Drinks with David and Allen at Mohawk
Last night I met up with Dave Nunez for some drinks at Mohawk and Allen Chen dropped by.
Subjects discussed:
- Microcelebrities (apparently tapping the zeitgeist)
- Does zefrank sleep?
- Trend: people are making things that they used to buy. Right now would you rather be in the clothing business or in the sewing machine business? Or the sewing magazine business for that matter? These days it’s better to sell tools to make music than it is to sell the music itself. See Paying to Create. And don’t get me started on scrapbooking.
- Data visualization as a new art form. How cool is it that a market exists for the services of a company like Stamen Design
- Why do companies even bother offering ‘skinnable’ apps? It’s a pain in the ass to implement and support, and it’s almost never considered a core competency for the company.
- Lots of people make lists of projects they’d like to persue. What about making a list of people you’d like to work with -regardless of the project, and realigning your raw creative urges in that direction?
I need to have more conversations like last night, because they motivate me to do something with my life.
For instance, David mentioned that Dorkbot is going to be at SXSW. He’s also organizing Maker Faire 2007. Oh and his ticket site is live.
And it turns out Allen is the guy who wrote the Austinist Interactive Guide to SXSW- I was wondering who did it since there are no credits (c’mon, Allen!). Given that he holds down a completely unrelated day job (I haven’t heard the phrase ‘Tape Out‘ in years), I really wonder how he finds time to cover SXSW for Austinist.
What am I up to? Uh, trying to make this Swear Jar widget work. A couple months ago I had a business idea prototyped and ran it by some people for feedback, but lost steam as some well-funded players appeared. And the problem space is not exactly a passion of mine.
Aside from that I started a new job almost two months ago, and that’s been keeping me pretty busy. I don’t have anything to say about it yet besides a) it’s fun working with rails, b) I’ve wanted to work with these guys for a while, and c) it’s great to be in an early stage startup again.
I was reading Getting Things Done last night. When I saw your post, I saw “Drinks with David Allen…”. That was completely wrong, then your post was about… getting things done. Wtf?
ryan
23 Feb 07 at 1:46 pm
Interface skinning: I think this is interesting. If you write your interface in XUL, then why not? Or is it that much more work?
There’s a related trend, which is not skinning of the chrome, but skinning inside the chrome. Think of Adium or NetNewsWire. Both of these are using Webkit in their primary windows, so skinning becomes trivial. I’m pretty sure that with NNW at least, Webkit is being used not because it permits skinning, but because its the best bang for the buck. Skinning is just a lagniappe.
Adam Rice
23 Feb 07 at 1:53 pm
@ryan: That cracked me up. I love it when shit like that happens.
@adam: We were discussing this situation: you are a company who sells access to your branded web application. Your customers are large companies who want to put their name and colors all over your app to make it look like theirs so they can offer it to *their* customers. You host the entire service yourself, and you need to keep your customers’ application skins up to date with the latest changes in their branding/website. It might sound contrived, but I’ve dealt with it at several previous jobs.
In the worst case scenario, you end up with a never-ending backlog of html/css/javascript tweaks for each of your customers, instead of building out features that add value across all of them. You want to avoid the situation where more customers = more html bullshit at the expense of value-adding features.
I have another post brewing on that very subject so I’ll leave it there. I suppose last night was more a discussion of approaches to branding a white-label web application for resellers, not what most of us think of when you say “skinning” in the traditional desktop app sense. XUL or something like WebKit works wonderfully in that use case and is probably worth the effort. Users keep the skins all up to date themselves, which is optimal.
banksean
23 Feb 07 at 4:18 pm
i’m pretty sure starting a band is the answer to all your life-questions. look what it’s done for me!
brent
25 Feb 07 at 1:23 am
A pre-rock&roll aphorism, for which you’ve found some updated corollaries:
If you want to make money in the music business, sell band uniforms.
Prentiss Riddle
1 Mar 07 at 1:17 pm