Mathias Mikkelsen

TV Interview with TV 2

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 02:00:00 GMT

In relation to the launch of Timely, I was invited to do a live TV interview on Norway’s biggest news channel, TV 2. In addition to Timely, I was also asked about life in Silicon Valley. I have never been on TV before, so there’s a bit of a nervous fella you’ll see in the first seconds below, but then it quickly calms down and ends up being a blast! A really fun experience.

PS: Sorry for the Norwegian-only version! If you manage to get through the whole thing, I promise there will be some English words.

A Timely Relaunch

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 01:00:00 GMT

Oh, how time flies. I was supposed to update this blog on launch day, but things got bigger than I had ever imagined, and I had to drop everything and focus on answering emails and doing product development. Anyhow… Timely relaunched a month ago. It’s completely new redesign from our previous version.

I like to look at it as the time tracking app to end time tracking. It’s a merger of scheduling and logging hours. When you plan your time, you’re already logging hours, and there is no point why these two tasks should be separate.

I really think we’ve made something different in a very crowded marked, and would love for you to check it out and make up your own mind. Head on over to timely.com to see it. Below is a little launch video I made:

Hello, San Francisco

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT

San Francisco fog by Shelly Prevost

San Francisco and Silicon Valley. So much stuff, so much history. The tech, the creatives, the diversity, the geeks and the culture. But maybe most important of all; the companies. Oh, The Companies. The technological behemoths and the scrappy startups. The disruption and the disrupted. The rags-to-riches stories and the comeback legends.

I’ve heard so much about this place and been wanting to come here for quite a while. I’m super-excited to be here for the next three months! After that, we’ll see what happens. I’m always available for a coffee or a beer, email me on me@mathiasmikkelsen.com if you wanna meet up!

New Website and an Updated Portfolio

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT

It’s that time again, where I finally manage to get a personal, up-to-date website out into the world, after spending way, way too much time on it and throwing away too many finished versions.

This time around, it’s not a complete redesign as I’ve done before, but rather a greatly refined version of the old one. And it’s fully responsive and retina-ready. The latter made the portfolio take some extra time to get done. Anyhow, let me know what you think on @matmik!

Here’s an overview of the Work-page. Head on over to view full-size.

Launch: Timely App

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I’m very glad to announce that Timely, a beautifully simple time tracking app, has now officially launched! Head on over to the brand new marketing page on timely.com and take a look.

Introducing Timely for Web & iPhone

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Super-excited to finally introduce Timely – a simple, beautiful time tracking application for the web & iPhone. They say a picture says more than a thousand words, so here’s a video:

Timely is launching in late May, but sign up today on timely.com and I’ll invite you to the beta trial.

“Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Steve Jobs, in 1994, talking about his perspective on life:

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

The quote is from PBS’ “One Last Thing” documentary, which aired on TV in 2011.

New Career: Full-time Freelance

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s official! From this day on, I’m a full-time freelance designer, employed by my own company with the highly creative name; Mathias Mikkelsen AS.

I’ll be designing all kinds of digital products; mobile, tablet and web applications, regular websites and everything in between. Shoot me an email if you wanna say hi.

My office at St. Olavs Plass 2, 0165 Oslo. Drop by if you’re in town!

If you’re in town visiting Oslo, don’t hesitate contacting me. I’d love to chat over a good cup of coffee. I’m sharing offices with the newly-founded Notch, a design & development studio founded by my good friends Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Henning Gjerde and their partner Christopher Einarsrud.

Two Prizes at the WIF 2012 Finals

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We managed to snatch two prizes at the WIF (Webdesign International Festival) 2012 Finals in Limoges, France! Our team – Tomato Tomato – won the best innovation prize, as well as the region of Limoges’ intercultural prize.

The finale lasted for 24 hours straight. All teams are given the same brief, and are then required to come up with an idea and concept, create a prototype and presentation. Teams all over the world qualified to the finale, from Brazil and Argentina, Germany, France and all the way over to China og Russia.

Myself, Henning and Simen’s entry was called Spring. Spring is an idea on how we can help students all over the world have a better education. Visit our Spring Presentation Site.

Here’s two articles from the press regarding the victory:

Hjemme fra Frankrike som dobbeltvinnere (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)
Trekløveret fra Isobar ble dobbeltvinnere i Frankrike (INMA, Norwegian)

From left to right: Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Mathias Mikkelsen, Henning Gjerde

Young Lions, in Cannes Lions

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Cannes Lions, The 59th International Festival of Creativity, is now officially over. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to go all the way in the finals. The Cyber Lions are fully focused on creating advertisement banners, a stretch from what we normally do. But none-the-less, the festival was an amazing experience I hope to be a part of again.

Myself and Simen qualified by winning the norwegian qualifier earlier this year. At Cannes, we competed against teams of two from over 90 different countries. Our task was to come up with an idea and produce an advertisement banner for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation within 24 hours. Great fun, and hopefully we’ll get a new shot at the finals next year.

Highlights from the festival included meeting a ton of interesting people, watching a talk by Bill Clinton, being very inspired after hearing amazing speakers each and every day, having highly creative dinner talks, and of course; enjoying the beautiful beaches and partying late into the night. Cannes, we’ll meet again.

The main entrance to the festival.

Won the WIF 2012 Norwegian Qualifer

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This past weekend, after 24 hours straight, my team Tomato Tomato ended up as the winners of the norwegian qualifier for Webdesign International Festival 2012. There were simultaneous qualifiers all over the world, and we placed in the top ten, beating over 200 teams in the process. The finals will be held in Limoges, France later this year on May 28th – 31st.

Our entry was called Me, a service to help people get to know themselves better. You can learn more on our presentation site.

Here are a couple of articles from the press regarding the victory:

Kreative under press (Østlendingen, Norwegian)
Isobar-trio i internasjonal finale (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)

From left to right: Mathias Mikkelsen, Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Henning Gjerde

Won the Young Lions Norwegian Qualifer

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We’re going to Cannes! This past weekend, at the Gullblyanten 2012 awards show, the results of the Young Lions Norwegian Qualifier were announced. Myself and Simen Øian Gjermundsen managed to snatch the top spot, and now we’re going to participate at the Young Lions finales in Cannes, France later this year.

The competition was held earlier this year. Each team was handed the same brief at 09:00 in the morning, and then we had 48 hours to come up with an idea and create a presentation. The brief was to create and plan a digital campaign for the norwegian non-profit; Natteravnene.

Here’s an article from the press about the victory:

Priset de unge (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)

From the awards show, Gullblyanten. Foto: Scanpix

Unedited Steve Jobs Interview From ’95

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This is a very interesting and long interview Steve Jobs did in 1995. Daniel Morrow conducted the interview for Computerworld, in relation to an oral history type of project. It’s pretty remarkable to hear his thoughts at that present, especially about Apple, when we know that only two years later, he would return to change everything once again.

A Must Watch: Inventing on Principle

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Bret Victor invent tools for people. He’s a former Apple-employee, has written a highly praised essay on user interfaces called Magic Ink (which I started reading a couple of weeks ago), created the UI for Hipmunk and done a whole slew of other very interesting things.

His talk from CUSEC 2012, Inventing on Principle, got released on Vimeo today. It’s enlightening, inspiring, thought-provoking, educational and incredibly fascinating. I recommend you take the time to watch it right now.

This video is no longer accessible.

Legendary Ad-Man David Ogilvy On Hiring

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

David Ogilvy, in a memo to one of his partners, thirty-three years after starting his first ad agency:

Will Any Agency Hire This Man?

He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college.
He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer.
He knows nothing about marketing and had never written any copy.
He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.

I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.

He was, of course, talking about himself. It reminds me of how revolutions of industries rarely, if ever, comes from the inside. It happens when people from the outside create products with a new completely new view, not bound or affected by those already in existence.

Via @tor.

Typical Big Business Ignorance

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Philip Newton, Director of Audiovisual for Samsung Australia:

When Steve Jobs talked about he’s ‘cracked it’, he’s talking about connectivity – so we’ve had that in the market already for 12 months, it’s nothing new, it was new for them because they didn’t play in the space. It’s old news as far as the traditional players are concerned and we have broadened that with things like voice control and touch control; the remote control for these TVs has a touch pad.

Hmm. Phones did exist before the iPhone, no? That could connect to the internet? And that had apps on them? You could call, send messages and listen to music. Yes, I think that was possible.

Samsung, and many companies like it, just doesn’t get Apple. If my mind serves me correctly, Microsoft and Nokia showed this exact type of ignorance back when rumors about an Apple-phone started to float around. And they even did so after Apple had their unveiling. How did that end again?

The Founding Story of GitHub

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Tom Preston-Werner, one of GitHub’s three co-founders:

In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”

A good and interesting read about how GitHub got started. What really stuck with me though, is that last sentence in the excerpt above. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”. Hell yes, I definitively plan on doing the same.

Via @aral.

The New Breed of Designers

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Garry Tan for Inc. Magazine:

It’s no mistake that this is very much the sort of thing that is most valued within the most effective software teams in Silicon Valley. Let’s call it “the designer who codes.” This is the sort of person can build exactly what he knows people need, with an aesthetic that compliments its use, with no back-and-forth.

Silicon Valley start-up Quora does it this way to great effect. They take the process simplicity to the next level. Every person on lead designer Rebekah Cox’s team is also an engineer. The design doesn’t happen in Photoshop. It happens in the text editor, in code.

Great article about the new breed of designers, that doesn’t just live in Photoshop all day, but can, and do, design just as much directly in code. For interface design, it’s just nothing that can match it. Facebook, and especially Quora, are excellent at this. The experience is stellar.

The article also tell’s a fun little story about Steve Jobs and the first calculator on a mac.

Why People Have A Great Experience With Netflix

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Bill Scott, former Director of UI Engineering at Netflix, on the 23:10 mark:

A lot of people think Netflix is better than it is, is what I would always say. Because they get a movie recommend to them, they like the movie, and they have a great experience with the movie, and they transfer that love back to the site. And if you can create a service like that, it’s golden. Because all you really do is to get out of the way.

Think about the invoicing application when you see much money you’ve earned, or Google Analytics when your site goes viral. Great, positive content often equals a great user experience. As software designers, we should be more aware of that, and try to highlight the positive content in our apps that make people happy.

The Morning After As A Design Tool

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 03:00:00 GMT

Jason Fried from 37signals:

In all this work, and all the usage, and all the trials, and all the tweaks, I’ve spotted a pattern. Things that look good at the end of the day often don’t look good the next morning.

The end of the day has a way of convincing you what you’ve done is good. The next morning has a way of telling the you truth.

Definitively. I also often look at a design every day after one another, and the more days I open it and still like it, the bigger the chance I’m on to something good.

Thank You, Steve Jobs

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:00:00 GMT

About three months ago, I woke up to the news of Steve Jobs’ death. It put me in shock, striking a chord that made me incredibly sad. I never thought I’d cry, but so I did. Steve Jobs inspired my life in so many ways. He inspired me to do what I do today, and to do it better.

For a very long time, I’ve had the following sentence in the bottom of my dekstop wallpaper; “Steve Jobs changed the world. What have you done?”. Each and every time I sit down next to my iMac to work, I read it and it reminds me of the quality he stands for and the work he’s done. It inspires me and motivates me to keeping creating the best possible things I can.

Steve Jobs in December 1982, at his home in California. Photo by Diana Walker.

I’ve always, in a strange way, thought I would meet Steve Jobs. But it wouldn’t happend before I had done something substantial in life, worthy of Steve’s time. It would be a day when what I had created was of the utmost quality, and had made an impact on the world. It would have met Steve’s standards. He would know who I was, and we would have a conversation, not fan-to-icon, but man-to-icon.

It might sound strange, and it most likely never would have happened, but I’ve still worked towards it and in some weird way looked forward to it. It’s been some kind of a life goal. And knowing that there isn’t even the slightest possibility to meet and chat with the greatest visionary the world has seen in modern time? That saddens me very, very much.

It’s a selfish reason to be sad for, but a reason none-the-less, and only one of many.

Thank you, Steven P. Jobs. For the impact you’ve had on me, and for the impact you’ve had, and will have for many coming years, on the world.

2012: A New Year, A New Website

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:00:00 GMT

So I finally made a proper, complete website for myself. Each and every website thus far has always been lacking in some aspect, weather it be in the portfolio, about or blog department. And I’ve always, always ended up hating the design so much that I had to change it only weeks after.

Today that stops. It’s a new year, with new possibilities and with the wonderful opportunity of “resetting”. I’ve spent all December designing, developing and editing it, so I hope you’ll enjoy what you see and read.

I’ve also changed the format of my blog. It will still include articles like before, but I’ll also be posting links to all kinds of different content, with my opinion or comment below. The new blog setup is inspired by Daring Fireball.

I’d really appreciate to hear your thoughts, be it good or bad. Feel free to add a comment below or message me on twitter. Thank you!

The Science and Psychology Behind Nightclubs

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

This is so clever and so cynical. People in nightclubs experience a carefully designed evening, much like cows on a field. Really.

Yale Fox, a DJ from Toronto, has for the past few years been researching the effect music has on people, especially how it affects human behavior in nightclubs. His findings are very interesting and show how easily we can be guided into doing something, or rather buying something. All on a subconsciously level of course. Some of his findings include:

Experienced DJ’s balance big hits, which makes people dance, with slower songs, which makes people go to the bar buying drinks instead of dancing.
House music generates more cocktails and vodka sales.
Rock music generates more beer sales.

Another thing that was particularly interesting, is if we’ve had a great time going clubbing and dancing, we tend to subconsciously give the credit for the successfully night to the liquor brand we drank. So the next time we go to the store to buy liquor, we buy that particular brand in search for creating that same good feeling and evening.

No wonder brands spend so much money associating themselves with different events, people and settings. Also, the reason clubbing is enjoyed so much by many people, is because when dancing with a group of friends, the brain produces a higher level of Oxytocin, which increases the level of trust you have towards the people around you and reduces fear and anxiety.

If you’re interested in some more tidbits, you’ll find them over at Teehan+Lax, which was just given a visit by Yale.

Image from VancityAllie.

BlackBerry Makers Thought The Original iPhone Was Impossible To Make

Sun, 29 May 2011 02:00:00 GMT

RIM refused to believe that it was possible to create the iPhone when it was introduced in 2007.

It was the morning of January 9th, 2007. Steve Jobs took the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to change the mobile industry forever. With a brilliant presentation, the Apple Chief introduced the very first iPhone.

The following day, around 24 hours after the 2-hour-long presentation, RIM (makers of the BlackBerry smartphones) executives invited the whole company to an all-hands meeting to talk about the newly-announced iPhone.

A former employee said they then concluded that it was impossible to create what Apple said they had created. RIM refused to believe the iPhone could do everything they said it could, without having terrible battery life. They also allegedly thought several features was impossible to create. Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola and Palm is said to have had similar reactions.

Enter the release on June 29th, when RIM disassembled an iPhone for the first time, and found that they had been completely wrong. They found that the iPhone was almost one big battery, with a tiny logic board strapped to it, and that it worked exactly as Apple had said it would.

RIM only then started to work on a iPhone competitor, The BlackBerry Storm. Failing to believing the first time, they had however given Apple an even bigger head start.

Such an interesting story, and it shows how big of a leap the iPhone really was. No wonder we had such bad phones when this kind of attitude and ignorance was all over the place.

Via SlashGear via Electronista via Shacknews.

Back to Blogging

Sun, 29 May 2011 01:00:00 GMT

I’m going to start writing again, after six months of laziness.

So I feel kinda bad for not having written anything on my blog in 2011. Things have been crazy busy with new projects taking lots of time, as well as a new full-time job. That is however no good excuse. Everybody is busy, and it’s really just a matter of prioritizing correctly and taking the time to do it. That’s what I’m going to do now.

There’s a couple of new things:

The design has been updated. It has been crafted for the single purpose of giving you the best possible reading experience.
Comments are now activated and will be active on all future posts. I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and critique.
The blog will become more topic-focused as time goes on. I won’t write about things that doesn’t belong here. I haven’t picked any particular topics yet, but I’ll definitively create some guidelines for myself in a couple of weeks.

I hope you’ll follow along and hopefully find what I write interesting.

Image from cambodia4kidsorg.

Genius: Using Design To Reduce Spillage In Toilets By 80%

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This is so simple, yet so genius. Perfect user experience design.

The urinals in the toilets on the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, has what looks like a small fly inside of them. When you look closer however, it’s actually the outline of a fly, etched into the porcelain itself. The staff at the airport did research afterwards found that urinals with the fake flies reduced spillage by 80%! When a man sees a fly, he automatically aims at it. Genius.

Via Thomas Krampl Via Dickson Fong Via Xianhang Zhang and lots of googling.

A Fascinating Interview With The President Of Pixar

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Everything Pixar touches ends up being solid gold.

They have to be doing something right to achieve that kind of quality. The interview embedded below is a fascinating look at how Pixar works and how the company is organized. It’s full of good stuff from start to finish.

The interview was done in March earlier this year, at Innovation 2010 by The Economist. Martin Giles interviewed Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Via Ryan Singer via Scott Berkun.

Subconscious Human Behavior: Statements versus Commands

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I use commands, instead of statements, to encourage people to do things. There’s a reason for that.

First of all, you should follow me on twitter.

I find subconsciously human behavior extremely interesting. It doesn’t matter what we do knowingly, it’s those milliseconds where our brain is making hundred of choices that affects what we do. All of our smaller actions, like clicking a link or not, is done utterly subconsciously. We just do it, but there’s always a reason behind it. There’s obviously different reasons, and often more than one, for us doing something (like the visuals), but for this article, I’ll talk about the text, specifically the difference between using a statement and command.

I’ve read several interesting articles over the last year about how certain smaller changes have affected clickthrough rates with huge results. I’d love to give them all credit and link back to them, but I could only remember and find two:

You should follow me on twitter
by Dustin Curtis

Dustin did a study where he created different phrases and showed it to 5000 random people a time. He increased the clickthrough rate with 173% from a simple statement: “I’m on Twitter.”, to a command: “You should follow me on twitter here.”.

How to increase signups by 200%
by Jason Fried (via Think Vitamin).

Jason and 37signals tried different phrases on the main action-button on their Highrise-website. They had been using the statement “Free trial”. After some tests, they ended up changing it to “See plans and pricing”, which resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups.

What I find interesting in both articles isn’t which exact phrase worked better than the other, but the fact that a command did so much better than a statement.

Do we humans, subconsciously, like to be told what to do, instead of having to manually take a choice of doing something? Is there a much bigger chance that we’ll do something if we being directly told to do it, instead of having to create an action from a statement (or a fact)? And the stronger the command, does the chance of doing it grow as well?

When we’re presented with a statement, we process a fact and may choose to read the fact and move on, or to execute the possible action a statement can give us. For example, as Dustin uses in his article: “I’m on twitter.”. The primary here is that he’s on twitter. The secondary is that we may follow him on twitter.

When we’re presented with a command however, we process an action and choose to execute on that action or not. Again, in Dustin’s article: “You should follow me on twitter.”. The fact has now changed from the primary, to the secondary, and the command has become the primary.

So it would seem that the brain subconsciously responds much easier to a command, where it only has to go through one process (the action), compared to a statement where it has to go through two processes (the fact and the action). The data shows that in both Jason’s and Dustin’s cases, changing from a statement to a command more than doubled the action they wanted people to do.

And that is the exact reason I use commands, instead of statements, when I really want people to do something. Obviously you can’t use commands everywhere, but on important things, like encouraging things to signup for something, subscribe to something, or follow/like something, a command will probably work much better than a statement.

I’m still very much interested in wether a much stronger command will create better results, and if there’s a limit to how strong a command can be. I’ll definitely try different A/B tests around this topic in the coming future and report back on my findings.

Image from Wikipedia, created by Patrick J. Lynch.

Planning Is Guessing

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Unless you’re a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.

So true. Excerpt from the excellent book Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37signals, makers of Basecamp and Highrise among other applications. You should read it.

Incredible: Apple’s Market Share Compared To Profits Share

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 01:00:00 GMT

Apple sold 2.8% of all mobile handsets worldwide, but rakes in a whopping 39% of the profits.

Let me say that one more time. Sold 2.8% of the market, gets 39% of the profits. And this includes all phones worldwide, not just smartphones. Apple sold 17 million handsets during the first half of 2010. Nokia, LG and Samsung, combined, sold 400 million. Their profits, again, combined, are lower than Apple’s.

Look at the graph below to get a better picture at how this is split up:

Via The Mac Observer.

A Perfect Example Of How Social Media Can Work For All Involved

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, I watched a short 6-minute-long TED talk from Margaret Stewart, YouTube’s head of user experience, where she talked about how YouTube thinks about copyright.

The talk shows how a viral YouTube video called JK Wedding Entrance Dance (which is excellent btw! It always makes me smile.) generated massive new revenue for Sony Music and Chris Brown. The creators of the video also received enormous attention and collected 26 000 dollars to help fight domestic violence. The huge youtube-hit was also parodied in an episode of NBC’s The Office.

This truly is a great example of how the creators, the content owner, the artist and the general public (from the joy and money for fighting domestic violence) can all benefit, together, from the same video.

Amazing Facts About Facebook And Breakups

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered when people break up? Look at the graph below.

I watched a TED talk the other day from David McCandless called “The beauty of data visualizations“. It was quite amazing and included lots of different datasets. One of them was about Facebook and breakups. David and his team scanned over 10 000 status-updates and set out to learn more about when people broke up. This is what they learned:

A big peak right before Spring Break
Most breakups are announced on Mondays
People like to start the summer being single
A big peak right before Christmas
The lowest day throughout the whole year is Christmas Day (thank God)

I never stop being amazed about how much Facebook can actually teach us about human behavior. When everything is being digitalized and searchable, some really interesting stuff appears.

You should watch the whole presentation on YouTube. Also, did you know that the volcano outbreak on Iceland was the first ever carbon neutral volcano? You’ll understand why in the video.

I do all my reading on an iPad

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

My number one killer-app for the iPad is hands down, the excellent Instapaper by Marco Arment.

I skim a lot of articles, and soon as they are interesting and of a certain length, I hit the Instapaper extension, Instachrome, that I use in Google Chrome. The whole article is then saved to Instapaper for iPad, stripped down to a text-and-images view, free of all the horrible advertisements and other badly designed elements that destroy the reading experience on a lot of websites. It all syncs seamlessy with an iPhone application as well.

Anyway, I think the iPad is by far the best reading device ever, so I’ve taken the time to really optimize this site for viewing with an iPad. It’s probably the best way to read the articles I post. While I was at it, I also optimized it for the iPhone.

Please send me an email or a message on twitter if you find any bugs.

New website and focus on writing

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I really want to become a better writer.

I want to write great, insightful articles. I want to comment on things that interest me, like amazing user interfaces, beautifully crafted experiences, new technology, business, web applications, Apple Inc and many others. I love to create, and to learn new amazingly cool stuff. I love details and I really enjoy people which go to great length about small topics. I appreciate the amazing work others do, and I hope to showcase lots of what people create and write.

I also want to share knowledge. Knowledge that I acquire from my own experiences creating two web applications, Timely (with a friend) and Coact (via my current employer), and knowledge that I acquire from other people.

This wont be a typical blog, it will probably fit somewhere between Twitter and a traditional blog. I like to look at it as a stream of things I enjoy.

I’ve removed everything from the previous site, including my portfolio and contact-page. I plan to add these things later on in time, but right now I want a site with only one goal; extremely satisfying to read. I think I’ve come pretty close. Smaller things like search, archive, etc will be added as I move forward. Comments are also disabled, but you’re welcome to send them to my twitter-account or via email.

Thanks for listening.