Your initial reaction- frustration.

Mask it with appreciation instead.

When those simple questions are sent to support and you’ve already answered those same questions three times on your Help page, take a deep breath, and be comforted by the fact that your users care enough about finding the answer to e-mail you. They’re seeking personal, timely interaction, and when you’re able to quickly and easily solve their problems, it only adds to your credibility. Keep Reading

Occasionally you read an article that feels like swallowing a chip sideways. It stops you; painful until you get it digested.

“There’s nothing wrong with the scientific study of usability. Until you pretend that it’s prescriptive, instead of descriptive. That something good for humans can be reduced to mathematical certainty.”

“Software cries out for personality, for ornamentation, for delight. To reflect higher aspirations, and evoke emotion. For designers who don’t think it’s silly to imagine software as a helping hand, rather than a tool to be used.”

You should go read the rest now…

It would be interesting to hear a progressive “old media” take on what online advertisers are starting to realize is an important distinction.

For other questions being tossed around for John for his interview on Thursday, see this article on SmallBusinessTrends.com.

Did you know that you could make brand new pickles by putting cucumbers in your leftover pickle juice? Maybe that’s like “did you know you could make brand new toast from bread?” -but I guess it never occurred to me. It works incredibly well, and quick. Alright, we can resume the talk about web apps and stuff now.

“Missing items in a complex visual search is not a new idea: in the medical field, it has been known since the 1960s that radiologists tend to miss a second abnormality on an X-ray if they’ve found one already. The concept — dubbed “satisfaction of search” — is that radiologists would find the first target, think they were finished, and move on to the next patient’s X-ray.” via

-Even when you think you’ve got it sorted, take a second and look around. I can’t tell you how many hours of future programming time you’ll save yourself by making a habit of taking a few seconds to review your last changes even after they “work.”

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get the work done. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lighting to strike you in the brain, you’re not going to make an awful lot of work.” – Chuck Close via Joshua Blankenship

I totally disagree. I’m not saying inspiration is the only way to get anything done, but it can be the boost you need to do it really, really well. In my opinion, it’s the rare combination of work ethic and inspiration that leads to really great results.

Find 10 minutes today to just stare at one of the pages on your site. Pick something other than the homepage, pick something obscure. Think, really think, about the page, and what it means. What it should do, and how well it does it. It’s amazing what a charging experience it can be to focus really deeply on minutiae. For an even more interesting challenge, -pick a 300px square anywhere in your app, or site to focus on.

“...by the time a program has been cleaned up to the point of being truly bug free, it is most certainly obsolete.”

-The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford