Look great, be great

For all the superior quality and sense of authenticity that makes New York City so special, it still succumbs to being a vain and stylized place. What other place breeds an enclave like Williamsburg, with all the grungy hipsters and all the design brilliance that comes with it. In the course of all the groups I follow on Twitter, I've discovered we have a very small "Silicon Alley" downtown. But I think the real value emanating from NY isn't the tech, it's actually the intersection of tech, social and design! It's not enough to be creative and come up with a good idea, it's important to create an experience that is positive and lasts, and look amazing while doing it.

A couple of simple tools I found yesterday that address issues that have always been on the periphery of my mind.

How cool is this: A randomly generating color pallet that supplies complimentary, triadic, etc colors! This was huge when I worked in finance. My boss would flip out if the colors of my charts and graphs looked too crayola or stupid.
 http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp

Another one is a forms builder. Don't get me wrong, I consider Google with a lust unrivaled, but the only thing that keeps people using their forms application is that it's free. There are a ton of better ones out there, namely this one: http://wufoo.com/tour/ - completely integrated image insertion, payments, even user management! Stellar product and perfect for this generation, if I do say so myself!

But the part that made me laugh was their "about" page. You know that tedious bio for every employee in your company that brags about what school you went to but probably hated, what fortune 500 company you were a tiny cog in, all that stuff that is so.. 1990's? Check out this guy's job description. I love it. Why can't I be paid to do the same?? =)

Mike Wong is Wufoo's Go-To Guy, resident smile maker, voice actor, victim of an online fan club, and friend to babies and cats alike. Often accused of having the entire internet in his brain, Mike enjoys injecting bits of RSS-parsed knowledge into any situation. Mike is the buoy of integrity in a sea of cynical sycophants. If you've got a problem, yo, he'll solve it.