Company philosophy

We talk quite a bit on this blog about how small businesses can take advantage of their differences from big companies, rather than trying to hide them.

Before reading this post, I want you to stop and think about the last time you tried out new software. What was your first impression like? What kinds of things did you enjoy?

As you probably know, Google released a new social networking feature called Google Buzz. Just like any Google product, some people love it and some people hate it.

In my last post, I talked about how everything can be improved. I didn't make this distinction at the time, but I implied that I was talking about improving existing features as opposed to creating new ones.

Last night I went out to a Thai restaurant with some friends. When the bill came, I saw something that I've never seen before.

I recently had a conversation with someone about what type of people a start-up company should hire.

It recently became clear that I spent the past 20 hours of work designing screens that we won't actually use, and I couldn't be happier.

One of the things that I love most about working at Less Annoying Software is that we don't have any artificial barriers between us and our work.

Regardless of what a company does, every business needs to be good at at least one thing: accepting money.

Now that we actually have a product, Bracken and I are trying to figure out ways to bring people to our site.

During my graduate career, I've read and analyzed a ton of research papers. Of all the compliments that one could give, I think the highest praise is to say that a method, experimental design, or proof is elegant.

Here's a fairly spot on comic on the relative importance of elegance in academics vs. business, courtesy of xkcd.com.

I wanted to get away a bit from discussion of using technology and focus more on how some of those ideas impact the way we are approaching the design of Less Annoying Software. So here goes.

As promised, I'm back with more analogies to chemistry and physics. If you enjoyed yesterday's post, you're in for a treat. If not, this post is completely different.

I wanted to start off my blogging with a few thoughts on my interpretation of a popular theme of this blog: the value and costs associated with change.

Here at Less Annoying Software, we're big fans of Software as a Service (SaaS).

I realize that I haven't really talked about what Less Annoying Software will look like, so I'm going to spend this post briefly going over what we're working on.

One of the most interesting things I've read is that Windows 7 is slightly faster than Vista, but in usability tests, users thought that it was much faster.

As soon as you build up a respectable user base, that all changes. Once your users rely on your software to perform a task, it's important to make sure that you don't disrupt that.

Bracken and I are in the process of designing our first round of software. I'll write a post in the next couple of weeks explaining exactly what we're working on, but what's been more interesting so far is how we've been making decisions.

I got in an interesting conversation tonight with a friend of mine that works as a sales rep.

I had to deal with some pretty terrible software earlier today so I thought I'd share. I've been getting emails from my Alma Mater that I really have no interest in, so I clicked the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email.

The end goal for any smart software developer is to create something that the users enjoy. It matters little what the software does as long as people like using it.

Here's some advice for anyone that ever needs to hire a programmer: Stop focusing so much on years of experience.

Have you ever done a quick Google search before buying a product to check out how other people feel? Doesn't it seem odd how overwhelmingly negative the comments generally are?