Dan Zambonini design + technology * people = culture.

Who I Don't Follow On Twitter

I was going to call this Who I Follow On Twitter, but given my fairly liberal following requirements, I decided on what you see above. Basically, I follow any real people who follow me. There are exceptions, of course: anyone who isn’t really ‘using’ twitter, and is trying to scam or spam.

The (very quick) process I go through when assessing whether to follow someone who has just followed me is:

1. Do they have a username that looks like a spam account (you know, the britney ones and the sexual terms)?
2. Does the photo look like a spam account (nudity, usually)?
3. So far, if all looks good, click on their profile. Are they following around 2,000 people (the limit), but have far fewer followers?
4. Do they have many thousands of followers, but are only following a few hundred? (If so, they probably use one of those automated bots that follow lots of people, then unfollows once the person has reciprocated)
5. Is their entire feed made up of tweets posted via an API, TwitterFeed, or some other automated system? I’m only interested in people who are actually ‘on’ twitter, not just feeding it, and therefore I expect to see at least one or two @replies on their profile page.
6. Do they have tens of thousands of followers, and are on relatively few lists? I’d expect at least 1 listing for every 500 followers.
7. And finally, I’m a little wary if they’re one of those people (usually ‘social media’ people) who have follower/following numbers up beyond 50,000, and yet I’ve never heard of them. It’s likely these numbers are mostly from automated bot following, and the person has ulterior motives for building their audience.

You can follow me at @zambonini - having read this, you’ll know whether I’ll follow back or not.

posted 6 hours ago

The Biggest Problem of the Web

Let me briefly describe what I think is the biggest problem that is holding back the full potential of the web.

The majority of web applications (the useful websites that actually ‘do’ something) are conceived and created by developers:

And yet the make-up of the global population is very different (the following graph is exceedingly over-estimating the proportion of web developers in the world):

And that, in summary, is the problem. Can you imagine if 90% of books were conceived and written only by people who knew how to work the printing press?

This will, of course, be solved over the next 10 years. We (yes, web developers…) will start to develop applications that make it easier for anyone to create functional web apps. Then we’ll have parents, children, pensioners, mothers, charity workers, cooks, newsagents, and everyone else creating services that they see a need for.

And it will be incredible.

posted 1 day ago

On Fractal Quality and Startups

Some recent interesting blog posts have talked about the fractal nature of quality: quality items (software, restaurants, whatever) will exhibit the self-same high-quality at every level. A great restaurant will not only have great decoration and great food, but a well-serviced coat-check and high quality napkins. No detail is left to chance.

Companies like Apple epitomise this concept, designing even the parts of their products that people rarely see, such as the underside of laptops.

Startup software companies need to exhibit this to compete with larger competition, yet by their very nature it’s incredibly difficult. A startup usually has to employ only those people they can get away with employing given their limited cash; this usually amounts to a few software developers. So how are they supposed to also know about great user experience, interface design and customer service?

This is why I’d suggest that startups always try to find a Generalist among the first 3 or 4 employees. It’s too easy for startup founders to fall into the trap of employing people-who-look-like-them: a developer entrepreneur will look for more developers. A generalist who knows how to develop may not be as quick as a specialist, 100% developer, but the additional value they bring can help to round-out the shape of the company and approach problems and solutions from a new angle.

posted 2 days ago

The Forensics of Twitter Bullying

Due to the sensitivity of this issue, I’ve decided to remove this post. Hope you understand.

posted 3 days ago

Bun Girls

I recently purchased a stupid domain, and can’t decide what the best thing is to do with it. However, I’m pretty certain that the current Bun Girls: Ladies Got Bread isn’t it.

Any ideas? Maybe a superhero comic-strip; “Bun Girls: Better Bread Than Dead”?

posted 6 days ago

Cheapest Best Places to Live?

What are the cheapest, best places to live in the world? If you want to be somewhere that has a cool nightlife and local amenities, and is probably close to another great city, where would you go? For example, what are the best cheap places in North America, UK, or Japan? Can you live cheaply near Tokyo, and only be a 30 minute train ride away?

Where would you suggest?

posted 1 month ago

The Lego Digital Camera

The Lego Digital Camera looks pretty neat until you realise that:

• It’s only 3 Megapixels, so for £70 (or £60 on Amazon), it’s an expensive kids toy.
• The “Buildable but not breakable!” is a bit mis-leading. You can’t pull it apart and re-configure the blocks (like you might expect with Lego). The top and bottom of the camera do have Lego holes/nubbins, so you can build around it, but that’s about it. I’d have liked a more ‘modular’ bit of kit that you could pull apart and fashion into weird looking cameras.

posted 2 months ago