• Drink a cup of tea and nanner for an hour with Paul Boag (Bow-Agg!).
• Have Paul Irish refer to something I’ve made as “awesome”.
• Pose in a terrible street-side iPhone photo with Jeffery Zeldman.
• Have a poster for my son’s room lettered by Jessica Hische.
• Get insulted by Mike Monteiro.
• Pick Jason Fried‘s brain about building a sustainable business.
• Join a book club with Erin Kissane.
• Watch Jason Santa Maria design just about anything.

and of course…

• Work on a web project with any of the people mentioned above.

Have something I missed on your web bucket list? Respond below, or tweet with the hashtag #webbucketlist.

The post A Web Creator’s Bucket List appeared first on Andrew Heins.

My Blackberry has been everywhere and done everything with me, it’s been buried in the sand-dunes of the Egyptian Desert, acted as my primary flashlight through the damp dark of the Amazon Jungle at night, and trekked the Great Wall of China with me, to say nothing of the hundreds of drops and thousands of hours of use.

The first photos of my son were taken with this Blackberry, just seconds after he was born. A hundred photos of the cat my wife and I adopted who has since passed away were taken with my Blackberry. It’s full of audio recordings of crazy ideas, or my son’s first gurgled words. It’s captured video at weddings, been my primary camera and MP3 player, and helped me find my socks under the bed. It’s been with me through the best and the worst of it, and has always been there.

Two and a half years of constant, intimate interaction with this device through all of that should be a strong basis upon which to develop a brand affinity. I should, by any logic, be a lifetime Blackberry fan.

But of course, I’m not.

Simply put, my BlackBerry failed me on two fronts:

1. The device failed to remain relevant for the term of my contract
2. The company failed to provide something to look forward to

The device failed me first. When I got my 9700, it was already behind both Apple and Android when it came to existing functionality, and it never got better. An Apple device purchased the same day has received three OS updates by now. My BlackBerry has received one, and it made the phone worse.

I don’t mean the device got slower (though it certainly did), I mean that UX of BB OS5 was cleaner and easier to use than BB OS6 is. Gestures I’d relied on for years no longer work, accessing popular functions is different. What was easy is now hard.

The upgrade, when if finally came, was not publicized at all (I had to actively search it out), difficult to find, inconvenient to install. And it made my phone worse.

But while you could argue that a device failing to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving market could be forgiven, it’s the company’s failure that lost me as a customer. I’m a proud Canadian. I want to support Canadian companies and technologies, but RIM hasn’t released an interesting device in years, and even worse, has provided even less hope for the future. If BlackBerry 10 actually ships on a phone, I’ll be absolutely amazed.

They have consistently produced boring, buggy software that ships late and disappoints, and so far they’ve provided no evidence that anything will change.

So I say goodbye to my BlackBerry and to RIM. The device and company that changed my life have not changed at all. Ain’t that a shame.

The post Goodbye Blackberry appeared first on Andrew Heins.

I really hate voicemail. It’s inefficient, expensive and annoying. I don’t like leaving voicemail, but even more, I dislike getting voicemail. Voicemail can sit, unaddressed on my phone for weeks, because there’s no point listening to the message. If you’ve left me a message, one of two things will happen:

1. I’ll call you back as soon as I see the missed call.
2. You’ll contact me another way, like by email, text, another phone, twitter, web, skype, facebook, as if we don’t have enough communication options!

And yet of all my issues with voicemail, the thing that bothers me the most that I can’t get rid of it. I don’t like the idea that if someone calls me and I’m unavailable, it just rings. The confirmation that they actually called the right person is important!

For years, I’ve had horrible voicemail greetings. Most of them tried to include a warning that I don’t check voicemail, but I can never tell what to say. Who’s calling? A client? My boss? My mother-in-law? Am I unavailable? Am I ignoring you? Is my phone dead? Am I? Inevitably, they wind up being forced, rambling, embarrassing garbage.

Until today. Today, I finally figured out a voicemail message that doesn’t suck:

“Hi, you’ve reached Andrew Heins. Press star to leave a message. Alternatively, my work number is xxx-xxx-xxxx ext xxxx. On evenings and weekends, try my wife’s cell at xxx-xxx-xxxx. My website, andrewheins.ca has lots of other contact options. Talk to you soon.”

Here’s why I like this voicemail greeting:

1. It says who you’re calling
2. It says how to skip the message
3. It lists other numbers to use in case my phone’s dead or it’s an emergency
4. It directs to non-phone ways to contact me
5. It’s fairly short, and skippable
6. It signs off well

Finally. After years of frustration, I can lay this one to rest… until someone actually leaves me a message, then we need to talk.

Have you found a better way to deal with voicemail, or other communications gaps? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

The post Voicemail Frustrations appeared first on Andrew Heins.

I even found a little note from 2007 on the first time my friend mentioned a girl he was interested in – a girl he proposed to this week. It’ll make a great little story for a speech at his wedding, and if I hadn’t kept a journal, I’d never have remembered it.

Journalling is one of those things on my list of “things I wish I did”. You know, that list of things you admire in other people and wish you could emulate. Other items on this list include reliable blog-writing, dressing well,  early morning running, fiction-reading and introspective meditation.

I can’t remember why I stopped, but my little adventure through my old notebooks has rekindled my interest and I’m mulling over how to get back into it again.

Journalling appeals to me on many levels:

• It’s a legacy I can pass on to my kids
• It may help them understand me, and where they come from better
• It demonstrates patterns of thought, priorities and themes
• It’s something my personal heroes did that I can easily emulate
• It’s private, letting me document more controversial thoughts

I’m inclined to jump right back into journalling, but before I do, I wanted to reconsider the medium. The contents of our pockets have evolved since 2007, and whereas my old cell phone barely had a camera, I’m now constantly connected to the internet. One would think that technology may have evolved to a point that a physical notebook is no longer required.

Physical Notebooks

Physical notebooks are how I started journalling, and they still offer great appeal. As physical artifacts, they provide an absolutely enthralling reading experience. The feel of the book and pages in your hand is comforting, and the fact that the medium of interaction itself existed at the time of writing is part of the charm. This is a great example of McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message. As you turn the page, little items can fall out – physical pieces of time that tell part of the story. Done right, you can’t replicate the experience of reading a physical notebook.

That being said, they’re far from perfect. Physical notebooks come with a lot of baggage – sometimes literally. Keeping a physical notebook and pen on your person can be a challenge. You either need an ever-present bag or a larger pocket than I normally have available. I used to manage this by using a very small notebook kept in my back pocket, but this isn’t particularly comfortable, either for writing or carrying.

Some other features:

• Media include text, drawings and small physical inserts
• Superior look, feel and nostalgic experience
• No worry of data corruption (hard-drive loss)
• Can be shared, but not digitally
• Secure  - can be physically hidden away, little chance of “hacking”

and drawbacks:

• I have terrible handwriting
• Requires a pen
• Harder to share
• Harder to translate to other media
• Can be physically lost
• Required time investment may deter participation
• I have no drawing skill
• Nice physical notebooks are costly

Digital Journalling

Whereas before I didn’t have a smartphone, today I’m never without one. There are lots of workflow options here. I could create a separate email account and send myself journal emails, I could use a hidden section of this or another blog or I could use Google docs or text files. Each option has its own specific advantages and drawbacks, but all of the digital options share the following characteristics:

Advantages

• Can be copied and forwarded for sharing or re-use
• Easy to manage and search
• No additional physical carry required, my phone works fine
• Leverages my web skills
• Photo and video multimedia
• Reliably legible?

• Lacks some character
• Hackable if stored online
• Potential for data-loss or corruption
• Environmental impact of servers, electricity, handhelds
• Cost (see above)
• Future compatibility
• Managing backups, emergency power or third-party management

I have some experience with digital journalling – during our trip through Peru, my wife and I kept a travel blog using Posterous. It worked great, and created a great little diary of our trip that friends and family could follow along. The problem is that this blog is already showing its age. Some of the image thumbnails are missing (though the full images are still there when you click), and on some articles, the text is starting to get corrupted, with embedded formatting information, and we took our trip in 2010!

It’s been two years, and the challenge of creating something that’s easily accessible 30 years from now, when my son is as old as I am is particularly daunting. What digital information do you have from the 1980s that’s aged well? I have none.

Use Cases

At the heart of the problem are the different use-cases addressed physical and digital journalling. Digital journalling is particularly strong at capturing the now. I can send a thought or idea to an email address with a few taps on my smartphone, and life it’s captured for short-term retrieval. Physical journalling is much more effective as a reflective exercise. Given a few minutes at the end of each day, reflect and document the day’s thoughts or events.

In many ways, reflective physical journalling matches well with the items on my “wish I did” list, better than digital journalling does, and if I do start wearing a sports jacket every day, or carrying a trendy messenger bag, it’s possible I’d have a place to hold my notebook.

At this point I’m still weighing my options. It’s possible I may mix techniques, creating a email account that I can send things to, which can then be reviewed and documented in my journal in the evenings. This process allows for some self-editing which has its own advantages and drawbacks.

Do you journal, either physically or digitially? How do you deal with it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The post Journalling in the Age of Smartphones appeared first on Andrew Heins.

I unsubscribed from LinkedIn’s spammy emails months ago, and go through the ritual every time they send me another one, but it doesn’t work. Their unsubscribe system is broken, they know it, and they refuse to fix it.

How bad is it? Here’s just a few of the tweets that show up in a quick Twitter search within the last few days.

Finally figured out how to stop LinkedIn from sending emails. They have this unsubscribe option that works if you cancel your account.

— Randy Tayler (@RandyTayler) August 14, 2012

I have lost the count of clicking/tapping the unsubscribe link in @linkedinemails.

— Filip Radelić (@fichek) August 14, 2012

Receive unwanted @linkedin email. Tap included unsubscribe link. Shown a full-screen tout for their app, then a login screen. #ARRRRGHHH

— chuckhagenbuch (@chuckhagenbuch) August 14, 2012

I can’t seem to figure out how to completley unsubscribe from stupid linkedIn.Blacklisting linkedin.com it is.

— Nelson Oepkes (@oepkes) August 14, 2012

Hey look everyone, an email from LinkedIn! The odds of this happening after thousands of “unsubscribe” clicks are, well, 1.

— Deon Garrett (@deong) August 14, 2012

Wtf is “LinkedIn today”? Yet another spam by LinkedIn? Do These 12 Things Before Noon to Succeed! Nope, just one, unsubscribe. Success!

— Guillaume (@gepeto42) August 14, 2012

Wow. Exactly how many times do I need to unsubscribe from LinkedIn emails to STOP receiving them?

— Ashley Baxter (@iamashley) August 13, 2012

For the love of small fluffy woodland creatures, how many times must I unsubscribe from these #LinkedIn notifications. #StopSpammingMe

— Johan van Rhyn (@jvanrhyn) August 13, 2012

Guys I figured out how to unsubscribe from Linkedin emails! Kill yourself.

— Matt Kump? (@kump) August 9, 2012

Linkedin, for the love of God, get your shit together. Both Canada and the US have laws that require you have a working unsubscribe. Fix it.

The post The Unkillable Spam Monster appeared first on Andrew Heins.

Don’t I love you? Don’t I respect you? Don’t I treat you better than any other man ever has? Why do you have to treat me this way?

Don’t I do nice things for you? Take you out to fancy dinners? Make you breakfast in bed on Sunday mornings? Get you things from downstairs when you’re tired? All I ask is a little respect, some recognition that our relationship has give-and-take, and that you use spell check when you email me.

Love is a two way street, and when we’re together, girl, I feel you. That connection. That incredible high I get when I’m near you. I treat you right because I value you as a person. You don’t ask for much, and I’d gladly give you all I have and more just to be with you.

And yet when you send me text messages that say “WHER R U???”, I don’t feel that connection. I feel lost, like I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. It makes me sad, and yet when I tell you how I feel, you don’t listen.

Love is about the little things. When I wake you up in the morning to get ready for work, I don’t wake you rudely. I leave the light off and kiss you lightly on the forehead, because I want you to start your day knowing that I love and respect you. It’s not a grand gesture, and takes only a second, but it makes you happy, just like how checking to ensure you’re not using caps-lock when you email me would make me happy. It would make me so very happy.

Girl, it’s not a lot that I ask from you. Just a little love and respect. Love is all about communication, that’s why I tell you so often that I love you, and why I listen when you talk. Love is built on being able to understand one another, and I want to understand. But when I get emails like,

“? 10.00 for the stand, right? we have basket that useles wihtout the stand…10. no more…”,

I can’t feel that understanding, that visceral love connection I know we both share.

I hope you read this and you feel me, Girl. I hope you understand what I’m trying to tell you.

Because I have no friggin’ clue what your wrote in that last email.

But Girl, I still love you.

Extrapolated from a real-life exchange I had with my wife. Title image by PhotoJonny.

The post Girl, Unedited appeared first on Andrew Heins.