On Black Friday – for those of you outside the U.S., that’s Friday, November 25th, they day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year – most of the Pragmatic Bookshelf’s books, PDFs and screencasts will go on sale for 40% off. Only a few titles, such as The SPDY Book and Exceptional Ruby, will be exempt, but everything else will be available at a 40% discount.
All you have to do to get the discount is use the discount code “turkey” while checking out at the Pragmatic Bookshelf store on Friday, November 25th between 00:00 PST (3:00 a.m. Eastern / 0800 GMT) and 23:59 PST (2:59 a.m. on Nov. 26th Eastern / 0759 on Nov. 26th GMT). Just enter “turkey” in the coupon code field, then select your payment method to apply the discount to your order.
This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.
The headphones come in three flavours: wired, wireless and earbuds. They’re currently available for pre-sale and range in price from $129.95 to $399.95, which is “right in line with current market trends” according to this TechCrunch article. SMS Audio recently boughtKonoAudio, who’ve been making funky high-end headphones for ages, presumably for their headphone manufacturing expertise, which will be backed by Fitty’s street cred.
In addition to headphones, SMS By 50 also carries shirts and caps, suitable for just plain old hangin’ or hittin’ da club.
If you’re working on your own Shopify shop or designing Shopify themes, give SMS By 50 a look. It’s got a great design whose look and feel works for its audience; it also shows you how flexible Shopify’s templating system is.
Oh, and by the way, if you think you’re not “street” enough to sport “Fitty” gear, here’s something just for you:
According to the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, there are about 50 million people in the United States with some kind of disability. We also have an aging population, who have their own accessibility issues. And finally, the odds are that sooner or later, most of us will have to cope with some kind of temporary or permanent limitation through illness or injury. People who fall into these categories rely on web accessibility and making sure that they can use your shop isn’t just the right thing to do; it also makes good business sense.
We’ve got over a hundred apps in the Shopify App Store, and Acessify is today’s featured app. It’s a handy tool for checking the accessibility of your shop and helping ensure that customers who use screen readers and other assistive technologies with their computer can use it. We asked Brian Getting, the creator of Accessify, and we’re sharing his answers with you.
What does Accessify do?
Accessify automatically scans your Shopify shop each week for accessibility issues. When accessibility issues are found, it sends you an email report showing which pages had issues, what those issues are and links to more information about resolving them.
What are Accessify’s key features?
It saves shopowners time by automating accessibility scans.
It helps shopowners address accessibility issues.
It provides shopowners with records of their stores’ accessibility status.
Why should shopowners use Accessify?
Shopowners should use Accessify because there are tens of millions of customers with disabilities in the United States alone. Worldwide the number of potential customers that have disabilities affecting their ability to interact with a computer (visual impairments, broken hand, and so on) is staggering, and general the PWD (People with Disabilities) community relies on the Internet even more heavily than the average customer.
There’s also the matter of accessibility regulations varying from country to country, and Accessify can help with documenting accessibility efforts.
Ruth Morton Asks: Can IT Pros Benefit from Agile Metholodologies?
One of the people with whom I had the pleasure of working during my days at Microsoft was technology Advisor Ruth Morton, who’s based near Microsoft Canada’s headquarters just outside Toronto. While my audience was developers, hers is what Microsoft calls “IT Pros” – the people who set up the machines, install/deploy/update the software, set up and keep the network running and do all those other things that we who write code consider to be Someone Else’s Problem. In addition to showing IT Pros the latest and greatest Microsoft tech, she talks to tech managers about using technology in the service of keeping their businesses running smoothly, to women about careers in IT and to students about their futures in the field of technology. Right now, she’s in Vancouver at the TechDays cross-Canada conference, where she’s running the Security, Identity and Management track. If you’re in the Toronto area and do sysadmin-y stuff or deploy Windows and Office for a business, you’d do well to get to know Ruth!
Even though the Agile Manifesto was born of a desire to create a mechanism for better software delivery, I see applications outside of that world too. In life, keeping an eye on your goals while planning a little at a time allows you to adjust for change, take advantage of opportunity and be released from disappointment because The Grand Plan didn’t pan out exactly how you anticipated. In desktop deployment projects, applying elements of the Agile methodology should allow you to be more flexible, adapt as issues are discovered and respond to your client’s needs. Less documentation, more collaboration with the customer and being responsive to change.
Now, I’m not out there deploying Office and Windows these days, so I don’t have the opportunity to put my theory into practice. What do you think? Is it possible to be "more agile” in client deployments?
In her article, Ruth mentions a presentation I created titled Go for IT: How to Have an Awesome Career and Life. While working at The Empire, I gained a bit of notoriety for building offbeat presentations that veered away from the standard Microsoft template. That, coupled with the fact that I had a good rapport with students, was probably why one of my last assignments was to create a new presentation about career planning aimed at students in college and university.
In making the presentation, I read a lot of Daniel Pink, watched Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture and looked back at some twists that had taken place in my own life. These all served as inspiration for Go For IT, and I’m sharing it with you now. It comes with copious speaker notes; with only a little practice, you too can deliver this presentation to students thinking about going into a technology career and asking themselves “What now?”
If you’d like the original slide deck in either PowerPoint of Keynote format, drop me a line and I’ll send it your way.
The folks at Gist, who make a manage-the-firehose-of-your-communications web application (I’m taking the beta for a spin) have created an infographic titled The Agile Business which covers how agile software development methods are being adapted for running a business today. Here’s a shrunken-down version:
At Shopify, the biz dev team have taken the underlying principles of agile development – the focus on individuals and interactions, stuff that works, customer collaboration and responding to change – and applied it to what their work, which involves drumming up new partnerships and business collaborations. Business development processes, which I’ve seen stretch on for months at my last job (a Fortune 50 company; I’ll leave it to you to ratiocinate which one, and it’s not that hard to figure out) take only weeks and are sometimes even pared down to days at Shopify. Harley and his people call it “Agile Bizdev”.
One minor quibble – note the graphic used to depict the gathering of software developers putting together the Agile Manifesto:
I’m familiar with the story of how and where the Manifesto got put together. I’ve even talked with The Pragmatic Programmers’ Andy Hunt, one of the guys who was there, about it. They most certainly weren’t sitting at a round boardroom table; they were at a ski lodge. In my interview with Andy, I asked if the get-together where they drafted the Manifesto was anything like Hot Tub Time Machine, and he gave a quick non-reply and changed the topic. So I choose to believe it was!
If you haven’t visited Shopify’s App Store lately, take a look now! There are now over 100 apps there, each of which adds new capabilities to your shop. From apps that simplify the task of cranking out shipping address labels to managing your social media presence to rewarding loyal customers, we’ve got lots of ways to make your shop even better.
Portable is one of the currently featured apps, and it brings customer data to an application you can use any time and can access from anywhere: Gmail. It’s a great way to quickly get information about any of your customers and stay on top of your customer relationships.
We had a Q & A session with Justin Burdett, Portable’s developer, and his answers follow.
What does Portable do?
Portable brings Shopify customer details and brings your customers into where you’re interacting with them most: your email. Portable looks up any of the details about a customer using their email address. If the email address belongs to a customer, important details about that customer will be displayed, all within your Gmail window.
Portable currently works with Gmail through Rapportive, but we’re hoping to expand to other email software in the future.
What are Portable’s key features?
Portable brings the following customer details right to your inbox:
A direct link to that customer’s profile in your Shopify store
Lifetime value details like total number of orders and total spent, localized for your country and currency
Recent orders, including a direct link to the recent orders in your Shopify store, the order number, and the financial status, shipping status and order status
Primary address and phone details for that customer
Any notes you’ve entered about that customer
Why should shopowners use Portable?
Portable will save you time and effort by bringing customer details right to you when you get support requests. You will be able to provide faster support by cutting down on the time it takes to find the information you need and better support by gaining valuable insights into the customer.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a geek from Pittsburgh, PA. I’ve got a couple of different projects I like work on. In my spare time, I like to play disc sports like Ultimate and disc golf. You can find more about me on my website or follow my dumb jokes on Twitter at @jburdeezy.
Where did you get the idea for Portable?
I was thinking about opening a Shopify store for another project of mine and I thought that I’d like something like Portable. I found Shopify’s API and got to work. Boom! Portable was born.
How long did it take for you to build Portable?
It only took me a few days to get an early version of the app and spent about a week in beta testing.
One of the people with whom I had the pleasure of working during my days at Microsoft was technology Advisor 
