I taught myself to program in 1981 (when i was 8) on a ZX81. I submitted a game (“Robin Hood” *cringe*) to Virgin Games when i was 10. I got my first real job in 1995. I did frontend development for a search engine – including design and UX. I acquainted myself with the UX…… Continue reading Don’t judge a developer by their job title
Category: Business
The profit paradox
At Metro, it’s been suggested that we “monetize everything”. The dev team happens to be very commercially minded. Most of the developers have started their own commercial venture. Plus, i have a degree in economics. Clearly we need to monetize our product, but we shouldn’t monetize everything. Here’s why. 1. The most valuable company in…… Continue reading The profit paradox
Apple’s design secrets
I’m reading the Steve Job biography at the moment. It’s so gripping! Here are some highlights about design. First Jony Ive, Much of the design process is a conversation… There are no formal design reviews, so there are no huge decision points. Instead, we can make the decisions fluid. Since we iterate every day and…… Continue reading Apple’s design secrets
The problem isn’t fake news or Facebook
There’s been a lot of noise recently about fake news being promoted by Facebook. I believe the bigger problem is real news. It’s a more subtle problem, but also more dangerous because we consume far more real news than fake news. I believe that this is a big opportunity for the people bold enough to…… Continue reading The problem isn’t fake news or Facebook
Product Insights: Beyond Stats
I just stumbled across an old project idea while clearing out my GitHub profile. If there is one thing that will make your business stronger, it’s understanding your users better. There are lots of analytics tools which help with this, but they suffer from two big problems. People hate stats. People want stories, not stats. Stats…… Continue reading Product Insights: Beyond Stats
The Future Of News (part 3)
In this new supersaturated digital universe of infinite free digital duplication, copies are so ubiquitous, so cheap, free in fact, that the only things truly valuable are those that cannot be copied. The technology is telling us that copies don’t count anymore. To put it simply: When copies are superabundant, they become worthless. This is…… Continue reading The Future Of News (part 3)
The Future Of News (part 2)
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future (by Kevin Kelly). Chapter 2 is about AI: The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services – cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything, and almost invisible except when it blinks off. This common utility will serve you as…… Continue reading The Future Of News (part 2)
The Future Of News according to…
I’m currently reading “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future”. It’s by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine and an internet pioneer in the 1980s. It’s brilliant and very relevant to the news industry. Here is a highlight from chapter one. You are not late … here is the thing.…… Continue reading The Future Of News according to…
SEO has changed: 5 things you need to know
This post is based Quick Sprout’s “7 Obsolete SEO Tactics”. The underlying message: search engines have got way smarter in the last few years. Here are 5 changes you may have missed: 1. Backlinks. The quality of backlinks is more important than the quantity. Relevance matters. 2. Keywords: write for users. Writing keyword-rich text for…… Continue reading SEO has changed: 5 things you need to know
Web Analytics 2.0
I recently stumbled across Web Analytics 2.0 by analytics guru Avinash Kaushik. Here’s the obligatory infographic: It made me wonder, how much of this do we do at Metro.co.uk? 1. Clickstream. This is provided by the analytics team using Omniture. We have a lot of “event” data as well as the usual page data. We…… Continue reading Web Analytics 2.0
How the Macintosh was born
Folklore.org has this great story about how the Macintosh team was super-charged by the prospect of achieving something great. “The original Macintosh was designed by a small team that worked long hours with a passionate, almost messianic fervor, inculcated by our leader, Steve Jobs, and the excitement that we felt during its creation shines through…… Continue reading How the Macintosh was born