I recently turned on paid subscriptions to Draft, the writing software I’ve created. And I wanted a really simple way to test a few alternatives of the payment page in Rails without needing to use a separate service.

But the solutions out there get too complicated. Even the “simplest” ones require things like Redis. They do that because somewhere the AB testing library needs to remember what variation of a test a user has already seen, so it knows what to show them on subsequent visits.

But I don’t want to install Redis just to have my AB tests be performant. That’s still an extra network call to Redis for this simple operation, not to mention the added complexity of adding Redis to my software stack when I don’t need it right now.

Why can’t the AB testing library just store what variation a user has already seen in the user’s cookies?

That’s what SimpleAbs does.

Installation

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I want more people to read my blog. I spend all this time writing; I don’t want it to bore people. I want it to be more interesting.

So part of the way I’m trying to accomplish that is to become a better storyteller.

As I learn more about storytelling and I look at what good storytellers do, I notice many of them don’t just lead with “once upon a time”. They lead with pain.

Sometimes they’ll even start a story in the middle. They’ll open with the main character on their knees, grovelling with a gun to their head. And as the hammer of the gun pulls back. Bam.

We’re back to the beginning before this painful event has even occurred yet. But they’ve got us hooked.

This method of storytelling maybe even seems cliché. So many movies and TV shows use it. It works.

But then it surprises me how few of us incorporate this method into our own stories.

Most people start a blog post with...

There are many neat Draft announcements today.

• Context aware comments
• Image hosting
• Twitter publishing
• Character count
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Improved collaboration

And the coolest thing. A Write Better Report. Easily see reasons why your published writing is or isn’t getting traffic.

Write Better Report

As I promised, Draft isn’t just an online editor. My goal is to make us better writers by investigating the tasks we have as writers and making those tasks simpler and easier.

One mistake I keep seeing people make, when they publish their writing, is that they don’t pay enough attention to attributes that might affect how much traction that writing will get.

They’ll publish 2000 word posts, when their audience would prefer 500. Or they publish on Friday night, when no one might be paying attention and Monday morning might be a better idea.

I wanted to make this type of analysis...

When most of us start a new Twitter account, or a new blog, or a new business, nobody cares. It’s not easy to find fans or an audience to help spread something you’re doing.

My entire goal in life isn’t just to have people on Twitter sharing a blog post of mine. But it is important. If it weren’t, I’d keep a private journal. Maybe invite my Mom.

But I like to teach. I also like to get the feedback an audience can give me. It helps me improve.

So 5 years ago, I’d blog randomly here and there, and I enjoyed it. Every now and then a post would get some nice traffic.

But it didn’t seem like I was growing any kind of audience. No one new would follow me on Twitter. The next blog post would have crickets. RSS subscriber growth was zero.

I gave up.

What an enormous regret. That’s why one of the best three decisions I’ve made in the last 18 months was a simple promise I kept: I would...

It’s a struggle for me to make something innovative. Often it seems like everything good has already been done. There’s already at least 20 competitors doing what I want to do.

Draft is a software project I’ve been working on to help people write better. So far I’ve been incredibly blessed to receive more positive feedback on this creation than anything else I’ve ever personally produced.

But before this I was getting stuck on some project management software I was making.

Clayton Christensen is the famous author of business books like Innovators Solution. Clayton advises wannabe innovators to focus on the jobs people are trying to hire products for. He describes a fast food company that figured out how to finally improve their product development when they stopped worrying about “market research” and instead spent time figuring out what jobs people were hiring their milkshakes...

Two big Draft announcements today.

Draft (http://draftin.com) documents can now easily be published to Wordpress and Tumblr from inside Draft. Go to Settings -> Places to Publish. You’ll then get a Publish button next to your documents.

But I couldn’t stop there.

Bookmarklets and browser extensions like Instapaper, Evernote’s Clearly, and Readability make reading anything on the web simple, focused, and gorgeous. Why can’t writing be that way?

So here’s a Chrome extension that lets you.

Any webpage that you can write on, you can now use Draft with. Your blog, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, even comment boxes on websites like Reddit and Hacker News.

Just place your cursor in the box you want to write in, click the Chrome Draft extension, and Draft will open up in a new Chrome Tab. Choose an already written document or something new to write in Draft (any text from the original text...

I know a lot of people who are stuck. Stuck in a job or a position. Or they want to start a business, but never seem to get past the vague idea. They want a promotion, but are too scared to ask.

I launched a new product a couple weeks ago called Draft to help people write better. A ninth grader was the first person to email me after news about Draft was published.

It was a simple proposition: Can he interview me over Skype or email for his blog. It would just be 5 questions. And he seemed to already have used my product: “Just used Draft. It is the coolest thing in the whole world. No more Google Docs for school projects. :)”

Flattery works. But I am insanely impressed that a ninth grade kid has the audacity to email people he doesn’t know to get their help improving the asset he’s created. That’s just not something most people do.

I was at a crowded concert this last weekend...

I can’t code. I can’t design. I can’t dance. I can’t get in shape. I can’t draw. I can’t give speeches. I can’t write. I can’t invent.

When I was 15 I had a friend named Patrick. We met in driver’s ed.

If you looked at him, you’d probably expect to find him in a moshpit, or playing insanely loud punk music. You’d be right. But the guy had the voice of an angel and sang in his high school choir.

One night, Collin and I pick him up from choir practice.
Collin was our 16 year old friend who we often made drive us around. Poor Collin :)

As we were driving to who knows where (some cafe to play chess and drink coffee or to Taco Bell) a song came on the radio that I liked. And I sang it a little.

That weird looking, punk rock, 15 year old kid gave me some advice that has helped shape every single thing I’ve accomplished since.

He warned me that, as I sang, I was trying to imitate...

I’ve been working on a new way to help people write better. It’s ready.

Too many inconvenient things get in the way of good writing.

Version control is overly complicated. Writers are forced to learn git to get collaborative edits on their documents? Git’s great. But not for writing. Collaborators end up copying my work into Microsoft Word to send me their own version. Yuck.

Finding previous versions of work is difficult. Google Docs and iCloud store arbitrary fragments making it impossible to find an old cohesive draft.

I don’t have enough friends to help copy-edit my work. My wife has a job and other important things to do. :)

And on and on.

I wanted to find solutions. I created Draft.

Version Control

With Draft, your collaborator works on their own copy without interfering with your master. You get to accept or ignore each individual change they make.

Uber for

I started figure skating when I was 4 or 5. It was my Mom’s idea. She wanted something of her own to do with the kids.

The first thing you learn when you’re taking skating lessons is how to fall. My sister would even stick a pillow in the back of her pants to cushion herself.

Nothing cushioned the fall she took on her chin. Blood on the ice. Stitches.

Almost two years ago I went through Y Combinator a second time (S2011). We built some pretty cool technology to help companies brand their own versions of popular games. Games like Bejeweled. Imagine if a company like The Gap let you play their version of Bejeweled, but instead of jewels they were Gap logos, and pictures of models wearing the latest shirts, and you could even win a prize.

We had people playing an average of two hours a day. I was pretty damn excited and hopeful.

But we weren’t getting enough repeat business. The...