Since discovering the wonder of outsourcing nine months ago, in October 2008, I've outsourced approximately 300 hours. That's 300 hours that I got to spend reading or playing (or working...) while various assistants re-formatted an e-book, researched traffic stats for competing sites, scheduled apartment visits, got price quotes for vacation rentals, designed posters for an upcoming party, performed bookkeeping work, handled support requests, and wrote software. All for a mere $3.50 / hour. (Slave wages? Hardly.)
Life post-outsourcing is much less stressful. Here's how you can get in on the action:
1. Understand what tasks you need help with: Spend three days figuring what you want. Each time you spend more than 15 minutes on a task, write it down on a list. At the end of the three days, go through your list. Which of these could you hire someone else to do?
2. Categorize the most important skills: What are the core skills that your tasks require? Photo editing, excel, etc? Is there particular software that your assistant needs? How good does the candidate's English need to be?
3. Post a job opening: I use odesk.com for finding outsourced assistants, because I love its transparency. I can see how many other jobs a candidate has (will they be too busy for me?), how much they've been paid (are they trying to overcharge me?), and their scores on a number of odesk-supplied tests. I post a suggested rate, and candidates respond with their own bid. Job applicants usually apply within minutes of posting a job opening.
Note: You might expect that if you post an expected wage of $7 / hour, no one will bid less than that. I haven't found that to be the case. Because you can see a candidate's prior wages, a person who's previously been paid $2 / hour has a hard time requesting $7. Furthermore, andidates are competing with each other to get each position, so they need to post competitive wages.
4. Interview via Instant Message (or Skype): I conduct my interviews over instant messenger. For an assistant, I'll usually ask the following questions:
What times of day are you available to work?
Are you available on the weekends as well?
Can you make phone calls, if needed, through Skype?
How much experience do you have with excel and photoshop?
[After providing a link to a recent news article] To better assess your English skills, could you please read the following article and provide a short (4 - 5) sentence summary?
You'll notice that my questions are very simple. Why? Because I don't think you can truly assess someone's capability without hiring them. So, I look for their English capability, confirm that they have the requisite software and skills, and then I hire them to test them out.
5. Hire Several, and Look for Quality not Price: You won't know how good a candidate is until they actually attempt a task and most, frankly, aren't very good. Hire several people, try them out, and then narrow it down to the best.
Don't automatically go for the cheapest. Suppose you have a $2 / hour and a $5 / hour candidate applying. If you have to spend even 20 minutes more time correcting the cheaper employee, it may be not worth it. Hire for quality, not price.
6. Clarify Expectations: Do you want an employee to make their own decisions? Or would you prefer that check with you first to see what to do?
7. Let Go of the Bad, Hold on to the Good: Some candidates won't be very good, but that's why you hired more than one. Let go of someone if they just aren't cutting it, but fight to hold on to the best. A good assistant is well worth it.
8. Go For It! Your new assistant will report his or her time to odesk.com, usually automatically using odesk's software (this software takes screenshots of their computer randomly while they're working, to ensure that their time reports are honest). Odesk will then charge you each week, giving you a short window of time to contest any charges. You can either IM or email tasks to your assistants. Note that both you and your assistants will be reviewed when you close the assignment, so it's in both people's interest to treat each other fairly.
Working for Microsoft, Google and Apple, I not only became a better engineer - I became a better entrepreneur. Their successes and failures, encapsulated in these five lessons, provided me with invaluable instruction in how to build a company and effectively compete.
#1. Build a large network. The “Biggies,” as I like to call them, have an unfair advantage: they have a network of literally thousands of experts. At Apple, I worked with some of the industry’s best designers. Microsoft has people who specialize in every conceivable role. At Google, I could walk down the hall and speak with the inventors of revolutionary technologies.
To compete with the biggies, you’ll need a network of your own. Get out to those start-up happy hours. Grab business cards. Set up coffee and lunch chats. And be open - you never know who might come in handy.
Good news bloggers and website owners! CareerCup has just launched its new affiliate program. CareerCup's affiliate programs allows website owners to post a link / ad for CareerCup's interview guide and, in return, collect some of the revenue from any sale. Best of all, it's super-easy to use!
We offer two designs: Horizontal (example) and Vertical (example)
Preliminary tests have shown that it far outperforms Google Adsense ads. Want in on the action? Great! Follow these instructions, or just tweak this code:
<SCRIPT type="text/javascript" src="http://www.careercup.com/js/affiliate.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT type="text/javascript"> var cc_width = 650; var cc_font_size = 12; var cc_header_font_size = 14; var cc_background = '#FFFFFF'; var cc_header_color = '#009193'; var cc_guarantee_color = '#FF0000'; var cc_link_color = '#009193'; var cc_type = 'horizontal'; writeAffiliateCode('mydomain.com', '1'); </SCRIPT>
When you've got it up and running, email me your name, paypal account, and url. You'll get a 20% cut of the revenue and will be paid each month.
As I've mentioned before, I've started outsourcing. A lot. Most of the outsourcing goes to an (awesome) assistant in the Philippines, who does everything from online research to document editing. She's great, and she's quite literally changed my approach to working.
Although most people are merely intrigued by my hiring a remote assistant, a surprising number tell me that it's unethical, supplying one of these reasons:
Exploitation: "You're only hiring someone from because they're cheap. You're not even paying them minimum wage!"
While it's true that some people I hire are paid well below US minimum wage (you can find assistants for as little as $1.50 per hour, though mine are paid considerably more), it's hardly exploiting them. I do believe that employees should be paid a livable wage, but that means a livable wage for their country, not for the US.
It's surprising to me that so many people would complain about this, when we're all perfectly accustomed to salary adjustments based on cost of living. For example, Microsoft pays California employees 15% more for the same work than they do the Seattle employees. Likewise, they no doubt pay their India employees considerably less. Exploitative? Of course not.
Now, I'm not an expert in economics, but I would guess that, far from being exploitative, outsourcing is quite good for the target areas. You're providing the people with work. Doesn't that boost their economy? Isn't that good?
Protectionism: "What about the US? You should be hiring US workers!"
Most outsourcing-supporting respond with the following: 1) "By outsourcing to India / Philippines / another country, we can expand our company and eventually hire more Americans." I don't know in which cases this argument is true, but I can certainly say that it's been true in my case. The outsourced workers I've hired have been the reason that I've been able to generate revenue for CareerCup. It simply would not have been possible without them. This revenue, in turn, enables me to hire Americans for things that do need to be done in the US. 2) "Welcome to a global world. If you don't operate efficiently, your competitors - who may not be American - will simply out perform you." This is possibly the most compelling argument. A business has an obligation to its shareholders to operate efficiently. If it doesn't operate efficiently, another company will. And then, if that happens, how have we helped the US?
In addition to those two points, however, I'd like to make a third: 3) Why are Americans so important? Why is hiring an American inherently "better" (ethically speaking) than a hiring someone from India? Are we not all people? In fact, I could very well argue the opposite: supporting a person in a poorer country, whose children may struggle to eat or to get an education, is more ethical than hiring a comparatively wealthy American. (I'm not saying that that's true; I'm merely arguing that the reverse isn't necessarily true either.)
Suffice to say... I feel perfectly at easy with my decision to outsource. I've employed some extraordinarily talented people and rewarded them well for their work. I understand that there's an awful lot I don't understand about globalization, so perhaps someone will open my eyes to some horrible truths. Until that day, though, I will continue to use outsourced workers to build and expand new projects.
While I can't exactly call myself an avid photographer - as I have zero skill in this art form - I do have a lot of photo albums. I call it the "quantity over quality approach." Unfortunately, when I want to look up, say, pictures from my Microsoft internship in 2003, it's a mess. Picasa throws all your albums in one ginormous list, making it difficult to track down the right pictures. That's why I created PictureMash.
Group albums logically - and automatically - by time into "Smart Folders" For example, I created a "Smart Folder" called Microsoft Internship 2003 which contains all albums between May 2003 and August 2003. I don't have to put the albums in there manually - I just give PictureMash the date range I want, and it does its thing. And, I can even group my smart folders, allowing me to tuck away all my college pictures into one master folder.
Merge Picasa and Flickr albums If you're like, well, many people, you may have used both Picasa and Flickr albums. PictureMash puts them all into one seamless list.
Add tags and related links When I go to a party or event, I'm usually not the only one taking pictures. With PictureMash, I can add links to my friend's pictures too, right next to my album. This way, when I'm looking up pictures from Seattle Anti-Freeze's Roller Disco party, I remember to look at Ming Li's pictures too.
Create one feed for all your friends Another fun use case for PictureMash: I can create a "group" account and add my friends' pictures to this account. When I move across the country next month, I'll be able to reference this account to see what's going on with my Seattle friends.
And remember: you don't have to re-upload anything. All your pictures are still stored on Picasa or Flickr!
Microsoft Loyalty Scorecard: + 1: Using Microsoft search at work. - 1: Using Microsoft search to prepare for your upcoming interviews... at work.
Kumo is Microsoft's new search engine that was released internally this month. No one seems to be talking about it much externally, and it doesn't show up in Google Analytics under "Search Engines". Kumo is, however, listed as a referring site for my site, CareerCup, which helps prepare for technical interviews. Almost all the Kumo users are, of course, from Redmond with a couple in Bellevue and Toyko.
Well, hey - while it's not so nice to look for a new job while at work, at least you're using Microsoft's search engine to get there. Your boss must be thrilled.
I spent six weeks in Argentina learning Spanish, and I'd love to keep up my limited skills by reading in Spanish. But, the fact is, my vocabulary just isn't good enough, and whipping out a dictionary at every other word is too cumbersome.
With a few relatively straight-forward changes, the Kindle 2 could really help out here. Amazon (or some clever hacker) could modify the existing dictionary to do translation. When you hover the cursor next to a Spanish word, an English translation of the word would pop up.
The technology behind this doesn't seem so tricky. The Kindle 2 already has a dictionary that operates in much the same way: when I hover next to an (English) word, a definition pops up. Thus, Amazon would just need to swap out the English dictionary for an Spanish-English dictionary.
I said I wouldn't buy a Kindle 2, as I already own a Kindle 1, and I made it a whole five days. As one friend said, I'd make an awful POW. Fair point. However (this is where I try to justify my choice), my Kindle is probably my most used device, so upgrading isn't so silly.
I love my Kindle 1. I carry it with me in my purse at all times (ah, the benefits of being a woman). I read so much more since I got it. There were the obvious benefits of owning a Kindle (being able to carry multiple books at once), and then the less obvious benefits (being able to read one handed, easily purchasing books while on vacation, not having to buy books at airports).
I must admit though - in the first few hours owning the Kindle 2, it's a serious step up.
Keyboard
The once horrible keyboard is now merely mediocre. The Kindle 1's keys were quite stiff, whereas the Kindle 2's keys have a similar resistance as a mac keyboard. The keys are still awkwardly far apart, unfortunately.
And, now that the screen is faster, the keyboard now feels much faster as well.
Cover
I'm not sure why Amazon didn't put more thought into the Kindle 1 cover, but they seem to have corrected the cover for the Kindle 2. The previous bulky case has been replaced with a trim, firm cover. The Kindle 1 would often slip from it's very lose case - the Kindle 2 locks in place almost like a seatbelt clasp. Snug and slim - perfect.
Underlining and Highlighting
What was once a cumbersome process of fiddling with slow menus is now an intuitive selection process. Want to add a highlight? Move the cursor. Click. Move. Click again. Want to add a note? Just start typing.
Fewer Accidental Clicks
The "Next Page" button has been re-oriented so that you're less likely to accidentally hit it. Frankly, I didn't really have this problem after the first few days of owning the Kindle 1. However, it was a little annoying that every time you showed someone else the Kindle 1 they would turn your page. This has been fixed. This bigger benefit, to me, is that I probably don't need to put on the screen lock any more as things in my purse are less likely to turn the page.
Archived Items
The Archived Items (eg, old books stored on Amazon's servers) are now much easier to retrieve. The previous "Content Manager", which included all current and previous books, has been replaced with Archived Items - a simple listing of all your old books. By trimming it down to only what's _not_ on your device, it's much easier to find what you were looking for.
Look and Feel
The sharp edges (a significant issue when you're reading for long periods of time) have been replaced by rounded edges. The cheap plastic feel that reminded me of the old NES or a children's toy is now something that could have _almost_ been designed by Apple.
Overall, it's not perfect, but it's a big step up from what was already a great device.
After I left Google and got the travel bug out of my system, I joined a tiny funded start-up called EmptySpaceAds. What excited me about EmptySpaceAds was more than just the product (although that was pretty neat) - it was the opportunity. With just one employee, EmptySpaceAds was small enough that I would lead the engineering effort. But, at the same time, it was funded. Funding = credibility + a great network of advisors. Our investors are actively involved - in all the right ways. How many other teeny tiny start-ups can say that they have funding? Not many! ;-)
Now, six months later, it looks like I may need to relocate and thus EmptySpaceAds must hire a replacement.
Know a rockstar developer - who wants to lead a start-up? Read on for the job posting!
Software Engineer / VP of Engineering at EmptySpaceAds
With over 40% of the space on web page consisting of "empty space" (margins, etc), empty space is the remaining element of the web to be monetized. EmptySpaceAds is turning previously wasted empty space into a growing revenue stream for our web publishers. Publishers no longer have to decide whether to use the margins for ads or for the aesthetic value of empty space - they can do both!
EmptySpaceAds is a small but well-funded startup. We are funded by Second Ave Partners.
Our Product EmptySpaceAds allows a website owner to utilize the page margins for both "empty space" (eg, pages look better with a bit of emptiness), and for ads.
How does that work?
Our ads only show up when a visitor's mouse hovers over the margins of a page. This means that when you visit a web page, it'll look just as "pretty" as it did before. But, when your mouse hovers over the margins, an ad will (gracefully) fade in behind the margin.
And, here's the best part: because the ads are reacting to the user's mouse rather than being always-present, users don't experience "banner blindness." Publishers will see high click-through rates.
Who We're Looking For We're looking for someone who is more than an engineer. Someone who can jump in and make decisions. Someone who can prioritize and schedule our product releases. Someone who can lead the engineering effort. Someone who can drive our product's success.
As employee #2, you will be instrumental to the company's success!
Here's why you should join us:
You will have incredible impact in our company as our first Software Engineer
You will lead our engineering effort... future developers we hire will report to you
Learn what it takes to run a startup. Interact with the founder daily and attend meeting with the company's investors.
You will reboot your career. You'll learn more, fail more, succeed more, and take away more than you ever would at the equivalent Big Company experience.
Hard Requirements:
B.S. Computer Science or equivalent experience
Minimum two years of professional experience
Possess initiative, leadership abilities, and the ability to make difficult engineering decisions
Location: Seattle, WA (Pioneer Square)
Full Time Only
How To Apply Please email jobs@emptyspaceads.com with the following information:
Resume / CV
[OPTIONAL] Pointers to software you've written. Examples: open source contributions, examples of source code you've written, examples of live production software you wrote or were a contributor to
[OPTIONAL] Links to places you discuss software. Examples: your blog, your website, etc
Last week, TechCrunch re-posted snippets from an email list for former googlers. This article was set up to make an obvious conclusion: Google is not the fairy tale land of employment.
Wait, wait, you mean not everyone loves their job at Google? Shocking! A logical person might point out that what one person loves another person hates and thus, it is physically impossible to have a large company where everyone loves their job.
That being said, allow me to make a few points: 1) Former Googlers are not representative of Googlers. Imagine if you set up a group for ex-New Yorkers, and then asked why they left New York. You'll probably get an usual number of negative complaints. That doesn't mean that most people hate New York.
Likewise, TechCrunch didn't ask Googlers whether or not they liked their jobs - they took a thread from a list of former googlers. That is, people who didn't love Google enough to stay, for whatever reason. So, you're already starting with a list of people whose feelings towards the company skew usually negative.
2) The Email Thread is not representative of Former Googlers People love complaining, particularly those who feel that they have been wronged in some way. If you start an email thread with the question "Why'd you leave Google," you're opening the floodgates for those who hated Google. People like me, who genuinely enjoyed their experience at Google, will stay silent. People like complaining more than praising.
3) TechCrunch was unethical in releasing the (first) names of the posters. Though TechCrunch hid the last names of the posters, they released the first names. If your name is Bob or Mike, your secret might be safe. But, what if your name is "Gayle", or one of the many ethnic or unusual names? Then they might as well have released your full name. Releasing people's names added nothing to the article, but embarrassed - or potentially hurt the careers of - the posters.
4) Almost everyone at Google does like their job. When I left Google, people were surprised. Everyone (or virtually everyone) likes it there. No one came to me and said "yeah, I want to leave too. I hate it here!" I did have several people admit to me that they were thinking about leaving as well. But, in every one of those cases, they said that they liked it, but wanted to go to a smaller company or to a different role.
5) Why I liked Google (and why I left) I had a great team. I liked our project. I liked my manager. I was working on cool, interesting stuff.
Google is, in my opinion, the best place to be an engineer. Engineers are given more authority than I've seen at any other company. If you want to work on something new, there's lots of other projects that you can easily switch to. You can work on your own personal pet project 20% of time. How many other companies let you do that?
For my 20% project, I got to teach two courses at University of Washington. It was an enormous time investment, but I loved teaching. I've kept in touch with many of my former students, and it's amazing to see them to become fantastic engineers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon. I really appreciate both Google and UW giving me that opportunity.
Despite Google being a great place to be engineer, I realized that I didn't want to be an engineer anymore. Ironically, the fact that I was so happy with everything about my job at Google made it the decision easier. After all, if everything was right about the job (team, manager, project) and you're still not excited, the issue is probably the job itself.
Though I liked coding and considered myself fairly good at it, I wanted learn a little more about business: sales, marketing, product design, finance, accounting, etc. Google is a great place, but it's not the place to learn those skills. I felt I could only get that education at a start-up, so I left.
I recently sent in a support ticket to evite about a pretty huge issue with their site. I can't say what it is - yet - but it's not a little bug. It's a huge, massive, gaping issue.
Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:
Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.
Uhh, no, it hasn't been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn't even read my email. What this means is:
They have an auto-response, on a time delay, saying that they've fixed the issue when they haven't done squat.
Some minion clicks a button to say that they're fixed issues when they haven't done squat.
Either way, they're just blindly telling their users that they're fixed issues that they haven't even looked into. Sweet.
Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.
By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:
Facebook: Once Seattle Anti-Freeze exceeded about 1500 members, we could no longer send messages to the group or invite the group to an event. Facebook employees Luke Shepard and Paul McDonald got those limits raised. Thanks guys!!
Pingg: I've written in feature / bug requests. Their support team has promptly responded with well thought out responses.
MyPunchBowl: After I posted about MyPunchBowl, the founder emailed me - within hours.
Zoji.com: I have exchanged numerous emails with the founders.
The lesson is: Don't automatically respond to users saying that their issue has been fixed.
"We will be taking memcache offline tomorrow morning from 9-10am PST (GMT-8) for routine maintenance. Calls to the memcache API will *not* throw exceptions but will instead return false for set() calls and None for get() calls (just like any other cache miss.) Your app should continue serving normally during this period, and we'll keep you updated on our progress."
Google writes this as though it's "no biggie - we're just disabling caching for an hour - your app will operate as normal".
If you've used App Engine, you know how ridiculous that is. You can't operate an App Engine site without lots and lots of caching.
App Engine takes your generous daily quota and divides it up into tiny little minute or second long quotas. Their logic is something like this:
You can eat 2000 calories in one day. Hurray! That's a lot of food!
It's good to pace yourself and not eat it all at once. Absolutely. You wouldn't want to pig out on breakfast and not be able to eat anything else all day.
Therefore, we will only let you eat 1.4 calories per minute. Well, f*ck. Pass me two thirds of a tic tac?
CareerCup gets about 10,000 page views per day - not the smallest site, but hardly the biggest. CareerCup cannot operate without heavy caching. By taking down caching, they took down my site for an hour. Not cool.
Now, Google could have mitigated this by removing the absurdly small quotas temporarily. CareerCup would have run slowly, but at least it would have run. Instead, though, users get punished for expensive-ish queries, with no chance to avoid it. Not cool.
This brings me to my next point: Google, if you're going to take down people's sites, can you pick a better time than 9am - 10am? Try, perhaps, 2am - 3am? I know you don't want to come into work at 2am. I know it's not really Google culture to tell a team that they have to be at work and away from their families 2am. But you have to. You have real users operating real businesses, many of which are a whole lot bigger than CareerCup. We depend on you to keep our websites up.
Google: Don't act like taking down memcache doesn't disable our sites. And don't disable our sites at 9am when you could've done this 2am.
I've been using Talkinator, an embeddable chat program for websites, for a few months now.
I realize I might be the only post-1995 site to want a chatroom, but it's actually rather useful. For example, when people are discussing, say, Microsoft Interview Questions, they'll jump in the chatroom to discuss problems. This use was expected.
The more interesting use-case was simply feedback. People hesitate feedback via email, or even through anonymous forms. They will, however, jump in a chatroom and complain. I've discovered a number of bugs this way.
So, without further ado, I present the the Top 10 Best Microsoft Interview Questions:
Microsoft Interview Question #10 Given two nodes in a binary tree, find the first common parent node. You are not allowed to store any nodes in a data structure.
Microsoft Interview Question #7 Given two sets of objects, S1 and S2, write an algorithm to determine their subset relationship. Eg, which of the following is true: C1 is a subset of C2, C2 is a subset of C1, C1 equals C2, or none of these?
Microsoft Interview Question #6 Given a value in a binary search tree, print all the paths (starting from the root or any other node) which sum up to that value.
Microsoft Interview Question #5 Imagine there is a square matrix with n x n cells. Each cell is either filled with a black pixel or a white pixel. Design an algorithm to find the maximum subsquare such that all four borders are filled with black pixels.
Microsoft Interview Question #4 How would you divide an integer array into 2 sub-arrays such that their averages were equal?
Microsoft Interview Question #3 Given two binary trees T1 and T2 which store character data, write an algorithm to decide whether T2 is a subtree of T1. T1 has millions of nodes and T2 has hundreds of nodes, and each may have duplicates.
Microsoft Interview Question #2 Implement boggle: Given an NxN matrix, print a list of all words that appear in the matrix. To find a word, you can move left, right, up or down, as long as you do not use the same letter twice. For example, if the matrix were: W A D R You could find the words: WAR, WARD, DRAW and RAW Microsoft Interview Question #1 Design a webcrawler.
It's been a good run. We've have laughed, we've cried, we've... ok, mostly just cried. What's up with evite? I swear, the only thing that the evite does is make the service worse.
The last Seattle Anti-Freeze event was the last straw. A few days before the event, messages we tried to send would silently fail. When your best selling days are within a few days, this is a big deal. The tipping point, however, was after the event: we could no longer export our guest list. We depending on exporting in order to drop people as they wish and to add new guests. So, that was it for evite.
After playing around with far too many services, I decided to use pingg.com. The designs are clean and simple - a big step up up from evite's cluttered interface. RSVPing is simple, and at no point does pingg try to force guests to register to do basic tasks like inviting their friends. It's missing a few features, like the ability for guests to remove themselves from the invitation (they do, however, support the ability to block someone which is sort of the same thing). I have a few little complaints, here and there, but all around pingg is a much better service than evite.
There's just one issue: people don't get it. RSVPs on all sides (yes, no, and maybe) have dropped significantly since leaving evite. I'm not sure if people are mistaking pingg invitations for, say, an invitation to join another annoying web 2.0's service, or if it's just getting lost in their email box. Either way, RSVPing is way down.
I heard so many people state that evite has no switching costs. Not true. The switching costs are huge and possess a scary unknown factor: Will people RSVP or not?
I'm always impressed by the number of tech / networking / startup opportunities in Seattle. Well, impressed / overwhelmed. Here's another one that came my way: Seattle Girl Geek Dinners.
The second dinner is coming up on Thursday, September 11 and will be hosted by Amazon.
Our 2nd dinner is right around the corner! Amazon.com is hosting, and will be presenting on some of the key technologies they are developing.
Thank you Amazon!
The date is Thursday, Sept 11 at 5:30pm.
To register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/158982521
We also need help with finding sponsors, and are looking for your ideas on making this a great opportunity for local technical women to meet.
Several months ago, I evaluated a number of evite alternatives out there. It's a crowded space, and lots of new sites have popped up since. Here's a new one that contacted me via a blog comment: BRADvite. Without looking at the comment again, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say his name was Brad.
First Glance BRADvite.com pops up with a loading screening. Literally - the background says "loading" all over it. It's sort of distracting. And then in the center, there's a picture of a guy talking on his cell phone. Brad, is that you? Why are you hanging out in the middle of the screen?
Invitation Themes The various background images load relatively quickly in the background. Options include waterfalls, oceans, leafs, classical music sheet, etc. But my party is a toga party. On a boat. With a DJ. And drinking. As beautiful as a waterfall is, it has absolutely nothing to do with my party, nor does it express the "fun party" vibe. A picture of a keg would be more appropriate.
Tucked away in a corner is a little button to change the main image: a rose, secret service cartoon drawing, asian-style flowers, a man fighting off an elephant, aliens, etc. And, of course, a picture of our new friend Brad on a cell phone. Again, none of these match "toga party". Or even, say, a birthday / Christmas / Halloween party.
Registration
At least registration is fairly painless. It just asks me name and email address. The registration email didn't actually work, but they fixed that for me pretty quickly.
Event Details & Sending Invitation
I can't specify the time for the party. 'Nuff said.
Email Invitation
At least the email invitation is clean, elegant and provides useful information: host name, email address, date, location, and invitation details. To open the invitation, I see three links: View Comments | Click here to RSVP | Click for Map.
Yikes. I just want to open it. Shouldn't I be able to view comments and RSVP at the same time? And why not put "Click for map" next to the address, where it's most relevant and out of the way?
After the Invitation Is Sent
Host options are limited. I can edit the text of the invitation after I've sent the invitation, but not the background or main image. I can't export the guest list. I can't see when people RSVPd. There's no integration with Google Calendar or Outlook. I can't message guests.
Summary
The limitations of BRADvite are fairly significant, so I won't reiterate them. There is a more interesting point to be made.
Brad of BRADvite is clearly focusing on high quality images. Good. Far too many websites underestimate the importance of their user interface. The issue is that while the images are high quality, they don't very well match what the user wants to do. Brad needs to create user scenarios, such as the following:
Mary: 50 year old mother who is creating an invitation for her husband's 50th birthday party. It's a dinner party for 20 guests at their house.
AEPi: Fraternity which is inviting a sorority to their winter formal
Jake: 20 year old boy, soon to be 21. He's throwing a party for his 21st birthday in Las Vegas.
Gayle: throws large monthly parties with thousands of invited guests. (Hey, I had to throw myself in there.)
If Brad walked through these scenarios, he might see that as pretty as the background images are, none of them match what Jake or Gayle is doing. He might notice that AEPi, which is hosting a party as a group, might want to let multiple people edit the invite. He might notice that Mary needs the ability to message all the guests to tell them that they don't need to bring gifts. He might notice that if I'm throwing parties regularly, I need the ability to grab my guest list after each event.
Issues like this aren't limited to BRADvite, of course. Websites of all kinds need to stop thinking in the abstract "I am a website which provides [invitations, job listing, etc]" and start thinking concretely about exactly what problems they're trying to solve.
With the recent press about Cuil, the latest "Google-Killer Search Engine", it seems that we've forgotten the lessons from the late 90s. Cuil's claim to fame appears to be:
It was founded by Ex-Googlers
They claim to have a larger web-page index than Google
The first point is somewhat interesting, but not exactly a path to success. As for the second point, I'd like to say: (1) How do you know that? (2) What does that mean? (3) So?
How Do You Know That?
Google doesn't release the size of its index.
What Does That Mean?
How did they count the size of Google's index? If two urls have identical content, are those the same page? What if the content is merely very similar? Suppose the only difference is that Google isn't indexing the duplicate pages (or, say, the spammy pages), does it matter that Cuil's index is bigger?
So?
Bigger isn't better. I thought we'd learned that back in the late 90s. For most queries, it doesn't matter if the search engine returns 30 results or 1000. You' generally don't go past the 3rd page. What really matters is the ranking of the pages. If the page you wanted is on the 15th page, it might as well not be there at all.
How Cuil Actually Stacks Up:
Interface:
Pros: Slick and pretty. The content drill down is nice - although it doesn't always display relevant things. I also like having the page numbers locked at the bottom so that I don't have to scroll.
Cons: Ranking of results is unclear. There's 3 columns and the rows don't line up with each other. When I'm trying to actually find a good page, I'm not sure where to read.
Speed, Reliability, Performance
Pros: Speedy
Cons: Searches frequently fail. I got "no results" when I tried searching for "Google Talk". I tried the same search a second time and it worked.
Search Result Quality
Selection Criteria for Sample Queries: All queries were selected from my Google Web History, and were queries in which I was attempting to answer a question.
Query #1 (an error I am getting with Google App Engine): error 403 cpu quota exceeded
Yahoo: #1 Result is Google App Engine article about it
Google: #1 Result is a Google Group question about this. #3 (or #5) is the Google App Engine article Winner: with Google as a close second. Answer: Common Error. Try using python's profiling.
Query #2: send pdf to kindle
Cuil: Show articles mentioning that you can do this, but not telling me how.
Yahoo: #1 Result is blog post mentioning it. #2 Result is press release about it.
Google: #1 Result is press release about it. #2 Result is blog post mentioning it. Winner: Google, with Yahoo as a close second Answer: This billboard was put up by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Yahoo: #1 is a seemingly-relevant but dead link. #2 also seems relevant, but not a direct answer. #3 is about carbon monoxide levels at death. Hmm...
Google: #1 is related article that contains an answer to the question. #2 is a very relevant study, and the summary (which is as far as I read) indirectly answers the question. #3 is about a particular school's gender ratio. Winner: Google. Answer: 48% of math majors in the US are female.
Bonus Query: cuil
Cuil: Nothing even remotely related to the search engine.
Google: #1 result is the search engine. Winner: Google and Yahoo. Poor Cuil... Answer: Google and Yahoo both know what Cuil is (as well as what each other). Cuil, sadly, does not.
Conclusions
While Cuil may claim to have a larger search index, the number of "no result" searches certainly suggest lesser web coverage. The flashy interface is mostly just that - flashy. It's pretty, but the three column layout leave your eyes wandering all over the page unsure of which result is meant to be the most relevant. A more cynical person might even suggest that the three column layout helps mask the fact that Cuil may not know an appropriate ranking.
If you want to get real traction as yet-another-search-engine, you'd better attack a different market from Google (or Baidu in China, or Yahoo in Japan, etc) or you'd better be substantially better than Google. Just being better isn't good enough, and Cuil has a long way to go even on that end.
Gayle Laakmann is a Wharton MBA student and owns two businesses, CareerCup and Seattle Anti-Freeze. She has previously worked for Microsoft, Apple, Google and, most recently, EmptySpaceAds.
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