TylerKing.net Blog

Some people still don't know how to use links

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:23:20 -0600

I hope you're ready for a rant, because I want to talk about my #1 web design pet peeve: telling me how to do something rather than just letting me do it. I have two examples.

The first example comes from espn.com. There's a section of their sidebar which normally has information about the fantasy sports leagues I'm in. However, when you're not signed in, it tells you to sign in...somewhere else. There's plenty of room to have a login form on the page there so I don't have to hunt for the "Sign in" link. If they don't want to do that, give me a link I can click to see a login form. Telling me to find the place to log in somewhere else on the page just doesn't make sense.

The next one is much worse. This comes from the Xbox live account management website. This website has about 5 gazillion major UI problems (Microsoft's specialty) but the worst one is the FAQ box they put on many of the pages. It has links that say things like "How do I update my credit card expiration date?". If you click that link, it takes you to a page saying something like "to update your credit card expiration date, go to this other page and then click the 'update my CC info' link".

Let that sink in for a second. You click on a link which tells you to click a different link, and then click another link. Is there some reason the original link could just take you to the correct page? Microsoft can go ahead and replace the "How do I update my credit card expiration date" FAQ item with a different link saying "Update my credit card expiration date". Am I missing something? Is there some reason we need an FAQ page about this?

You'll find examples of this type of behavior all over the internet, and it's almost always horrible. There is one case where it makes sense to tell a user how to do something rather than just give them a direct link. That is if you want to educate the user so they can find that page again. For example, LAS has some help text that explains how to add a note to a contact (rather than linking directly to the page) so that the user can learn how to add notes the correct way.

I'm back, and I learned a thing or two

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:23:20 -0600

Hello. It's been a long time. I've been off at Less Annoying Software, and you've been doing your thing. Well, I'm happy to say that we're finally being reunited. That's right, TylerKing.net is back in action.

If you followed me over at LAS, you may have seen this post which explains our plan to use that blog for posts centered around small business software, and move my general tech/business ranting over here just like the good 'ol days. Starting with this post, things will be back to normal over here.

So I want to briefly talk about what I've learned about blogging so far from my experience with Less Annoying Software. The reason I completely moved all my blogging over there instead of starting out with the arrangement I have now (only posting relevant information on LAS) is because I had absolutely no idea what LAS would end up doing. As you can tell from my last post on this blog, we started Less Annoying Software with absolutely no product, business model, or plan of any sort. Because of this, I couldn't very well write blog posts specifically for our target audience.

All-in-all, I think it was the perfect way to start a business, and a blog. I'm pretty sure that the main thing keeping people from starting new projects is the fear of looking stupid at the very beginning. Maybe you want to start a blog, but you need an awesome name and you need a great first post. After all, if you can't even pull off the first post of your blog, how in the hell will you keep it going? The first post is the most important one.

In reality, the first post is the one no one will ever read because you don't have an audience yet. Your first post is the least important one you'll ever write. The important thing is to just get started so you have something to build off. The first 7 months (or however long it's been) of blogging at LAS were unfocused and we didn't really offer any value to our potential customers. Luckily, we didn't have any readers so it didn't matter.

The important thing is that now we're starting to see some traffic coming to our blog. We have a real business with a clear focus, and we're adapting the blog appropriately. But if we'd waited until right now to get started, we'd be far behind. The seven months of unfocused, irrelevant posts are every bit as useful now as seven months of prolific writing would have been.

The same has been true of our business. Like I said, we started it without having any clue what software we'd be building. We picked our company name, started the blog, and got a website built before making any important business decisions. By getting started right away instead of spending months planning, we gave ourselves some serious momentum. By the time we decided to make a CRM product, we were ready to jump right in and start coding.

So I guess the lesson I learned (or at least validated) so far with Less Annoying Software is that if you're thinking about doing something, just do it. At worst, you can just quit if you decide it was a bad idea. Messing up at the beginning is the best time to mess up, so it doesn't make sense to wait for the stars to align before making your move.

Moving Day

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:23:20 -0600

You may have noticed that I stopped posting on this blog. That's not because I lost interest in blogging, nor is it related to my laziness. I've actually been working on a new project with my brother.

Less Annoying Software is our new business. To get started, we're going do some general tech consulting. Eventually, we plan on transitioning from consulting to pure software development. The goal is to have at least one online application that we can build our business around.

We're also starting a blog called The Less Annoying Blog. I plan on posting over there instead of on TylerKing.net from now on. I still may use this site to give periodic updates on my life, but you should really head over to the new blog and subscribe to that if you enjoy reading this one. Let me know what you think about Less Annoying Software, or if you know anyone that could use our services.

The Perfect Idea

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:23:20 -0600

I've mentioned this before, but I want to really focus on this entrepreneurial dream of "The Perfect Idea". I know a lot of people that think they may one day start their own companies but they're waiting to have a great idea to build the company around. Here are some core beliefs that I have regarding this:

You won't ever have the perfect idea

Very few cool tech start-ups were founded on a great business idea. The great ideas like Google Adwords, social networking, etc. all evolved out of stupid (or at least misguided) ideas. Why? Because it's nearly impossible to have a good idea about something that you're not familiar with, and you can't get familiar with an industry without starting to work in it.

If you have the perfect idea, you'll mess it up

Even if you do have a once in a lifetime idea, you're going to botch the implementation if you're waiting to become and entrepreneur. If you spend the first ten years after college working at a giant corporation and then you have a brilliant idea, you'll have to learn how start-up companies work as you're trying to execute the idea. It would be a shame to waste such a brilliant business model on your practice round.

Someone else will beat you to it

Even if there is a perfect idea out there, and even if you do think of it yourself, there are people out there already working in that industry. They're building infrastructure, learning about the market, and gaining valuable experience. Those people will almost always beat the people that are sitting around waiting for an idea.

Blogging offers a great example of this. Sometimes I sit around for hours trying to figure out what to write about. Eventually I give up and start working on an old idea that I'm not wild about (like this post, to be honest). The second I start typing, I come up with tons of new topics. In the time I've been writing this post, I added six new documents to my "drafts" folder with topics way more interesting than this one. But if I hadn't started this post, I never would have thought of the new ideas.

Redefining the term "Web Developer"

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:23:20 -0600

I'm not the type of person to care too much about titles. If someone tells me they're the director of national accounts at a five person company, I'm not particularly impressed. However, titles are a useful way to quickly summarize one's job, so I have some interest in getting them right.

That said, one of my main job roles is "web developer". This should be a pretty accurate way for me to describe myself when others ask what I do. The problem is that 10 years ago, web developers made websites with pictures of their cats and lots of flashing, scrolling, comic sans text.

Despite the widespread adoption of web applications like gmail, people still think that "real" programs aren't online. Good programmers don't make websites, they make boring old windows applications. If I majored in computer science and now I build online applications, I must be the most pathetic CS major ever.

When someone asks me what I do and I say I'm a web developer, they respond with something like, "oh yeah, my cousin has Dreamweaver and made her own website. Cool". So instead I have to say something needlessly vague like "application developer" or "software engineer" or just boring old "programmer".

These titles aren't nearly as useful as "Web Developer" but they communicate to people that I actually write real code which I guess is more informative than only communicating that I deal with websites.

So in case you didn't already know, the times they are a-changing and there are real applications hosted online these days. If someone develops web applications, there's no reason to believe that they are any less of a programmer than someone working on a more traditional desktop app. And if you ask me what I do and I say I'm a web developer, please don't assume that I spend all day making celebrity-themed Myspace templates.

/end rant