You should really smile more. Please do.

I would have to say one of the most amazing things in the world is a smile. A smile can change any situation from whatever it is, to amazing. I don’t get why people don’t smile more.

Me my self I’ve had days that were going bad and just having people smile at me completely changed them for the better.

I find when I smile people are much more open with me. If I walk down the street smiling people will smile back, wave hello, ask how its going, etc. When I don’t smile while strolling people hardly look, bump into me, etc etc

You can make the world a better place just by smiling so please do so. Do it today. Do it now. Do it peroid. Its priceless. Oh its so priceless I’m serious.

Also it makes you much more attractive. 

6. Things I learned about creating web applications from a crack dealer.

The other day I was thinking back to what I would remember about certain people. What lessons I had learned from the mistakes of others. What I had taken from experiences of them. I once knew a drug dealer. Most people would write him off as the scum of society and the root of most social problems (“The reason my child turned into a crackhead”). I am not saying I agree with what he did but rather what I gathered from it.

When Micheal Ironside got both his arms ripped off in Total Recall it was funny. In Underseige when Steven Segal stabs Tommy Lee Jones in the head and shoves his face into some kind of computer console it was funny. Its funny that this drug dealer can run around the city out of control with a .357 (like a cowboy) selling drugs with impunity, driving luxury cars and having sex with attractive women at will.

So this is what I took (aside from the fact that everything he does do is illegal. Take it with a grain of salt):

1. Superior Product Quality
The quality of this guy’s product was the best in an entire region of the city. If you wanted the best you would get his product. This is why my friend didn’t need any SEO stuff, adwords, backlinks, etc in order to sell a massive amount of drugs. He didn’t make a habit of diluting. Users recognize this. Even users who have no idea about what goes into a web app. All those extra buttons, random flash animations, music playing, etc. is just the annoying afterbirth of a crappy application. (Do you honestly think a Jonathan Ive’s designed case with 320×480 px, 3.5 in, color LCD, etc. (that tells you all this extra information like the temperature inside) is going to make the quality of your cocaine better?). Pure design. PURE.

^ Thats how you’re going to make the next best web application. You will do this by creating a superior product.

2. There are no short cuts
Product doesn’t sell by its self. This guy had to work hard. 7 days a week. This guy wasn’t the smartest person in the universe. Because he worked, and worked, and worked, constantly improving, he didn’t have to be. The smarter guy was probably at home thinking of better and faster ways to sell instead of actually selling. He learned about his business from being in it and not from simply sitting at home and reading about it (you know he didn’t read but watching Scarface over and over again counts as reading). Moving and shaking! Thats what he did. People couldn’t compete because they were not willing to work as hard.

^ Thats how you’re going to make the next best web application.. You will do this by putting in more work than the competition.


3. Information is next to IDKFA, IDDQD, etc (EVEN -MLI- ())
This guy knew everything. He had people feeding him information from everywhere. I think his mental facebook has like 10,000 people in it, all mashed up with google maps. Even better was how fast he got breaking news from the area. Better than his information was the way he used it. He knew the prices of everyone in the area. He knew everything about his competitors from where they ate to where they slept. Shootings, Drug busts, etc. He could take advantage of almost right away.

^ Thats how you’re going to make the next best web application. You will do this by acting on useful information instead of sleeping on it.

4. Word of mouth advertising.
The best kind of advertising. This guy’s business wasn’t exactly legal. Any other kind of advertising would be a little ignorant. But then again hearing things from the horse’s mouth sure beats reading about them in e-mails, blog spam on digg, banner ads, etc. People who get hooked on this guy’s product swear to god its the best thing they’ve ever touched. The testimonials they give are like an apple fanboy telling you about an iPhone literally on crack times ten. Some of then can even show you needle marks to prove it and they’ll preform sexual favors on you to get ‘a page view’ of it.

There is no real point here. I just wanted to use the words and phrases: advertising, legal, ignorant, ‘blog spam on digg’, testimonials, ‘apple fanboy’, ‘on crack times ten’, ‘sexual favors’, and ‘a page view’ in a single paragraph.

5. Providing a single QUALITY service.
This guy provides a service and he provides it well. His business is moving product. Thats what he does. Thats his aim. Thats his focus. Do you know how hard it would be to 100% focused on selling drugs but also had a hand in loan sharking, gun running, the numbers, etc? He does something and he does it well. His business isn’t a mashup of all the popular web 2.0 services with no clear use. OMG YOU CAN BUY CRACK WITH PICTURES OF FLICKR GEOTAGED AND MASHED WITH GOOLE MAPS THAT WILL AUTOMATICLY UPDATE YOUR TWITTER WITH THE STATUS OF “BUYING CRACK!” THAT WILL SHOW UP ON YOUR BLOG VIA RSS FILTERED FEEDS VIA YAHOO PIPES WITH A BUTTON ON THE BOTTOM TO ADD TO DELICIOUS OR SUBMIT TO DIGG THAT HAS A FULLY XHTML COMPLIANT LAYOUT WITH CSS HACKS FOR IE THAT YOU CAN UPDATE FROM YOUR IPHONE. Like seriously.

^ Thats how you’re going to make the next best web application. You will do this by creating a QUALITY product with a CLEAR and SINGLE focus instead of making something that does everything.

(Yes I compared mashing up flickr, google maps, yahoo pipes, delicious, digg, xhtml, css, to drug dealing, running a numbers racket, bootlegging, extortion, gun running, securities fraud, etc…)

6. Patients + persistence.
This guy started small. In high-school maybe? A person at a time is how he built his user database. Slowly but surely things came to fruition. He didn’t rush to get as many customers as possible. There were times where he got chased by police and had to hide for hours on end. There were times where he did time in jail for drug related charges (He sold drugs in jail too. I drool at a t-1000 business model that can just morph and work under any circumstanc He was so passionate about what he does I think the only thing that will stop him is death. I know quite a few passionate people but I think very few of them are willing to go through the horrors of things like the prison system, gun drama, getting chased by police, etc. Because of their job. You cannot convince this guy other wise. No amount of discouragement will phase him. And he can wait.

^ Thats how you’re going to make the next best web application. You will be very patient. You won’t give up either.

Minimizing designs and layouts

How important is navigation?  Do I really need these over the top visual effects? How much information is actually useful to the user?

I asked my self a few of these questions the other day in regards to a site I was working on. The orginal design was really nice visually and quite useable. But is that good enough? Nooooooooo. I printed the design out on a piece of paper and like went over ‘the most profitable departments’ and the ‘least profitable departments’ and made my adjustments.

 Usability was my goal. I looked over the design and circled the 100% mission critical parts of the layout. This was my new design. Just the important parts. The parts that the user ‘might use’ but doesn’t need to use had no place in this design. To makeup for all the stuff I removed I just made all the typography very sexy. Spacing between the elements was also key.

 The new design isn’t as ‘flashy’ as the old design. It doesn’t have to be because its ‘classy’. Its a lot more usable and leaves no room for confusion.

Ice cream time.