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Printable sketch sheets for wire-framing by hand
I have always believed that the best place to start when designing a new feature or product flow is with a pen and a piece of paper. I think if you go to quickly to screen/UI design, it’s harder to take a step back to focus on the actual user problem. Instead, you immediately start…
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Software engineers are more valuable to companies than money
CNBC posted an article last week that really resonated with me. From their article: A recent study from Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly — as we mark a decade after the financial…
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Branch, a deep linking SDK, is now a unicorn
From TechCrunch: Branch, the deep-linking startup backed by Andy Rubin’s Playground Ventures, will enter the unicorn club with an upcoming funding round. The four-year-old company, which helps brands create links between websites and mobile apps, has authorized the sale of $129 million in Series D shares, according to sources and confirmed by PitchBook, which tracks…
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Apps caught sending location and other data to advertising companies
From ZDNEt: A team of security researchers behind a popular mobile firewall app say they’ve identified tens of iOS apps that are collecting location data from iPhone users, data they later pass on to monetization firms. In all cases, researchers say, the collection occurs via packaged tracking code monetization firms provide to developers to embed…
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On Strategy…
I came across this quote in a fantasy novel* I was reading: “Strategy is just a fancy word for a special kind of common sense, the ability to see options, to make them where there were none. It’s not about knowing the rules. It’s about knowing how to break them.” When it comes to building…
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Distribution-centric beats product-centric product companies
There is a lot of gold in this interview with Marc Andreessen. The key insight for me was the notion that a superior product can easily be beaten by an inferior product with superior distribution. “The general model for successful tech companies, contrary to myth and legend, is that they become distribution-centric rather than product-centric.…
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A general plea on all App Store and Google Play users
If you have time to leave a review, you have time to respond to the developer when they reach out to you to try to solve your problem. Behind every app in the App Store, behind every game, sticker pack and camera filter, is an app developer. These individuals, or most likely team of individuals,…
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On solitude and taking a break for a day
On Friday, I did something I nearly never do. I took the day off, and spent the day outside in a Kayak. The simple act of being outside, alone on the water, was not only fun, but it was refreshing and energising. I relaxed. I had nothing to do, nowhere to be, no emails or…
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The new way to display outdoor maps on your website
There is a new way to embed beautiful 3D Maps into your website. Meet the new Map Embed from FATMAP. There is no better way to embed a high-resolution 3D map onto your website. Chamonix, France The map is fully interactive: use your mouse or trackpad to move around, and hold the SHIFT key to…
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Barrels and Ammunition
I came across this quote from Keith Rabois: If you think about people, there are two categories of high-quality people: there is the ammunition, and then there are the barrels. You can add all the ammunition you want, but if you have only five barrels in your company, you can literally do only five things…