Iridesco Watercooler

Jack Cheng on idea of a love-growth-cash triangle.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:18:04 -0500

Jack Cheng on idea of a love-growth-cash triangle.

What Is Art For?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:44:26 -0500

What Is Art For?: The article does not answer that question. Rather, it’s a profile on poet and philosopher Lewis Hyde, founder of the Creative Capital Foundation. If you are a creator of any kind (writer, painter, designer, programmer, carpenter, etc), you’d be interested in reading this article. Also: Lawrence Lessig devotees and Creative Commoners, you’ll enjoy the article as well.

Enough of innovation, how about the basics?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:30:16 -0500

Lately I’ve read, watched and listened to some very smart people talking about innovation. Innovation is important, and innovation is sexy. Business people love it, you love it, the media loves it, and I love it. But why are we talking about innovation when we can’t even get the basics right?

Take the airline industries for example: I don’t need a new word for flying, nor do I need mood lighting. I need the basics: get me from one place to another safely and try to be on time. The flight itself should be painless (let’s not even talk about a “good experience”): the seats should be clean and roomy, and the food, if you serve them, should at least not induce vomit.

Look, trying to reach for innovation when your business does not have your basics covered is like trying to dunk like Vince Carter when you can’t even dribble. And if all your competitors are trying to innovate and they are neglecting their basics, then there is no better time to stick by your guns and work on your fundamentals.

We're Hiring: Iridesco Evangelist (Marketing)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:13:00 -0500

We're Hiring: Iridesco Evangelist (Marketing): We are looking for a NYC-based marketing person to join our team. Check it.

At a glance, one may write this off as just another photo of the...

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:31:00 -0500

At a glance, one may write this off as just another photo of the Times Square area during the 80s. To get the full effect, you will have to see this in person as it’s actually a minature model that’s no bigger than a couple shoeboxes stacked together. The artist, Alan Wolfson, creates incredibly detailed dioramas of urban scenes, and you can catch him and his work this coming Saturday (Nov 22) at the OK Harris gallery in Soho, NYC. It’s a small example of intense attention to detail.

I demo’d Co-op last night at the monthly NY Tech Meetup. ...

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:05:00 -0500

I demo’d Co-op last night at the monthly NY Tech Meetup. Aside from being able to tell people about our latest baby, it’s always great to meet all the people in NY who are also working on various interesting projects. Here are a few noteworthy NYC startups we shared the stage with last night that you should get to know:

FreshmanFund - an easy way to start saving for your kid’s college fund (and allows gifting of college funds so you don’t need to give that new parent another baby blanket they already have).

Glue - an interesting way to discover what your network of friends like and consume in music, books, movies, etc. without the confines of any one social network.

Cookstr - not just another recipe site, this one will feature recipes from some of the best know cook book authors and chefs in the industry.

Wee Web - a private way for parents to document and share updates about their kids (founded by former Meetup.com co-founders).

MixedInk - a document collaboration tool that seems great for groups.

Without a doubt, New York City has become home to more and more design and technology companies through the years, and despite all that is going on right now in the macroeconomics picture, a visit to a full-capacity NY Tech Meetup offers a glimpse into the city’s interest and passion for design, web, and technology.

I was looking at the Photojojo store yesterday and was amazed at...

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:42:00 -0500

I was looking at the Photojojo store yesterday and was amazed at some of the UI details Amit and Co. have put in to it. I wrote Amit and asked him a few questions:

I love the simplicity of the video player and how the play/pause also functions as the progress nugget. Is it custom built by you guys?

Video player is custom. We didn’t need all the gobbledygook in most players and couldn’t find anything as minimal as we wanted.

The pink balloon (“Learn More”) and the animation is brilliant! How did you guys come up with the details?

Glad you like the balloon! We’ve been rolling out this design in pieces over the past few months, and that was one of the first. We wanted the store to be fun, and we wanted big photos. Having that big photo up top meant pushing the description down below the fold, and I didn’t want people to miss that. So originally I just had a line drawn down to it with arrows and a box up where the balloon is that said “more details”. I rounded the corners of that box, it started to look like a balloon, so I made it into a balloon, and the rest just came from that.

The sickest (and slickest) element of the store is the Add to Cart animation (try it for yourself). How did that piece go from an idea to the final piece online?
The Add to Cart animation took forever to get right! We still tweak the animation curve and speed nearly every day. Susan and I worked pretty closely on the add to cart animation. Typically I hand over photoshop comps to her, we discuss them, and I revise based on that conversation (and in some cases, feedback from flickr). It’s harder with animation because you can’t mock it up as easily. I had an idea for what I wanted (it’s actually born from an effect we did for the forum a year ago but didn’t end up pushing live), Susan got it working in rough form, and then we worked together on tweaking the behavior as she finished the implementation.

For all you people with a fetish for great UI designs, check out the thumbnail slider below the main photo on this product page, and note the motion and the shadowed cut off line, and how it switches sides… Stop drooling.

Time warp ruby gem

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:33:00 -0500

Time warp ruby gem:

As you know, we at Iridesco now support multiple products. As I helped develop Co-op, I would copy and paste bits of useful code from Harvest. It weighed on me at the time; I felt more wet than DRY. With the successful launch and stabilization of Co-op, it is time to start extracting out shared code.

While I am not one to slavishly shove round code into square shared repositories, our time warp testing technique was a great ruby gem candidate. The time-warp gem, also available as a plugin, is a small piece of Iridesco’s shared code base. It helps our tests to be very specific about the time in which they are running. We are grateful to all who shared code that ultimately was wrapped up into this ruby gem. Please visit the public github repository for installation and usage instructions.

Kim Deitch: A MOCCA Retrospective (via comicologytv) If you like...

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:39:19 -0500

Kim Deitch: A MOCCA Retrospective (via comicologytv)

If you like comics but don’t know who Kim Deitch is, you should. I would recommend starting with his book The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and then Alias the Cat.

I have two tickets to see the amazing Maira Kalman and John...

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:27:57 -0500

I have two tickets to see the amazing Maira Kalman and John Maeda speak at ADC next Tuesday (November 11th). I can’t go because we’re presenting Co-op the same night. If you are in NYC and have time that night for the event, e-mail me at shawn (at) iridesco (dot) com and I’ll give you the tickets (for free).

Co-op at NY Tech Meetup, Tuesday Nov 11

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:22:00 -0500

Co-op at NY Tech Meetup, Tuesday Nov 11: We’ll be demoing Co-op this coming Tuesday at the NY Tech Meetup in the Frank Gehry-designed IAC building. 300 spots will be open for RSVP at 12PM EST (they go quick!) Come by and say hi!

We received this 110% spam/scam-looking invitation via e-mail. ...

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:42:44 -0500

We received this 110% spam/scam-looking invitation via e-mail. I think they need to work on their pitch to entrepreneurs.

Trying out the Harvard Idea Cast podcast. Heard a couple of dry ones, and one good episode: #107,...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:20:41 -0500

Trying out the Harvard Idea Cast podcast. Heard a couple of dry ones, and one good episode: #107, Singapore Airlines’ Winning Strategy (they don’t provide a page for the episode, so the best I can do is to link to the MP3 file - about 10 minutes long). Towards the end of the episode, Professor Rohit Deshpande talked about three lessons that we can all learn from Singapore Airlines:

Marketing should be treated as an investment, and not as an expense. This is a particularly important thing to remember as our economy gets worse, as marketing budget is usually the first thing to get cut. Prof Deshpande thinks that if we can change our point of view and see marketing as an investment, we’d make better decisions during good or bad times.
Focus needs to be on the customer - rather than on the product or the service. There’s a big difference between serving your customer and having the best product. And the professor believes that if your business is “customer-centric” and you’re giving what the customer need - you can ride through the tough times because your customers will stay with you.
Getting the customers involved in all aspects of your business - and have them involved in helping you solve problems. I agree with this to a certain extent… Customers are obviously important, but I think the opinions of your customers are often formed by the very few vocal ones, and they may not represent the majority.

About the airline industry - it seems that most airlines are providing great service and attention to their business and first class customers. For us normal folks who cannot afford business class, we are treated like cattle. I think it’s strange to split up your customers into the very rich and the extreme price-conscious. What about the folks in the middle, who are willing to pay extra but cannot make the jump to business class? Maybe there’s something I don’t know about the airline industries, but it seems to make sense to create a middle class, that I can pay extra for a bit extra legroom, humane service and decent food. Is that too much to ask for?

How to nap According to this article from The Boston Globe, our...

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:30:57 -0500

How to nap

According to this article from The Boston Globe, our propensity for an afternoon nap isn’t due to a heavy lunch. It’s just a part of our physiological pattern, something we’re genetically wired for. Read up on this article accompanied by tasty infographics for the how and the why.

I just saw this sweet ass HP Mini on Uncrate, clicked on the...

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:48:40 -0400

I just saw this sweet ass HP Mini on Uncrate, clicked on the image, went on the HP website and what did I see? A tiny picture of some black laptop with what looks like a molded, stained screen. Look, if you’re selling a product, please make sure your product shots are at least as good (and as big) as the pictures used on blogs.

I did a quick comparison of how HP and Apple display their products on their websites. Moral of the story: when in doubt, think: what would Apple do?

Making music on an iPhone with Bloom (an ambient music...

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:25:40 -0400

Making music on an iPhone with Bloom (an ambient music composition app by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers).

"Let’s take that bitch on together."

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:32:14 -0400

“Let’s take that bitch on together.”

- Inside Obama’s Emails | The Onion

One of our Harvest customers, Headspace Design, has recently won...

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:40:00 -0400

One of our Harvest customers, Headspace Design, has recently won an Ice Award for their package design for Mucci Pucci, a dog food company. I love the package design and asked Kyle about the story behind it. This is what he said:

Mucci Pucci is run by a couple of entrepreneurs who wanted to sell home-made, organic, human grade ingredients to an audience of dog spoilers. The design challenge was to create an identity that was high-end and almost fashionable, but also fit their small start-up budget.

The logo communicates cute and friendly, and the tagline sums it up, “For dogs with taste”, a tongue-in-check play off of the snooty attitude we think of when it comes to dogs getting bought human-grade treats. The bone designs on the packages are made up of organic designs, and they differ for each flavor. The bags used are cheap, recyclable paper, and the labels were printed and applied by hand.

Headspace, which is based in Nova Scotia, also designed Mucci Pucci’s website, point-of-sale booth, staff shirts and poster campaign - and you can see them on their website. Aside from the honor of getting the award, Mucci Pucci has been selling out since April 2007, when the marketing campaign launched. That’s good design, folks.

We did not have this for lunch, but I wish we did (I have no...

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:24:00 -0400

We did not have this for lunch, but I wish we did (I have no idea who the photographer is, but I follow him/her on flickr and damn wish I can go on trips and eat all that delicious food).

Caching is not enough: spite of having Co-op to serve nearly all...

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:27:52 -0400

Caching is not enough: spite of having Co-op to serve nearly all requests by gluing together memchached content after going live things were just slow compared to what you would expect from quad Xeon servers.

Whenever a cache item became stale we have to go out via an API and refresh the missing pieces from the cluster running Harvest. Going trough logs it revealed that processing the API output was significantly more expensive than just generating the XML on Harvest side. 88+ seconds for just parsing an XML file that took a few milliseconds to produce … just not reasonable.

It turns out that the XML parser used by the Hash.from_xml method or ActiveResource in general has a horrible performance. The larger the input worse ActiveResource behaves. Enter Libxml to the rescue, there are countless benchmarks claiming 10x speed improvement. If anything I think they are an understatement as Libxml mostly has a linear performance that cannot be stated about XmlSimple shipped by default with rails.

The graph above shows how CPU usage looked before with libxml and after. As you see speed is just one factor. With libxml I can actually increase the ruby processes to handle much larger traffic, whereas a with XmlSimple can tie up an entire cpu core. Libxml is more scalable.

If your XML processing needs limit to consuming REST resources via ActiveResource the fix is simple dead simple. Just install the fine FasterFromXml plugin by Brian Durand.