design it simple - sense

Recently I have been invited to beta test ClickTale. Although I can’t tell much about the service itself yet there was one very interesting thing.

What is ClickTale
ClickTale is a website trackting tool that records the interaction of a user with the page, even mouse gestures. So it gives you the possibility to see how a user acts. You don’t know what he thinks since the mouse movement may not be the same as the eye movement. However, since many people move the cursor pretty soon to clickable areas (to not waste time) it still gives you a good impression. The visitors for the site are randomly selected to ensure that not just a special group (the early morning office surfers) are selected for all your available recordings.

Subscription models
As many other web services ClickTale has several subscription model to choose from. They allow for different amount of recordings per day. This is ok for sites where you want to test continuously, but this is not the usual case. For those who do tests every once in a while when a new feature is released ClickTale offers one-time boosts that give you a certain amount of recordings.

In my opinion this is a very reasonable choice to give the users what they need. I haven’t seen any other web service using this model. Sure, Backpack or Basecamp let you change your subscription each month, but this might not be the right thing sometimes. This is not to say that every service should have one-time boost but for this service this definitely makes sense.

Over the last months and even years I have registered with a lot of sites. Most of them I just try to check out because they are pretty new and are apps that seem to be worth using. However, I assume 90% of sites I register with I don’t use more than 2 - 3 times. Then I would really like to delete my account. Most of the time it’s hard to find how to delete your account, but sometimes it’s just impossible.

Today I wanted to delete my wordpress.com account. Why? I just don’t use it. I searched for a way and found a faq-page which told me something I just couldn’t understand.

Why would the software or database crash if an account is deleted? If you write your app code properly that won’t ever happen.

This question is a very important question, especially if someone thinks about OpenID. Can I unregister from a webpage. What happens to my data? Any suggestions?

Chicago based 37signals just launched Highrise, an online shared contact manager. It looks quite similar to their existing and successful applications, Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire and completes the “suite” of easy to use personal and business web applications.

Unlike Google or many others, 37signals does not try to replace currently existing desktop applications, such as Word, with a web version (Word will be around for some more years, so competing against is really hard and maybe even sensless). Instead, they create products that solve problems better than many others by making it just simple, easy and a pleasure to use.

Since Highrise is out just a few hours ago, I won’t give any detailed review yet. However, one feature I already like. Adding categories to tasks:

This makes the task list a lot easier to view. Also, look at the grouping in GTD style.

Long awaited and now finally there it is - reboot 9.0. The last two events have been amazing, the city and especially the venue. Don’t wait too long to register.

What is reboot about? Reboot is an event where people from all over the world, but especially Europe, gather and share ideas, opinions and discussions about the web, the world and lots of other things.

This year’s theme is “human”.

A friend told me yesterday about a new blog tool on the web - SixAparts Vox.com. First I was not suprised, but after a while I was completely exited.

So what is different with vox.com. It has one feature I always missed and that was for many people a reason to not have a blog - privacy control. It lets you decide who can read your post. Whether it’s the whole world, your friends or your family. Now you can decide who can read your posts and view your photos.

Why is that so important? Many people use their weblogs to communicate with friends and so on. However, weblogs can be read by the whole world. This is not how it should be - only your friends should be able to read it. So, many people switched back to good old email and sent an email to all their friends. Sometimes with very long text and images. Now, you can manage to do that with a blog tool and still get the privacy you had with email.

Another aspect is, that a new way to communicate will emerge. Lets look at an email conversation with 4 people. You write the first one to 3 of your friends, and all 3 reply to your first one. So, how do you integrate their comments in your email to all 4 again. Actually you can’t do that very well and even more, if those 4 reply to all 4 participants, it doesn’t get better. I am sure you had that experience.

I already used Basecamp to communicate with more than one person in an email like way and it was a lot easier than with email. Everybody sees each others comment and will react on this comment. Also, you can view the conversation more easily.

Now with vox.com you can start conversations, not just blog posts, with others using your blog tool and don’t have to use email anymore. Sure, there are still uses for email but this opens up a whole new world.

One of the best books I read this year is free for everybody now. It’s 37signals “Getting Real”. After reading their weblog for more than 3 years now, using almost all of their products (except Ta-Da lists) I have become a big fan of theirs.

The insights and opinions in their book are amazing, groundbreaking and helpful. I have been struggling with same problems when programming and after using some of their techniques it makes a lot more fun.

But be aware, after reading this book you might get big problems with the old-habbit people that don’t want to change.

Matt from 37signals wrote today about his additional reminders he has set up in Backpack. Basically it’s the same note every week “There are things in life that you shouldn’t take for granted”. I was impressed. Yet again I have to admit. I know 37signals since I have been studying at CU Boulder in 2001. Since that time I’ve been a admirer of their work and closly watched their blog. At reboot 7 and 8 I also met David and Jason.

The main reason why I like those guys so much is because the do care not only about their visionary, great work, but also because they changed the way I think about being a part time developer and that there are some more things in life than just your work. That’s what makes them so exceptional and I am happy to have met them.

Matt says thank you on behalf of 37signals to all readers but I think everyone should say thank you for so many inspiring thoughts and for being the way they are. THANKS A LOT 37signals.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference Steve Jobs and his collegues presented some nice new features of the upcoming OS Leopard. One thing that draw my attention a lot was Core Animation. With it a whole new way of interaction might be possible if developers see them.

One application that already is on a good way but proably couldn’t use Core Animation yet is CoverFlow, a nice application to flip through your iTunes albums. For people who remember the cover art, and I think many people do, this is a pretty way of searching what they want to listen to.

This is only the beginning, I assume people to change the way we work with folders, files, images. Maybe this will lead us someday to something like the scene in “Disclore” where Michael Douglas moves around files in a virtual space.

Last week two applications caught my attention. WriteRoom (Mac) and Dark Room (Windows-clone). They both do share the same concept of distraction free writing. The only thing you can do is write, no highlighting, no bold or italic, just plain writing.

Especially after reading this wonderful article about managing you daily office life I tried the Mac-version. I really have to say that I did like it a lot. You just type in what comes to your mind and don’t care about layout. That you can and have to do later. However, even after writing just two or three things I changed the way I wrote. I paid more attention to the style of my writing so that even without formatted headings you can do a lot with basic text layout.

So is it a replacement for word? Yes and no. Sometimes I just want to type in stuff and word will not be the tool to layout it at the end, e.g. when writing emails. However, as I neve used layout techniques to a high extend I tried the Word full screen feature. This is almost the same as with WriteRoom, it doesn’t show anything but text and grey background. Then I set up my keyboard shortcuts to have some for heading 1 to 3 and that’s all I need now. It saves the same purpose of distracting free writing for me since there are no toolbars and so on. So, give it a try and see for yourself how different writing can be.

Today, I was part of a very special moment. The company I work for, Neue Digitale, was bought by Avenue A | Razorfish. Although I am not fully into the online marketing business I really appreciate this move. If you want to get more information read the press release.

The integration into AARZ will take some time, for sure. Things like that are never easy neither on the technology side nor on the people side. The technological changes can be overcome just by working it out. Getting the people together might be a harder issue. However, since the two companies share attitudes, ways of working and a strive for quality this may help becoming a global company a lot faster.