Oct
24

Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech’s Hottest Startup

“Dropbox’s ascent has been just as stunning. The 50-million-user figure is up threefold from a year ago, and it has solved the “freemium” riddle, with revenue on track to hit $240 million in 2011 despite the fact that 96% of those users pay nothing. With only 70 staffers, mostly engineers, Dropbox grosses nearly three times more per employee than even the darling of business models, Google. Houston claims it’s already profitable but won’t reveal margins.”

— [Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech’s Hottest Startup - Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/)

(via futuristgerd)

Source forbes.com

Reblogged from futuristgerd

Sep
27

To get a sense of how much of an outlier Tumblr is when it comes to pageviews, let’s take a deeper look at the comScore numbers. (ComScore’s estimates are lower than Quantcast’s, but show the same general trends). In August, Tumblr entered the top 100 sites comScore tracks (at No. 99) with an estimated 41 million unique visitors. But it’s estimated 6.5 billion pageviews a month places it at No. 21 among all sites ranked by that metric. By comparison, the Wikimedia Foundation sites (which includes Wikipedia.org) get 423 million unique visitors a month who generate 5.6 billion pageviews. Tumblr is also bigger than Twitter.com in pageviews (but not in unique visitors), and is about half the size of AOL and Craigslist. Below is a snapshot of where Tumblr ranks in Pageviews compared to other select sites in the ComScore Top 100.

To get a sense of how much of an outlier Tumblr is when it comes to pageviews, let’s take a deeper look at the comScore numbers. (ComScore’s estimates are lower than Quantcast’s, but show the same general trends). In August, Tumblr entered the top 100 sites comScore tracks (at No. 99) with an estimated 41 million unique visitors. But it’s estimated 6.5 billion pageviews a month places it at No. 21 among all sites ranked by that metric. By comparison, the Wikimedia Foundation sites (which includes Wikipedia.org) get 423 million unique visitors a month who generate 5.6 billion pageviews.

Tumblr is also bigger than Twitter.com in pageviews (but not in unique visitors), and is about half the size of AOL and Craigslist. Below is a snapshot of where Tumblr ranks in Pageviews compared to other select sites in the ComScore Top 100.

Source futurejournalismproject

Reblogged from futurejournalismproject

Sep
22

Sep
21

Labeling the Back button

Most “deep” apps require some amount of navigation, moving the user deeper into child views and then back out to the parent view. That navigational backtracking is typically done with a “Back” button, positioned in the top-left corner, and denoted by a pointed left side. You’ve all seen it:

The title of the entire bar is the title of this view; the Back button shows the previous, parent view’s title. Here, then, is a piece of advice for app designers: The Back button should never show the text “Back”. 

This is a widespread issue, present in many extremely popular apps.

This is redundant and it provides no context. Note that Apple never does this, not in any app. Instead, they provide either the full title of the previous view, or an abbreviated/truncated version of it.

Consider the iOS Calendar app:

Apple put three legible, helpful data points into one button. This is the standard to aspire to.

If the previous view is “yours”, as in, titled and populated by you, the developer, you should always have at least a short name for it. (A related point: if you find yourself titling that view Home or Main or Start, you should rethink the app’s navigation completely.) If the view contains user-generated or otherwise unpredictable data, you should specify a reasonable maximum length for the user-generated label, truncating when necessary. As for localization, you’ve presumably already localized that previous view’s title, right?

There’s one more case where even abbreviating or truncating won’t do: a view with an unpredictable, but predictably long title. Apple was faced with this in their Music app (ex “iPod” app). Their solution was to provide a nice, big arrow glyph:

This button provides no context, but it doesn’t have to; the context is already displayed in the toolbar, right next to it. The glyph is small, easy to read, and it requires no localization. If you’re in a similar situation, use this glyph. But, don’t rush to conclude that this is the situation you’re in. Explore the above options first.

Here, then, are your options for Back-button labeling, from the most desirable to the least desirable:

A Back button labeled “Back” is never a good option.

Source mrgan

Reblogged from mrgan

Sep
20

Kickstarter Tuesday!: Chalk Party

As part of our ongoing Kickstarter Tuesday project, we are really excited to share this creative collaborative user art project with everyone. It has all of the makings of a massive hit, but its on the brink of failure. What does Chalk Party need?!?  YOU!

Well you ask, what is this Chalk Party?

A Chalk Party is what happens when billions of internet-connected people can draw together in the most massively collaborative ongoing art project that we can think of. As you contribute, you unlock the opportunity to draw with Chalk Party’s best Partiers.

We really love this project. Collaborative drawing rewarding artist and punishing party-poopers. While semi-harsh, this is a necessary filter, because the internet collective loves to mess good things up. On our wishlist, we would really want to view into upper level parties, because drawing with a mouse has never been a strong suit of mine.

Chalk Party really needs your help and all you need to do is donate. Lets all work together, so we can party together.

Define Idea Rating: 8 pieces of chalk out of 10


stats:

Backers: 48
Goal: $1,992
Amount Pledged (at time of post): $18,000
Days to go (at time of post): 15


Links:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1759252318/chalk-party-the-world-drawing-together

http://twitter.com/#!/chalkparty

Source kickstarter.com

We first introduced you to Podio in September last year, when we described it as “A game-changing virtual office that forms to your needs.” More recently, the company added Web-based forms that users can set up to feed data into their self-created apps. While Denmark and San Francisco-based Podio operates in a highly competitive market, with rivals such as Yammer, Socialcast and Convofy, its ‘apps’ concept certainly offers something a little different. (via Podio brings its ‘build enterprise apps’ platform to the iPhone)

We first introduced you to Podio in September last year, when we described it as “A game-changing virtual office that forms to your needs.” More recently, the company added Web-based forms that users can set up to feed data into their self-created apps. While Denmark and San Francisco-based Podio operates in a highly competitive market, with rivals such as Yammer, Socialcast and Convofy, its ‘apps’ concept certainly offers something a little different. (via Podio brings its ‘build enterprise apps’ platform to the iPhone)

(via thenextweb)

Source thenextweb.com

Reblogged from thenextweb

Sep
13

Kickstarter Tuesday!: ZOMBIES, RUN!

With me, working out is 100% motivation. Sometimes its hard to get off the couch and do something good for myself. I would much rather lie around and watch a good zombie movie. If there was a way to mimic the feelings of panic from heart-pounding zombie flicks in real life, would you be game?

Enter Zombie, Run!

You tie your shoes, put on your headphones, take your first few steps outside. You’ve barely covered a hundred yards when you hear them. They must be close. 

You can hear every gutteral breath, every rattling groan - they’re everywhere. Zombies. There’s only one thing you can do: Run!

Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive game for the iPhone and iPod Touch where you help rebuild civilisation after a zombie apocalypse. By going out and running in the real world, you can collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts that you can use to build up and expand your base - all while getting orders, clues, and story through your headphones.

It doesn’t matter where you run.
It doesn’t matter how fast you run.
It doesn’t matter how far you run.

Just run.

The thing I like most about this project, is also the thing that could ruin it… The story. While fully aware of the over 30 missions that last 20-30 minutes, its hard to believe that all 30 will be unique. If any of them are even close to the same it would be hard to hold an attention like mine. Also, its only a little more than a months worth of missions if you take a few days off (I do New Years resolutions longer than that). 

That being said I think this app has loads of potential. Promises of special well-known voice actors upon better than successful funding adds motivation to donate.  

Updating stats as your run, sound effects, and motivation from people at your “base” add depth that really will keep you running for you life.


Define Idea Rating: 7 brains out 10


stats:

Backers: 187
Goal: $12,500
Amount Pledged (at time of post): $5,434
Days to go (at time of post): 27


Links:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sixtostart/zombies-run-a-running-game-and-audio-adventure-for?ref=recommended

http://www.zombiesrungame.com/

http://twitter.com/#!/zombiesrungame

Source kickstarter.com