I just did a nice MySQL dump of about 10,000 spam comments, just from the last week here. Hundreds of them are getting through Akismet, and they’re dang smart, too.
So, we’ve axed ‘em. Went in and disabled all comments on all posts. I might have to build in a human check. Or we might leave comments off. We’ve loved interacting with all you people, but comments are a funny thing. I’m not sure any of us will miss them.
“A lot of these guys take themselves a little bit too serious. Let’s see, a teacher, policeman, fireman, doctor, and somebody who’s in the service. I truly believe those are the only five real jobs in the world. Everybody else should just shut up and enjoy life. There’s five legitimate jobs in life.”
Apologies for the crickets around here. Lots going on, and we hope to fill everyone in soon.
In the meantime, we’ve got crazy amounts of really smart comment spam hitting the site. How do you code around this type of spam? I’m not sure a captcha would work. Ideas?
Hoping to write much more about the thousands of decisions that went into this, but for now come see our latest work on beta.lds.org. We’ll be adding features and new pages in big monthly bursts, with a funeral for the current site planned for October(ish)..
“We just shipped it on Saturday. And then we rested on Sunday.”
Product management 101, courtesy of Steve Jobs. In last week’s iPhone Q&A session, he answered whether Apple had “veered away from widgets on the iPad.” Prodded further with “So widgets are possible?”, Steve responded, “Everything is possible.”
“Studies show that commuters are on average much less satisfied with their lives than noncommuters. A commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40% more than his current salary to be as fully satisfied with his life as a noncommuter, say economists…
People usually overestimate the value of the things they’ll obtain by commuting – more money, more material goods, more prestige – and underestimate the benefit of what they are losing: social connections, hobbies, and health.”
Quoted from a Business Week article in The Commuting Paradox on SvN this morning. Matt adds, “Who wouldn’t want a team that’s filled with folks who are less stressed and more satisfied with their lives?”
I posted this in the comments to another post, but wanted to give more of you a sneak peek at our new lds.org work. Keep in mind this is in development, and the Scriptures screen behind there has already changed since yesterday..
For those of you in SLC and not heading to Austin this week, come join us this Thursday at the Stimulate SLC Hack Night. Bring your laptops and sketchbooks and collaborate with a few dozen creative hackers.
Huge disclaimer: Stimulate isn’t affiliated with NT or the LDS Church, but Chris and I organized it.
There’s limited space so get in here. All the info’s at Hulabalub.
John’s two series are simply fantastic: his cosmic knot series has a chaotic beauty and intricacy, each representing a different significance of the knot; his geometry and life series feature geometric symbolism as a reflection of life and beauty.
“When you treat estimates as promises instead of guesses, you bind your worth as a worker to it. If you do not meet your own deadline, you are a failure. And since nobody likes to be a failure, they’ll indulge in risky behavior to avoid it, like burning the midnight oil and checking in bad code with scanty or no tests.”
Somehow this eluded quite a few of us over here, but this weekend is the Altitude Design Summit in Salt Lake City (disclaimer: links to Hulabalub, a site I made). Alt is bringing together a ton of designy bloggers and enthusiasts to talk shop and style. This week, Thursday and Friday, but note that online registration is now closed, with only a handful of walk-up spots available.
Going the hand-drawn route on a blog design can easily end up looking played out and cliche, but IDEO pulls it off admirably and authentically on labs.ideo.com, their collection of tests and prototypes.
Jeffrey Kalmikoff, new design director at digg.com, sounds off on The anatomy of useful feedback, including some excellent suggestions for making design reviews productive:
Knowing there’d be the probability of a high volume of feedback and limited time to respond via both communicatively and creatively, I asked for feedback to come in a particular format to make it as easy as possible for my team to digest.
He also suggests including as many non-designers as possible in your reviews, to spread enthusiasm and gain valuable feedback:
I find collaboration with non-designers to be so important in design. Designers have a tendency to see things thought a different lens than most people, which can be counter-productive when trying to find solutions across all use cases
See his full post for more. Good to see design reviews going well somewhere, and it’s got me thinking of how to make them better over here..
Naz Hamid has a new article on Weightshift called Stuck between an App and a Website, and its a thoughtful look at designing to the project and the humans using it:
Get to know your client well, do the research, do what is right, not what is now and trendy and because Apple/Facebook/xxxxxx does it. Listen, communicate, design well.
It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in a look, a design or an aesthetic. The science fiction of my youth left those impressions but ultimately, it was the human element — the stories that mattered the most, that left the lasting impression. In the end, we’re all trying to make machines more rounded, more curved, more organic, more human.
By the way, I hadn’t seen Naz’s new design but it’s equally impressive:
