I pre-announced it today on Twitter so I thought I’d do the same thing here just to make it a little more “official.”
I purchased the domain for Deck78 (or Deck 78 or deck78 … whatever) today and Deck78 is going to be the kindred spirit of Replosion, my prior failed adventure into owning a business (and may it live in peace).
More information will be coming in the future.
Also, an imaginary cookie to the people who can figure out the reference in the name.
Over this trip, I was able to listen to some of the backlog of podcasts from 5by5, mainly the four episodes of Build and Analyze I had forgotten about from Dan Benjamin and Marco Arment. One of the topics that has been discussed over those past episodes has been that of self-hosted blogging platforms.
Marco was the lead developer of Tumblr and is currently the founder of Instapaper, a service I use daily. He’s been working on a project he calls Second Crack. It is, basically, a self-hosted blogging platform that transforms text files written in Markdown into blog posts. Cool stuff. Dan and Marco have talked quite a bit about the design ideas behind it, what Marco has been aiming for as far as post workflow, administrative workflow, how posts get where they are supposed to go, etc. and it is a lot of fun to hear about.
However, I want to write something myself because of it.
Also over the past few days, Andy Clarke has released 320 and up, a really cool inversion on what has traditionally been touted as responsive web design. What I mean by “cool inversion” is that instead of starting with the desktop and working your way down, you start with the stylesheet at the smallest device level (usually smart phone-sized) and work your way up to the desktop. The idea is to download only the needed assets and add stuff as you scale up.
It makes sense, it is cool, and I want to build something.
I’m also looking at forming an LLC again. I know, I just disbanded Replosion about a half-year ago, but things have changed (obviously) so I’m looking for names again.
All in all, a lot of work to do.
So here is what I am thinking at the moment:
That’s the idea, at least. There is a lot of moving parts to get out of the way, but http://bobmartens.net will once again be changing. WordPress is too much for what I want, Tumblr is not hosted by me (which is not what I want or need).
Now I need to actually ship something.
One of my pet peeves at the moment happens to be websites which do not clearly display the prices of various services or products.
Canonical has brought this to the fore again. What I write has nothing to do with the company or their services (both of which I think are great), but has everything to do with their website.
If you are selling a product or service, hiding the price behind either sales representatives or registration walls is not going to make me more willing to part with my money. I might just end up paying more money to someone else because they clearly state their prices. This happens for a number of reasons:
I’m more likely to leave a site and move onto a competitor than try and hunt for prices. Simple as that.
I tried working with Balsamiq Mockups today to see if I could incorporate it into my workflow for webpage design. Mainly I use paper + Sharpie as my toolset of choice for design mockups before I jump straights into HTML + CSS to get a working mockup.
I’m happy with how things work right now but I was wondering if a more digital tool would benefit me at all.
I’m sure it works wonderfully for other people, but I find that I’m too picky when working with a digital tool. I tend to try and get everything to line up properly, and spend more time crafting the mockup than I probably should. Balsamiq was no different. I spent maybe thirty minutes trying to put together a single webpage mockup and ended up trashing it
On the other hand, I spent maybe ten minutes with a couple of pieces of paper and some colored Sharpies to put together a few design mockups and come to some quick conclusions on what would and would not work (for those interested, why looking at the difference between three or four wells for content).
What does this mean? Not much. I just find that the simpler my toolset, the more I end up using it.
As I was getting ready for bed last night, a phrase popped into my head.
It’s the small stuff that makes the difference.
It’s a true statement. In a lot of ways, the tiniest of details can make a huge difference between a good product and a great product. The way something feels can change how you interact with something. My Logitech MX620 wireless mouse feels infinitely better in the hand than a cheap Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse. You pay more, but the experience is better as well.
However, the small stuff wouldn’t matter if you don’t get the “big stuff” correct first. I don’t care how good the mouse feels in my hand if it can’t effectively track my movements. A cake with excellent frosting can taste terrible if the underlying cake is stale. A car can look awesome, but if it doesn’t have wheels it’s a huge paperweight on your front lawn.
What I’m basically saying is that before you can start fretting over the details you need to have your foundation in place. Sweat the big stuff and get that right, otherwise all of those small tweaks you make will be for nothing because you’ll still have a terrible product on your hands.
It will just look really good doing nothing.