Yeah, it's nice to be able to type your message once and have it automatically published on all your social sites. The problem is it's damn annoying to see the same message on every site. Especially when you get notified about them. Besides friendfeed makes you go thru their site if you want to see attached photos or links. Seriously, friendfeed degrades user-friendliness and readability of content. This is definitely something to work on.
Posted using Androblogger.
Sep 13, 2009
Aug 24, 2009
Facebook Ads
Google owns me. It probably knows about me more than I do. I store most of my life on Google. My photos (Picasa), my plans (Calendar), my contacts and conversations (Gmail/Gtalk), my interests (Reader/Blogger) and so on. In fact they own me so much that I've never dared to think that I could use a different advertising service than AdWords. That's hell of a brand loyalty! Until recently that is.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to check out Facebook's ad system, so I started a small campaign for my company. Here's a short summary of my experience.
I love the targeting options! Facebook makes it damn easy to target very specific groups (say, people on their birthday - great idea!). It also lets you specify criteria like age, education, marital status, spoken languages and region. But what really put smile on my face was the ability to target people associated with specific events, groups, pages or even applications! Can you imagine the endless possibilities?
Another thing that I really appreciate is the instant estimation of number of users who fit the criteria. Very informative and useful.
Now to the downsides (of course there are some!). The most obvious one: not everyone uses Facebook and if they do, they may not use it to the extent that will let you do such narrow targeting. Basically, success of your ad heavily depends on completeness of target users' profiles.
Another thing that prevents me from falling in love with Facebook Ads is the long approval time. I like to tweak my ads a lot and test many versions and it's not uncommon for me to change my mind every day or two. Facebook makes me wait 10 hours or more for even a very small change to get approved and published. Takes all the fun away.
And the worst thing of all. Their click-through stats were significantly higher than what Google Analytics showed. I have no idea where this comes from (and I can't say it's Facebook's fault), but I have the nasty feeling that I pay for false clicks. I know Google put a lot of effort to detect and eliminate false clicks in their AdWords platform.
Overall I'd give Facebook Ads 4 out of 5 stars. I hope the platform will continue to grow and above issues will eventually go away.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to check out Facebook's ad system, so I started a small campaign for my company. Here's a short summary of my experience.
I love the targeting options! Facebook makes it damn easy to target very specific groups (say, people on their birthday - great idea!). It also lets you specify criteria like age, education, marital status, spoken languages and region. But what really put smile on my face was the ability to target people associated with specific events, groups, pages or even applications! Can you imagine the endless possibilities?
Another thing that I really appreciate is the instant estimation of number of users who fit the criteria. Very informative and useful.
Now to the downsides (of course there are some!). The most obvious one: not everyone uses Facebook and if they do, they may not use it to the extent that will let you do such narrow targeting. Basically, success of your ad heavily depends on completeness of target users' profiles.
Another thing that prevents me from falling in love with Facebook Ads is the long approval time. I like to tweak my ads a lot and test many versions and it's not uncommon for me to change my mind every day or two. Facebook makes me wait 10 hours or more for even a very small change to get approved and published. Takes all the fun away.
And the worst thing of all. Their click-through stats were significantly higher than what Google Analytics showed. I have no idea where this comes from (and I can't say it's Facebook's fault), but I have the nasty feeling that I pay for false clicks. I know Google put a lot of effort to detect and eliminate false clicks in their AdWords platform.
Overall I'd give Facebook Ads 4 out of 5 stars. I hope the platform will continue to grow and above issues will eventually go away.
Aug 23, 2009
Be formal, but not too formal
Every now and then I hear different opinions on weather or not to do business plans, SWOT analysis, schedules, road maps, etc. I'm surprised how extreme some positions are. There are people who believe that hundreds of pages of documentation is a must before any actual work can be started, others take it for a total waste of time.
Well, all these documents have a purpose - to provide information and help you keep track of your goals. If prepared properly they can be extremely helpful and will help you stay focused on what you should do. They are also great reference point in many cases. Your mission statement should make it much easier for you to create products that are consistent with company's values and goals. Having market segments nicely described will help you discover new opportunities and new ways to reach your target. Periodical SWOT analysis will make you more aware of the risks your business takes.
So why so many people are so negative about them? Well, it seems they just haven't seen these tools implemented correctly. They usually associate business plans with many long, bloated pages of worthless forecasts and predictions most of which have no solid foundations. And sadly, that's true in many cases. Here's good news - it doesn't have to be like that.
All these tools are great as long as they serve their purpose. Having these done just because it's "the right thing to do" will get you nowhere. First of all make sure that you and your team knows exactly what to expect from each of these tools. Secondly remember that the output has to be readable and informative above everything else. I'd rather have single page of analysis I can understand and draw conclusions from than 10 pages of overly detailed, incomprehensible reports, which will just waste hours of my precious time.
To be honest my company is lacking in the area of formal documentation. This is something I want to work on over the next couple of weeks. What's your experience with using these kinds of tools in small companies? Did it pay off? Did it turn out to be helpful or did it get lost and forgotten?
Well, all these documents have a purpose - to provide information and help you keep track of your goals. If prepared properly they can be extremely helpful and will help you stay focused on what you should do. They are also great reference point in many cases. Your mission statement should make it much easier for you to create products that are consistent with company's values and goals. Having market segments nicely described will help you discover new opportunities and new ways to reach your target. Periodical SWOT analysis will make you more aware of the risks your business takes.
So why so many people are so negative about them? Well, it seems they just haven't seen these tools implemented correctly. They usually associate business plans with many long, bloated pages of worthless forecasts and predictions most of which have no solid foundations. And sadly, that's true in many cases. Here's good news - it doesn't have to be like that.
All these tools are great as long as they serve their purpose. Having these done just because it's "the right thing to do" will get you nowhere. First of all make sure that you and your team knows exactly what to expect from each of these tools. Secondly remember that the output has to be readable and informative above everything else. I'd rather have single page of analysis I can understand and draw conclusions from than 10 pages of overly detailed, incomprehensible reports, which will just waste hours of my precious time.
To be honest my company is lacking in the area of formal documentation. This is something I want to work on over the next couple of weeks. What's your experience with using these kinds of tools in small companies? Did it pay off? Did it turn out to be helpful or did it get lost and forgotten?
Aug 22, 2009
Android - my $0.02
So I've been using using HTC Magic for a couple of weeks now and I love it. I wouldn't switch to anything else right now and Android is definitely my platform of choice. But it ain't perfect. It is a bit more complex than iPhone and it could use some work on UI obviousness. It also has a lot of minor bugs, which don't really get into your way, but the overall experience isn't as smooth as it could be. I haven't found any major issues so far, thankfully. The biggest danger I can see is the lack of something I appreciate so much in Apple's products - consistency. It feels like there are no clear guidelines for Android developers on how to build GUI and user experience in general. There are slight differences between apps' behavior, which makes learning curve a bit more steeper. It should be very clear to user what will happen if you hold an item, what if you tap it, what kind of things are found in pop-up menu and what on the on-screen buttons. This kind of consistency makes you feel that you already know the app even though you run it for the first time.
I hope to see a lot of usability work on the platform. It's still much better than other platforms (WinMo for example), but still not the best (iPhone) and we want to be the best, right?
I hope to see a lot of usability work on the platform. It's still much better than other platforms (WinMo for example), but still not the best (iPhone) and we want to be the best, right?
Aug 21, 2009
Always talk to your client!
Working at Aenima helped me understand a lot about business dynamic and client-provider relations. I always knew good communication is very important in any business relationship, but now I think it's like the single most important thing companies like us need to worry about.
First of all project success rate dramatically improves with good communication. When all the risks and dangers in the project are brought to attention as soon as their spotted you have a much better chance of dealing with them in non-destructive manner. The sooner you know about a problem the more time you have to work on it.
Feedback from your clients is the most valuable information you can get. As Donald Trump said - it's actually good when your clients complain to you - it's the best lesson you can learn! If you want to stay in business you have to know exactly what your clients expect from the product/service you're selling. So listen carefully, take notes, draw conclusions.
At Aenima we're working very hard to improve all aspects of communication both internally, in our teams and externally, with our clients. Our clients need to know that they are being listened to and that they are always up-to-date with the status of their projects.
First of all project success rate dramatically improves with good communication. When all the risks and dangers in the project are brought to attention as soon as their spotted you have a much better chance of dealing with them in non-destructive manner. The sooner you know about a problem the more time you have to work on it.
Feedback from your clients is the most valuable information you can get. As Donald Trump said - it's actually good when your clients complain to you - it's the best lesson you can learn! If you want to stay in business you have to know exactly what your clients expect from the product/service you're selling. So listen carefully, take notes, draw conclusions.
At Aenima we're working very hard to improve all aspects of communication both internally, in our teams and externally, with our clients. Our clients need to know that they are being listened to and that they are always up-to-date with the status of their projects.
Dec 1, 2008
Neuro-usability Workshop
Some time ago I was wondering how to make the world of IT and NLP work together. And there it was, a small conference called Neuro-usability Workshop, organized by YUUX and Neuralia in one of the Warsaw's hotels. The topic was the effective ways of measuring web applications' usability using neuroscience.
We arrived at the conference just a few minutes before it started. There were not that many people, which was kind of surprising for me. I thought this was a very hot topic.
First disappointment was that one of the key presentations was cancelled due to health issues of the presenter. Thankfuly, the orgranisers were thoughful enough to collect email addresses from people, record the presentation at a later time and send it to everyone. I forgot to leave my email so if you know how to get the presentation please let me know :-)
Then there was a short walk-thru on the methods used to measure our subconscious reactions, including MEG, fMRI, ETR and so on. Strenghts and weaknesses of each method was covered. This was pretty basic stuff, but still very interesting. People familiar with the subject probably were bored with it, but newcomers sure found this introduction very helpful.
And that's when I should have left the conference. If I have left then I would say it was a fairly good conference.
The last part was close to be a disaster. It was supposed to be a simple case study showing how neuroscience can help with usability. First of all, there was no clear thesis. I felt like they had no idea what they are trying to prove. The research went like that: first they checked which values did the respondents associate with each store. Then they gave each respondent some basic tasks to do in both stores. And finally they checked how did the association change after the respondents completed their tasks. To be honest, that proved nothing. The respondents were exposed to each store for just about 5 to 10 minutes and the definition of success and failure was not clear. All we could see there was some poorly designed tests and misinterpreted data. Instead of showing how neuroscience can help to improve web sites, they tried to use it to compare how brand perception changes over very short exposure to a website. Furthermore one of the stores was internet-only and the other had a lot of physical stores also and a much stronger brand among young people. The test group was not the best one either. It's true that they had little funds to do a real research, but still they could have done a much better job with the resources they already had.
That's all I wanted to say. I don't regret going to the conference, but only because there still aren't that many meetings on that subject, so better this than nothing. And there was free lunch...
We arrived at the conference just a few minutes before it started. There were not that many people, which was kind of surprising for me. I thought this was a very hot topic.
First disappointment was that one of the key presentations was cancelled due to health issues of the presenter. Thankfuly, the orgranisers were thoughful enough to collect email addresses from people, record the presentation at a later time and send it to everyone. I forgot to leave my email so if you know how to get the presentation please let me know :-)
Then there was a short walk-thru on the methods used to measure our subconscious reactions, including MEG, fMRI, ETR and so on. Strenghts and weaknesses of each method was covered. This was pretty basic stuff, but still very interesting. People familiar with the subject probably were bored with it, but newcomers sure found this introduction very helpful.
And that's when I should have left the conference. If I have left then I would say it was a fairly good conference.
The last part was close to be a disaster. It was supposed to be a simple case study showing how neuroscience can help with usability. First of all, there was no clear thesis. I felt like they had no idea what they are trying to prove. The research went like that: first they checked which values did the respondents associate with each store. Then they gave each respondent some basic tasks to do in both stores. And finally they checked how did the association change after the respondents completed their tasks. To be honest, that proved nothing. The respondents were exposed to each store for just about 5 to 10 minutes and the definition of success and failure was not clear. All we could see there was some poorly designed tests and misinterpreted data. Instead of showing how neuroscience can help to improve web sites, they tried to use it to compare how brand perception changes over very short exposure to a website. Furthermore one of the stores was internet-only and the other had a lot of physical stores also and a much stronger brand among young people. The test group was not the best one either. It's true that they had little funds to do a real research, but still they could have done a much better job with the resources they already had.
That's all I wanted to say. I don't regret going to the conference, but only because there still aren't that many meetings on that subject, so better this than nothing. And there was free lunch...
Oct 22, 2008
When to commit my changes?
A very common question SCM newbies tend to have is when to commit your changes? I've heard a lot of ideas, ranging from one commit per day to "commit when you need someone else to debug your code". All wrong. Very wrong. So I'd like to share my point of view.
I think the best way to picture it is to imagine that you have 2 branches on one project and you want to port some changes between them. Image that at some point in time your application forked and you've been working on branch A and now there are a few different things you also want in branch B. How would you like your commits to look like? That's right, you want them to be focused on one particular change, preferably small and integral. So if I added some functionality, say, new welcome page and by the way fixed a typo on contact page, that's 2 separate commits! I may want to fix the same typo in the other branch, but not necessarily change the welcome page. When you commit changes make sure they are logically separable - that you can describe the patch in one clear sentence. Of course if you fix 3 typos on the contact page you don't need to do 3 commits, you can just go with "fixed typos on contact page". The point is some day you may need to port one particular piece of functionality to other branch, backport a bugfix to stable branch or revert some small set of changes and you'll want to access that particular change easily without affecting other parts of the code. Believe me, this simple rule will save you a lot of time in the long run.
I think the best way to picture it is to imagine that you have 2 branches on one project and you want to port some changes between them. Image that at some point in time your application forked and you've been working on branch A and now there are a few different things you also want in branch B. How would you like your commits to look like? That's right, you want them to be focused on one particular change, preferably small and integral. So if I added some functionality, say, new welcome page and by the way fixed a typo on contact page, that's 2 separate commits! I may want to fix the same typo in the other branch, but not necessarily change the welcome page. When you commit changes make sure they are logically separable - that you can describe the patch in one clear sentence. Of course if you fix 3 typos on the contact page you don't need to do 3 commits, you can just go with "fixed typos on contact page". The point is some day you may need to port one particular piece of functionality to other branch, backport a bugfix to stable branch or revert some small set of changes and you'll want to access that particular change easily without affecting other parts of the code. Believe me, this simple rule will save you a lot of time in the long run.
Oct 2, 2008
Unobtrusive Date Picker Translation
This will be a quickie.
Some time ago I translated Frequency Unobtrusice Date-Picker Widget to Polish. I've tried to submit my translation, but got no response at all. So I'm just gonna post it here for the time being. Here's Polish translation for Unobtrusive Date-Picker. The widget is really nice, unfortunately the author isn't very responsive.
Some time ago I translated Frequency Unobtrusice Date-Picker Widget to Polish. I've tried to submit my translation, but got no response at all. So I'm just gonna post it here for the time being. Here's Polish translation for Unobtrusive Date-Picker. The widget is really nice, unfortunately the author isn't very responsive.
Sep 30, 2008
NLP and IT?
As some of you know NLP is one of my biggest time consuming interests. Neuroscience has made its way into many areas of life including life coaching, therapy, marketing, trainings, sports, etc. But what about IT? Is there a place where NLP can make a difference in this market?
Personally I think that there are places where NLP can change a lot. Usability is the first thing that comes to mind (that's actually where this idea came from). If we could create software that conforms to its user's metaprograms we could design a whole new user experience! Maybe we can extract users' strategies to ease the lerning curves of the more complicated software? Or maybe even create social networks based on what we can extract from users' behavior? E-learning platforms?
NLP is a pretty sophisticated model, which makes it very hard to embed into computer software, but I believe that we'll manage to find a way to make those two thing play nice together. And it's gonna be huge.
Personally I think that there are places where NLP can change a lot. Usability is the first thing that comes to mind (that's actually where this idea came from). If we could create software that conforms to its user's metaprograms we could design a whole new user experience! Maybe we can extract users' strategies to ease the lerning curves of the more complicated software? Or maybe even create social networks based on what we can extract from users' behavior? E-learning platforms?
NLP is a pretty sophisticated model, which makes it very hard to embed into computer software, but I believe that we'll manage to find a way to make those two thing play nice together. And it's gonna be huge.
Hello again
Hi! It's been a while since my last post, mostly due to a lot of going on and to the fact that I don't really do development anymore (but I'm still pretty close to it). Actually, I occasionally do some coding, and I'd like to announce my latest offspring, which is... on the other hand, let's wait until it's shippable. I don't want to spoil the surprise.
Like I said - unfortunately I don't do much coding these days. Not that I don't like what I'm doing now - I love it just as much as programming - but I kinda miss messing with the code. But oh well, life throws lots of (un)expected stuff at us all the time, we have no choice but to learn to deal with it and accept it as it is.
My recent job is mostly conceptual work on usability and quality standards. We're looking for ways to drastically improve user-experience of our customers' sites at low cost for the customers. Times have changed. Web applications market is very dynamic and you can both lose and win over thousands of users within just a few days. I believe that users really don't like to think and figure out stuff. They just want apps to work and most importantly - they don't want apps to get into their way. So my current task is to improve overall user experience by removing stuff that annoys/confuses users (usability bottlenecks) and make web apps more obvious and intuitive.
Of course at Aenima we just love Free Software and we want to give back to the community as much as we can. After all we built the whole company mostly on FLOSS. I do have big plans on working closer with open-source projects, but unfortunately our company can't afford to hire people to do only FLOSS development yet.
Ok, that's all for tonight, just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and still doing some really interesting stuff, which I hope you'll also be able to enjoy soon.
Like I said - unfortunately I don't do much coding these days. Not that I don't like what I'm doing now - I love it just as much as programming - but I kinda miss messing with the code. But oh well, life throws lots of (un)expected stuff at us all the time, we have no choice but to learn to deal with it and accept it as it is.
My recent job is mostly conceptual work on usability and quality standards. We're looking for ways to drastically improve user-experience of our customers' sites at low cost for the customers. Times have changed. Web applications market is very dynamic and you can both lose and win over thousands of users within just a few days. I believe that users really don't like to think and figure out stuff. They just want apps to work and most importantly - they don't want apps to get into their way. So my current task is to improve overall user experience by removing stuff that annoys/confuses users (usability bottlenecks) and make web apps more obvious and intuitive.
Of course at Aenima we just love Free Software and we want to give back to the community as much as we can. After all we built the whole company mostly on FLOSS. I do have big plans on working closer with open-source projects, but unfortunately our company can't afford to hire people to do only FLOSS development yet.
Ok, that's all for tonight, just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and still doing some really interesting stuff, which I hope you'll also be able to enjoy soon.
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