Umamiblog

Snapped this at the airport a while ago. Found right next to the AirNZ check-in counters, it’s a good example of thoughtful placement.

Smaller text reads: “Most of our clients are based in Wellington, so that’s where you’ll spend most of your time.”

Nice work Equinox (shame about your website though…).

Sign up forms really do need to die. And yet its such an ingrained part of our thinking and practice with websites, both as users and as webbies. This certainly isn’t a new topic but it’s a great one to think about because it can have such a huge impact on our users’ experience.

One of the better articles you can read on this subject is an excerpt posted on A List Apart from LukeW’s semi-recent book: Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. I have to quote the opening paragraph:

I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. [You've] stumbled upon or been recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form.

The simple question is why does your service need to know information like your birthday or last name to allow you to post a video or start a blog or to play a game or whatever? Why not allow your users to get stuck in, see the value of using your service, and only ask for the info when it is needed to advance the task or experience?

One of the best examples I’ve seen of this recently was Posterous. Consider their homepage:

I love the: “Skip it! No setup or signup”. Posterous is seriously cool – it can even tie in with your blog to make it super simple to email anything to your blog. Give it a go now, just email: post@posterous.com

As soon as you start thinking about how gradual engagement could work for your service you’ll start to feel like you’ve been freed from some kind of web-oppressor. We’re working on something really neat at Ponoko (launch is very close) following these rules. I can’t wait.

A big thanks to Jeffrey for helping make me passionate about the use and abuse of forms.

I was surprised and chuffed to see my groovy Stiletto Laptop Stand get a quick review on CNet by Michelle Thatcher:

It’s bad enough that my vacation’s over, but the sudden withdrawal of natural materials is really bringing me down. Which is why the wooden Stiletto laptop stand spoke to me…

The basic design idea, or brief, came from my father who wanted some laptop stands for his mobile computer suite. We spent the better part of a weekend designing and cutting out prototypes (5 in total) before we arrived at the finished and perfected result.

It’s another great example of what’s possible with Ponoko. Not only can we help you create a truly original and personal piece but we can help expose it to the rest of the world. Brilliant.

I can’t work without mine now and I’m slowly converting the others in the office. If anyone would like one of these stands, let me know, I’ll give you a special Umamiblog discount.

Update:  And another quick review on PopGadget – “The Stiletto is a laptop stand with style”

Tomorrow I’m faced with the joy of having all four of my wisdom teeth (or mandibular third molars) removed. Given the option of being knocked out with a general anaesthetic or having a local + sedative I opted for the (much) cheaper option. So sedative it is!

Apparently I’ll “be very calm, you might not even remember it”. Perfect.

So for those who’ve already had it done. What’s it actually like? As bad as they say it is? Any tips on slushy foods for afterwards? Luckily, nurse Sarah is free these days to take care of me.

Imagine it’s lunch-time. You’re sitting at your desk stuffing your face with some kind of nutrition-less processed snack and you think to yourself: “Ooh, I better check my bank balance”.

Trawling through your credit card transactions, buried between Hell Pizza and numerous iTunes charges, you see:

80000 TANITIM ILETISIM ISTANBUL (27.06 Turkish Lira)

Simultaneous thoughts of “Oh crap” & “WTF!?” rush through your brain. Followed immediately by: “How’d they get my credit card? I better ring the bank, reverse the charge, and get a new card…”

Then suddenly you remember. Could TANITIM ILETISIM ISTANBUL be Itself, that cute t-shirt site you bought a t-shirt from last week? A quick email to their support team answered my question in the positive. Phew.

The review:

The good
Itself is a well designed site that is clean and visually appealing. The checkout process is easy to complete and they’ve definitely thought about most of the interactions users are going to have with them and worked to make them simple. Given how much Threadless has led the charge in this area it’s not surprising to see others follow.

I do like the t-shirts they offer and the fact they’ve limited it to only a handful of designs. Itself’s shipping costs to NZ were quite reasonable and they definitely out perform Threadless when it comes to packaging – beautiful in comparison. Their comms and support are also very good – for instance they don’t charge you until your t-shirt has been shipped.

The bad
The whole credit card charging scenario I went through above is a major let down for Itself. I felt they weren’t upfront about being a Turkish company or what I could expect to see on my credit card bill. I just don’t understand why companies don’t charge with their brand name!?

It’s not an issue about Itself being Turkish, the problem is purely that my expectations are that when I order a t-shirt in US Dollars from a .com English language website, then I’m going to expect to see a US-based charge. Not an Istanbul charge in Turkish Lira with a name I don’t recognise! Seriously Itself has no idea how close they came to having the transaction reversed/canceled.

The t-shirts themselves are ok – but they’re the kind of t-shirts that only look good on people who go to the gym. A lot. (If you’re one of those people then this won’t be a bad thing…) This is purely a style call.

Here’s the actual t-shirt I bought. Love the simplicity quote so had to have the tee:

Wee note: Part of the reason I’m posting this is in case anyone else has the same freak-out when seeing their credit card and Google’s the charge name. If that’s you, do leave a comment…

Busker (puts down guitar, pulls out ciggies): I bet you I make more money during my smoko break than I do actually playing… because that’s HOW STUPID PEOPLE ARE!!

- Opera House Lane

Interesting reading yesterday, I thought, with the following title on Stuff: Pacific migrants ‘drain on economy’.To be perfectly honest, when I read that I thought what’s our beloved Foreign Minister up to now?

However the article is about a study conducted by one of Massey University’s Economists, Greg Clydesdale, on the “significant and enduring under-achievement” of NZ’s Polynesian immigrants and the problems that presents to NZ as a whole.

To quote the article:

Issued last week, the document says Polynesians are less productive and less likely to contribute to economic growth. They have the highest unemployment in every age group, are less likely to start businesses and have lower rates of self-employment.

Polynesians are over-represented in crime statistics and have higher rates of convictions and prosecutions. They are also more likely to be victims of violent crime. They are more likely to need Government assistance for housing and income.

It helps me confirm a thought I’ve had for a while that, as a country, we have quite a lot at stake in terms of the quality of life and education in our neighbouring Polynesian nations. We do contribute a lot of aid already, but China is generally surpassing us as it works to increase its influence in the Pacific, and I think we need to do more.

It’s in our best interests to invest in public education in Polynesian nations. We, as a country, would benefit as much, if not more, than the nations we were investing in. Better education and quality of life fights each of the negative points in the quote above – something that would benefit New Zealand and every single Polynesian nation. It would improve productivity, contribute more to economic growth, increase employability, reduce the over-repesentation in crime, and reduce reliance of Govt assistance.

Naturally, there would be a lot of issues that would come with any sort of focus or approach like I think I’m suggesting. We need to respect their sovereignty for one. We need to respect their culture and values as another. But I don’t think these are insurmountable especially given 6.9% of NZ’s population are Polynesian – that’s a large pool to draw upon. I imagine a lot of NZ primary and secondary teachers would love to do a ‘tour of duty’ in one of the Islands for instance…

Surely this is an idea worth pursuing?

Update: Had a bit more time to think about this and I think it’s a pretty stupid idea now. How could you, in good faith, subject anyone else to our education system and bureaucracy??

I’m astounded at today’s Fairfax Media poll that suggests almost 3 out of 4 Kiwis think removing GST on food is a good idea. If it is just a reaction to 9 years of unchanging taxation combined with climbing living costs, then it does make some sense.

However, removing GST on food would have to be one of the most counter-productive “solutions” we could come up with for the problems and pressures New Zealanders are feeling today.

Petrol, mortgage/rent, and food form the core of most families’ expenses and all three have risen higher than wage growth for a number of years. Voters also feel overtaxed. They probably should. Govt spending has been of a quality which doesn’t match or justify the current level of taxation (but that is just an opinion of this one voter).

Throw in a resurgent National with this as their main election plank and a finance minister making their job easy and we have today’s situation. I honestly do think that Cullen has good intentions (like Muldoon), but he’s just the wrong person for the job (like Muldoon). Thankfully Cullen likes to horde and spend rather than spend and bankrupt (like Muldoon).

The first problem with removing GST on food is that it’s a really lousy way of helping those who need help the most while reducing revenue for the Govt. It is much more efficient to tax them less in the first place rather than change the rules of GST. This leads directly onto the next problem.

If we remove GST on food, we break the simplicity that is our GST. This would raise compliance costs significantly and this really should be reason enough. Personally I think GST is probably the most efficient and effective method of taxation we have. Businesses know how much money they’ve earned and they know how much they’ve spent – it’s easy to calculate and plan for GST payments. In fact, in my dream world GST would be raised and be the only form of taxation (encourages saving, encourages exporting, Govt revenue tied even more closely to the current health of the economy, etc).

Lastly, if we break the “rule” we have of almost no exceptions to GST then we’re at the mercy of future politicians pandering to voters to exempt further items from GST. What’s next? Would, for instance, the Greens say we should exempt GST on NZ-made goods to further their buy NZ campaign? Would United Future say we should remove GST on anything child-related as part of their focus on families? It would be a rather slippery slope that would only end in higher compliance costs and higher taxation in other areas.

I hope our politicians show some leadership on this point and refuse to make it an issue or to consider it a real option to better the lot of New Zealanders, well-off or not. I’m very interested though, do 3 of my 4 readers think it’s a good idea too?

When I still worked at Intergen, Trey put me onto Mozy. It’s an insanely-great online backup tool. It works on a PC or a Mac, it works in the background with minimal fuss, keeps the different versions of your files, is very lightweight, and has a very generous free account.

I love it. It has saved my bacon while I’ve been working on Ponoko more than a couple of times.

Today, as a Mozy user, I received their May newsletter (don’t think we’ve seen one at all before…). A big part of my role at Ponoko is email marketing so I pay a lot of attention to what others are doing. Below is the “lead” story in their newsletter:

First thought: WTF was he thinking!? I’m almost speechless beyond that…

It has nothing to do with their product (which is awesome) and manages to insult Americans, Canadians, Quebecois, hockey supporters, and probably his staff as well.

Then again, had he not insulted all those people I could probably guarantee I wouldn’t be blogging about his newsletter or his company or his product.

What do you think? Insanely stupid or insanely smart?

Boy: It’s not my fault!

Girl: I know! It’s not like I actually think you control the weather…

- cnr Dixon and Egmont

At least in this analogy it is.

JD has posted some good commentary on Facebook’s $15billion “valuation”. And as usual he couldn’t be more wrong for the most part I agree.

However, I can’t help but think we would have said the same of TradeMe’s eventual valuation of $700-and-something million. To me it means we should really look at the other side of the equation and just consider: “what if?”

At $15billion, Facebook’s 240million users would be worth $62.50 each. Now if you have an average profit per user of $6.25 per year then maybe the $15billion “valuation” is more or less valid (at least for the purposes of this article).

The obvious observation is, of course, there ain’t no way Facebook is earning a profit of $6.25 per user right now or anytime soon. JD rightly points out that even “Google’s latest conference call included hints that they were having trouble monetizing social traffic” and I think it’s not hard to agree with that point for the whole social media/networking/traffic kit and caboodle.

Which leads to my title and analogy:

Social media is like a money making machine. Only we’re all too stupid to figure out how it works. We can recognise that a lot of smarts, effort, and thought went into building these networks. We know the output is money. We just don’t know how to do that tiny little bit in the middle.

I eagerly await what happens next.

The smartest thing a brothel could probably do is campaign against itself.

Yesterday I found out I live in the same suburb as Simple and Loveable ‘s Nat. As she reported, Mt Vic residents received a letter from the banana-republic-styled “Mt Victoria Resident’s Association about Brothels in Mt Victoria”. It was a simple petition/submission letter asking you, as a resident, to let the council know you don’t want brothels in our suburb.

I really don’t know if I could care less. Moral panic is boring and generally turns me off. If a brothel respects the regulations those business have to follow… then the law says it’s a completely legal enterprise.

It’s an interesting contrast with Mt Vic’s recreational drug users, from the social dope smokers to the drum’n’bass munters. While some of these are probably next in line for legalisation (once Jim ‘need to protect you from yourself’ Anderton departs) and tolerated like they already are legalised… the law does quite plainly state… they are illegal.

These concerned residents and other moral outrage activists never seem to learn from each other that the very thing they crusade against is what they end up helping the most.

I remember when the “Society for Promotion of Community Standards” protested against Baise-Moi being screened in NZ. Essentially all it did was bring attention and coverage to the film. If they wanted to stop people from watching then they suffered an excellent failure. Their rampant attention grabbing probably increased the film’s patronage in NZ by a factor of 100.

Which makes me think: if I was a brothel, the cheapest most effective way to promote myself would be… to campaign against myself. It would be brilliantly effective at grabbing attention compared to the newspaper ad examples included in the petition, has amazing stickiness, word-of-mouth appeal, efficient (read: cheap).

These guys have just advertised “convenient” brothel services to Mt Vic’s 5000+ residents for the price of a ream of A4 paper. Well done.

It has all the makings of a brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign. Remember, you read it here first.