Don't ignore your stupid ideas... that only waste a few hours of your time if they don't go anywhere; otherwise, your first instinct is probably the one to go with.
'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#12What does this say? I mean, it's nice that he made a popular app and a ton of money, but there is nothing to learn here. It was either raw luck or a stupid populace or both that made this happen. There's no insight in to the design of a well made and genuinely entertaining or interesting application here, just a gimmick app that somehow made it big. It's discouraging to read things like this, because the implied mora…
It reminds you that when your small ideas require proportionately small efforts, you might as well do them and see what happens. Too many people inappropriately shrug off their smaller thoughts as not worth doing, because they're not going to 'change the world' or some other low-probability outcome.
I noticed this a lot when I tried blogging a couple of summers ago. The articles I thought would be hits bombed, and the stupid ones I wrote just for fun [1] ended up being huge successes.
Inevitably, I just resigned myself to the fact that I don't know what'll be successful, and the only way to find out if something will work is to do it.
[1] http://phillipcohen.net/articles/simcity/ (got like 30,000 hits)
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#13For all the new designers out there, please don't add a CSS text shadow to the main body of your text content. By highlighting everything, you make everything less readable.
drop shadows on body text is the new rounded corners.
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#14Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…
> Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0
that's why I sometimes just hate the appstore (and humanity). when a shitty 10 minute app tops the charts and projects that people (read me) spent months on are somewhere @place 1000.
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#15Stupid ideas is all I have. Looking forward to the millions I'll be making soon. Thanks for the encouragement, Billy!
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#16When a field like apps is so new, the effort required to innovate is low. People bring their expectations about the level of effort from areas where expertise is well developed. Think of databases and algorithms. Eventually novelty apps will have to become pretty sophisticated (if they haven't already).
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#17Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…
Survivorship bias. Pretty common. "Look I failed" posts are much rarer.
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#18Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…
something is wrong with your css http://i.min.us/ieqoxc.png
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#19Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…
something is wrong with your css http://i.min.us/ieqoxc.png
A ton of things are wrong with that app. It works about 80% of the time when I want to lampoon a friend. Fixing it for the other 20% just isn't worth it to me.
Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
#20What does this say? I mean, it's nice that he made a popular app and a ton of money, but there is nothing to learn here. It was either raw luck or a stupid populace or both that made this happen. There's no insight in to the design of a well made and genuinely entertaining or interesting application here, just a gimmick app that somehow made it big. It's discouraging to read things like this, because the implied mora…
Surely the moral is "it's hard to tell in advance which ideas will be successful, so the more of them you execute, the more success you will have"?