Ban Helvetica: The Brave New World of Web Fonts – MinneWebCon

I just received confirmation that my ‘Ban Helvetica: The Brave New World of Web Fonts’ presentation has been accepted into MinneWebCon on April 12, 2010 at the University of Minnesota.

I’ll be covering; optimizing fonts for web use, browser compatibility, licensing, and answering your questions.

Registration is a very reasonable $200.

Expertise is Declared by Others, Not Yourself

One of the ongoing undercurrents of my thinking is the concept of acknowledged expertise.

A concrete example – we’re the worst people to write our own résumé. Talking with people we’ve worked with is better.

Having others describe us and what we do is far more accurate – if only because there are more of them.

What shows up in my Aadrvark.com profile today? The request to declare what I think my friends are experts in.

trusted_friends

Talent recruiters are about to get pwned.

Big Economy by Any Measure

Too much of the popular economics news paints an economically adversarial picture between the US and other countries of the world.

Aside from the obvious issue that all economies are tied together because economic behavior doesn’t like to be restricted by arbitrary boundaries, the US economy is unbelievably larger than other countries.

3x bigger as measured by stock market capitalizations.

stocks

And by some measures, just US Exports are larger than the GDP of some countries.
exports2

It’s always nice to reset perspective.

Users are a Side Effect or Why Google’s Web Applications are Free

“I get the feeling that all of Google’s products were invented for Google to help streamline the way it does things.” – yellowbkpk

Exactly.

Just as I wrote about Google’s AppEngine last year, Google’s applications – whether Gmail, Wave, Maps, or the recently announced Buzz – are about reducing costs and streamlining their business.

In the long run – it’s significantly cheaper for Google to build the tools its employees use (especially if the same employees build them) than it is to negotiate licensing or usage feeds to someone else.

This is why the significant majority of Google’s applications are free to us non-Google employees – the cost of opening up their apps to the outside world is so close to zero, they treat it as zero. Google’s development costs were paid by their operating budget.

I feel the same way about all the products I build, Cullect, Kernest, etc – I use them and I’m building the same technology infrastructure whether 1 person uses it or a thousand.

The incremental cost of sharing it with the world at that point is, well, zero.

Importance Persists

I woke up a to an inspiring post from Michael Janssen, one of Cullect’s biggest supporters:

“Still, I hope Cullect can come back in some form in the future, as it was hands down the best reader that I had ever used.”

Wow. That means a great deal to me.

Cullect was originally built during a time of stagnation within feed readers. Since it went down, sites like Facebook and Twitter have increased the number of people comfortable with the noisy-ness of real-time publishing and processing. Simultaneously, the innovation those services once provided has also stagnated. Additionally, many of the services Cullect integrated with are also down for the count.

Though Cullect.com is down – the Cullect engine is still being actively worked on – it’s powering RealTimeAds.com

If you’re wondering – no, I haven’t used another feed reader since Cullect.

Confidence is Relative in Markets

The DJIA’s eratic-ness (regular 100pt fluctuations then flat for weeks) has me looking for another metric of economic confidence, like a stronger US Dollar. (What’s with the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ following each other in lock step?)

Back in August, Pete suggested the reason the DJIA was climbing was the same reason oil prices were climbing a year earlier – a devalued US Dollar.

Sure enough, as the DJIA ebbed and flowed, the Dollar-to-Euro conversion flowed and ebbed. Today, the DJIA closed just a hair above 10k (yes, I know) and the Dollar is worth 72.9% of a Euro.

I still think there’s some ‘air’ between the Dollar’s value and the stock markets, but I think they’re more in-line with each other. Unfortunately, the weaker Euro in fact means a weaker Euro – not a stronger Dollar. Greece’s, Spain’s, and Portugal’s debt is devaluing the Euro and driving demand for the “world’s reserve currency”.

While I feel badly that a new currency hit a rough patch, the notion that some states’ books severly impact a union’s currency – it feels like another way Europe is becoming more like the US.

A comment from the above link I quite enjoy:

“the US is a leading indicator for the rest of the world. Don’t count your chickens.” – Henrik Mintis

The iPhone, iPad, and the End of QWERTY

“It is just a tragedy that we are taking QWERTY into a new era of devices” – Alec Longstreth in a Wall Street Journal article on this topic.

“The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like ‘th’ or ‘st’) so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. While it is often said that QWERTY was designed to “slow down” typists, this is incorrect – it was designed to prevent jams while typing at speed” – Wikipedia

For as long as I can remember, there have been attempts to displace QWERTY as the dominant Latin character keyboard layout – if only because the hardware problem QWERTY solved no longer exists.

Back college, I remember a fellow geek blacking out his keyboard and re-mapping it to Dvorak.

Efforts like the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard or Maltron are designed to increase typing efficiency (minimizing finger movement) by ordering characters based on frequent letter combinations within a specific language. In the case of the Neo layout – German is the target language.

The iPhones’ soft keyboard has quite a few layouts in it; QWERTY, numeric + punctuation, 9 key, URL-optimized, email address-optimized, not to mention all the international options.

While I only have the iPod Touch and it is missing some of the capabilities of the iPhone – I haven’t seen any mechanical typebars that may collide if I type too fast.

I have seen signs of a sophisticated spelling correction engine – which I imagine wouldn’t have to work so hard if the alphabet wasn’t all jumbled up on screen.

The larger format of the forthcoming Apple iPad, JooJoo, and HP Tablet, have the potential to be easier to write on – an write more on than on smaller phones. This with the increasing number of electronic devices with soft keyboards provide an huge opportunity to re-evaluate the usability of our keyboard layouts. Let’s find one that doesn’t apologize for the failings of a 125 year old technology.

Perhaps there’s an app for that?

Elsewhere:
THOMAS PAUL LUDDITE LAPTOP SLEEVE Luddite Laptop Sleeve – $50

Prediction: Apple’s Next 2 iPads: iPad iChat & iPad One

When the first rumors of the iPad began circulating – I immediately dismissed them on the grounds it wasn’t clear to me how a tablet fit into Apple’s deliberately simple product line.

I’m still not convinced it does.

It could be argued there’s enough space between the iPod Touch and the Mac Book for another product – but it could be easily argued the $400 – $900 is actually a black hole for consumer electronics. Too costly to be considered disposable, too cheap to be elite.

Enter the Apple iPad.

Aimed squarely – if awkwardly – at that price point.

Awkwardly – because the iPad is, essentially a stretched iPod Touch. Or more accurately – a stretched iPhone without the phone part. With a higher price point of both. (There’s an interesting argument in thinking of the iPad as Apple TV version 3 – but that’s for a different post.)

In addition to awkwardly straddling a space between Apple’s product lines – the iPad’s currently announced feature set feels simultaneously too little and too much. The combination of the open Web and constrained App Store at the software level and free WiFi and subscription-fee AT&T at the hardware level continues to feel like a conflict of intention.

So I predict Apple will quickly extend the iPad family by this time in 2011:

  • iPad iChat: webcam1, microphone, no AT&T – just WiFi, $699. This would finally fulfill The Future’s promise of portable video phones. Only WiFi because AT&T wouldn’t want to risk their 3G network stability. This would also be the Kitchen computing device – hang it on the wall, talk with extended family while making dinner, or voice control the playback of a NetFlix streaming movie, etc.
  • iPad One: only App Store, no web browser, no WiFi – just AT&T, $399. Think of this as Simple Finder as a distinct device. The complexity and unknowns of the ‘raw’ internet completely removed.

Elsewhere:

“All this argument over whether the iPad is too simple — if anything it’s probably still too complex.” – John Gruber, Daring Fireball

1. According to CrunchGear, the current iPad already thinks it has a webcam anyway.

Introducing Garrick-by-the-Month

Sometimes you could use a small boost on a web project. Maybe the
small boost is help refining a use experience design. Maybe
it’s quickly building out the first version of a new web app.
Maybe it’s simply having access to a trusted advisor on a regular basis.

These projects don’t require a full-time user experience consultant
or a full-time developer – though they benefit from the expertise
of both.

To help you move those projects forward – I’m pleased to announce
my consulting services are now available as a monthly subscription.

Each of the 4 monthly subscription tiers are designed to give you
and your project that small boost – with the appropriate degree
of engagement.

TIER 1: START UP – $250/month
I’ll be another pair of eyes for your team – reviewing your
strategy, user experience and help you identify the next steps for
your project and help you maintain forward progress.
6 month minimum.

TIER 2: GUIDE RAIL – $1000/month
If you have an existing web application – I’ll help you add new
functionality or optimize existing functionality. For new products
– I’ll help you architect a product strategy and interview customers
to help identify the core product offerings.
3 month minimum.

TIER 3: BUILD OUT – $2500/month
I’ll lead your user experience design and we’ll build some early
prototypes with core functionality.
3 month minimum.

TIER 4: LAUNCH READY – $5000/month
I’ll lead your user experience or development effort to build the
core functionality and we’ll launch a beta.
3 month minimum.