I just downloaded the wordpress app from the app store onto my iPod touch and thought I’d test it out.

As proof:

All from the comfort of my own bathr… I mean what?

So I will post about being green! Kinda.

About a year and a half ago, my sister and I walked into Watsons because she wanted some lip gloss crap while we were in Taiwan. After she paid, the cashier left the lip gloss on the counter. My sister stood there, a bit confused and stared at the cashier. Likewise, the cashier did the same. For what felt like way too long, the cashier realized that were standing there because we were waiting until she put the lip gloss in a plastic bag.

“We don’t offer plastic bags for free anymore. They now cost [25 cents USD] if you want a bag,” said the cashier.

This was the same throughout much of Taiwan, and I imagine many other places around the world. And I wonder why it isn’t more common. It seems like a perfect solution to be “greener”.

Simply:

• It is better for the consumer, store, environment, THE WORLD because we would all be using fewer bags, fewer plastic. SUPER GREAT FOR THE PLANET
• Better for the store because there’s no need to spend money on buying these plastic bags. I imagine large chains could save millions a year just by doing this.
• Paying for plastic bags I think is enough to make people bring their own bags when grocery shopping. And if priced right, if you just stop into a supermarket and need a plastic bag, it’s not the end of the world

I don’t really see any reason not to start charging for plastic bags. Well, maybe I do. It’d be supremely inconvenient for consumers, but for places like super markets where your purpose of going is to buy groceries, it won’t be hard to bring a couple of canvas bags with you.

Being a click-highlight guy, I was very intrigued when I read about Awesome Highlighter.

Awesome Highlighter is a company that provides a tool that enables you to go to a website and highlight information to save for later or share with your friends.

Here’s what TechCrunch had to say about the site:

Awesome Highlighter have focused on a simple task, and executed on it very well. Some of their competitors have overly complex processes that require a lot more user involvement than a simple and familiar highlighting and note making procedure.

I feel like that statement can be applied to any most genre of websites, and can explain why the successful ones succeed, the other ones go the way of the deadpool. I’ve commented on the success of Muxtape compared to other “mixtape” sites here.

Less is … less (that doesn’t mean bad!)

Creating a simple solution to a problem generally means having less of a feature set than other websites. And contrary to conventional thought, thats a good thing. I feel this is because people like to do what they want to do with the least possible resistance. One example of this happened a couple years ago at Columbia:

CU Community vs. Facebook

A few years ago, there was a website for the Columbia community aptly named CU Community (link to founders site). CU Community was a website that aimed offer a journal feature for blogging, submit news, and allow students to showcase their artwork. You could also request people to be friends to be a part of your network.

Although the CU Community and Facebook weren’t exactly the same type of website (CU Community was more of a mini-Deviant Art for students), I feel like in many of the students eyes, they were in direct competition. It was a way to connect friends on campus.

At the time, Facebook was in its original form; a simple website where you could be connected with friends. Back then, I don’t even think they had the “Wall” application yet.

For a while, the two sites were gaining popularity on campus, but eventually Facebook won out. There are many reasons for this, but one major reason is that Facebook had a clear message of “we are a social network.” Conversely, CU Community was a place where you could upload artwork, you could blog, you could create a social network with friends, but there was no real focus. There were just too many features on the website to focus on just one.

Reading

This idea of doing one thing and doing it well has been around for a long time. The Unix community has long held that ideal. From The Art of Unix Programming:

Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

And more recently, 37signals wrote in their Getting Real book:

The answer is less. Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems…

This isn’t to say that adding features is bad. Of course not. But don’t add features if it doesn’t help solve the problem.

My buddy Jon has been prisoner to iMovie since we got back a week+ ago and has made two video, one from our trip to Taiwan and one from our stint in Hong Kong.

Trip to Taiwan: Healing Island

Trip to Taiwan from Jonathan W on Vimeo.

Hong Kong: Homage to Benny

24 Hours in Hong Kong from Jonathan W on Vimeo.

I love how little design decisions can make a huge difference. The tangible changes may not be big, but the impact is enormous. Here are two examples of good design and bad design:

Evernote Login: Remember Me

I’ve recently been checking out Evernote (watch the video) recently and it seems pretty cool so far. If you want an invite, I have 10 of them :). It’s a pretty handy piece of software to keep track of random crap you encounter.

The login page looks pretty standard, username, password, remember me and submit. The beauty in the design here is subtle, but extremely useful. If you want to click the “Remember Me” button, you don’t have to click the tiny, tiny box. If you click the text, it checks the box too. This essentially quadruples the area that you can click!

It may sound obvious. It’s pretty logical to have the text be clickable, yet so many websites don’t let you do it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to chase down that little checkbox just to select it. Making the text after it clickable is very simple to write in code; there’s really no reason it shouldn’t be clickable.

iPod Touch: Layout

A couple months ago, it was finally time to retire the iPod I had since high school. I had been waiting for a touch screen iPod to finally replace my old one. So far, I’ve been back and forth whether I really like it or not. Overall, though, I’m fairly happy with it. A lot of it has to do with it being gorgeous

One thing that has annoyed the bejeesus out of me is the placement of one of the buttons. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it had more than two buttons. The iPod is shown below:

Now, this is a big problem when I want to do something craaaazy, like … put it in my pocket. The big problem is: which side goes down?

• On/off button - wrong. If it goes down first, it can potentially continually turn on and off whenever I sit down or even when I’m walking. I’m pretty sure there were a couple of times my iPod died much earlier than it should’ve because of this
• Earphone jack - also, wrong. This causes the base of the earphones I use to tear. Exhibit A:
  If they were on the same side, there would be no problem!

you can watch a whole season of “How I Met Your Mother” in one day? Not sure why I know, but It’s true.

For anyone who has known me for more than, I don’t know 10 minutes, would know that I am really lazy. I very much believe in the converse of the physics law “things in motion tend to stay in motion.” ie. if I’m sitting my ass in a chair, pretty be damn good to get me out of it.

However, recently, I’ve been oddly productive. I don’t mean at work either, but like in real life. What I’m referring to is some of the side projects I’ve been working on (exhibit a and exhibit b). Now, here’s a revelation I’ve come upon: It feels good to do stuff.

How does this relate to missed opportunities?

Muxtape.com has been getting some buzz around the net. It’s a pretty cool concept, upload a few songs, and be able to play the songs as well as link it with your friend. Simple problem, simple solution. Not trying too hard at all. It’s one of those ‘Web 2.0 startups’ that are bound to be bought out by a Google or Yahoo-types.

A few years ago, I had started develop this site called “hearphone”. Simple idea: upload a few songs, be able to play it, share the link with friends. Sound familiar?

I think part of the reason why I’m, you know, doing things is that it sucks that you miss an opportunity like this because you’re lazy. If you have a good idea, why not go with it? It sucks to regret not putting in the extra little bit to keep going.

Updated (05/08/2008 @ 9:37 AM): my thoughts about other “Mixtape” websites here.

via my tumblr:

Tie Domi’s total number of penalty minutes in his NHL career according to his wikipedia page, comes out to 3515 minutes. A quick Google of “3515 minutes in days” yields:

“2.44097222 days”

Two and a half days of Tie Domi’s life was spent in the penalty box.

My brother had told me this and I couldn’t believe it!

for my comeback post, i thought i’d post something absolutely necessary (”necessary”)

Have you ever bought something to eat and was excited about eating it? And then when you took your first bite, you thought to yourself, “why…why did i do this?” Well, i just took a bite out of my sandwich, and uhm, why did i do this?