MeltingWaldo

Just finished Effect Managing IT by Ingrid Otterson and Mijo Balic, a deceptively long read (for its 102 pages). Its dry style makes it feel like it’s been inspired by university textbook writers and it’s a little too prescriptive for me (it provides an agenda for a steering group meeting!), but it has some great points that are worth considering.

[Read more →]

Two months later and one speech at Business of Software 2009 still sticks in my mind (actually, several do, but I’m only focusing on one today). Kathy Sierra asked us whether we’d rather people say we have a good A) product, B)  service or C) company. Don’t cheat – have a think about this for a second…

[Read more →]

Even if you don’t venture into casinos often, anyone can understand the thrill of winning when you see your number come up on a Roulette wheel… or the excitement when the dealer busts at the Blackjack table and chips move your way. But what happens when you take money out of the equation? What is there to be excited about and why do people play at Free To Play (F2P) casinos?

[Read more →]

Whether you like it or not, Farmville was the top game on Facebook for 2009. And its success is being attributed, not to a desire for sustainable agricultural growth, but to sticky games and an impressively large and seemingly growing advertising budget. Zynga, the game’s creators, are known for their aggressive use of Facebook’s marketing channels – whether it’s in the players interests or not.

[Read more →]

Business of Software 2008 was going to be hard to match, but I think Neil and Joel pulled it off. Inspiring speakers, great location, power outlets for everyone… oh, and I almost forgot the bright blue snuggies / slankets (who comes up with these names?). After a little reflection, there were three standout speakers whose messages kept coming back to me. And here they are (ineloquently paraphrased by me):

Geoffrey Moore

He was the conference opener and he certainly deserved the spot. Geoffrey talked about innovation and the difference between your core (your differentiator, your competitive advantage – in other words, what makes you money) and context (the other stuff you have to do to keep up or to improve productivity – which might even be mission critical). Once you divide everything into these two camps, it’s easy. Innovate on context just enough to get you by – then focus all your efforts on your core. So simple, yet such a useful way of thinking, particularly when it comes to prioritisation.

Kathy Sierra

I hadn’t come across Kathy before, but I wish I had. She had one premise, which she repeated in so many ways it couldn’t fail to get through our heads – make your users feel awesome! Yes, that’s it. It’s not about the killer app, it’s about the killer user. I was used to thinking about software from the user’s point of view, but this takes it a step further. And it makes sense. If software (like chocolate, alcohol, Disneyland – debatable?) makes you feel good, you’ll love it.

Ryan Carson

I respect Ryan for putting so much of his creativity and personality into his company, Carsonified. He made me want to start a company, just so I could make it a really fun place to work. He had a whole lot of tips, ranging from be creative to give back to the community to just hire a designer, but it was more the overriding focus on making it a great workplace that got me.

Conclusion

This is not to say that the other speakers weren’t brilliant (because most were). But these three stood out because:

• They had one point that they got across clearly
• The point was just so obvious and natural, it made you wonder why you didn’t think of it earlier

And to me, they’re the marks of a great speaker.

Keeping to the schedule, it’s been spot on two weeks since the last MeltingFood Beech release. How can we manage it you wonder? Triangles – sine, cosine all that mathematics stuff – easy really, obvious even. Or you can judge it by the length of the list below (we provided less features – but you get them now).

Highlights

• Recipe counts – see how many recipes each of your friends have; or for the competitive amongst us, see who has the most.
• Popularity of each recipe – see how many times have people “grabbed” their own copy of your recipes.
• Sort recipes – just added something and it’s disappeared to the bottom of the list? No more! Sort by latest and it’ll pop back to the top.

A handful of other little fixes, including: sitemaps, so your recipes will be found by search engines; see the latest recipes from everyone; and, pretty (long) recipe urls on the noise page.

Progress

In the last month we had 9 current users (accessed in the last month). And 51 total users referred. This highlights a continued need for improvement – since this essentially hasn’t moved from our figures in May (8 and 45 respectively).

Add a comment here or contact us on meltingfood to join or provide any feedback.