WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious) was released last week. At first pass I didn’t notice much of a difference. You might think that too if your current WordPress theme is overriding some of the new features or if you don’t know about a needed code change.

The latest version of WordPress makes it a lot easier to customize a theme with a drag and drop tool in the Appearance panel. Unfortunately, I don’t see that option available in my installation. That’s because my current theme called Thesis is overriding the standard WordPress setup. I’ll have to wait on an update from the folks that make the Thesis theme I use. Check to see if you’re having the same issue with your theme.

WordPress 3.0 allows you to manage multiple blogs from one install, but there’s no setting to enable this feature. You’ll have to modify a file to get the feature working. Click here to learn about the multi site option in WordPress 3.0.

Watch the video below for a full rundown on all the new features in WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious):

This awesome tutorial breaks down simple drawing techniques to facilitate visual thinking. The tutorial comes from a post on the blog of Bigger Picture, a Danish company that teaches visual language and visual thinking skills.

Intro:

Step 1: Drawing People

Step 2: Drawing Places

Step 3: Drawing Process

Step 4: Drawing Speech

Step 5: Using Color

Step 6: Drawing Effects

Step 7: Drawing The Rest

Putting it together

There’s a new iPad app to visually structure business models based on the Business Model Generation methodology. The methodology is outlined in the book
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Alex Osterwalder, one of the writers of the book, used paper prototyping to show how the new app will function.

As the name indicates, paper prototyping uses paper to mockup user interface designs. There’s a good book on paper prototyping called Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces. It was recommended to me by Dan Arkind, the CEO of JobScore.

Many folks say it’s best to start prototyping on paper before moving to computer programs like Omnigraffle, Balsamiq, or Axure. During the initial prototyping stages computer programs can constrain your creativity when defining how an app should function. It’s best to work out your ideas a bit before moving to the computer.

In the videos below, Alex uses paper prototyping on top of his iPad. Showing the paper prototype this way is really powerful. Since we can see the iPad underneath the paper, the simulation is enhanced as it really seems as if we’re looking at an iPad app.

I’ll consider buying this app when it makes it into the App Store. However, it may still be best to do the Business Model Generation work on paper.

Here’s a video showing the alpha version of the app:

How do you build a project schedule? If you start building a fairly complex schedule on the computer, you can actually end up wasting time. It’s much easier to build a project schedule with paper (actually Post-Its) before heading to the computer. Here’s how I make my schedules with Post-Its.

1) Categories
Grab a piece of paper and define the categories for your project. My schedules usually deal with Internet marketing so my categories often include email marketing, affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, etc.

2) Structure
Go back to your paper and map out how you’re going to organize your Post-It notes. Draw a large rectangle on the paper. One option is to place your categories along the top of the rectangle and the units of time you’ve chosen (e.g. week, months, years) along the left side of the rectangle. This gives you the framework for your workspace.

3) Build the Workspace
Take a roll of brown paper and cut off a piece big enough to cover a good chunk of a wall. Then make equally spaced vertical lines on the paper. This gives you some structure to organize the Post-It notes. Then tack the paper to the wall with some wall putty.

4) Moving to the Wall
Ideally, you’ll have some Post-Its in a few colors. I use green for categories, purple for the months, pink for items that require a setup process, and blue for the launch of a specific marketing initiative.

Start by placing the categories and months on the paper. Then create the items that will go into the schedule. Don’t worry about putting them in the right month or even the right category at first. Just get the info out of your head and onto the Post-Its.

Once you’ve created a few Post-Its, start shifting them into the appropriate categories and months. Keep going until the schedule is done.

Here’s a marketing launch schedule I built using the technique described above.

Post-It note visual schedule

5) Making It Pretty
At this point you can copy your schedule into Microsoft Project or another project planning tool. One choice is to use the Post-It schedule as the basis for a graphic that will look great in a presentation.

Here’s a graphic I made based on the Post-It Note schedule shown above.

If you have OmniGraffle you can use my template to build a visual project schedule.

I was inspired to start building project schedules with Post-Its after reading
Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It Notes. The technique I described above is a bit different than what the book covers. I think the book would describe what I did as a variation on a bottom up decision tree.

Good luck with your visual project schedules!

Here’s a great video I found showing the trade-off of value vs. complexity when deciding which features to add to a product. Often times folks building a product become fixated on building the most complex features because they’re cool, not because they can generate a lot of value. This is a product management trap to be avoided.

The video uses a 2×2 matrix to show the relationship between value vs. complexity. If you want to explore your own product features on a 2×2 matrix, here’s a nice
2×2 matrix stencil for OmniGraffle.

So you have an iPhone app to sell (or you’re working on one). Well, good for you creator of app 300,001. How do you plan to sell the thing? If your app is rockstar quality then simply posting it in the App Store may be enough. Unfortunately, most apps get lost in the shuffle, or drowned out by competitors.

Below are 6 practical tips to help you sell more of your iPhone app.

1) Free iPhone app lite version

Do you offer a free lite version for your app that offers limited functionality of the paid version? If you don’t, you’re missing the boat. How do I know your app is any good when 10 others supposedly do the same thing? Which one is the best? The only way to know is to try them. Sure there are reviews, but they could be out of sync with the latest version of the app, and I want to decide if it’s good myself. So make a free lite version of your app so everyone can try it.

The Geocaching app is a great example. Based on the free version of the app, I purchased the paid version for $9.99. If you’re not familiar with Geocaching give the free app a try. It actually gives you a crash course on Geocaching not found in the full price app. This is very smart. The lite version of the app walks you through the the basics of Geocaching and when you upgrade, you have no need for the tutorial.

2) Money back guarantee

Clearly state on the app description in the App Store that you offer a full refund if not satisfied. List this on the site you use to promote the app too. A 7 day money back guarantee should be sufficient for most cases. Eventually Apple will build this feature into the apps, but as far as I know right now it requires manual processing by the app creator to issue a refund. If I can try your app without the risk of feeling buyer’s remorse, my likelihood of buying it will go way up!

3) Show us that your iPhone app is great  – Video please

This is really simple. I want to see a video of your app working. Yes, the screenshots in the App store are nice, but please please do yourself a favor and make a video. Better yet make a few videos. I want to see how your app works. Does it really do what I want? Take things up a notch by asking a few customers to make some videos of them using your app. The videos will serve as social proof that your app is indeed worthy. Ask for those videos right now!

4) Don’t lock me in – No export means no sale

Sometimes I’ll run across an app that looks great at first. I’m right about to buy it when I realize, hey wait I wouldn’t be able to get the awesome things this app makes (e.g. a drawing, note card, etc) off my phone and into my computer. Why isn’t there an export option?

Take a look at Cartoon Creator and their competitor Animation Creator. Both look like really cool apps to quickly build flipbook style animations, both cost $0.99, and both don’t offer export capability. You can’t get the animations you create off your phone (errgghh, “@#$*!”). No capability to email a video or post one online. That’s pointless.

In this case I hear that both apps will soon offer the capability to upload to online galleries hosted by the makers of each app. If an app should allow for export, make sure it does.

5) Get some reviews – outside the app store

Reach out to customers, bloggers, whoever. Get a few reviews of your app. This is really simple to do. Many apps have no reviews outside of the app store. Ask that the reviews link to your site for the app (yes, you do need a place to post the info on your app including the videos mentioned, etc.) and link directly to the app in the App Store. Even a few reviews could help with SEO for the site you use to promote your app.

6) Iphone app updates – Twitter and Facebook

Make sure to keep your loyal customers and potential customers up to date regarding the status of your app on Twitter and Facebook. I want to know when the next update will occur, what’s in the update, and how the approval process is going over at Apple. It’s nice too if you offer some free coupon codes for the the app every few days. The 3D Camera guys do a great job of this on Twitter.

Sometimes it can be hard to decide on the correct type of chart to best represent your data. Should you use a two axis column line chart or ??? Well, there’s an easy way to narrow down the options.

Dr. Andrew Abela, developer of the Extreme Presentation Method, created the graphic below as a starting point to help us pick the right chart. You can download the PDF here.

Based on Dr. Abela’s graphic, the guys over at Juice Analytics built the Chart Chooser tool. Just select a few checkboxes to define your goal for the chart, and the tool will recommend chart options for you.

For each chart type, you’re offered the option of downloading MS Excel and PowerPoint templates.

chart choose - pie chart

The chart templates are free of what Edward Tufte calls “chartjunk“. So there’s no grey background, grid lines, or other junk usually added by MS Excel when making charts. You just get clear charts with nice colors

Widgenie offers a great way to quickly create charts that you can embed in a blog or share (iGoogle, Facebook). Click the “Grab me” link at the bottom of the graph to see the sharing options. In a previous post I showed how to create business dashboards with iGoogle. We could use Widgenie to add additional graphs to that dashboard.

What’s the catch? There’s a banner ad at the bottom of the chart unless you purchase the paid version for $49.95 per month.

Here’s the output of a Widgenie widget.

Here’s a short video I made on how to create simple business dashboards using Google Spreadsheets, Google Spreadsheet Gadgets, and iGoogle.

The example is web analytics oriented, but the method can be used to build any type of dashboard.

Setting up a static dashboard is easy. If you want your data to update dynamically you’ll need to use the Spreadsheets Data API.

Yesterday the Google Analytics blog announced a new free desktop dashboard solution offered by a German company called Trakken.

Trakkboard is an Adobe Air application for building dashboards from Google Analytics data.

I took a quick look at Trakkboard. It’s seems like a good start toward something more interesting. Currently there does not appear to be any way to pull data from custom segments or to build custom segments.

Trakkboard could get a lot more interesting if it becomes possible to pull data from sources outside of Google Analytics.

Here are the widgets currently available:

• Visits
• Visitors
• Pageviews
• Medium
• Source
• Top/Flop Keywords
• Bounce Rate
• Time on Site
• All Goals
• Goal 1
• Goal 2
• Goal 3
• Goal 4
• Notes