Sean Gates' Blog » Productivity

Jason Fried is Right

Sean — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:17:29 +0000

Today I came across an article at Inc.com about Jason Fried. Jason was answering questions about the way he works. This part stuck out to me:

Our blog has more than 100,000 readers, but I don’t post every day. I write when I have something specific to say. I recently wrote a scathing piece on the tech media. It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you’re successful. No, you’re not.

I wholeheartedly agree with him. The sites which have the most users have some information capital, for sure, but they may not have a sustainable revenue stream. I believe Jason Fried and 37 signals have one of the best business models and some of the best products online.

I believe I came to this realization a long time ago: any services that I build need to be profitable from the beginning, and can self-sustain even on a limited user base. This is where true value will be for the users of your site.

Get Dropbox, Work Better, Work Smart

Sean — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:30:53 +0000

I love Dropbox.

I’ve been using Dropbox for some of my file storage across my computers for about a year now. It was a great place to store my resume so that all my computers were synced with the changes that I was constantly making while out of work.

And now I have begun to use Dropbox for development and syncing among all my computers … and it rocks. If you haven’t considered it for your development projects, Dropbox is your answer. No more USB sticks, or emailing myself a zip file, or anything like that. It’s perfect!

Here are some highlights:

2 gigabytes free
Any file is welcome
You handle your files on your computer normally; no funky upload/download
Versioning! Yes, I said versioning!
Auto-syncing across all computers: Windows and Mac
Shared folders
Undo and Undelete!
Did I mention it was FREE?

So, take a moment and get your Dropbox. You won’t regret it.

Gmail Muting

Sean — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:38:17 +0000

The people at 43 Folders are constantly helping me with new and innovative ways to organize and manage my life. So when I read about a tip for managing Gmail conversations I was overjoyed at being able to mute conversations once and for all!

Yipee! An answer to prayers! (Prayers of the heart, really)