January 2012
- 2012 -
Go.
November 2011
Digithoughts: Skmmr - Share with those who care →
Skmmr got featured on Digithoughts today! Sign up for our beta here. digithoughts: So, you like sharing stuff you read on the web with your friends, but don’t feel that Facebook, twitter or Google+ does a good job of sorting out what to share with whom? Maybe Skmmr can be your solution: Instead of just “yelling into a crowded room”, Skmmr intends to help you share content…
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With Skmmr, Sharing Content Is As Personal As It... →
Skmmr got some great press on Fueled.com today. Become a part of our beta at Skmmr.com.
October 2011
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Skmmr aims to be your favorite way to share what... →
We got some great press on The Next Web today! Check it out and sign up for the Skmmr beta!
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Skmmr got picked to be part of TechCocktail!
Just got some great news. Skmmr has been selected among a handful of companies to present tomorrow night at TechCocktail in Boulder. Eric, Andy and I have worked very hard on Skmmr and we’re excited to show it off. We’d love your feedback as we roll out the beta very, very soon. Sign up to be a part of it here.
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Skmmr (beta) - Tell your friends what to read. →
Friends, I’m incredibly proud to be releasing Skmmr in the very near future. Skmmr is a web app that lets you create a small, intimate circle and push content directly to your friends and loved ones through those same circles. That’s about all I can say for now. Eric Magnuson and I are behind Skmmr. It was beautifully designed by Andy Stone. Give us your email and we’ll send...
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Could Customer Service Usurping Be a Business?
This idea came to me around my fourth or fifth call to Comcast/Xfinity today, trying to get help with a strange problem affecting my cable modem. What if, instead of calling the actual company related to your problem, you could call a third-party service, one that could help in a variety of areas, encompassing many, many companies’ knowledge bases? This third-party service wouldn’t...
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Why You Should Produce a Lot
Across all forms of art there are those that produce in obnoxious and sometimes obsessive amounts. The Beatles, Tupac and Lil Wayne are just a few artists off the top of my mind that I pulled from this list of compulsive creators. There is a lot they can teach us about churning out work. Not everything you produce will be a hit This should be a fundamental understanding. Not everything you do...
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How Utah Will Soon End Homelessness →
Utah gives the homeless homes, job training, social services like abuse prevention and access to mental health professionals and it works! Incredible story.
September 2011
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Facebook Timeline Drills Through Facebook's Data...
Yesterday’s Facebook Timeline announcement was interesting because it blew out the data floor that Facebook has had for years. Facebook has very little consistent data prior to 2004 when it began. This is obviously a function of technology as a whole, as it’s difficult to gather data from before you started working on whatever it is you’re working on (there are exceptions to...
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I love when bands write songs that sound better... 3 tags
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An Interesting Use of 10,000 Hours
In high school, my buddy Pete and I played a lot of pool in my basement. One day, before the start of our sophomore year, I decided that I wanted to have a little contest: First one to 500 victories in 9-ball wins. The only rule was that we had to finish by the time we graduated in June 2008. (We didn’t.) We played. And played some more. And sometime over the next four years, we got really...
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Design Spotlight: Drew Melton of The Phraselology...
(Photo: Ryan Pavlovich) Drew Melton is a graphic designer based out of Grand Rapids, MI. He specializes in print design and is constantly fiddling (and failing) with letters. He started a company called justlucky that collaborates with clients and designers all over the country. In addition to justlucky, Drew also runs The Phraseology Project which turns common phrases into gorgeous...
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August 2011
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“CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. To one of...”
– Vic Gundrota - Icon Ambulance 2 tags
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“Gamification is the wrong word for the right idea. The word for what’s happening...”
– Can’t play, won’t play This is something that needed to be said. We’re cheapening the richness of actual games by referring to everything with incentives, as a game. Part of the reason we love games, whether they be board, video, bar or other types of games is that they have... July 2011
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On Inverted Scrolling
I’ve been using inverted scrolling in Lion for a few days. I want to like it but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Here’s the problem: On an iPad, I’m physically manipulating the content, moving it in relation to the screen. On my Macbook Air, I’m not (or at least it doesn’t feel like I am) If you want to abstract this imagery, think of a long scroll...
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America, Stop Killing Your Teachers
Much of my family are teachers. My mom teaches computers to elementary school children. My uncle used to teach kindergarten. My grandmother taught a variety of different subjects in her day. I have tremendous respect and reverence for teachers. And American public schools are killing the art of teaching. As a teacher, my mom had two phases of teaching. The first, which happened before I was...
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Initial Thoughts on Spotify
I’ve been a giant fan of Rdio for a few monts now. I was excited this morning to try Spotify, after all of the hype and the long American wait. Here are my initial thoughts: I miss the feed of things my friends are adding to their collections that Rdio has I’m confused about the idea of a Library or Collection. If I find an album that I don’t own in iTunes/Spotify, how do I...
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The Horrible Crowes - Behold the Hurricane ... 5 tags
4 Easy Ways to Read More Content Online
As many of you know, I’m constantly trying to figure out the best way to consume content efficiently. As time goes on and you find more websites that you love - or think you may love in the future - you scribble them down somewhere in your computer’s memory and then hope you’ll someday return to them. I use four rules that seldom change. These rules may expand and contract based...
June 2011
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I Suck at Editing
Every time my parents spoke to my teachers, teachers unequivocally told my parents that I rush through my work. I was always the first one to finish a test, to get the assignment out of the way and to move on. They were, and always have been, correct. Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about editing - How we edit (or rather, how we don’t). I want to do a better job...
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10 Things on the Top of My Mind
I’ve heard that if you’re stuck creatively, that making a list of things on your mind is a great way to move past them to what you actually want to do. I gave this a try for the first time: 1) I want to learn a little bit of Ruby - Maybe my desire to learn to code is perpetuated by startup job listings, the fact that I have so many ideas or the simple desire to build things with my...
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Sharing Location: How With Judo-flips Foursquare...
I was talking with some friends on Saturday night. I was telling them why Path’s new app With intrigues me and why I’m totally turned off by Foursquare. Here was the summary of my argument: With is all about people. You can add pictures and location to that if you want but first and foremost it’s about the company you keep. Foursquare isn’t interesting to me because I...
Anonymous asked: Hi Zack,
I came across your blog while searching the internet for iphone app developers and their stories. I am currently teaching myself Objective-C and looking to create iphone apps for enterprise applications.
Did you partner with computer programmers to develop your Beeline RTD app or did you create the app yourself?
I came across your blog while searching the internet for iphone app developers and their stories. I am currently teaching myself Objective-C and looking to create iphone apps for enterprise applications.
Did you partner with computer programmers to develop your Beeline RTD app or did you create the app yourself?
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Save Your Memories: How to Extract Photos from...
Photos are a funny thing. On one hand, they’re how we remember our lives. No one wants a photo-less life to look back on. On the other hand, we’re terrible at saving our photos when we sync our phones with our computers. Let’s say you just restored your iPhone but forgot to pull the photos off and put them neatly into iPhoto before you restored, you just did it on an impulse. ...
May 2011
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Lessons from TechStars: Create with Passion....
Recently at TechStars, Pascal Finette and Lloyd Hilaiel from the Mozilla Project came to visit the teams and give presentations. Pascal’s talk centered around creating great products and great communities, and that’s what I want devote this post to. Pascal started with a simple point: Superior products matter. Throughout the talk I referenced Pascal’s points to the creation...
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Reading Readiness - A Little Bit on A Lot →
Frank Chimero is my favorite writer of the moment. He uses language better than anyone else I’ve read in quite a while. Don’t do things you’re not ready for and respect your own readiness. There’s nothing wrong with not being ready to take something on.
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How We Create
I love the study of creation: How one figures out what they want to do, the medium they want to do it in, and then they attempt to translate what’s in their head onto a more permanent canvas than their neural network. When musicians talk about their processes, writing albums specifically, they’ll usually say that the first few albums have direct influences. If you talk to a musician about their...
How the Martha Graham Google logo is anamated →
Very cool description by my friend Josh Clemence and the company he works for, Acumen Holdings.
“In the effort of trying to make something good, we will not look good.”
– Frank Chimero 2 tags
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Is College Necessary?: An Argument from the Inside...
TL;DR - There’s no correct choice as to whether you should go to college or not. It depends on you and sort of depends on where you want to go to school. Pick an avenue and make it great. There has been a lot of talk recently about the practicality of higher education. Student loan debt is reaching the $1 trillion mark and universities keep hiking tuition higher and higher, year after year....
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April 2011
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Super Mario Bros. 3 Level Design Lessons →
I always knew that Mario was a brilliantly designed series. I never knew quite how brilliant. Incredibly interaction design.