If you’ve recently updated Spotify, you’ve surely noticed the new logo. I personally didn’t mind the old logo, but the new one…. not my cup of tea.

Here is the new logo:

And here is what my dock currently looks like:

Personally, I’m not a fan. After doing some Dribbble hunting, I found this really cool cassette by Román Jusdado:

After a little Photoshop action, we get this nice image:

To change your icon simply do the following:

1. Open the image with Preview (on a mac)
2. Hit cmd + A to select all
3. Hit cmd + C to copy the image content
4. Go to your Application folder, find Spotify, right click and select “Get Info”
5. Select the tiny logo (on the left upper hand)
6. Hit cmd + V and voila!

Before:

After:

The last, and final step, is to re-drag Spotify from your Applications folder.

You’re all set!

PS: Here is what the old Spotify logo looked like:

PPS: Yes, that is indeed a Pikachu icon on my doc (used for Sublime Text).

Hi there Tumblr fan, I’ve heard you LOVE browsing the incredible pictures available everywhere on Tumblr. I’ve also heard that you want more… more pictures. More incredibly beautiful pictures. MOAR AWESOME PICTURESSS!

Ok ok, we’ve listened and here is min-s. A new way to discover visual content on Tumblr.

You can browse by #tag and by blog. Here you go, enjoy!

The fluffington post:

Sartorial:

The Black Workshop: (with the discovery drawer hidden):

P.S.: You should follow me on Twitter here.

It seems that today the International Space station has been busy surfing the web today.

I was just on Google Analytics and noticed that my personal site was showing 41 Active Visitors from the ‘International Space Station - Control Room’. Glad to know that my site is Astronaut worthy :)

If you want to see it for yourself go to Google Analytics > Real Time > Overview and look at your map. You can also visit this link: https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en&pli=1#realtime/rt-overview 

Happy April Fool’s Day from Google, GA nerds!

[Image below is clickable, opens in a new window]

P.S.: You should follow me on Twitter here.

P.P.S.: In need of inspiration? Check out min-s!

A friend and I just discovered a simple yet incredibly useful feature in Google Maps for iPhone… The one-hand zoom.

To perform a one-hand zoom simply double tap on your map and, after the second tap, leave your finger pressed. You can then move your finger up and down to zoom in/ zoom out.

Simple, useful, elegant, brilliant.

Dear Apple, I’d love to see you implement this in Apple Maps. Dear developers, I’d love to see you implement this in any pinch-to-zoom app.

P.S.: You should follow me on Twitter here.

P.P.S.: In need of inspiration? Check out min-s!

1. Tell your accountability partner WHAT goal you want to be kept accountable for (yes, I know, sounds obvious)
2. Make sure you provide both: a goal and a deadline
3. Make sure that your goal is MEASURABLE

A good example: Finish the redesign wireframes for CourseBacon by January 15. This include the resources index page and the resources show page.

Now do me a HUGE favor: Write down a measurable goal and send it to a friend and ask him/ her to become your accountability partner. Actually, here’s my offer, if you can’t find an accountability partner I’d be more than happy to become yours - I’ll do this with the first 10 people that reach out. My email is carlsed[a.t]ThatGoogleEmailThing.com.

Give it a shot, what do you have to lose?

P.S. I’d love to hear how you stay motivated, let me know in the comments or on Hacker News.

TLDR: It is really easy to scrape ~28,000 profile email addresses from GitHub. If you don’t want unsolicited emails then I’d recommend changing your public email address to your Twitter handle.

The backstory:

New York City was set to a halt this past Sunday night due to hurricane Sandy. As it turns out, rare are the occasions when I find myself at home, with free time and with energy left… so, as any good dev-in-training would, I decided to pop open a terminal window. While refactoring some code for CourseBacon (which you should totally go visit if you’re looking to learn something new) I suddenly felt an urge to do something a bit more exciting than working on old code.

Being an avid HN follower, I’ve noticed that most devs tend to hate (almost) every recruiter out there - and with good reasons. On the same note, I recently got an email from a good friend saying that he just received a crappy recruiter email that had nothing to do with his skill set. He also mentioned that the recruiter got his email address via GitHub.

My friend was extremely surprised when I told him that he can remove his public email address directly from his GitHub profile settings by simply leaving the “Email” field blank (I choose to show my Twitter handle - more on that later).

The fun begins:

As the gears started turning in my head I wondered how many devs were making the same “mistake” as my friend - leaving their email address exposed when they really didn’t mean to. 

After taking a quick look at some GitHub search results and glancing at their API I came up with the following code (EDIT: the gist has been deleted). I let this bad boy run for couple hours (was grabbing drinks with the neighbors at this point) and, next thing you know, here’s the result:

Yup, that’s right, over 28,000 email address straight from GitHub. There is absolutely nothing advanced about this code and, as you can see, anyone can create a “small” database with over ~28,000 devs email addresses. If you want to get fancy you can also get each user’s number of repos and followers and so on.

This is absolutely shocking when you think about it! Since when it is so easy to get ~28,000 email addresses of people making an average 70k+? As a matter of fact, what email addresses are you looking for? Some @google.com emails? Got it! Some @facebook.com emails? You bet. 

Note: I will NOT be sharing this list with anyone. Also, I understand that there is a possibility that many (ok, lets say most) people on this list have chosen to leave their email address visible because they want to engage with the community. But, if you hate unsolicited mail as much as I do, I would advise that instead of having your email publicly available you leave your Twitter handle. People can engage with you through Twitter and, if needed, ask for your email address then and there. By doing this you’ll get zero unsolicited emails from the GitHub vultures.

Just like you, I really, really hate spam. But, before complaining about how annoying unsolicited emails are, I’d like to challenge you to see if there is anything YOU can do to proactively protect your inbox (that’s right, protect it).

To all my NYC folks, I hope that you’re safe and that (unlike me) you do have power and phone signal in your area.

I like to Tweet about marketing and programming, you should follow me. Or maybe not.

This past Wednesday I got the opportunity to attend an onboarding class by Ben Chow at GA.

The rest of the information here is my own interpretation of Ben’s class - which was absolutely amazing. Any misinterpretation, flawed logic or errors are totally mine, any valuable content is Ben’s.

Onboarding

Onboarding is about the how and why. How do you get visitors to use your product and, more importantly, why should they use it. Your goal is to make the boundaries of “trying out your product” and “using your product” disappear.

An onboarding process does not only to teach users, it also guides them while they use your product. Design your onboarding process so that users actually use your product. Let me repeat that: Design your onboarding process so that users actually use your product.

Now, it’s important to note that as every click has a cost - yet every click buys you time. It’s a yin-yang of sort. Think of it this way: after every click you have 3 seconds to get your visitors to the next step… take longer than 3 seconds and boom! they. are. gone. Each click “buys” you 3 seconds of extra attention - it’s like a time bonus on the racing track.

The best way to stick to the 3 seconds rule is easy: Do not make your users read… nobody likes to read. Get them to use your product, one small step at a time. Think of it like micro-adrenaline shots where each click gets them visible progress while they interact with your product.

Onboarding enemies:

• Confusion
• Apathy
• Time

When you’re describing your product, and onboarding users, remember that visitors may not necessarilyunderstand your product and may not even understand the problem you are solving. Oftentimes you will need to explain your product (and it’s benefits) 3-4 times! You will need to bring to light concrete goals and benefits, this is what gets people to sign up for shit.

Show social proof when possible. Show “like”, interactions, “what’s popular”, who’s got the most points, and so on. Always address fears & concerns - example: “We’ll never post to your wall without your permission.” Yes, many users fear Facebook login. Add this sentence underneath your Facebook login button, you’ll thank Ben and I later. 

The 6 onboarding “must”:

1. Grab their attention and guide them: Provide cue, context & feedback. This needs to be a tightly integrated loop.
2. Sell your value proposition: Remember, you may need to explain your product 3-4 times.
3. Get personal: Example, a content or fashion site could use an onboarding quiz to only show users relevant content.
4. Invite friends and make it make sense: Asking users to invite friends before they’ve even started using your product probably doesn’t make much sense - asking them to do this after they’ve earned a badge or won a game makes more sense. Social coefficient can be amazing for your brand, take the time to get this right.
5. Help users setup. Help them integrate into existing habits: Think about it, when you join a new service you don’t want “yet another platform”, you want shit to be integrated. Guess what, your users want just the same. Think how your product fits into their life, how it fits in their day-to-day interactions. Note: When helping users setup explain them “why” they’re doing this and show them their progress - no one likes to do useless stuff.
6. Measure your performance, optimize your funnel: Recommended tool: Kissmetrics. Optimize like your life depends on it. Because it does.

In essence, your onboarding process should build excitement, build energy and get your users to use your product. Intro videos are great but the truth is: they don’t get your users to use your product… actually most intro videos are too darn borring. I mean, they are good to tell users what you do in 30 seconds, but that’s generally about it. Note: This is in the context of onboarding, training videos and all other educational videos can be, and sometimes are, a total must.

Get into social gaming and understand what these guys are doing - and how they do it. Carefully study their onboarding process. You may not like social gaming (I surely don’t) but they know what they’re doing. Think about it, their job is to get users to come back to their games over and over and over again. Many social gaming companies are doing it right - their business life depends on it. Also, look at the online dating industry, they know a thing or two about onboarding.

When designing your product you need to think of what you want your users to do every time they use your product. You need to form a habit. Using your product should become a habit. Opening your app, going to your site, playing your game should become a habit. Make your product habit-worthy.

Remember that when you are onboarding you dont have a passionate user (not yet). You need to think about all the touch points where your product may be useful or needed. Be everywhere your user may want or need you.

Good examples of mobile onboarding:

• Karma
• Pose
• Pocket

Suggested reading:

• Malcolm Gladwell - The Pitchmen
• The Power of Habit

Now go and refine your onboarding process. If you’ve had any great successes, or miserable failures, feel free to share them in the comment below.

You should totally follow me on that twitter thing.

Edit: Here is Ben’s presentation http://socialy.herokuapp.com/onboarding/#/title

Most people have a tendency to believe that Time is their most limited resource. I’d like to differ and say that our most limited resource is Energy.

Everyday, after waking up, you only have a limited amount of Energy available to spend. Today, since you are young and handsome, you have a great deal of Energy. Tomorrow, you’ll be old, handsome nonetheless, but you’ll have less Energy.

As you can imagine, some tasks require more Energy than others. Also, some tasks will affect your energy levels. I mean, rarely will you go through an hour of answering emails and tweets and feel like “Hot damn, I’m in the zone! Lets do this for another 4 hours”. (And if you do, then try call verifying leads.) The same is true after spending an hour on HN - your energy level just drops. On the other hand, if you’re coding up some cool new feature an hour will feel like 10 minutes. Even though coding takes a lot of energy, in my opinion, it doesn’t drastically decrease your energy levels (but rather does so gradually, throughout the day).

Next time you have to decide whether to do something or not, don’t only measure how much time it will take you - also take into account how much energy it requires. Also, since you’re as young as you’ll ever be again, it’s a good idea to pursue your most ambitious, energy demanding, ideas today. I’m sure that your older you will be grateful.