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Thanks to Scott Meade for taking really good notes from my How to Measure Success presentation from LessConf in Jacksonville, Florida. Consider this a teaser for the forthcoming video. Photo credit: Mr Noded.

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Thanks to Scott Meade for taking really good notes from my How to Measure Success presentation from LessConf in Jacksonville, Florida. Consider this a teaser for the forthcoming video. Photo credit: Mr Noded.

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Thanks to Scott Meade for taking really good notes from my How to Measure Success presentation from LessConf in Jacksonville, Florida. Consider this a teaser for the forthcoming video. Photo credit: Mr Noded.

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Thanks to Scott Meade for taking really good notes from my How to Measure Success presentation from LessConf in Jacksonville, Florida. Consider this a teaser for the forthcoming video. Photo credit: Mr Noded.

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The much talked about tag in the HTML5 spec is, obviously, of interest to me. I mean, I work at Viddler after all. However, even if I didn’t – I’d still tell all of you – especially those of you that are Web developers – to take a look at Mark Pilgrim‘s amazingly awesome chapter […]

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I joined Twitter in November 2006. Since then I’ve written about Twitter quite a bit and I’ve tweeted over 13,000 times. Wow. That must mean this thing is going to stick with me. So, if you feel like it (and aren’t already) – consider following me on Twitter. Inspired by Justin Blanton’s eloquent plea.

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It has been far too long since I made any suggestions to all of you. Suggestions, here on First Initial, Last Name are what I consider recommended reading/viewing. Of course, all of the links I put here are worthy of your attention I’m just trying to draw more than the usual attention to these specific […]

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Thanks to Scott Meade for taking really good notes from my How to Measure Success presentation from LessConf in Jacksonville, Florida. Consider this a teaser for the forthcoming video. Photo credit: Mr Noded.

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If you’re going to do a demonstration of Windows 7, the latest version of Microsoft’s – most popular in the world – operating system, you might as well do it on an iMac. [viddler id-b32b9577 h-278 w-420] Via Viddler.

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WPAPI.org, the brain-child of Dean Robinson (who has been [mentioned a few times here on First Initial, Last Name](http://cdevroe.com/?s=dean robinson)), is an easy to use stats API for plugins and themes hosted on WordPress.org. Simple idea, perfectly executed.

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Yeah. Awesome.

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Tweetie on Mac But, you just got done saying how much you loved Tweetie 2 for iPhone. You want more? Well, yes I do. I am now using both Tweetie on my Mac and on my iPhone. On the day I bought Tweetie for iPhone I immediately began to wish that the two of them […]

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It is going to be a nice evening.

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My friend Jon Christopher has just launched a new site for himself. He’s run the Monday By Noon site and brand for years yet he never had a place all his own on the Web. It is so very important for a designer/developer, freelance or otherwise, to have their own site. Personal branding is a […]

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From the guy that invented bagless vacuums and the insanely powerful airblades to dry your hands in bathrooms comes this; a bladeless fan. Using what looks to be the same principles that the Wright brothers used to discover flight, this fan wraps are around a "wing" which then collects the air around it and pulls […]

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Taken on October 14, 2004. Five years ago today: Again, I’m late on this one. For a fair stretch of time I was camping every single year in Chenango Valley State Park with family and friends. This particular year, I remember, it was rather cold a few of the nights. I was sleeping alone in […]

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Taken on October 15, 2004. Five years ago today: Well, not really. I haven’t been keeping up with my "five years ago today posts" and so this one is a bit late. Switching to the Macintosh was a fairly long process for me due to the work I was doing at the time. My having […]

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[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] This is via a ton of people on Tumblr but ultimately Garrett Murray. He says it is perfect and I think it is super fantasticly perfectly awesome. So, there.

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[viddler id-d3739ab9 h-357 w-420] Part reason to play with 15 second videos again, part quick way to document that my office is clean at the moment, here is a 15 second video tour of my cleaned up office!

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(Video removed) This is my blog and I can post as many ‘hey my cat is cute and is sleeping’ videos that I want to, b’okay?

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I don’t buy a lot of iPhone applications. My reasons are that I don’t have a lot of extra money for such things and that many times I end up getting rid of an application a few weeks after installing it. In other words; why buy applications that I will not end up using long […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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Do you like peanut butter? Then I highly recommend you try out Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter. Creamy, chunky, the choice is yours but I will say that it is the best peanut butter I’ve ever had. Ingredients: Peanuts. I love that. Find it at your local grocer. Then come back and thank me.

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My friend Dan Rubin hasn’t written on his site in 13 months. However, the other day he came out of hiding and compared his less-than-frequent updates to the way he approaches washing the dishes. I’m linking to his most recent post for no other reason than to say welcome back Dan. Oh, his site is […]

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After going outside it appears there are, and this isn’t an actual head count just a best guess, hundreds of thousands of lady bugs swarming around our apartment building alone. Due to other friends reporting the same in their area I’m calling it a plague.

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[viddler id-cec0aceb h-280 w-420] Welcome to Random 60 season 2! Sorta. Today we have a special guest, Kyle Slattery, who is a friend and fellow Viddler team member. Today’s topic, haircuts. I just got my haircut and I usually just tell the lady at the hair place to cut as much off as she’d like […]

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[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] When Eliza and I were hunting for good photos and videos of what the rooms looked like aboard the Carnival Miracle for our vacation we really couldn’t find what we were looking for. Sure, there were some photos but many of them weren’t very good. The ones that were good didn’t really […]

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So I’m an old fart. It is something that I’m beginning to come to grips with and so should all of you. That being said, I’m beginning to get annoyed with the way some people choose to use and misuse hashtags. I’m well aware that this is a free country, that Twitter is a free […]

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In late August I opened iChat, as I typically do, only to see that no one was online. Having quite a few people in my buddy list this makes for a strange occurrence. I rarely see an empty buddy list. A few hours go by and I check it again, still – no one. After […]

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Instapaper, a read-later service by Tumblr‘s Marco Arment, has been popping up in front of me for months. I’ve seen two of my friends, Justin and Jonathan, rave about it. So I thought it was time I gave it a spin. This morning I’ve installed the bookmarklet from the site, installed the free version of […]

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I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at LessConf in Jacksonville, Fla. on October 17th. The title for my talk is still tentative but the main subject will be about how startups should measure success. I have a lot to say about how startups measure success in a global market like the Internet. Too […]

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Own a bakery? Want to notify your customers when fresh baked goodies are ready via Twitter? Look no further than Baker Tweet. A simple device that sends canned Twitter updates with the push of a button. Love it. This has me wanting to work on my own device that will update Twitter for no other […]

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[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] Nothing is stated on their Twitter account. Their staff blog is silent (yet not down). Of course, neither is Marco Arment’s Tumblog (he’s a staff member). And yet my dashboard is down, my Tumblog is down, and so are many others. The message appears to suggest that they know about this downtime. […]

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Want an easy way to learn how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO affect a photo using an SLR camera? This simple flash application shows you a live preview of what a photograph would look like while you slide the values of all three up and down. A great way to learn.

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Flickr recently released an official application for the iPhone (link opens iTunes). I agree with John Gruber, the design of the application is well done in many areas but it doesn’t feel very "Flickr-like" and isn’t as good as Flickr’s mobile site for the iPhone. My biggest gripe, besides the application crashing every few minutes, […]

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If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook,Tumblr or my wife on Flickr than you know that we’ve picked up a new car. We decided on a 2007 Honda Civic LX. After our major Jeep FAIL last week we knew we needed something. For many months we’ve wanted to have a smaller, more economical and eco-friendly […]

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This is excellent. After our interview was published yesterday Steven Frank of Panic has now posted a call for help on his Tumblog. He’s asking what the community thinks Panic should do to become more transparent. "In short, what can we do to help you better?" Asking the community to help forge Panic’s new communication […]

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My thoughts on transparency in software development got me thinking about a particular application that I use on a daily basis, Coda. I think it is safe to say that most Coda users, of which I consulted six for this post, are not just Coda users, they are Coda plus other software users. Why? Because […]

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Well ok then.

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I wish I thought of this! The Museum of Animal Perspectives is, exactly what it sounds like, a collection of videos taken from the perspective of animals by literally putting a camera on an animal. Awesome.

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I assure you this link is SFW. Ever wonder why men’s dress shirts have two buttons and only one hole? Ben Gray knows and is willing to let you in on the secret. Via Pat Dryburgh.

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With Snow Leopard comes a markedly better way of handling window minimization into the Dock however Chris Clark feels as though it could be done better. His proposal is to minimize the windows directly behind the application icon on the Dock. I like it.

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After climbing a tree at Lehigh University in an attempt to capture a cicada I ended up finding several skins left on a tree at about eye level. Go figure. There is tons of information on Cicadas on Wikipedia. Worth perusing.

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The only review of the latest version of Mac OS X you’ll ever need to read, John Siracusa’s review of Snow Leopard.

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Corporate transparency has always been a lesson in balance, a constant struggle between altruism and self-preservation, and proves itself to be a different challenge to each company striving to stay as transparent to their customers as possible while maintaining their foothold in their space. Nearly no other business is impacted by corporate transparency more than […]

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