My mom always said it’s easier to be happy than to be angry. When you’re upset, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Happiness seems miles away, until you realize how much energy you’re spending being grumpy.

Similarly, it takes a lot of effort to penny-pinch and it’s pretty easy to be generous. The key is to find the stuff that doesn’t cost much more, but has a very positive effect.

• Noah spent today at a coffee shop. He witnessed enough “accidental” fancy drinks given away to realize it was instead a brilliant marketing plan.
• Seth has a pet peeve with small coins. When sales tax brings the price of something just above a dollar amount, we’re forced to dig into our pockets or get a heap of change back. His marketing advice: “Don’t worry about the nickel!”
• Jory received free donut holes while waiting in line at a restaurant. Later, she bought some ice cream, but was disappointed that there weren’t more sprinkles available.
• Sometimes I get some food from the deli at my local supermarket. There’s one lady who consistently gives a little bit extra. She spoons in the amount I request, weighs it, then adds another spoonful before closing the lid.

The truth is that it doesn’t cost these companies much more, nor does it take more effort. They are making much happier customers for a very small price.

My goal is to find a way to move these lessons to the web. Giving more should be even cheaper when all goods are virtual. How do we find the free fancy drinks, the nickels, the donuts, the sprinkles, and the extra scoop?

When you find one, implement it. Whatever it takes to do it will be made up in spades by how much people appreciate it.

For as long as I’ve used Facebook (last fall sometime), it has included a status feature. Like a Twitter message, it tells my friends what I’m up to. To enter a new one, I simply finish the sentence, “I am…” Then my friends see my status as, “Adam is…”

I have often found it strange that Facebook chose to tempt grammatical issues by switching from “am” to “is.” Granted, it’s a rare problem, but why be so tricky?

They subconsciously got the message from me, because they’ve made a change.

When changing status, I now see what other people will see. And that makes sense! Facebook stopped being tricky and has ended up with a feature that is never confusing.

A few more thoughts on simplicity from Founders at Work.

Evan Williams, talking about Blogger, but he could just as well be talking about his latest project:

“What we built wasn’t that amazing. It was the idea of putting a couple of things together and being able to establish a lead by doing something really, really simple. How far you can get on a simple idea is amazing. I have a tendency to add more and more–the ideas always get too big to implement before they even get off the ground. Simplicity is powerful.”

Joshua Schachter on del.icio.us, a social bookmarking tool I like:

“Reduce. Do as little as possible to get what you have to get done. Do less of it; get it done. If you’ve got two things that you want to put together, take away until they go together. Don’t add another thing. Because you can understand it better, you can analyze it more cleanly.”

The book also features Blake Ross, who had similar thoughts about Firefox’s success.

If ever there was a time to not talk about the Internet, this is it. The tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday has brought the nation together. More importantly, it brought a campus of 30,000 students together.

That’s why I think this might be the best time to talk about the Internet. And social design. And emulating real life.

These aren’t silly college students. The real life here is not frat parties and keg stands. Maybe that’s what Facebook is to us non-college students most of the time, but not now for Virginia Tech (FB account required).

Students are finding solidarity online. In this case, it’s Facebook, because the site has made it easy. They’re communicating, connecting, and mourning, just like they should after a tragedy.

This makes me proud of the Internet.

Have you recently ventured into your browser settings and disabled Javascript? It can be an enlightening experience, especially if your sites make heavy use of client-side interactions. About 18 months ago, I suggested degradable Javascript. It wasn’t a new idea, but it really seemed like the great divide between anti-JS and pro-JS camps was growing.

I was surprised to see that Google Maps, the supreme example of required Javascript, has a no-frills version. It’s very Web 1.0, but it works.

Google Maps without Javascript is not innovative, but it is still very usable. Impressive. Respectable. Respectful.

I doubt degradable Javascript like this will become the norm. Heck, in the last year I have written a lot of Javascript, but haven’t worried much about the disablers. Yet I still completely agree with what I wrote.

It turns out that it’s a lot of work to do it right. You first have to build a boring version of your app (which as my friend Sean explains, is inherently less than). Then you add frills. And now whenever you want to fix a bug or change a feature, you have to make sure everything still works in both versions.

That sounds not simple for the developer. Yet, this is a time to ask, simpler for whom? Because when done right, like the GMaps team has, the solution is very elegant for all users.