http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Posted via email from Jason Resnick’s posterous

I guess there always comes a time when good things come to an end. Yahoo announced that Geocities will be turning the switch off permanently on October 26th. It’s been a long ride for the free web host. Starting back in the mid-90s, pretty much at the advent of the internet as we know it. My first site we a Geocities site, and from reading the article, it makes me wonder why I haven’t kept that first site. Oh yeah, I remember now, because it was horrible – animated Simpsons characters, horizontal rules that were yellow and black construction type signs, an “LED” Welcome sign, all center aligned. At the time I loved it and spent a lot of time on it when I should’ve been in economics class, and was proud to have my little place on the web.

Anyway, thank you to Yahoo for keeping the “first apartment” alive and well these past several years. But we all need to move out and move on with our lives as you do as well. Goodbye and Farewell Geocities, it was great while it lasted.

Posted via email from Jason Resnick’s posterous

A question I ask so many times a day

Being a lead developer, I get asked this more times a day than I can count.  It may not be in that exact phrase, but that question will for certain pop up in my thinking along the way.  My thought process always flows in the same direction when I get asked “Is it possible to have …?” or “Can we set up this page for them to …?” or “We want our clients to …” or (and this is my favorite question prefix) “What would it take to…?”

What happens is that I usually listen, digest, and translate the question.  These are the steps that I go through in order to finally get to “What is a Good Idea?”

1. After getting asked a question, I think about the technologies involved to fully answer the question.
2. Once I understand the technologies involved, I think about how those technologies will interact with the ones currently implemented.
3. If everything is still ok, then I think about the best way to provide a solution.
4. After I’ve thought my way through the solution, I ask myself “Is this a good idea?”
5. Based on my answer in number 4, I proceed to follow the original question up.

This is a really simplified version of my thought process, but it pretty much breaks down how I go about fulfilling a proper answer to many of the questions I get asked daily.  Until I’m about 80% of the way through my thinking, “What is a Good Idea?” doesn’t even come into play.  Being the lead developer, a good idea means something different than to a project manager.  Being an entrepreneur and a forward thinker, that question poses something totally different than the other two.

So the next time someone comes to you and asks you “What is a Good Idea?”, take a step back (listen) and evaluate (digest/translate), and see if in the end the solution is a “Good Idea”.

Everest Broadband Interlink

I was hired by them to design and develop their website.  They needed their clients to be able to log in and view their accounts.  Everest also wanted to have a CMS implemented so they can managed the website.  This was all done in ASP with a SQL Server backend.