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Mobspin reviewed by TechCrunch

By Igor Gasowski  |  Posted in , ,   |  November 23rd, 2008

We’re excited that Mobspin, a social networking site that we worked on, was reviewed by TechCrunch.
 
Here’s how the site works. Rather than looking for advice from anonymous people on a site like Yelp or Yahoo! Answers, you send out questions to your community of friends. (You can quickly establish a friend list by importing from Facebook.)

Fly-out Menus and Usability

By Igor Gasowski  |  Posted in , , , , , , ,   |  October 22nd, 2008

From time to time, while designing new web-sites, I am asked to consider fly-out menus (sometimes called drop down or roll over menus). In most cases, I steer my clients to more user-friendly, more efficient solutions; but in the process, I end up repeating the same basic points many times. So I decided to post my thoughts on fly out menus here and refer people to this entry.

First, let me go over the benefits of fly out menus. They are attractive, some might even say cool. They can save a lot of space.

Social Network Primer

By Igor Gasowski  |  Posted in , , ,   |  October 14th, 2008

So you are tasked with building an Online community. Guess what: you are not alone. More and more companies are trying to elbow their way into social networking space.

The challenge is to approach it in the right way. You need to ask yourself and by extension your organization, not only, how would we benefit from an online community, but: how would a member of your online community benefit from participating in our social network? And while it may seem topsy turvy, this should become the objective of your effort, the foundation of your endeavor. Everything down the road should be measured against that goal.

Go Ahead: Invent!

By Igor Gasowski  |  Posted in , , , ,   |  August 14th, 2008

The romantic idea of the genius inventor never sat right with me. Now that idea has been torn down once and for all.

A very interesting article in the New Yorker featured Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures laboratory. When Myhrvold left Microsoft way back when, he gave himself the small task of inventing the invention. He invented an invention factory. Here's the idea. He brings together really smart people from various fields and asks them to brainstorm. Myhrvold apparently hoped that his invention company might file a hundred patents a year. They've averaged about 500 patents a year. And that's not to mention their backlog of three thousand ideas. They just licensed off a cluster of patents for 80 million dollars.