Launching a new blog
Posted by Howard Yeend in (misc), Startups on March 25, 2012
As some of you know, I got married last October. Budgeting was a difficult thing to do, so I’ve decided to try to help out newly-engaged couples with a UK focused wedding budget blog.
Now, I know that’s not really the kind of thing most puremango readers will be interested in, so in this post I’m going to talk about the process of launching a new blog in your spare time. At the moment it’s too early to say whether weddingbudget.co.uk will be a success or not – it’s been going for less than 2 months right now (814 visitors to date), but hopefully you’ll get some idea of how much (or little) time and effort it takes to put something like this together.
Being Awesome
Posted by Howard Yeend in Productivity on January 16, 2012
Three months ago, there was a post on reddit entitled “what is something I can do today that will make me a better person by the time I go to bed tonight?”
I think this is an incredibly valuable question to ask of ourselves. So many people are struggling to find meaning in their lives, and it’s surprising how even small actions can improve our self esteem and feeling of self worth.
Fenix E01 vs Fenix E05 – review
Posted by Howard Yeend in (misc) on November 16, 2011
This is a Fenix E05 and E01 comparison and review. They are both AAA flashlights from Fenix and come in a range of colours.
I’m writing this post for people who don’t want to spend a lot on a flashlight, but want something of good quality. The E01 you can get for around £12, the E05 for £18.
If you’re used to the slightly cheaper (£7-£11) and much more popular Maglite solitaire, then be prepared for a whole other level of quality with Fenix.
What Being Number One On Google Gets You
Posted by Howard Yeend in Startups, web on October 27, 2011
I’ve been collecting information on how much traffic Google send to me across my various domain names. I’ve found the results rather interesting and quite useful, and so I thought I’d share them. Note: This is based only on four data points. Skip to the ‘related work’ section at the bottom for some links to studies which are more involved, but which lack my deeply elegant wordsmithery and the soothing pixelated green header that puremango has become world famous for… (ahem)
Read the rest of this entry »
Making Money With Wallpaper Domains… ish
Posted by Howard Yeend in Startups on September 27, 2011
Hello readers :)
As some of you may know, I am a domain fiend. I actually have no idea how many domains I own right now, but it’s somewhere in the low double figures. Most are pipedream projects which either never saw the light of day, or did but failed due to lack of effort on my part. But I’m not going to talk about the failures today.
I’m going to talk about the very modest success I’ve seen in an unlikely place: Wallpaper domains.
In this post I’m going to walk through exactly what I’ve put in and what I’ve got out of these domains, and maybe I’ll reach some clever way of quantifying whether it’s worth it or not.
I’m going to tell you right now up front: We’re talking £45 profit over two years here. This is not a story of overnight success.
Read the rest of this entry »
Three Neat JavaScript Tips
Posted by Howard Yeend in javascript on September 2, 2011
JavaScript is a great language. It really can power your entire web stack from animated effects on the frontend to ajax calls for faster user experiences, to backend JSON APIs written in NodeJS. It’s been called the language of the web before, and never has it been more true than now.
I’d like to share some little techniques I’ve picked up which make your life easier as a professional JavaScript developer. Actually the first two are applicable to many languages.
Read the rest of this entry »
Duncan Bannatyne live-tweeting kidnapping threat
Posted by Howard Yeend in (misc) on August 2, 2011
Duncan Bannatyne has been live-tweeting about a threat to his daughter which he received via email and twitter. The first message was posted on popular text-sharing site pastebin (favourite medium of lulzsec and anonymous), and read:
30 Day Challenge List
Posted by Howard Yeend in (misc), Philosophy, Productivity on August 2, 2011
Try something new for 30 days.
It’s a simple enough concept, but it is just enough to give your life a breath of fresh air, to get you out of a rut, to re-invigorate. I was inspired by Matt Cutt’s TED talk on this topic – it’s worth taking three and a half minutes and watching the video.
With that philosophy in mind, I’m trying to put together a nice list of 30 day challenges to inspire you.
To my mind, there are two ways to approach the 30 day challenge – habits, and achievements:
- Habits: Try something new and do it every day for 30 days
- Achievements: Aim to have completed something by the end of the 30 days
Your contact form sucks
Posted by Howard Yeend in web on July 4, 2011
Good web design is not about pretty pictures. Neither is it about using web standards. It’s about having a user-centric, task-focused philosophy.
What does that mean?
It means instead of starting your design with a mental picture of what everyone else does, or what people say you ‘should’ be doing, or what you’ve done in the past, or what you can make money from, you instead start from what the user wants to achieve. You focus your entire site on connecting users with solutions to their problems.
A great example of task-focused design is Google’s homepage. The user’s task is “I want to find information”, so the dominant feature on the page is the search query box. That makes sense. It’s not a particularly pretty page, it’s not even a web-standards compliant page, Google don’t make any money directly from the homepage, and it’s certainly not there via an examination of what their competition are doing.
It’s there because Google know that great web design is centered solidly around building sites which enable their users to complete the tasks they want to. Solving a user’s problem is delivering a great experience. Sites which deliver great experiences tend to do well. It’s that simple. Google’s homepage funnels users into a highly optimised revenue-generating page by presenting users with a UI which allows them to solve their pain very quickly. Google instant and auto-suggest all feed into this philosophy of reducing the amount of time the user’s problem is unsolved for.
Back to the humble contact form. What is the user’s pain that you’re solving, the task that your task-centric UI is solving? For contact forms, it’s easy – the user wants to send you a message, that’s why they came to your contact form.
Why your web app won’t work
Posted by Howard Yeend in Philosophy, web on May 16, 2011
Your idea is a (tick all that apply):
[ ] Social
[ ] Discovery
[ ] Cookery
[ ] Video
[ ] Gaming
[ ] Music
[ ] Shopping
[ ] Business
[ ] Technical
tool which makes peoples lives easier by:
[ ] Giving them things for free that they used to pay for.
[ ] Showing them interesting things in their local area.
[ ] Allowing them to do things anywhere that they used to have to do at home on a PC.
[ ] Allowing easy access to relevant information about what’s in front of them.
[ ] Suggesting things they can do or make which they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
[ ] Suggesting new content based on the content they or their friends consume.
[ ] Giving them discounts when they buy via your app.
[ ] Making tasks take minutes that used to take hours.
[ ] Creating a new way of sharing things with their friends.
It won’t work because: Read the rest of this entry »
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