How to generate more revenue from your web application today
There are ways that your software as a service web application can make more money today. They aren’t complicated or revolutionary, but instead are practical ideas that you should consider implementing right now. Before we jump in you should take a moment to check out my latest book on designing web applications. It…
European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright...
Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing
Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing Posted: September 18, 2012 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: data, design, product, yahoo | 26 Comments » I was visiting my grandparent…
Why software sucks?
[First published: September, 2005] No one makes bad software on purpose. No programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people enough to make them cr…
Learning from competition
I experimented with custom fonts in Instapaper last year, but my efforts fizzled out. Before iOS 5, rendering custom fonts in a UIWebView on iOS was extremely buggy and slow. And nearly all of my licensing inquiries to font foundries went unanswered, so I couldn’t legally ship any of the fonts I wanted even if I could…
Astrology For Businesses
A few years ago, my work sent me on a training course. It involved the usual things, trust exercises, team bonding, and personality profiles. I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused…
Mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur
I started my first business eight years ago in 2004. I’ve managed teams as small as two (from our top bedroom), all the way to my current 54-person team at Treehouse. I’ve had some wins and plenty of losses and learned a lot of things the hard way. Hopefully other business owners can avoid these un-fun mistakes …
On Building Flipboard for iPhone
Flip flopping between bits and atoms
Which is better: Many customers at low price-point or few at high price?
If two companies have the same revenue, one from a few large customers and the other from many little customers, which is better? Which would you rather build?
That'll Never Work
I got invited to speak at the last Hacker News London meet up and gave a talk called That'll Never Work! about crazy ideas and what to do ...
Introducing the Predictive Interface
Stephen Wolfram gives a look into the new Predictive Interface technology in Mathematica 9. Users are provided a list of buttons for possible actions to take next based on what they have already done.
Candy Japan April Income Report
How much money can you make by sending surprise candy to people around the world?
$26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launch
Do you work on web applications? Then you’d probably learn a lot from my new book, Designing Web Applications. A few years ago I had no idea a day like last Wednesday was even possible. After all, everyone I knew worked jobs that paid a modest yearly salary. My wealthier friends made closer to $250/day […]
Raising funding as a first-time founder
I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with some outstanding first-time entrepreneurs on a few different days during this week. In almost every case I can really feel the passion and determination they have, and I know that if they will just continue there is every chance that eventually they will be very successful.
How VCs get paid
[4.7.12 Addendum: Many of the management company details are now available on a SEC web site. More details here .]