Source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201202/jason-fried/starting-over-get-real.html

Starting Over
Sometimes, the best way to improve something is to begin again from scratch. Even if it’s your top-selling product.
By Jason Fried |      @JasonFried       | Jan 24, 2012

In 2004, 37signals, the software company I co-founded, released a Web-based project-management and collaboration tool called Basecamp. At the time, we mostly did Web design; Basecamp was a side project that we developed in our spare time to make it easier for us to work together.

Back then, project-management software was mostly about charts, graphs, statistics, and one-way broadcasts. Basecamp was different. It provides team members with a consistent place to work on projects and tools to swap ideas, share feedback, make revisions, and deliver the final project online. Millions of people across nearly every industry have used Basecamp to manage more than eight million projects; 96 percent of users say they would recommend the software to others.

That can mean only one thing: It’s time to start over.

Why mess with something that has proved so successful? There are a couple of reasons. For one, eight years is a long time. Consider the ways in which the world has changed over the past eight years. We’ve learned a lot about collaborating in that time. We’ve received tons of feedback from users, many of whom have shown us the ways in which they work. Plus, there are technologies available that didn’t exist back then.

But that’s only part of it. About a year ago, we began discussing how we might improve our best-selling product. The more we talked, the more it became clear that the only way to significantly improve Basecamp was to start over.

Think about a product’s life span. When something new is released to the public—and this is especially true of software—it’s hardly set in stone. You get feedback from customers and make modifications. You add features, refine existing ones, and make things better over time. If you really listen and do it right, the product earns its success.

But paradoxically, that success makes it harder to change. As time goes by, people get used to things the way they are. And the more someone is accustomed to doing something a certain way, the harder it is to ask him or her to change. When it comes to introducing ideas, the years have a way of boxing you in.

And that’s where we found ourselves with Basecamp—a successful product that was tough to change in major ways. Of course, it has evolved; over the years, we’ve made thousands of incremental improvements to the software. But now we have ideas that are more revolutionary than incremental. We think these ideas will dramatically enhance Basecamp’s speed, power, and flexibility.

The problem is that we cannot make these kinds of changes in the existing product. Over time, software builds up legacy. The old technology is baked in, and the roots of the product are so knotted that simply unwinding them becomes a massive undertaking. Think about trying to uproot a 250-year-old oak tree versus a two-year-old one.

The easy thing to do is nothing. But continuing on the current path is a time-tested formula for complacency.

Of course, customers have a way of building up legacy, too, and there’s bound to be some grumbling. We’ll deal with any such issues as they arise. But one thing is certain: Starting over doesn’t have to mean forcing change on existing customers. We’ll have two versions of Basecamp—the Classic version and the new version. Users will be able to switch to the new Basecamp or stick with the Basecamp they are already comfortable with.

After a year of hard work, this is all set to happen soon. How will our customers receive it? In an upcoming column, I’ll let you know.

A few comments:

• Am I asking “how might I improve” enough?  Am I getting complacent?
• Do I have the guts to say it’s time to start over?
• Is starting over the only way to have revolutionary change?  Maybe.  Obviously 37 signals believes so.
• I love the image of uprooting a 250 year old oak tree vs. uprooting a young tree.

EffectiveUI and 15 Million Elephants Help ‘Fight the Famine’ in East Africa with Action Emblem

“Fight the Famine” Action Emblem is part of the 50/50 Project to raise £1 million for Africa’s worst famine in 60 years

DENVER – Nov. 8, 2011 – EffectiveUI, an award-winning user experience agency, has joined forces with 15 Million Elephants, a social enterprise focused on using technology to support the missions of non-profit organizations, to develop a digital awareness and fundraising application: the “Fight the Famine” Action Emblem. The application is part of the 50/50 Project, which called for digital agencies to create 50 projects in 50 days that would raise £1 million for famine relief in East Africa.

Funds raised through the “Fight the Famine” emblems go directly to UNICEF, which has stepped up its efforts to provide aid to those in need in the Horn of Africa. According to UNICEF, an estimated 13 million people are at risk, and tens of thousands have already died. To donate to the cause and display the emblem, visit http://5050.gd/projects/fight-the-famine.

Action Emblems: The “Digital Bracelet” for a Cause

Action Emblems, created by 15Million Elephants and developed in partnership with EffectiveUI, are digital symbols that non-profit supporters can display in their digital communications, including Facebook, email, blogs and websites. Similar to a cause-related wristband or ribbon seen in the physical world, Action Emblems create visibility and awareness for a cause online. Unlike bracelets or ribbons, however, the emblems provide the unique ability for people to immediately take action by clicking on the emblem to make an online donation and/or become an instant ambassador for the cause by adding the emblem to their digital communications.

“Non-profit organizations have had a hard time with social media because it’s not tangible like a ribbon, lapel pin or bracelet, which is a common way to raise awareness,” said Jason Manke, who drives social media strategy to fundraise for more than 100 non-profit organizations in his role as media director at Community Shares of Colorado. “Action Emblems shift the medium from one’s physical self to one’s digital self – focusing not on what people could wear, but rather on what their Facebook pages, email signatures, and websites could display.”

Technology for Good

According to Pingdom, there are nearly two billion email users sending an average of 17 emails per day (excluding spam). This led the team to focus on email integration as a critical component to the Action Emblems. The development team built a solution that automatically adds the emblem to email signatures, while also adding “Emblem On” and “Emblem Off” buttons to the compose-mail interfaces of Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, making it easy for supporters to decide when to include the emblem in their communications.

A mobile-optimized version of the experience features the ability to add the emblem to Facebook and Apple’s iOS Mail.

“When we heard about the 50/50 Project, we knew that the emblem could achieve widespread awareness for a cause that needs more visibility,” said Anthony Franco, president, EffectiveUI. “Our team contributed to an application that we hope will bring fundraising power to the online world, not only changing the way non-profit organizations reach donors, butalso the way people show support for their cause. We’re proud to be part of 50/50, working alongside other leaders in the digital world to help supportrelief efforts for the crisis in Africa.”

EffectiveUI will match funds raised through the Fight the Famine Action Emblem.

About EffectiveUI
Founded in 2005, EffectiveUI simplifies complex experiences, bringing value to people’s lives. By researching and articulating user needs, our team of customer insight, design and development experts create custom applicationsthat improve digital interactions and enhance emotional engagement with a company and brand. Focusing on customer insight, EffectiveUI has worked with some of today’s top companies – including AAA, Boeing, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, eBay, GE Health, Navy Federal Credit Union, CenturyLink, TIAA-CREF and American Greetings – to provide a strategic vision and to increase revenue, brand awareness, customer loyalty and usability.

To learn more about EffectiveUI, visit www.effectiveui.com, send an email to info@effectiveui.com or call 888-310-5327.

About 15 Million Elephants

15 Million Elephants is a social enterprise that provides people with a highly effective way of promoting worthy causes through Action Emblem digital symbols, thereby giving nonprofits and non-governmental organizations a better way of raising awareness and funds. The organization has launched a pro-bono public beta of its ‘Fight the Famine’ Action Emblem, which is raising awareness and funds to support famine relief in East Africa. Thecompany name comes from “On the Origin of Species,” the seminal work of Charles Darwin, who wrote about 15 million elephants in explaining the power of exponential growth.

In mid-November, 15 Million Elephants will present the “Fight the Famine” Action Emblem application at Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford – Europe’s most prestigious entrepreneurship forum.

Supporting Resources

• “Fight the Famine” Action Emblem
• 50/50 Make or Break Project
• EffectiveUI
• 15 Million Elephants

It’s definitely worth the read. Here’s the link to Steve Yegge’s entire essay/rant:

https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX

Here are a few quotes if you just want to scroll:

Amazon vs. Google

“There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies (Google and Amazon), and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.”

“Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon’s retail site…Bezos is super smart; don’t get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.”

Amazon Transformation

“Amazon transformed internally into a service-oriented architecture.”

“I’m not really sure how Bezos came to this realization — the insight that he can’t build one product and have it be right for everyone. But it doesn’t matter, because he gets it. There’s actually a formal name for this phenomenon. It’s called Accessibility, and it’s the most important thing in the computing world.”

“Like anything else big and important in life, Accessibility has an evil twin who, jilted by the unbalanced affection displayed by their parents in their youth, has grown into an equally powerful Arch-Nemesis (yes, there’s more than one nemesis to accessibility) named Security. And boy howdy are the two ever at odds.
But I’ll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network.”

Does Google Get Platforms?

“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t “get” platforms.”

“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call….”

Platform vs. Product

“…The problem is that we’re (Google) a Product Company through and through. We built a successful product with broad appeal — our search, that is — and that wild success has biased us.

Amazon was a product company too, so it took an out-of-band force to make Bezos understand the need for a platform. That force was their evaporating margins; he was cornered and had to think of a way out. But all he had was a bunch of engineers and all these computers… if only they could be monetized somehow… you can see how he arrived at AWS, in hindsight.

Microsoft started out as a platform, so they’ve just had lots of practice at it.

Facebook, though: they worry me. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far. So I’m not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform. It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along.”

“The Golden Rule of Platforms, “Eat Your Own Dogfood”, can be rephrased as “Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.” You can’t just bolt it on later.”

A great Colorado musician NRateliff played a few great songs.  Listen to some of his work here:  http://www.myspace.com/nathanielrateliff

It’s been a great first session.  Truly enjoying my first Tedx event.

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable application that alerts you whenever you have new Gmail messages. (Mac users, please read What is Google Notifier?
for Mac-specific information.) After you download the Notifier, an icon
will appear in your system tray (so you don’t have to open a browser)
to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages.

Once you install the Notifier, you’ll be able to:

• Automatically check for new messages every two minutes.
• See a snippet of text from up to 30 unread messages.
• Select a sound to indicate when you have new mail.
• Make Gmail your default email application.

To use the Gmail Notifier, you need Windows 2000, Windows XP, or a more recent version of Windows. (Download the Notifier*)

The Notifier is not compatible with Windows ME at this time, but we look
forward to offering support for more operating systems in the future.

The Notifier is currently available in English only.

If you have an idea for improving the Notifier, please click the
‘Contact Us’ link in the Gmail Help Center and send us your idea using
the suggestions form. But before you do, please check out some of the
things we’re already working on.

How it works

The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.

Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Note: This version doesn’t load objects included in JavaScripts. We have also put a limit on the number and size of the objects that are loaded (to prevent the tool from downloading movies, for example).

This Full Page Test was inspired by the OctaGate SiteTimer. We liked what they did and wanted to take the idea one step further.