rumblestrut

Indeed he must have.

A lifetime ago I worked as a reporter, but also did page layout. One of the stories I wrote was about a local food pantry at a church that was running low. I don't remember exactly what my headline was, but I left the "r" out of "pantry."

Oops.

It's a shame about this typo a little more than halfway through the article:

"TMO: That’s right. The pubic face is, oh, yeah, there’s no problem."

I did it two years ago. When I was done, I shopped it around. No one was interested.

Even still, it was totally worth it.

Ha! I found that postcard today. Here's the front and back.

http://ericjgruber.com/images/wufoo-thanks-front.jpg

http://ericjgruber.com/images/wufoo-thanks-rear.jpg

(Note: Frank, who the card was addressed to, was the cardholder on the account but I used it all over our site, to clarify.)

I've mentioned this in another thread before, but Wufoo sent me a handwritten thank you note for being a (paid) customer one year around Christmas.

Now THAT made an impression.

First of all, if you know a little bit about Steve Jobs, you'll know he wasn't likely a big fast food eater.

Secondly, I think Steve Jobs would have been much worse off if he had stepped down as CEO.

Steve Jobs needed Apple as much as Apple needed Steve Jobs.

I'm so confused. Can I create a million-dollar business in a weekend or not?

Because I read "Reboot. Relaunch. Redesign. Pivot. Sunset. Shutter. The Knack, a web app, story," and it sounds like building a business is work. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3024147)

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My daytime employer subscribes to Wufoo's mid-level plan and the experience has been fantastic. I was worried when they sold the experience might change, but so far it's been nothing but the rock-solid steady performance and smart feature enhancements we've had since day one.

I can't remember when, but not too long ago Wufoo sent us a hand-written thank you note for being their customer. It blew me away.

I second patio11's comment below: "I wish there were a lot more Wufoos."

Reed Hastings makes me wonder what kind of company Netflix is.

Does Netflix listen to its customers? I've hated the website redesign since it launched and from what I've read, I'm certainly not alone. I find the redesign to be much less user friendly than the old one, which I loved. I don't login as much as before to browse, review and add to my queue. I avoid the website and stick to watching stuff on my Roku. In my opinion, the redesign took the Netflix website from one that was fun to use, to one that devalued the company to being just another company that provides movies. The charm is gone.

And now this odd, Qwikstupid thing. That site isn't even up yet. Is it because they planned it that way, or are they looking for customer feedback first before making any concrete changes?

And that takes me back to my original point: does Netflix care about customer feedback?

(edited for my terrible typos)

I'm a Merlin Mann fan and decided to build this so there'd be some sort of record of his fantastic quotes.

As of this post, it appears to be working.

And I have to say, it's impressive. Those are some good-looking bookmarks. That's probably the oddest maintenance I'd ever think to write, but in this case, it's true!

Very nice.

I'm not a fan of the overall design, but the way the logo disappears into the top bar (scroll slowly) is pretty darn cool.

Presuming you're using WordPress, this will help: http://thingsthatarebrown.com/blog/2010/05/dont-get-fireball...

Man, I take a lot of things for granted.

Bar none, I think this guy wins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu_tk5TvszE

(But if there are other awesome examples, please share.)

I didn't say it made sense, merely clearing up the quote.

The article doesn't say this flare is releasing 10 percent of the Sun's total energy. Instead it says:

"A good flare can release up to 10% of the Sun’s total energy, the equivalent of billions of nuclear bombs exploding. What’s funny to me is that this wasn’t all that big a flare; it was rated as a class M2.5, far lower in energy than the vast explosions from the Sun back in February."

Great story! I'll have to check out Hidden now.

Thanks Steve. Well done.

That is one well-designed blog. Very readable.

I know there are many who complain about things like the inability to copy and paste text and so forth, but I've not found that to be much of an issue.

In general I'm the type of guy who reads books but doesn't lend them out. Not that I wouldn't, mind you, but it just doesn't happen that much. And since my local Borders - my de facto place for getting computer/tech books - closed last months, I'm happier than ever to be a Kindle user. (Even though I get the irony in this).

Physical books won't go away and ebooks are still evolving. I look forward to what the future of reading holds.

I like the concept, I think it's well designed and the iPhone app seems to be really great. It's got a bit of a chicken and the egg problem at the moment, but I really hope it grows.

Newspaper ... what is this thing you speak of?

Wow. Voted down. Does the HN crowd have no sense of humor?

In other news allofmp3.com has announced an expansion of its Warner Music library ...

I had tried the free iPhone app and could never get the thing to accept my credentials. So, I gave up and didn't give it much thought.

But then I kept hearing about how great Instapaper was. I didn't get it. My experience with the free app was bad so I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Instead of writing a terrible review of the free one, I went ahead and purchased the paid app.

And now I'm hooked. I find Instapaper to be incredibly useful and love its simplicity. I then turned it on in my Twitter client, expanding my use even more.

The free app is a detriment to Instapaper rather than an asset. Marco is likely better off sticking with a great product customers are willing to pay for who end up loving the service, than having a mediocre app that doesn't build up a fan base that translates to paying customers.

Keep up the great work Marco!

You might also try Facebook's advertising. From my experience helping my wife advertise her home childcare, it was cheap and helpful to build brand recognition (she wasn't selling anything online, however). At least Facebook's ads let you upload a picture.

We also tried Google AdWords with not much success.

Our No. 1 source of traffic to her website? CraigsList.

How long did you work on business development? Could it be you didn't give it enough time to gain legs (not trying to be facetious).

Hello. I'm "this guy." Totally surprised by my unknown, abandoned blog getting 1,500 visits all of a sudden. The internet is a wonderful place.

1. Indeed, Gladwell pushes the idea of a 10,000 hour goal quite heavily to the point he seems to want to make it a mantra. 2. I understand Gladwell's point much more so now than when I wrote this piece two years ago (Jan. 6, 2009).

There was a comment last month (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262619) about using an annual calendar to encourage yourself to work on a task (or whatever). I went out and got one and have been using it as suggested in the Seinfeld article.

After a month, with most of the days "x'ed" out, I realized the important correlation between a dedication to routine to get better (or even the best?) at something. It's not like this is a deep revelation or anything, but the lesson is clear: do the work, and (likely) get better. And I totally agree with you're comment: "He just needs enough that he's better than everybody else."

Heck, even being better than my previous self is good to me.

Thanks for reading. Now I have to restore my database connection ...