Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, November 28, 2007:
Email Standards Project
An interesting project from our friends at Freshview. If you’re involved with HTML emails in any way you’ll want to keep an eye on this project.
http://www.email-standards.org/
iPhone Wallpaper
In a follow up from yesterday’s Calendar post, Mike has now added a free iPhone / iPod Touch wallpaper option. So if you have one of these devices and want some really cool free wallpaper check it out.
iPhone and iPod Touch Wallpaper
Coffee Calendar
Mike Rohde has created a beautiful Coffee Calendar. If you’re into that type of thing I suggest you check it out. I just purchased one.
Email is Dead?
I second Charlie’s thoughts on this. In addition, every day I use a million year old business technology called a fax machine. It’s totally insane and archaic, yet here I am faxing PO’s back and forth. While emails day of being cool may be over there’s no way it’s going away anytime soon.
Silliest Thing I’ve Heard in a While
I love when technologists drink the cool-aid, it really makes for funny blogging.
In this post about Mahalo by Andrew Baron he has one of the funniest lines I’ve read in a long time. You should go read it in context, but the line is:
“Mahalo is fundamentally flawed because it’s purpose is to provide useful, valuable information about a specific subject matter, but ultimately so that users who are looking for that information will be lead astray by clicking on less relevant advertising.
Mahalo is unlike Google which uses advertising to help pay for the technology of generating great search returns”
Huh? So Mahalo is bad because the money generated goes to the founders, but Google is good because the money generated goes into search technology. Can he actually believe such a ludicrous statement? Last time I checked the Google founders flew around in a 767 they own for fun and company masseuses are becoming millionaires. So I guess not every dollar is going back into search result technology eh.
More on Google
An interesting post from the financial perspective on Google that sort of echo’s my thoughts from the other day.
Feedback from Other Developers is Mostly Worthless
TJ had an interesting post yesterday on some new features he’s added to iKollect and where they came from. The key observation he makes is that feedback from other developers and passers by is completely worthless for the most part. That’s why I long ago stopped asking for feedback on forums and the ilk. Someone coming to your site and giving you ideas for your product based on a one minute assessment is just a waste of both people’s time.
This is even more true for sites like TJ’s that are not geared for developers. Getting feedback from programmers for a site designed for collectors is only going to pull you in the wrong direction. Your time is much better spent researching your market, listening to customer feedback, and following your gut instinct.