. I like food, forks AND version control, no matter how you slice it, this sounds like the place for me. A way to speed up my chances you say? And off to Fork.ly I went, to dutifully supply my email address in the hopes that I could get in on this exclusive club du jour.

The ploy was very clever. But not kosher.

Don’t get me wrong, I signed up out of own silly will. The ploy is still to be revealed: After you sign up, to wait in line, Fork.ly supplies you with a custom URL. Share your URL with three people and get moved up in line. Not to the front, mind you; just up.

Genius. In an untoward sorta way.

The thing is, the un-kosher thing is, that they don’t tell you shit about what Fork.ly’s is. It’s all vague one-liner hype. Like a college, first year bump’n'grind club. Innocent, brash, honest and seedy.

My problem is that they were asking me to share something with my friends, just to move myself up in line, without knowing what I’m supposed to be vouching for. I even did a quick Google. These guys are ghosts. (And of course, by ghosts I mean that I couldn’t figure out who they were in under 45 seconds.)

The golden rule of social media.

Hell forget social media. The golden rule of relationships is: Trust. Online, when relationships and sharing often happen in such a truncated and fast-paced manner, when we find ourselves barreling across the super information seas, we don’t always have the opportunity to explain the nuances of what we’re sharing. This isn’t laziness, it’s the everyday truth of the matter. I mean, look how long it just took me to butter you up, dear reader.

When you’re running a company and dreaming up ways to generate hype, stop and think about what you’re asking of people. Not all viral campaigns are good for those passing around the virus.

The term disruptive technology was coined by Clayton M. Christensen [who later] replaced disruptive technology with the term disruptive innovation because he recognized that few technologies are intrinsically disruptive or sustaining in character. It is the strategy or business model that the technology enables that creates the disruptive impact. — Wikipedia

My favourite examples,

• The affordable Model T Ford (not previous automobiles) disrupts the market for horse-drawn vehicles.
• Digital photography disrupts the market for chemical photography.
• Refrigerators disrupt market for ice houses and milk men.

This theory starts with the observation that technologies tend to get better at a faster rate than users’ needs increase. From this simple insight follows all kinds of interesting conclusions about how markets and products change over time.

After my first week or so making a concerted foray into the social media world, it started to feel like I was (am am am am) shouting into a void. I got to feeling like “why doesn’t anyone want to hear what I have to say?”

Then it hit me. Return the favour.

So, I’m following people on Twitter and back to reading my favourite blogs and commenting my comments, etc etc. The wind is back in my sails. Across the world from home it’s easy to forget the human element in all of this. But what else is there?

It’s easy! Just make the most successful piece of entertainment of all time.

In terms of revenue, Modern Warfare 2 holds the title for the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment (read: books, music, movies, video games). The numbers are staggering, and more than double that of the unbelievably successful iPad.

From wikipedia,

… sold approximately 4.7 million units in both the United States and the UK in the first 24 hours … After five days of sales, the game had earned revenue figures of $550 million worldwide.^[87] As of January 18, 2010, it has taken over $1 billion in sales.

Activision also claims that Modern Warfare 2 had 8 million players online within the first five days, constituting the largest ‘army’ of players in the world.^[89] On March 8 2010, Robert Bowling announced that the game had amassed 25 million unique players.^[90]

Check out this article for a proper vetting of the claim.

I recently moved to Prague, Capitol city of the Czech Republic, and find myself learning by wrote the cultural habits of my new home. A guilty pleasure I have happily since developed is to frequent a hotdog stand at the entrance of my local metro(1) stop. The hotdogs are slathered in Djon and stuffed top down into a Czech style mini baguette. Try as I might, I can’t resist them.

Now that you understand how irresistable they are, you can appreciate my chagrin when low and behold, time and again my Czech compatriots nonchalantly slid in front of me in line. “The Nerve!” I thought to myself. Past tense because as it turns out, unlike in North America, the Czechs when free of obstructions will line up parallel to the counter. No one was butting in line because I was in a line all of my own.

Well you what they say about assumptions, they’ll make an ass out of me and… Burger King (or something like that). Today I found myself in line at a Burger King facing their rows of tills and having no choice but to line up the American way, coming at a smiling associate front-on. So I do and I order. But then, the confusion sets in I stand to the side to wait for my “food” and people start lining up behind me. Now I’ve got to try and explain with my three Czech words and charades that I already ordered u and the line is over there. Not the end of the world to be sure, simply a tale of warning for those who design the places and spaces that we find ourselves inside.

I bet you never guessed it but this is an article about user interface design and the confusion that we can inadvetantly cause in carrying an innocent assuption from one culture to another. My advice is, consult heavily with an expert on the inside because otherwise friend you’re shooting in the dark. In design consistency is the language we use to make ourselves clear but if the language of your design doesn’t fit with the language of the land then things just might get out of hand.

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1. Metro. Quebec for Subway or Underground.

What can I say — I had a hankering. Of course, the first shot I took at installing it resulted in the installer crashing. But I persisted, restarted my virtual machine and voila! Encarta ’95 all the sweeter for the emotional roller coaster that brought me here. It’s something I miss using Macs. I know that sounds facetious, that’s cause it is. But that don’t make it any less true.

There’s something perversely and massively rewarding about thwarting the man while getting shit done Microsoft style. Ahh, success(fully)!

Apparently, way ahead of it’s time

I’ll admit, I was trying to make them look dumb. “They’ll never have this entry,” I said to myself, between bursts of maniacal laughter, as I typed in Global Warming.

Fossil Fuels, Carbon Sequestering, and Melting Icecaps. Tell it like it is robot man.

PS – Thanks Screenr for making sub 5 min. screencasting easy-peasy (not a sponsor, just like’em).

Does iAd meet the bill?

Seems like, aside from taking over yet another industry, Apple may have taken push Ads and made them fun enough that they’re worth clicking on. .

For me, the real genius is those little exit buttons that let you get back to the app you were using. I’m betting that knowing you’re free to leave at any time will make walking through the door a lot more enticing.

No one wants to go into a store with a pushy sales person, or visit a site with flash auto-play content. People like to be in control. To control means to have the ability to change a situation. And nothing’s a bigger change than picking up and leaving, whether it’s the 37signals monthly no-contract plans (& simple data export) or the exit button in iAds. Giving people a way out is a lot more about giving people a way in.

Of course, you’ve still got that pesky problem of giving someone a reason to stick around.

All that said, I did just drink some rainbow flavoured Kool-Aid, so I’m probably not to be trusted. Could be, all this Push and Pull amounts to a Pushmi-pullyu.

Just watched the keynote. Of course. You’ll learn of my addiction as this blog progresses.

Interestingly, they cut the video short of the final applause once Job’s had finished up. At first, my inclination was to feel assume they dropped the ball (it was a bit unpolished feel at times). But now, I’m thinking maybe it just wasn’t big enough. Either way, it was strange to see the empty seats. Nonetheless and as per usual, this Apple fanboy’s gone gaga over the latest Apple flavoured candy.

This, of course, begs the question:

If Apple applause happens in a studio but isn’t recorded, does it still give me shivers?