Working with some big highstreet brands on promotional offers and incentive programmes, encouraging spend. Incorporated a number of booklets, membership cards, online catalogues and corporate stationary.
Just finished reading 37 Signals’ Rework
It took me the best part of two weeks to get through because I don’t get much free time, but I just finished reading ‘Rework’ by 37 signals.
It’s been an inspiring read. I started off quite skeptical of it, because although I have a huge amount of respect for him, I have in the past found some of Jason Fried‘s comments and business ideas to be either arrogant or counter-intuitive to how I would normally work, but I have to say that Rework has given some of his remarks more of a context. I was pretty much a 37 signals convert before reading this, but now I realise that they really are a cut above the rest.
The book is cut up neatly into individual tips that last about a page or two, not nearly big enough to describe as chapters - instead they’re nuggets of advice, and this really helps to make what is actually quite a sizable book very digestible, navigable, and memorable.
There’s just too much in there to summarise so I really encourage you to read it yourself, but I think my favourite tip was in relation to using ‘ASAP’ to describe project / task urgency. It’s one of my pet hates because proper prioritisation is just critical in getting anything done. It’s used by clients and employers all the time and it can be very frustrating. Here’s what 37 signals say about it in Rework…
“When you turn into one of these people who adds ASAP to the end of every request, you’re saying everything is high priority. And when everything is high priority, nothing is. (Funny how everything is top priority until you actually have to prioritize things.)
ASAP is inflationary. It devalues any request that doesn’t say ASAP. Before you know it, the only way to get anything done is by putting the ASAP sticker on it.
Most things just don’t warrant that kind of hysteria…”
I won’t post too much from the page, but they’re spot on with most of their points. The book has inspired me to look again at how I’m working day to day in the office, but also on projects at home and some bits that I manage externally.
More than anything it’s made me get some of my priorities straight!
I’d love to know what you thought of the book, if you’ve read it yet, and if you think any of 37 signals’ advice is going to impact your business or the way you work.
Speed becomes an influencing factor in Google positioning
Matt Cutts’ blogpost about Google introducing site speed as an influencing factor in how it ranks pages has got me thinking about making some changes to a few of my sites.
At first I was quite disenfranchised with this idea on a number of points.
My main objection is that this seems to work in the favor of big players who can bankroll faster servers, faster connections and co-location. This isn’t something I feel benefits Google’s end users, nor is it the kind of possibility for abuse that they have traditionally allowed.
Secondly, I don’t believe that speed is a key factor that users expect their search results to be filtered by. When I run a search on Google, I expect to find the most relevant answers listed first - I am either looking for a specific piece of information, the answer to a question, to find a site, or maybe I’m looking for a specific bit of media, etc… I am not looking for the fastest site, the best designed site, or even the best organised site, I’m just looking for the right site.
Thirdly, this directly penalises sites who are non-commercial, those hosted in developing nations, or ultimately sites that might be directly relevant but who just aren’t fast loading. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Now with a little further thinking, my perspective on this has changed a little. Matt’s post did say that this doesn’t affect more than 1% of sites indexed in Google (though that probably means it does affect millions) - so the impact is relatively minimal. Speed, like it or not, is also an important factor in user experience, and it does have an impact on the end user’s ability to get hold of the information they’re looking for.
But most importantly, when you really think about it the people who are in the best position to benefit from this change are probably not big corporate players - its those of us who run small, agile sites and blogs who can quickly zip through them and optimise code a bit better, improve image compression, and those of us who don’t rely on ads for revenue generation (woop!). Ironically, its Google AdSense that often makes pages drag in their load time, and frankly I’m quite happy that I might get a better SERP position because my site will load a hundred times faster than one that’s bringing in five Flash based tower ads or something ugly like that.
It’s also worth considering that the mobile web is really blowing up right now, and speed efficiencies on your site are going to make it a lot more accessible for those browsing on an iPhone, a Blackberry, or another mobile device. 3G services are pretty slow compared to a landline broadband connection, so don’t fall too easily into the trap of not optimising for speed as best possible because it does probably matter more to users now than any time since the demise of the 56.6kbps modem.
Domain names for sale
I have to confess, I compulsively buy domain names. Often I’m involved in searching for convenient domains for clients that are looking for good names to represent their brand or company, or who just want to extend their web presence or SEO efforts with some domains using valuable keywords. Sometimes along the way I register a few for myself too, and that’s left me with about a hundred domains in my possession… oops! Some of these are running active sites, some all forward to the same site, some forward to my own site, and some are just sitting dormant with a holding page.
So, being Easter and all that, it’s time for a bit of spring cleaning, and I’d much rather some of these domains get some better use than they’re currently able to from me, so I have some domain names currently for sale as follows…
brighton-music.co.uk
brightondesigner.co.uk
brightondesigner.com
brightongraphicdesigner.com
londoncitydesign.co.uk
londoncitydesign.com
recordr.co.uk
I’m happy to do a very good rate on these as they’re going unused at the moment, so please get in touch if you’re interested in any at all… I’d rather see them go to some good use!
Free high resolution textures - Texturepack 001
I have a big set of old photographs from when I had a bit more time to go out shooting bits n bobs that has really been sitting doing not very much. I’m going to publish a few sets as royalty free photographs so that hopefully they get some use.
1985 Texturepack 001 - Click to download
This is a series of 47 high resolution photographs of macro textures. Largely these are organic surfaces, from grasses and dirt, to animal shells, shattered ice, and a few man made surfaces like eroded brickwork and carefully carved walls. There’s a few liquids too like thick gloopy jam.
The total filesize of this set is 85.1Mb (zipped). Each photo is about 1.2Mb full quality JPG.
Please comment!
I really hope that some of you can use some of the shots in your work. If you do find some use for it, I’d love to see some of the results and am happy to link to your work, so please let me know or drop a comment onto this post!
Creative Commons
No credit is required, these photos are free to use and totally royalty free. Please do with them as you like!
Now I had hoped to release these photos under a Creative Commons license, but you know what, I can’t find find one that just says do what you want with them for commercial or non-commercial purposes, so in this case… do whatever and enjoy!
More to come
I’m going to publish some more sets of free photographs if this set gets enough downloads to justify it. If you think anything would be particularly relevant, or you’d like to get access to anything in particular, then please let me know. I have sets of quite a lot of materials… not the absolute finest quality in the world mind you as I am very much an amateur photographer (it’s not be primary skill!), but some are quite useful as components to work with as part of a piece. If you think of something you’d really like to see, why not leave me a comment t?