How To Be A One Person Startup

There is an excellent article about the struggles encountered when thinking about building a one-person startup. The article covers myths such as:

• Enough time
• A good idea
• Money
• Lack of marketing/sales
• I can't quit my job

SOURCE:
http://www.intermittentintelligence.com/youre-a-developer-so-why-do-you-work-for-some

Downtime, what to do and how to do it.

There's an excellent A List Apart article titled Fire Drills: Communications Strategy in a Crisis that details how to create a framework/protocol to deal with downtime. It describes how to create a work structure to handle the downtime including how to organise people into different roles, and how to communicate efficiently to the outside world about what is broken, and what is being done to fix it.
The key sentence for me is:

"The protocol makes these kinds of decisions ahead of time, reducing the cognitive load on the response team during the emergency"

Common sense but unfortunately not very common place. This is a very enlightening article, describing a somewhat simple framework that can be applied and scaled to companies/projects of any size.


SOURCE:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fire-drills-communications-strategy-in-a-crisis/

Interesting predictions about the tech industry

Tech industry predictions from Roger McNamee, incl the future of Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc.
HTML5 is the silver bullet apparently...

Realistic Minature Set

Source:
http://www.dailydawdle.com/2011/05/mind-blown-ultra-realistic-miniature.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DailyDawdle+%28Daily+Dawdle%29

Steven Sasson - Inventor of the Digital Camera in 1975

Check out the modular storage solution:

Inventor Portrait: Steven Sasson from David Friedman on Vimeo.

SOURCE:
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/04/15/we-owe-him-so-much/

What 8 Bit Video games Can Teach Us About Usability

Great article over on spyrestudios about the usability techniques that the 80's video games of our childhood employed, within the constraints of limited resources:

• Use lack of colour to create atmosphere - Super Metroid
• Use vibrant colours and shapes to convey futuristic themes - Mega Man 3
• Use unconventional concepts to capture the imagination of the user - Super Mario 2
• Use colour to convey status changes - Mega Man 3, Super Mario
• Define a clear pathway of how the user progresses through the system - Super Mario

See the SOURCE link below for the full article.

SOURCE:
http://spyrestudios.com/what-8-bit-video-games-can-teach-us-about-design-and-ux/

New Shock Wave Generation Hybrid Engine

The engine has a rotor that’s equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

SOURCE:
http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2011/04/engine-sends-shock-waves-auto-industry/

Alphabet Heros

Source:
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/04/08/minimalist-quiz-of-the-day-alphabet-heroes/

Earth Temperature Increases Mapped

Nasa's GISS Temperature Map:

Source:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php?src=eoa-features

Minimalist Fantastic Four

Source (Tom Fowler):
http://www.comictwart.com/2010/11/minimal-fantastic-four-by-tom-fowler.html

President Obama Inauguration on GigaPan

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/15374/

Space Shuttle Launch Pad on GigaPan

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/63782/

Quite simple really