Michael Richard Murphy

I have an ipod and an FM transmitter for the car. If you don’t know, it plugs into my ipod and sends the music to an empty FM station so I can listen through the car stereo. It’s very cool because I’m done with CDs and all my music is stored on the computer and ipod (for portability).

The transmitter needs to be tuned into a pretty empty station in order to work and be heard clearly (without static). Unfortunately there were hours and hours of driving time through the Midwest and above that for whatever reason, I couldn’t find a station empty enough to make it worth tuning into. Instead I spent hours hitting scan and bouncing between country and religious stations.

S– and I were headed out to run a quick errand today and she wanted to listen to a CD. I popped open the changer and what did I find…?

Six great CDs ranging from Tom Petty and System of a Down to Wyclef. They were there the whole time! Oh well.

I just finished Hackers & Painters Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham. For those of you not familar, Graham was the co-founder of Viaweb, the web’s first online e-commerce store generator. Graham and Robert Morris sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998. Hackers & Painters is a collection of Graham’s essays on topics ranging from the education system to the ideal programming language.

I like Graham’s essays because although his topics are wide in scope, he breaks it down in a manner that lets you know he’s really spent a lot of time thinking about it. Now I’m no Paul Graham but I think I spend an almost painful amount of time thinking about a variety of different things. It’s almost relaxing to read the thoughts of someone who thinks more than I do.

I’m not sure if it’s because this topic came at the end of the book so it’s freshest or because this is a big topic lately at work but there’s a paragraph or two that’s been stuck in my head since I read it. It’s in the essay titled Revenge of the Nerds under the Recipe heading. It’s about “best practices” and “standards”.

Graham suggests that managers push for the adoption of best practices and standard technology because they’re safe choices. Any company can fail at any given time. Graham proposes that failure of projects that use best practices aren’t viewed as failures of management but rather as failures of technology and the industry that chose it (at least as far as those managers are concerned).

Don’t get me wrong, I think standards are a good thing. I try to construct all my sites using and validating against W3C standards. In the 1800s, it was nice to know that railroad tracks constructed in the West using a certain gauge would match up with those constructed starting in the East using the same guage. It’s also nice for those building skyscrapers to know that a steel beam will support the same weight whether it’s purchased from Metal X or Y Steel. I also think usability standards are also important. Web users have come to expect certain behaviors from certain web controls and it doesn’t help anyone to deviate from them.

On the other hand, I think Graham’s point is that innovation doesn’t come from safe choices or doing what everyone else does. This is where small companies excel. Maybe nobody told them things aren’t done a certain way or maybe they have nothing to lose. Graham quotes Erann Gat as saying that “what industry best practice actually gets you is not the best, but merely the average”. I don’t think any company can afford to be average. What do you think?

Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

I found this quote by C.S. Lewis is some recent reading and wanted to share it. I think its extremely timely.

I don’t get it.

I went to the mall today to run an errand and grab some lunch. While I was there, I saw two high school kids walking around.

One had headphones on and the other had a cell phone glued to his ear.

Why did they even go together?

I don’t get it. I guess I’m old.

A few thoughts:

1. I᾿m still alive…
2. Somebody always has it worse.
   A friend of ours called last night to say her car was totalled in a collision with a truck. Funny thing…nobody was in either vehicle. The truck was hurtled into her parked car after it got hit by a train. You really do have to laugh. Apparently the truck got stuck on the tracks and somebody was in the process of reporting it to CSX when the train came. Luckily no one was hurt but talk about a freak accident.
3. Last year around this time I bought and moved into a house in the town where I grew up. In fact, without knowing it, I rode my bike by this house many, many times on my way to and from where most of my school friends lived. This weekend some friends of ours where in town and all the kids walked down the street to a corner store that I visited myself when I was their age. As expected, they came back with what we sent them for and candy and soda. It makes me happy.

Not that long ago, I mentioned that Citigroup’s NAIT was interested in the recognition program I wrote for The Student Loan Corporation.

Well, this past Friday, I presented a portion of the program to a representative of that project team and he was impressed. He’ll be presenting his findings to the team this week so we’ll have to see where it goes from there.

To see my little web app go from the several hundred employee Student Loan Corporation to adoption by Citigroup, the world’s largest financial institution, might blow my mind.

On a side note, the shirts I designed for the 2006 Corporate Challenge were apparently a big hit although I was a little disappointed. To reduce the printing costs and because of possibly foul weather, they decided to print in a single color on not white. I guess I can’t blame them for being frugal but I was not a big fan of the turquoise color that was chosen. Ugh.

While writing this recognition application for The Student Loan Corporation, overlapping roles has been a constant thorn in my side.

Application administrators and managers have access to certain functions, such as the ability to approve nominations of different levels, that general users do not.

Managers were relatively easy to handle. Creating an employee table that correlated managers and their direct reports allowed me to move nominations for specific employees to the appropriate manager’s queue.

Adminstrators are a whole different beast however. Not only do admins need to be able to function as normal users and administrators, they can also be people managers. As far as approvals were concerned, it was tricky (but doable) to figure out when a nomination needed to be approved by a specific employee acting as an administrator and when that specific employee needed to function as a people manager. Their role in these instances affected whether or not the nomination moved on and to where.

I solved this problem by creating different statuses to indicate where each nomination was in the approval process. Based on that information, I was able to determine where it should go next. That problem has been behind me for a little while now and it’s been smooth sailing until recently.

Roles are starting to get muddled again now that I’m working on the redemption portion of the application. The idea is that an employee’s accumulated recognition points can be redeemed for prizes. These prizes reside in an inventory maintained by the administrator.

This is where it gets slightly complicated. Because quite a few of the prizes are company branded and the program sponsor is Human Resources, these items are also used for other purposes such as charity give-aways or gifts for visiting executives. The admin now needs to be able to remove items from inventory from time to time for these purposes. Since the recognition program depends upon an accurate count of the items available for redemption, these withdrawals really need to take place through the system. The rub for me was how to determine when the administrator is removing these items as an adminstrator for the purposes just discussed and when they are legitimately redeeming credits accumulated as a normal user. In one instance, this action would mean reducing their accumulated credits for the redeemed prizes while in the other, it would not.

The idea that I’d need to figure this out eventually has been floating around in the back of my mind nagging me. I kept putting it off because I didn’t want to invest the brain power I thought would be necessary to figure it out. Little did I know how short an amount of time it would actually take.

SLC is rapidly outgrowing the available space in their current location so people are tight. I’ve had a tough time concentrating lately with anywhere from 6 to 8 people within three feet of me all having their own conversations and working. Maybe I just have superhuman hearing but there’s this constant chatter than once I pick up on, I can’t drown out, even with headphones.

Anyway, I’m getting down to the wire on this project and this functionality is one of the few remaining pieces so I decided it was time to just knock it out.

Yesterday at lunch I headed over to a trail nearby with the idea that I would get some fresh air (and quiet), focus exclusively on this problem, and come back to work with a solution. I’m proud to report that less than two minutes from the trailhead, I had everything worked out. About an hour after returning to work, the solution was implemented.

I guess the next time I’m strugging with something, instead of putting it off, I’ll just take a walk.

Ok, so it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve written here. As usual, there is lots of stuff going on. It’s all subjects for other posts however.

I attended a seminar today on Feng Shui in the workplace. May is Asian American History Month (I think) so the company sponsored this seminar at lunch. I had some free time and I’m sometimes interested in stuff like this so I dropped in.

The seminar was taught by a local Feng Shui Master named Louisa Ong-Lee who put on a very captivating presentation. She trained under a well known Feng Shui Master in Singapore for many years and now she consults here as well as speaks and writes on topics related to Feng Shui.

For those of you that aren’t familiar, Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of position and placement of objects to create positive energy. For those of you that are familiar, I apologize, those are my own words to describe it. The idea is that placing certain objects in certain locations can result in a more harmonious environment which in turn can attract health, wealth, happiness, etc. The brochure says that although this is an art, a lot of it is based on mathematical and scientific calculations. I don’t know if it is or is not, we only had an hour so we focused more on the whats than the whys.

The idea that simply placing certain objects in certain locations facing in certain directions can bring health, wealth, and happiness would certainly be enticing. Afterall, who doesn’t want those things? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s that simple. It never is.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. What it really is, meaning, how does it feel to be happy? Where it comes from, meaning, does it come from having things, from other people, from personal achievement, etc. This is pretty on topic because by practicing Feng Shui you can supposedly attract positive energy and repel negative energy. If that’s true and your life becomes filled with positive energy, then it stands to reason that all other aspects of your life will improve.

Your new positive energy will probably result in a better mood, which you will probably bring to your workplace, which will probably be noticed by your boss, which will probably enhance your career, which will probably enhance your bottom line, which will probably reduce any possible financial stressed in your life, which will put you in a better mood…

I guess my question, and the ultimate point of this article is if the expectation that placing certain objects in certain locations will bring positive energy to your life and mood, is it necessary to actually do it? Just like the recipients of a placebo often times report their symptoms relieved, could simply making a conscious decision to practice Feng Shui and the expectation of the results be enough to bring about those results without actually doing anything more? Maybe the decision by that person to learn and practice Feng Shui is more important than the actual act of placing the objects. Maybe that’s the commitment necessary to make positive changes.

As an example of what I mean, a recent combination of busy-ness and laziness has kept me from getting as much exercise as I need and like. I know I feel better and less stressed when I’m getting that exercise so I decided to make a conscious decision to make time for it. Even though I’ve only found time to run once since making the decision (give me a break, I said it was a recent decision), I’ve actually felt better since making the decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Feng Shui. People can use all the help they can get when it comes to health, wealth, and happiness. I just think it can’t be as easy as having an aquarium in a certain corner of your house. A martial-artist friend of mine used to have a t-shirt that said something like Discipline…if it came in a can, everyone would have it. Or something like that. What the attribute is really isn’t important. The point is, if it’s worth having, you need to work for it. So whether you practice Feng Shui or not, make a conscious decision to put yourself in surroundings that lift you up and improve your mood. You’ll be glad you did.

I apologize for the off-topic posts lately. I’ll be making two or three major announcements before the month is over that will bring the focus of this site back to technology.

I just got back from a week in Orlando visiting some of Disney’s different theme parks. My parents tell me that when I was much younger, we went almost every year just before school started. I only have vague recollections of some of it and of course the Wonder Years-style home movies of the experience.

The various parks are all adjacent to one another and inter-connected either by parkings lots, tram, the monorail, or ferries. Even though each park is massive, there are still only three or four ways into the complex and then visitors are sent in different directions to each park. I don’t remember the exact wording but above each entrance is a sign that says something to the effect of “Welcome to Disney World” and under that, “The Happiest Celebration on Earth”

Like I said earlier, I have only vague memories of Disney but wasn’t it always referred to as “The Happiest Place on Earth”? Maybe I made that up but that’s the way I remember it.

The happiest celebration is certainly more fitting since it can reasonably be assumed that anyone celebrating is happy. Maybe they secretly and quietly changed it from the happiest place because some of the people that I saw weren’t all that happy.

They weren’t happy about trudging around in the hot hot sun for 12 hours on a death march to see everything or waiting in line for 40 minutes to ride a 3 minute ride. They weren’t happy to pay $2.50 for a bag of Doritos that would cost 99¢ anywhere else. It should be noted that while I experienced all of those things, I’m not complaining about them. I fully realize that that is the cost of vacationing. I’m merely reporting what I observed. Parents upset with their children, children upset with their parents, couples frustrated with each other. Everyone with their own idea of what vacation means.

Anyhow, this is all just a convenient segue for me to explore the idea of happiness in future posts. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Different people have different ideas of what happiness is and sometimes it’s not even what they think.

As part of a promotion, I was enrolled in something called a Card Protector Benefit after signing up for a new credit card. The idea is that a percentage of your monthly balance is paid back into a fund like an insurance policy in case you’re ever in a situation where you can’t pay your monthly bill.

I try not to use my card too often and I don’t anticipate losing my job so I wasn’t totally excited about this program. But people get busy and several months went by before I called to cancel it. Naturally the woman on the phone tried to convince me not to leave the program by informing me of its other benefits. It turns out that they pay out for more than just job loss. They pay out for other life changing events such as purchasing a new home, having a child, graduating from college, things like that.

Having purchased a home a little while ago, she convinced me to stick it out at least until I received what I had coming to me for that event. Turns out that’s two months of bill payment (courtesy of the card company) and a refund of those two months of the program fee.

I didn’t intend to give it too much more thought until I had received those benefits (and it was time to cancel again) but for some reason I’ve been thinking about it this morning.

This whole concept is genius for many reasons. Like insurance, the company bets that not everyone they collect from will use the benefits so they make money. They still win when you collect because you’re providing them with valuable personal data that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

For instance, I collected my benefit because I purchased a new home. Since most people don’t purchase homes on credit cards, whether I rent or own would be information they wouldn’t know unless they asked. I’m voluntarily providing them with this information. It just so happens that this credit card company also provides many other services such as mortgages, student loans, auto financing, etc. Now that they know I own a home, how long do you think it will take before I’m bombarded by marketing material asking me to consider refinancing or describing home equity products?

I find this person’s writing and insight so spot on that I would consider going to work for them immediately if:

1. I lived in Silicon Valley
2. I knew who this person was
3. I knew where this person worked

Numbers 2 and 3 are relatively easily solved with a little detective work but it’s just not worth it considering number 1. So for now I think I’ll simply continue to enjoy his writing.

Visit the link above to soak in some ideas on how decisions are made and ideas created. I find I work much the same way. Maybe that’s why I enjoy his articles so much.

Listening to NPR the other day. Diane Rehm was talking to a young woman with a learning disability. She was saying how she had gone to schools specifically tailored for LDs all her life but since no one was going to cut her any slack in the real world, she decided to go to a non-LD college so she’d get used to it. Diane asked her if she liked it. She said yes but she wasn’t sure if she was going to stay. She wasn’t sure what career she wanted to have when she grew up but she knew she wanted to be a super hero. A super hero. They never said what college it was but I’m pretty sure they don’t have a super hero program there.

I want to be a superhero too. I want to be a super hero to my family. I want to be a super hero to my friends. I want to be a super hero to my coworkers and clients. Is that too much to ask?

Luckily the two Andys (Budd and Clarke) have me covered in the web design department with their SXSW presentation, How to be a Web Design Superhero.

My logs indicate that this site was returned in the search results for “interesting facts about Oklahoma” close enough to the top that somebody clicked through on it.

I find that interesting because those are three things that are rarely mentioned on this site:

1. stuff that’s interesting
2. facts
3. Oklahoma

Wonders never cease.

It’s a good thing that A- and I are good at our chosen careers because we would make terrible, terrible agents or talent managers.

A woman approached us at the garden show this weekend and asked to take our picture for something. We immediately said yes and asked for details afterward. And even though we did ask for details, neither of us is still sure what it was for. We’re either going to be in the Insider (whatever that is), the Weekend section of the paper, or The City Newspaper. We’re not sure which.

I half expect to see our smiling faces gracing an article under a phony headline like the one above.

I was going to complain about how busy I’ve been lately. Working full time, family, side projects, and such. Until I heard about Clarice on NPR this morning.

Clarice cares for her 89 year old sister who is in the terminal stages of Alzheimer’s. She also cares for her brother who is 95 and a stroke victim. Sound tough but do-able? Clarice turns 102 this August and has health problems of her own.

Clarice is their sole care giver which means feeding, bathing, doing their laundry, everything. She also has to wake several times during the night to turn her sister who is bed-ridden. She does it all with a positive attitude and thanks God for the ability to do so.

I don’t think I’ll complain today. About anything.

Note: This is a rough, rough draft written over two or three days at well past midnight. The topic is something that comes up quite a bit and that I have a lot to say about. This is an explosion of some of those things. It’s somewhat (dis)organized in some places. In the interest of time (and mostly so I can move on to something else), I’m publishing this as is. There are some gems in here if you have the time. If not, the takeaway is right in the title. You don’t need to read any further than that. On with the show…

This is something I’ve talked about in the past, both here and in person to clients. It was a topic in Sitepoint’s March Newsletter and the basis for some recent converstions I’ve had as well.

Content is king!

I think for people with little knowledge of the Internet outside of recreational use, comprehension of this concept comes in stages or unfortunately, not at all.

1. Let’s assume you have a business. I don’t care if you work for yourself selling homemade pot holders or if you’re the CEO of a 500 employee manufacturing company. At some point somebody has probably told you that you need a web site and that this web site would answer all your (business-related) prayers. At this stage, that’s not only believable but you can’t wait to get that site online and watch the $$$ come rolling in.
2. The site is online, you put your feet up on your desk, and…nothing happens. The big letdown. No bags, piles, or stacks of money. You think you know firsthand why the tech bubble burst and the e-Toys stock you bought to send Johnny to college now won’t even pay for a week of his day care. I digress.
3. Your web site really let you down. But you have money and time invested in it so you’re not entirely ready to give up. Good news! You get an email one day claiming to be able to get you umpteen-million visitors. XYZ Company will get you registered on a million search engines, they’ll get you setup with a pay-per-click campaign, and they have tons of SEO tricks that will land you the #1 spot on Google. Cool. You’re on cloud 9 again.
4. You’re paying hundreds a month in pay-per-click and ongoing SEO fees but you’re not getting any more orders or phone calls or walk-ins or whatever you’d like your site to accomplish for you. ‘The web is just hype’, you think.

I think this is an all too common scenario. It’s not necessarily that the web developer or SEO company is no good. It’s just that they didn’t take the time to truly understand what the goal was and what is required to meet it. There’s the old saying, ‘when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. Some developers just develop.

Simply having a web site is a good start but not necessarily enough. If I never put any work into this site and had only one page, it would contain information about my background, skills, experience, and a way to contact me. That little bit of information would work for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It would be like giving everyone I see my business card, only it contains way more (useful) information.

That’s the minimum it accomplishes. I don’t do pay-per-click or search engine optimization. I’m not interested in it. Honestly, I don’t really believe in it. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe that paying the highest amount for specific search terms will get a site listed the highest for that those search terms. I also believe that optimizing your web site for a specific search term will get you listed higher for that search term. What I don’t believe in is the benefit of it.

Ok, I should probably clarify that. If you’re not explicitly selling something, I don’t believe that pay-per-click is beneficial. ‘Everybody is selling something’, you say. You’re right, this site pitchs me. I said explicitly, meaning, you’re selling…a widget for $25. If you’re a straight up e-commerce company competing with other companies that have the same service/product/etc. and the only difference is who gets to the consumer first, then have at it. Pay-per-click is your best friend. Buy your way to the top, it’s worth it.

If you’re doing anything else (which encompasses a lot), then I just don’t think it’s a productive use of time or money. Let’s use a familiar example: this site. I can pay hundreds (or more) dollars each month to get this site to the top of Google for web design. If you click through and are greeted by a message that says something like, “This site best viewed with Internet Explorer 4”, or terrible MIDI music, or references to clearly outdated technologies, it’s not going to inspire a lot of confidence and it won’t be long before you’re back at Google resuming your search and my hard-earned money is wasted.

My point is that high rankings don’t mean anything if your site doesn’t appeal to your target market and satiate some desire of theirs. Whether it is to purchase something or obtain some piece of information or whatever. When I search for something on Google and I click through on a result, I give that site an assessment in about 15 seconds. If it’s not readily apparent that it will meet my needs, I hit the back button.

I prefer organic results. That means that my site appears naturally for the search terms that it most closely relates to. In my mind this kills two birds with one stone.

1. I don’t pay for listings but my site still appears. Albeit for fewer, more specific search terms but it’s more relevant to the user. This should make that person happy. Making the user happy is very important.
2. I’ve taken the time to provide quality information so my site because useful. A utility. A tool. People come back, instead of this being a hiccup in their search for what they really want.

You can use pay-per-click campaigns and search engine optimization tricks (both legit and illegit) to get traffic to your site and/or make it more appealing to search engines but ultimately, search engines don’t buy your product or service or visit your office or any of those things. So why would you design specifically for them? That’s like manufacturing a product for one audience but marketing to another.

There is not substitute for useful, relevant, current content. Just in case you didn’t get that. There is no substitute for useful, relevant, current content.

that I’m number 2 on Google for the search term i love mike murphy.

I found that as a search string in my stats. At first I didn’t believe it but it’s true. Try it.

A while ago I read an article in Wired about a traffic engineer who removed all the traffic signs from a village in Holland. No street signs, no lane markers, no crosswalks, not even markers to indicate where the road stops and sidewalks begin. What residents found is that it reduced accidents because without any explicit direction, people were more focused on the task at hand, mainly driving. It interested me at the time but it also seemed pretty idealistic to trust people to pay attention. I filed this nugget away in my brain and promptly forgot about it until Jason Fried posted about it over at 37signals.com.

What does any of this have to do with web design? I think the point Jason made and I’d like to reiterate is that less is sometimes more. Have you heard about the million dollar homepage? It was thought up by an English lad as a way to pay for school. Basically he divided up his homepage into a million pixels and sells them to advertisers for a $1. While it’s got him rolling in cash, looking at it is enough to trigger a seizure. It’s a great gimmick for sure but there’s way too much going on.

Users can get overwhelmed by information so before you put pad to pen, think about the purpose of your design. What do you want from the user? Look at Blogger’s home page. I think they’ve narrowed it down to two main reasons why someone would visit their site: 1. An existing user wants to use their account. Good, the login area is featured prominently at the top of the page. 2. A potential new user wants information and/or to sign up. Again, the necessary information is displayed right smack in the middle of the page. That’s pretty much it. Simple and elegant. Even the dimmest bulb could figure out how to login or where to click to create a blog.

Cameron Moll had a great article on breaking a design down to only the necessary elements. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it on his site when I went to write this but if you troll his archives you just might get lucky. Derek Powazek has also written a great piece at A List Apart about home page goals and how to design to meet them. The moral of the story is that complexity or features don’t necessarily make something better. There’s a reason KISS rocks.

Editor’s Note: You can also find this published on fad.tastic’s home page.

The first of the year is the time everyone is talking about resolutions and making plans for change. Somebody wants to lose weight, somebody wants to set aside and save more money, and somebody wants to take a much needed vacation. If 2005 wasn’t good for you, it’s not too early to start planning for a better 2006.

I’ve selected a couple of articles by the always upbeat and insightful Jeffrey Gitomer to help people get started off on the right foot in 2006. The first has Jeffrey’s suggestions not for finding happiness but creating it within yourself. The second has more to do with setting goals and committing to them.

Read up, set some goals for 2006, and create an environment for yourself that fosters happiness. Enjoy!

With the new year rapidly approaching, everybody is talking about and/or setting goals for themselves. Here’s two of mine off the top of my head:

• Within 5 years…have my own business with at least two coworkers (I already know who they are)
• Within my lifetime…write a book