Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Usability Testing Hack – “Digital” Paper Prototyping [June 10th, 2009]
Sometimes the best ideas are born out of last minute necessity. We had an experience recently that led to a great new technique for conducting paper prototypes without the paper. It gives us many of the advantages of paper prototyping but it can even be done remotely.
More From SXSW: Merlin Mann & John Gruber [April 16th, 2009]
I think I finally figured it out. The reason I’ve started and stopped this blog post so many times is because I’m trying to wrap up everything that Merlin Mann and John Gruber had to say about blogging and social media when you can actually just listen to it for yourself right here:
You can download [...]
The power of What If? [April 2nd, 2009]
When I was a kid, my parents bought a sailboat. My mom, dad and myself thought this was a very cool thing. Actually, I’m just assuming I thought it was cool because I do now and I was only three then. My sister, on the other hand, was 6 and she had A LOT of [...]
There’s nothing like a good fight between creatives and techies [March 5th, 2009]
John Williams and I had lunch recently and talked about a funny question. How come “creative” and “technical” people get along at NewCity – unlike every other place he’s worked in his previous 10 years? (Nevermind the fact that some of the most creative people I know are IT people). John wrote about it in a [...]
How to delete backups from Time Machine [February 18th, 2009]
A few weeks ago I tried to use my Time Machine-managed backup hard drive for manually backing up a hard drive that was dying on me. But to copy those files over, I needed more space. So I grabbed a handful of months-old backups and deleted them. You know, via the “Trash Can -> Empty [...]
What does “impossible” mean? [February 12th, 2009]
How do you respond when someone tells you nothing is impossible? Does it help you see limits as mere obstacles to overcome? Does it encourage you to try things you would have never tried before? Does it revitalize your creative spirit and bring you back up?
Maybe you react the other way. It kills your morale. [...]
Tales of dysfunction and success [January 29th, 2009]
As Dave Perks mentioned, the two of us have been discussing technical and creative mindsets. I’ve worked in a lot of places where technical and creative staff have pushed each other away, to the point where there’s maybe only one point of contact between the two departments.
As a result, the idea people have to [...]
College Facebook groups getting hijacked [December 19th, 2008]
Brad Ward reported yesterday on his Squaredpeg blog that he’s uncovered what looks like rings of people who are creating groups for incoming freshmen classes on Facebook (or getting admin privileges on these groups) for questionable purposes. These people are not actually applying to or planning to attend these schools. They may be developing networks [...]
Satisfaction [November 21st, 2008]
For the third time since joining NCM, I have left our annual retreat even happier in my job than I was in the days before. What is it that we can do in two days that can have such a marked and noticeable affect?
We review last year’s goals and celebrate those we’ve achieved, and that’s [...]
Skoolpool cool – Facebook connection for students & colleges [July 25th, 2008]
I traveled to Eduweb 2008 this week in Atlantic City (Pamela Michael of Imperial College London and I gave a presentation) and saw some cool new ideas for higher education and the web. One of those is SkoolPool. It’s a Facebook application that allows:
Colleges to create profile pages within Facebook, and
Students to create lists of [...]