what area does Google have a monopoly in? Surely not search, email, or the browser. MS wasn't just cross-marketing, it was bundling IE and setting it as default which was unfair competition given that getting netscape required a lot more work (knowledge of the alternative, pre-broadband download and install). That plus bullying OEMs into unfavorable contracts. It's a poor analogy because Google doesn't own the web platform, and it's incredibly easy to switch services (just change your bookmarks).
Not when you have your entire team/company using gmail as a paid service. And when you factor in the part about the user being the product in social networking, basically you're forcing a paying customer of one product to become a revenue stream in another.
Monopolies find themselves in trouble over this all time, just like when a customer service agent from your credit card company or local energy conglomerate passes you onto a sales rep from a third party without your knowledge. It's how they scam the old, ignorant and uninformed.
tl;dr: you cannot change your bookmarks when you have no other options.
I don't shop local any more unless it's for a premium item and the customer service is beyond average. Not when Amazon can deliver consumer items the next day.
If you're not a designer, don't design. Just focus on building your product, app, service, whatever. Visual design is temporary and won't hinder adoption as long as the product itself works as advertised and is fun to use.
Set your hourly rate, configure it to represent how much time you think you'd waste sifting through online designs and spend that amount on a decent theme that will work with Bootstrap, Foundation or any other framework that a developer can configure.
Designers don't post billable collateral on the web. They're too busy working and keeping their design under the radar is part of the business. They don't have a Github mindset so don't bother trying.
> Visual design is temporary and won't hinder adoption as long as the product itself works as advertised and is fun to use.
This is so wrong on so many levels. Of course it will hinder the adoption. In fact a poor design is likely to kill it altogether.
For one, and print this out in bold Comic Sans and hang it at the eye level, - "First impression lasts." If something looks like poop, no one will bother checking out if it works as advertised.
For two, and this follows from #1, a good product with a poor design is not likely to outperform a poor product with a good design simply because there will be fewer people trying former.
For three, it's not "fun to use", it's "a pleasure to use," again meaning that the visual component is the product is vital. Show me a poorly designed product that is fun to use. Seriously.
Just to be clear, visual design is not about drop shadows, background textures and glass effects. It is about forming an appropriate product impression. You just can't expect an average user to look past an ungodly frontend and appreciate the beauty of the guts. This just doesn't happen. You need... strike that... you must consider the design at the same level of importance as any other feature of the product. The same goes for "oh, just pick a theme" - sure, but it's a goddamn theme that's used in hundreds other places, so guess what - it comes with a "generic shit" tag. You want to have your blog/site/service have this vibe - fine, but is it sensible thing to do - hardly.
You're obviously too young to recall the first versions of Facebook or maybe you haven't even taken a good hard look at the latest one. They all suck but they're fun for their users and adoption rates speak volumes.
> Just to be clear, visual design is not about drop shadows, background textures and glass effects.
You have no idea about what you're talking about. You're not even a rookie.
Pretty much. When I worked at bars in college I knew of a guy who used to give glowing recommendations for bartenders he'd fired. To his competition.
Outside of that, the best thing to is to confirm employment with dates. Oddly enough, some people will list a reference from where they were fired for misconduct. I'd bet that said person doesn't even understand what constitutes misconduct, why they were fired and how to avoid it in the future.
Call or email, leave a message asking to be called back IFF the candidate was exceptionally strong. Assuming you aren't a competitor, you'll probably get a call back if true. If the guy was meh, it is a nice way to pocket veto.
For when you do employee referrals, if employees are getting pressured by lames to refer them, let them do no-op referrals. Default bring meaningless, and "strong referral" being a real referral. Google, Facebook, etc do this.
Any company who wants to avoid a lawsuit will respond to your request whether or not they consider the person to be "strong". And the good ones will contact the ex-employee and inform them that you are trying to get around their reference policy
Not in the case where it is one fairly respected hiring manager calling another in a smallish industry. Not corporate HR (startups, not like HR is more than form filling).
It would be exceedingly difficult to successfully sue someone for failing to return a call or email from a random outsider. Plausible deniability.
This is also one of the cases where being part of a "mafia" is awesome -- you can actually call up and get unvarnished opinions, or at least, cagey "I don't think I would" "That might be difficult" etc.
This is prone to false positives. I never return voicemails that are left by recruiters doing a background check. It's just a single sample point, but I'm sure there are others.
That is quite honestly, the stupidest "hack" I have ever heard of. People gets dozens or hundreds of emails or calls each day, especially at the manager level. They don't always have the time to respond to each email or call, especially (to them) low priority emails about a former employee.
Your suggestion would basically just screw over any person whose boss had more pressing matters on his plate.
Anyone who has spent time in San Francisco, worked in the industry or ever spoken to a person who writes like that knows the story to be a fabrication.
That's an option and it works even better than the bundles do with TextMate. Just goto Action > Install Extras and you'll see bundles and themes. Once I figure out this split-pane thingy I'll pony up my $49.
Split panes are actually beautifully easy. You just select both files that you want in the sidebar (command-I) and they show up. To change the individual file you can click on the name in the bottom of the window. The bigger find for me was holding option and clicking to get multi-cursor editing. Can't wait until a manual is published to see what else I missed.
I have yet to receive a request for parallax. And we I do I will kindly point them in the direction of any marketing firm who knows nothing about usability or implementation.
The same ones that put contact information in an image so you can't select and copy it, and hide that image behind a transparent div, so you can't even download it. Ugh.
I've become that guy, that whenever a sticky fact comes up for debate, people just turn to me because they know I'll be looking it up.
What I really enjoy is when some asshole refutes the evidence and stops talking to me. For good.