Good news, everyone!

FriendFeed is officially launching! (and also announcing our funding)

See Louis Gray, VentureBeat ("Friendfeed, the best software for conversations"), and TechCrunch for more detailed reviews.

sock and glove freebies on marthastewart.com

Hey there, sock animal lovers. If you’ve wanted to try out Sock and Glove, but still haven’t bought the book, you are in for a treat today. Martha featured the book on today’s episode, Homemade Knitwear Day, and you can find the pattern and instructions for the glove dog and glove bunny free on her website. Yay!

If these freebies don’t inspire you to run out and buy the book, I’m not sure what will. Enjoy!

Photo from marthastewart.com

two crafts and a quick Q&A

It's Friday night and I just woke up from a 4 hour nap that started at 7:30 pm - whoo! I really know how to party. Anyway, I thought I'd post a few things I made a while ago and never got around to posting, and briefly address some reoccurring questions I've been receiving in the comments.

First, the crafts, since frankly, that's more fun:

This is the first of three mum scherenschittes I plan to cut. Lest I fool you into thinking I am artistic, the design is not my own. I'm copying it from some artwork I saw at Art.com.

Second, here's another pair of baby shoes - I hope these aren't getting too boring. I spiced this pair up with a working button in an attempt to 1) learn how to use my button hole foot on my sewing machine and 2) try to incorporate a few of my own ideas into the Stardust Shoes pattern, or in the words of my dawg, Randy Jackson, "make it my own." :) (sidenote: are there any good american idol contestants this season? I haven't been watching)

On to the Q&A - here are a few questions people have been asking in comments and emails:

Q: Will you post a tutorial for your sock animals?

A: I will not post tutorials for the animals I make from the book Sock and Glove (which is most of them) - they are copyrighted. If you like them and want to learn how to make them, I encourage you to buy the book! It is a great resource, and an addictive craft. Click on the link above to buy it on Amazon.com.

I've had a lot of requests specifically for a tutorial for the sock giraffe. This is one of those rare items that actually came from my own head, so I could probably do a tutorial for it. But since that will involve making another one, it might be a while before I get around to it. Plus, I kind of like that it's one of a kind. :)

Q: Do you sell your crafts?

A: Occasionally, but usually just to family and friends.

Q: Have you ever heard of Etsy? Why don't you open a shop?

A: Yes! I'm a huge fan of Etsy - it is a fantastic marketplace and I do plan to open a shop (someday). A few things have been holding me back:

1) I don't feel like I have enough time for it at the moment.

2) I don't love mass-producing things. With a few exceptions, I usually will make an item only once, and then move onto something new. I get bored easily. I'll need to overcome this to commit to a shop.

3) I am only going to sell products that are my own ideas. Most of the time I borrow ideas/copy other people from around the web. It would be pretty uncool to start selling things that I'm copying from someone else. So, I want to come up with a few solid ideas of my own first.

I think those are the questions that come up most! I really appreciate your comments, and all the encouragement to start and etsy shop makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Happy Friday!

birthday boy and the best ever chocolate cake

Jared turned 28 today. We almost feel like adults!


A favorite neighborhood treat is the Princess Cake from Crumbs Bakery. I did my best to recreate it.

success!

Best Ever Chocolate Cake (via www.kraftfoods.com)

1 pkg. (8 squares) Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate, divided

1 pkg. (2-layer size) chocolate cake mix

1 pkg. (4-serving size) Jell-o instant chocolate pudding

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup water

1 tub (8 oz.) frozen Cool Whip

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two 9-inch round baking pans. Chop 2 of the chocolate squares; set aside. Beat cake mix, dry pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, oil and water in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed just until moistened. Beat on medium speed 2 min. Stir in chopped chocolate. Spoon into prepared pans.

Bake 30 to 35 min. or until wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 min. Loosen cakes from sides of pans. Invert onto racks; gently remove pans. Cool cakes completely.

This is where I change the recipe. Make chocolate mousse using the recipe below. Chill in refrigerator for at least an hour.

Place frozen whipped topping and remaining 6 chocolate squares in microwaveable bowl. Microwave on HIGH 1-1/2 min. or until chocolate is completely melted and mixture is smooth, stirring after 1 min. Let stand 15 min. to thicken. (First of all, the whole cool whip thing scared me because I think the stuff is gross. The frosting actually turns out to be quite good - a ganache-type consistancy. Second, I don't have a microwave, but a double boiler works just as well).

Place one cake layer on serving plate; top with chocolate mousse and second cake layer. Spread top and side with chocolate frosting.

Chocolate Mousse (via Alton Brown, Food Network)

1 3/4 cups whipping cream
12 ounces quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 ounces espresso or strong coffee
1 tablespoon dark rum
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon flavorless, granulated gelatinChill 1 1/2 cups whipping cream in refrigerator. Chill metal mixing bowl and mixer beaters in freezer.

In top of a double boiler, combine chocolate chips, coffee, rum and butter. Melt over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. Remove from heat while a couple of chunks are still visible. Cool, stirring occasionally to just above body temperature.

Pour remaining 1/4 cup whipping cream into a metal measuring cup and sprinkle in the gelatin. Allow gelatin to "bloom" for 10 minutes. Then carefully heat by swirling the measuring cup over a low gas flame or candle. Do not boil or gelatin will be damaged. Stir mixture into the cooled chocolate and set aside.

In the chilled mixing bowl, beat cream to medium peaks. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Fold in the remaining whipped cream in two doses. There may be streaks of whipped cream in the chocolate and that is fine. Do not over work the mousse.

Enjoy!

The most important thing to understand about new products and startups

First, a quote from Marc Andreessen's "Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters"

If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which of team, product, or market is most important, many will say team.
...
Personally, I'll take the third position -- I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure.

Why?

In a great market -- a market with lots of real potential customers -- the market pulls product out of the startup.

The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along.

The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product.
...
Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn't matter -- you're going to fail.

Mark's blog post did not immediately resonate with me, because his terms are somewhat different from the way I think. After all, how great is your product if nobody wants it? How great is your team if they persist in building something that nobody wants?

However, his main point has stayed in the back of my mind since then, and I'm continually reminded of how important it is, and how often I see people who clearly don't get it.

In my mind, there's really two points. One: You can take the smartest, most experienced, most connected, most brilliant people in the world and have them build the most stunningly designed and technically advanced product in the world, but if people don't want it, then you will fail. This is roughly what happened with the Segway, for example.

Perhaps that seems a little discouraging. After all, if really smart people with all the right resources can fail, then what hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps success is random, and maybe startups are more like the lottery than we'd like to admit.

I don't believe that's true though. There is an optimistic way of understanding my first point, and that's my second point: Even if you aren't the smartest person around, and your product is kind of ugly and broken, you can still be very successful, if you just build the right product. YouTube and MySpace are both fine examples of this.

But if your team is so great, why aren't they building the right product? Simply put, they have the wrong attitude. Firstly, they overestimate the importance of their own skills. Engineers think that success is all about fancy technology and complex engineering (hello Google). Designers think that success is all about beautiful design. MBAs think that success is all about knowing the right people, or spreadsheets, or something. If you have especially smart or successful people, then this problem could be even worse, because then the team is also likely to be arrogant and overconfident, which makes them less likely to question these assumptions or the value of their own skills.

It's easy to find examples of this wrong attitude. When Google acquired YouTube, many people inside the company were flabbergasted, "But they have no technology!?" They didn't understand that you only need enough technology to make the product work. Any more and you probably have the wrong priorities. I regularly see similar complaints about Facebook, MySpace, and a lot of other popular sites. Similarly, people will often complain that MySpace or even Google has "no design" or "bad design". Again, they have enough design (or the right design) to work for their users.

So what's the right attitude? Humility. It doesn't matter how smart and successful and qualified you are, you simply don't know what you're doing. The good news is that nobody else does either, though some are foolish enough to think that they do (and that's why you can beat them).

What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren't. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery. Whatever works, works.

MySpace is a great example of this. I'm pretty sure that their custom profile page layouts were an accident. They didn't know enough to properly escape the text that people put on their profiles, and that allowed their users to start including arbitrary html and css in their pages. This is a common bug, and most people would have fixed the bug and that would have been the end of it (really great engineers wouldn't have had the bug in the first place). But they did something smarter. They noticed that the feature was popular and found a way to preserve it. The result is mostly ugly, but it's extremely popular.

There are many other accidental inventions besides MySpace, but it's important to understand that "accidental" isn't the same as "random". There are clues all around us, we just need to watch more closely.

For web based products at least, there's another very powerful technique: release early and iterate. The sooner you can start testing your ideas, the sooner you can start fixing them.

I wrote the first version of Gmail in one day. It was not very impressive. All I did was stuff my own email into the Google Groups (Usenet) indexing engine. I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine. That was version two. After I released that people started wanting the ability to respond to email as well. That was version three. That process went on for a couple of years inside of Google before we released to the world.

Startups don't have hundreds of internal users, so it's important to release to the world much sooner. When FriendFeed was semi-released (private beta) in October, the product was only about two months old (and 99.9% written by two people, Bret and Jim). We've made a lot of improvements since then, and the product that we have today is much better than what we would have built had we not launched. The reason? We have users, and we listen to them, and we see which things work and which don't.

Find the gradient, then follow it.

Happy Valentine's Day

squirrel scherenschnitte valentine for jared ... template from Little Acorn

sockfest '08

We had an all-sock animal Saturday this weekend. I made a giraffe, Meg made a dog and a zebra, Kathryn made a monkey and Mitzi made a rat. Good times had by all.

Bib Tutorial

As promised ... here is a free tutorial for this baby bib. Make as many as you like, but please don't sell bibs made with this pattern! Thanks.

Note: To print the template in the correct size, right click on the image and save to your computer, then open to print as an 8 1/2 x 11 inch image. If you print from your internet browser, the template will be resized to smaller dimensions.

1. Cut out two pieces of fabric to the above dimensions. I like to use terrycloth for the back so the bib can double as a washcloth after dinner.

2. I added a strip of bias tape to the front for decoration, mainly to cover a flaw in the fabric. If you want to add any kind of decoration, appliqué or embroidery, now is probably the time to do it.

p.s. bias tape makers are awesome!!

3. Pin the RIGHT sides together. Top stitch around all the edges using a 1/4 inch seam, leaving about 1 1/2 to 2 inches open at the bottom of the bib (for turning). See below.

4. Trim the edges, especially in the small round corners. Pinking shears work well for this if you have them.

5. Turn the bib right side out and top stitch around all the edges again, using a 1/4 inch seam. This will give a nice finish to the seam and will close the opening at the bottom.

5. I use velcro for the closure. You can also use snaps or ties, although if you are sewing ties into the end, you will need to add them in step 3. The button on this bib is merely for decoration. I added it to cover up the poor sewing job I did attaching the velcro. :)


Enjoy!! This is a fast, easy project - great for beginning sewers.

baby bib

The project of this evening was this flowered baby bib. I'm a big fan of the fabric. The backside is terrycloth, so it can double as a washcloth after baby's dinner.

I'm working on a tutorial for it - hopefully I will post it tomorrow!

craft night

I am a lucky girl. Not only have I had the same fantastic best friend for the last 10 years, she recently moved here to New York! Megan and I have the best time together and even do a blog - Bee-Boppin' the Boroughs.

Tonight we got together for a crafting session and I taught her how to make a sock animal. Actually "taught" gives me too much credit - I loaned her my sewing machine and Sock and Glove book, and she went to town. And her pink argyle sock dog rocks.

So cute!
I tried to convince her to keep it for herself, but this little dog is being shipped off to a friend.

While Meg stitched away, I made fun greeting cards using a template from How About Orange. So easy, so cute. You simply print the template, and hot glue the buttons on. I could make 50 of these!

More craft nights to come...

seven-up cake

I had never heard of this cake before making it for a recent birthday celebration at work. It turned out to be delicious, so I thought I'd pass on the recipe. Seven-up cake is similar to a lemon pound cake, but gets increasingly moist towards the center.

Seven-Up Cake

3/4 lb butter, softened
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tablespoons lemon extract
3/4 cup 7-Up soda

Lemon glaze:
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice

1. Cream butter and sugar
   
2. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition.
3. Add flour and lemon extract.
4. Fold in 7-Up.
5. Pour into well-greased 12-cup Bundt pan or tube pan.
   
6. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 to 1 1/4 hours.
7. Make Lemon Glaze - mix powdered sugar and lemon juice together
8. When cake is cooled, dribble with Lemon Glaze.