Writing beginner level tutorials. Great tips about what to consider when writing tutorials aimed at beginners. My favorite nugget is, “[people looking for help] won’t be searching for the solution – they’ll be searching on keywords relating to the problem.” (via Daniel Bachhuber)
Tag: ideas
Work+ A new iPhone app from Tender Creative that aims to help you discover new places to get work done. Looks like a nifty tool. Kind of similar to an idea I wrote about previously.
Scaling my long-form writing
Earlier Daniel asked me about starting a blog circle of sorts to help each other work on longer form writing that requires research, editing, and more careful thought. I think it’s a great idea. There’s a few things that I’d love to explore in more depth here that I don’t have a good structure in place for right now.
A benefit to attending a liberal arts school like Whitman was the sheer amount of writing I did every semester. Many classes required 4 papers a semester each of 5-7 pages. It meant I was writing something almost every week.
Since graduating the frequency of writing I’ve done has gone up drastically. Whether it’s on this blog or in my work at Automattic I’m writing far more and in far more varied contexts than I ever have before. That’s fun. What I’m not doing is the type of sustained, long-form writing that causes me to dig deeper and push my abilities. That’s also fun but is more difficult to do on a blog than as part of coursework.
There’s a few ideas that have been kicking around in my head that may fit for getting back into the swing of things with research and in-depth writing.
First, I’ve been thinking more about how news organizations need to think of themselves as crafting a product. It’s something I’ve written about before and is something I’d love to dive more deeply into. There could be an interesting line to trace here between the history of news publications and the growth of technology companies that more readily grok what it means to create a product.
Second, it’d be great to spend more time researching how WordPress can play a role in a rebooted school system. I think our current system of schooling is on its way out. Something may take its place and I think WordPress can, and in many cases probably is, playing a role here. Collecting those stories and theorizing a bit about what a more sustainable school system could look like would be fun.
We’ll see how this goes. It’d be a blast to get back into writing pieces longer than 500 words.
Pub Rules. In a follow-up of sorts to the quote I posted yesterday Brent Simmons writes about what he would do if in charge of a publication. I think it will only be a matter of time before we see someone try this with a large-scale site. I bet that when they do they’ll supplant whatever the main source is for that community. The trick will be sticking to these principles as the site grows and not becoming a bloated mess of “business opportunities.”
Journalism for makers
Journalism for makers. This is journalism I would pay for. Terrific piece by Jonathan Stray.
Innovation Starvation. We’re struggling to get big stuff done in the world and Neal Stephenson has some ideas as to why that may be. Interesting thoughts as to what context allows a society to take risks and strive to accomplish the difficult.
An idea for banks
Last month I posted a status update about how Bank of America froze my credit card after an $18 purchase for Alfred’s Powerpack. The purchase was a UK-based transaction which apparently was too much for a Visa card to handle.
It gave me an idea though. What if a bank gave its customers the ability to set a threshold for fraudulent activity? The bank would let me say, “Do not freeze my card for any purchases below this dollar amount.” Seems easy enough.
If my card or account information was stolen I really wouldn’t be worried about an $18 purchase. What I’m concerned about is someone stealing my information and going on a shopping spree at an Apple store. If they want to drop $18 to support an indie software company that’s fine by me.
While ideally I’d like to not be liable for an $18 fraudulent purchase I don’t need my account frozen because of it. Send me a non-urgent email or a text message but don’t cut off my access.
Personal recommendation of support documents
Earlier today Daniel posted this idea:
Prioritize frequently asked questions on an external facing documentation site based on how often the questions get asked in support tickets. Show the number of times a given question was asked this month as a way of indicating to the customer that the answer probably already solves their question.
It gave me a quick idea to jot down: personal recommendations for support docs. The idea would be to take something akin to the Like button on Facebook or WordPress.com but turn it into a way for users to say “This doc answered my question.”
Really low friction interaction is the goal. One click should register whether it helped the user and then display their Gravatar next to the doc to show that it worked for them. In a way this would be turning the vetting of documentation into a user-facing feature.
The data would be public. Having a publicly displayed list of those users whom the doc has helped may convince future users that the answers are found in docs. Sort of a “Oh look, it worked for these 150 people, maybe it’ll work for me” scenario.
To take it to the next level you could aggregate a list of vetted docs for each user. This way they could look back and see which ones they’ve found answers in before. Maybe they have a repeat question and you just saved them half an hour of searching.
Let’s meet and work. An index of places to freelance and co-work around London. Sounds like an NYC map is also in the works. Somewhat related to and idea I wrote about earlier this month. (via swissmiss)
Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code
Customers don’t patronize companies on the basis of the difficulty of the code or the unit test coverage percentage or whether you used Bodoni instead of Times New Roman on the home page. In fact I’ve made millions of dollars on companies with hideously ugly websites and buggy code. Those things are actually not the most important things. Real life is a startup contest too.
Jason Cohen – Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code.