Hey there, 2011!
2011 is off to a heckuva start!
We’ve got work in the pipeline for Web Foundation, NuLayer, Jet Cooper, blogTO, and a whole host of other great companies and people. Everything from desktop to Web to mobile apps.
We’re pretty well settled in our new Richmond and Spadina office space.
And we just received word that our (Jon Lax and I) Abolish the Hourly, How Value Pricing Wins Clients SXSW talk has been accepted, so we’ll be sharing some success stories with the world come March.
Words are the soul of UX; making forms that speak to users.
We’re in the throws of what feels like an endless project trying to improve on what should be a relatively simple donation form for Web Foundation. I’ve been pushing hard to work through the convoluted error messages that we’re getting back from the API we need to work with simply because running into a problem when you’re trying to give someone money is just about the last thing you need.
(Source: twitter.com)
The importance of infrastructure: Haiti and beyond.
In the wake of the earthquake and ongoing disaster relief in Haiti there has been a lot of discussion around the political state of Haiti. Setting these political issues aside, let’s look at the disaster itself and, more specifically, how Haiti’s infrastructure has played a roll in multiplying the level of destruction and, as a result, greatly increased the requirement for aid and subsequent rebuilding efforts.
Access in the information age: the threat of ongoing supply chain battles
Amazon’s decision to cease selling Macmillan print books and eBooks last week had me extremely concerned regarding this form of, well, censorship. An interesting reaction given that Apple pulled the same stunt in 2007 with NBC, pulling their content from iTunes due to disinterest in capitulating on pricing. In that case, an act where I was rooting for Apple simply because I despise protectionist agendas and see video content owners as far more egregious in this area than music, which does not bode well for consumer access (and with the rhetoric on that one being that it followed “NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes”, rather than a unilateral decision on Apple’s part to make this content unavailable). But books. Man, I (yes, naively) expect Amazon to do whatever it takes to make every book available to me. To be a leader in access to knowledge. In that sense, the Google of the retail world. So when Amazon intentionally makes unavailable an entire publisher, including most of their subsidiaries, that was a wake up call. And I immediately thought: boycott Amazon, let them know why. Buoyed further by the excellent outsider’s guide to the fight article from Charlie Stross. But, yesterday, Amazon capitulated.
