The GAP Website - Model videos

I'm too lazy to drive to the mall and buy blue jeans and shorts. So I hop on The Gap website, and notice they've got videos now (see top of screenshot below). Pretty neat. You pick a style and a guy walks across the screen and shows you what the jeans look like in action. I like the way each style of jean comes with a different style of walking and posing. This is the best thing YouTube has done for the "Internets." Everyone has Flash now, and everyone has high bandwidth, so stuff like this is easy for all of us to implement.

Busted for Plagiarism (sorta)

We just launched a banner ad campaign for MailChimp on The Deck (an ad network that basically targets web developers and designers). So far so good.

But just the other day, a designer (with a very good eye) sent in a concerned email to The Deck that perhaps the MailChimp logo was a ripoff of a monkey illustration seen over at Lollipopcards.com.



Actually, it's the other way around. The Lollipopcards design is a ripoff of the MailChimp logo. I know that for a fact, because I designed both of 'em. Hey, I needed a monkey, and I needed it yesterday!

It was actually kind of funny that anyone even knew about lollipopcards.com. I built that site with Mark (who later partnered with me to start The Rocket Science Group), back in 1999. We did it in our spare time. We mainly wanted to see if we could ever build enough traffic to make some side money off of it. Maybe we could sell advertisements targeted at fathers inside our Father's Day cards. Brilliant! Let's do it! IPO!

Took Mark about a week to figure out the whole multipart-alternative MIME encapsulation thing (basically, how to get HTML email to work). He programmed, and I designed little cutesy cards. When we finally launched, we sent our St.Patrick's day card out to 7 friends. They sent cards to their friends. And on and on. In about a year, with virtually no marketing whatsoever, we had 30,000 uniques visiting the site every month. Meh. By then, we lost interest. We had day jobs.

We never made any money off of that site. It turned out to be just a hobby.

Just before we considered it a complete and utter failure, and just before we turned the switch off to save some hosting money, we got the idea to build MailChimp (an email newsletter delivery tool).

We took a bunch of the code we developed for lollipopcards, tweaked it, and it became the foundation for MailChimp. We had the delivery part down easy. It was the "tracking and sorting bounces" that took us so much time. I still remember those late nights helping Mark search the Internet for "how to handle bouncebacks." I finally hit on the word "VERPS" (thank you almighty Google) and the rest is history.

Now MailChimp has thousands of customers from all over the world, and makes us enough pennies that we don't really have to worry about much anymore.

So if you have some cool web technology you developed, don't throw it away. You'll think of some weird way to re-use it later. Same goes for monkey drawings.

Hypermilers (tricks for getting 59 MPG in an Accord)

Here's a crazy story about Wayne Gerdes, a "hypermiler" obsessed with squeezing every last drop of gasoline out of his driving. He can get 59 MPG in his regular Honda Accord, and got 180 MPG from a Honda Insight at "Hybridfest." Funny thing is, the Insight tops out at 99MPG on its digital readout, so they had to switch to kilometers per gallon in order to measure his results. Love the part about the "death turn" and his ice vest...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html

Your Name On A Honda F1 Car

This is nice. Instead of covering their car with countless sponsor logos (which you can never see anyways) Honda's looking to promote environmental responsibility by just covering their entire car with an image of the earth. You can make a pledge to help save the earth (and sponsor the car) and they'll put your name on it. It'll make up a tiny pixel on the car, which you can only see with a microscope, but still:



More info at AutoBlog Green

Mobile Phone for Old People

For old people? Heck, I'd want one myself. Just give me a simple phone with no frills.

http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/02/mobile-phone-for-old-people.html



I just bought a cellphone for my 50+ year old mother in law, and watched her try to use it.

Tip for phone designers: make that LCD a touchscreen. If I had a nickel every time she scrolled to a name in her address book, then pressed down (really, really hard on the delicate screen), I'd be a dollar-menu-naire. It sure made pretty colors when she jammed down on the screen, though.

Phone for really, really, really old people: Ditch the address book, and just make the inside of that flip-down piece hold a piece of paper.

Michelin Man Loses Spare Tire

Check out new Michelin Man vs. Old Michelin Man:



New Michelin man is healthier, stronger, he's quit smoking, he cares about the environment, and he "lasts 25% longer." Congrats!

Navy may deploy anti-terrorism dolphins and sea lions

Yahoo has an article about how the Navy uses dolphins and sea lions to detect underwater terrorists. I'd heard of that before, but not this:

"Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person's leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning."

Crazy stuff. Reminds me of this Onion article:

Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs

I'm Linux

I just can't stop laughing at this "I'm a Mac" parody:




http://techdigest.tv/2007/02/im_a_pc_im_a_ma.html

Advice From GoDaddy Founder

Practical Commerce has an interesting interview with GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons. Some interesting thoughts about the future of ecommerce.

Here's a snippet I liked:

If you had one single piece of advice for startup ecommerce people what would it be?
They have to be relentless, they have to be willing to change and adapt and they have to do it often. That would be it. They will not get it right the first time, I assure them.

Mr. Roboto

Pretty cool handmade robots from found parts: Lockwasher Design.
Tip o' the hat to 1508 for posting the link: