Design
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Yes, You Can Upgrade The iPhone 4s to iOS9
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2 min read
OK, there’s not much info on the web about this so I can confirm that yes, you can run iOS9 (9.2.1 in my case) well on an iPhone 4S. It’s not slow, it’s not weird. That wasn’t always the case with old iPhones and new OSes. For me it’s the same speed, and some of…
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I Refinanced My Auto Loan
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3 min read
Last year we refinanced our home mortgage and saved a bunch of money, but at the time it didn’t occur to me to refinance my auto loan. In preparation for replacing our second car I was reading The Biggest Lies Car Manufacturers and Dealerships Tell to Sell You a Car and I recognized one: You…
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Balancing My Budget with My Desire
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2 min read
In my work on Nickel I want to avoid giving the same old tired advice that a lot of financial advisors give — manage your money well, then go out and life your life with whatever money is left. That’s not how most of us live. For example, my family is planning on going on…
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Raise the Bar
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2 min read
Perhaps the single most useful thing a manager of a design/development team can do is to raise the bar of quality. By extension, I think this also holds true for clients of design agencies. By ‘raise the bar’ I don’t simply mean saying, ‘This isn’t good enough’ or ‘work harder’, or this… Raising the bar…
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Docker and Containers Summarized
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1 min read
Just as container ships can carry more cargo because they use a standard form factor for storing the cargo, software containers can run more apps on each server by using a standard way to share the operating system without all the wasted overhead of virtual machines. How? Containers bundle together all the pieces you need…
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Channeling my inner Edna Mode
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1 min read
Whenever I feel downtrodden and powerless I channel my inner Edna Mode and imagine it’s me, not Elastic Girl, she’s whacking over the head… Confront the problem! Fight! Win!
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Podcast! Getting The Right Design, Part 1
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1 min read
Thanks in advance for beta testing my new podcast. I’d love to hear what you loved and what you think sucked. You can email me at victor (at) victorlombardi.com. Subscribe to the audio version on iTunes Listen online on SoundCloud Watch the video on YouTube, or right here…
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One reason I love bouldering is that it’s game-like. No matter how much experience a climber has, we’re all at a certain level with certain climbs (they’re actually called “problems”) that currently challenge us. It’s like playing a well-crafted video game: the levels you’ve finished are easy, the levels ahead of you are frustratingly hard,…
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Why We Fail is available in eBook form at O’Reilly and all the reviewers there gave me 5 stars! Yay! Paul in Austin writes: The case studies alone provide an very interesting read to anybody who has some interest in technology in general. Each case study has been thoroughly researched with plenty of references. The…
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Good Design Can Make the Elevator Pitch Futile
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2 min read
I had a five-minute conversation with an angel investor last week and described the product I’m working on. His response: “Similar things are being done by bigger companies with giant marketing budgets, so you’ll need a very clever marketing idea to succeed. What is it?” There was an uncomfortable pause. On one hand, I haven’t…
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Agile Ain’t Wishy Washy
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2 min read
As I write this there’s a group of about 15 developers and designers standing near my desk in a heated but constructive argument about how to check the design is right before the code heads off to QA. Occasionally the dichotomy of agile vs. waterfall is raised, and sometimes “agile” is used as a euphemism…
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Lean UX and Ecommerce Design
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1 min read
For over seven months I’ve been working with the good folks at Alexander Interactive on some ambitious work for MetLife. Here’s a peek into that work with a focus on process. I’m the guy at the whiteboard in the Tokyo board room on page 73 :-) Lean UX and Ecommerce Design: How Ai is transforming…
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Startup Legal Straight Dope
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2 min read
A benefit of being a speaker at Failcon was getting an invitation to a talk hosted by Anit Guha of Orrick Legal. Here’s some of his wisdom that I noted down: When choosing a name use the uspto site and a 3rd party search service Avoid incorporating in California; use Delaware C Corp. Not only…
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RealNetworks and The Trap of Binary Thinking
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2 min read
While I was researching my book Why We Fail: Learning from Experience Design Failures I spent some time reading about people’s experience with RealNetworks, particularly the RealPlayer, and wondering if they were worthy of inclusion in the book, particularly the don’t be evil chapter. At that point there was no smoking gun, no hard evidence…
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Love this Steve Jobs story: …Jobs turned around Apple and did it pretty quickly. He did two primary things as far as I can tell. First, he got his people into the top jobs and got rid of the executives who had been calling the shots before he showed up. And second, he brought focus…