Gelform builds web apps

I’m a big productivity nerd. Check out my latest project Timerdoro, the ultimate timer for all productivity hacks. I spend more time than I should looking at my daily processes and figuring out how to optimize them.

My best friend is aggregation. iTunes aggregates my podcasts. Google Reader brings all my blogs into one place. HootSuite helps me manage 6 Twitter accounts form one place.

But then I started getting comments from my favorite bloggers and podcasters, “You never comment!”.

I realized that my efficiency had moved me a degree away from the source. Aggregators are great for consuming, but make interaction counter-intuitive. So I stopped commenting, leaving feedback, being involved, and I was getting less out of my reading. Without comments, and even a sense that people writing or talking on the web is a conversation, I didn’t absorb as much!

Now I make the effort to click back to the more popular blogs I follow. And I try to visit the pages of the podcasts I love. I’ve come full circle. It’s more important to me to be involved.

This little rant come from chatting with a guy who I met, who was nervous about talking to the promoter at a club night.

There are always people above you and below you. There’s always someone just starting out – the new hire down the hall, your cousin that just graduated from college and would be happy with a free internship, your neighbor’s kid who’s just learning how to ride a bike. But there’s always the old programmer in the basement, the seasoned manager everyone wants to work for, or the guy who’s been here for six months assigned to teach you the ropes on your first day.

In networking, you want to help everyone. That’s how you become valuable. Our first instinct is that we have nothing to offer the people we look up to. Not true! Skill sets are as different as experience. Listen, be humble, but don’t be afraid to contribute. If you’re sincere, you can always help.

A great trick to tighten up your designs is to reduce the contrast between your colors. Bleed them a bit.

If you have black text on a white background, make it a dark grey – #333 instead of #000. If your background is a light blue and your text is black, make your text dark grey and add a little blue to it – #334 instead of #000.

Same goes for blocks of color. blend your colors slightly, and you’ll find your site feels a little softer, and more holistic.