stinky613

I was under the impression that a third of that figure was spent on marketing

They kind of have to because the App Store doesn't allow paid upgrades. There's no way to offer two prices (upgrade price and full retail price) for an app.

EDIT: The in-between choice would be moving to SaaS (see Adobe), but that's another discussion entirely

> Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for the longer-term

Well, that depends--and that's where my metaphor breaks down. The customers went home satisfied and remained satisfied (at least, that's what their consistent repeat business and smiling faces would suggest).

Tomatoes and website loading times matter to you in the here and now but don't have any lasting effect on your life. That's not the case for making a major purchase.

I worked, for a brief instance in time, at a roadside produce stand. At first I got really hung up on whether or not I could give a customer an accurate, precise answer to their question. With time, I realized that 19/20 customers didn't want the correct answer; they simply wanted a confident answer to allay their concerns.

To wit: a customer asked for a tomato with qualities A, B, and C (anyone who thinks that such a conceptually complex interest in tomatoes is unnecessary needs google 'heirloom tomatoes'). I recommended a Black Krim tomato which, to the best of my knowledge, I believed would meet all of her needs.

She happily purchased six Black Krim tomatoes and went along her merry way. I then asked my manager if there was a better recommendation.

He promptly told me that 1) I was diametrically incorrect in my choice for meeting her needs, and 2) it didn't matter, even in the least.

Sure enough, later that week the same customer came back and specifically thanked me for my excellent recommendation.

I've been reading the comments on various progress bar threads here and elsewhere in the past few days, and I think many of those who dismiss this UI pattern are missing the forest for the trees.

It's not about accurately representing the loading of elements in the page. It's not about accurately predicting and displaying when the page will finish loading. It's not about supplanting browser features for the sake of establishing a site-wide or web-wide standard.

---

It's about making the user feel like things that are out of their view and control are working properly.

---

When I look back on my childhood experiences with computers in the 80s and 90s I distinctly remember my litmus test for "is it frozen" was "can I hear those clicky noises from the hard drive".

Those noises told me nothing directly actionable nor did they accurately describe what had been done or what was left to be done. If, hypothetically, I ran an app caught in some bizarre infinite I/O hard drive loop those noises would have been misleading, and I eventually would have given up and hard-rebooted the computer

Spinning wheels generally act consistently; a loading bar such as this juts and pauses without any noticeable pattern. It gives us the impression that something is happening behind the scenes that we can't directly observe. If it acted uniformly we might just as easily believe that a dumb loop was living out its repetition.

Actual representation of reality is not the point. Perception is the point.

I'm sure that popularity could result in a harmful cliche-ification of this UI pattern, but I believe it has its place and its purpose. A browser cannot divine the amount of content that will be loaded on a dynamic site pre-execution.

At this point in time, at least, I don't mind encountering these loading bars. I can't really think of an example that irk me in any way. If I notice an in-site loading bar sticking around for a while there's probably something happening (or not happening) that would have pissed me off whether or not that loading bar were there.

I think what sours people is that there's far less grey area in "is this a business" than "is this a server". Businesses are legally defined, registered with the government, and follow a series of rules and standards that often differ from those expected of an Average Joe.

Personally, I find it asinine that setting up my own personal cloud server on a premium internet service is a ToS violation.

Tone affects the perceived meaning of content. The same statement delivered with different tones will come across as genuine or enthusiastic or sarcastic or puzzling etc

I too was surprised that the author didn't go that route--especially considering there are hundreds of gameshark codes available to give you interesting RAM locations to monitor. There's a weight modifier code for each player which could make for some interesting analysis, also.

Disturbingly some of my most frustratingly, restrictively simple password requirements for account registration have been banks and credit cards. If I recall, at one point American Express required I choose a password 4-6 alphanumerics.

I can say that every bank and credit card site I've used have vastly, vastly improved their security model in the past 5-7 years or so.

In 1982 some nutjob went around to supermarkets and pharmacies and put potassium cyanide in Tylenol bottles. Johnson & Johnson responded by issuing a recall for ALL Tylenol products nationwide. This incident is anecdotally credited with having directly led to those paper or foil seals on over-the-counter pill bottles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

Indirectly related to your question: you can find some interesting food for thought from the Delhi episode of Scam City[1]. By the end of the episode the host has a paper trail of (phony) medical problems and, eventually, his own death certificate.

http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/scam-city

"Congressional sessions open with the recital of the Pledge, as do many government meetings at local levels, and meetings held by many private organizations. It is also commonly recited in school at the beginning of every school day, although the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions that students cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge, or punished for not doing so."

"According to the United States Flag Code, the Pledge of Allegiance reads: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The "under God" part was added to distinguish us from 'godless communists'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_allegience

That wasn't really my point. It doesn't inspire confidence when the host says "hey! put your stuff here! I'm not sure that I can pay the bills each month but I sure hope we can. Oh--and I have no idea how this will scale."

It's all understandable. But even if it's free and even if my content is stupid, I'd still feel a little uncomfortable because of how much doubt the owner expresses over the viability of the service.

I was thinking about this too. I agree that counting on donations in sufficient quantity and regularity is like buying lotto tickets to pay your electric bill.

And if they add a premium tier... well then that kind of kills their differentiation, doesn't it? They're aiming for the niche of free, modest, simple, laissez faire vis-a-vis content. When you take 'free' out of the mix then you're in the arena of commoditized cheap hosting; inertia would be the only reason for someone to upgrade their free account to a premium plan.

Haha, wow. It's like going to a civil war reenactment where everyone adhere strictly to period customs and vernacular.

Unfortunately they forgot center tags and to capitalize all of their HTML. I was going to say it's missing a table-based layout, but then I recalled that the height of geocities' popularity was earlier than I remember seeing table-based layouts everywhere.

It's really not very assuring when they state on the front page that they "hope" they can get enough money each month so they can pay the server bills.

I had no idea that ESC was required by law. Sure enough, you're right; U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard Rule 126 [1]: "require electronic stability control (ESC) systems on passenger cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks, and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating of 4,536 Kg (10,000 pounds) or less"

Apparently similar laws exist in Canada, Australia, and the EU. I guess you learn something new every day.

[1] http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Electronic+Stabi...

We too can use debit cards that way. The laws regarding fraud liability differ between debit and credit. As such, credit card providers generally have fraud detection departments working around the clock, whereas the onus is entirely on you to report fraudulent charges on a debit card within so many days of the charges appearing on your monthly statement.

I don't think your impression of American shopping is accurate.

Many people pay with credit cards because they don't want to deal with loose coins and because credit card transactions can be viewed online. Anything I put on my Visa card I pay off in full at the end of the billing period; there are no fees, charges, or changes in prices that hit you when you use a credit card.

Could you elaborate what you mean by "the same level of productivity software ability"?

Software and digital technology are different from everything that the legal system has legislated on in the past because reproduction and distribution (basically) are free, instantaneous, limitless, and available to everyone.

I like it.

I'd recommend that you make a block link out of the text bubble that contains your 'next' link. Honing in on the actual word 'next' slowed me down.

For especially... uninitiated (?) web/computer users I could see there being an issue wherein the text bubble containing 'next' is cut off by the bottom boundary of the browser window.

Just recently I had to make a series of screenshots to walk someone through something. Great weekend project.

Personally, the hype was what pushed me past the Ambivalence Tipping Point. The last time anyone really tried to get me excited about email was when Google had a mysterious beta webmail that was invite only. It was a good five years before there was anything in the market that gave me any second thought on switching away from gmail as my email browser.

That said, Mailbox is sleek but gimmicky, and I have doubts about its long-term value.

Finally getting accepted for Mailbox was exciting. I wouldn't want everyone to do the same thing, but I'm glad that they did.

Does this / will this hook into the Google Spreadsheet API to pull data from Google Docs?

Fair question; I guess petty was the wrong word. Also, after youtubing 'scroogled' to make sure what I'm about to say is accurate I found there are other scroogled ads that don't irk me as much.

The ad I've seen the most criticizes gmail. The guy says "these ads just showed up" and the woman says "ACTUALLY,...", and, personally, when someone corrects a person by starting out with that heavily emphasized "ACTUALLY..." it sounds really smug.

If Lucas hadn't had the (absurd?) trademark on "droid" I think "Droid OS" would have been easier to market. Though, even then, there were other issues.

The move to drop "Android" makes sense. "Google" is a name that people generally trust (despite the efforts of MS's petty 'Scroogled' campaign).

"Android", on the other hand, has come to represent a disjointed conglomeration of smartphones. The OS versions are inconsistent between phones and have names that give no indication of chronology. Reach into a bag of current Android phones and pull out two at random--you have no idea what to expect. Certainly Microsoft deliberately avoided this specific pitfall in their design of Windows Phone 8.

Motorola jumping early into the fray with "Droid" phones running "Android" likely added confusion.

Does an editorial titled "The Trouble With Online College" make no mention of colleges that only operate online? That seems... odd, I guess.

Ignoring that bit of my personal pedantry, this editorial was disappointingly shallow. I get this is a newspaper editorial and not an essay, research paper, or some sort of manifesto but still...

The author's position seems to pivot entirely on class-time (or, more broadly, face-time) with teachers. I posit that there are many more equally-pressing issues.

For instance (anecdotally speaking), first-year students either know what formats and incarnations to expect from traditional classes, or they are able to quickly learn what to expect; online courses often have very little in common with one another.

Online courses differ in interface, necessary/compatible software and hardware, and how and what course information is available. Online courses are still young and improving.

I'm still not sure how online course developers will ultimately tackle the most fundamental issue with online courses: trust. How can you as a teacher or course administrator be confident that the person on the other end is who he/she says he is and that the person isn't using contraband resources?

I was hoping for more depth in this article because determining and implementing the appropriate mix of technology in education is objectively necessary.

Perhaps I spoke too broadly, but I signed up (according to my Facebook account) September 6, 2004 and only did so after being nagged by friends and acquaintances. So, for me when I look back, it felt unavoidable.

Note: I went to a university in the US but not an Ivy

If you were in college in 2004 it was pretty unavoidable

That would make an excellent passphrase

It's funny that the descriptions of password requirements would make much stronger passwords than any password a reasonable person would ever use.

American Express used to require 6-8 alphanumerics. No more, no less. Fortunately they've upped this to... I think something like 20 characters.

Look, I get that there are other safety factors (I pray) in place to prevent someone from hacking my account (most commonly in the form of login-attempt limits), but that's absolutely no reason to stop me from making my password longer and more complex. If I want my door to have a deadbolt _and_ a chain lock I expect a damn good explanation if someone tells me I can't.