bryne

I'll bite - no _good_ parent.

The Icon Factory does (highly acclaimed and visible) work. The new icon is about a million times more polished than any of those options, in my opinion.

I think they answered your question pretty thoroughly and promptly, despite your intense neckbearding.

Certainly more thoroughly than the Path guys.

Do you really still think Google has any say in the whole carrier upgrade thing?

That's part of the point. Zynga is disrupting the risky, hits-based game industry by attempting to remove as much risk as possible from the equation, and this extends down to (game) design by data.

GitHub's OS X client also works with non-GitHub-hosted repos.

This exact scenario happened to me a few years back. I had just jumped onto a team in the middle of an enormous shift in product and put the nagging, on-and-off pain on the back burner with some aspirin and made a dentist's appointment a few days out.

After I woke up on Wednesday with the worst headache of my life looking just like that first photo, I went to my oral surgeon, who sent me in for emergency surgery immediately. I spent a night in the ICU and three days recovering. He explained that I had developed a serious abscess that had spilled into my palate and threatened to close my windpipe completely, and that if I hadn't come in I probably wouldn't have made it to the weekend.

It was an extremely sobering look at my priorities and good luck. I was young, and health insurance hadn't been a priority - had I been bootstrapping or freelancing instead of a part of a team with the good sense to get a group health insurance policy, I might have dug myself into about $40,000 in debt, or worse - hesitated to go to the doctor's for even longer.

Don't fuck around with your health. I dodged a bullet. It's tempting to push these responsibilities off like any other, but like other commentors said, it runs directly contrary to your duty to be healthy and present for your team. Dead entrepreneurs make no products.

More anecdotal commentary: I have an iPad 2. It's jailbroken. I haven't rebooted it since the jailbreak, which is probably going on several months now.

Given iOS's stability (even while jailbroken), the tethering is an annoyance, but certainly not a dealbreaker.

I was on the fence until the bit about automatic spritesheeting via Compass. This is awesome.

Holy crap, The Cheesecake Factory's website is a 1996-era graphic adventure game!

Nitpicking the infographic: Canvas should be listed as "partially supported" at best on those iOS devices, as it won't get hardware support until v5.

Interesting mix of data. Wonder why Android wasn't listed? The list of Android devices that even partially support flash in this time snapshot is a sliver at best as well.

"Did everyone really forget that Duke Nukem c1996 was also 'barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive?'"

https://twitter.com/#!/ibogost/status/80475033998327808

Today I learned there are people who consider themselves serious users of flash card apps.

I use Evernote every day and it doesn't annoy me as a diversion from their core product. The smart Smart Cover integration is cool, at least.

I don't think I'd even mind so much if it weren't transparent, but it's pretty repulsive.

As some other commenters noted, the site tries really hard as well but 1300-px-wide content is awful in any light. It's just form, not function, but the irony from a site that pushes the uniform display of email and uses (web and email) resolutions that most users can't see without scrollbars isn't helping the message any.

When I hear the word "maximally" shitty in this context, I don't think of MVPs - I think of products like IE6, RealPlayer, or E.T. on the Atari. A product can't be maximally shitty unless it manages to affect both users and developers in a seriously negative way, at huge scope and cost.

It's kind of the design equivalent of studying someone else's code _and_ its execution in one fell swoop. It's also the equivalent of hitting the man pages and learning the syntax and vocabulary of design.

That Cameron Moll link is great, thanks for that!

For the same reason the "every co-founder should learn to code" mantra always gets tossed around here: because it's not impossible to do yourself and will make you a better and more self-sufficient developer.

You might still choose to bring in a design specialist for pixel-perfect work or usability perfection, but it's no different than having the hacking chops to get your prototype into a functionally complete form. Done is better than perfect.

As a graphic designer/artist: this question strikes me as funny because the frequent "how do I start programming" threads are always so matter-of-fact. 3-4 biblical texts get recommended, a handful of vetted resources bandied about, and then a minimal amount of hemming and hawing over which language to use.

As daunting and foreign as those threads seem to me, programming has a lot of known knowns - I can see where "how do I design" would be more daunting because it's such an unqualified expanse consisting almost completely of grey area. Stand before it, naked, putting yourself in the shoes of the designer, and imagine the horror of the client's most unspeakable words: "I can't explain it to you, but I'll know it when I see it."

All that aside, I think the advice that I've received from this community re: learning to program/hack is still sound as it applies to graphic design:

1) Have a project and work toward it. If you don't have one, make one. Be specific in your end goal.

This focus enables you to do the most important thing:

2) Steal like an artist. (via http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-a...)

All the other advice in this thread is pretty legit. You probably don't even know what looks good, so don't start on your own. Do your research. Look at competitors in the space (or the closest you can find to it). Use open source/CC art. Follow the crumbs back to the artist's portfolios and see the other work they've done. Web and app design follows patterns and there are many pattern resources that you should use. Form follows function and usability should inform design: copy good patterns and make them great later. Copy copy copy.

And at the end of the day: hire a designer! It's a big ecosystem and we all need to eat.

For many years I've dealt with clients who were incredulous when I told them "no, we can't/won't just clone Yahoo/Facebook/etc" when a pixel-for-pixel copy was precisely what they wanted. There's an important creative and IP distinction between stealing concepts and cloning every aspect that some people just don't grok.

Did Windows clone the Mac UI right down to the color and pixel and then replace the Apple logo? I think the bashing here is well-deserved, above and outside the discussion of whether China has a demonstrated economy of copying (it does).

Also, there's a special place in hell for people who can't just come out and call a clone a clone.

You should ask Myspace; their building's on the same block and I'm sure they've got some space these days.

I was just there for an interview - it is very nice, new office space with plenty of parking. In true fashion, some of the tenants were racing RC cars around in the empty space, so whether it's due to layoffs or just an inability to rent, there's definitely more space in that building for interested startups.

I'm not sure what the exact terms are or even what the PA market looks like, but not having to sweat about office space seems on the surface like a Good Thing for a startup outgrowing their current digs (or living room).

I'm pleased for these guys, but a little surprised as well. Launching a Pokemon social game isn't exactly being disruptive; it's not as if there's any dearth of them on Facebook, particularly at a time when many companies are fleeing the already strip-mined platform for greener pastures.

The same app, or the same type of app? Judging from overall revenue reports this would seem to make you the exception, not the rule. I'd read it.

This is a pretty amazing level of non-story, even for TechCrunch. I guess speculation about unreleased Apple hardware always gets traffic, though!

It's rather remarkable how able people are to tolerate a borderline existence until a concrete metaphor for its inevitability and hopelessness - like an unpayable loan - is thrust into their faces.

Don't leave us hanging, what was the funny Dropbox joke?

So it won't be Renren, StudiVZ, or Yammer, then?

Because it'd be pirated ad infinitum and the game presumably makes more money on the Marketplace with the ads included, no?

Roughly ~$8 million, without any distribution cut to speak of (other than bandwidth costs).

It'll be interesting to see what his newly incorporated studio does next, as he seems to be expanding fast and putting resources toward a sophomore effort already.