These posts were written by hillel.
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Five years ago this week I left an incredible job at a great company to co-found my own business with Jenny and Walter — Jackson Fish Market. Leaving the security of a big company and a job that most people would kill for was incredibly counter-intuitive. And building your own business is way way harder [...]
So many times, when designing a software user interface, it’s helpful to ask yourself if you would enjoy interacting with a human being who talked to you the way the software did. If the answer is “no” then you have more work to do. Inevitably, this exercise gets turned on its head when user experience [...]
There’s something about this trailer for GTA V that amazes me. It’s not that the graphics are higher resolution or more photo realistic. They’re not. I’ve seen new games recently that look much more realistic. Especially when it comes to the people. But the world illustrated in this trailer is amazing nonetheless. It just feels [...]
I have always considered myself a video game nerd. I grew up with an Atari 2600, an Atari 800, a Sega Genesis, a Dreamcast, a Playstation, and both Xboxes. I also played games on Macs, PCs, and even spent many hours of my youth playing games in actual arcades. Pretty typical for many guys my [...]
Recently I saw an article about a new startup called Small Demons. The premise was vague, but had something to do with the publishing industry. Being interested in publishing I signed up to be notified of their launch. Today I went to their website and was introduced to their premise of cataloging real world details [...]
Two years ago, we launched an online children’s book service called A Story Before Bed. The service lets parents, grandparents, teachers, authors, and even kids record videos of themselves reading a children’s book that can be played back over and over again. We’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing children’s book publishers who’ve [...]
Every year at the beginning of October Seattle sees the advent of one of the biggest Lego conventions in the country. And each year lego hobbyists (like me) start working months in advance on their Lego creations to display at the convention. Enormous spaceships, moon monorail layouts, entire cities, castles, sculptures and more fill every [...]
As you may know, Jackson Fish Market is a bit of a hybrid business. We’re a software startup with products like A Story Before Bed and Thrilled for You, but we also have a user experience consulting side that helps other companies make their software special. We’ve worked with dozens of companies and are proud [...]
There aren’t many things more enjoyable than the surprise learnings you get from shipping a piece of software and seeing how people actually use it. We created A Story Before Bed to connect families, but were surprised to see just how useful teachers and educators found the service for use in their classrooms. Imagine letting [...]
We’ll be talking to the makers of TinyTower about their unlicensed use of our images.
Jared Spool recently posted about “Why the Valley wants designers that can code.” Basically, he makes the good point that hiring managers at startups are always looking for ways to get more value for their dollar. And so based on that understanding he recommends “If you’re a designer, you don’t have to learn to code. [...]
When we started building A Story Before Bed in late 2008 there was really only one place to have customers record videos of themselves reading children’s books – inside a web browser on a PC or Mac with an attached webcam. So that’s the path we pursued. But a year and a half later when [...]
In our efforts to connect with the potential audience for A Story Before Bed, we’ve spent lots of time finding folks online who care about things that A Story Before Bed can help with… like connecting families, and promoting literacy. On the literacy front, these blogs are among the best: Educational Technology in the Classroom [...]
We shipped A Story Before Bed, our recordable children’s ebook service back in November of 2009. In the year preceding the launch we spent plenty of time talking to publishers to see if they would license us their books for inclusion in our service. And we did find three intrepid publishers (Immedium, Charlesbridge, and Bubblegum) [...]
I just happened upon an article by Matt Marshall on Venture Beat: “How HTML5 will kill the native app.” Ugh. This article reads like an HTML5 marketing document. There’s good reason to be excited about HTML5. But I believe there are a couple of key things missing from this discussion: 1. The value of cross-platform [...]
Without realizing it, we’ve been spending the last two years building software destined for the iPad2. The first is the newest version of A Story Before Bed (www.astorybeforebed.com). It’s our children’s books service. Customers subscribe to the service and can record themselves reading their favorite child a kids book. While you could view the finished [...]
On October 20th, 2010 we announced we were giving away 100,000 free children’s books to parents in the U.S. military using our kids books online service A Story Before Bed. Between then and March 2nd, 2011 we’ve given away an average of 746 children’s book recordings each day to families with a deployed or deploying [...]
Building our children’s ebook service, A Story Before Bed, has been an educational process to say the least. One of the coolest things about it is the role that accidents play in our modest leaps forward. One of my favorite is the creation of our library of free children’s ebooks read by authors and illustrators. [...]
I’ve been management at various companies, and I’ve certainly been subjected to management at the same companies. I’ve been a victim of this disease and I’m not proud to say that I’ve also been a vector for it. That said, management is the disease in almost every fucked up company. It comes down to management’s [...]
New York, NY, January 25, 2011 — Digital Book World announced last night that A Story Before Bed (http://www.astorybeforebed.com) won the first ever Publishing Innovation Award in the Children’s category. Jenny Lam, Co-Creator of A Story Before Bed (and Co-Founder of its parent company Jackson Fish Market) added: “We couldn’t be more pleased to win [...]
As part of my job here at Jackson Fish Market when I’m working on our children’s book service, A Story Before Bed, is to license books for our library from children’s book publishers. (BTW, I recently read an article where Netflix has at least 80 people doing this job for them for movies. ) Getting [...]
Jenny, Walter, and I founded our little company back in late 2006. After some time trying other possibilities, we finally found our first major product when we decided to build A Story Before Bed in late 2008. In November of 2009 we were the first and only service on the internet that let you record [...]
I love being in the software industry. So many things are being reshaped right now and I get to participate in my own small way. Here’s a vision piece from some European newspapers describing the newspaper of the future. News+ concept live from Bonnier from Bonnier on Vimeo. The problem is, there’s really nothing new [...]
We have a new iPhone app from a little known subdivision of Jackson Fish Market — Acme Toolkit. Acme Toolkit, provider of toolkits for specialty professionals is proud to announce the latest in its line of field tools – Spy Toolkit. Today’s field agent needs a reliable set of tools in a compact package. Hidden [...]
We’re simple software folk here at Jackson Fish Market. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying hard to make nice stuff that people like to use. And when a new platform comes along that people have worked hard on, we’re happy to give it a shot. Luckily, the new Windows Phones from Microsoft are not just [...]
Jackson Fish Market is Hillel, Walter, and Jenny creating handcrafted software experiences in Seattle, Washington. Including:
Our blog is about creativity, user experience, high quality software and content, attention to detail, innovation in advertising, and starting a small independent business.
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