Jolie O'Dell at VentureBeat wrote a post about Curebit's theft of code from 37signals' Highrise site. And apparently there was a hullabaloo about it on Twitter, as DHH from 37signals got his panties supremely bunched over the whole thing. Frankly, I'm not sure why he's so upset.

Okay, I gotta agree that Curebit actually using Highrise's assets straight off their server is a big no-no. But honestly, that's part of what makes me think that it might really have been a genuine mistake rather than intentional theft, because no one in their right mind would do that. And now they've changed the site, and apologized. That didn't stop DHH from losing his shit all over Twitter, but that doesn't seem particularly out of character for him, either.

Let's be honest: the design isn't that complex or innovative. I don't know which should be more embarrassed by that, the guy who's flipping out that someone stole his basic layout, or the guy who stole it. But as was pointed out in the VentureBeat blog comments, any designer could write that code from scratch inside of a couple hours. We're not talking about anything all that cutting edge or unique. Further honesty, if it was my site, I wouldn't have been able to resist switching out the images to show up as something inflammatory on the other site. And then I would have taken screenshots and giggled my butt off.

But this is the very best part—also in the blog comments, everyone admits to copying code from other sites, even Jolie O'Dell. So, wait, what's the fuss all about then? Oh yeah, it's because it's 37signals. Anointed by God, they are the walking-on-water-est firm ever created. I'll admit that I do kinda like a nice, spare design myself, so I've got nothing against their site layouts, I even like them. But for god's sake, let's not pretend they're anything all that special.

By the way, guys, I read your book, ReWork, and it wasn't all that. I never even quite got all the way through, too much rah-rah redundancy. So maybe you should just get over yourselves.

Techies just love to rag on Flash. Their claims that Flash player causes crashes are dubious at best, I still suspect their biggest problem with it boils down to one thing: they don't like working in Flash. People have a strong tendency to hate what they aren't good at.

But Flash isn't dead, not even close. The thing about those tech articles is that they're written by techies, who are on the cutting edge. Most people are not, and here's the proof: Even though usage of the IE 6 browser has finally dropped below 1%, a third of the people online are still using some version of IE*. So a third of users didn't even care enough to upgrade to a better browser. Average users simply don't care on the same level that experts do.

So if techies don't like Flash because it makes them feel dumb, and most users don't mind it, why is it disappearing from mobile devices? Well, first Apple got into a major power battle with Adobe. As long as Apple was doing it, the other mobile makers realized they could follow suit and still compete. These are techies making the decisions on this, after all.

But the thing is, Flash isn't really needed on mobile devices. There might be some potential use for it, but people do still use desktop PCs plenty. Case in point: Ford's website has a great build-a-car interface that uses Flash player. They don't need to worry about it functioning on a mobile device because no one is going to shop for a car on a 4 inch screen. Even a tablet is on the small side for that. When I'm looking at cars online, I'm going to use the largest screen I have available, which means using my PC.

Oh, but we're switching to HTML5, we don't need Flash any more! Right. There's still browser-compatibility issues with HTML5, especially older browsers. Remember that bit about people not upgrading their browsers? Exactly. So, sure, eventually we'll move to that, but we sure as hell aren't all the way there yet. Not even close.

Seriously, that Ford build-a-car thing is fun, you should try it. I don't endorse Ford, frankly I don't like them. But I am sorely tempted to want that Shelby convertible now. And since that was the entire point of the Flash interface there, I'd say it's a big success.

 

*The statistics vary depending on the source, but the overall average is around one third.

The Austin-American Statesman's Social Media Awards nominations have begun. Nominees must live in the central Texas area (sorry Baltimore Firefighters Union, I'm sure you are an outstanding organization, but your nomination has been deleted now). If you find the two votes I've made so far (one of which consists of a verse from Sexy Bitch), it becomes clear that I don't take these awards seriously, to say the least. But it did make me think about the people who inspire a lot of response in the form of votes.

When I get a Twitter follow from someone I don't know, I check their feed. If it's loaded with all self-promotion of their own blog and business, I never follow back. I'm not interested in anyone who's only interested in themselves, and this is a key point that too many businesses miss. Social media isn't an advertising platform, it serves best when used for engagement. And the top nominees in the Statesman awards understand that. They engage with and promote others more often than they do themselves. And it works because it gets those others invested in wanting to promote them in return. See how easy? Engagement.

You'd think this would be an easy concept, but I still seeing businesses getting this wrong like crazy. Just because someone hits the follow button doesn't mean they're listening to you or they care. A better metric is to see how many interactions you're actually having, and even better, if any of your followers ever care enough to promote you.

Smacks of effort, huh.

I actually kind of love Joe Bickett for his curmudgeonly demeanor.

And yes, I watch Fox News, they're the only ones who have all local news in the mornings. So there.

I downloaded Edge Preview today, the beta version of Adobe's latest web development app. It's clearly a beta, a lot of tools and controls are incomplete, but it looks very promising.

Just like with Flash, you can create web animations, but it exports to HTML5 and javascript instead of requiring use of Flash player. That's supposed to be better, and it actually might be better if only the browsers would all catch up and include HTML5 compatibility. Riiight. And some day we won't have to make pages backwards compatible with IE any more. And some day my dog will learn to fly. Let's all hold our breath, shall we?

The timeline controls are sort of similar to Flash, and while I struggled to adapt to the differences, I think this is going to be much more intuitive to a new user. I didn't go deep into the possibilities, or review the code it generates for serious problems (hopefully anything like that will be resolved in the real product release). I just had some fun with it and animated a butterfly, not my best work, but I was just trying to figure it all out. You can see it here:

http://www.krazyawesome.com/butterfly/butterfly.html

If that didn't work for you, go update your browser, you cretin.

You can download Edge Preview for free (though you'll need to log in with your Adobe ID).

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/

On startup, it told me it would be good for 151 days. Hmm, that seems awfully random. 151? The only numerical connection I could make offhand was with Bacardi. And I don't even drink rum.

This is a neat little trick with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop, and it works as far back as CS4 (or maybe even farther, that's the oldest version I still have loaded on my machine to test with). But I've found a lot of people don't know they can do this, so I thought I'd share.

Say you want to sample a color from a website or even another application. Make sure whatever you want to sample is visible on your screen along with your Photoshop document. Click and hold the mouse over the Photoshop document, move your cursor outside of the document window and over the color you want. Release mouse button. That's it.

It's so easy it might tick you off a little if you didn't know about it. But hey, you know now, right?

Just playing with some Photoshop filters and adjustment layers.

We only found out that Simon Pegg would be at Book People in Austin in the morning of that same day. Actually, I only even found out that he wrote a book at all that morning. So I'm not that big a fan. Whatever. Rose and I decided to race down to Book People and score some wristbands. We were in the red-stripe (hooray beer!) group, meaning we'd be just over halfway through the line. The guy we talked to estimated we'd get to the front of the line by 8:30 to 9:00 (the signing started at 7:00). Turns out that was an optimistic estimate, it was about 9:30 by the time we got to him.

You know what happens when you pack a couple hundred geeks into a bookstore during an Austin summer? It gets hot in there. No AC can overcome a that many sweaty nerds. But wait we did. I'll spare you the details of that part.

You know how, at big book signings like this, someone will write down your name on a note so the author doesn't have to ask the spelling? I told them my name, conveniently forgetting that my husband had asked us to get him a copy of the book, too. I looked at the post-it with my name written in fat, red marker. Hmm. I could have tried to get a replacement post-it with both names, but instead I whipped out a pen and scribbled his name. Above mine, because, hey, at that point, I gotta do something to make up for my failing.

This was our view as the line snaked around the outside of the room in which the signing was happening. Rose tried to discourage me because it would look like a stalker taking a pic through a window. Duh, that's why I did it.

Here's Simon singing the theme of Everything's Rosie to Rose. He said his daughter loves that show, and then he seemed mildly embarrassed for breaking into song like that. It was so adorable I wanted to adopt him and hug him to my bosom. Actually I just said that so I could work the word bosom into this post. People don't use that word enough. But it was adorable. He also put a little kiss x in his signature in her book. Awww.

And here's my signed book. See those little black marks on the post-it? That's where Simon rapped it with his pen and said, "This guy was obviously just an afterthought to you. But you did put his name first, so, you've redeemed yourself." I sputtered something like an apology (sheesh, as if he cares) and forgot to say anything clever. Hey, it could have happened. Shut up.

Then he caught sight of my Etch-a-Sketch iPad case and complimented it. Which is exactly why I had it out. Geeks love that thing! So at least I left him with some shred of geek-cred intact, instead of just being that dumbass who forgot about her husband.

Groupon filed yesterday to go public, which I only mention out of a sense of obligation to prove that I pay that much attention to the news. I'm not going to join the debate about their financial blah blah blah, there's enough of that around from better-informed people and sites. Instead, I'm going to take issue with how Groupon presents their deals and their misleading use of numbers.

I do kind of love how Groupon writes the text for their daily deals, for example, today's Austin deal begins: "Because Mexico vanishes and reappears throughout the world at random, no one is exactly sure where it is." Cute. I have yet to buy a Groupon deal, I'm inherently suspicious of coupons because I believe they trick you into spending more money than you would without a coupon, thereby negating any real savings (in spite of what advertisers would have you believe, you never truly save money when you spend it). So here's the graphic explaining the breakdown of a typical deal: 

It says the discount is 50%, you save $10—strictly according what you spend on the coupon itself, that's correct. You will save $10, but in the end you won't save 50%. Check the fine print in the terms. In a recent deal for Old Navy, it specifies that the coupon can only be used on purchases of $20 or more. Of course, the way things are priced at Old Navy, you'd be hard pressed to buy anything for exactly $20, odds are good you'll need to go over by several dollars, at least. Let's say you spend $30, now your "50%" goes down to an actual savings of 33%. If you buy $50 worth of merchandise, your percentage savings goes down to 20%.

So, sure, you save $10, and if you routinely shop at Old Navy, that might be worth it. But would you have been as likely to buy the deal if you realized you would only be getting 20% off instead of 50%?

And here's comes the real kicker that businesses should be aware of—if a consumer sees this deal and chooses to pass on it, they are probably less likely to go to that store in the near future. I saw the Old Navy one, realized that the last five times I went there I couldn't find anything I wanted, so I passed on the deal. Now I feel that I can't go to Old Navy, because I could have saved $10 if I had taken the deal, but I've lost that chance. So now I'm going to stay away from Old Navy like I'm avoiding an ex-boyfriend so as to not have that uncomfortable conversation. "Oh, uh, hi, Old Navy, how are you?" [awkward pause] "Yeah, uh, I have to go over here now." [runs away]

And this, kids, is why I'm anti-coupon. Not to say I never use them, but I always view them with an extreme amount of skepticism. And you should, too, especially when they use tricksy numbers like this.

Do you remember what would happen when you were a kid and you'd whine, "I'm bored," to your mom? Every mom I've ever known would promptly give you a task to do, the most common being cleaning your room. Mom didn't care about solving your boredom crisis, she really wanted to punish you for griping and bothering her while she was attempting to get something done herself (children always magically pick a bad time to make this particular complaint). You quickly learned not to do that, and if you were really clever you might have realized that was the perfect time to do something creative, like writing or drawing (sadly, I was not quite that smart). Mental downtime is great for thinking, and thinking is crucial for creativity.

I don't listen to music while I'm riding my bike. Most joggers can't stand the inside of their own heads, judging from their insistence on plugging up their heads with earbudded, musical goodness, blocking out all sound around them. So as I'm coming up behind them on the trail, I ring my little bell at them, slow down, and move as far as possible to the side; yet as I pass they still startle back as if I just jumped at them with a knife. Which, hm, gives me something in common with squirrels (see previous post about squirrels). But I digress.

Okay, so maybe that's their brief time to indulge in music. But I rather doubt it, I suspect it's more that people are so conditioned to think of boredom or wandering thoughts as a bad thing that they're desperate to keep themselves constantly entertained. I'm sure there are people who have too many chances and need to come up with some distractions, but I think most of us have the opposite problem.I don't even think of my rides as boring, I love using that time to plan things out, or just let my brain go. I occasionally come up with really great ideas while on my bike. Someone I know likes to turn off the radio while driving—many people would find that actively painful—so he can use that time to think. You probably have plenty of opportunities like this that you might be missing if you've fallen into the "distract myself at all times" mentality—while you're in the shower, doing household tasks, anything that doesn't require active mental engagement is another chance to think, create, or just take a mental vacation. All of which will help when it comes time to meet another creative challenge.

And next time your kid complains about being bored, try telling them to write a story. Or just make them clean their room, it probably needs it anyway.