Geeks really have a problem with large fonts, since when did linux users care about presentation?

On Swiss Army Knives:

“Swiss army knives have great portability and lousy tools. I think I’ll stick with a browser that’s made only for browsing, thanks” — from

Define browsing. Do you use bookmarklets? How about Flickr? Which are your favorite ads? The way people browse the web has gotten significantly more involved in recent times, you’ve got javascript all over doing everything it can to make your browser into a client application, web sites offering alternative interfaces to their data that are much faster and more versatile, even using so many ads that loading an RSS stream makes it many times easier to read.

I don’t know how you browse the web, but I don’t think it is how I do.

On wording:

“Why do geeks simply never say “It’s a way to work together with your friends over the Web!” Why do we have to use nonsense words like “dashboard” and “collaboration” when there are perfectly lovely plain English substitutes?” — from

They are metaphors, you use them to describe something. What does a dashboard do? I guess somebody could say, “it places information and tools in front of you for quick random access,” but if you say dashboard, people know what you mean. Collaboration is just a cool word

On functionality:

“It looks like it won’t be doing anything in terms of functionality that a dedicated FireFox user couldn’t get via extensions. That said, it doesn’t look like it intends to compete on functionality. The name, page layout, and co-opting of GMail’s invite viral marketing all make clear that they’re going to go for broke on the presentation and marketing. Hey, it worked for the iPod–there are plenty of mp3 players out there with greater functionality, but people like how the iPod looks and will seek it out.” — from

I’ll just go install the “enhanced user experience” extension, I guess. Extensions for Firefox are very powerful, you can do an immense number of things… so are plugins for Vim… and Emacs is a better operating system than an editor (thanks Ian, for that quip). You can do the things anywhere with enough hacking skills, but you can’t necessarily pull it together well enough to make it good.

We love the press we’re getting, we aren’t a marketing company but we have good design. People like iPods because they are consistently more enjoyable to use than the alternatives, we fully intend on providing a powerful and enjoyable experience.

We have a strong mix of people working here and we think you’ll like what we’ve come up with.

Technorati Tags: flock, puppy

I have offered up two of my Gmail invites to somebody willing to do a good deed.

Update: My donation has been exhausted, many thanks to the people who received them, hopefully more people will donate their invitations to the cause and we can keep this up.

Update: I ran into some more invites, but I am putting them all at Jonas’s command, so talk to him.

Jonas writes:

It’s not free, however. If you’re interested in one, comment here and let me know what you’re willing to do for it. Not to me (though I am more than ready to trade for a few good massages), but to someone else. A random act of kindness, maybe? Work in a soup kitchen? Help out at a needle exchange? Or maybe you’re doing that already – you’d be the ideal recipient. link

So, if you are interested, shoot me a message over at andyster@gmail.com or get to Jonas at jluster@gmail.com. And, if you are interested in adding some of your invites to the pool, I encourage you to let us know.