Simplicity Rules

Elliot points to a Google engineer’s guide to writing a Killer Resume (for software engineers). It does have some good advice, even for non-programmers, and I’d recommend the quick read for anybody who wants to write a resume.

I hope I never write another one. It’s out-dated and I’m surprised Google hasn’t come up with a better method than the resume (outside of the Google Labs Aptitude Test).

Personal Web pages, portfolios, blogs, and other ways of expressing ourselves online should be the standard by now. A cover letter and a few good links should suffice. As for what to put on your site, I say be yourself. If you want something more directed, the killer resume article has some great guidelines. Just don’t put them in resume form.

This reminds me of a sign I saw in a Portland restaurant window: “Dishwasher wanted. Apply online only.” I love it.

Inspired by Boston and San Francisco, my new friend Ryan and I are setting up a group of Portland Web Innovators.

Are you from Portland? Do you like the Web? Let’s all get together and see where it takes us.

Recently I complained about MySpace and its ilk. Then I offered my Three Rules for Social Websites. Now I’d like to put del.icio.us, a “social bookmarking” application to this test.

Give me a benefit, outside of the social aspect, to use your site

Del.icio.us organized bookmarks for me by tags/categories that I create myself on-the-fly. I want to remember places I’ve cruised on the Web, so this is useful to me.

Loosen the constraints

One of the coolest things about del.icio.us has been sharing links with friends and acquaintances. But I never had to add anyone to my trusted buddy list. And del.icio.us didn’t even officially add their only social tag (for:, which sends a link to another user) until last July. They let the social aspects build on their own first.

Know thy audience

Del.icio.us shows they know their users by adding features as needed. And they seem to get that we’re techies, too, which might be one reason those loose constraints work so well.

These three factors worked together to build an evolving platform. People use del.icio.us as a to-do list, link log, and community playlist.

To me, this is a whole lot better than a site that lets me set music to annoyingly play when the page loads.

This Came From High School

“Social network” sites became the rage a couple years ago. They arose out of nowhere and demanded that I list all my friends. Egads. I didn’t get it. (But I’m often wrong).

These sites are still around and we’ve named a whole group of people after one of them. Worse yet, I still don’t get it, so the “MySpace generation” has me feeling mighty old at 26.

Adam’s 3 rules for social websites

You can trust these rules, because it’s too late for hype.

1. Give me a benefit, outside of the social aspect, to use your site
2. Loosen the constraints
3. Know thy audience

MySpace has done a very good job with #3. It’s almost as if, while brainstorming, they wrote “Not Adam DuVander” as their model user. So, MySpace can take my comments with a grain of salt, because I’m obviously not hip to their jig.

However, I think MySpace could work on numbers 1 and 2. From what I’ve seen (and heard from the happenin’ folks at NPR), the social aspect is all there is on MySpace. And sending me an email to say there’s an email waiiting for me is overkill. It’s the opposite of loose constraints.

And if the MySpace generation were free to make up their own new uses of the site, it could grow with them. Otherwise, they’ll be bored with it by junior year.

Today I pulled the plug on my oldest remaining website, DuVander.com. Technically, I moved it, marking its transition away from being my personal website.

It was always the spot for my Web experiments. When the tests were about user-contributed content, it sort of became a way of experimenting with everyone’s ideas. And I liked that, for the most part. At Snarf!, those will continue on, without the confusion of being my namesake. I like that, too.

And it’s fitting that, as a final Web experiment with what was formerly known as DuVander.com, I tried out 301 redirects for a full site’s worth of content. Hopefully, this will keep old links to specific pages active.

I don’t really intend to eulogize the site. It’s moving in a natural direction, so it’s pretty much still alive. My friend Jon wrote a thoughtful piece last summer that pretty much covers the progression that led to this decision.

My first 457 Haiku on Snarf!:
Things look the same / But different, too / Makes you want to say, “Oh Snarf!”

My Free Portland WiFi site’s traffic has exploded since I wrote about knowing the full story. Traffic has grown an average of 20% per month.

And in that time, the total number of free hotspots has increased almost two-fold. This is a combination of more people adding WiFi to their businesses, as well as the greater reach of WifiPDX enticing people to add their spot.

One could also credit Elliot’s design.

Regardless of why it’s hopping, I’m naturally happy. WifiPDX started as a print publication, and it will return to that initial vision in some format. There is a lot of power to locally-oriented websites, as well as offline-online combinations. More to come, I’m sure.

Chipotle is a fast-ish food mexican restaurant. There is one right outside my office building.

Recently I discovered that Chipotle’s Web site will let me order online through their Don’t Stand in Line feature.

Usually I put the order in fifteen minutes ahead of time or so. When I arrive at the restaurant to pick up my burrito, I walk past a line that usually wraps around the store. The worker at the register grabs my pre-made order and takes my money.

Chipotle DSL has worked well for me. The employees are still a little confused by it, which makes me think there aren’t a whole lot of people taking advantage of it.

A friend and I had an idea over two years ago to help Portland restaurants provide this service to its customers. I still think that’s a great idea (but you know what I think of ideas), especially with a company like Chipotle helping people be more comfortable with it.

Sometimes in fits of over-analysis, I decide to try to apply lessons learned one place to something I don’t care about. This has yet to really work.

Paul Graham says Do What You Love. Below are a couple examples where I didn’t follow that advice.

Fantasy Football

Before last Sunday’s Super Bowl, I hadn’t watched a football game in two years. Yet, I gave fantasy football a shot last season. My thought was to see if I could use my statistical analysis skills I picked up from fantasy baseball. It’s just numbers, right?

I quickly lost interest and sank to the bottom of the league.

Replica Sword

Sure, giant medieval swords look cool, but I’m not really the Ren-Faire type. However, I wanted to test another affiliate program (like my Amazon/Adwords experiment). I signed up, grabbed the datafeed, and made a cool “which sword is more badass” game. Then I started sending traffic to it.

What a failure. People came, but they didn’t buy. Not a single user even clicked. The site was awful and I didn’t even dare enough to make it better. Luckily, I only blew about $50 (plus time) on this experiment.

Conclusion

Succeeding at something I’m not interested in is hard. It’s a huge barrier to get past and there are so many other ideas out there. Granted, playing a fantasy sport I enjoy could still land me at the bottom of the standings. And I could easily blow fifty bucks on keywords I like more than “medieval sword.” At least it would have been fun.