Brick by Brick

My daughter's math class needed to find examples of periodic behavior and estimate a sine curve to fit the data, both manually and by using a TI-83 calculator.  Obvious examples of periodic behavior are average city monthly temperatures and low/high tides.  My daughter wanted something a bit more unusual; her teacher suggested looking at data for live births by month in the U.S. prior to the introduction of contraceptives.

 So off to Google we went.  She typed in "live births by month in the U.S., 1954" and got this search result page.  We clicked on several of the links, ending up at this page about the US census.  Data is yearly, we needed monthly.  But there is a URL at the bottom of the page that we followed to the Center for Disease Control.  And with a few more clicks, we found what we were looking for, Yearly Vital Statistics Reports.

We downloaded various PDFs, found the monthly numbers, and my daughter used Excel to plot the graphs, fiddled with the constants to come up with a good approximation, and used her calculator to get the best sine curve fit possible.  About an hour and a half in work.

While she was finishing up, an advertisement for Bing was running on the TV.  So I gave it a try, and typed in exactly the same thing:"live births by month in the U.S., 1954."  I didn't know what to expect, but here's the page, and look at the fourth result.  Bing-o! Not only the data, but various graphs and explanations for the seasonal variation in live births.  All in two clicks.

This is only one anecdote.  I don't know yet if Bing is a decision engine, but in this case it was a powerful discovery engine that beat Google hands-down.

Around eight months ago we made the decision to start using Basecamp to manage nearly all our projects.  Prior to the move to Basecamp, we used a patch work of tools to manage our work.  We had an internal wiki we used for many of our task lists and project documentation.  We used a bug tracking system for some of our more intense programming projects.  We used Basecamp for some work.  And for some projects we relied on emails, Outlook task lists, whiteboards and Excel sheets.

While in retrospect this random approach to project management seems dysfunctional, it really wasn’t a huge problem until we started growing and hiring new people.  When you have a small group of people that have worked together a long time, formal process and tools are less important.  You just sort of know how people work, where they saved their files and how they want to be communicated with.  However, this reliance on personal relationships falls apart when the volume of work increases and you have to integrate new employees into a poorly defined process.  It doesn’t scale.

So we started using Basecamp.

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Twitter was barely off the ground before companies and programmers were looking for ways to monetize it, and a new tool by 83 Degrees has found a new  way to do that.

The tech company on Sunday launched Super Chirp, a subscription-based service allowing Twitter users to require payment to receive certain direct messages.

While most Twitter users aren’t thrilled about paying for Tweets from their favorite celebrities or areas of interest, even getting just a fraction of their fan base to sign up could end up turning huge profits for Twitter publishers with a big enough following.

The Washington Post reported that if even one percent of Shaquille O’Neal’s 1.1 million followers paid $0.99 a month to access a for-subscribers-only direct message stream, “he could bring in about $100,000 worth of extra revenue this year.”

Super Chirp is a little different from past efforts at monetizing Twitter streams, such as Twitpub. Unlike its competitor, Super Chirp doesn’t require Twitter users to create a new account, but lets them set up special direct-message only streams for subscribers, according to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

“Twitter is mobile and it’s real time, two huge advantages over normal fan sites. And it’s constantly refreshed with new content,” Arrington reported Sunday.

The tool runs through PayPal, and Super Chirp keeps 30 percent (including PayPal fees) of the profit. Publishers can charge anywhere from $0.99 to $9.99 for subscriptions.

TechCrunch points out the tool can be utilized not only by celebrities and businesses, but also by charities.

“Loyal supporters can donate to the charity and get a stream of news relevant to that charity,” Arrington reported.

While Super Chirp offers something new over competitors like Twitpub and Be a Magpie, brainstorming ways to profit from Twitter has just begun.

“Super Chirp is just the latest in a stream of third-party services and apps trying to capitalize on Twitter’s social infrastructure,” Arrington said.

I came across a great article today entitled How to Design for Your Worst Client: You. While the article aims to provide designers with tips for designing their own personal websites, there are some some lessons that anyone working on a web design project can learn from.

“Be as specific as you can on what you would like on each page. That means decide on the content first. I know, it’s a design portfolio. You need something to design though. How many times has a client had you design something without saying what content they want on there, or saying they will get it to you soon (meaning the day before it goes live). Don’t do this to you.”

Too often sites are designed without a thought out content plan in place.  This usually leads to last minute redesigns or sites that are squares when they should be circles.  Content should be where you start, not an after thought.

“There is always someone better than you. Always. But remember: That person’s first few websites sucked. Not only did they suck, they might have been the worst website ever created. So why are you trying so hard to have the best website ever in one shot? You won’t get better unless you start making your own sites.

Stop using other websites as a crutch while you aimlessly wander looking for something to spark an idea. Since you have your goals defined and know what content you want, you can quickly move along until you find the elements that match your needs. Then STOP looking.”

In almost all cases, organizations are better off getting something good, but simple up quickly and then improving in an iterative way over time.  Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.

One of the biggest obstacles to getting good design implemented is a dysfunctional approval process, as this article on the struggles American Airlines has had attests.

“The biggest challenge to better design isn’t getting better designers. The problem is organizational, and the hub-and-spoke decision-making process that was originally created to slash bureaucracy–that is, to create more decentralized decisions and less hierarchy. But the overriding weakness, which design thinking makes manifest, is that good design is necessarily the product of a heavily centralized structure. Great design at places such as Apple isn’t about “empowering decision makers” or whatever that lame B-school buzzword is. It’s about awarding massive power and self-determination to those with the most cohesive vision–that is, the designers. Those are the people with the best idea of what customers want. That’s the essence of design thinking.”

While the quote references problems with the way things are structured at American Airlines, I’ve found that organizations of all sizes and shapes have similar structural problems.  No matter how talented the design team, it is difficult to produce good websites unless the end client has efficient structures in place for responding to and approving your work.  Committees are probably good for a few things, but designing websites isn’t one of them.

President Obama made his way into office with a tech savvy campaign team and promises to use new technologies to change the way government gets its job done. With the campaign over and the administration under way, shifting rhetoric into action has happened in notable ways but also raised major concerns.

The Center for American Progress held a roundtable discussion Monday with a few of those working inside and outside government to improve Federal impact and navigate some of the hurdles presented by opening government up through technology.

“The Web and the Federal Government grew up in different neighborhoods,” CAP Senior Vice President for Online Communications Andrew Sherry said in his introduction.

Speaking directly on how these two elements from different sides of the track are learning to work together was Alec Ross, Secretary of State Clinton’s senior advisor for innovation, who led the roundtable’s central discussion on 21^st century statehood, and what he termed “Diplomacy 2.0.” (more…)