April 2011 Archives

Powder-keg promises and probabilities

By
Gabriel Weinberg
April 25, 2011 6:28 PM  
Powder-keg ideas are very rare. Yet I get many cold pitches promising them. "I just need some investment to launch."

Since the probability of actually coming to fruition is so low, a powder-keg promise (without any evidence) leaves me placing you in a bucket with people you probably don't want to be grouped with. 

In other words, it's counter productive. It's also counter-intuitive. If you truly have a powder-keg idea, you should be doing everything you can to launch without formal investment because the second you spark that powder-keg your valuation will skyrocket. Traction trumps everything.

My advice would be to take a step back and write down all the underlying assumptions that lead you to believe you have a powder-keg idea. How and why exactly will you achieve viral growth? Literally break it down by the numbers.

Then see if you can prove out those assumptions as cheaply as possible without investment. Maybe you can nail down some of them, or at least place smaller error bars around them.

Then temper your message a bit and let people like myself extrapolate as we see fit. That is, under promise and over deliver.

DuckDuckGo and Wolfram|Alpha are now official partners

By
Gabriel Weinberg
April 18, 2011 2:10 PM  
WolframAlpha computational knowledge engine.png

DuckDuckGo has been using Wolfram|Alpha (via their API) for about two years now. I actually was an alpha tester and authored the Perl API binding. I've also open sourced the regular expressions I use to determine if a query is relevant to send Wolfram|Alpha. Needless to say, I'm a big fan.

So I am very pleased to jointly announce that we are now official partners. As a result, you should see an even tighter integration over time. And I will have a more official responsibility of maintaining the Perl API, which is in need of a V2 update (feel free to submit bug reports here via CPAN).

Most of the recent integration improvements have come via user suggestion, e.g. I run this or that query regularly on Wolfram|Alpha so can you make that work on DuckDuckGo? I'm in the process of going back through the Wolfram|Alpha examples as well as asking them directly for ideas, but please keep them coming as well!

Toddler app user interface guidelines

By
Gabriel Weinberg
April 10, 2011 1:00 PM  
My son Eli has been using iPad apps since he was one and we have about 50 toddler apps. With the big caveat that this post is based off essentially a sample size of one, here are some toddler app user interface guidelines.

  • Load the app as fast possible. By this I mean two separate things: first, reduce the time it takes to press the icon and be able to interact with something on the screen. If this takes too long, impatience sets in and the app is likely to face the gong (home button).

    Second, reduce the number of screens before the actual app appears to zero, i.e. go right into the app. Yes, I understand you want to upsell and do other stuff there, but just don't. When you do that, especially when put links to the app store there, the toddler will click them, and then get confused. For example, Park Math is a great app, but I hate their home screen -- that big yellow bus is so attractive to click!

    button.png


  • Move all settings out of the app. For iOS at least, you can move settings out of the app and into the general settings window. Please do this because toddlers are drawn to your little setting icons, and they a) destroy the flow of the app and b) the toddler will change all of them and put the app into an annoying state, e.g. in another language, too hard for them, etc. Interactive Alphabet is another app we like, but it really needs to drop those 4 unnecessary buttons on the bottom of the home screen.

    abc.png


  • No pop-ups/notifications. See a theme here? If there is a non-app associated thing the toddler will click it :). Pop-ups are the worst because they are modal giving them a 50/50 chance to click on the wrong thing. They're just not appropriate in these apps. There must be a presumption in these scenarios that the parent is controlling the app at that point, but at least in our household this is usually not the case. He scrolls through the screens and picks the apps he wants to use.

    The worst offender I've seen with this point are the Dr. Seuss Apps. These apps need work in general and I don't really recommend them, but this aspect particularly annoys me.

    popup2.png


  • Make everything tappable/clickable. Toddlers love to interact with the app and point out and press everything. When things respond to those taps, it makes the experience a lot better. Itsy Bitsy Spider does this really well.

    spider.png


  • Change it up/give surprises. The best apps not only make everything cilckable, but also do different stuff from screen to screen and even hide games/easter eggs. For example, a click may do something but a long-click may do something else. In a book, one page you may have to color and the next page you may have to click a series of things. Jack and the Beanstalk by Ayars (there are several) does this excellently. Here's an example page where they have this mouse dragging game action built in.

    mouse.png


  • Give multiple ways to do things. Sometimes it is unclear what to do, or the toddler hasn't mastered a way to do something, e.g. the swipe motion. So it is better to offer an alternative. In the swipe example, little arrows to turn pages work well.

  • Give hints. If there is no activity for a bit, it is great to give the toddler a hint of what to do, e.g. by highlighting something they could/should tap. A similar behavior is to offer a mechanism to get hits when something is hard to do. Animal Hide & Seek Adventure does this well. You're supposed to tap the hiding animals, and they offer a dock on the bottom to shake the animals if you can't find them.

    hideseek.png


  • Add delays. Once a toddler understands how to do something, like turn a page, they want to just keep doing it. But this leads to them doing things like rushing through the app without really getting much out of it. The way around this is to delay some of the interface elements (including hints). For example, instead of showing the arrow to the next page right away, wait 5 sec. for doing so. I actually haven't seen anyone doing this yet, but would really appreciate it. The same goes for hints, i.e. the animal game I mentioned above. It would be better if the hint dock did not show all the time.

  • Give instructions. Literally tell the toddler what to do, i.e. speak instructions to them. This can be done in conjunction with the hints and delays mentioned above, and also at the beginning of a task. Monkey Preschool Lunchbox (also on Android) does this very well.

    monkey.png


  • Update the app. It's great when you can update the app and the toddler can see the changes. It doesn't have to be new features, but could just be new themes or other look changes. Elmo's Monster Maker does this well by releasing seasonal and holiday updates.

    elmo.png


  • Highlight words and letters as you say them. When reading to the toddler, I think it will help them associated words and letters with the sounds better if you highlight what you're saying as you're saying it. The Monster at the End of This Book does this well.

    grover.png


Finally, here are some gripes with iOS:

  • Home button needs an off switch. I need some way to disable the home button or make it harder to access during app play, e.g. a triple click or some other morse code sequence.

  • Need a way to hide videos. Eli knows how to get to the videos. He can find the icon no matter where I put it. I can disable videos through restrictions, but that doesn't really solve the problem. I would really like to be able to hide this icon like you can do for system icons on Windows. Another option would be to put the restriction on the icon itself and force me to enter the password when clicking on it. Come to think of it, this would work for the home button too.

Update: there are tons of excellent comments below, including many from great app makers and other parents like myself. Here are some additional guidelines.

--Enable multi-touch. 
--Setting to disable photo taking. 
--No in-game purchases.
--Cheer for the toddler when they do something right.

Are you chasing a fad or a market?

By
Gabriel Weinberg
April 5, 2011 8:00 PM  
slap bracelets.jpg

Startups usually take many years to exit. So it is important to figure out up front whether what you're working on is a fad or a real market. You don't want everything to fall apart two years in because a fad passes.

Even if you plan to sell at the earliest opportunity, you won't be able to unless a buyer is convinced it is in their long-term strategy to buy you. And so then you're back to pursuing a real market.

A simple strategy is to choose something already big because there is often more room for success within a big market. That is, if you're a scrappy founder you will probably be able to figure out *something* that works within this huge market. That's what we did in my last company. Classmates.com was making a lot of money so we found a niche in their market and ultimately got bought by them.

A bit more complicated is to work within a big market and concentrate on where you think it is headed. That's what I'm doing now with DuckDuckGo.

The hardest strategy (though often the most lucrative) is picking a smallish market now that is imminently exploding, such that you can standout in an area everyone is about to be talking about all the time. Some proven examples here are Netscape, Groupon, and Zynga; some potential examples are Hunch and foursquare.

Another way to look at this whole issue is what long term market premise(s) is your startup betting on? For DuckDuckGo, there are a bunch:
  • Structured content often packaged through great APIs are on the rise and can be integrated intelligently to produce great search results.
  • Privacy will become an increasing issue and some non-negligible percentage of people will value their privacy being protected by their search engine (including myself!).
  • Universal search, ads and complementary products have cluttered results too much and some non-negligible percentage of people would prefer something less cluttered.
  • Search result pages don't really make that much inherent sense, and there is an opportunity to make them more readable and understandable.
  • SEO spam is on the increase and have made searching for stuff on the Internet more annoying over time.
  • The Web is increasingly becoming a market for attention, and so becoming the start page is a great position to be.
I'm 3 years in now, and these have generally been good bets so far. All but the privacy one I had from the beginning. I picked it up from users, and started thinking about it really seriously at the beginning of last year. Now it is also a personal cause, but I definitely think that there is a long-arc of privacy consciousness that is on the rise.

What is your startup betting on? Are you chasing a fad or a market? Is it a dying market or a growing one or an exploding one?

Perl submissions for Google Summer of Code

By
Gabriel Weinberg
April 1, 2011 7:46 AM  

DuckDuckGo is mainly written in Perl. If you're a student and looking for something cool to do this summer, consider messing around with Perl. That's how I originally got into it! 

This is a guest post by Mark Keating, who is the Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited and a Director/Secretary of the Enlightened Perl Organisation. He regularly writes on Perl Blog and Work Blog.  

The Perl Foundation (TPF) has once again been accepted as a mentoring organisation for the Google Summer of Code (Official Site) an annual initiative to encourage student participation in open source software and programs.

The efforts on behalf of the Perl Foundation this year are being co-ordinated by Florian Ragwitz (Rafl) and there is a dedicated channel (#soc-help) on irc.perl.org where help and advice can be obtained.

Students can suggest any topic to work on, but for those wishing to try something new, or are looking for general guidance, there is a list on the EPO Wiki which outlines some suggestions and ideas from a number of Perl projects. Once you have a project idea, speak to the other participants in #soc-help and we will advise you on application and match you to a mentor.

The program is accepting submissions from students and mentors, until Friday 8th April, so now is the time to get involved. The Perl community welcomes students who are new to its ranks alongside those who are already members.

Continue reading Perl submissions for Google Summer of Code.
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