Ben Cochran - Blog

Photo

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:37:27 -0500

A series of photos Steve took in my office testing Photo...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:55:22 -0500

A series of photos Steve took in my office testing Photo Booth filters in 2005. Rest in peace.

—Mike Matas (via willw)

nickd: Charge money for your work. Don't be a jerk to people. Repeat.

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:44:07 -0500

nickd: Charge money for your work. Don't be a jerk to people. Repeat.:

Go read that then come back. It’s short, just do it.

The topic of charging money to users who love your products has been on my mind a lot lately. By putting your product cart before your business plan horse, you’re basically leaving yourself two options: force ads on your users/sell user data to advertisers or force previously non-paying customers to pay.

I’m not saying that venture capital is in itself bad. Some products and ideas need startup capital to get off the ground. But going full force towards a product without any plan for making money is setting yourself up for compromises I’m not willing to make.

Make great things and let people pay you for them. Either you’ll end up with customers who actually value what you’ve created or you won’t. If not you’ll have plenty of time to give it another go and reinvent the whole thing. You can’t do that when you have hundreds of thousands of users and investors knocking at your door for their payout.

"Think beyond features."

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:07:41 -0500

“Think beyond features.”

- minimalmac

"All too often we forget that many companies aren’t built primarily to make money: they’re built to..."

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:24:01 -0500

“All too often we forget that many companies aren’t built primarily to make money: they’re built to solve problems. Money is the intended side-effect of that. Connect with customers emotionally and you’ll start seeing happier humans.”

- Zach Holman, Customer Support Doesn’t Have to Suck

Photo

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:28:51 -0500

Thank you, Steve. (via nevver)

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:14:40 -0500

Thank you, Steve. (via nevver)

(via winneswago)

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:49:27 -0500

(via winneswago)

topherchris made a comic: Garfield Minus Garfield and Jon ...

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:00:21 -0500

topherchris made a comic:

Garfield Minus Garfield and Jon

(very related)

I got inspired.

nevver: Our First Place

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:13:56 -0500

nevver:

Our First Place

pitchfork: tUnE-yArDs’ bold new album w h o k i l l is our...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:46:00 -0500

pitchfork:

tUnE-yArDs’ bold new album w h o k i l l is our latest Best New Music pick. Read Matthew Perpetua’s review and head over to NPR to stream the record.

Go listen. It’s fantastic.

Also if you ever get a chance to see them live, do it! Merrill Garbus has unbelievable energy.

Note to NPR: if you have an entire album up, please let me add it all to my playlist with a single click. Thanks.

Photo

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:33:58 -0500

fan•boy |ˈfanˌboi|

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:41:58 -0500

marco:

noun

informal derogatory: a term used to describe people who bought a product that competes with the one you bought, which is probably more popular than your choice, for reasons that you wish to discredit or diminish because you’re secretly afraid or upset that you made the wrong choice.

ORIGIN from fan + boy.

I’m glad the Dogfish Head World Wide Stout inspired this post.

Skyhook Wireless on Android’s Openness

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:56:00 -0500

Skyhook Wireless on Android’s Openness:

Gruber:

Put another way, there is something called “Android” that truly is open source, in the “take this and do what you want with it under this standard open source license” way. But that “Android” doesn’t include all sorts of things that we, as users, think of as being part of Android — things like Google Maps, Gmail, Android Market, etc. None of those things are open in any sense of the word, but all of them are essential aspects of any consumer phone or tablet running Android.

Reading this, I immediately thought of Darwin and Apple. Sounds like Google is edging Android closer and closer to exactly as open as iOS: there’s a core operating system down there that’s open (in the typical open source sense). But if you want all the good stuff that really defines the platform you’re going to have to get in bed with Google/Apple.

Harry Startdust (via nevver)

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:47:31 -0500

Harry Startdust (via nevver)

Color Picker app for Mac

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:31:40 -0500

Color Picker app for Mac:

lovequicksilver:

sweethtml5bro:
Click to download an AppleScript I wrote to turn the OS X color picker into a standalone app. It even has a nice icon.

Alternatively, you can write this app yourself by putting
choose color
in an applescript and saving it.

Also of note: Hex Color Picker x waffle software. Assign to a QuickSilver hotkey and access it anytime (useful when designing).
Why aren’t Hex numbers built into Color Picker again?

If you save your own script as an app to launch from Quicksilver, add this code before ‘choose color’:
tell application "System Events" to set _frontMostApp to (name of processes whose frontmost is true)
 
set _frontMostApp to item 1 of _frontMostApp
 
tell application _frontMostApp to activate
- to avoid the Color Picker window appearing behind the current app.

This is extremely handy for a global color picker. Also, be sure to check out Developer Color Picker by Panic’s Wade Cosgrove (handy built-in UIColor and NSColor support as well as hex values)

The Real Problem With Dick’s Bar

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:19:45 -0500

The Real Problem With Dick’s Bar:

Justin Williams lays out a nice summary of recent complaints about the #dickbar saga.

He nails it at the end, and I hope this is in Twitter’s roadmap: geographic “local” does nothing to make me want to look at trends; put trending topics from users I follow (and who they follow) and it would be much more useful. Not that I don’t love seeing about ChrisBrownFAMEAlbum or JonasReunion.

And be sure to follow through and read the entirety of Marco’s post.

Love seeing Aesthetic Apparatus work in the wild. Especially on...

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:53:32 -0600

Love seeing Aesthetic Apparatus work in the wild. Especially on an iPad.

Video

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:54:57 -0600

Instant reblog. (Rodent’s Revenge via sujay)

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:06:07 -0600

Instant reblog.

(Rodent’s Revenge via sujay)