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Entries for October 2004
Six Apart gets $10 million in a series B funding round
Six Apart gets $10 million in a series B funding round. Mena said I had to post this or she would come in through the MT backdoor and delete my archives.
An introduction to using pattern in Web design
An introduction to using pattern in Web design. After Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you
And if you’re living on Internet time, perhaps even if you have seen it. The most overused phrase at Web 2.0, aside from “at the end of the day”, is some variation of “next generation” applied to software or services. Every new app being talked about here is next generation or revolutionary or __[fill in the blank]__. The sheer amount of supposed novelty being blasted at the audience is exhausting…everything is changing the world in a significant way. I imagine many of the attendees — those who read 900 Atom/RSS files in their newsreaders daily perhaps — find this energizing, but it saps my energy. No wonder Meg left the biz to focus on something a little less suppositious.
Re: Technorati’s stats on the screen right
Re: Technorati’s stats on the screen right now @ Web 2.0: they’re still wrong.
Hundreds of video game consoles for sale
Hundreds of video game consoles for sale on eBay in one huge lot.
Design for Web 2.0
Jason Fried, Jeff Veen, and I did a workshop yesterday on Design for Web 2.0. In preparing for the informal chat we had among ourselves and with the audience, we prepared a list of questions to consider. There’s about 15 of them, presented here unedited without context or answers:
- Right now, Web design feels like talking to the del.icio.us API and blending Flickr RSS with Upcoming iCal subscriptions. What happens when design(ers) has little to do with what’s on the page?
- Blogs democratized publishing, now “tags” could be considered to democratize information architecture. What’s behind this? Are powerful tools in the hands of millions really better than well-trained experts?
- How do we justify the high upfront costs of doing user research? Is there a magic bullet formula that will tell us if it’s worth it?
- I love quick wins. Find something you can fix in two weeks. Measure how it works now. Fix it. See how the numbers change. Repeat until you run out of stuff. Why is this so shocking to corporate Web sites?
- It feels to me that IT departments still operate under the assumption that technology is a precious resource that should be guarded carefully and trickled out. This is like a pair of handcuffs to most Web teams. Why do so many enterprises treat their Web sites like shrink-wrapped software and not publications?
- Can usability drive innovation? What’s the balance between giving the user what they need but also giving them what they do not yet know that they need?
- How do you go about designing for groups? When the “user” is a collection of people rather than a single person?
- Do brochureware sites still have a place on today’s Web?
- What does user experience mean in the context of cross-media services? How do you keep it consistent when you’re using T-Mobile’s interface to email your photos to Flickr or updating your blog with your TiVo using your Blackberry as an input device?
- home pages -> sites -> “posts” -> ????
- Q for Veen re: your content management is a process, not a software package mantra. Is there a lesson here for software in general?
- How would you design a web-based application differently today than 3 years ago? What do we have in our design war chests today that is capable of making the experience feel 3-years more mature?
- Do you think design “talk” is too focused on technological achievement (“Look mom, no tables!”) these days, or is it a step in the right direction?
- Should one design fit all? Should designers worry about their web designs working on alternate devices by default, or should each device have its own unique design?
- What is your feeling on Personas? Do they really help drive the visual design process or are they just process for process sake? What does it really mean to know your audience might be represented by a 30-something single female who likes to watch Friends, prefers paying her bills by mail, gets coffee every morning at Starbucks, and has a 56K connection at home?
- Who should we follow into the Web 2.0? What are some of the best examples of interaction design today?
I’ve opened the comments if you’d like to discuss any of these questions amongst yourselves.
Google is ramping up their Print service…
Google is ramping up their Print service…they’re offering to scan books for free.
Hep is a universal translator of sorts
Hep is a universal translator of sorts for Web bits (posts, emails, etc.). Got a demo of this last night…it’s quite neat.
JotSpot, a wiki with structured data capabilities
JotSpot, a wiki with structured data capabilities.
Web 2.0, Day One
I’ve got a few minutes before things get going here at Web 2.0 today, so I thought I’d wrap up what happened here yesterday.
During his interview with John Heilemann, John Doerr (who sits on Google’s Board) indicated that the Web browser space is ripe for some action again, but that Google is not doing anything. No Google Browser?
Demos of the Snap and A9 search sites. Two interesting things about Snap: the data they’ve purchased from a “large ISP” about what people do after they search (e.g. how many pages they visited on Wal-Mart’s site and if they bought anything) and the exposure of their statistics information, including how much money they’re making on any given day. However, I’m not sure I want search results that looks like an Excel spreadsheet.
In general, I’m very skeptical about these search engines that offer second-level searching (Snap, Clusty, A9) or personalized search. I’m not convinced that people are going to spend that much time tinkering with their searches. Search results are not a mp3 collection or photos…I don’t know how much time people are going to want to spent organizing them.
Heard a curious phrase last night…companies are doing lots of deals with other companies because they’re “not Google”. That is, Google would rather hire people to build stuff for them than partner with companies (which seems a bit self-centered to me). So it seems there’s lots of opportunities out there for smaller companies trying to compete with Google to partner with Google’s larger competitors.
And finally, the design of the paper program here at Web 2.0 is, shall we say, less than optimal. There’s no single listing of events in the program that contains the 3 vital bits of information attendees need: event description, time, and place. The description and time are listed on one page and then you need to flip to another page to figure out where it’s being held. Annoying, especially since it seems like the program is designed for maximum ad space rather than for usability.
FoodBALL is a new restaurant by the
FoodBALL is a new restaurant by the folks who brought you Camper shoes.
Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne wins the X Prize
Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne wins the X Prize. The prize was offered to promote low-cost commercial space travel.
Tim Shey on reblogging
Tim Shey on reblogging. So many of these observations apply to blogging in general that it makes me wonder: what’s the difference between blogging and reblogging?
The Smaller Picture: collective typography
The Smaller Picture: collective typography. This is brilliant.
There was a “blogs” category on Jeopardy the other day
There was a “blogs” category on Jeopardy the other day.
Some impromptu Internet art exhibits
Some impromptu Internet art exhibits. Gallery space provided by Google Images.
New personal techniques which are unstoppable
My new fighting, filing, chatting, voting, hand holding, glazing, brain eating, planting, shirt folding, updating, blogging, waxing, screaming, litter scooping, sewing, theater going, parenting, dressing, programming, turning cool, randomization, swiping, Election Day news gathering, exercise, hamburgering, atomic browsing, laundry folding, penguin smacking, fucking, coloring, dustpan, thread killing, replying, actionscripting, tabbed browsing, publishing, vote rigging, Rumsfeld fighting, reinforcement learning, designing, folding, hibernating, muffin eating techniques are unstoppable.
Credit: the original new personal technique and a few Google searches.
The 36 possible plots of role playing games,
The 36 possible plots of role playing games, adapted from a list of the 36 dramatic situations.
How Google (or another company) might build audio search services
How Google (or another company) might build audio search services.
Slideshow of Richard Avedon’s work for the New Yorker
Slideshow of Richard Avedon’s work for the New Yorker.
The Forbes 400 Richest Bloggers
Ok so there’s not 400 on the list, but there are at least three billionaires who blog:
- Pierre Omidyar, $10.4 billion
- George Soros, $7.2 billion
- Mark Cuban, $1.3 billion
A little bit surprising that Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, David Filo, Jerry Yang, and Oprah aren’t on the list. Come on gang, TypePad is only $4.95/mo.
I’m playing around with Flickr a little
I’m playing around with Flickr a little bit, posting a few photos.
Ichiro Suzuki breaks George Sisler’s 84-year-old record
Ichiro Suzuki breaks George Sisler’s 84-year-old record for most hits in a season. It’s an impressive feat…everyone else in the top 10 played earlier than 1931.
Some Possibilities in a Half-Hearted Campaign to
Some Possibilities in a Half-Hearted Campaign to Rename the Middle West. I liked “America’s Meth Basket” and “National Endangered Goatee Reserve”.
Some photos by Richard Avedon, who passed away today aged 81
Some photos by Richard Avedon, who passed away today aged 81.
Speaking at Web 2.0
I’ll be doing a workshop on Design for Web 2.0 at the Web 2.0 conference next week with Jeff Veen and Jason Fried:
Web design and development has come a long way in the past ten years. Early assumptions have been replaced by mature decisions based on tested principles and clear best practices. We’re taking what we’ve learned in those ten years and presenting the workshop attendee — be you a designer, technologist, or businessperson — with a collection of practical tips and techniques for designing Web sites, Web applications, APIs, feeds, and everything else that makes up the next-gen Web. So join us for a lively discussion of Web design as it continues to move beyond the browser.
Given the freewheeling nature of the workshop format, that description may not be entirely accurate, but it’s close enough and if you show up, you won’t be disappointed. (For a chuckle, if you look at the rest of the workshop roster, there’s me and my one-man band stuck in amongst a bunch of CEOs, Partners, Directors, and VPs. Good times.)
Amazon UK borks up a birthday order
Amazon UK borks up a birthday order but recovers wonderfully with an employee *hand-delivering* a portable DVD player to a delighted 8-yo. And they swallowed the 50 pound difference in cost as well.
Amateur revolution
Amateur revolution. “From astronomy to computing, networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations.”
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