January 19th, 2010
Allowing multiple, simultaneous downloads
In building DubFiler, I had to learn all about downloads and browser behavior. Browsers usually only allow two downloads from a server at once. Which meant if I started downloading a file while another was downloading or “streaming” (being downloaded by the Flash audio player), the page would hang. Not a great user experience.
After some digging around the web, I found the solution. Browsers consider subdomains (anything.dubfiler.com) another domain, so you get two more simultaneous downloads. People use this for faster image downloads, but it works great when yre downloading other files, too.
So I just created subdomains pointing to the same domain – images.dubfiler.com just points to dubfiler.com. There was no noticable server hit, and browsers will download more files simultaneously. Hope this helps.
Tags: browser hangs, file downloading, simultaneous downloads, subdomains
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January 11th, 2010
Can Balsamiq’s Mockups work for an enterprise site?
For the last few months I had the opportunity to use Balsamiq’s Mockups on a really big client. I had to create wireframes for about 80 web pages. At the high point, I had open more than 40 wireframes. Here’s how it held up.
Mockups is an Adobe Air app, which can be buggy, but I find Mockups to be fairly stable in Windows XP. It got a little slow, but performed well.
I love that Mockups assumes you will be working with lots of files, with options like “Close all” and “Export all”. What a time saver!
My only complaint is there is no functionality for includes. Since this was a web site, every wireframe had one of two headers (“logged in” and “logged out”). I created groups for headers so it was one copy and paste, but that’s one per file. I would I love to have been able to update a two files and have all my wireframes change.
So over all, it was great. Performance was fine and it made my life easier. Don’t think you need an “established” product for doing lots of wireframes. Balsamiq continues to rock my world.
Tags: balsamiq, big project, enterprise, large site, mockups, wireframes
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August 10th, 2009
Tr.im closing, and thoughts on monetizing on the web
If you haven’t heard, the URL shortening service Tr.im is closing down. It’s a shame because it was my favorites, and I wasn’t alone. In a busy space, the tr.im product wasn’t particularly unique, but it was easy, clean and offered a couple features that no else did. And it was free.
But all of the url shortening services are free. Some have freemuim models, some, like tr.im, are meant to drive traffic to the company’s other products. Free is a big topic of discussion right now, and a lot of people building web apps struggle with it. What do we give away, and what do we charge for? What will people pay for? How do we make money off of free? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: chris anderson, free web sites, monetizing, saas, tr.im, url shortening, web apps
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July 15th, 2009
You Don’t Know What you Don’t Know
This keeps coming up lately and I think it’s an interesting concept. Making informed decisions implies yre informed. When trying to solve a problem, I have to understand the problem, the possible solutions, and also usually the context in which the problem sits. That’s a lot of learning, but it can be done most of the time. If I’m laying out a web site and I want to separate two areas with a line, I dig around the web and decide to use <hr>’s. There’s my problem and my solution. By styling <hr> tags is inconsistent, so when I move onto the CSS, I need the larger context of the browsers and maybe some knowledge about SEO. Now what I need to know is much larger and more vague.
The wildcard that makes this scenario really hard is other people. In the above example it’s just me against the web. The more common scenario is when a boss or client hands you a project. They have expectations, and that’s a scary word. They may do a great job laying out the requirements (a.k.a. the problem) and your knowledge and experience may perfectly fit (a.k.a. the solution), but, man, if they leave out one little thing, or you happen to be checking Twitter when they explain one small detail, it can be disaster.
Here’s my short list that I use when taking on someone else’s problem: Pay attention. Ask lots of questions. Ask them again. Take notes. Do planning, wire-framing and iterations. And over communicate while yre working. At times it feels unprofessional, but better safe than sorry.
Tags: expectations, knowledge, project management
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May 22nd, 2009
I’m… so… alone…
I’m currently on a Bob Walsh kick. Between the Micro-ISV book and his marketing e-book, I’m going to master everything micro-ISV and take over the world. Anyway, a question I’ve been pondering lately is about running DubFiler and whether it’s wise to try to run it all alone. (Can you take over the world by yourself?) Since I’m looking to Bob for all the answers right now, I thought I’d send him an email. His answer is the resulting blog post on his blog.
To Partner or not to Partner, that is the question.
This is one of those questions that feels huge when I think about it, but then I stop thinking about it. What I mean is that the amount of attention it’s paid in writing makes it feel big. The reason I asked is because in most books they tell you in bold letters, “Don’t go it alone!” But it still doesn’t feel right to me. I do most things on my own. So when I stop thinking about the question, things feel right again and I go on my merry way.
Once again there’s no clear answers.
Dammit.
I’m looking forward to his subsequent posts about finding the right person. Perhaps understanding the ying to my yang will make me search for someone to spoon with, business-wise.
Tags: Bob Walsh, collaboration, parters, sole proprietor
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April 27th, 2009
Please stop saying “Let’s go ahead and…”
If you haven’t seen the movie Office Space, shame on you. It’s a hilarious movie making fun of the cubicle office experience. One of the bosses is a great spoof on corporate speak, and often says, “Why don’t you go ahead and…” and “Let’s have you go ahead and…” in this beautifully passive-aggressive way. “Corey, please do this” is telling me to do something. “Why don’t you go ahead and do this” implies that I came up with the idea and yre giving me permission. In Office Space, it’s great.
In product demos, it’s not. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: being direct, passive aggressive, voice, web demos
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March 30th, 2009
My Experience with Outsourcing
I’m usually a one-stop shop for anything web or design related. If I don’t know it, I’ll often take the time to learn it… or I just won’t take the job. But you can’t do that when you are yr own client. In building DubFiler, I hit a couple roadblocks and either couldn’t learn the stuff myself, or didn’t want to take the time.
Flash is one of the few ways to get a progress bar when uploading a file. There are Javascript methods, but I didn’t want to get into it. So I fiddled around with Flash for a bit and then decided I’d rather have someone else build it.
DubFiler uses the Zend Framework. I was taught to use it but never to optimize it. Once I’d build the core site functionality, I wanted another pair of eyes (ideally those of an expert) to to tighten things up and implement caching, plugins and abstraction to make it run faster.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: elance, freelancing, guru.com, hiring, outsourcing
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March 17th, 2009
Presenting DubFiler next Tuesday
I will be talking about DubFiler at the NYC Music Technology meetup next Tuesday. I’m really looking forward to it. It should’ve occurred to me sooner that there would be a meet-up for tech and music. So this will be my first to attend, and I’ll be presenting! If yre interested in music and tech, come out! Come say hello.
Tuesday Mar 24th 7-9pm
NYC Music Technology meetup
at Think Coffee
248 Mercer
between 3rd & 4th street
New York, NY 10012
Tags: dubfiler, NYC Music Technology meetup, pitch, presentation, talk
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