19 Jun 2012
We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for headcount, budget size or fixed expense.
Some food for thought.
12 Jun 2012
We recently switched issue trackers—and while a feat in and of itself—half the battle was getting our arms wrapped around the replacement… JIRA. When discussing the topic with one of our clients they remarked, “JIRA gives you sooooo much rope, it’s almost impossible not to hang yourself with it all!”
8 Jun 2012
Awhile back we started work on a customized human verification process for one of our clients to help the cut down on the amount of spammers. It recently came up again, and as I was digging through my memory, I also ran across this article by HOW Interactive Design that same day. Coincidence?
7 Jun 2012
Programmer Robby Russell began exploring the framework just over a year ago. Within weeks, he was hooked and evangelical; he launched a crusading blog, “Robby on Rails,” and realigned his consultancy, Portland, Ore.-based Planet Argon, to work exclusively on Rails development and hosting.
It's crazy to think that this was written over six years ago.
6 Jun 2012
For the past few months, we’ve been working with TCI, a K-12 publishing company, redesigning their online application for students and teachers with new features, pages, and interactions within a responsive design for classroom learning.
While the Glossary was not the most difficult to design, it looks like it’s been well received. You can see a sneak peek of it (and a few other changes) here and stay tuned – TCI launches their new online app June 30th, so expect a blog article highlighting some of the exciting new changes!
4 Jun 2012
Dear WebEX,
We’ve been testing out a few conference systems and first went with WebEX as several of our clients/partners seem to use it, but after a few calls, it seemed like a lot of moaning and groaning on our end about having to navigate their UI.
We’ve since settled on GoToMeeting as their tools/interface feel much easier to interact with.
So, today… I went through your cancellation process, which required me to call and wait on hold for 20 minutes, talk with one of your agents, explain why we wanted to cancel, turn down their offer for free training of using their tool, and eventually wait for my confirmation email. I’ve gone ahead and provided it for you.
I’ll give you some credit though. When I first compared WebEX vs GoToMeeting, I found your marketing/sales pitch to be more compelling, so pulled my credit card out for you first. However, once you gave me access to my new account, It was nothing but headaches and annoyances for the team. Very difficult tools to interact with… the epitome of a web tool designed by technical people who lack much empathy for the end-user. I worry that you’re losing a lot of customers for similar reasons… and would encourage you to have some of your usability experts focus on your online scheduling/planning tools as it was too painful for us to work with.
Sincerely,
$FIRST_NAME
4 Jun 2012
We recorded a new podcast last week discussing our recent white paper about the benefits and drawbacks of responsive and mobile-specific design. Listen as we talk about screen sizes, mobile devices, browsers and Annie’s true opinion of her fingers. You can also check out our previous podcasts and subscribe in iTunes so you won’t miss another exciting episode!
1 Jun 2012
Ultimately, the organization’s instinct is to protect the ground that’s already been taken rather than take new ground. Every organization begins as an advance force and ends up as an occupying force.
30 May 2012
Bryson Meunier has posted an article that outlines some rationale for why some businesses, such as restaurants, are better off with a mobile-specific version of their site instead of a responsive one.
30 May 2012
In January 2009 we invited the community to participate in a survey about the state of hosting Ruby on Rails applications. We wanted to get a better understanding of how people are currently managing their deployment and hosting process, and what they’d like to see going forward. Our goal was to use the information provided to help us continue to evolve our hosting-related products and deployment services (this actually helped us decide to accept Bluebox’s acquisition of our hosting business later that year). Additionally, we wanted to provide this information back to the community so that our colleagues in the industry could also use this information in their decision making processes.
Given that it’s been over three years since we ran this survey, we felt that it would be interesting to see just how much the landscape has changed by running another one.
We’ve modified a few of the old questions and added some new ones for good measure. Responses will be collected through the month of June and the results will then be shared with everyone (similar to 2009).
If you have a few minutes to spare, take our survey and help us how Ruby on Rails applications are being deployed in 2012.
Have a project that needs help?