The Catalyst

The issue that finally broke my will to live and made me write this blog post came a few weeks back when working on getting Redmine setup to manage my projects. The whole process went according to plan (well maybe I had some help) till it came to setting up email through my Google Apps domain.

For those who don’t know I’ll provide a bit more detail. When setting up Redmine you have to configure your email client. It’s not a text field in the settings but a file in the application itself. No having it in a text field in the admin would not have helped me at all.

It took me 2 hours on two different days to get the email working (no this has no reflection on Redmine, read on). I read blog posts, combed through issues on the Redmine site, stuck my tongue out while coding, and nothing worked. It’s only as I beat my head against the table yet again that something jumped out…I spelled the username/email wrong in the configuration file.

I suppose the fact that I was getting errors from Redmine saying there was an issue with the username or password and that the login was failing should have been my first clue, but I guess the hammer wasn’t big enough to knock sense into me.

The real issue is not that I made a spelling mistake but the fact that it took me 4 hours to find it spread over two days. Why didn’t the incorrect username jump out at me right away? Redmine is a solid piece of software with good testing. All the blog posts I read said to do what I was doing (mind some were for older versions), and yet I missed a simple spelling mistake. Something in my head just didn’t want to see the forest for the trees.

Learning It All Again

I’m sure that I’m not alone here in saying this is not the first time I’ve had to learn this lesson. There is no way I could count the times that I struggle with implementing something on a site and after spending days (sometimes) I realize that I’ve made a spelling mistake, syntax error, didn’t link to a script…. The hard thing is how do I stop myself from learning this over and over again?

Got any suggestions?

girl screaming cause of distraction

It’s kind of like the ‘killing zone’ in the movie Wanted. You start off with it just happening and you have no control. Over time you learn how it works for you and grab the shuttle from the loom. Then you become a master.

The Distractions

Whether you work at home or in an office distractions come at us fast and furious. In the office co-workers visit your desk to chat. At home dogs bark, kids cry, neighbours stop by to say ‘hi’. In either place the phone rings while you are focused. Email comes in and audibly notifies you. You keep your twitter client open and it notifies you (my hands up on that one for sure).

The Weapons of Distraction Death

My primary weapon to kill office distraction is headphones or at the least music. Even if I’m not actually listening to music I have my headphones on. The headphones create a visual barrier for people when they come up to my desk. It makes them think twice when I don’t immediately react to their entry into the office (even though I see it at the edge of my vision). A number of times, when I stay focused for a few seconds extra they leave and shoot me a quick email which I can answer during my email times.

Second you need to turn off your email. Don’t leave it open all day. Don’t respond instantly to every message that comes in. Don’t open your email first thing in the morning. My daily routine goes something like this. I arrive at the office and login to my computer. Open Google reader and triage the items I’m never going to read. Fire up mail.app and triage my secondary email (99% of the time just filing and marking items as spam). Then I open my normal work email and deal with what needs to be dealt with. Once I have dealt with my email I close the window.

I personally have my email set to provide no notification of any fashion when new email comes in. This lets me Tab to Entourage if needed and create a new email from the keyboard without opening the app and seeing what might be there. I only open my email if I am between items of work and have a few minutes that I am not focused on a project. I also open it directly after lunch and just before I leave for the day. It takes a bit for co-workers to realize that you don’t answer email instantly but in the long term they learn and it makes you way more productive.

Finally, stop the social networking. Don’t have Tweetdeck open. At the very least turn off the notifications. For a while I used Seesmic and it lets you turn off all notifications but a small tone if someone DM’s you or replies to you. While I love this feature in Seesmic I went back to Tweetdeck cause it’s way faster. Unfortunately Tweetdeck notifications are on or off. So turn them off or close the application.

While multitasking is all the rage constant interruptions are unproductive. So let’s decide to kill the distractions and get more done. Have any other ideas to kill distractions love to hear them.

restoring and ipod

My experience with my iPod 3.0 update was less than satisfactory. 3 hours 2 reboots 1 complete restore and I was up to date. I played with it for the night plugged it in to charge and went to sleep. I woke up in the morning and tried to grab my iPod to do some email triage before work and crashy crashy is what I was met with. So another complete restore and resync is what I had to do to get the iPod working again.

Needless to say I was not super happy. I know this is totally a first world problem. I still had food, I still had a roof, and I probably threw out more food last night than lots of people have opportunity to eat in a day. But it got me thinking…

The Epiphany

This whole experience got me thinking about my 5th Gen iPod video. I don’t ever remember having to restore it. I used it while I was working construction and going to school for 8+ hours a day 5 days a week for 3 years. I dropped it 2 stories onto concrete (as it was spinning and playing). Not once in the time I used it did I have to do a restore.

Really, the big thought here is that all of the power and good stuff about the iPod Touch and iPhone (when was the last time to restored your basic flip cell phone?) breeds a whole lot of complexity. If something is more complex it’s way harder to keep running properly.

This transfers to our designs and information architecture on sites. The more ‘stuff’ we throw into the mix the more ‘stuff’ there is to break. Next time you want to add the cool new plugin to your blog or the boss wants to add just one more thing to the site really stop and evaluate if the added complexity is worth the time.

With great power comes great complexity. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

build social capital

I was recently asked to do some social media consulting for a business. They wanted to know all of the normal stuff like what ages and target markets are on social networks. Which networks they should focus on. Should they let employees use social networks during work to talk to clients?

What they failed to grasp though was that they needed to invest in the networks before there was anything to get back out of them.

They have an event in 3 weeks and wanted to advertise it on Twitter and Facebook. Of course advertising over those sites is great, the problem is they don’t even have accounts on them. No account means you have no followers. No followers means you have no one to market too.

What they failed to grasp was that in many ways social media is like a bank account. You don’t just open an account and start taking money out (and if you know of pre-filled bank account leave it in the comments). Before you can get anything out you have to put something in.

So if you want to use social media as an extra way to advertise your service or event remember it’s not magic. You have to cultivate you followers, fans and friends before social media has anything to return to you.

I do use Dreamweaver. Oh yeah I also use Notepad++ and Textwrangler. I have tried coda (great by the way) and BBedit and Aptana and many other applications for web development.

At my fulltime job it simply comes down to cost. I use Dreamweaver because it is in CS3. There is no real break through feature that I could find to justify to my boss so that they would purchase Coda. At home I use Dreamweaver because there is no good alternative on a PC. Sure there is Notepad++ but no mater how many times I have tried I can’t get the code completion to work. Really why would I waste time to get an application working when Dreamweaver works out of the box? It’s just not good practical use of my limited time. Using Dreamweaver has no bearing on my code writing skills.

The problem with Dreamweaver is that a large number of people purchased it solely on the basis of the WYSIWYG view. Really these are the people that recruiters want eliminated from applying for jobs as web designer/developers not the ones that hand write code inside Dreamweaver.

So come on people that post jobs know what it is that you want. You want good web designers/developers. Let them use whatever tool they find most reliable and easy to use. If it’s Dreamweaver fine. Focus on the end product not the tool used.

There are 3 options for membership when signing up to become an iPhone developer. Two are paid and one is free. To start with I have gone with the free option though it seems there are some limits. (write down the limits).

I also downloaded the special content from Apple for iPhone developers. Really it’s just a series of videos that take you through Xcode, Dashcode, and Cocoa (the native OSX programming language).

Finally to actually be able to code for OSX and iPhone you need to download the iPhone SDK which includes all of the applications for writing code.

Unfortunately since I am not a paying iPhone developer I don’t have access to the iPhone 3.0 SDK. I haven’t found any info on when this may become available to non-paying developers but I hope it’s soon. The only application that I can think of building that isn’t out there wouldn’t require the new SDK but the function would be enhanced by push notifications. Ah well maybe I’ll pay someday.

This is obviously a very cool add that brings a whole new dimension to advertising on the web. Is this what companies need to do now that many web users aren’t even drawn to banners on the sides and tops of website? What do you think?

Personally I bought a new phone in August and have had all of the above. At one point it cost me over $3000 in lost work let alone the time I spent on the phone with Bell Canada. They have lost my message box, over billed me, and given me problems over a phone that didn’t work when I got it.

I am not a happy customer. I would not recommend their service. I will not buy a phone on contract again cause they essentially have my money garaunteed so they have no incentive to fix my problem.

This is totally contrary to how you want to deal with customers. We all know that word of mouth is the best way to get new clients or customers in the door. With the recommendation I gave above would you use Bell Canada? Probably not. The first time I called with a problem it should have been fixed the first time.

Blindly Good Customer Service

When I used to work sales the policy was that a happy customer would bring in their friends and their friends would purchase. I remember trading in for full value a 1 year old $4000 kayak that someone didn’t like. They had come in over the year to talk about the boat. We test paddled it with him gave him tips and he tried them all. At the end he sheepishly came back and said that it still wasn’t the right boat and we said okay let’s get you the right boat.

The Payoff of Lost Income

With surprise on his face he asked how much he would get for the old one and we said full price at time of sale. More astonished he bought a boat for himself and upgraded his wife’s boat. Two weeks later his friends came in and boat two boats.

That $1000 loss in value of selling a used boat returned $15,000 in sales so it was well worth it. So how do you go over and above to provide service to your clients? How do you make sure that they’re you biggest fans? Short term loss can win long term relationships.