Disqus - Latest Comments for kevnull

Re: Building a game in Unity…

kevnull — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:21:00 -0000

Shouldn't the game come before the technology? I mean I agree it's awesome but considering how amazing some game have been w/o using awesome graphics engines, it feels like the game should come first. I know you mean for it as a learning "hello world" exercise. I just would love to see a week of your time be spent on a cool game with crap graphics than Pong in Unity glory.

Re: What if interviews poorly predict job performance? What if dating poorly predicts marital happiness?

kevnull — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:55:25 -0000

The flip side of that is do it like Zappos or Netflix where they offer a severance of some sort when they let people go and that makes it easier for managers to let someone go if it's not working out. Zappos in particular, have the great notion of offering people the ability to fire themselves in the first few months and still get severance.

Re: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Designer

kevnull — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:29:13 -0000

Haha, thanks Paul. I once was told I should be a DJ for an easy listening radio station. I -think- it was a compliment ;)

Re: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Designer

kevnull — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:49:57 -0000

Fixed! Thanks!

Re: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Designer

kevnull — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:46:40 -0000

Someone else told me this. I can't trace why it's happening because I'm not seeing it. Grrrr.

Re: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Designer

steveportigal — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:19:52 -0000

I had the services of a cameraperson. I just didn't want to be standing in front of a wall and talking.

Re: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Designer

kevnull — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:13:43 -0000

Thanks, Steve. I wasn't skilled enough to record while driving so I had to compensate! ;)

Re: Virgin America: How a Bad Website Can Kill Goodwill

cringle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:23:11 -0000

right. then, you call....

Re: Virgin America: How a Bad Website Can Kill Goodwill

kevnull — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:37:21 -0000

Because there was no confirmation number, no reservation number and nothing showing on the website. That's the whole point. There was no indication ANYWHERE.

To quote from the post:
Two days later, we still hadn’t received any confirmation emails. We checked our spam folders to no avail. Coley logged into her VA account and the website said “no pending flights”. No charges had been made to the credit card, either.

Re: Improving User Retention with Achievements

kevnull — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:08:41 -0000

As euwyn mentions, Foursquare's implementation has a few aspects that most sites that attempt this system didn't do: personality, external validation, and a design worthy of coveting. I've come to find the design of the badge and the uniqueness of it has a huge impact personally on my desire to acquire it. Following that, there's a desire to show that off.

It's funny you should talk about a central place for achievements. A few of us from Yahoo! Brickhouse launched a product called BravoNation in December 07. In the system, we explored exactly what kinds of achievements exist on sites today and also created a mechanism to "covet" achievements.

If you look at http://bravo.yahoo.com/docs/ you'll see hints of the direction it was meant for. Unfortunately, the project only lasted for a few months and all of the project team has since moved on.

Ultimately, when it comes to achievements, what matters most is, "do your users care?" It won't make a useless site more interesting and it won't even help a useful site be more engaging if the achievements are not designed to appeal to various base gaming psychology profiles.

Re: JOE LAZARUS - Last.fm Tumblr Weekly Top Artists

kevnull — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:13:33 -0000

Yay! Pipes! Woohoo!

Re: I can’t unfollow you.

kevnull — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:28:12 -0000

I somehow only just saw this now. It definitely resonates with me and if it's any consolation, it's difficult no matter which side of the fence you're on. In fact, experiences of my own and others lead me to set up a panel at last year's SxSW (which eventually lead to Keely's one): http://breakups20.pbwiki.com/

Somebody really needs to write a book on it already. Or at least do a research project.

And I'm glad you wrote/painted that. Both are awesome.

Re: Facebook Has License to Sell Your Photos

kevnull — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:18:39 -0000

*sigh*

That is not at all the same thing. People just don't seem to understand copyright laws. In the cases linked in your article, Flickr had nothing to do with the selling of those images. Companies irresponsibly stole the images without permission or license. Flickr's terms are very clear — the owner maintains and controls what license to give (whether it's all reserved, creative commons or public domain).

Facebook's policy is that when you upload, you are GIVING them license so they can legally use your images for whatever they want, including resale. In the former case, someone took the photos without permission. In the latter, you actively give permission.

Re: Kamekame-huh?

kevnull — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:57:45 -0000

Wow, thanks for the detailed response, Heather. Focus groups are, in my opinion, rarely that useful at finding out useful information because it's so easy to interpret the data to mean what one wants it to. There's a big difference between not having a preference for Latino/a and translating that to having a preference for Caucasian actors.

I've seen Ping Pong Playa and loved it.

In addition, I happened to watch Sunshine yesterday and really was surprised/impressed that it featured 3 Asians in a cast of 8 and none of them were cast as character roles.

Re: Facebook Has License to Sell Your Photos

kevnull — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:01:20 -0000

That's a licensing issue. You would hve to make sure that the person posting it had license to do so. If you gave them only permission for limited use, then they shouldn't post it to FB since FB states that when you post, you certify you have the rights to them.

Re: Twinkle Hijacks Twitter Usernames

kevnull — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:49:27 -0000

If you're going to use a channel, you should respect that namespace, yes. While @ is a standard, if I say @joshuakaufman here on my blog, it's fine but it shouldn't post to Twitter. Twitter wasn't "first" in using @'s either. The problem isn't using @ in general, it's using @ on Twitter specifically.

Frankly, it's not about whether Twitter should have an API. It doesn't even benefit Twinkle or anyone else to have an overlapping namespace on the same channel.

Re: Kamekame-huh?

kevnull — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:13:45 -0000

There's an Oldboy remake? Nooooooooo.

Even "The Departed" was frustrating. It was good but lacked so many elements that the original movie had.

Re: How to Convert Music to MP3, AAC, AIFF or WAV With iTunes

kevnull — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:35:59 -0000

Update for those of you who are making ringtones for iPhone, RingtoneStudio is being given away at the MacHeist Giving Tree: http://givingtree.macheist.com/ I haven't tried out the software yet but it's worth a shot.