It' s the small touches that won me over. Well designed, a bit of attitude, and useful. App store reviewer Jragon on Sketches . Should good software have a bit of attitude' ?

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It's not its. A single serving site for those wondering. (Now where' s There not their ?)

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Man, has Hulu nailed online TV viewing or what? First off, they have a huge library of content that people actually want (e.g. SNL , Family Guy, Daily Show, Colbert, Kitchen Nightmares, etc.). And then they really execute on having a usable, effective UI. You do have to watch ads with Hulu. But just one at a time. The timeline lets you fast forward to anywhere in the show and also displays where the commercial breaks are located. That means ...

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In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. Thomas L. Friedman

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You should never hire anyone for something you haven' t first struggled to do on your own. It' ll teach you most of what you need to know to actually interview candidates, it' ll allow you to understand the nature of the work better (do I even need to hire or can we outsource?), and you' ll know exactly what a job well done will look like. It' ll also give you a sense of whether the job is big ...

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Logbook is the first product from Transmission Apps , a group that is building Mac OS companion apps for our products. Logbook allows you to keep your Backpack Journal updated from your Mac menu bar. You can update your status and log journal entries without having to log into Backpack . Logbook is $12.99. It' s slick and very well executed. I' ve been using it for a while and it' s really encouraged me to keep my journal updated. ...

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Mattijs asks: I am developing an internet product and I am rapidly approaching the point at which I will need to set a pricing scheme for this product. Problem: I have no idea what to shoot for! I have done some research which shows a wide range of similar products with varying pricing schemes. When 37signals was developing Basecamp, how did you come up with pricing? When we first priced Basecamp in Feburary 2004 the plans were $9, $19, $39, ...

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We' re experimenting with new styles of posts here at Signal vs. Noise (quick quotes, links, photos, etc.) These will allow us to share quick bits that we find interesting without doing a full blown post. You can see a couple of examples in the two previous posts. These posts will show up indented and, for now, comments are disabled on them. Still tweaking so stay tuned.

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Last week, the entire 37signals team went to York Harbor, Maine for three days. (We stayed at The York Harbor Inn .) So what happens at a 37signals company trip to Maine? We talk about what we' ve done and what we' re about to do. We have breakout sessions to work on projects in small teams. We eat lobster. David talks about racing cars. Joshua plays flamenco guitar. We watch SNL clips. Ryan teaches us how to meditate. Jamis ...

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Found this happy honeycrisp apple at the farmers market Saturday.

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I just got the first issue of Ferninand in the mail, and I have to say it has been a long, long time since I was this impressed by a magazine. The entire thing (and their website ) is the work of just a few people, led by designer Lester Nelson. All proceeds go toward opening a graphic design tutoring center in the Philippines for artists who can' t afford traditional art education. We' re lucky to live in a ...

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via Cartype .

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The Senz aerodynamic umbrella turns itself to the best position in the wind and won a red dot award for its novel design. Even the shaft was rethought and redesigned (it' s oval, not cylindrical or square). I love reinventions of every day objects that are long taken for granted. And not that an umbrella matters in a hurricane, but

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Once again I' ll be speaking and giving a three-hour workshop at Future of Web Design in NYC this November 3-4. The workshops especially are a lot of fun. What would you like to hear me talk about? Please post your ideas here or email ryan at you-know-where dot com. I' d love to see you in New York, and especially hear your questions and ideas.

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The #1 piece of advice you hear from frequent travellers: Pack light. Lay out everything you think you need. Then put away half : You see that pile of stuff sitting on your bed, waiting to be stuffed into your suitcase? Take half of that stuff and put it back in your closet. Seriously. I know you think you’ve already narrowed your pile down from what you really want to bring. I know you don’t see how you’ll ever survive ...

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Vinnie Cilurzo is regarded as one of the most innovative microbrewers in the country . He explains why he' s happy keeping his brews local: Right now your beers are mainly available on the West Coast. How important is it to you to go national? Not at all. We expanded three months ago into this new brewery space, so now we' re brewing in both our brewpub and in this brewery. And we started bottling Pliny the Elder, which until ...

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{via Coudal }

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If you have a problem with someone on your team, have the conversation in private: IM, one-on-one email, face-to-face meeting, etc. But if you want to praise someone, do it in public so others can see it too: via a Basecamp / Backpack message, in your group' s Campfire chat room, in a blog post, an email that CC' s others, etc. It' s a modern way to apply the advice Dale Carnegie gives in Be a Leader: How to ...

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Anthropologie Interesting walkthrough metaphor at Anthropologie . You navigate through a room where everything' s for sale. Threadless Threadless adds some personality to the typically boring shopping-cart pattern. Sad cart. Happy cart. Gawker The Gawker network of sites moves to threaded comments (threads open with a click). Closed. Open.

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My wife recently ordered Henry Bursill' s classic Hand Shadows and More Hand Shadows . It was first published in 1859 and 1860 (in two parts), but what' s best about it is that, aside from the name of each pattern, the book is simply a book of pictures. No text. No preface by a famous hand shadow practitioner. No page of text describing the history and variations of each pattern. Just pictures. Each page is a single picture, drawn ...

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