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  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  2. <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  3.   <channel>
  4.     <title>Signal vs. Noise</title>
  5.     <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts</link>
  6.     <language>en-us</language>
  7.     <ttl>40</ttl>
  8.     <description>Signal vs. Noise</description>
  9.     <item>
  10.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  11.       <title>INSIGHT: You break expectations by changing what someone…</title>
  12.       <description>&lt;p&gt;You break expectations by changing what someone&amp;#8217;s already used to. You change expectations by giving them something new. Understanding the difference is key to product design.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  13.       <pubDate>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
  14.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3035-you-break-expectations-by-changing-what-someone</guid>
  15.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3035-you-break-expectations-by-changing-what-someone</link>
  16.     </item>
  17.     <item>
  18.       <dc:creator>Ryan</dc:creator>
  19.       <title>QUOTE: Remember, a real engineer doesn&amp;#8217;t want…</title>
  20.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Remember, a real engineer doesn&amp;#8217;t want just a religion about how to solve the problem. Like &amp;#8216;object-oriented&amp;#8217;, or &amp;#8216;functional&amp;#8217;, or &amp;#8216;imperative&amp;#8217;, or &amp;#8216;logic programming&amp;#8217;. This piece of the problem wants to be a functional program. This piece of the program wants to be imperative. This piece wants to be object-oriented and guess what&amp;#8212;this piece want to be logic-based. And they all want to work together usefully, because of the way the problem is structured.&lt;/p&gt;
  21. &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8212;Gerald Jay Sussman, &lt;a href="http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute"&gt;We Really Don&amp;#8217;t Know How to Compute!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  22.       <pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
  23.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3034-remember-a-real-engineer-doesnt-want</guid>
  24.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3034-remember-a-real-engineer-doesnt-want</link>
  25.     </item>
  26.     <item>
  27.       <dc:creator>Jamie</dc:creator>
  28.       <title>First Round Winners: Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest </title>
  29.       <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/740-winners.png" align="left" style="margin-top: 30px; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; border: none;" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  30.  
  31.  
  32.     &lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;re happy to announce the first round of winners in our &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com"&gt;Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
  33.  
  34.  
  35.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iPad Winners:&lt;/strong&gt;
  36. Darren from Victoria, Australia uses Basecamp at all three of his businesses: &lt;a href="http://www.problogger.net/"&gt;Pro Blogger&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.digital-photography-school.com/"&gt;Digital Photography School&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://www.feelgooder.com/"&gt;FeelGooder&lt;/a&gt;. JoAnne from Smithtown, NY uses Basecamp at &lt;a href="http://www.lighthausdesign.com/"&gt;Lighthaus Design, Inc.&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.gettingrealhealth.com/"&gt;Getting Real Health&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  37.  
  38.  
  39.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MacBook Air Winner:&lt;/strong&gt;
  40. Michael from New Hope, PA is a Basecamp fan, &lt;a href="http://michaelport.com/"&gt;best-selling author, professional speaker, and entrepreneur&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  41.  
  42.  
  43.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell your friends about Basecamp for a chance to win&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  44. We still have 9 more iPads, 2 MacBook Airs, and $5,000 cash to give away. Every friend that you sign up for Basecamp also gets $10 off their first month. Here’s how it works:&lt;/p&gt;
  45.  
  46.  
  47. &lt;ul&gt;
  48. &lt;li&gt;Sign up with your Basecamp account at &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com"&gt;https://tellafriend.37signals.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  49. &lt;li&gt;We&amp;#8217;ll give you a special link that you can tweet, share on Facebook, or email to your friends.&lt;/li&gt;
  50. &lt;li&gt;Every person that signs up from your link for a paid Basecamp plan will get $10 off their first month.&lt;/li&gt;
  51. &lt;li&gt;Every person you sign up counts as a &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com/prizes"&gt;chance to win one of our prizes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  52. &lt;/ul&gt;
  53.  
  54.     &lt;p&gt;This contest ends on January 2, 2012. &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com"&gt;Sign up today&lt;/a&gt; and start saving your friends $10 off their first month.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  55.       <pubDate>Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:43:00 +0000</pubDate>
  56.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3033-first-round-winners-basecamp-tell-a-friend-contest-</guid>
  57.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3033-first-round-winners-basecamp-tell-a-friend-contest-</link>
  58.     </item>
  59.     <item>
  60.       <dc:creator>Jamis</dc:creator>
  61.       <title>QUOTE: When a friend calls to me from the road
  62. And…</title>
  63.       <description>&lt;p&gt;When a friend calls to me from the road&lt;br /&gt;
  64. And slows his horse to a meaning walk,&lt;br /&gt;
  65. I don&amp;#8217;t stand still and look around&lt;br /&gt;
  66. On all the hills I haven&amp;#8217;t hoed,&lt;br /&gt;
  67. And shout from where I am, What is it?&lt;br /&gt;
  68. No, not as there is a time to talk.&lt;br /&gt;
  69. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,&lt;br /&gt;
  70. Blade-end up and five feet tall,&lt;br /&gt;
  71. And plod: I go up to the stone wall&lt;br /&gt;
  72. For a friendly visit.&lt;/p&gt;
  73. &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8212;Robert Frost, &amp;#8220;A Time to Talk&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  74.       <pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
  75.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3032-when-a-friend-calls-to-me-from-the-road-and</guid>
  76.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3032-when-a-friend-calls-to-me-from-the-road-and</link>
  77.     </item>
  78.     <item>
  79.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  80.       <title>A little customer get together in Chicago</title>
  81.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Last week our whole company got together. We try to do this a few times a year. We fly everyone in and all spend a few days together in Chicago. We share what we&amp;#8217;re working on, we talk, we debate, we review, we get some work done, and we have some fun.&lt;/p&gt;
  82.  
  83.  
  84.     &lt;p&gt;Usually we reserve one of the nights to all go out to dinner together, but this time we decided to host some of our Chicago-based customers at a party at our office instead. We invited about 50 customers &amp;#8211; some new, some old &amp;#8211; and all hung out for a few hours. We met, exchanged ideas, fielded feature requests, and just got to know each other. Everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came.&lt;/p&gt;
  85.  
  86.  
  87.     &lt;p&gt;We put together a little video to share.&lt;/p&gt;
  88.  
  89.  
  90. &lt;iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31097623?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0&amp;amp;portrait=0" width="530" height="298" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
  91.  
  92.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  93.  
  94.  
  95.     &lt;p&gt;Special thanks to Steve Dale from &lt;a href="http://www.gyro.com/"&gt;Gyro&lt;/a&gt;, Jimmy Spencer Jr. from &lt;a href="http://www.lovewithoutagenda.com/"&gt;Love Without Agenda&lt;/a&gt;, Ray Hightower from &lt;a href="http://wisdomgroup.com/"&gt;Wisdom Group&lt;/a&gt;, Ben Greiner from &lt;a href="http://www.forgetcomputers.com/"&gt;Forget Computers&lt;/a&gt;, and Michael Carney from &lt;a href="http://mwcaccounting.com/"&gt;&lt;span class="caps"&gt;MWC&lt;/span&gt; Accounting&lt;/a&gt; for taking some extra time to be interviewed on camera.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  96.       <pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
  97.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3031-a-little-customer-get-together-in-chicago</guid>
  98.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3031-a-little-customer-get-together-in-chicago</link>
  99.     </item>
  100.     <item>
  101.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  102.       <title>QUOTE: And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved…</title>
  103.       <description>&lt;p&gt;And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.&lt;/p&gt;
  104. &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8212;Jonathan Ive at the &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;#38;v=nPUsuY8JZJI"&gt;Steve Jobs Tribute&lt;/a&gt; on the Apple campus. His talk starts around 47:17 right after Tim Cook introduces him.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  105.       <pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
  106.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3030-and-just-as-steve-loved-ideas-and-loved</guid>
  107.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3030-and-just-as-steve-loved-ideas-and-loved</link>
  108.     </item>
  109.     <item>
  110.       <dc:creator>Jason Z.</dc:creator>
  111.       <title>INSIGHT: Who is the star of your product? Do you want…</title>
  112.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Who is the star of your product? Do you want people to think your product is awesome, or would you rather they felt awesome about themselves because they used your product? Does the UI say &amp;#8220;Look at how beautiful this app is&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;Look at how beautiful your content is&amp;#8221;?&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  113.       <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:16:00 +0000</pubDate>
  114.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3029-who-is-the-star-of-your-product-do-you-want</guid>
  115.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3029-who-is-the-star-of-your-product-do-you-want</link>
  116.     </item>
  117.     <item>
  118.       <dc:creator>37signals</dc:creator>
  119.       <title>New in Highrise: LinkedIn profiles</title>
  120.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Today we’re introducing LinkedIn profiles in &lt;a href="http://highrisehq.com/?source=svn_post"&gt;Highrise&lt;/a&gt;.
  121. You can now add LinkedIn URLs to your contacts to see their profiles in Highrise instantly.
  122. You’ll have easy access to all the specialties and qualifications listed in their LinkedIn profiles.&lt;/p&gt;
  123.  
  124.  
  125.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/705-taylor-linkedin-profile.png" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  126.  
  127.  
  128. &lt;h2&gt;How to set it up&lt;/h2&gt;
  129.  
  130.     &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s simple: Just go to a contact, click the &amp;#8220;Edit&amp;#8221; link in the top right corner, then scroll down to the &amp;#8220;Social media&amp;#8221; section on the edit screen. Enter the person&amp;#8217;s public LinkedIn profile &lt;span class="caps"&gt;URL&lt;/span&gt; and click save. Then you&amp;#8217;ll see a &amp;#8220;LinkedIn&amp;#8221; tab at the top of their contact page. Click that link and you&amp;#8217;ll have access to their LinkedIn profile.&lt;/p&gt;
  131.  
  132.  
  133.     &lt;p&gt;To make the most of this feature you’ll need to have an account on LinkedIn.
  134. Highrise uses your LinkedIn account to grab the latest profile each time you view one of your contacts.
  135. This ensures the profile information you see is always up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
  136.  
  137.  
  138.     &lt;p&gt;Integration with LinkedIn has been a popular customer request since we launched Highrise.
  139. We’re pleased to make it a reality today and we hope it makes Highrise more useful to you everyday.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  140.       <pubDate>Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
  141.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2985-new-in-highrise-linkedin-profiles</guid>
  142.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2985-new-in-highrise-linkedin-profiles</link>
  143.     </item>
  144.     <item>
  145.       <dc:creator>Ryan</dc:creator>
  146.       <title>Watch Ryan sketch and code a UI from scratch on PeepCode</title>
  147.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Last month the folks from PeepCode visited our office and asked to record my design process. Geoffrey told me not to prepare anything. He said he&amp;#8217;d show up with a sample problem and simply record whatever I did with it. The result is two 75-minute videos (&lt;a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux"&gt;Part One&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii"&gt;Part Two&lt;/a&gt;) that show my thought process step-by-step, starting with paper sketches and then moving on to &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTML&lt;/span&gt;/CSS.&lt;/p&gt;
  148.  
  149.  
  150.     &lt;p&gt;The hard thing about demonstrating design is the sample problem. The problem should be simple enough that the details don&amp;#8217;t bog down the audience, but complicated enough that you run into real-life conflicts and constraints.&lt;/p&gt;
  151.  
  152.  
  153.     &lt;p&gt;Fortunately Geoffrey picked a really good sample domain. He asked me to design a UI for picking the top five finishers out of 200 participants in a pro bicycling race. The task was rich and interesting enough that we spent the first 75 minutes purely sketching and analyzing the approach.&lt;/p&gt;
  154.  
  155.  
  156.     &lt;p&gt;The first video, &lt;a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux"&gt;Part One&lt;/a&gt;, covers the sketching process. A lot of good material came out of this section, including:&lt;/p&gt;
  157.  
  158.  
  159. &lt;ul&gt;
  160. &lt;li&gt;How to tackle a UI problem by dividing it into tasks that each have a beginning, middle and end&lt;/li&gt;
  161. &lt;li&gt;How to use sketching as a response to uncertainty, and when to stop sketching and move on to &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTML&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  162. &lt;li&gt;How to focus on the most natural solution so that people will intuitively grasp a design&lt;/li&gt;
  163. &lt;li&gt;How to focus your design process on conflicts and friction points, attacking them one by one until the design works&lt;/li&gt;
  164. &lt;/ul&gt;
  165.  
  166.     &lt;p&gt;This video also gave me a chance to explain the UI design process through an analogy to software testing. Kent Beck&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/Test-Driven-Development-Kent-Beck/dp/0321146530"&gt;Test-Driven Development&lt;/a&gt; had a huge influence on me, and I&amp;#8217;ve always had trouble explaining the connection. In both videos I continually refer to setting up &amp;#8220;tests&amp;#8221; &amp;mdash; specific things in the design that aren&amp;#8217;t working or aren&amp;#8217;t resolved &amp;mdash; and then design against those tests until they &amp;#8220;pass&amp;#8221; (that is, until the problem goes away). This loose analogy articulates that tricky and hard-to-pin-down process where a designer continually moves their focus among pieces of a problem and along the way settles conflicts step-by-step in a constructive sequence.&lt;/p&gt;
  167.  
  168.  
  169.     &lt;p&gt;I think the process will be interesting to both designers and coders. Designers can compare the process to their own, while coders can use the analogies to software testing to see design as an extension of concepts they already know.&lt;/p&gt;
  170.  
  171.  
  172.     &lt;p&gt;In the second video, &lt;a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii"&gt;Part Two&lt;/a&gt;, I take the sketches and ideas from the first session and build them out in &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTML&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class="caps"&gt;CSS&lt;/span&gt;. Along the way I dip in and out of Photoshop, explaining the time and place for each tool.&lt;/p&gt;
  173.  
  174.  
  175.     &lt;p&gt;Part Two especially focuses on getting quick results in the browser. I sketch out dom elements, give them classes to communicate their purpose, and  gradually decorate them with inline styles until the design comes together in the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
  176.  
  177.  
  178.     &lt;p&gt;I would prefer videos like this to be free. But Geoffrey had the idea to begin with and his PeepCode team did all the hard work. I just showed up one Friday morning for a couple hours of design practice. So if the material is useful to you I hope you&amp;#8217;ll support their effort and buy the videos at $12/each.&lt;/p&gt;
  179.  
  180.  
  181.     &lt;p&gt;Here are the links:&lt;/p&gt;
  182.  
  183.  
  184. &lt;ol&gt;
  185. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux"&gt;PeepCode Play by Play: Ryan Singer Part One&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  186. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii"&gt;PeepCode Play by Play: Ryan Singer Part Two&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  187. &lt;/ol&gt;
  188.  
  189.     &lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s also a &lt;a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux"&gt;10 minute preview&lt;/a&gt; on the Part One page.&lt;/p&gt;
  190.  
  191.  
  192.     &lt;p&gt;I hope they&amp;#8217;re useful!&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  193.       <pubDate>Sun, 16 Oct 2011 22:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
  194.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3028-watch-ryan-sketch-and-code-a-ui-from-scratch-on-peepcode</guid>
  195.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3028-watch-ryan-sketch-and-code-a-ui-from-scratch-on-peepcode</link>
  196.     </item>
  197.     <item>
  198.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  199.       <title>INSIGHT: Some designs are evil &amp;#8211; you know they…</title>
  200.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Some designs are evil &amp;#8211; you know they&amp;#8217;re bad right away. Others are like love at first sight. And some you just need to live with for a while before making up your mind.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  201.       <pubDate>Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
  202.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3027-some-designs-are-evil-you-know-they</guid>
  203.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3027-some-designs-are-evil-you-know-they</link>
  204.     </item>
  205.     <item>
  206.       <dc:creator>37signals</dc:creator>
  207.       <title>Fast and great support from the 37signals team</title>
  208.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Our support team works hard every day to make our customers happy, and we&amp;#8217;re always proud to &lt;a href="http://smiley.37signals.com/"&gt;show how great a job they do&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  209.  
  210.  
  211.     &lt;p&gt;In addition to making customers happy, our fantastic team also answers questions &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;fast&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;. Across the last 500 new cases we&amp;#8217;ve received during our normal hours, we&amp;#8217;ve responded to 97% in less than hour, with the average case answered in 14 minutes and solved in 25 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;
  212.  
  213.  
  214.     &lt;p&gt;Our team has been steadily improving at this too. Over the last few months, we&amp;#8217;ve steadily cut down response times, all while maintaining or improving customer happiness.&lt;/p&gt;
  215.  
  216.  
  217.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href = "http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/739-support_last_3_months.png " target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/739-support_last_3_months.png" width="530" style="border:none" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  218.  
  219.  
  220.     &lt;p&gt;Congratulations to Michael, Ann, Kristin, Merissa, Joan, and Chase!&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  221.       <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
  222.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3026-fast-and-great-support-from-the-37signals-team</guid>
  223.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3026-fast-and-great-support-from-the-37signals-team</link>
  224.     </item>
  225.     <item>
  226.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  227.       <title>Questions I ask when reviewing a design</title>
  228.       <description>&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve been thinking more about how I review a design &amp;#8211; both my own and someone else&amp;#8217;s. So over the past couple days I&amp;#8217;ve been writing down every question I&amp;#8217;ve been asking when I look at a design-in-progress. Some of these I say out loud, some just go through my head, some are in person, others are posted to Basecamp or Campfire.&lt;/p&gt;
  229.  
  230.  
  231.     &lt;p&gt;These are in no particular order, and I don&amp;#8217;t ask all of them every time.&lt;/p&gt;
  232.  
  233.  
  234.     &lt;ul&gt;
  235.     &lt;li&gt;What does it say?&lt;/li&gt;
  236.         &lt;li&gt;What does it mean?&lt;/li&gt;
  237.         &lt;li&gt;Is what it says and what it means the same thing?&lt;/li&gt;
  238.         &lt;li&gt;Do we want that?&lt;/li&gt;
  239.         &lt;li&gt;Why do we need to say that here?&lt;/li&gt;
  240.         &lt;li&gt;If you stopped reading here, what&amp;#8217;s the message?&lt;/li&gt;
  241.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s the take away after 8 seconds?&lt;/li&gt;
  242.         &lt;li&gt;How does this make you feel?&lt;/li&gt;
  243.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s down below?&lt;/li&gt;
  244.         &lt;li&gt;How else can we say this?&lt;/li&gt;
  245.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s memorable about this?&lt;/li&gt;
  246.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s that for?&lt;/li&gt;
  247.         &lt;li&gt;Who needs to know that?&lt;/li&gt;
  248.         &lt;li&gt;Who needs to see that?&lt;/li&gt;
  249.         &lt;li&gt;How does that change behavior?&lt;/li&gt;
  250.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s the payoff?&lt;/li&gt;
  251.         &lt;li&gt;What does someone know now that they didn&amp;#8217;t know before?&lt;/li&gt;
  252.         &lt;li&gt;How does that work?&lt;/li&gt;
  253.         &lt;li&gt;Why is that worth a click?&lt;/li&gt;
  254.         &lt;li&gt;Is that worth scrolling?&lt;/li&gt;
  255.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s the simpler version of this?&lt;/li&gt;
  256.         &lt;li&gt;Are we assuming too much?&lt;/li&gt;
  257.         &lt;li&gt;Why that order?&lt;/li&gt;
  258.         &lt;li&gt;Why would this make them choose that?&lt;/li&gt;
  259.         &lt;li&gt;What does a more polished version of this look like?&lt;/li&gt;
  260.         &lt;li&gt;Why would someone leave at this point?&lt;/li&gt;
  261.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s missing?&lt;/li&gt;
  262.         &lt;li&gt;Why are we saying this twice?&lt;/li&gt;
  263.         &lt;li&gt;Is it worth pulling attention away from that?&lt;/li&gt;
  264.         &lt;li&gt;Does that make it clearer?&lt;/li&gt;
  265.         &lt;li&gt;What&amp;#8217;s the obvious next step?&lt;/li&gt;
  266.         &lt;li&gt;How would someone know that?&lt;/li&gt;
  267.         &lt;li&gt;Would it matter if someone missed that?&lt;/li&gt;
  268.         &lt;li&gt;Does that make it easier or harder?&lt;/li&gt;
  269.         &lt;li&gt;Would this be better as a sentence or a picture?&lt;/li&gt;
  270.         &lt;li&gt;Where&amp;#8217;s the verb?&lt;/li&gt;
  271.         &lt;li&gt;Why is that there?&lt;/li&gt;
  272.         &lt;li&gt;What matters here?&lt;/li&gt;
  273.         &lt;li&gt;What would happen if we got rid of that?&lt;/li&gt;
  274.         &lt;li&gt;Why isn&amp;#8217;t that clear?&lt;/li&gt;
  275.         &lt;li&gt;Why is this better?&lt;/li&gt;
  276.         &lt;li&gt;How can we make this more obvious?&lt;/li&gt;
  277.         &lt;li&gt;What happens when this expands?&lt;/li&gt;
  278.         &lt;li&gt;If we got rid of this, does that still work?&lt;/li&gt;
  279.         &lt;li&gt;Is it obvious what happens next?&lt;/li&gt;
  280.         &lt;li&gt;What just happened?&lt;/li&gt;
  281.         &lt;li&gt;Where&amp;#8217;s the idea?&lt;/li&gt;
  282.         &lt;li&gt;What problem is that solving?&lt;/li&gt;
  283.         &lt;li&gt;How does this change someone&amp;#8217;s mind?&lt;/li&gt;
  284.         &lt;li&gt;What makes this a must have?&lt;/li&gt;
  285.     &lt;/ul&gt;</description>
  286.       <pubDate>Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
  287.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3024-questions-i-ask-when-reviewing-a-design</guid>
  288.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3024-questions-i-ask-when-reviewing-a-design</link>
  289.     </item>
  290.     <item>
  291.       <dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
  292.       <title>Why programs become territorial</title>
  293.       <description>&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Can you ask Sam about that? Stacker is his domain&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;I&amp;#8217;d rather let Josh look at the router, he wrote it&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;Jon is better versed in associations, send it to him&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;
  294.  
  295.  
  296.     &lt;p&gt;The natural progression of programs is towards the territorial. When a programmer has weaved an intricate web of considerable complexity, others are loathe to enter his lair and he is loathe for them to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
  297.  
  298.  
  299.     &lt;p&gt;This is despite the fact that we all agree that it&amp;#8217;s bad for programs to become territorial. When only one or a few people know how to work on something, you get bottlenecks where progress is stunted until the master is ready. You risk the hit-by-a-bus factor where nobody knows how the system works if the master leaves. You ensure the annoyance of stakeholders who can&amp;#8217;t understand why another minion can&amp;#8217;t fix his urgent problem.&lt;/p&gt;
  300.  
  301.  
  302.     &lt;p&gt;But this problem can&amp;#8217;t be solved with a slogan. You can proclaim that &amp;#8220;we shouldn&amp;#8217;t have territorial parts of our program&amp;#8221; until you turn blue, but nothing is going to change until you accept the cost of avoidance.&lt;/p&gt;
  303.  
  304.  
  305.     &lt;p&gt;The first step of acceptance is to recognize that sending someone fresh in to fix a single issue in a complex part of the code is expensive. It&amp;#8217;s going to take Pratik five to ten times the effort to fix a single issue in Stacker that it&amp;#8217;s going to take Sam. And the odds are that even that is not enough to appreciate the internal coherency of the system, which means that the fix is likely to be a butcher&amp;#8217;s job, and Sam will have to rewrite it afterwards anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
  306.  
  307.  
  308.     &lt;p&gt;To broaden the base of knowledge, you&amp;#8217;re going to have to let someone else not only spend considerable effort getting up to speed. Then you&amp;#8217;re going to have them deal with more than just a quick fix. Let them deal with a raft of issues and let them spend the time of the original creator to learn it all.&lt;/p&gt;
  309.  
  310.  
  311.     &lt;p&gt;To do all that, they can&amp;#8217;t do anything else at the same time. That feature you want do is now going to be pushed a few days or a a week out. Until you&amp;#8217;re ready to delay things you really want done, it&amp;#8217;s fruitless to bemoan that parts of the code base territorial.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  312.       <pubDate>Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:49:00 +0000</pubDate>
  313.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3023-why-programs-become-territorial</guid>
  314.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3023-why-programs-become-territorial</link>
  315.     </item>
  316.     <item>
  317.       <dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
  318.       <title>QUESTION: The home button on the iPhone 4 stopped working…</title>
  319.       <description>&lt;p&gt;The home button on the iPhone 4 stopped working properly for both Jason and I recently. Requiring hard presses or multiple tries to work. It appears that lots of people have this problem. Has it happened to you yet? Let&amp;#8217;s track this.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  320.       <pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:07:00 +0000</pubDate>
  321.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3022-the-home-button-on-the-iphone-4-stopped-working</guid>
  322.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3022-the-home-button-on-the-iphone-4-stopped-working</link>
  323.     </item>
  324.     <item>
  325.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  326.       <title>Steve Jobs changed</title>
  327.       <description>&lt;p&gt;He changed computers.&lt;br /&gt;
  328. He changed software.&lt;br /&gt;
  329. He changed design.&lt;br /&gt;
  330. He changed publishing.&lt;br /&gt;
  331. He changed film.&lt;br /&gt;
  332. He changed music.&lt;br /&gt;
  333. He changed advertising.&lt;br /&gt;
  334. He changed retail.&lt;br /&gt;
  335. He changed business.&lt;/p&gt;
  336.  
  337.  
  338.     &lt;p&gt;He changed beige.&lt;/p&gt;
  339.  
  340.  
  341.     &lt;p&gt;He changed expectations.&lt;br /&gt;
  342. He changed our minds.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  343.  
  344.  
  345.     &lt;p&gt;He changed them.&lt;br /&gt;
  346. He changed us.&lt;br /&gt;
  347. He changed you.&lt;/p&gt;
  348.  
  349.  
  350.     &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Don&amp;#8217;t be sad because it&amp;#8217;s over. Smile because it happened.&amp;#8221; &amp;#8211; Dr. Seuss&lt;/p&gt;
  351.  
  352.  
  353.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Now what are you going to change?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  354.       <pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:02:00 +0000</pubDate>
  355.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3021-steve-jobs-changed</guid>
  356.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3021-steve-jobs-changed</link>
  357.     </item>
  358.     <item>
  359.       <dc:creator>Ann</dc:creator>
  360.       <title>37colors</title>
  361.       <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend during the Ravenswood Art Walk, I visited &lt;a href="http://www.lornaslaces.net/"&gt;Lorna&amp;#8217;s Laces&lt;/a&gt;. They hand-dye yarns in some really beautiful color combinations. I took some photos to share, because sometimes it&amp;#8217;s nice to look at pretty things!&lt;/p&gt;
  362.  
  363.  
  364.     &lt;p&gt;Designers, how do you put colors together? Where do you find inspiration?&lt;/p&gt;
  365.  
  366.  
  367.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/736-IMG_1391.JPG" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  368. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors"&gt;More...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  369.       <pubDate>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:42:00 +0000</pubDate>
  370.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors</guid>
  371.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors</link>
  372.     </item>
  373.     <item>
  374.       <dc:creator>Noah</dc:creator>
  375.       <title>The rhythms of 37signals</title>
  376.       <description>&lt;p&gt;I was thinking this morning about what I perceived to be my normal working pattern&amp;#8212;lots in the morning, then tapering out from mid-day on with an occasional bump in the evenings. I wanted to see if this was quantifiable through git logs, and I decided to look across a wide range of our repositories.&lt;/p&gt;
  377.  
  378.  
  379.     &lt;p&gt;The chart below shows the portion of each person&amp;#8217;s commits that occur within a given hour of the day in their local time.&lt;/p&gt;
  380.  
  381.  
  382.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/729-rhythms_for_svn_anon.png" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/729-rhythms_for_svn_anon.png" width='550' style="border: none;"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  383.  
  384.  
  385.     &lt;p&gt;As you can see, there&amp;#8217;s a wide range in preferred working hours &amp;#8211; one of the great advantages of working in &lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2888-real-time-vs-slow-time-and-a-defense-of-sane-work-hours"&gt;slow time&lt;/a&gt; is that this is absolutely fine. There&amp;#8217;s enough overlap in hours for people to be able to work together, but enough flexibility to work when you want to.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  386.       <pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:47:00 +0000</pubDate>
  387.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3019-the-rhythms-of-37signals</guid>
  388.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3019-the-rhythms-of-37signals</link>
  389.     </item>
  390.     <item>
  391.       <dc:creator>Noah</dc:creator>
  392.       <title>API design for humans</title>
  393.       <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the things about working with data at 37signals is that I end up  interacting with a lot of different APIs&amp;#8212;I&amp;#8217;ve used at least ten third-party APIs in the last few months, as well as all of our public APIs and a variety of internal interfaces. I&amp;#8217;ve used wrappers in a couple different languages, and written a few of my own. It&amp;#8217;s fair to say I&amp;#8217;ve developed some strong opinions about &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; design and documentation from a data consumer&amp;#8217;s perspective.&lt;/p&gt;
  394.  
  395.  
  396.     &lt;p&gt;From my experience, there are a few things that really end up mattering from an &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; usability perspective (I&amp;#8217;ll leave arguments about what is truly &lt;span class="caps"&gt;REST&lt;/span&gt;, or whether &lt;span class="caps"&gt;XML&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class="caps"&gt;JSON&lt;/span&gt; is actually better technically to someone else).&lt;/p&gt;
  397.  
  398.  
  399. &lt;h3&gt;Tell me more: documentation is king&lt;/h3&gt;
  400.  
  401.     &lt;p&gt;I have some preferences for actual &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; design (see below), but I will completely trade them for clear documentation. Clear documentation includes:&lt;/p&gt;
  402.  
  403.  
  404.     &lt;ul&gt;
  405.     &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Examples that show the full request.&lt;/b&gt; This can be a full example using &lt;code&gt;curl&lt;/code&gt; like we provide in &lt;a href="http://developer.37signals.com"&gt;our &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; documentation&lt;/a&gt;, or just a clear statement of the request like Campaign Monitor does for &lt;a href="http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/account/#getting_countries"&gt;each of their methods&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  406.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  407.  
  408.  
  409.     &lt;ul&gt;
  410.     &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Examples that show what the expected response is.&lt;/b&gt; One of the most frustrating things when reading &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; documentation is not knowing what I&amp;#8217;m going to get back when I utilize the &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt;&amp;#8212;showing mock data goes along way towards this. Really good &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; documentation like this would let you write an entire wrapper without ever making a single request to the &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt;. &lt;a href="http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/account/#getting_countries"&gt;Campaign Monitor&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/1.3/campaignabusereports.func.php"&gt;MailChimp&lt;/a&gt; both have good, but very different takes on this.&lt;/li&gt;
  411.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  412.  
  413.  
  414.     &lt;ul&gt;
  415.     &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;A listing of error codes, what they mean, and what the most common cause of receiving them is.&lt;/b&gt; I&amp;#8217;m generally not the biggest fan of the &lt;a href="http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/reference/"&gt;Adwords &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in many ways, but they are a great example of exhaustively documenting every single response code they return.&lt;/li&gt;
  416.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  417.  
  418.  
  419.     &lt;ul&gt;
  420.     &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;A searchable &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTML&lt;/span&gt; interface.&lt;/b&gt; Whether it&amp;#8217;s visually appealing doesn&amp;#8217;t really matter much, and Google indexing it is plenty of search. What doesn&amp;#8217;t work for me is when the &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt; documentation is in &lt;span class="caps"&gt;PDF&lt;/span&gt;, or I have to authenticate to get access to it.&lt;/li&gt;
  421.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  422.  
  423.  
  424.     &lt;ul&gt;
  425.     &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Communication of versioning and deprecation schedules.&lt;/b&gt; There&amp;#8217;s some debate about whether versioning is better than gradual evolution, but regardless, anytime you&amp;#8217;re changing something in a way that might break someone&amp;#8217;s existing code, fair warning is required, and it should be on your documentation site. Sometimes you have to make a change for security reasons that don&amp;#8217;t allow much advance notice, but wherever possible, providing a couple of weeks notice goes a long way. The &lt;a href="http://developer.github.com/"&gt;Github &lt;span class="caps"&gt;API&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  clearly shows what will be removed when and shows the differences between versions clearly.&lt;/li&gt;
  426.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  427. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3018-api-design-for-humans"&gt;More...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  428.       <pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:28:00 +0000</pubDate>
  429.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3018-api-design-for-humans</guid>
  430.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3018-api-design-for-humans</link>
  431.     </item>
  432.     <item>
  433.       <dc:creator>Ann</dc:creator>
  434.       <title>Basecamp eliminates time zone math</title>
  435.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Question: If your company is boarding a train at 1pm in Boston, but you&amp;#8217;re living in Denver, and you have a client living in London, what time does the train reach Philadelphia?&lt;/p&gt;
  436.  
  437.  
  438.     &lt;p&gt;Answer: You don&amp;#8217;t have time to figure this out. You have work to do.&lt;/p&gt;
  439.  
  440.  
  441.     &lt;p&gt;Basecamp can now eliminate the time zone confusion!&lt;/p&gt;
  442. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3016-basecamp-eliminates-time-zone-math"&gt;More...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  443.       <pubDate>Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:57:00 +0000</pubDate>
  444.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3016-basecamp-eliminates-time-zone-math</guid>
  445.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3016-basecamp-eliminates-time-zone-math</link>
  446.     </item>
  447.     <item>
  448.       <dc:creator>Taylor</dc:creator>
  449.       <title>Behind the Scenes: Internet Connectivity</title>
  450.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Last year, we suffered a number of service outages due to network problems upstream. In the past 9 months we have diligently worked to install service from additional providers and expand both our redundancy and capacity. This week we turned up our third Internet provider, accomplishing our goals of circuit diversity, latency reduction and increased network capacity.&lt;/p&gt;
  451.  
  452.  
  453.     &lt;p&gt;We now have service from Server Central / Nlayer Networks, Internap and Level 3 Communications. Our total network capacity is in excess of 1.5 gigabits per second, while our mean customer facing bandwidth utilization is between 500 megabits and 1 gigabit. In addition, we&amp;#8217;ve deployed two Cisco &lt;span class="caps"&gt;ASR 1001&lt;/span&gt; routers which aggregate our circuits and allow us to announce our /24 netblock (our own IP address space) via each provider.&lt;/p&gt;
  454.  
  455.  
  456.     &lt;p&gt;Keeping Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire available to you at all times is our top priority, and we&amp;#8217;re always looking for ways to increase redundancy and service performance. This setup has prevented at least 4 significant upstream network issues from becoming customer impacting&amp;#8230; which we can all agree is great!&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  457.       <pubDate>Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:17:00 +0000</pubDate>
  458.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3015-behind-the-scenes-internet-connectivity</guid>
  459.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3015-behind-the-scenes-internet-connectivity</link>
  460.     </item>
  461.     <item>
  462.       <dc:creator>Noah</dc:creator>
  463.       <title>A/B Testing Tech Note: determining sample size</title>
  464.       <description>&lt;p&gt;In discussions on our &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Behind+the+scenes%3A+A%2FB+testing&amp;#38;sitesearch=37signals.com%2Fsvn"&gt;posts about A/B testing the Highrise home page&lt;/a&gt;, a number of people asked about sample size and how long to run a test for. It&amp;#8217;s a good question, and one that&amp;#8217;s important to understand. Running an A/B test without thinking about statistical confidence is worse than not running a test at all&amp;#8212;it gives you false confidence that you know what works for your site, when the truth is that you don&amp;#8217;t know any better than if you hadn&amp;#8217;t run the test.&lt;/p&gt;
  465.  
  466.  
  467.     &lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s no simple answer or generic &amp;#8220;rule of thumb&amp;#8221; that you can use, but you can very easily determine the right sample size to use for your test.&lt;/p&gt;
  468.  
  469.  
  470. &lt;h2&gt;What drives our needed sample size?&lt;/h2&gt;
  471.  
  472.     &lt;p&gt;There are a few concerns that drive the sample size required for a meaningful A/B test:&lt;/p&gt;
  473.  
  474.  
  475.     &lt;p&gt;1) We want to be reasonably sure that we  don&amp;#8217;t have a false positive&amp;#8212;that there is no real difference, but we detect one anyway. Statisticians call this &lt;a href = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors"&gt;Type I error&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  476.  
  477.  
  478.     &lt;p&gt;2) We want to be reasonably sure that we don&amp;#8217;t miss a positive outcome (or get a false negative). This is called &lt;a href = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors"&gt;Type II error&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  479.  
  480.  
  481.     &lt;p&gt;3) We want to know whether a variation is better, worse or the same as the original. Why do we want to know the difference between worse vs same? I probably won&amp;#8217;t switch from the original if the variation performs worse, but I might still switch even if it&amp;#8217;s the same&amp;#8212;for a design or aesthetic preference, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
  482.  
  483.  
  484. &lt;h2&gt;What not to do&lt;/h2&gt;
  485.  
  486.     &lt;p&gt;There are a few &amp;#8220;gotchas&amp;#8221; that are worth watching out for when you start thinking about the statistical significance of A/B tests:&lt;/p&gt;
  487.  
  488.  
  489.     &lt;p&gt;1) Don&amp;#8217;t look at your A/B testing tool&amp;#8217;s generic advice that &amp;#8220;about 100 conversions are usually required for significance&amp;#8221;. Your conversion rate and desired sensitivity will determine this, and A/B testing tools are always biased to want you to think you have significant results as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
  490.  
  491.  
  492.     &lt;p&gt;2) Don&amp;#8217;t continuously test for significance as your sample grows, or blindly keep the test running until you reach statistical significance. Evan Miller wrote &lt;a href="http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html"&gt; a great explanation&lt;/a&gt; of why you shouldn&amp;#8217;t do this, but briefly:&lt;/p&gt;
  493.  
  494.  
  495.     &lt;ul&gt;
  496.     &lt;li&gt;If you stop your test as soon as you see &amp;#8220;significant&amp;#8221; differences, you might not have actually achieved the outcome you think you have. As a simple example of this, imagine you have two coins, and you think they might be weighted. If you flip each coin 10 times, you might get heads on one all of the time, and tails on the other all of the time. If you run a statistical test comparing the portion of flips that got you heads between the two coins after these 10 flips, you&amp;#8217;ll get what looks like a statistically significant result&amp;#8212;if you stop now, you&amp;#8217;ll think they&amp;#8217;re weighted heavily in different directions. If you keep going and flip each coin another 100 times, you might now see that they are in fact balanced coins and there is no statistically significant difference in the number of heads or tails.&lt;/li&gt;
  497.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  498.  
  499.  
  500.     &lt;ul&gt;
  501.     &lt;li&gt;If you keep running your test forever, you&amp;#8217;ll eventually reach a large enough sample size that a 0.00001% difference tests as significant. This isn&amp;#8217;t particularly meaningful, however.&lt;/li&gt;
  502.     &lt;/ul&gt;
  503.  
  504.  
  505.     &lt;p&gt;3) Don&amp;#8217;t rely on a rule of thumb like &amp;#8220;16 times your standard deviation squared divided by your sensitivity squared&amp;#8221;. Same thing with the charts you see on some websites that don&amp;#8217;t make their assumptions clear. It&amp;#8217;s better than a rule of thumb like &amp;#8220;100 conversions&amp;#8221;, but the math isn&amp;#8217;t so hard it&amp;#8217;s worth skipping over, and you&amp;#8217;ll gain an understanding of what&amp;#8217;s driving required sample size in the process.&lt;/p&gt;
  506.  
  507.  
  508. &lt;h2&gt;How to calculate your needed sample size&lt;/h2&gt;
  509.  
  510.     &lt;p&gt;Instead of continuously testing or relying on generic rules of thumb, you can calculate the needed sample size and statistical significance very easily. For simplicity, I&amp;#8217;ve assumed you&amp;#8217;re doing an A vs B test (two variations), but this same approach can be scaled for other things.&lt;/p&gt;
  511. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3004-ab-testing-tech-note-determining-sample-size"&gt;More...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  512.       <pubDate>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:03:00 +0000</pubDate>
  513.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3004-ab-testing-tech-note-determining-sample-size</guid>
  514.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3004-ab-testing-tech-note-determining-sample-size</link>
  515.     </item>
  516.     <item>
  517.       <dc:creator>Jamis</dc:creator>
  518.       <title>Four tips for learning how to program</title>
  519.       <description>&lt;p&gt;I recently received an email from someone who was getting into programming, and was asking for advice on how to proceed. He had a project in mind, and had started on it, but had run into areas where his current knowledge was insufficient to puzzle out the solution.&lt;/p&gt;
  520.  
  521.  
  522.     &lt;p&gt;First of all, I was very impressed that he had actually started work. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, and one of my least favorite things are &amp;#8220;idea people&amp;#8221; who feel like their work is done when they come up with an idea, and all that&amp;#8217;s left is to find a programmer who is willing to fill in the blanks. That this person came to me after first trying to solve it himself was a huge mark in his favor.&lt;/p&gt;
  523.  
  524.  
  525.     &lt;p&gt;Sadly, I wasn&amp;#8217;t able to help him take his project further, but it gave me a chance to think back on the times that I&amp;#8217;ve been a beginner (whether it was web programming, or iOS programming, or even something unrelated to software entirely), and to contemplate how I approached those beginnings.&lt;/p&gt;
  526.  
  527.  
  528.     &lt;p&gt;I identified four things that I&amp;#8217;ve found were fundamental to my particular learning style. Obviously, there are as many learning styles as their are learners, but these are what work for me.&lt;/p&gt;
  529. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3014-four-tips-for-learning-how-to-program"&gt;More...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  530.       <pubDate>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:27:00 +0000</pubDate>
  531.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3014-four-tips-for-learning-how-to-program</guid>
  532.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3014-four-tips-for-learning-how-to-program</link>
  533.     </item>
  534.     <item>
  535.       <dc:creator>Jamie</dc:creator>
  536.       <title>Tell friends about Basecamp. Save them $10, you might win great prizes.</title>
  537.       <description>&lt;p&gt;Basecamp became the world&amp;#8217;s most popular web-based project management app because happy customers have recommended it to their friends and colleagues. It&amp;#8217;s been amazing to see how Basecamp&amp;#8217;s popularity has risen primarily through word-of-mouth.&lt;/p&gt;
  538.  
  539.  
  540.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/724-img-couple.jpeg" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  541.  
  542.  
  543.     &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  544. We want to help you spread the word to your friends, so we made the &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com/"&gt;Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest&lt;/a&gt;. Here&amp;#8217;s how it works:&lt;/p&gt;
  545.  
  546.  
  547. &lt;ul&gt;
  548. &lt;li&gt;Sign up with your Basecamp account at &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com"&gt;https://tellafriend.37signals.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  549. &lt;li&gt;We&amp;#8217;ll give you a special link that you can tweet, share on Facebook, or email to your friends.&lt;/li&gt;
  550. &lt;li&gt;Every person that signs up from your link for a paid Basecamp plan will get $10 off their first month.&lt;/li&gt;
  551. &lt;li&gt;Every person you sign up counts as a &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com/prizes"&gt;chance to win one of our prizes&lt;/a&gt;.
  552. &lt;/ul&gt;
  553.  
  554.     &lt;p&gt;This contest ends on January 2, 2012. &lt;a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com"&gt;Sign up today&lt;/a&gt; and start saving your friends $10 off their first month.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  555.       <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:51:00 +0000</pubDate>
  556.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3009-tell-friends-about-basecamp-save-them-10-you-might-win-great-prizes</guid>
  557.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3009-tell-friends-about-basecamp-save-them-10-you-might-win-great-prizes</link>
  558.     </item>
  559.     <item>
  560.       <dc:creator>Taylor</dc:creator>
  561.       <title>Looking for two more people to join our operations team</title>
  562.       <description>&lt;p&gt;We are looking for &lt;strong&gt;two&lt;/strong&gt; more people to join our operations team. We would prefer individuals interested in both application development and systems engineering. We&amp;#8217;ve got 100&amp;#8217;s of servers running Ubuntu, 400+ terabytes of Isilon storage, and we&amp;#8217;re building out a second site. We use lots of &amp;#8220;bare metal&amp;#8221; in addition to VMware virtualization and some of the Amazon and Rackspace Cloud services.&lt;/p&gt;
  563.  
  564.  
  565.     &lt;p&gt;Come work with us at 37signals and do the best work of your career.&lt;/p&gt;
  566.  
  567.  
  568.     &lt;p&gt;Want more information? Check out &lt;a href="http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/9730"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on the Job Board.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  569.       <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
  570.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3010-looking-for-two-more-people-to-join-our-operations-team</guid>
  571.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3010-looking-for-two-more-people-to-join-our-operations-team</link>
  572.     </item>
  573.     <item>
  574.       <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
  575.       <title>Fast Company's 10 most influential interactive designers and an east-coast bias</title>
  576.       <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/fc-east-coast-designer-bias.png" align="left" style="margin-right: 35px; margin-bottom: 10px;" height="360" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  577.  
  578.  
  579.     &lt;p&gt;Fast Company just put out a list of the &lt;a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/design/2011/50-most-influential-designers-in-america"&gt;50 most influential designers in America&lt;/a&gt;. The eight-category list includes interactive, fashion, architecture, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
  580.  
  581.  
  582.     &lt;p&gt;10 of the 50 are in the interactive category. Out of Fast Company&amp;#8217;s 10 most influential interactive designers in the world, eight of them are on the east coast, and seven of them are based in New York.&lt;/p&gt;
  583.  
  584.  
  585.     &lt;ol&gt;
  586.     &lt;li&gt;Ji Lee lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  587.         &lt;li&gt;Joe Rospars is based in New York and DC&lt;/li&gt;
  588.         &lt;li&gt;Robert Wong lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  589.         &lt;li&gt;Khoi Vinh lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  590.         &lt;li&gt;John Maeda lives in Providence&lt;/li&gt;
  591.         &lt;li&gt;Nicholas Felton lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  592.         &lt;li&gt;Jake Barton lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  593.         &lt;li&gt;Lisa Strausfeld lives in New York&lt;/li&gt;
  594.     &lt;/ol&gt;
  595.  
  596.  
  597.     &lt;p&gt;Fast Company is based in New York. This east-coast bias feels a little echo chamber-y and lazy. There are influential designers all over the country.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  598.       <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:05:00 +0000</pubDate>
  599.       <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3008-fast-companys-10-most-influential-interactive-designers-and-an-east-coast-bias</guid>
  600.       <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3008-fast-companys-10-most-influential-interactive-designers-and-an-east-coast-bias</link>
  601.     </item>
  602.   </channel>
  603. </rss>
  604.  
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