Sample Mood Boards

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208 North demoed Atlas at the FOWA conference in Miami. It’s a really spiffy web-based IDE for Cappuccino geared towards building desktop style apps for the web. Go sign up for information on the release so you can be one of the first to play with Atlas.

Keep an eye on 280 North.. they’re going places for sure.

Gary crushed it for sure. You have to admire and be inspired by his passion. Watch the video, then get off your butt and do something you love.

I ran across this list of 9 Signs You Shouldn’t Hire THAT Web Guy today over at CSS Zone. I felt like it was worth re-posting over here. Those of us who really ARE web professionals know these folks all too well.

1. He Calls Himself a “Webmaster”
Any web guy that calls himself a “webmaster” probably isn’t a master of anything. The term “webmaster” has become a translation for the word “amateur.” The web has diversified into so many different realms that webmaster is no longer meaningful (was it ever though?)

2. He’s a FrontPage Expert
Any developer / designer with a degree knows that Microsoft FrontPage most definitely isn’t a professional tool. FrontPage will pass for Mom and Dad who want to create a website dedicated to their dogs, not someone who’s trying to do business. I’d argue that a solid Web Developer should work at code level.

3. He’ll Submit Your Website to [Inflated Number Here] Search Engines
Submitting your website to hundreds of search engines would be great…10 years ago. Websites are indexed by relevant search engines by how rich their content and keywords are. Search engine optimization is big business and submitting sites to search engines simply isn’t the way to get to the top of Google.

4. He Wants a “Designed By ….” Plug on the Bottom of Every Page
You’ve paid this person to create a marketing tool for you — not a billboard for him. Your website is a launch pad for your business and Poindexter McScooner is simply the man behind the curtain — keep him there.

5. He Created a Cool Website for [Insert Family Member / Friend Here]
Your business needs someone who’s been there before. The most common answer to my “Who was he and what business did they work for?” question is “Oh, he did a website for the CEO’s daughter’s [insert lame organization here].” I honestly hear that friend-of-a-friend story all the time. Choose someone with a sizable portfolio that can provide references.

6. He Can Make You a Great Splash Page Flash Animation
Translation: “I can spend dozens of hours wasting your money to create something that will take too long to load and will be skipped more times than dessert at a bad restaurant.” Consistency and website flow are important to web design — not meaningless animations that waste visitors’ time and your money.

7. He Mentions He’s a HTML Expert
Who the hell isn’t? I would argue that dropping any language acronym on a customer (PHP, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, etc.) unless they ask is meaningless fluff. A mechanic could use a banana on my car if it would fix it. Keep your tools, especially HTML, to yourself — the customer doesn’t care.

8. He’ll Fit a Cool Counter on Your Site
You’ll add an ugly relic of the early internet on my site so that my competitors have an idea of my web stats? Sweet!
Counters make a website look as unprofessional as possible — don’t use them.

9. He’ll Place a “Best If View in…” Message on Your Website
Any real Web Developer knows that he doesn’t make the rules. Follow standards in the initial build and then fix it in Internet Explorer — that’s the flow. No responsible programmer would place a “best if view in…” message on the front-end of a website.

I think we could probably throw a handfull more in there like…

10. He’s A Charter Member of the HTML Writers Guild
Again, anyone who’s familiar with the HWG knows that all you have to do is sign up for membership, you don’t have to qualify, test or do anything to prove your skillset. Anyone who feels the need to inflate their status with bogus credentials is probably someone you wouldn’t want working on your project. Find someone with some real credentials that they had to EARN.

11. He Thinks Comic Sans or Papyrus Would Be Great Fonts to Use for Your Site
Pretty much every designer I know cringes at the thought of having to use Comic Sans in their project. In fact, there are even websites devoted to banning the overuse of the font. The untrained designer still thinks that Comic Sans is fun and original and that everyone will appreciate it’s playfulness. In reality, it’s overused and the bastion of the mom & pop website. Papyrus isn’t quite as egregious, but it’s still way overused and we’re tired of seeing it everywhere we turn.

Any other ideas out there? I’d love to hear them.

Original Posting

1. Undermined motivation
2. Weak personnel
3. Uncontrolled problem employees
4. Heroics
5. Adding people to a late project
6. Noisy, crowded offices
7. Friction between developers and customers
8. Unrealistic expectations
9. Lack of effective project sponsorship
10. Lack of stakeholder buy-in
11. Lack of user input
12. Politics placed over substance
13. Wishful thinking

Process Mistakes

14. Overly optimistic schedules
15. Insufficient risk management
16. Contractor failure
17. Insufficient planning
18. Abandonment of planning under pressure
19. Wasted time during the fuzzy front end
20. Shortchanged upstream activities
21. Inadequate design
22. Shortchanged quality assurance
23. Insufficient management controls
24. Premature or too frequent convergence
25. Omitting necessary tasks from estimates
26. Planning to catch up later
27. Code-like-hell programming

Product Mistakes

28. Requirements gold-plating
29. Feature creep
30. Developer gold-plating
31. Push me, pull me negotiation
32. Research-oriented development

Technology Mistakes

33. Silver-bullet syndrome
34. Overestimated savings from new tools or methods
35. Switching tools in the middle of a project
36. Lack of automated source control

If you’re an experienced software developer and have some relevant feedback, you can particpate in a “classic mistakes” survey to add your thoughts to the list.

If you haven’t seen it yet, boxesandarrows.com had a great post with some research data on just this subject. If you’ve ever been in the “above the fold” argument with a client or coworker, it’s something you’ll want to read.

read the post

1. Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a dealbreaker.

2. Change the interaction. What makes great websites great is that they are simultaneously effortless and new at the same time. That means that the site teaches you a new thing or new interaction or new connection, but you know how to use it right away. (Hey, if doing this were easy, everyone would do it.)

3. Less. Fewer words, fewer pages, less fine print.

4. What works, works. Theory is irrelevant.

5. Patience. Some sites test great and work great from the start. (Great if you can find one). Others need people to use them and adjust to them. At some point, your gut tells you to launch. Then stick with it, despite the critics, as you gain traction.

6. Measure. If you’re not improving, if the yield is negative… kill it.

7. Insight is good, clever is bad. Many websites say, “look at me.� Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.�

8. If you hire a professional: hire a great one. The best one. Let him do his job. 10 mediocre website consultants working in perfect harmony can’t do the work of one rock star.

9. One voice, one vision.

10. Don’t settle.

PngOptimizer is powered by the OptiPNG library and built with Ruby and Platypus and don’t flame Nick over the icon… he doesn’t like it that much either. The application will optimize any PNG (or folder of PNGs) dropped onto it. Once the optimization is complete, PngOptimizer will notify you via Growl with the total number of images it has optimized and how many kilobytes you have saved. Check it out and leave a comment if you would like to let him know what you think.

PngOptimizer v1.0 for Mac (360kb DMG)