Archive for the ‘Productivity’ Category
A New Way of Working: A Two-Month Recap – 37signals
A New Way of Working: A Two-Month Recap – 37signals.
The above linked article is part two of 37Signals journey down a new product development cycle/process. It is encouraging to see that their radical departure from traditional “waterfall” approaches was so successful. I especially appreciate the fact that they make these processes (whether they succeed or fail) transparent and public. Good stuff and a great approach to product development.
Making Buzz Better
Its been a couple of days now and Buzz is starting to turn into something powerful – more people are using the service and surprisingly, some of the naysayers are converting over to the service as their primary social vehicle. This is interesting on several levels as it shows the power of Google’s reputation as a tools provider and it shows that people are starting to trust the tool after only a few days whereas the adoption of Twitter and other similar products seemed to take longer to gain traction.
But like any 1.0 product, there are some glaring omissions in the toolbox, some of which are cosmetic and will come with time. But a few are so necessary to basic usage that I wanted to point them out here along with my suggestions for fixing the problems. I am posting this to Buzz as well with the hopes that we can get a chain of ideas going to send on to Google. So here goes…
Expanding and Collapsing Comments
Probably one of the first “problems” you will encounter when using Google Buzz is the sheer magnitude of the comment threads. If like me you follow prolific writers/industry pundits, you quickly will become overwhelmed and find yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to get to the bottom of things (literally). This seems like such a glaring omission and something that even Gmail has already. My suggestion is to add an expand and collapse menu choice right on the Comments menu.
Liking a Post
Another weird interface “glitch” is with the “Like” UI element. In addition to this sometimes not being at the top of the thread, there is no way to collapse the Likes once you have “shown” them. There is also no provision to “Unlike” something if you change your mind or clicked Like by accident. I propose the following inline options attached to the Like UI area as follows:
This area should always be at the top of the thread for consistency similar to the way it is handled in FriendFeed and Facebook. And we should not be forced to scroll all the way to the bottom of the thread to like something. I think the current like at the bottom of thread should still be there in case you happen to be at the bottom (to spare you the hassle of scrolling up), but we need one at the top of the thread.
Stacked Thread Handling
The way Google is handling a stacked thread makes no sense and is so unlike Gmail that you might wonder if you are even in Gmail when reading Buzz comments. I am not really sure what causes items to be bunched together like this as expanding them reveals unrelated Buzz comments. Maybe this is just Google’s way of putting a bunch of comments from the same author together when they hit some magic number of posts. Who knows, its a mystery. But regardless of why, the functioning of these “layers” should mimic Gmail’s expand and collapse functionality.
Documentation?
And finally, please please please provide us with some documentation. The little bit that is available is horrible. If you are targeting this service at all Gmail users (I assume you are since you pushed this out to all users and not a subset of industry and developer types), at least give us a glossary of what the interface elements mean. Like the little triangle (that after a few hours you figure out points to the active Buzz you are viewing), or the bar to the left of a Buzz thread’s comments that I still can’t define with any authority. I realize this is a 1.0 release, but we have to assume you did not whip this up on Monday for the Tuesday release, so a little basic documentation would be nice.
I have to admit that initially I was worried about Buzz and how I would use it. So far I have been pleasantly surprised and I am very excited about this product’s future. I spend the majority of my “me time” in Gmail and other Google products like Reader, so this is a nice natural extension to my online activities. And the addition of Buzz to Google Apps will be an exciting development that will allow me to consider recommending Apps with Buzz to my daytime work team.
My next challenge will be determining which service I want to keep and integrate into Buzz and which i will be ditching. I missed being a part of the early days of Twitter as I mistakenly avoided the service thinking it a fad and not very useful. I am glad I have learned the value of social media tools this time around and can be a part of the early adoption phase of Google Buzz. As long as this adoption of Buzz by the people I follow on other services continues, it should be a no-brainer to move to Buzz full time. Goodbye Twitter? Probably not, as Twitter will still have a place for short “broadcast” style messages. And Facebook? That will still be the place for personal friend updates. But I am afraid FriendFeed’s days are numbered for me, as they have been for a few months now as I find I use that service less and less. It’s going to be interesting.
Guy Kawasaki on The Art of the Start
Google Reader Bookmarklet
I have started using Safari 4 for Windows on my Netbook recently after hearing it was faster than Chrome. It’s been a few days and I am slowly sorting through missing features and finding ways to “work around” the few shortcoming I have discovered. One of the biggest and most annoying (to me at any rate) is the built in RSS reader functionality in Safari 4.
Now I understand why Safari was designed to function as a feed reader when clicking the RSS button in the address bar. But this behavior is the opposite of what happens in my other browsers – namely a feed should be detected and I should be given the option of how I wish to subscribe to it. I am a big Google Reader fan. I don’t want to see a feed in a regular browser window. Frankly, its ugly, has limited functionality and defeats the reason for even having the feed in the first place (just my opinion of course). And on pages without a “Subscribe to Feed” button, it’s a real PITA to subscribe in Reader.
After a little bit of research and scrubbing for solutions, I came across a bookmarklet for detecting the feed on the page being viewed and subscribing to that feed in GReader. Of course it was in the last place I looked, right on the Google Reader Blog itself.
It’s very slick and works like it should. I To install it, simply drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark bar (if you are using IE, you’re on your own as they do not support that drag and drop method). The one I chose to use is the simple Subscribe bookmarklet. You can find it and some other goodies at the following Google blog page…
Subscribing to feeds via little Google buttons
Now, when you are visiting a page that contains an RSS feed, just click the bookmarklet and you will be taken to Google Reader and the current feed will be ready for the push of the Subscribe button.
Now if only I could right click a bookmark in a folder to open it in a new tab. I will keep searching for that fix.
Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More – by Dumb Little Man
Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More – by Dumb Little Man.
Another great article over at blog site Dumb Little Man. As the first month of the new year/new decade wanes, its not too late to change behaviors and install some new habits for a better 2010. While some of these tips are a little “out of my realm”, the majority are sensible and a good read.
6 Ways to Start the New Year Doing Instead of Dreaming – by Dumb Little Man
How to Run a Meeting Like Google
Mayer holds an average of 70 meetings a week and serves as the last stop before engineers and project managers get the opportunity to pitch their ideas to Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Eight teams consisting of directors, managers, and engineers—all at various stages of product development—answer to Mayer.In a shop like Google (GOOG), much of the work takes place in meetings, and her goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction, and actionable information, while making participants feel motivated and respected.
Excellent article in BusinessWeek on Google’s meeting process. While a lot of these techniques really work best with large groups, many of the ideas can be “scaled” down to the small business (especially agile ones). I have seen several articles that have talked about the way Google uses a “numbers” approach to make market and product decisions rather than an emotional approach. In fact there was recently a popular article from a Google creative director who left based on this very issue.
While sometimes this has created some sterile products, overall it works well for Google and some of that approach can be applied to most software businesses successfully.
