ireddit developers 280north get fastcompany shoutout

Yes, this has been sitting in my drafts folder for too long. Anyway, check out this slideshow to learn how to make iPhone apps that don't suck and become the next iPhone app millionaire we keep reading about.

Chris Dannen wrote it, who also happens to be the dude who prompted our own iPhone app (now without crashing bug!). Yep, this guy. We've been exchanging emails now and then -- consider all future good reddit ideas the work of Chris.

the 37 signals dilemma

There's been on ongoing open letter exchange between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction. GetSatisfaction allows anyone to create unofficial customer support communities (like UserVoice) that all both remind me of a much better implemented features.reddit (now defunct). 37Signals doesn't want to have one and feels it "misled our customers into thinking the Get Satisfaction site was an official place to get 37signals customer service and support."

At this point, Jason Fried is requesting that the GetSatisfaction team makes it much more obvious that this is not an official 37Signals site, he outlines a number of changes he'd like them to make.

But here's the dilemma: 37signals has long touted the strategy of saying no to feedback.
That's why you start with no. Every new feature request that comes to us — or from us — meets a no. We listen but don't act. The initial response is "not now." If a request for a feature keeps coming back, that's when we know it's time to take a deeper look. Then, and only then, do we start considering the feature for real.
Granted, Jason isn't in this case a user of GetSatisfaction, but hopefully he'll find this as amusing as I do. I just hope he doesn't expect GS to do anything anytime soon. Heh.

reddit alien spotted at uva's new cabell hall

Thanks to Erin for snapping these pictures from New Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia (where Steve and I did our 4 years). I'm pretty sure this is one stickering I had nothing to do with, so it was quite a nice surprise.

While it may not be the sharpest picture, I think there's no disputing what that is. It's a water fountain. And above it is a reddit sticker.

reddit sponsored links are the new black

All Things Digital just published a piece on reddit's sponsored links.

The results have made Condé “cautiously optimistic,” says Stinchcomb. You can measure that two ways: Click-through rates for the ads are running at about five percent, which is several times more than the industry average. And readers haven’t revolted.

In fact, we used the sponsored link with great success last week to point people to scifi.reddit for discussion on the final episode of BSG. There are some links we'd just like to put in front of as many redditors as possible (even though it's not actually 'sponsored' in this case) and this lets us denote that we're doing it.

All in all, we're pretty happy with it and the reddit community seems to have picked it up nicely (and, as the writer points out, haven't gone 1776 on us).