Posted on May 4, 2008 by Chris LoSacco

JetBlue has a great writing staff

I signed up for JetBlue's TrueBlue point program today, and I was greeted with this success page:

Thanks for joining. Your TrueBlue number is ###. Unless you've got a photographic memory, you might want to print this page for your reference. (You can also cut out the card below for your traveling convenience - or to impress your friends.)

Awesome. Made me smile and I immediately felt good about booking a flight with them (I hadn't yet, as I wanted to get the number before I booked). They really sealed the deal.

In addition, they had a really concise, clear way to describe the terms of the program:

TrueBlue points live for 1 year. So to earn your free flight, you need to accumulate your 100 points in a consecutive 12 month period. Just to be clear, that means any unused points automatically expire on their first birthday. For example, if you earn 12 points on 12/31/04, those 12 points expire on 12/31/05.

No complicated rules, just a plan English description in a down-to-earth tone.

We're currently working on our first product offering at Arc90, and crafting the writing within and about a product isn't easy. It's good to see that JetBlue took the time to put some effort and creativity into how they speak to their customers.

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Posted on March 4, 2008 by Chris LoSacco

Searching for the Right Mouse

I use (and love) a MacBook Pro at work and home. At work, my desk setup centers around an external monitor, so I wanted an external keyboard and mouse. Early on, I tried Apple's Wireless Keyboard, on a recommendation from Avi, and it was great. Very easy to type, very comfortable and, best of all, wireless via Bluetooth.

But finding a good mouse was a different story. At first, I stayed with a wired mouse, for two reasons: (1) weight -- wireless mice are typically heavy with battery weight -- and (2) lag. I sometimes do design work, and I can't have the mouse pointer lagging even a little bit. The wired mouse was okay for a long while, but the wire started to bug me, and just like that, I started looking around for good wireless mice.

At first, I was looking only at Bluetooth mice. Rich let me try his Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, which worked well for a few weeks, but lagged every so often, and was bordering on being too small. It also didn't reliably wake up my computer, because the radio would shut off automatically. That was annoying.

I was telling Rich about this and he suggested that I try Logitech's VX Revolution. I've always liked Logitech's mice, and he said this one specifically was very nice. It uses a USB dongle, but it has a storage mechanism inside to hide it away when not in use, and since I don't regularly use all of my USB ports, I gave it a shot.

Long story short: it's pretty awesome. Very smooth, very lightweight, no lag whatsoever, scroll wheel that switches between click and no-click styles, and a comfortable, not-too-big-but-not-too-small size. There are also a bunch of little touches, like the fact that when you store the dongle in the mouse, it turns off; when you eject it, the mouse turns back on, so it's instantly ready to go. Awesome.

I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a high quality wireless mouse.

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Posted on February 29, 2008 by Richard Ziade

10 Reasons We Love Adobe AIR

A ways back, we rambled off 10 reasons we love Flex. With the release of Adobe's AIR desktop runtime platform, we're giddy all over again. At Arc90, we're getting tired of having our creations relegated to living inside the web browser's walls. We're eyeing the miles of untrodden territory: your desktop. And AIR is a great way to leverage what we already know to build some exciting tools for our products and clients.

So without further adieu, 10 reason's we're loving AIR:

1. One Build, Many Platforms. We've always eyed turning our tools and apps into desktop clients, but the prospect of dealing with multiple operating systems turned us off. With AIR, you build once and deploy to OSX, the various Windows flavors...and even Linux!
2. Turn Any Web Application Into A Desktop App In Minutes. While you're hardly taking advantage of all the goodies AIR has to offer, you can take just about any web destination and turn it into its own desktop app with AIR in around five minutes. Don't have five minutes? Try our Airifier.
3. Real File Interaction. There are few things more annoying than browsing, finding and uploading files via a web form. With AIR, you've got full control over dragging and dropping files between your desktop and Internet-based applications.
4. A Seamless Installation Experience. AIR apps beautifully install with a couple of clicks - even if you don't have AIR installed. No more "where did I drop setup.exe?" experiences.
5. No More One-Size-Fits-All! Did you ever navigate to a full-blown portal page to just find out tomorrow's weather? Some content and applications don't need a full-blown browser to run. With AIR, we can create finely tailored experiences that fit the needs neatly - and you can custom brand them too.
6. A Desktop App That Hardly Needs To Ship. One of the big benefits of web applications is that updates can occur without the pain of deploying an app to hundreds of desktops. AIR marries the seamless deploy-ability of web applications with the power of desktop apps.
7. Airplane Friendly Web Apps! With SQLite, we can finally build apps that anticipate and accommodate offline usage.
8. AIR Hearts Ajax. With a full browser built right in, we're able to leverage not only our Flash & Flex skills, but Ajax and Javascript skills as well. It's a great way to quickly transition existing rich web apps to the desktop.
9. Minimize To Tray Or Dock. This is a subtle but important feature. Certain web applications are all about the updates. AIR allows you to hint to the user that important events are happening in a subtle and unobtrusive way - without opening your browser and visiting a web destination.
10. "Hello Clipboard! Nice To Meet You" We've sort of accepted that just about all we can paste into a web browser is text into a form control. With AIR, you can handle multiple data formats - text, URL, images, etc.

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Posted on February 2, 2008 by Javier Julio

cfDrinks In Manhattan!

Adam Lehman has organized a first cfDrinks event right here in Manhattan this upcoming Tuesday, February 5th. It's being held at the Village Yokocho in Manhattan/East Village. Again no special occasion but sure is nice of Adam to set this up for everyone.

I'll definitely be there along with friends Peter Bell and hopefully Ben Nadel and Clark Valberg too. If all three will be in attendance it should be a great social event. Lots of drinks and awesome food (trust me!) so I'm looking forward to it and hope to see some new faces there!

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Posted on January 14, 2008 by Joel Potischman

capitalizationGuide

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Posted on January 11, 2008 by Javier Julio

New York's Own ColdFusion User Group

What a surprise to see my friends Ben Nadel and Clark Valberg not only out of nowhere get announced as the new managers of the NYCFUG but at the same time revamping the site with a killer layout! Talk about an incredible first impression. What a way to back up an announcement fellas! You got my full attention.

New York's ColdFusion User Group is in great hands folks. The first meeting should be a hit with Adobe's Adam Lehman talking about the future of ColdFusion. Maybe we can get some early information on CF9. I'll be there representing Arc90 so we look forward to seeing you there!

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Posted on January 10, 2008 by Tim Meaney

Dear Developer

Dear Developer:

I'm writing you today to express a frustration, perhaps you can help. You likely know me by one of a number of titles: Business Lead, Project Manager, Product Manager, Project Owner. In a well-functioning software company, I have an important role, some might argue the most important of roles. When a project kicks-off, I interact with the 'business', whether that be the market, a client or internal business team. It's my responsibility to articulate the need, the driver for the software endeavor (have you ever attempted to build something not well defined? Good luck.) During this phase of a project, I'm wholly engaged in the effort - organizing people, designing, creating requirements, spec and tickets. You, developer, and I, spend a bunch of time together at this phase and collectively define the effort - the design, interactions, error handing, the software architecture, XML schema, resources, database definitions and others. This effort belongs to the both of us. The whiteboard is full of our sketches, flurries of tickets are created, and a plan is put in place. We commit to dates, shake hands, and then....

...I go back to my office and wait. You have to understand, I was once a developer too, but I hung it up when I realized I would add more value as a definer, communicator and facilitator. But I love software too, I'm as passionate about it as you are. I understand nearly everything that you do, albeit at a more superficial level. My frustration - I can't stay late, open Eclipse and start implementing, but trust me, I wish I could. Just for a moment, put yourself in my shoes. Imagine the feeling I have sitting there waiting for you to build our software. Now of course, I have levers to push, I might be your boss, I might be responsible for rewarding you. But those are nearly irrelevant, building good software isn't effected by that. However, I certainly have the say as to whether your effort is successful or not, in fact, I define that success for you. I can motivate you, recognize your efforts, shine the light on your many successes. Think about it, who has been a more powerful advocate of your work? Why do you think that is? This is why you should even bother being concerned about my opinion on this matter - I'm not just a project manager, I'm your customer - I define your success.

So back to the subject at hand. I sit in my office waiting for tickets to move to QA. I try to hold back from harassing you, I've learned from experience that you're at your best when I stand down. But sometimes I see you leave at a reasonable hour and can't fathom it! If I could, I'd sleep here tonight to bang this out! Everything is teed-up, there's clarity of definition, all that needs to happen is to author those lines of code!

I guess I'm like the football coach. I used to be a great player; nobody cares more about the game than I do. I've spent the week crafting the perfect game-plan for this team, we can't lose. I'm better prepared than the other coach. All you, quarterback, need to do is go out and execute on it and we'll win. So now it's kick-off, and while I can call time-out, yell at you, give a kick-ass half-time speech, pull you out of the game, call a deep pass or a sweep right -- in a sense I'm powerless. I would never have thrown into double coverage, but you did. If I could throw the pads on like I used to, I'd show you how to really play this game...

So what's all this about? What do I want from you? Mostly, I'd like a little empathy next time I ask you a question about how you're implementing something. Not only do I need to understand this stuff in order to champion it, to articulate it and to test it, I'm simply just curious about it.. Remember, it's our software you're building. Pull me into your world, talk me through your decisions, do a code walk-through with me - you'll be surprised how much I understand. I sometimes even have killer implementation ideas, as I bring a different perspective from yours. Overly communicate with me, we're all better off when I completely understand where you stand. Just as your job is made much easier when I fully and clearly define the business need and project goals, mine is made easier when I fully understand where we are in an effort at all times. If you want to know why that's the case - two reasons are: I'm responsible for communicating this to the client or internal business owners (and trust me, there's nothing worse than being caught ignorant on this front) and I'm also responsible for resourcing across many efforts, so I need to know where we stand to make informed calls about who should focus on what. Pay attention to the priority that I set, just as you know the best implementation approach, I have my ear to ground and understand when something apparently small is crucially important, or when something you think is crucial is not. Trust my judgment here by respecting my calls, as I do yours.

Finally, understand my frustrations, they run as deep or deeper than yours.

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Posted on January 4, 2008 by Javier Julio

Is Touching Better?

When I first came across Smashing Magazine's article titled User Experience of the Future, I pushed it aside. What a mistake. Popular Mechanics did a wonderful video review on the new Microsoft Surface. Touching is better.

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Posted on December 10, 2007 by Chris LoSacco

A Crappy New York Times Feature

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Posted on August 31, 2007 by Joel Potischman

Law of Unintended Consequences, Abbreviated

Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and LinkedIn contact? (Not photoshopped)

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Posted on July 24, 2007 by Kamni Khan

Yet Another Round Against Ticketmaster

The summer concert season is well underway around New York City. There's nothing like hearing music on a warm night with the grass at your feet. If you purchased your tickets from Ticketmaster, you might be standing in the park trying to figure out exactly where the money goes for the company's convenience fees.

When buying tickets from Ticketmaster online, the user's only option is to pay surcharges, which can increase prices up to 25 percent. The cost usually averages $10 per ticket and can climb much higher.

For years, consumers have complained about the big jump in the cost of tickets purchased from Ticketmaster, either during the two-minute online transaction or via telephone. Given the lock the ticketing giant has on venues, most concertgoers don't really have a choice--they have to buy from Ticketmaster or not at all. There usually isn't an alternate method for purchasing tickets from larger venues.

An examination of Ticketmaster's service charges reveals that the ticketing company adds convenience fees ranging from 17 to 29 percent to the advertised ticket prices for Live Nation shows. In 2003, Rolling Stone reported that the convenience fee is divided with 30 to 40 percent for the venue, 25 percent for the ticket. During Pearl Jam's battle against Ticketmaster, the 1994 memo to the Justice Department charged that service charges are usually kicked back by Ticketmaster to promoters and venues.

Split from Live Nation?

The big news for frustrated consumers is that a major change could be in the works: the concert industry has been buzzing for months that Live Nation, which runs events in New York at the Fillmore NY at Irving Plaza, Gramercy Theater, Hammerstein Ballroom and Roseland Ballroom, may begin selling tickets for all of its concerts itself.

Live Nation is currently Ticketmaster's single largest client, but that contract expires next year. Live Nation also owns a stake in two major independent companies, Next Ticketing and MusicToday, which both rival Ticketmaster's capabilities for selling tickets online.

If Live Nation cuts Ticketmaster out of the transaction and sells tickets directly to concertgoers, industry experts say that it will be able to keep more of the ticketing revenue for itself—and hopefully reduce service fees for concertgoers.

Box Office Pick-Up

Although SummerStage tickets were previously sold through Ticketmaster, this season's tickets can also be purchased from Ticketweb or the Mercury Lounge box office.

If you are going to any of the Bowery Presents shows at Mercury Lounge, Bowery Ballroom or Webster Hall, you also have the option of purchasing tickets from Ticketweb or picking them up from the Mercury Lounge box office, located at 217 East Houston Street. It is open from Monday-Saturday, noon to 7 p.m. The box office only accepts cash but your fee is merely the transportation cost to Mercury Lounge. It doesn't add any service charges to the ticket price and you walk away with a hard ticket.

Ticketweb's online service fee varies according to the price of the ticket, along with the number of tickets. The fee for two tickets to a $15 show is approximately $9.11 while the fee for one ticket to the same show is approximately $5.31. The fee for two tickets to a $25 show is approximately $11.75 while the fee for one ticket to the same show is approximately $6.63.

You can also save yourself Ticketmaster's fees for summer shows at Prospect Park by picking them up from the Town Hall box office, located at 123 West 43rd Street (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue). However, tickets for events at Williamsburg's McCarren Pool are only available from Ticketmaster.

Text-for-Tickets

The Knitting Factory recently introduced the text-for-tickets system that allows fans to buy concert tickets via their cell phones. ShopText Inc. operates the new ticketing-by-text service as a secure technology which allows consumers to buy products by using their cell phones and text messaging a specific code to ShopText.

Before purchasing tickets, you are required to register with ShopText. If you opt to register via your cell phone, you will get an automated call from the ticketing system. You must provide your credit card information and verify your identity. Once this process is complete, you will get a pin number to complete all of your future transactions.

You might have to go online to get the even keyword for the specific even (the code is also listed on flyers and in newspapers) but you won't have to sit in front of your computer at the exact moment when tickets go on sale. You can also save up to $1.50 by texting for tickets. The savings may seem minimal for a single event but they will add up if you are an avid concertgoer.

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Posted on July 9, 2007 by Chris LoSacco

Build Yourself Out of a Job

It doesn't make immediate sense for a services company to deliver great tools to its clients--it makes sense for the company to keep the good stuff in-house, and charge a healthy premium for its use. This leads to high margins, low overhead and a generally steady stream of work. But there's a better way.

Here are 5 reasons to avoid this practice and, instead, build yourself out of a job.

1. It makes the client happier. From their perspective, it's definitely better to have good, solid tools, because their employees can interact with the content directly and reliably expect turnarounds (or demand them). It makes sense that the fewer steps there are between the start and finish lines, the quicker the race will be.
2. The requests get boring very fast. Software shops aren't about managing content and shouldn't be hiring people to do it. The staff of a good services company should be skilled developers who want to spend their time developing, and skilled developers don't want to be responsible for changing content.
3. It's easier to focus on writing a great tool than it is to anticipate all of the possible software needs. Inevitably, the client requirements will change--most likely, they'll grow. A well thought out custom tool will do much better at handling changing needs than a one-off on top of an in-house solution.
4. Your client saves money. For almost all recurring projects, they'll undoubtedly spend less on a tool up front than they would repeatedly buying the service or paying maintenance fees. This increases good will, and frees up funds on their end for additional projects, which leads to the next item.
5. If you've done your job right, there's bound to be more work. This is the single most important reason to work strategically. There isn't a company out there that doesn't have another project waiting in the wings after the one you're working on is complete, and if you hit a homerun with the current project, guess who they're going to come back to with the next one? Show them that you can deliver for them, and care about their needs by not nickel and diming them with service requests, and the work will come back to you tenfold.

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Posted on July 9, 2007 by Joel Nagy

Brain Games

Video games have been touted as enhancing hand-eye coordination as well as providing skills that lead to better surgeons and soldiers.  But what about brain development, mental acuity and memory.  Look at how "Wii Sports" and previously "Dance Dance Revolution" have made people more active.  Retirement homes have now begun introducing the Wii to senior citizens as a way to get them moving and having fun, and schools are also bringing DDR to the gym to help fight childhood obesity.

Continue reading "Brain Games" »

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Posted on July 6, 2007 by Tim Meaney

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Hilarious - from Scoble the other day:

Its interesting, I see many of the same people in my friends list on Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, and now Pownce. Pownce is growing faster than the other ones right now, though. 728 people have already added me on Pownce.

I can't take many more social networks. These are worse than email and that's just the "are you a friend?" requests.

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Posted on June 18, 2007 by Kamni Khan

Mind the Gap

On Tuesday, will you run down to your local record shop to pick up the latest release by the White Stripes? It's more likely that you will click the "Buy Album" button from the iTunes interface without having to step outside the comforts of your air-conditioned home or office. Perhaps you will wait for a friend to burn you a copy. Or did you save your $9.99 and find a leaked version of Icky Thump weeks before the release date?

Continue reading "Mind the Gap" »

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Posted on June 11, 2007 by Tim Meaney

Let's Stay In Touch

I've been thinking a lot lately about web services, particularly API versions, and how to make sure your software (which in 2007 is likely comprised of many disparate services) stays current with those services. More specifically - how you as creator and maintainer of your software stay current with those services. I should start off by saying that the overall goal across versions of an API is to remain backwards compatible, but for one, that isn't always the case, and new non-destructive features are frequently added in new versions. However, both cases are plagued with the same communication issue, which is described in this post.

Some background:

For one of our clients, we've built a software platform comprised of many distinct and protected services. This was done for many reasons, not the least of which is keeping a team of 15 developers productively working without stomping on each others toes, or code, as it were. You know, the whole reason we moved toward services in the first place, as a natural evolution of functions, components and objects. This particular software platform is built upon at least a dozen distinct services (however this is a bit arbitrary as a few of these are full-blown REST API implementations, which themselves are comprised of dozens of resources, each with their own life-cycle and potential effects on the API.) Most of these are created and maintained internally, but a few are commercial services. So flash-forward to this morning, imagine you're a developer coming to work on this software platform, how can you be sure your code is safe today, when you have little to no idea when they may be releasing a new version?!

This communication challenge exists within your organization as well, possibly to a greater extent than externally. Your private services likely change far more often, with undoubtedly a lesser focus on API compatibility, than those services available commercially. The good news - a new version of a service you rely on is available after being released by a guy in the cube next to you; the bad news - he forgot to let you know.

In addition to potential breakage resulting from a change to a relied-upon service, the same holds true for additions to the API. The goal across API versions is to attempt to be backwards-compatible, knowing that there are many clients out there using the services. But many times, non-destructive new services, alternate representations or additional resources are introduced that you might be interested in taking advantage of - but how will you be made aware of these?

Currently, most commercial services are described in static HTML pages, and sometimes machine-readable WADL or WSDL - but should you as a developer need to bookmark that page and check it every day? How about every week? New versions of services are sometimes announced via blogs or mailing-list, but this is 2007, every developer has a feed reader, right?

Wouldn't it be great, or at least really useful, if every service, whether private or commercial, SOAP or REST, would expose an RSS feed for each resource or method? As a part of the standard development / release process, developers can either write, or auto-generate out, information to this feed about changes to the API for new versions as they occur. Standard practice would be to create this feed for every API change, and standard practice for integrating with a service would be to subscribe to its change feed.

Picture yourself as a developer in this new world, launching your feed reader when you come in to work:

• Joel Spolsky has a new post announcing his new book on recruiting talent: awesome.
• Nick Carr has a new post letting you know it's too hot to blog, and he'll see you in a few months: damn.
• A new version of the Yahoo! Maps Traffic API now supports serialized PHP output: sweet, I can use that.
• A new version of the Highrise API now supports GET of people tagged with a specific tag: cool, that's useful!
• The guy in the cube next to you has a new version of a list of contacts service you consume, which he states is backwards compatible and isn't announcing anything particularly interesting to you.

This allows developers on both sides of a service to stay in touch, via the standard method of, well, staying in touch these days.

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Posted on April 16, 2007 by Chris Dary

Collaborative Brilliance

I'm Chris Dary - a Web Application Developer here at Arc90. I joined the team about four months ago, and I've been getting my hands dirty in some great projects.

I had an idea the other day, about ideas. A meta-idea, I guess.

I looked around my office, and thought about my friends, and realized: the level of intelligence in the people that surround me essentially knows no bounds. I've truly been fortunate to be able to congregate with these people. Their ability to come up with elegant solutions, to provide excellent feedback, and to formulate great ideas consistently amazes me.

A quick thought exercise. Think about all of the people you respect in your place of work, your profession, and your social circle. As varied as their skillsets might be, they are all likely to have come up with some great ideas. Even those small, perfect little ideas - the ones that make doing something just a little bit easier. Do you remember any of those ideas that they voiced where you said, "Hey. That's a really good idea, and I never would have thought of that."

If these are the ideas you knew about, think about all of the ideas these people are having that they never even bring up - perhaps because they haven't fleshed them out, or they'd feel somehow ignorant or flat out wrong. How many ideas do you have that you've never voiced to your peers?

What if, as a business, you could encourage these ideas, and implement the good ones? Good ideas translate into better output and higher profits, right?

One of the best things about working at Arc90 is that every endeavor has been open to new ideas. None of my superiors have ever been afraid to take a fresh look at how to approach a problem, and that has led to not only some great experiences for the employees, but some great solutions for the business. These ideas being encouraged were key to the development of the company.

When you get a group of minds together, each equally contributing to solving a problem or creating something, great things can happen. With ideas flying around, people acting as sounding boards for each other, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

It's pretty amazing when you see it happen.

This isn't just delegated to the boardroom, though. There's already a very large movement in software today that takes every voice seriously. Where every person can make a difference. And I bet you already know what it is.

Open source software has been taking these conventions to heart for a long time. Growing from the roots of academia, it's been working for the benefit of society for many years. Linux, the Apache HTTP Server, even the very foundation of the Internet itself were all formed under an open context.

Without this collaborative brilliance from a large group of very dedicated people, the software world today would be a very different place. Spanning many time zones and decades, these voices have created something larger than any single one could have.

As awe-inspiring as all of this seems, most businesses today are not run like this. In many cases, businesses see there being two very different types of people in an effective process - the boss and the employee, the brain and the hand. This doesn't translate very well into the industry we're seeing nowadays - software development especially. Often the 'hand' himself has more insight into the process and can more effectively identify problems - and elegant solutions to them.

Software development is a different animal than classic management science ever could have dreamed of back in the industrial revolution. Mind and hand are blurring, and figuring out where to draw the line is wasted effort.

Instead, borrow from Open Source, and let every person make a difference.

It's pretty amazing when you see it happen.

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Posted on March 2, 2007 by Chris LoSacco

Software as Art

Why is building software often compared to bridge building?

In college, I took an advanced Comp. Sci. elective called Software Engineering where the analogies to construction were many and, seemingly, widely accepted. And I agree, in large part, with these parallels. There's a lot of overlap between the two realms.

But I am increasingly finding that really successful, groundbreaking, go-where-no-software-has-gone-before kinds of products are sprouting up around the philosophy that software is more an art than a science.

What evidence is there to back this claim? I would suggest that there are a few items about software which separate it from its more physical constructed counterparts; this is not a new idea. But in my mind, there's one reason paramount to the others.

Software can change. When I build a bridge, I know I'm done when there are cars driving over it every day. Users interacting with an application does not imply any sort of finality about completion. It's an inherently "scoped" process - the bounds around a project are decided up front (or sometimes not) and arbitrarily enforced - because the end result can change relatively easily on a whim. Tweaking a line of code is quite different from, say, moving a staircase two feet to the left.

And so I find it intriguing that the art of building software isn't about realizing a blueprint, about finding that endpoint where the cars are driving over the bridge. It's about embracing change, writing magnificent code that feels right, creating an application that appeals to us on a deeper level.

A great example of this kind of development is the new wave of chess-playing programs that discover incredibly insightful techniques which have eluded generations of grand masters. Our first crack at intelligent chess was brute force - just figure out all of the moves, already! - but the sophisticated programs that have evolved use subtle logic and best-guess approaches to produce playing styles that even their creators didn't (couldn't) imagine.

This sort of thought process makes sense to me on an intuitive level. Writing code isn't an act completely free of constraint, of course, but some of the best artistic expressions have come under heavy constraints (perhaps Shakespeare's use of iambic pentameter, or Picasso's blue period, are good examples). Elegant, artful solutions to complex problems have a sort of intrinsic appeal.

I think that the future of software is in these strategies and methodologies, the ones which cast software development as an artful process rather than an engineering one. Clever and creative products, both in interface and in code, are attractive! And popular. And successful. There's little doubt that we, as creators and software professionals, should be doing all we can to get users excited, enticed and interested.

So let's starting thinking about software as art, and not as bridges. I'm willing to bet some great stuff will happen as a result.

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Posted on February 12, 2007 by Tim Meaney

The Devil's in Both (the details and the big picture)

Dreaming in Code, a newly released book by Scott Rosenberg that explores 'why building software is so hard', should be read by everyone involved in the creation of software. Unfortunately, it won't be, which is one of the problems with the software industry. But more on that later.

Continue reading "The Devil's in Both (the details and the big picture)" »

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Posted on January 18, 2007 by Tim Meaney

A Two-Way Conversation

[This is part one in a two post series on metadata]

It is widely regarded that the introduction of Google Maps was the tipping point for AJAX, or more generally, for Web-applications employing rich, desktop-like, interactions. Recently, Google introduced personal usage statistics and graphs to Google Reader (RSS / feed-reader) via Reader Trends, and after spending some time with it, I'm wondering if this will be regarded as the tipping point for the reporting of personal usage metadata.

Continue reading "A Two-Way Conversation" »

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Posted on July 20, 2006 by Richard Ziade

Calling All (Really) Talented Developers!

Read it with your best British accent:

• Are you tired of your current job where you hide in a cubicle and think about lunch at 10:30AM?
• Are you looking for a cool, fun, dynamic environment where creativity and strong technology skills are rewarded?
• Do you live (or are you willing to work) in the New York City area?
• Are you into web application building / AJAX / Flash / Actionscript / PHP / Coldfusion?
• Is this starting to sound like an infomercial? (Hence the need for the British accent)

If so, dust off that resume and send it along to Arc90. We'd love to hear from you.

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Posted on May 24, 2006 by Richard Ziade

Welcome to Blog.arc90.com

We're not sure how you got here but thanks for visiting. My name is Richard Ziade (sole proprietor of www.basement.org) and I'm a lead strategist and partner at Arc90.

Arc90 is a strategic design and technology consulting firm based in New York City. Our primary focus is bringing all the great ideas and concepts that have arisen (and continue to arise) out of Web 2.0 to our clients. Whether you want to redefine your customer-facing product or improve how information flows within your Enterprise, Arc90 has the team to deliver the ideas and solutions to help you get there. Arc90’s ingredients are part technologists, part business analysts, and part architects that share one common trait: a passion for creating powerful and game-changing experiences on the Web.

Now that we’ve gotten the shameless plug out of the way, welcome to blog.arc90.com. Here we’ll share our thoughts, opinions and ideas with the community. Along with our lab (located at lab.arc90.com), we’ll be giving the world a glimpse of how we think and work while sharing our ideas, tools and experiments with the community.

We hope you’ll subscribe to both the blog and lab and visit often. And more importantly, we hope you’ll talk back. 

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