the snagsta blog

On Sunday, I got shouted at by my wife.

This happens occasionally, and just between you and me, it is usually my fault, though of course I would never admit to that within her hearing.

This time though, I place the blame firmly upon Snagsta.

You see, I had told my wife that I needed to spend a bit of time in the outhouse to do some testing on the site, but unfortunately when she came out five minutes later to see if I needed anything, I was watching an Eddie Izzard video clip. She was a bit miffed, but was slightly appeased when I managed to explain that I had followed a link from one of Alex M’s lists that had cropped up as part of my testing.

About fifteen minutes after that, she kindly brought out a snack, only to find me chuckling to myself whilst reading a page of Mitch Hedberg quotes. Again, I tried to explain that I had been checking the friends functionality and seen this list of Paul’s on the site and it was all part of the testing process. Even to my own ears, this sounded weak.

The final straw though, was when she came out about an hour later and found me on perezhilton.com. Now, I had literally just seen the site mentioned on a list of Nikki Davies’ and had clicked through to have a very quick look, but it was exactly the wrong moment and of course because of this, it looked like my morning’s “work” was watching videos, reading jokes and ogling celebrities.

I tried manfully to make her see that it was Alex, Paul and Nikki, and in a wider sense Snagsta, who were to blame, but she was having none of it.

Our nanny could only laugh as she saw me getting dragged into the house by my ear to spend some time with my son.

I’ll leave you with Nikki’s list of Best Celebrity Gossip Blogs, but remember this is not for work hours:

1. perezhilton.com
   Trashy, flashy and crass
2. pinkisthenewblog.com
   Personal and engaging
3. tmz.com
   At the cutting edge with breaking news and video clips
4. jossip.com
   New York focussed gossip site
5. pagesix.com
   The original, but no longer the best
6. hollywood.tv
   Video-based blog
7. hollywoodtuna.com
   Blog featuring the hottest female celebrities
8. defamer.com
   LA focussed gossip site

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

I remember reading something a while back about how God had a huge project and he got it done in 7 days. For us though, we have not had much luck with His approach. No matter how many times Phil, Alex, Paul or myself proclaim “Let There Be Snagsta”, that only seems to work for deities.

We are at that stage now when it seems like every issue resolved sprouts 3 new issues to deal with. Not that these are big issues necessarily, but even the small issues can stack up.

It is also now that we start to see just how many tiny details there are to address in order to get Snagsta to the point where we can let you loose on the site (and don’t think we can’t see you there salivating all over your keyboard at the prospect!).

As with a lot of things, it is all about finding the right balance. Good enough to keep you interested, complete enough to keep us happy.

To close, I’m going to leave you with a bit of a cop-out list - some project management one-liners that have tickled my fancy over the years:

1. To estimate a project timeframe, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.

2. If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.

3. A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.

4. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

5. The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90%.

6. Warning: Dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Somebody, somewhere said a problem shared is a problem halved, and I have a problem I’d like to lay on you, Gentle Reader.

We are starting to put Snagsta through its paces, which has been fun and all, but the next step is for each of us to put together a small team of hand-picked testers and get some (useful) user feedback. Now obviously I want my team to outperform Alex and Phil’s by some considerable margin, which is where my problem arises.

What is the optimal make-up of my team?

Here’s whom I think should be in:

1) Mister Internet Savvy – someone with a good understanding of what is already out there and some hands on experience using other comparable sites to tell me how we match up.

2) Little Miss Newbie – to contrast with above, she would be able to give me the perspective of a new Internet user to really test how intuitive the site is.

3) Sir Overly-Critical – somebody who is happy to point out the flaws we just wouldn’t have thought of. Even if he drives me crazy.

4) Miss Dedicated – you know the type. Their homework at school was always 8 pages longer than everyone else’s. Hopefully she will pick up most of the actual issues.

5) Mr. Way Out There – a creative type who will probably not find much actually wrong, but will come up with a hundred ideas we never thought of for us to sift through.

So who am I missing? Or is this the wrong approach? With such a small sample, does it make more sense to fill with “dedicateds” first and worry about the rest later?

To close, I’d like to offer a list of fun 404 pages that are worth checking out:

http://www.bluedaniel.com/404.shtml
http://www.newyorker.com/404
http://www.zug.com/404
http://homokaasu.org/errors/404.html
http://www.psycho78tacoma.com/404
http://www.psychpage.com/404
http://technorati.com/404

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

They say time flies when you are having fun.

Considering how fast the days seem to be flying by at the moment, Team Snagsta must be having just about as much fun as is humanly possible without taking our clothes off.

Development of the system continues (have we made this a cliché now?), with ongoing debates about what looks right and what looks nothing like we thought it would, together with a hefty dose of change requests, a sprinkling of bugs and the odd overlooked issue or two.

It is at this time that you get a lot of “what were we thinking when we came up with that idea”, but the truth is, you can’t always tell how something is going to work out until you can see it.

But wait… Is that light at the end of the tunnel? Or have I just been staring at my monitor for too long?

To close, here’s a great list from Iain Tait (crackunit.com) highlighting a bunch of things that people who are just getting into digital always seem to propose at some point or another but really should best be ignored:

The 7 Deadly Sins of Digital

1. Tamagotchis

They say: “A game where you have to feed this little character to keep them alive, and you give them stuff, and they do stuff”

You say: “You want to create something based on an obsolete early 90s toy that wasn’t actually any fun? And you’re expecting people who don’t give a toss about your brand of fake-cheese-based snacks to go though a bunch of meaningless interactions for no real reward why?”

2. Screensavers

They say: “Let’s make a screensaver”

You say: “When was the last time you installed a screensaver? When was the last time you saw a screensaver on someone’s screen?”

3. Interfaces that look like the tops of desks or tables

They say: “We could make it look like the character’s desk, you can click on a file to read it, if you click on the answering machine you can hear a message… And so on…”

You say: “Oh FFS we can bend space and time and create things that redefine the way that the world works, but you want to use a clumsy metaphor that people are going to have to decompile in order to figure out how to get to a bit of information that in some rare case they might actually want. And it’s not extensible. And besides how many people watch youtube videos of their own adverts in the residue at the bottom of a coffee cup? And it’s not accessible… And so on…”

4. Desktop assistants / characters

They say: “You know the Microsoft paperclip, can we…”

You say: “Stop right there sonny, don’t say another word! Nobody likes the paperclip. The only good thing that ever happened to the paperclip was death. Even Bill Gates hates the paperclip.”

5. A virus

They say: “Could we create an actual virus that spreads our message”

You say: “Why not do it in the real world instead - why not just make a branded version of HIV, there’s more people in the offline world that you can infect”

6. A ‘viral’

They say: “We’ve made this film, can you make it a viral”

You say: “I’m just going outside to suck on an exhaust pipe for 30 minutes - if I make it back I’ll stick it on YouTube for you”

7. Starting a list of seven things and not counting how many you’ve got.

Things are hotting up under the Queenstown Road Arches. We’re a long way from the Golden Arches claim of over 100 billion served but big changes are afoot. Within a week our private alpha site will be up and there’s a real buzz in the air. And its not just the electrified railtracks overhead!

One thing that has really got us revved up is the fact that people have started asking us for lists! They know we’ve been collecting for a while now and so figure we’ve got some good stuff! And they’re right. I’ve just fired off a list of excellent suggestions for a chilled out weekend in Cape Town. And one person asked for a list of no-fail first date hotspots to take girls to in London. So if you find yourself sitting beside my brother Dave in a cozy nook of the Crazy Bear then make sure you keep your wits about you. Of course this warning may already be too late for some!

I was at the Imperial Entrepreneurs event on Tuesday night. Apart from providing the opportunity to drink beer with like-minded people they always seem to attract some great speakers. I am really starting to understand why setting up your own business is so addictive. Stephanie Bouchet, the Global Marketing Director for Joost, shared her 8 tips for an entrepreneur:

1. Think Customer: Integrate them into your organisation.

2. Passion: Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work again!

3. Timing: Like all things in life. As much as there is a bit of luck involved, you also need to trigger it.

4. Creativity: I don’t mean design; I mean creativity with respect to ideas and problem-solving.

5. Learn: Learn from your mistakes and don’t be afraid to fail.

6. Network: In London try 2nd Chance Tuesday / OpenCoffee / EYP / MiniBar

7. Growth: Grow beyond your time spent at work and apply what you learn in the office to life.

8. Have fun!

It has become quite “cool” to support the striking writers in the US these days and I think I will jump on the bandwagon.

Of course my reasons for doing so are not totally altruistic. I basically decided to support them when I read that online stats for a number of sites are flying through the roof now that there is officially nothing decent to watch on TV.

This is a golden opportunity to convert millions of TV addicts into Internet addicts (and hopefully then Snagsta addicts)!

In fact, I am going beyond supporting the writers and am actually trying to think of anything I can do to extend the strike through until the launch of Snagsta later this month, this quarter soon. It is this kind of extra boost in traffic that could really help us to “tip”, so no strategy is off-limits to me.

Ideas, anyone?

P.S. In perhaps another side effect of having no writers available for love nor money, Alex Moore has managed to convince someone to post his ugly mug online, together with a story about us.

I was thinking about how to kick

Phil’s reading a book about this very subject right now named Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb who defines the black swan concept as a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Life over here under the railway bridge has been full of those lately!

I’ll leave the last word on future gazing to former England footballer Paul Gascoigne who perhaps put it best when he said: “I never predict anything, and I never will”.

If it’s creative inspiration for the year ahead you’re after then you may like to watch this video clip below - thanks to Iain Tate for sharing this.

All continues to gather momentum under our railway arch here in Battersea this week. As the trains thunder overhead our brilliant beta testers are sending in all sorts of weird and wonderful lists for Paul to put inside his little black box the rest of us are not allowed to play with.

Some of our top lists so far include:

1. My favourite parts of the cell - Jeff Zweig
2. The best of Beijing - Dianne Hofmeyr
3. Where to play Ice Hockey in Bangkok - Bjorn Turmann
4. Favourite Orange County Surf Spots - Monu Joseph
5. 5 places so good I almost don’t want to tell you about them - Steve Catling

Seeing all these inspiring lists only reinforces our belief that our little site wont be that little for that long. Thanks to all for your contributions - please keep them coming.

Anyway, better get back to those spreadsheets, thanks for listening. More from us very soon.