Design

... design tweaks ...

Gerry Heidenreich — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:57:31 GMT

Just some updates to make it sharper... lost the #88Fish baby blue, got this sharp #008ish blue thing going on with links, it is a step in the right direction, I like it...

Doug Kinney #4: We're gonna eat a dolphin!
Doug Kinney #2: We're going to pet a dolphin...
[multiplicity quotes]

Salesperanto AND Coderian?

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:03:47 GMT

"Stop Thinking Like A Programmer"

I swear it's the theme this week.. I was actually told this by someone at work. In my own defense, I was thinking like somebody that would rather script a solution than wait 3 weeks for it (ok yeah, that's like a programmer)....

Think about this...

1. Business: Coders should be able to think in terms of features, interface complexity, barrier to entry, design and visualization, and capable of elevator pitching their product (notice I didn't say solution?) to a customer in these terms.

2. Innovation: getting the "I can do that" people (e.g. your engineers/architects/coders) to be able to speak directly to the "it would be cool if..." people (e.g. your billers, customers, parents, etc)

3. Apple's innovation/momentum and Microsoft's shift in perspective & ability to compete: Microsoft has always been guilty of "thinking like programmers", and it has been very profitable for them, but things are changing, and they are reacting accordingly.

4. Black & White: on one side are the geeks that appreciate your architecture and could debate code/frameworks/paradigms all day. On the other side are your customers, who want to know how you are going to make them more profitable/efficient/confident/marketable/competitive. Not much of a grey area here. 2 different languages: Salesperanto AND Coderian.

5. Intentional Programming [wikipedia]: Your skillset is in demand, but we are getting closer to the day that "Everyone Writes Software"... Lutz has a section dedicated to this. Developers must learn to understand the intent of their users. Stop thinking in syntax, start thinking in semantics... Mashups, FDD, REST, RDF, Pipes & Popfly (Google SETS prediction).

There is a pattern developing here, and there is A LOT of money being tossed around because of it (check this out!).

That Van Wilder RainbowWordCrunch movie :)

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 03:35:00 GMT

The trailer looks funny [here] but the logo, as trendy as it is... is horrible.

This looks like one of the rare movies that Jeanne & I may enjoy together... it looks chicky enough for her and has a good cast & enough immature comedy to keep me happy.

The last of it for now...

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:54:00 GMT

These guys went the extra mile... they enhanced the power of their RainbowWordCrunchiness with additional graphics & effects...

More RainbowWordCrunch

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:59:00 GMT

So I noticed this trend about a year ago and kept any logos I tripped across, people would send them to me if they found them, and I ended up with quite a collection... My goal was to write up something clever and present everything LogoHell-style, at rainbowwordcrunch.com, throw some adsense up there, spam the discussion groups, and hope for some beer money. My time's more lucrative doing other things... and the blog's been a quiet place lately... so I decided to get this stuff up online through here. Here are some more original rwc logos:

Introducing the RainbowWordCrunch™

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:36:00 GMT

For those of you out there getting sick of the old 'MOCS' cliche (see previous post), there's a new trend that's fixing everything:

Some of my favorite examples are also the most ironic: the 'branders' and imaginators...

The Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh revisited...

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 04:08:00 GMT

In the late 20th century, The Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh™ was the technique used by prominent powerhouses as AAA, Ameritech, Sony, and Al Gore. Steven Lekowicz (I believe) cleverly aggregated these and many other examples of this technique in Logo Hell.
[Link]

I love logos. I enjoy seeing new ones, recognizing something about old ones, The Logo Hell page, and other sneaky logo trickery like the FedEx arrow and the Playboy bunny (there's got to be something there I just keep getting sidetracked)...

[Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh] [Google]

A few extra examples gathered:

Photoshop: Copy layer mask

Gerry Heidenreich — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:55:00 GMT

This is as helpful as it is unintuitive... This will take an existing mask and apply it to another layer.

ScottWater's Cojax - Async Sourcecode Viewer for Community Server Source Code

Gerry Heidenreich — Mon, 30 May 2005 16:44:00 GMT

Found this from Rob Howard's Blog, then on ScottWater's Blog: A code viewer that uses async calls to retrieve file info & populate a treeview control.

Scott did it all within a couple hours, by wiring up a few prebuilt controls:
TreeView - ComponentArt TreeView control
Callbacks - Ajax.Net [blog]
Syntax Highlighting - ASP.Net Resources.com Highlighter

Cojax Source Code Viewer

Also, a note to myself because I never seem to remember this page:
[Milan's AspNetResources.Net online code highlighter]

Specificity = Simplicity = Opportunity

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 01 May 2005 02:52:00 GMT

[expedia.com] knows what's happening... You can tell by looking here. That's right... Expedia owns expediaflights.com, expediahotels.com, expediavacation.com, and probably many more... I would venture every item across their tabstrip will have a domain if it doesn't already... They don't even forward you to expedia.com... If they're owning these domains just to squat on them , they're making a mistake... but I imagine they've got ideas on what to do with them.

Quiet note to self: expediacars.com is available...

If you want flight information, how often are you concerned about all that other stuff up there??? I want a flight, possibly a hotel... thanks, but this is too busy.

Here is Expedia's flights page, and another service available that knows what you want, kayak.com.

I know which one I prefer...

Other such sites are popping up everywhere. I've been referring to them as “micro-niche” sites. Your traditional niche may be travel, but unless you can somehow trim the fat and give your users exactly what they're looking for, quickly, and richly, you need a new solution now. That solution may be to break your site out into atomic service-specific sites.

Kayak.com has everything it takes to drive a splitting-wedge into the online travel market.

These splitting wedges are everywhere, and entrepreneurs have an enormous opportunity right now to take a sharp slice out of just about any market, here's another:
[www.indeed.com] vs. [www.monster.com] (It's the mechanism of the service I'm referring to, not the source of the data... in other words, indeed depends on monster and others to aggregate it's data from. The point is, Monster.com could be as slick as Indeed, but why toss all that time and energy put into their design???)

In explaining this concept to a friend of mine, I drew it up on an index card... here's a more refined version I did in Photoshop...

Please provide your insight & comments!

May 1 Update: After visiting with Brian Tinkler on this subject, I realize how important emotion is in marketing. Brian, being the business & marketing ninja that he is, stressed the importance of awareness/brand building, and how, without those facets of marketing this vertical-marketing strategy can't compete with the expedias and the monsters. Brian mentioned experience, vs. perception of experience. The latter being the “awareness portion“ of the brand. It makes sense that in a truly minimalistic approach, the awareness may also be minimal, due to the fact that awareness costs money...

I know we're on to something here, and I believe that the vertical-markets will enable service providers to sharpen their authority, and that there will be solutions for managing all of the tiny, but perfect micro-niche solutions out there. I got a comment from the co-founder of Indeed.com below, mentioning that such a “meta-service“ exists, to help point you in the right direction... I had a look at info.com, it seems like it has potential. I have to believe, however, that people will continue to rely on Google foremost, and that your strong, proven authority in your specific service will achieve it's deserved ranking. If all else fails, there's AdWords™ :)