Andre’s Blog

February 10th, 2008

Guy Kawasaki just posted an interesting article that contradicts conventional wisdom on which entrepreneurs are your best bet for success, old or new. Based on some of the companies and founders I’ve seen going around Web 2.0 I’d tend to agree with a bunch of his points, some seem a bit harsh and may only apply in certain situations;-)

How to Change the World: In Search of Inexperience

Superficially, it’s hard to fault this �back the proven entrepreneur“ theory. For one thing, from a venture capitalist’s point of view, if you fund a serial entrepreneur and she succeeds, you “knew� that she was proven. If she fails, at least you backed someone for a good reason—that is, she was proven—so your limited partners shouldn’t get too bent out of shape.

That’s a lot better than backing a first-time entrepreneur who fails—then you are just stupid. (Also, if you back a first-time entrepeneur, and she’s successful, you take the credit: “It’s because of my hands-on coaching and guidance.�) But, just as Glenn wrote, if you think about it, great, world-changing companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, eBay, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and YouTube were zero for three according to the official venture-capitalist spec sheet: Proven team, proven technology, and proven business model.

I could see slipping into the comfort zone of pas success being one of the biggest reason’s a second time entrepreneur would work as hard and might not make it:)

Posted in Business, Technology, Web 2.0, startup | No Comments »

February 7th, 2008

Just read this hype infested load of nonsense.

“We think all of these Google Apps as social apps�

Posted in Technology, Web 2.0, hype, scoial | No Comments »

February 3rd, 2008

Here’s a little clip of me talking about AIR on the Lab with Leo Laporte show.

We talked a little bit about what AIR is and then checked out some demos including Pownce, a Google Analytics app (correction there is no API for Google Analytics) and our SalesForce demo.

Posted in AIR, AJAX, Enterprise Ajax, Flash, Flex, Software Development, Technology, Web 2.0, nitobi, ria | No Comments »

January 29th, 2008

The second Nitobi Hack Day is coming up Feb 9th at our office. Doors open at 9am, Hacking Starts at 10am and Judging will be at 6pm. There’s an iPod Nano Video up for the best app. Sign up on upcoming. You can hack on whatever you want Ajax, Rails, Python, AIR…it’s all free game. Lunch will be provided.

Posted in Software Development, Technology, Web 2.0, events, hackday, nitobi | No Comments »

January 21st, 2008

InsideRIA is now officially live! I’m really stoked to be a part of this joint effort by O’reilly and Adobe. We’re going to be covering a wide range of topics including design, development and standards for RIAs. Even though Adobe is sponsoring this portal no technology is off limits so Ajax, Silverlight, Google Gears, Prism, etc are all in bounds. Of course there will be a healthy amount of chatter about Flash, Flex and AIR as these key tools in the RIA kit. I personally hope learn and share a lot about user experience, user interface patterns and new forms of analytics we’re going to need a world with more and more RIAs.

Posted in AIR, AJAX, Software Development, Technology, Usability - HCI, Web 2.0, ria | No Comments »

January 8th, 2008

I’ll be giving a quick overview of developing with AIR Jan 30th at WDN 08. Should be a blast.

Web Directions North - Crash Course in AIR
There comes a time when web developers need to reach beyond the browser to allow users to go offline, use local files or get rid of the hideous browser chrome. The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is an up an coming runtime technology that allows desktop applications to be developed with HTML, JavaScript, Flash or Flex. The AIR runtime and SDK are completely free so anyone can get started immediately.

Andre Charland will will give an overview or AIR, the APIs you get access to and how to build a simple Flex and HTML application with it. From there we will explore some of the tools available to make AIR development easier and faster. We’ll finish up with a few important usability guidelines and real world case studies of AIR projects.

Oh ya there’s a ski trip included in the conference so it’s probably worth dropping everything else in life to attend:)

Posted in AIR, AJAX, Business, Flex, Technology, Web 2.0, components, events, nitobi, ria | No Comments »

January 2nd, 2008

JPMorgan Predicts 2008 Will Be “Nothing But Net�

“JPMorgan expects 34 percent earnings growth in 2008 for the Internet stocks it covers”

So hopefully we’re in for another good year, or the bubble is stretched tight. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Posted in Business, Technology, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

December 28th, 2007

We all have some vague notion that we can’t visually focus on everything in our field of vision at once, but just how little can we really see at once? This is a very important question for web designers and information architects. James and I are working with Andy Edmonds of StomperNet to build a browser type application “that simulates the limited high resolution vision available to humans as they use the computer”, called or
Foveal Gaze Simulation Software Scrutinizer.

Basically the app applies a filter over the web page your viewing that allows the region around your mouse to be in focus, while the rest of the screen is blurred out. This is to illustrate the difference between what your fovea and periphery of your eye see. This way you can see what your users see more or less and apply some usability best practices to improve conversion or generally make your site easier to use. Specifically you can make adjustments like button positions, whitespace, navigation bar headings and typography. The idea is to use the science behind vision to improve your site without really needing to understand it all;-)

James built this app with AIR. Using the HTML functionality to implement a simple browser and Flash to create the filter over the web page. We had a few interesting challenges getting the page interactions and events to work through the Flash filter, but it’s working pretty well now and will only get better:) On interesting feature you might miss is that you can adjust the size of the focused region with the mouse wheel. This simulates the narrow detailed foveal view when zoomed vs the larger less focused foveal view for rapid scanning when zoomed out.

The masses really are starting to think that usability is cool, even Scoble plugged Srcutinizer! Quick buy some shares in user experience!

Scrutinizer is free, so go download it.

[Update] There’s a super handy Top 10 uses for Scrutinizer posted on the site that includes suggestions simulating eye tracking in a usability study, testing findability, assessing the ease of a multi step process and more.

Posted in AIR, AJAX, Business, Flash, Usability - HCI, Web 2.0, design, nitobi, ria | 1 Comment »

December 28th, 2007

Web designers can watch how visitors behave on sites

What are you looking at?

Sometimes, website designers don’t see the flaw of their own creation that deters a site’s visitors. They are so familiar with the site they built that they think everyone will be able to use it as easily as they do. If you want to see how people are really using your web pages, use Robot Replay to watch them interact with your site.

It’s neat to see RobotReplay picked up by some mainstream media…I wonder is that means it has a much broader appeal than we first thought. I do feel like usability and user experience are hitting main stream vogue, but I may be stuck in an echo chamber. Help;-)

Posted in AJAX, Business, Software Development, Usability - HCI, Web 2.0, design, nitobi, ria, robotreplay | No Comments »

December 14th, 2007

Dave Johnson just put up a post titled “Ajax Alive and Kicking” that looks at where Ajax is today and what some of the new innovations in the space are. He identifies the key factors in why Ajax is still continuing to the be successful versus other RIA technologies and in particular Flex.

An additional benefit to Ajax (HTML + JS) is that its interactions are somewhat measurable, which is much more difficult in the Flash world. If you put Google Analytics on your Flash site and you don’t get much, a little bit more now with “Events” in Google Analytics but not much. How meaning is a page in the historical sense in an RIA? Of course this falls down in Ajax sites too, but tools like our RobotReplay are springing up to fill that void already, but I don’t see the same happening for Flash/Flex. Of course we’re looking at it, but it’s definitely a chicken and egg thing. One might choose Ajax over Flex because they can measure interactions and effectiveness of their public facing Ajax more easily, and we chose to build RobotReplay for Ajax first because more people use it. This is a very important decision if ad revenues and/or conversion rates mean anything to your business.

Posted in AJAX, Business, Flash, Flex, Software Development, Technology, Web 2.0, ria, robotreplay | No Comments »