Article: Feature Presentation
posted by ryan on May 29th, 2007
Clint forwarded me an article from the New Yorker this morning that I thought was worth sharing.
The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates a peculiar problem for companies. A product that doesn’t have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. (A cell phone that doesn’t offer a Bluetooth connection, for instance, may be dismissed as underpowered, even though relatively few Americans use Bluetooth headsets.) But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers and generate bad word of mouth, as BMW’s original iDrive system did.
The fact that people buy and use with different parameters is very interesting. This is where iterative development can really shine. When we build software our goal is to get something usable in the hands of real end-users within the first couple weeks of development. This gives us a huge head start by turning buyers into users quickly and allowing us to use their experiences to shape what we do. Giving real users such a heavy level of involvement also means they become your biggest cheerleaders and often can help to assure new users that simple and non-complex can better better than feature-heavy and bloated.
The boys at our BBQ
posted by ryan on May 27th, 2007
We had a great little BBQ on the roof of my building and it allowed for a rare group shot of the entire unspace team (minus only our awesome office manager Meghann).
Top Row from Left: Shawn Allison, Anthony Watts, Pete Forde, Jeff Hardy, Mike Ferrier & Lukas Dryja
Bottom Row: Ryan McMinn & Hampton Catlin
Slingshot Hosting Rules the School
posted by pete on May 25th, 2007
We didn’t count on CBQ and the Slingshot Hosting team being so available and helpful that they have assisted with RMagick compilation, troubleshooted interactions between mongrel and the amazon_s3 gem, and CBQ coming home from a party to restart a panicking box. It might sound like we’re raving here, but I’d take bullets for these guys at this point, because I get the feeling they are taking them for us.
Read the rest of this entryAnticipation vs Reaction
posted by ryan on May 24th, 2007
Living in reaction is a very unhealthy way to be, personally and professionally. Most people live in that mode because it makes you feel important, people are coming to you, you are always busy with your todo list adding new tasks as they roll in. You think to yourself if I only had more time I would clear off my todos, clean out my inbox, empty out my voicemail.
Read the rest of this entryGoogle should know better
posted by ryan on May 23rd, 2007
Up here in Canada we have a privacy law that states offers have to be opt-in not opt-out.
When I went to upgrade my flash player I got the following screen.
C’mon Google, stop acting like Realplayer. Now I know why all my relatives have the Google toolbar but can’t remember how they got it. It’s like a virus.
It states right beside the button “Not required for operation of the Flash player” so it should be unchecked by default.
You don’t engender brand loyalty through trickery, you should know better
Bye Bye Big Bang!
posted by ryan on May 22nd, 2007
Our development processes and interactions feel very different than most anything else that I have ever heard of in the world of software. We can all agree there are many reasons the traditional software development pattern is outmoded but what I want to talk about has nothing to do with code or design but instead with people.
Read the rest of this entryPete to speak at AjaxExperience
posted by ryan on May 18th, 2007
Half way through the 40 hour long developer trek to Railsconf (Toronto->Buffalo->New York City->Portland) Pete got his invite to Ajax Experience in San Francisco in July to present a couple talks.
If you are at Railsconf look out for the whole unspace team (Hampton, Jeff, Pete, Mike and our good friend Nathan) and don’t forget to check out Jeff and Hampton’s talk on Sunday
Five Questions for Pete Forde
posted by ryan on May 15th, 2007
Pete recently did an interview with Arieh Singer for marketing blog onedegree.ca about Looking Real Good, and we are really happy with how it turned out.
Hampton does the Rails Podcast
posted by ryan on May 14th, 2007
Our boy Hampton’s interview with Sam Aaron is now online at The Ruby on Rails Podcast site.
Hampton talks about Haml, how we work at Unspace and the speculation about his current hair style.
A New Chapter
posted by pete on May 11th, 2007
Six years ago, Marcus MacDonald and Ryan started a small database consulting company called M7 Database Services, with a mission to change the way software was being developed. Marcus had radical ideas that he'd been evolving in practice since the early 90's, and they crafted those ideas into a sustainable, working process. Many of the clients they had at the beginning are still active clients today, in large part due to that process.
In 2004 Ryan and I met, and after working together I convinced him to make the leap to web applications. Anthony came on board - I convinced him to quit his job at his own wedding - and we started Unspace. Both companies have been collaborating on websites and databases ever since, to great success. From two people and one company in 2001, we have grown to twelve people and two vibrant industry leaders in 2007.
In June, Ryan will be joining the Excel and Access Web Services team. While this might seem like a crazy transition, there is a larger plan at work. Ryan has been slowly polishing his presentation of our methodology, and in October we presented several workshops at the Seneca Free Software and Open Source Symposium. Ryan's address was recorded, and eventually we put it online, in the hopes that it would be appreciated by a larger audience. The response was intense, and today close to ten thousand people have seen that video.
The video, combined with Ryan's experience running the most established Access and Rails shops led to an invitation to come to Redmond to address their developers and talk with product managers. It took them about five seconds to recognize Ryan's unique genius and realize that for them to be successful innovators, they need Ryan to steer them in the right direction.
This is clearly a win-win for all parties. Ryan leaves behind two successful, thriving companies and joins a new ecosystem where he will be able to bring our methodology to a huge company that has 70,000 employees and a billion customers. The opportunity to inject the ideas that make Rails great into Microsoft is staggering. As Marcus says, we're in a position to change the course of history, and Ryan is our man of the day. Confidential to Star Trek fans: Ryan is our Hugh.
So, while Ryan will not be here for the day-to-day operation of our company, the fact remains that we're a small team of close friends, and these are ties that bind. Microsoft, for their part, understands this and are being extremely accommodating.
Plus, Ryan gets to brag that he was here, right in the beginning.
Factor Apps - The First Month
posted by ryan on May 9th, 2007
April marked the launch of the new factor apps, one of the big changes from the original system we launched in 2005 is that you can upload all your attached files thus removing the need to mail anything in. We were going to have to handle lots of files and it needed to be secure so we decided to house the files on Amazon’s S3 service.
Here are some stats from the first month:
- 3041 Uploaded attachments
- Average Size 1.42MB
- Total Uploads 4.8GB
Total cost for data bandwidth and storage was less than 2.00USD… I love amazon.