Aza Raskin

This article suddenly becomes relevant again: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/does-google-censor-tiananmen-square-how-to-create-an-internet-hoax/ :-)

And this guy falls for it, even though it's pretty much spelled out in the search results shown what is going on.

Even so, I found the following remark interesting:

"It seems to me that removing Oracle from the Google search database would be an intentional tort and actionable under a variety of unfair business practice theories. Whether Google wants to admit it or not their search engine has become something of a public facility. As a result, arbitrarily and capriciously denying any individual or company access smacks of censorship and a high handedness that would result in the unilateral selection of winners and losers. With the power of Google they cannot be allowed to do something like this because if they can do it to Oracle they could do it to me or you or many others who would have little recourse."

I wonder if that is true? If Google would actually decide to remove company X or word Y from their search results, would that be considered censorship under the law? Would it be illegal? One could argue that it's their data and they can show it, or not show it, whichever way they want.

"Customer Development" is not the same as a having an effective "business model". I believe they should be treated differently. They will impact the product/service in differnt ways.

Getting in front of (selling to) 1, 10 or even 100 customers, collect feedback, implement feedback is easy. Getting in front of (selling to) 1000, 10,000, 100,000 is hard if your business model does not scale.

"Customer Development" is more "will they buy it"

"bus dev" is more "how to best penetrate the market efficiently"

"Bus Dev" will force you to change your product in ways you may never imagined, and these changes will not be realized from customer feedback. Customers do not care if you have an efficient b model.

Make sure you are not solving the wrong problem see http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/

While going through the customer feedback process I realized are b model sucked (it always bothered me). The article above inspired to me solve the right problem which has caused us to make a significant change to our offering.

Exactly. Your revenue is a proof of your entrepreneurial skills and that's an asset worth exploiting :) Before considering the new CEO stop for the moment and think about the challenges your company is about to face (both right now as well as in a following year). Then analyze what exactly do you need to cope with each of them. I bet sometimes you'll need just an encouraging advice, sometimes filling the competence gaps with some learning and probably most of the time it'll be coaching (your post below about decisions that seem to be bad suggests that you might be in that phase of your development). Sure, transitioning to the managerial role isn't a piece of cake but also it isn't that hard if you really commit yourself to the work on own develoopment. For the beginning, you may find this post http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/psychological-pitfalls-and-lessons-of-a-designer-founder/ inspiring, as you're a designer too I guess. Good luck!

One thing to keep in mind is that "graphic design" and "user interface engineering" tend to get conflated. They are not the same thing, but pretty closely related.

I find that the best way to proceed is to design an "overall style" for the site first. That means, pick a color scheme, typography, and base layout according to the principles mentioned in other comments (e.g. CRAP). Thereafter, the problem becomes user-interface engineering (which, in turn, may lead you to change your design).

I found this talk to be really helpful:
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1952-i-gave-a-talk-on-ui-fundamentals-for-programmers

Also, +1 on The Non-Designer's Design Book.

I've also found many useful articles here:
http://www.azarask.in/blog/

In particular,
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/know_when_to_stop_designing_quantitatively/
and
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/how-to-critique-an-interface/

So do I. To summarize the reasons:

1. Most apps (as you said) don't support it

2. The apps that I switch back and forth between are not the ones that support it

3. There is no alternative to keeping the app open when you exit (see: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-problem-with-home/)

4. There is no easy way to close all the apps at once. Everyone I know has to manually go through each app and close them, just as you said.

5. No one has ever fully addressed the issue. I'd like to see some tech people (or even John Gruber) explain their take on the seemingly useless feature.

Beautiful story, but when think about the details it may misleading.

If the only object or the judgment criteria
of the quantity way is quantity, and without any deliberate practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Deliberate_practice) why the students finally not just only develop a way to produce high quantity product?

It's not the same way MacCready solve Henry Kremer's problem (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/), although looks similar.