Danny Halarewich

What entrepreneurship means to me... thus far

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:11:04 -0700

Getting Techcrunched. Seeing your iPhone app featured. Wearing hoodies to business meetings with people that cant wait to write you a cheque for $1MM. Waking up whenever you want. Being your own boss. Scaling to 1 million users. Scaling to 10 million users. In a week.

Those are just a handful of the romantic misconceptions associated with entrepreneurship. The reality is much less sexy, yet so much more rewarding than that.

Building a business from nothing can be painfully hard. It can be a very lonely endeavor. It is usually exhausting. It can rob you of work/life balance if you’re not careful. It can make you wonder if it’s all worth it.

But despite all of those things, I don’t think I could do anything else. I honestly could not see myself ever being a cog in someone else’s machine again.

To me, It’s worth it every time I hear our team laugh and celebrate together, all being strangers to one another just a couple of months previous. It’s worth it when I see something much bigger than myself emerge out of nothing but a vision to change a small part of the world just a little bit.

It’s so worth it every time I hear how our product helped a customer enjoy their day a little more, maybe even putting a smile on their face.

But what really inspires me is the rare and beautiful experience to go up against overwhelming odds, and constantly be winning little battles each and every day regardless of the outcome.

This day, 6 years ago I incorporated my business, on an aging...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:27:18 -0700

This day, 6 years ago I incorporated my business, on an aging computer while still living with my mom (I was 19). (Taken with Instagram at LemonStand)

Taken with iPhone from Alcatraz (Taken with Instagram at...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:22:10 -0700

Taken with iPhone from Alcatraz (Taken with Instagram at Alcatraz)

View from Mozilla’s offices (Taken with Instagram)

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:21:22 -0700

View from Mozilla’s offices (Taken with Instagram)

Coming in to SF for C100’s 48Hrs in the Valley. (Taken...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:20:41 -0700

Coming in to SF for C100’s 48Hrs in the Valley. (Taken with Instagram)

Ferry ridin

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:56:17 -0700

Ferry ridin:

(Taken with http://cinemagr.am)

How I discover new music, then play the hell out of it

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:31:00 -0800

I have a pretty good music system now. A while back I discovered Last.fm and immediately fell in love with its discovery engine.

How it works

Type in an artist or song that you like, and Last.fm will play songs that the community at large has deemed similar. It does this by tags. You’re encouraged to tag songs with genres and similar artists. And it works remarkably well.

I discover new music that I think is awesome almost every day. And every once in a while I find a song that makes me stop in my tracks, listen intently and just get immersed in it.

But, then I usually want to listen to more of the artist that made the song that just got me all excited. Unfortunately, Last.fm is not the place to do that.

You see, Last.fm licenses its music similar to a how a radio station would (at least it’s how I understand it) and so you cannot listen to any specific song you want on demand (only a short preview), because that would be more similar to buying a CD or purchasing a song from iTunes.

They are essentially creating a radio station on demand for you, based on your search criteria (song, artist or genre).

So… that’s kind of a bummer. Downloading MP3’s is tedius. And expensive. More often than not I get bored of a song/artist after I obsess over their tracks for a few weeks to a month or two.

Enter Rdio.

What is Rdio

Oddly enough, Rdio is less like a radio station than Last.fm is. Rdio can be compared to Spotify. But Rdio works in Canada while Spotify doesn’t. And from what I have seen, I like Rdio better.

How it works: Find music you like and listen to it. That’s it. They have a pretty huge catalog of albums for you to listen to all you want. You can even sync songs to your iPhone or iPad, so you can listen to them later while offline.

Rdio does have a sort of recommendation engine built in as well, but for me it doesn’t work nearly as well as Last.fm in terms of usability and the tracks it selects.

Price

Last.fm is $3/month and Rdio is $10/month for unlimited web and mobile streaming + sync (listen offline). For me, $13/month for the ability to discover new music and listen to almost anything I want, when I want is well worth it.

Little rant

These are the types of services that consumers want. I find it incredibly pathetic that record labels would rather keep trying to sell their plastic and lobbying to pass legislation to stifle innovation, than just change their model and offer something that consumers want and would willingly pay for.

Path is a beautiful iPhone app.

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:58:55 -0800

Path is a beautiful iPhone app.

Empathetic Design

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:22:10 -0700

I come across people making assumptions and decisions every day that are based solely on their personal perspective.

In the design and interactive industry, this is a major problem.

Some people are really good at designing things for themselves, or people of a similar perspective. This is great, if you make up the major and only audience for whom you are designing for.

When I say design, I mean anything that someone else interacts with: website copy, API, UI, information architecture, etc.

It’s an easy mistake to make. We naturally want to create things that resonate with ourselves. It’s enjoyable and self gratifying. But, it’s very easy to forget who you are audience is composed of; what their preferences, limitations, skills and perceptions are.

It’s also very easy to justify your decisions by making a sweeping assumption that you are part of the audience, or that if you have a preference, certainly the rest of the world must!

Following trends

Some like to design everything with a specific style. This is not very affective, and hardly good “design” even if it looks good aesthetically.

Do you really need to give a retro-worn look to that website you did for your trucking company client, because that’s your style?

Should you create a minimalistic design for a children’s daycare service, because it resonates with you personally?

Talent

A skilled and talented designer is versatile. They can empathize with their target audience and understand what makes sense for them. They deploy the aesthetic and functionality design that resonates with their audience, and not necessarily them on a personal level.

I believe naturally talented designers have the ability to go outside of themselves, and empathize with their audience. Walk in their audiences shoes. And if they deploy methods and tools like proper research, personas and scenario testing they can create things that are a joy to use and look at, for their intended audience.

"1140 is the new 960"

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:27:24 -0700

“1140 is the new 960”

- Me

Super 8

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:45:37 -0700

Just got back from watching Super 8 at the local theatre.

I didn’t have many expectations going in. Didn’t read much about it. Just saw a few previews while seeing other films in the last few months. Looked to have some sci-fi elements, so I figured I would check it out.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Goonies meets ET meets District 9?

The film focused on a group of 5 boys that were working on their own amateur film project. Joe was dealing with some problems that would be tough for anyone, especially a boy, and his father wasn’t much of a crutch. He mostly relied on his group of buddies to keep him occupied.

The group takes you through a lot of adventure, and there’s some good humor sprinkled throughout as well. A little pre-teen / teen love (nothing corny) and friendship trials that they all go through.

The sci-fi aspects were quite suppressed. If you’re looking for deep insights into the mechanics or back story of a science fiction storyline, you won’t find it here. But, that’s OK. The film was entertaining, human, fun and serious all at the same time.

Overall, it’s a great film. I liked the characters and was able to relate to most of them, the acting was well done, CG was good and the cinematography was done well and perfectly captured the time era (late 70’s) it was based in.

Check it out!

Heading south before I'll be too busy to

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:09:59 -0700

This Friday morning my wife and two friends of ours will be heading down to the Yucatan Peninsula area of Mexico. Going to enjoy the sun and find a little clarity before diving back into the busy time of work.

At LemonStand we just brought on another enthusiastic soul and some very exciting things are bubbling to the top of our internal roadmap. More exciting is the fact that our people power is growing and we’re able to push forward faster than ever.

We’ll be moving into a new office on May 1st too. It’s only a block away, but it’ll give us the room to bring on a handful more ninjas of various kinds in the next year.

StackLayout - A flexible width, component based CSS layout system

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:26:57 -0700

StackLayout - A flexible width, component based CSS layout system:

Really liking the concept behind this CSS grid system. It’s fluid and adaptive. Good stuff.

jQuery File Upload Demo

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:23:40 -0700

jQuery File Upload Demo:

Really like this jQuery file upload plug-in. Works great. Has some cool queueing features too.

Humans TXT: We Are People, Not Machines.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:25:30 -0800

Humans TXT: We Are People, Not Machines.:

What is humans.txt?

It’s an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. It’s a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website.

We're Giving Away $8738 Worth of Prizes

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:15:42 -0800

Yesterday, we launched the LemonStand Giveaway. It’s in celebration of having been released for 1-year (since Alpha).

A bunch of great companies came on board to sponsor prizes. Companies like Typekit, Media Temple, Site5, MailChimp, Freshbooks and more.

We also had a bunch of great folks create custom themes for the giveaway. 3 different themes in fact.

The top 3 prizes consist of a complete package for starting an online store: LemonStand license, hosting package & custom theme.

Launching the giveaway on Friday made for a great day. But next time, I think we’ll do it on a Monday or Tuesday and compare results.

Apple intros MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt, quad Core i7 | Electronista

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:03:16 -0800

Apple intros MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt, quad Core i7 | Electronista:

Was waiting for this upgrade. Very nice.

My early 2008 MB Pro has been terrific. It’s powered on a really big chunk of the day, and I haul it from home to office 5 days a week. Great little workhorse that looks pretty as well.

Filtered, easier-to-use HTML5 spec

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:49:45 -0800

Filtered, easier-to-use HTML5 spec:

The focus of this specification is readability and ease of access. Unlike the full HTML specification, this “web developer edition” removes information that only browser vendors need know.

Snowing!

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:59:35 -0800

Snowing!

sunsurfer: Turquoise Sea, The Maldives photo via baylorjordan

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:09:26 -0800

sunsurfer:

Turquoise Sea, The Maldives

photo via baylorjordan