The Power of Prototypes

definition of the word prototype

When your job is to make something for someone else (like a client), you go through a series of clearly-defined phases. Let’s take digital projects as an example. It could be a website, an app, or a web app:

  1. Discovery: What is this project all about? What are the goals?
  2. Design: What is it going to look like? How are users going to interact with it?
  3. Development: Give all of this to a developer and have him/her build it.
  4. Testing and Release: Work out all the bugs and then release it into the world.

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Is this the Future of Web Development?

macaw logo

The future of web development is hanging in the balance. On the one hand, you have the designers who create the beautiful pictures that eventually become a website. Then you have the developers, who take that design and translate it into code that a web browser can understand—transforming the code into a working website that looks and feels like the designer’s design.
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Compensation, Motivation, and Incentives: Finding a Balance

100 dollar bill, the ultimate incentive

Most people’s number one complaint about their job is money. Any of these sound familiar?

  • I should get paid more because I’m so good at my job
  • Compared to others in my field, I should get paid more
  • For what I’m putting up with, I should be getting paid a lot more
  • Chuck is making X, so I should get paid at least that much
  • I haven’t gotten a raise in years, I’m due for one

Slice it up however you want, we always seem to complain about how much we’re paid. And we should: it’s the reason we go to work every day.
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A Picture of My Bookshelf

my-bookshelfTim Ferris just shared some pictures of bookshelves that belong to certain “thought leaders.” As someone who loves books, has too many of them, and can only “display” a small percentage of them, I thought it was pretty interesting.

So above you’ll see a small slice of the books I have on “display” between Dora books, princess stickers, and play-doh containers.

I didn’t prepare for the picture or try to do anything to change it from what you would actually see if you were in my place, and I wonder if the people in Tim’s post did or didn’t.

Vanity being what it is, I’m sure at least some of them did.

What does my bookshelf say about me? Well, I like David Foster Wallace, obviously. Other than that, I don’t know…what do you think?

Why the Nexus 5 Matters

Google's Nexus 5 Phone

The Nexus 5 is Google’s follow-up to the once-popular but now sold out Nexus 4, which was a very good phone at a very good price.

Oddly enough, there are a bevvy of Nexus 5 rumors but still no official release date—word on the street is that the Nexus 5 will hit the streets in October.

Why are people so excited about a phone that doesn’t even officially exist?
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Learning Stuff Online: Are MOOCs the Future?

Girl on Laptop

The Internet has already changed the way all of us learn, and I’m not just talking about specific apps (shameless plug for Duolingo—created by a Guatemalan, FYI) and niche websites. I’m talking about basic things like Google and YouTube.

You have no idea how many times I’ve seen kick-ass developers Google something to figure out why a bug is happening or how something should be fixed.
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