

One A Day - neilc
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/03/one-a-day.html

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hhm
I think <http://thefeelgood.com/> also has this constraint, and they explain
somewhere that it's for the same reasons.

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jsrn
" Q. Why can I only upload 1 song per day?

A. Our goal is quality over quantity. We found that limiting uploads to one
song per day makes people really think about the music they are uploading and
only post the best songs that they can think of. However, you can upload up to
six songs for the next six days and they will be published automatically. "

from: <http://thefeelgood.com/static/faq>

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jsrn
Constraints can be good. The article reminded me of the tales of 'oldschool'
hackers saying that lacking resources of early computers forced them to write
good and compact code. The scarcity of a resource obviously leads to this
resource being valued higher than if it would be available in abundance.

What I find noteworthy, however, are his examples: the resources described are
constrained artificially, yet are still valued higher than if not constrained
(and competing services not constraining the resource (Flickr or normal Blogs
in his example) couldn't destroy this mechanism).

When, however, does this mechanism take place? When email accounts where
strongly constrained in storage space, GMail with its then 1Gig storage was
seen as liberation (the opposite effect).

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Alex3917
There are some constraints that consistently encourage creativity, and others
that do not. Someone should come up with a list of examples of constraints and
look for patterns. I briefly mentioned this on my blog a while back:

"The rich and variegated use of Twitter seems to be a case of technological
constraints forcing creativity. One can't help but wonder, "At one point does
less become more?" When adding new features we worry about increased cognitive
load and reduced usability; should we worry about damping creativity as well?
And is it possible to purposely restrict functionality to encourage
ingenuity?"

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sant0sk1
Reminds me of Noah. He also got great results from the "one a day" model of
photography.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo>

As an aside, the music to that video is spellbounding...

