Tracy Osborn at Limedaring.com

Contagion Health

Tracy Osborn — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:05:28 +0000

Just launched the new mini-site for Andrey’s company, Contagion Health. I worked with him and his cofounder Jen to build a site to feature the applications they are building and showcase the company as young, fun, and dynamic.

We ended up redesigning the logo as well, using Aller with a custom glyph. Site designed and built by myself in HTML and CSS.

Hacking Your Week: The 28 Hour Day

Tracy Osborn — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:12:59 +0000

This last New Years, Andrey and I decided to try out an experiment and switched to 28 hour days: 19 hours awake, 9 hours of sleep. It turned out more difficult and more interesting than I would have anticipated, and wanted to do a quick write-up for anyone else who was willing to try it out. Andrey also wrote an introductory post at his blog.

Tips:

Most obvious: Make sure you have an entire free week to devote to this project. I would not recommend this if you have a 9-5 day job, since during half the week you’ll be sleeping.
Go for the 19/9 approach, instead of the 20/8. Having an extra four hours a day can actually be extremely tiring, and 9 hours of sleep will help you recuperate a little bit better.
- Make sure that you go to bed and get up at your scheduled times, regardless on how sleepy or awake you feel.
Plan it on a week that takes advantage of the days you’ll be awake at night. Andrey and I managed to make New Years Eve the day we wake at 8pm, so we were able to run around San Francisco all night feeling rested, grab “dinner” at 8am right when my favorite breakfast spot opened, and then crashed at 1pm.
- Sidenote: Lack of sleep/odd hours can make you cranky, and it’s really odd to be cranky after waking up and it’s 8pm. Make sure your “mornings” are restful and not stressy.
You might or might not be able to get by without naps. Yeah, an extra 4 hours of wakefulness might not seem like much, but halfway through the week it was really hard to stay awake (and the last thing you want to do is go to bed early). Don’t be afraid of a random 30 minute nap midway through the day.
Do it with someone - a significant other or a friend. It’s more fun to be running around at night with someone and sharing your experiences.
- That said, if you have a week you need a lot of quiet time to get stuff done, sometimes working during the night can be very productive. Andrey did this on his first time.

One week of 28 hour days is a really great way to shake up your routine and try something new. I’d highly recommend it if you have the time.

Building beautiful business cards

Tracy Osborn — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:02:11 +0000

Five ways to make your first impression stand out.

Cards from Moo.com are a great place to start to get nicely printed cards on thick, professional stock. You can order them with your information printed, but blank cards are a great jumping off point to create interesting and handmade cards that make a better impression.

Decorate the edges

Moo cards don’t come with corner rounding, but it’s easy to add rounded corners using a rounded corner scrapbooking punch.

Alternatively add some interest to the edges by using scrapbooking edging scissors, which range from traditional deckle edge to more crazy examples.

Create a stamp

You can also order your business cards completely blank and use a custom stamp to stamp your information on your card. A lot more visually interesting than traditional printing, stamping will create irregularities between each stamped business card so each are unique.

Handwriting

Personally, I love seeing someone’s actual handwriting. Especially on an item as personal as the business card, having something in your handwriting (whether it is your signature, printing your name, etc) shows that you spent time on your cards to make them unique and interesting.

An obvious caveat is if your handwriting is particularly bad, then I would recommend using your handwriting only for your signature. But handwritten elements combined with a classy and professional business card can really create an impact.

Pilot Hi-Tec-C - My favorite pens
Great example of a handwritten card
My former business cards with my handwritten name.

Use fun cutouts

Die cutting your card professionally can cost a lot, but can be easily replicated using the appropriate scrapbooking punches. Hundreds of punches exist, and with a little effort, you can create a cheap “die cut” card.

Additionally, you have have a punch created with your logo without the cost of professional die-cutting.

Create a wrap

I love adding texture to a traditional flat card, and an easy way to create this is adding an additional paper wrap around the card. Have your information printed on the second piece of paper, cut to size (using an X-ACTO knife and a ruler, not scissors, for greater accuracy), sprayed with adhesive (such as spray mount), and mount on your blank business card.

My own business cards with wraps

My personal business cards are the half size Moo cards, printed with a random image, with a paper wrap, decorative edge, and a handwritten signature. It’s not something that could have been professionally ordered cheaply, and leaves a great impression.

Have interesting and business cards? Send them to me and I’ll add them to the post.

You should follow me on twitter here.

Can’t cancel TiVo? Neither can I

Tracy Osborn — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:35:58 +0000

I recently moved to a house with satellite, rendering my TiVo useless. Being that I don’t watch much television anyways, I elected to cancel TiVo, especially since I haven’t used it in about a year ($129 down the drain).

The web is rife with people complaining that it’s impossible to cancel TiVo. Apprehensively, I called TiVo (since their website says that online chat exists, but isn’t available right now).

Call #1:

Called, hit the automated system, chose “Cancel service”. Got message, “I’m sorry, due to call volume, all our technicians are busy. Please use our website or call back later” (essentially). Call was dropped.

Call #2:

Called, hit the automated system, chose “Change account details”. Put on hold. Talked with nice rep, who was surprisingly okay with me canceling my service. Told me he’d transfer me to the advanced call center something-or-another to cancel. Which led me straight into the black hole of “We’re too busy, call back later.” Call was dropped.

Call #3:

Called, hit the automated system, chose “Change account details”. Put on hold. Reached nice rep #2. Explained that I want to cancel my account -now-, didn’t appreciate my call being dropped. Assured me this was the first time he’s heard of this, said he still has to transfer me, and they’re “not that busy, so I don’t think they’re too busy”. I asked if I could just be put on hold, instead of calling back later and he said that that shouldn’t happen. And back to black hole of dropped call.

This leads me to believe that most people, upon reaching that black hole, give up and then forget to cancel. I anticipated TiVo trying to talk me out of canceling, but practically disconnecting the cancellation line seems rather ridiculous.

Annoyed.

StacyPlease

Tracy Osborn — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:13:00 +0000

I attended Startup Weekend Bay Area and worked on a team to create StacyPlease, a service that pings you with reminders with no set up or sign up involved.

We ran into a few problems (namely, the lack of a back-end developer that could actually build the service), but we managed to launch a splash page and begin hacking the service together by the end of the weekend.

Design of the splash page and interior concepts by yours truly, with input and help by my teammates.

Concept, design, and implementation all by yours truly. :)

Remilon.com

Tracy Osborn — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:47:13 +0000

Recently redesigned and rebuilt Remilon’s website, the company where I currently work. We’d outgrown the previous corporate website (which I had designed and developed in the past as well), and we focused on moving to a classy and professional presence combined with hints of fun, curious, and new.

Concept, design, and implementation all by yours truly. :)

Tweography

Tracy Osborn — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:08:40 +0000

Tweography was a quick evening project between @shazow and myself for Hacker Dojo’s Reddit-a-thon (build a project that could be released on Reddit).

Tweography uses the added geolocation feature on Twitter, and shows on map where you’ve been tweeting. Eventually, we’ll add support to check friend’s tweet locations as well.

Concept is @shazow’s and my own, back end development and Javascript by @shazow and front-end development and design by myself..

Where in the world is Jeremy

Tracy Osborn — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:52:45 +0000

Awhile ago I worked with my friend Jeremy to build a webpage to support a product he was building (codenamed “Cheeselog”).

Concept is Jeremy’s, design and HTML/CSS work my own (with some Javascript help from Jeremy).

Don’t change your username on Twitter

Tracy Osborn — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:19:36 +0000

Your tweets not showing up in the Twitter search results?

It might not be due to spamming, but due to a broken “feature”.

Twitter allows you to change your user name to anything else (as long as it isn’t taken). I took advantage of this quite a few months ago to switch from my previous internet handle of @vadavia to my newer and friendlier @limedaring.

Yesterday, I noticed (and subsequently whined) that my user name was not showing up in search. I eventually managed to snag someone who works at Twitter who explained that it was possibly due to a bug when I changed user names. When I asked how to be notified when they’ve fixed this, she said Twitter will announce when they’ve fixed the bug. Seems like it’s not a very big priority to them.

I remembered that Jina Bolton changed her user name awhile back from @sushimonster to @jina, and lo and behold, the same problem.

So, first: if you enjoy using features like hashtags and would like to show up in the Twitter search results, resist changing your user name until Twitter fixes this bug.

Have you already changed your name, and are subsequently annoyed that you’ve been dropped from their results? Since I’ve changed my user name more than six months ago (so the bug probably has occurred since then), I really can’t see Twitter deciding to fix this any faster unless more people are annoyed. You should make a fuss and see if Twitter will put a higher priority on fixing this bug: Submit a help request; bug Twitter employees; write a blog post.

Please Twitter, I want to participate in the conversations that your platform creates and encourages.

Banned from Twitter Search

Tracy Osborn — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:30:54 +0000

Dear Twitter, you’re making me sadface. :(

I noticed a some weeks ago that I wouldn’t show up in the Twitter search results when searching for conversations that would include me, and chalked this up to a Twitter “feature” filtering me out. Then, I attended An Event Apart San Francisco, and was quite active on Twitter once I noticed the #aeasf09 hashtag. I wanted to join the conversation of people sharing funny quotes and insights about the conference, and hopefully make a few new friends in the process.

Alas, again I wasn’t showing up when I searched for the hashtag, even if I just tweeted something relevant to the conference. I initially thought, like before, Twitter was filtering me out until I realized I wasn’t signed in (was using Brizzly). And this led me to this post, which indicates I’m not alone.

Somehow, Twitter feels I am not worthy of being searchable and not relevant enough to be added to the general conversation. Did I inadvertently spam? I checked my feed and I couldn’t find anything to indicate this; I have a healthy number of followers, I don’t “stalk” many people, I participate in conversations with friends and strangers, and try to post a mix of personal insights as well as interesting links to things around the web. During the conference, I was having problems with Brizzly posting multiple times due to the poor wifi at the conference, but I deleted the duplicates as soon as I realized (plus, as I mentioned, this has been going on for months).

What do I do? Twitter’s help isn’t actually very helpful (Translation: “Oh, we’ll fix it soon, don’t bother us personally”). I’ve pinged @twitter but kind of expecting the same response. So maybe I’ll make enough fuss and maybe get re-included into the search.

Twitter, I want to be a part of the conversation, but I’m really feeling like a second-class citizen right now.

Edit: I was reminded by a friend that quite a few months ago I switched my username from @vadavia to @limedaring. Did I get penalized for that? Maybe.

Edit x2: I was able to ping @delbius who works at Twitter and responded surprisingly quickly:

@limedaring It may be a bug due to namechange; we’re working on fixing that and it’s a ticketed thing for engineers.

I admit I’m a little suspicious since they might have seen the first edit and said, “Oh, that’s why” without actually checking my account, but hopefully Twitter can fix this ASAP. I changed my name about 6-8mo’s ago through, so I don’t have much confidence in a speedy resolution. :(

New blog post about this development: Don’t change your user name on Twitter.