I was honored to have my home screen featured on MacSparky. I’ve been a big fan of David’s for some time, and he had asked me last year to do a home screen post. It wasn’t until recently that I felt like I had a compelling story or anything interesting to share.
I tried to dive a bit into some unique workflows I have for different apps, and some of the standard app replacements I’ve found.
Thanks, David!
I love to see these types of details being sweat. Think how your users are working, and make small details better.
Good interview with Garrett Dimon who founded and has bootstrapped Sifter for several years now.
An interesting part was his experience with eliminating their cheapest plan:
Our conversion rate from site visitor to trial plummeted. It decreased by 50%. So we had 50% fewer trials signing up. However, our total amount of $29 plans skyrocketed. Fewer people signed up but the ones who did were much more likely to sign up, and they were fine going ahead and signing up on the $29 plan. We were definitely were happy with how it worked out… lots of the customers who would have signed up for $14 went ahead and signed up for the $29 plan without skipping a beat.
Jason Fried:
What happened was we forgot we were just building a quick-and-dirty demo for ourselves. We didn’t need to worry if the software could handle thousands of concurrent users. It didn’t matter how people would sign up or how much the product would cost. We didn’t need to worry about whether something was called a “response” or an “answer” or a “comment.” Later on, perhaps, we could spend hours debating which one was right. But for now, any word would do.
It’s difficult to not start with perfect, but the best ideas always seem to flow when you don’t worry about finding the perfect image, writing the best copy, or building a pixel perfect layout. Sometimes you need start with something rough to iterate to something great.
Dan Shipper:
The process is almost “lean” in the sense that you want to try a lot of different things, and develop a strong feedback loop for what works for you and what doesn’t. But what’s really key is to not be discouraged by the fact that if someone asks you what you’re good at, you can’t give them an answer right away.
You weren’t meant to be able to do that.
Figuring out the answer to that question is an organic process that unfolds over a long period of time. Expecting anything else is unrealistic: no one’s power’s of introspection are so strong that they can plumb the depths of their head and find an answer immediately.
The crux of Dan’s advice: try a lot of things quickly and see what sticks. Have feedback loops in place so that you won’t go too far down a path that isn’t going to work.
Jon Bell:
The next time you have an idea rolling around in your head, find the courage to quiet your inner critic just long enough to get a piece of paper and a pen, then just start sketching it. “But I don’t have a long time for this!” you might think. Or, “The idea is probably stupid,” or, “Maybe I’ll go online and click around for—”
No. Shut up. Stop sabotaging yourself.
Getting started is often the hardest part, especially on your own projects. Our lizard brain is really good at sabotaging itself.
Arrive in the office, make a cup of coffee, open up your email, and turn up your favorite song. We know how it goes.
Check out Steven Jengo’s new single, summer of 2042.
Fresh tunes with a softly different touch; with that kind of familiar sound, simple and melodic, deep and lazy, freshly brewed for your listening pleasure.
Take care when driving at high volume. Find more at jengo.com.
Trevor McKendrick has started a 10 post series about his path to launching a profitable niche iOS app, a Spanish Bible. His first two posts have been a very interesting take.
There’s something to be said about taking concepts that popular apps are using, and applying them to underserved niches. You won’t make millions, but it’s much easier to be in a low competition market where you can be a fast follower, emulating the concepts of others.
Beware though: don’t go niche hunting, find a problem you are interested in solving, or else you’ll get burned out quickly.
David Smith launched his Google Reader replacement today, Feed Wrangler. I’ve personally moved to Fever, but if self-hosting your RSS isn’t quite your thing, this is might be the solution for you.
David says the idea is to build a sustainable business:
Feed Wrangler is funded directly by your ongoing support. It isn’t a fly-by-night outfit without a business model. You are my customer and it is my job to create and sustain a product you’ll want to continue to use.
Sounds a lot like Pinboard, and I hope David does very well with this!
Update: MacStories, as always, has a great overview of Feed Wrangler.
It’s like Mac Power Users‘ workflows series for the 80s. It’s humbling to realize how easy things are these days. 28 years ago, you were writing code that ran straight into the CPU. Everything else is so abstracted these days that you can get away with never understanding some of these concepts if you start with something like PHP or JavaScript like yours truly.
This makes me thankful for all the work that brilliant developers have done over the years to make this as easy as pie to pick up. It’s all still going on, but we don’t have to see it.