How are The Doors related to the iPhone? Scrabulous' user interface to YouTube Analytics? They're not, really. Except that they were among all of the "gems created" (you'll get that reference later) this week across our four blogs.
Jackson's
post, in reaction to
Alexander Kjerulf's article, describes the importance of listening to the majority of consumers' opinions in aggregate, but not gettting bogged down with impossible-to-please individuals. For the record, Jackson's call to "fire toxic customers" is not a reference to any current Viget clients.
Steph's
post was in response to Brian Clark's post on
Copyblogger about how The Doors got their first gig; she emphasizes that consumers ultimately must recognize long-term potential in something beyond the initial hype; otherwise, it's a fad forever. (Like former Viget client
NKOTB. Or so we thought...) In my post, "
Mixing a Clear Vision with Agility," I referenced a point
Jason Fried of
37signals made at
SXSW in March; in short, when you're building a business, being nimble and making lots of small (and sometimes conflicting) decisions is fine as long as you have a clear core vision to keep you on track.
Erik told us about how a
Flash Player is coming to the iPhone someday, and why it hasn't
yet made its debut.
Peyton, a year from
Andy Rutledge's original article on the topic, reminded us all about the importance of Square One, saying, "in many cases, the effectiveness of a good design can often be traced back to a recognition and understanding of the basics." Peyton also wrote an open letter to
Scrabulous offering
his suggestions for how their user interface could be improved.
Ben has a dream: "I long for the day when I can get by on git alone." Until then, he'll share tricks like how to
keep git and SVN synced if only using git in development.
Clinton reviews
Tim Pease's Mr Bones -- and compares it to other more widely used tools -- and gives
a brief tutorial on how he's used it to create Rubygems.
Josh reviewed
Efficient PPC, a new tool we've been using to make
building out pay-per-click campaigns more efficient once the heavy lifting is over. Josh said his life is forever changed ... which sounds dramatic, but he does take PPC very seriously. He also this week gave kudos to YouTube -- and Google Analytics -- for
launching Insight, its new analytics tool Josh thinks will further distance the online video juggernaut from its competition.
Ryan described how Intel is following the trend of
connecting its product developers to its user base, but through a unique portal called
ITopia, which "is designed to enable IT professionals to talk directly with Intel engineers." That's the update -- this week posted from Viget's Durham, NC office where I'm camped out for a couple days. Happy weekend, everyone!
