Yeah, contacts is lacking for sure. We use the 37signals products, so we track shared contacts in Highrise (or Basecamp for project-specific contacts). It's not ideal right now, but with Google we've come to expect the products to evolve -- so, I expect they'll get around to improving it. For us, it's not a critical need for our business right now.

I used to resist just like you, but over the past few weeks we've switched the last remaining PC users (including me) at Viget. It's been a smooth transition in part because for the last year we've been moving as much as possible to Google Apps (gmail, calendar, docs, etc.). With Chrome (which I've been hooked on for a long time) all these apps are very consistent.

It also helped that I broke my Outlook habit about 6 months ago. I don't like the browser experience of gmail & calendar better, but both work fine and ultimately the benefits of having both in a browser has been worth the trade-offs.

Key for the transition is to surround yourself with Mac power users for a couple weeks if you can. We've been running "microclasses" at the office to share all the kind of tips you're getting from this post. Hopefully you'll stick with it. My world seems much more orderly with my MBP next to my iPad and iPhone.

Cool video, Brad. Thanks.

I agree with Jesse that everything will be tracked. I've discussed this in the past -- that while the concept of everything we do being recorded (online and off) is scary, the benefits of agreeing to participate in this sort of system will be significant enough that people volunteer (in part because smart people will work on safeguards to minimize the scary-factor). Whether it's rewards and incentives or just a highly personalized and enhanced software experience, the people who opt in to the data sharing agreement will benefit greatly (as will the businesses that will gladly fund the whole thing).

I disagree with him about the game premise, though. I don't think it'll be a big massive points system that people view as a bunch of individual games. I'm a competitive guy, but I just don't think that's the theme that will stick long-term. I think it'll be more pervasive and less "in your face" day-to-day. I use apps like RunKeeper and Gowalla not for the "game" aspect of them, but because I feel like I benefit from the tracking of data. I'm confident that over time, the way I interact with businesses will be enhanced because of products like Gowalla (for example).

I guess if you consider things like rewards points for a credit card to be a game, he could be on the right track. I do think that behaviors will change significantly (and generally for the better) as behaviors are increasingly tracked (they already are, opt-in or not), but the idea of throwing out high fives just for a couple of extra rewards points .... I don't see it.

Brad -- thanks for sharing this. Having 3 young kids I find my schedule largely unpredictable day-to-day (mostly in a good way), but I like the longer-term cycles.

I'd be curious to hear more about how you and your Foundry partners do performance reviews of each other. Any chance you can share some details?

Congrats on the relaunch -- looks good. Great to see you guys doing well.

Very cool, guys ... Congrats!

Thanks, Andrew. Great catching up with you in Boulder. As expected, I had a blast getting to know the new teams this year. I put up a post on the Viget Blog about our talk - http://www.viget.com/blog/user-experience-talk-at...

Thanks for sharing this, Brad. I was lucky enough to convince my dad to start Viget with us back in 1999 -- as one of our lead developers -- even as he continued his "real" career as an airline pilot. We were both early-birds, and I'd often spend hours talking to him about the clients & company before anyone else even got into the office. Being able to work with him closely every day, in retrospect, really changed our relationship and gave me a chance to get to know him in ways I never would have otherwise.

We lost him very suddenly in 2003, and I was devastated, but I'll always cherish those years working with him -- I'd feel awfully disconnected from him without them. Now that I have kids, you can bet I spend those hours everyday connecting with them. My 3 year-old daughter, in fact, just got her first "computer" and is insisting that she comes into the office tomorrow for "a meeting." Sounds great to me!

Good thoughts, Mitchell, thanks. This is why leveraging some form of Agile is the only way to develop software in my book. Releasing early and often allows you to find mistakes (or mini-failures) and fix them quickly.

I couldn't agree more, Brad. This pisses me off to no end. Not only is it impossible to get into the product, but it's insanely wasteful. I'm sure they do it because it's cheap and keeps the product pristine even under tough transport circumstances, and studies have no doubt shown that consumers are more likely to buy "perfect" merchandise. It's gone too far, though. What we need is a good groundswell of support from some influential bloggers who demand that products be packaged differently -- and a movement of consumers to commit to not buy products packaged that way ...