By the way, I like the Performancing plugin for these quick blog notes. It could use some improvements, but it's FAST and right there in my browser, which is a big deal.
Unlimited Skypeout calling for US$ 30 a year? Oh, but it's only to the US and Canada. Oh well, still might be a good deal.
Offline access to web services (email, editing, ...) is the next Big Thing (I'm sure Google must be working hard on this). SocialText seems to have an interesting approach: embed the application in the html (as js), download it, use it to edit and such, and when you're back online synch back. (If I understand the approach correctly). That's smart, it doesn't require a new browser or anything. Could Gmail do this for me?
Christina Wodtke's baby, Publicsquare launches. It's a hosted CMS for magazine style sites, with a focus on editorial workflow. Check it out.
Drupal considered dangerous for startups?
Mike mentioned on a mailing list that he "can think of at least 5 startups that were seriously hurt by using Drupal".
I have to agree, I can think of at least three cases.
But you could say that that's more a case of startups being hurt by technical incompetence because they thought they could use an open source CMS as the basis for their company. Not to say there aren't any successful companies using Drupal, but if you're building anything else than a content company (which you could probably run on any cms), you'd be foolish to start by using Drupal. That's just what I think.
Why? Drupal keeps evolving to solve a lot of different problems, it tries to be a swiss army knife. You'll probably use 20% of Drupal, which means you have 80% cruft (which 20% can be different for everyone), and you'll probably only have 20% of your needs addressed by Drupal, which means you'll have to hack around the 80% cruft to get your 80% needs addressed. It'll just keep frustrating you.
I call this Peter's "generic-cms-warning 80-80 rule".
Check out the would rather eat a turd tag at Amazon ;)
Values in categories of film ratings:
"Mechanical sex is R while sex that shows female pleasure is NC-17.
Heterosexual interactions are PG-13 while homosexual interactions are R."
S3 continues to rock
Amazon S3 really rocks. We generate a LOT of thumbnail images at mefeedia.com for all the videobloggers, and earlier this year all these millions of small jpg files were slowing the server to a crawl (servers aren't generally good at having millions upon millions of little files stored, even though we used a sensible directory approach).
Last month, we were hosting 120 Gigs worth of tiny files on Amazon S3, and transferred 150 Gigs of data. All this for 46 US$ for that month. You couldn't rent a server for that cheap, let alone you'd have to deal with all the management and scaling problems yourself. Rocks!
I am totally looking forward to the IA summit (as always), almost the only conference worth going to for me, but who the hell decided to hold it in god damn Las Vegas? I was in the Las Vegas airport once, full of slotmachines (or what do you call those), it was as close to hell as I have ever been. Ugh. And don't tell me I can study the user experience of Las Vegas!
Winer and Co are talking about building a true podcast device: no DRM, wifi, podcast subscriptions. It's indeed incredibly that neither Apple, Sony nor M$ have taken this opportunity yet, and I think the community can totally spec and build a device. Open source hardware, it's the next step.
Speed is still a very big deal in UX. This yahoo research says that one of the easiest improvements you can make is having less objects (images, js files, ...) per page, which reduces the amount of requests the browser has to make. There you go, Yahoo said so. Drop those images.
The Colombia migration project (http://colombiamigrationproject.net/) is well underway, with 1 or 2 videos a week. Check it out and give it some linky love!
lack of posts
I've been travelling in Colombia, hence the lack of posts. The silence will continue a bit longer...
Original post on November 14, 2005 from SALT - Seminars About Long Term Thinking: (RSS feed)
Clay Shirky - Making Digital Durable: What Time Does to Categories Video
(Via Mefeedia)
If only I was a good programmer, I would have known to expect the weirdest stuff with data coming from outside the system. At mefeedia, we aggregate RSS feeds, and anything you can imagine is out there. Loads of invalid feeds (but we take them anyway), invalid data, missing elements, and so on. What a mess :)
New horizons for IA: 2006 Information Architecture Retreat (Latin America)
Check out New horizons for IA: 2006 Information Architecture Retreat (Latin America)
Here's a thought: a scalable memcached service. So what you provide is a memcached pool. Charge by memory - it doesn't matter how many servers this runs on. x4/MB of memcached. Then, I, as a user, just have to buy some, and call it in my code. And I can easily get more. Nice & sweet, especially because shared hosts and such often can't easily install memcached.
I know, probably a bad idea.
I'm not sure why I like to check Mashable and Techcrunch every day. They profile a bunch of startups every day. Part of it is that I like to see what's out there. But I do wish they'd be a bit less web 2.0-y.
It just occurred to me that Borat is a much more appropriate character to show America than Ali G, who worked better in the stiff upper lip English environment. Borat shows America's racial problems, Ali G showed the UK's class problems.
ok I turned off that automatic link to performancing. I understand why they do it, and since it's free and very useful I'll go with it, but that was almost evil.
Testing performancing
I've been very happy with Windows Livewriter, especially for its handling of rich text and images, but it loads up slightly slowly, so I'm testing out the performancing blogging plugin today.powered by performancing firefox
Why you need 50000 songs, not 500
the weblog of Lucas Gonze: "I remember times in my life where I had a strictly limited music collection, and I kept things fresh by listening at finer and finer levels of detail. Those days should be over for most of us, though. It's important for individuals to grow their collections past the "enough" marker, whether that's 50,000 songs or even just 500, because at that point you stop listening in the old way.
The new way is to treat music more like a newspaper than a book, so that a continuous stream of fresh content is intrinsic to the media. If you hear a good hook somewhere, the next day you should find that hook remixed into another song. You should never again, post 20th century, post the era when music and manufactured goods were synonomous, think of music as something so static that 500 songs could encompass it."
Interesting. I always have fun with calling stuff "the X of Y". So this is the psychology of abundance? :)
The Joy of Scrolling Long Pages.
The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day. Need some happy thoughts? Read this.
And on a related note: that page is an example of the Joy of Scrolling Long Pages. Don't break that page up and destroy the magic. Don't commit informationarchitecturitis. :) Sometimes, a really long page should just be a really long page.
Bllshit Google how clueless can you be?
Official Google Blog: Do you "Google?" "Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad"
So now Google is telling us when to use the word "Google". That's not even funny. That's just clueless.
Health , Diet and Fitness videoblogs and podcasts - a list of videblog and podcast RSS feeds on mefeedia
Who knew there were so many? Health , Diet and Fitness videoblogs and podcasts - a list of videblog and podcast RSS feeds on mefeedia
Vox
Somehow, Vox (SixApart's new service that came out of beta today) just doesn't appeal to me. Not sure why that is.
evhead: The Birth of Obvious Corp.
evhead: The Birth of Obvious Corp.: "We are attempting to create a new model for building and running web products. Nearly everyone I know in the Internet business is either at one of the giants, wishing they were at a startup, or at a startup that hopes get bought by a giant."
swipr.com
swipr.com: "swipr is basically a plug-in toolset for Microsoft Visio. It allows you to create a set of HTML pages that integrate screenflows or sitemaps and wireframes. Anyone can navigate thorugh your sitemap and see the wireframes of the pages in the sitemap just by clicking through it. You can also create links on your wireframes, effectively turning your basic wireframe deliverable into a low-fi prototype."
The new Firefox is pretty nice with feeds: it displays a "nice" looking page for feeds and gives you the option to subscribe using various feedreaders. Smooth and friendly!
Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease » Blog Archive »
Cool, the new firefox now has close buttons on each tab. Just as I suggested in 2004. World domination next!
35,000 in Secret Prisons | CorrenteWire
Are 35,000 people in America's secret prisons? That is fucking crazy. Is America the new nazi state? Is that a question I shouldn't ask?
35,000 in Secret Prisons | CorrenteWire: "Iâm at the Center for American Progress, listening to Sid Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald talk about the Imperial Presidency, and one thing is important enough for me to want to live blog. Sid says that Wilkerson, Powellâs old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only %5 of which âmayâ? have to do with terrorism. More than twice what I thought, and hardly any to do with the âwar on terror.â?
All videos and podcasts in List of BBC Podcasts - a list of videblog and podcast RSS feeds on mefeedia
This page has a mixed list of all the podcasts (video and audio) of the BBC.
In the spirit of good citizenship, it also has an rss feed, but all the links in the RSS feed point back to the BBC as much as possible, instead of republishing stuff and pointing back to mefeedia as seems to be the norm with directories these days.
What the hell is a whotel?
Why the hell would this post for the search query whotel send me lots of traffic to this page: curry: podcasts and videoblogs about curry?
That's just weird. I can't even figure out what a whotel is?
Metroblogging Vancouver: All in the Cards
A good story about very specific categories (Lost A Cat? Suitable For Marriage) that sell more cards.
I proceed to the Marketplace floor of the department store (that's on the same level at the Skytrain ticket booths, just at the bottom of the first escalators in Granville station). They've recently renovated as well - there's a pharmacy and a new deli counter and yes - a card section (right next to Godiva Chocolates). A big huge multi-aisle card section was just what I needed. So I start browsing the rows of greetings and sympathies. I look under the heading "Religious" and it's not there... I eventually find it right under "Baptism", how convenient. Oh, but the convenience didn't stop there. I discovered ALL kinds of card categories that the Bay has laid out for us and I'm not talking about the usual sections of "Birthday - Son" or "From all of us".
Oh no, The Bay really wants us to find what we're looking for. Here are some examples of their card section categories:
"Still thinking of you". In case the "thinking of you" cards just don't cut it anymore.
"Loss of Cat" was a category in the Religious section, next to "Friends are praying for you", well okay that's understandable I suppose pets can become family members and their loss can be profound.
"Suitable for Remarriage" Now, I'm not sure if the card itself is suitable for someone who is getting remarried or if it's to congratulate you on being suitable... for marrying again.
Now here's where it just gets outta hand.
An entire section of cards labeled "You've been through so much but you're never alone" and another couple rows reserved for cards that all express, in some way or another, "We stay friends despite our busy Schedules".
Link to Metroblogging Vancouver: All in the Cards
Xark!: How the Internets work
A great diagram about how the internets work. Finally we understand!
Link to Xark!: How the Internets work
SecondLife podcasts and videoblogs - a list of videblog and podcast RSS feeds on mefeedia
And here's a list of secondlife podcast rss feeds
List of BBC Podcasts and more..
I made a List of BBC Podcasts, using a new lists feature on mefeedia. I coded the list feature in a few hours, launched it this afternoon, and so far we've already gotten a few useful lists:
- A complete list of NPR audio podcast RSS feeds
- A list of Vloggercon source feeds
- List of IBM podcasts IBM is doing well with adopting blogs and such internally.
- A complete list of ABC News Feeds
Enjoy! OPML and all that goodness is for later, the next few days I have no time whatsoever :)
The Revolution Will Be Televised
Josh Wolf is in prison now because he didn't want to hand over his source material as a citizen journalist. You can go donate something for the good cause on his site. Prison is no fun, so I think he needs some support.
Link to The Revolution Will Be Televised
Scripting News: 10/12/2006
You know how people who invent a technology can often look into the future better than people who grew up in it? Dave Winer is like that. I think it might be because they see the technology for what it, technologically, is. And they see it's limits.
We, who grew in with a technology, we just think the world is like that and how can we change it? Anyways, Dave:
A few years back we wrote about cars with interfaces for MP3 players, and now they're starting to make them. That's good. Okay, the next thing is to put fractional horsepower HTTP servers on board, with simple programming interfaces (I like XML-RPC because it interfaces easily with every programming language, but lower-level interfaces would be okay, just more work for the programmer). While you're at it, home theater systems should also have HTTP servers with programmable interfaces, so I can write a script on my desktop computer to move stuff over to the hard disk on the music system. Oh that's right they don't have hard disks. Add one, okay? They're really cheap.
Source: Scripting News: 10/12/2006
Yahoo Time Capsule
Yahoo is doing a project where they let people from all over the world submit pictures and video and such, and then they will treat it like a "timecapsule" for future anthropologists.
The timecapsule idea is a bit weird (are they engraving this? or building a 10,000 year lasting server?), but I love the idea of creating interesting ways for people to collaborate and discuss and create "content" online. Social networks are getting boring.
Oh, and the UI is funky too:
(Yes it really swirls around the way you imagine.)
Link to Yahoo Time Capsule - by Jonathan Harris
Peoplework, paperwork and real work. | The poorbuthappy guide to working without a job
I wrote a post estimating how much time I spend on different kinds of work:
- Peoplework: 15% (about right)
- Paperwork: 5% (not enough)
- Real work: 30% (yea, really!)
- Information work: 50% (This is way too much!)
What are your percentages like?
Clickable links and interactive forums
I always cringe when people say things like "clickable link" or "interactive forum". "Can we add some clickable links there?" I guess it's just that they lack familiarity with the medium. But come on guys. I hear this from people who are responsible for some large websites!
"Meeting eBay?s top developer, Eric Billingsley". Interesting interview about eBay's search engine. It has very specific requirements: if I add something for sale, it has to show up in searches very quickly. And you need complete retrieval: ALL items have to show up.
He also talks about a flexible datamodel that can accomodate various datafields for a teddybear to a car.
Technically, one interesting bit is that the whole system is IN memory.
Original post on October 11, 2006 from ScobleShow: Videoblog about geeks, technology, and developers: (RSS feed)
Eric Billingsley used to design nuclear power plants, but his new job is no less interesting: he is the senior director of eBay’s new research labs. Come along and listen as he tells you what eBay is up to and how he built eBay’s new search engine. He also gives us a demo of the latest stuff from their research labs. It should be said that this stuff is experimental and has not been shipped to eBay yet. Tags: Eric Billingsley, eBay
(Via Mefeedia)
Rosenfeld Media - Search Analytics for your Site: The seasonality of search demonstrated
For quite some time, I've known how seasons affect search needs among an academic institution's searchers. After some seat-of-the-pants manual clustering of queries by topic, the seasonality of search seems to be validated once more. I've color-coded the clusters in spreadsheet snippet below; you can download the entire spreadsheet here (942Kb Excel spreadsheet; each column represents a single week's worth of queries from each month, September 2005 through September 2006):
This graph illustrates top searches in the university:
Source: Rosenfeld Media - Search Analytics for your Site: The seasonality of search demonstrated
"The Adventures of Dancin' Dan"
Watch movie (1 MB, 0.4 min)
Original post on April 30, 2006 from Undergroundfilm > Comedy: (RSS feed)
Dancing Dan has a problem. Every time he hears his favorite song he dances out of control, leading to embarassing moments and painful memories.
(Via Mefeedia)
Tracking conversations
We launched a new version of mefeedia today. Not many new features, most of the work was to make the backend scale - we moved to an entire new datamodel.
But we did add a few conversation tracking features. I'm learning a lot about the information architecture of conversations :)
Link to The best videoblog and podcast directory
Sharing slides
I am trying Rashmi's new slideshare product. I really think she's on to something here. Below are my slides from a talk I gave at the IA Summit 2006.
Whole lotta slides
I love this. Lou Rosenfeld often puts the slides of his seminars online, but downloading a huge PPT is no fun. He used the new service of Uzanto (by another information architect, Rashmi Sinha and the team she set up that's partly US, partly India) called Slideshare to embed his slides on the website. Much easier to skim through. I think this might be a hit.
Link to Bloug: Whole lotta slides
Embedded, it looks like this:
