Disqus - Latest Comments for tobin

Re: Privacy Model for Notifications - The Gong Show

tobin — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 16:14:57 -0000

I notice that developers/designers typically consider users that openly share on social products as first class citizens. Almost everything is designed around them because being open has benefits to help the product grow. Privacy settings/publishing control is usually an afterthought unless the product is focused around privacy or more intimate networks.

When it comes to notifications an open network that's growing can find itself in a dangerous situation. For me, when an application's notification to open ratio is really off balance I tend to delete/unsubscribe. As a developer I try to stay away from over sharing to a user, even if another user is trying to... It's much easier to delete an app than it is to configure/disable notifications.

When it comes to content itself, as a product/network grows and matures I think there's a transition it goes through where the Signal/Noise ratio also becomes something of a concern. Less so with notifications, but creating a way to manage how I consume content.

I am not fond with how Facebook is sorting out people's timeline for me and twitter is a mess. I personally love Nuzzel as a way for me to get notified about content people are sharing and think they do it well.

Re: End To End Encryption

tobin — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 13:31:13 -0000

Unfortunately the concept of living in public is not the same as securing my life. The default position on encryption should not be about hiding information, but about protecting information that puts my life and my family's life at risk.

Re: Tourists Think This Is The Best Restaurant In NYC

tobin — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 14:30:56 -0000

Could have been worse... much much worse... http://guysamerican.com

Re: Gotham Gal 3.0

tobin — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 14:09:14 -0000

I like it! Though the feed burner url isn't up to date yet.

Re: Brief Thoughts On Trends In Mobile App Investing

tobin — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 04:52:12 -0000

If it were a choice between A and B, I feel like A is what _should_ be right. Let the market determine who the winners are. Where we're all competing on execution. However while option B really rattles the chip on my shoulder, it's an advantage we all wish we have.

Another thing is that I feel like option B doesn't create the best results for the customer. It's good for the founders (who can employ this tactic) and the investors (who will push and protect this investment). Especially when the industry pushes to polarize a market with clear leaders in a category. Then again I'm making the assumption that in certain categories there can only be one or two clear leaders in the space (which makes these sort of investments interesting to investors).

Option B bugs me, but I gotta remind myself: hate the game, not the player.

Re: How Does Path 2.0’s iPhone App Implement Their Expandable Menu?

tobin — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 11:55:59 -0000

Hi! You most likely did not do something wrong...

I haven't updated that code in a few years. It was originally written for iOS 5 and I'm not sure if it would work without changes on iOS 7. I will try to take a look at the code when I have some free time and update it to iOS 7.

Re: Burned Freelancer Takes Client’s Website Hostage

tobin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:47:32 -0000

Mike Monteiro had a good talk about how to avoid this: F*ck You. Pay Me - http://vimeo.com/22053820

Re: Distribution, Distribution, Distribution | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

tobin — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:26:13 -0000

I have some I've been working on for my company. Less so for an investor pitch, but more for describing the vision and strategy to anyone on the team. (: If you're free to meet and give some feedback on them I am happy to share them with your readers =D

Re: Distribution, Distribution, Distribution | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

tobin — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:36:52 -0000

Definitely hard, but I'd put more emphasis on the research than experimentation when looking at how to deal with product distribution. Having a deep understanding of your market, customer segments, and usage patterns will reveal how your customers go about finding out about services such as yours. This is where you can start putting the thin edge of the wedge into distribution strategies.

From there you can build a good understanding behind the costs of customer acquisition. I think the experimentation really comes key when you're trying to figure out how to optimize & scale those acquisition costs & efforts.

Ideas need a healthy balance of market research. IMO the market research has been much more valuable to me for understanding the costs behind customer acquisition and whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

Re: Ability to Hire | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

tobin — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:45:40 -0000

Okay... so I have a bit of a hiring "hack" that I've recommended to a few people and it has helped find some candidates that normally would not have come across their desk.

Everyone of us has friends who work for larger corporate companies. Ones where the corporate culture isn't very inspiring. If your friend is not fulfilled at their job, chances are their co-workers aren't either. Take one of the top creative & challenging problems someone you are looking to hire would have to work on at your company. Find a way to parallel that challenge to something someone at the large corporate company would have to deal with... then ask your friend if there's anyone at their company that could provide feedback/advice on how to solve the problem. Make sure you're asking for advice & feedback. Chances are you'll get an email introduction to someone.

Typically those recommendations are people that are reliable and can communicate well, otherwise you wouldn't have been introduced to them. From there build a relationship with the person you are introduced to. Get them to talk the problem out... ask them for their thoughts on how it will work, where the pitfalls are, etc. It is also important to show them you've put thought into the problem. This takes away from the feeling of "this guy just wants me to do something for him." Smart people want to work with other smart ppl and they want to see that those people aren't afraid to tackle tough problems. Basically let them see you are trying to solve the problem yourself as well.

You'll be able to gauge from interactions whether or not you can warm them up to joining your company. If the person spends time to put some creative thought into the problem and you can see they are excited, ask them to come in to meet your team... have coffee, get lunch. Don't make it an interview, make it a "let's learn from each other" conversation.

Re: Process vs. outcome

tobin — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:09:07 -0000

TL;DR; version - implementing process typically is used to change/increase internal value. Pre-Product/Market fit should focus more on delivering the most value to the customer through simplified/minimized Build Measure Learn iterations.

Long version:

I’m replying to Brad’s comment because Brad’s an awesome dude, but more importantly I strongly agree on minimizing process. Especially for trying to reach goals that have unknown or varying outcomes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as the organization I’ve been working for has been struggling with process overload. We’ve adopted agile methodologies (scrum & kanban).

The problem in my organization is that when our goals are unmet, we scramble to figure out what went wrong. Unfortunately the team’s assessment has been myopic and we only review the team & process as faults for not reaching our goals. This typically creates a discussion on how to amend the process and results in adding steps for checks in balances to avoid the failure. After a few months of this we’ve added so much to our process that we are doing more work to satisfy the process than we are for our customers/audience. I feel it’s the worst thing that can have happened with “process” as it’s hindering the team from delivering any external value for the customer (this pains me the most).

I’m now trying to convince our stakeholders to throw away the process and let us focus on the external value for the customers. To replace the process I want to let the team executing the work discover how to be self-organizing through accountability. This in itself has it’s own challenges as I’m pushing up against escalation of commitment to the process (“we’ve spent a lot of money on trying to get to where we are and even though it’s failing, we’ll continue to do so.”).

When it comes to delivering value to our customers I want to get to a place where we shorten our iterations for Build/Measure/Learn and keep that as fluid as possible. The more rigid that is, the more I feel we’ll miss opportunities. The challenges there are to keep us from rationalizing our learnings and keeping the same myopic view when re-evaluating our product & strategy through iterations.

Re: http://tob.in/post/15654557154

tobin — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 02:52:24 -0000

Hi Mike!

Thanks for taking the time to check out the code and commenting on my tumblr!

The source is free to use as you like. I haven't added any license, but am open to suggestions. I'm interest in sharing with others, but I do not require anyone to share their own modifications or credit me if used. This applies to free and paid uses. It would be nice to get a shout out, but not expected at all. I'm just happy someone got use out if it.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Tobin

Re: http://tob.in/post/15654557154

tobin — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:12:24 -0000

Hi Alex!

Thanks for the question.

How are you trying to open another view controller?

In the code I have a method - (IBAction) touchMenuItem:(id) sender; at the bottom of ViewController.m. This method is wired to the touch event of the buttons that have been set up in the view (ViewController.xib).

Right now I simply display a UIAlertView, but changing this to launch a new view shouldn't be too hard. Here's an example of what you can do.

if( self.myViewController == nil ) {
self.myViewController = [[[MyViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"MyViewController" bundle:nil] autorelease];
}

[UIView transitionWithView:self.view
duration:0.5
options:UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionFlipFromLeft
animations:^{
[self.view addSubview:self.newViewController.view]; }
completion:NULL];

This will create your view controller if it has not been created already and then add your new view as a subview to your current view. For extra flare I used a transition to do it.

Let me know if this helped answer your question.

NOTE: All of the buttons are wired to call the same method. You are able to add your own methods to handle touch events and attach them to the buttons in the xib.

Tobin

Re: http://tob.in/post/11396965897

tobin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:03:49 -0000

Hehe, yeah it's not perfect, but maybe there can be different discounts applied based on how many friends/followers you have.

Re: Blog - General Assembly

tobin — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:21:24 -0000

Great post Adam! Though I do remember you somewhat scoffing at my idea 2 years ago about non-technical founders taking the time to learn to code at least a little ;)

Re: Interesting infographic on digital textbooks and... | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

tobin — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:28:21 -0000

I love the ideas that can be built around the last two parts of this. Thinking about the future of text books, but more importantly the reach around the content contained within the text books. Annotations, notes, discussions... that's just the tip of the iceberg.

On a related side note, I personally would love to see physical media shrink by 20% (books and magazines), the world would depend a lot less on the natural resources used to produce and distribute books, magazines, etc. The downside is that there's a lot of industries that benefit from paper product production...

Re: http://tob.in/post/869180999

tobin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:50:10 -0000

The best way for me to recommend whether or not cohort analysis is useful is for me to understand what you are looking to learn & change about your application.

You're going to need to talk to your customers no matter what. Basically you're going to need to understand their needs and problems, then it's up to you to decide how to solve the problem they trying to find a solution for.

Once you have a prototype, I'd recommend you do rounds of User Testing with people you feel represent your target market. This will allow you to see if your users understand your solution to their problem and if they get "stuck" while using your application.

You'll know the feeling when the product is "good" to ship or if there are any major areas of friction to your product.

When you look at what sort of metrics you want to collect, you need to think about what you want to validate & test.

I like to look at cohort analysis to determine how I'm influencing a users engagement with a product. Specifically over time when do users fatigue with a set of features (or even the whole product). I wouldn't use it to find out whether or not someone "understands" my product.

For installed software like desktop apps and iPhone there are a few things you can do. When I first looked at MixPanel.com they had a REST api that you can integrate with for event tracking. See their documentation here: http://mixpanel.com/api/doc...

Re: Photos: Brooklyn Gets Tagged... With A Love Letter

tobin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:13:10 -0000

Eh, this "love letter" is pissing me off. My apartment is right across the street and they've been working on it at late hours. 3am?! Not a fan mostly out of spite of being inconsiderate to the neighbors in the area.

Re: http://tob.in/post/8480867578

tobin — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:13:55 -0000

Thanks for the comment!

Here are the classes I've taken:

Creating a Product Focused Startup Culture -
http://www.skillshare.com/B... - blog post - http://www.mikekarnj.com/bl... - Mike K.

How to Bootstrap - http://www.skillshare.com/H... - http://spencerfry.com/how-t... - Spencer Fry

Tips for early stage companies looking to break through - http://www.skillshare.com/T... - Vin Vacanti & Spencer Fry

Again let me know if I can be of any help!

Re: http://tob.in/post/8480867578

tobin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:31:40 -0000

Thanks for the comment!

I fully agree. The layering in java is cumbersome, but spring frameworks and it's respective projects are tackling that. Spring Data is extremely useful from removing the Dao layer.

I use straight up jsp (view) and spring controller annotations to define controllers. I've been looking to dive back into ruby at some point too.

Re: Outsourcing the Startup | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

tobin — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:37:18 -0000

Totally agree! The ability to effectively outsource is a scrappy entrepreneur's "secret weapon". If there's something that you need to do, but can be done by someone else (and even sometimes better, faster, and cheaper) then outsourcing is invaluable.

There are times where it doesn't make sense, but you illustrate quite well that you can pick and choose what to outsource.

Also there is an art to outsourcing, you need to be a master at communicating expectations and directing people. That can be a job in itself and I suspect a lot of people figure they are just better off doing it themselves than spending the time giving it to someone else to do it. In the end, it's a skill that has many rewards!

Re: Screw New York!

tobin — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:56:37 -0000

A la "Fuck You" scene from 25th Hour (http://www.youtube.com/watc...

No, No. Screw you, Ryan O'Connell.
(:

Re: http://blog.saadiq.org/post/4059009543

tobin — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:47:27 -0000

Looks like right now there's a big focus on the valuation behind the round of funding that was raised by these guys which is somewhat (if just mildly) distracting to the app itself. Ignoring the hubbub around the $$ aspects, I agree with the excitement about the potential of this app!

I am on an Nexus One so I had to wait a little longer to try out the app. My initial "reaction" to the app was fair at best. However that had to do with the fact that there wasn't much data for my current location (times sq., go figure).

I checked it a bit later and there were a bunch of new images within my proximity. It was really neat to see the same location through the eyes of others. Especially in a building that has 50+ floors of tech nerds!

Seeing "responses" to the location was really cool and MADE me want to participate even though there was no direct dialog between individuals.

It is exciting and I can see this as an app I use at times... concerts, conferences, events, or just colorful days! No filters or fluff required, just seeing the immediate location through the eyes around me.

Re: Confessions of a Startup CEO: Pre-launch Jitters

tobin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:12:30 -0000

Congrats Adam! Can't wait to see your DEMO presentation!

Re: http://tob.in/post/1037872094

tobin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:12:20 -0000

Thanks for the response!

The application does data aggregation in the background for various services. I wouldn't say it's computationally heavy, but the outbound requests can be a bit expensive depending on the service we're connecting to.

One thing I didn't show is that the JMS consumers are scalable as well. These are what will be doing most of the data aggregation. Although the graph illustrates the application servers being scaled out, as of right now there are only 2 tomcat instances in rotation on the load balancer.

I switch from AWS to Rackspace for pricing as well as for feeling more secure with support. I had a few issues with EBS due to problems with their data center. I figure I'd like to try someone else to see how it works. The application is fairly portable, so I may move back if I feel I'm outgrowing RSC.

Thanks for the slides!