Simplicity Rules

Adam DuVander on keeping it simple

Wi-Fi in Portland growing

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Traffic on WifiPDX
My Free Portland WiFi site’s traffic has exploded since I wrote about knowing the full story. Traffic has grown an average of 20% per month.

And in that time, the total number of free hotspots has increased almost two-fold. This is a combination of more people adding WiFi to their businesses, as well as the greater reach of WifiPDX enticing people to add their spot.

One could also credit Elliot’s design.

Regardless of why it’s hopping, I’m naturally happy. WifiPDX started as a print publication, and it will return to that initial vision in some format. There is a lot of power to locally-oriented websites, as well as offline-online combinations. More to come, I’m sure.

Chipotle DSL is a hit with me

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Chipotle is a fast-ish food mexican restaurant. There is one right outside my office building.

Chipotle is right out my office window

Recently I discovered that Chipotle’s Web site will let me order online through their Don’t Stand in Line feature.

Chipotle confirmation

Usually I put the order in fifteen minutes ahead of time or so. When I arrive at the restaurant to pick up my burrito, I walk past a line that usually wraps around the store. The worker at the register grabs my pre-made order and takes my money.

Chipotle to go bad

Chipotle DSL has worked well for me. The employees are still a little confused by it, which makes me think there aren’t a whole lot of people taking advantage of it.

A friend and I had an idea over two years ago to help Portland restaurants provide this service to its customers. I still think that’s a great idea (but you know what I think of ideas), especially with a company like Chipotle helping people be more comfortable with it.

Don’t do what you don’t love

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Sometimes in fits of over-analysis, I decide to try to apply lessons learned one place to something I don’t care about. This has yet to really work.

Paul Graham says Do What You Love. Below are a couple examples where I didn’t follow that advice.

Fantasy Football

Before last Sunday’s Super Bowl, I hadn’t watched a football game in two years. Yet, I gave fantasy football a shot last season. My thought was to see if I could use my statistical analysis skills I picked up from fantasy baseball. It’s just numbers, right?

I quickly lost interest and sank to the bottom of the league.

Replica Sword

Armor and Swords Sure, giant medieval swords look cool, but I’m not really the Ren-Faire type. However, I wanted to test another affiliate program (like my Amazon/Adwords experiment). I signed up, grabbed the datafeed, and made a cool “which sword is more badass” game. Then I started sending traffic to it.

What a failure. People came, but they didn’t buy. Not a single user even clicked. The site was awful and I didn’t even dare enough to make it better. Luckily, I only blew about $50 (plus time) on this experiment.

Conclusion

Succeeding at something I’m not interested in is hard. It’s a huge barrier to get past and there are so many other ideas out there. Granted, playing a fantasy sport I enjoy could still land me at the bottom of the standings. And I could easily blow fifty bucks on keywords I like more than “medieval sword.” At least it would have been fun.

The Ripple Effect

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On a long drive recently, I listened to Gene Wilder’s autobiography, Kiss Me Like A Stranger. He bounced around from topic to topic in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. As part of this, he pointed out some of the strange connections that set his life in a certain direction.

If I hadn’t been miscast “in Mother Courage, I wouldn’t have met Anne Bancroft. If I hadn’t met Anne Bancroft, I wouldn’t have met Mel Brooks. If I hadn’t met Mel Brooks, I would probably be a patient in some neuropsychiatric hospital today, looking through the bars of a physical therapy window as I made wallets.”

Steve Harper calls this The Ripple Effect. And he’s looking for your Ripple stories.

When Pets.com had Aeron chairs, Amazon had door desks

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It might be unfair and cliche to poke fun at Pets.com. Feel free to substitute your own extravagant Bubble company. While most spent and spent on fancy office equipment, Superbowl ads, and the like, Amazon was flying by relatively on the cheap.

Greg Linden has started a new feature on his site where he shares stories of the early days at Amazon (1997). Today, he brings us the story of the door desks, furniture that probably is cheaper than a FedEx desk.

Yet Amazon became a poster child of the Web and its new lifestyle. Amazon’s founder was Time’s person of the year. Most importantly, Amazon made it through the tech crash. The door desk is a symbol of the frugality it took to stay in business. It shows that even big ideas can be bootstrapped.

Greg mentions an earthquake in Seattle in 2001. He and his co-workers were happy to have heavy doors under which to duck and cover. I’m also happy they had their makeshift furniture. The frugality probably saved Amazon before the earthquake took its shot. The web is better with Amazon around.