In the whitewashed Spanish village of Alozaina, about 40 minutes from Marbella, is a very special center, called Casa de Pepe Bravo. The center takes in the socially unfortunate, helps them, and teaches them the crafts and skills needed to work productively. If you live in the area, it’s a place you must visit!
04
Jan 12
Jan 12
My new social media diet
1996. I remember it clearly. Recently graduated, I was working as an engineer at the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany. A rebellious type, I’d decided that either they let me keep my Mac, or I’d go work somewhere else. They let me keep it.
I’d heard about the internet, and supposedly we had it, but via an email gateway called Bitnet. To “FTP” something, we’d send an email, and get back several encoded file chunks, requiring a terminal emulation program to download for offline reassembling.
Curious one day, I downloaded, assembled and launched John Norstad’s usenet reader. I’ll never forget that day; the moment I realized I had graphical access to the internet, and a door opened to a brand new world.
01
Jan 12
Jan 12
An interview with Notational Velocity developer Zachary Schneirov
For the past few years, one of the most frequently used applications on my Mac has been Notational Velocity. It’s a note-taking application, with a unique and efficient unified mechanism for both searching notes and creating new ones. Although I usually end up editing those notes in other applications (like iA Writer), they are always created and managed in Notational Velocity.
I’ve never known who’s behind the app until today, having stumbled across a great interview with its author, Zachary Schneirov.
Having read the interview, the following thoughts came to mind:
Schneirov is one of those super-talented individuals hidden away, working in obscurity and under the radar of mainstream social media. (In @makalu, we often talk about how that’s where most of the people we’d want working with us are located, and how hard it is to discover them!)
I really admire and envy his ability to apply such discipline to making decisions. Whether it’s taking donations, or adding a new feature, the interview gives an insight into how carefully he weights the consequences. You can tell he’s a man who says “No” far more often than “Yes”.
That the application is so fast, efficient, elegant and solid can almost go unnoticed; the ironic and unfortunate fate of great design and engineering effort. The interview illustrates just how great the design and engineering is behind this product! (And, it makes me want to rush out to pick-up Jeff Raskin’s, “Humane Interfaces” book…)
Apple’s development environment provides a lot of great frameworks. But the general purpose nature of those frameworks will mean they are sub-optimal for a lot of specific application contexts. To make the best application possible, an engineer needs to deeply understand both the framework, and the problem he’s solving, in order to know when it’d be better to roll his own solution. In the article, Schneirov discusses some of the interesting areas in which he decided not to use Apple’s solutions.
Grab a coffee, and spend some quality time reading the full interview.
27
Dec 11
Dec 11
Teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
I’ve been training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — a relatively young martial art that focuses on ground fighting — for just over a decade. Through my progression from white to black belt, I’ve been privileged to have trained under some of the world’s best instructors — beginning with Fabricio Pereira (under Alvaro Mansor), Paul Creighton (under Renzo Gracie), and the majority of my instruction with Edson Jorge and Thelmo Calmon (both under Vinicius “Draculino” Magalhães).
In competition, I’ve managed to achieve some good results, including three gold medals at the European Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championships, and I think that’s a direct reflection of the quality of these instructors.
About a month ago, an opportunity presented itself to assume the leadership of our local academy — Draculino Team Marbella — here in Marbella, Spain. I was sad to see our previous instructor return to Brazil, but at the same time, excited at the chance to try out some ideas that’d been brewing in my mind for some time.
09
Dec 11
Dec 11
Compromise in Design
My friend Andy Rutledge asked yesterday whether there is place for compromise in the design profession. There are probably multiple interpretations of what’s meant by “compromise”, but in terms of design itself, I would argue that no design solution can exist without compromise.
08
Dec 11
Dec 11
The Making of the Catalog Choice iPhone App
IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that an opportunity presents itself to develop a product for an audience of 1.5 million people. That’s exactly what happened recently at Makalu, as we were engaged to develop the iPhone component of Catalog Choice’s new suite of premium services.
And we can’t wait to tell you about it!
04
Dec 11
Dec 11
A paragon of design and user experience — the Spanish parking meter
In the mainstream, we commonly admire the design works of luminaries such as Apple, IDEO, Frog Design and, well, why not — Makalu Interactive. But there are others out there, designers flying way below the radar, who equally deserve our admiration and respect — including the gifted ones (elegantly named, “Grupo Setex”) who designed the Spanish Parking Meter.
Pour a cognac, put on some Vivaldi, and spend some quality time soaking in the inspiration:
24
Nov 11
Nov 11
Are philosophy and religion dead?
The history of both science and philosophy is one in which man observes things (or studies the observations of others), and attempts to construct models for understanding those observations. Those models are borne in the thought processes of humans, and thereby limited to the realm of human experience.
Quantum physics, on the other hand, is a different story.
24
Nov 11
Nov 11
User experience and the changing room
Alex and I were discussing over coffee at the office this morning the amazing job Apple did in their retail experience, and were imagining the areas in which clothing retailers could improve their shopping experience. One glaring example in which some attention is badly needed is the changing room.
The changing rooms in many retail outlets are surprisingly overlooked, when you consider they’re often the place at which a consumer makes the final purchase decision.
Many retailers start off the experience by suggesting you’re an unwanted thief. You have to ask for a key, because all the doors are locked. And don’t think about taking in more than three garments at a time.
Some have curtains, rather than doors, which can leave the timid a bit too focused on preventing the world from getting a sneak peek at their backsides. The good places have solid doors, that make a comforting clunk when closing.
Often, changing rooms provide nowhere to place the clothes you’re taking off. Who wants to drop their clothes in a big clump on the floor? The good places provide hangars, a bench or a shelf. (And this concept can be extended to other consumer needs we can anticipate — like what to do with the 22 pins evidently required to hold a folded shirt in place.)
And last, but definitely not least, there’s the lighting. How do they get such an obvious thing so wrong? We’ve all been there, getting half-naked in a changing room lit by cheap florescent bulbs, casting their light down at just such an unflattering angle that one glimpse in the mirror provokes a quick decision that the more prudent purchase would be a gym membership.
23
Nov 11
Nov 11
How to schedule focus
For nearly a decade, we at Makalu have worked to consistently deliver real, objective value to our customers, and by external measures we’ve been successful. We built a website for Catalog Choice that registered a million users in its first year. We built a game for Google and Virgin America that Ogilvy & Mather pointed to as a reference for modern-day marketing. And we’ve increased signed up conversion, customer retention, and ultimately the bottom line for many more.
We seem to have done well, which is great, except for one thing — we’ve never been able to shake a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction. Although we’re doing good work by external standards, we know deep down that we’re not doing our best work, by our own standards.
Is it something we should just accept, or should we do something about it? In case others in our industry might share in this internal tension, I decided to put our thoughts into an article to share.
13
Nov 11
Nov 11
Cycling — Yunquera to Ronda
Today, on a beautiful November Sunday morning, we packed up the car and headed out to the town of Yunquera, Spain, about an hour’s drive from Marbella. While the wife and kids did a hike in the Sierra de las Nieves, I took the opportunity to do some road cycling — from Yunquera to Ronda, and back.
The route — which is spectacularly beautiful (and, really, what isn’t around Andalucia?) — leaves Yunquera, almost at the altitude of the Puerto de las Abejas (820m), and then dives right down to the town of El Burgo.
11
Nov 11
Nov 11
Google vs Facebook advertising — Our experience with RaceSplitter
At Makalu Interactive we ran both Google and Facebook ads for our RaceSplitter product, for about six months. After seeing the relative performance, we dropped Facebook.
07
Nov 11
Nov 11
My system for Getting Things Done
Back in 2004, I wrote a popular article describing my system for “Getting Things Done”. Since then, tools have changed and my needs have changed, and so it was about time for an update.
Today’s system is simpler; it’s based on two tools — OmniFocus, and TaskPaper. Here’s how it works.
17
Oct 11
Oct 11
Cycling through the chestnut valley
It’s October, and that means it’s the season for the chestnut harvest in the nearby Valle del Genal.
We left Marbella this morning around 10am, heading up the Carretera de Ronda where we stopped (as usual) at the Venta Navisillo for a late-morning breakfast. It was an absolutely beautiful morning — cool, crisp, sunny and blue. Perfect for a bike ride.
