icecrums

Terrific article from the guys at 37Signals about their design decisions for the Highrise signup chart. They also shed some light on signup increases in a particular plan as a result of suggesting a plan. Dell has been doing this for a long time. They alays have the “Dell recomended” option. It probably sees the most clicks from average users.

One particular thing they don’t mention, but have noticed repeatedly in different subscription based apps is that they put the most expensive plan on the left side. It seems to be a “Shock and Awe” experience: First surprise the potential customer with the highest possible price, then let them discover a much reasonably priced plan on the right and make them feel like they’ve found a great deal!

(Link 37Signals)

Officially, 2008 will go down as the Rails’ year:

-Massive migration to Passenger Phusion(mod_rails) together with Capistrano de funks the Rails deployment myth. I dare to say it is easier to deploy and maintain a Rails app than it is a PHP one.
-Ruby framework consolidation. Merb’s speed and Rails strength all in one. Need I say more?
-Scalability is no longer questioned(we don’t have twitter to thank for that) thanks to all the resources available and entasis on this subject.
-Solid migration to 2.0 and projections for an amazing 3.0.

What are you waiting for, start learning today!

As David HH said “Rails 3 is going to kick ass.”

(Link Ridding Rails.)

Max on how the Koombea team built a 24 hour app. Great team building experience!

(Link Max Sez.)

Nintendo hasn’t always rocked(Wii). Elioncho describes one of their biggest failures:

Nintendo simply got it all wrong. Just one year later came the Nintendo 64 along with Super Mario 64, full of brilliant colors and 3d gameplay which made the Virtual Boy look totally outdated, obsolete and the worthy owner of a place at the nearest closet.

(Read the Full Article Elioncho.)

Colombia knows how to leverage social networks:

Oscar Morales, an engineer deom Columbia who set up a Facebook group called One Million Voices Against the FARC that organized in mass demonstrations on the street in that country.

(Link TechCrunch.)

Stanza iPhone application can download books from a store:

Fictionwise will operate the “Stanza by Fictionwise” eBook store, which is accessible directly through the Stanza app, and gives Stanza users access to over 40,000 titles from all major trade publishers.

Surprised how this doesn’t break part 3.3.3 of the iPhone SDK license agreement:

Without Apple’s prior written approval, an Application may not provide, unlock or enable additional features or functionality through distribution mechanisms other than the App Store.

I guess, you need to be in a special “club” in order to get written approval from Apple.

(Link JkOnTheRun.)

Francine Hardaway writes a good reality check on for Silicon Valley startups(or would be entrepreneurs). This time is as good as any other to start a company. Starting now is great, since you have very little overhead. As she puts it:

This panel agrees that a good entrepreneur WILL get funded in this market. Early stage companies are actually doing better, because they are less expensive to invest in. Larger, bridge rounds are harder to come by.

So if you have an eye on a particular market, go for it. You might as well do it now!

Read the full article at Francine Hardaway’s blog.

VMWaware is offering 50% discounts on licenses and an extra $30 rebate for Parallel owners(Final price of Fusion ends up at $10, from the original $79). Price cuts these high only damage the perception of value.

I paid full retail for VMWare Fusion, and now feel like an idiot. Next time around, I will wait for another crazy promotion like today’s and not pay full retail, since it is apparently “worth” much less than I paid for.

(Link AppleInisder.)

They should have sold Facebook, because until now no one on either company knows how to make money like Google does! The offer was crap, but maybe combining all those people with one same problem($) could have resulted in an amazing monetization strategy(or not).

(Link TechCrunch.)

Shit! There goes the cool factor for our skumo.com site name! Cool thing is that I now get another reason to hate Microsoft!

Thanks, guys for making my hatred so easy!

(Link TechCrunch.)