“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”

Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1846-1912)

- via DaringFireball

We sometimes forget how powerful our little Macs our – forget about the Terminal command, but simply through the power of Automator.  I needed to convert 237 images from PDFs to JPEGs for web use and amazingly Photoshop & sister app Bridge (both CS3) were completely unhelpful.  No combination of batch actions, droplets, image processor routines, etc. were good or smart at opening the PDFs at a pre-specified resolution and saving as a JPEG, thereafter.

I came up with an Automator routine, which did all of this and worked in under a minute, so I’m posting it as a screenshot here as a guide for others that may find themselves in similar situations.  It’s useful to note that after running any rendering change to passed files in Automator, the files are sometimes saved to the/tmp/ directory and not the passed folder, so you need to specify a Copy Finder Items steps and an output folder.

From Ira Glass . . .

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through”

Thanks to John McWade at Before & After

It’s a total confidence booster when a client tells you they love you enough that they want to come back for more work on their site.  Even moreso, when they have minor requests and give you carte-blanche to improve the issues that have cropped up since the site went live and they have used it fulltime.  With that, Cheryl Wills wanted to update the site for her book as she is gearing up with more and more press, and an increasing number of traffic spikes. Continue reading “Updated Work: WillsCivilWarHistory.com” »

I couldn’t help but smile when I reread this old post on the blog, which linked to a 37signals whitepaper/report on finding the epicenter of a design and using good design patterns in your interface.

Links:

• http://www.secretweaponlabs.com/2006/08/an-introduction-to-using-patterns-in-design/
• http://37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns//index

PS: I also kinda love how the 37signals site still has old links around that haven’t gone the way of the dodo

A close friend recently helped launch Maravilla Coffee, which turns your idle cup of joe into a workhorse that truly improves community health in some of the most impoverished and vulnerable areas in Latin America.

Your purchase of a 12oz. bag of beans supports 200 community health workers and gives 5 microloans to some of the workers to push the boundaries of what can be achieved in Nicaragua and setting a new standard within the Ministry of Health.

I don’t receive a kickback from this and haven’t tasted the coffee yet (though I am looking at the bag right now and plan on making a cup very soon) but think this is a wonderful opportunity to do something special with very little effort – what a way to start the new year!

I’m looking for a whippersnapper sales and business development lead for InBloom Shop Software.  InBloom is a great and growing FileMaker-based product geared towards businesses that run on consignment: resale shops, art galleries, auction dropoff stores, antique stores, etc.  It’s primarily for Mac, but also runs Windows beautifully.

The software reach is growing (organically, using only SEO) and I’m looking to grow it even moreso. iPhone and iPad development is happening with all sorts of cross-sell opportunities and there are many marketing ideas.

Experience with retail, retail accounting, and consignment businesses is a big plus as is the ability to focus on growth internationally (the software has already sold from Hong Kong, to London, to South Africa).

New York City proximity is preferred but not necessary. Send relevant work samples, and anything else that will make you stand out, to denis[at]secretweaponlabs.com

It doesn’t matter where you went to school, or if you even graduated. It doesn’t matter if this is your first job or your fifth. Doing great work and being driven to improve yourself and everything you touch is what matters.

Amazingly, I can’t seem to really find useful results (after some quick preliminary research) on the best practices when implementing tooltips. While I’m focusing this query more on their behavior in FileMaker, the web, the myriad of accessibility guidelines, and the evolution tooltips have undergone with jQuery/MooTools/whatever-JS-library-you-can-think-of would raise the importance of this question.

So I’ll ask you, what do you consider the best practices when implementing/using tooltips?

Are they major data vehicles?

I implemented the following test in FileMaker just to get a sense of the usability: 3 buttons, 3 different tooltips of varying length and clarity.  Which is the most helpful?

Here are some thoughts on this process:

1. Given a user is only spending a fraction of a moment hovering above the button, is it disconcerting to see the tooltip?
2. Is it more disconcerting with a longer tooltip?  End users don’t read after all, the scan.
3. How useful is the tooltip in the end if it simply reiterates what the button says in the first place?  The web version of jQuery tooltips may offer some help here (as these forms of tooltips are usually more verbose)
4. Should  the tooltip text end with a period?

Apple’s HIG offer’s no major guidance here.

Having eaten octopus and followed them while snorkeling, I had no idea that such an amazing creature existed.

My friend Jen Spencer who is an astounding personal and professional life coach, but by her terms “wing woman” (who also organized this little event called TED Austin) recently sent a small thank you note for a charitable gift we sent.  I was touched by the handwritten response (an increasing rarity these days) and loved her professional gift of a small field notes notebook.  I had gotten some as swag at some point but this one was a little different as she had seen the beauty of what SWL is about and honorably used that as part of her business – indeed, this one was emblazoned with “BE THE SECRET WEAPON”!

I’m all about being your secret weapon, but if you’re looking for more fulfillment and direction in what you’re doing, Jen is your secret weapon.  I highly recommend her insights and enthusiasm.  www.JenSpencerCoaches.com Nuff said…

Oh and btw, she actually tweets useful info