This is an awesome article. Lots of people confuse graphic designers with interface and user experience designers, and they often end up with shitty applications with pretty outer shells.

Good user experience and also pretty: wufoo.com

Pretty, but lacking user experience: imthere.com

Awesome UI: cdbaby.com

Sadly, bad user experience ("noprocrast" implementation), also not pretty (though simple): news.ycombinator.com

Ahh, not cdbaby.com's default style, this one: http://cdbaby.com/?css=plain

news.yc is really nice looking if you install greasemonkey (ff extension) and the News.YC Enhancements script.

Also, I figure whoever wrote that script uses this site, so thanks for that.

Have you guys noticed the text highlight in Firefox! That's great CSS!

"As a startup, the first thing that you'll need is a logo."

Umh.

I was talking about from a design perspective... I think that's obvious given the topic of the post, but I suppose I could clarify it. Jeeez. Nitpick much?

:-)

I still say "umh" to that. Are you more likely to use an app by a company with a good logo, or an app with a good ui?

Brand development is still deadly important. No one is going to use your site if they can't remember it. If your competitors are on par with you feature-wise, the one with the stronger brand is going to win.

That being said, if your opponents aren't on par with you feature-wise, well...