jonathanmoore

I see this as a positive for Shopify. We work very closely with the platform, and over the years I have only seen a handful of direct-from-Chinese dropshipping sites that actually produce any revenue. Sure there are a lot of accounts that are opening with the hopes of a get-rich-quick scheme with low cost and risk.

I am certain that it is the legitimate businesses that are behind Shopify's success, and this will help with their reputation and give them a chance to focus their marketing on the right customers.

A while back when Yahoo released inactive email addresses, I grabbed moore@yahoo.com. It was a nightmare. The account would receive 10,000+ emails a day. The inbox was full of insurance claims, social security numbers, mortgage applications, pay stubs, and more. In the end, I deleted the account since I didn't want the possible liability of the account.

The support for this has been there on Shopify for quite some time. With a tool like https://www.taxjar.com/ I was able to easily pay all the state, county and city taxes in a few minutes for my wife's small online shop.

Thankfully with Shopify it is extremely easy and straightforward to manage for my wife's small online store. Their platform does a great job properly charging taxes by state, county and city in certain situations. Then using an inexpensive plan from https://www.taxjar.com/ the entire filing and paying process is 100% automated.

In 10 minutes I was able to file and pay all the sales taxes to several state, dozens of California counties and a handful of cities that charge additional taxes on top.

I can relate to this video. In the mid-2000s I worked as an art director at 2Advanced creating over the top Flash sites. We had a client who insisted that we add a red, invisible hexagon shield on top of the animation to prevent "forces" from attacking the site.

Here are my current favorite IFTTT recipes for my phone:

Screenshots to Dropbox - Add my iPhone screenshots to a Dropbox folder Post Instagram pictures

Voicemail to Soundcloud - Leave a voicemail for IFTTT and post it to Soundcloud as a private track

Siri to Evernote - Create a Reminder list "Evernote". Use Siri to add a new reminder to the "Evernote" list. Append the reminder as a note to an Evernote notebook.

I primarily used Safari on the Mac for development and browsing up until Safari 6. After they crippled the web inspector by removing key features and adding the confusing design and layout I switched completely over to Chrome for browsing and dev.

I'll certainly give it another shot, but it'll be hard to give up Chrome as the primary browser.

From a slightly different perspective here are the detailed and technical case studies from the movie's VFX designer Bradley "GMUNK" Munkowitz:

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Opening-Titles

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Solar-Sailor

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Rectifier-Globe

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Throne-Room

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Fireworks

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Portal-Climax

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Board-Room

- http://work.gmunk.com/TRON-Disc-Game

As one of the first 100 on the Behance platform, I think this is a fantastic acquisition for both sides. When a large corporation acquires a company you love there is often concern, but seeing how the Adobe + Typekit relationship played out I'm expecting great things.

Having a calorie count on the menu is helpful. The state of California started requiring this a few years ago and it has influenced what I order.

As an example, before the calorie count I would occasionally go for a tuna sandwich at Subway. I knew that the sandwich wasn't a healthy choice, but after seeing 1,000+ calories next to it on the menu I stopped ordering it. When you see items on the menu in the 1,000+ range and others half of that for the same portion it should influence your chooses.

- Brand spotlights

- Sponsored radar posts (ads)

- Promoted posts (for all users)

- Premium theme shared revenue

- Selling access to data

I felt the same way when they picked up Desk (formerly Assistly). I have been pleased that they continue to push the product forward since the acquisition.

I'm rooting for App.net, but I highly doubt that the post-Twitter era will simply involve a comparable Twitter replacement.

Personally I believe that the post-Twitter days will involve a shift away from micro sharing towards long form writing and better ways to have discussions with peers.

Add to the list...

* Surprise users.

A perfect complement to this article is the short film "Resonance - a film about design strategy" by Continuum. http://jonathanmoore.com/post/129160860/resonance

“Sometimes the user needs are to be surprised and delighted. And they can’t tell us how to surprise and delight them, that has to come from us.”

The dashboard is where you primarily view all of the posts from the people you follow on Tumblr. Think of it in terms of what you view on Twitter, all of the Tweets from people you follow plus the ability to send out a new Tweet.

I am using CloudApp (http://getcloudapp.com/) to upload screenshots I take. Quite the handy tool.

With most platforms that is a valid concern, but with Tumblr you can easily create a local backup your entire blog (http://staff.tumblr.com/post/286303145/tumblr-backup-mac-bet...) as basic HTML, images, assets, theme, etc.

With that said, Tumblr has a very bright future ahead of them.

Here is a screenshot example of what a promoted posts looks like in the dashboard - http://cloud.jonathanmoore.com/Dsu4. Users have the option of choosing from several dozen feature options like "buy this", "very special posts", "super proud of this", etc.

Right now it appears to be limited to one highlighted post per day, and with all purchases on Tumblr they give you the option of donating an additional $1 to EFF, Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

Take a look at Numbers for Startups - http://numbersforstartups.com/

A few weeks ago I saw a link to the demo video of this hardcore financial spreadsheed for startups, and it might be the perfect resource for you.

Great list, although it doesn't include the first thing I ask myself:

Does it have personality?

I would love to, but in our case the two limitations are Internet Explorer 8 (and below) and cross domain limitations for the IE work arounds. The specific projects we're using the Pictos icon font on are being served up from a secondary asset server were we have no ability to add cross-domain policies or .htaccess modifications required for SVG or the .htc fixes.

I have been using this method for nearly a year on various projects and theme designs. The font icon method is incredibly useful when you want to give user the flexibility to change up the color of the icons. Plus, as mentioned using CSS pseudo elements with content should not effect modern screen readers.

One of the disadvantages mentioned in the article is the file size, but it can be drastically optimized. My favorite icon font is Pictos by Drew Wilson (http://pictos.drewwilson.com/). When I use it in a site design I will actually recreate the font file with just the few icons I need, usually 6-8 characters.

To reduce the font file size just load up the icon font in Font Squirrel's font-face generator (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator) and use custom subsetting to specify the needed characters.

Full Pictos Font EOT (19 KB), WOFF (13 KB), TTF (18 KB), SVG (41 KB) Total - 91 KB

Optimized Pictos Font (8 characters/icons required) EOT (6 KB), WOFF (4 KB), TTF (5 KB), SVG (5 KB) Total - 20 KB

My mistake. I must have missed that.

The version of the story that is told on Kenneth Cole's website is still worth checking out.

Fun fact... Their legal name to date is still Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. as a reminder to resourcefulness and innovative problem solving.

Source: http://www.kennethcole.com/content/index.jsp?page=our_story&...

I'll throw my hat into the ring. After a decade of working in the digital agency world, I left a well paying job at an agency in Los Angeles to start my own studio in early 2009. Because I was fortunate enough to have amazing connections I managed to land large projects with UFC, Picnik (now Google), Microsoft, Volcom and others. I was running the studio solo and operating as the creative director while I outsourced various roles. The business was off to a great start financially, but the time required was insane. It was full of 100+ hour weeks and frequent "I know it's Friday, but can you have something ready to show us on Monday?" emails.

During a gap in between two client projects in May 2010 I got an email from a designer at Tumblr asking if I would be interested in selling premium themes on their platform. As an experiment I took a few weeks to design, develop and launch a theme. Instantly I realized this would be a great supplement to the client work. After launching the third theme, it hit me that with just a bit more work it could replace all the income from all the client accounts I had. By October 2010 I officially stopped taking on clients and the theme sales revenue surpassed the client services revenue.

Officially I opened up shop as Style Hatch - http://stylehatch.co. Earlier this year I was able to hire my first full-time employee as a director of customer experience, and now I'm looking to hire a designer and developer. As of right now we still only have Tumblr themes for sale, but we're working on a few new platforms to launch for in the next few month.

For the first time I was able to truly control the amount of time that I wanted to put into the business, as opposed to being controlled by client schedules. With two young kids I have taken advantage of the success by taking plenty of half-days off to go to swim lessons, head to the beach, or just being there. This summer was also the first time that I was able to take a two week vacation and completely unplug from email and work.

When we first started the process I was evaluating both Tender Support (http://tenderapp.com/) and Uservoice (http://uservoice.com/fullservice). Overall I preferred the way that Uservoice worked although there were a number of limitations at the time to how you could brand your help page.

Then we moved to Zendesk and used them for several months. Overall we were incredibly pleased with the process, although I was not a fan of their public support portal unless you use their API to roll your own.

Three weeks ago we setup an Assistly account and were instantly blown away at how they simplified the process of providing support, and added the ability to easily create complex business rules. When you're using Assistly it feels more like an native application full of keyboard shortcuts rather than a website. In short Assistly isn't a chore to use.

Plus, Assistly has some of the best support for their customers.

I have to applaud Gowalla for taking the risk of changing directions with their platform. Although it is a step away from the check-in crowd, their move is in the direction of how I tend to use Gowalla or Foursquare.

If you live outside of urban areas like most people checking in at the same places over and over looses its appeal quickly. The only time I actively use any check-in service is when I'm traveling or at a conference. I'm sure they'll continue to find their way in the new direction, but I like where they're heading.

Stellar design too.

I couldn't agree more. After trying several other support platforms moving to Assistly drastically changed our process for the better. Good for them!