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Mashable* » Ma.gnolia - Because You Really Need Another Social Bookmarking Site: "How many more photo sharing sites, social bookmarking services, ajax start pages and online calendars can the market withstand? [...] I think it’s a shame to see talented developers and designers building me-too applications when there are so many great ideas still up for grabs."
Tag conversations
I'm chatting with Emanuele about tags and structure, getting ready for my talk at the IA Summit this year. Here's the chat transcript for prosperity. We talked about adding structure to tag spaces, and whether that's a good thing, and if so, what kinds of structure, and such.
[1:45:20 PM] Emanuele says: Peter
[1:45:27 PM] Emanuele says: I cannot reach mefeedia
[1:45:44 PM] peterkevandijck says: hi emanuele
[1:45:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes, it's down...
[1:45:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: being worked on...
[1:45:59 PM] peterkevandijck says: wanna talk about tags? :)
[1:46:13 PM] Emanuele says: heheeh i'm thinking hard about the future of tags..
[1:46:33 PM] Emanuele says: today Monthly Vision has published an interview with me
[1:46:36 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) I'm preparing my talk....
[1:46:41 PM] Emanuele says: inside an article about tags
[1:46:46 PM] peterkevandijck says: cool
[1:46:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: online?
[1:46:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: congratulations!
[1:47:08 PM] Emanuele says: no it's a physical magazine
[1:47:13 PM] Emanuele says: and it's in italian
[1:47:14 PM] Emanuele says: :(
[1:47:19 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) oh well
[1:47:31 PM] Emanuele says: i'm talking about the future of folksonomies
[1:47:39 PM] Emanuele says: with the guy who wrote the article
[1:47:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: so what *is* the future?
[1:47:53 PM] Emanuele says: you know
[1:47:57 PM] Emanuele says: you are the international expert
[1:47:59 PM] Emanuele says: :D
[1:48:02 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah right ;)
[1:48:13 PM] Emanuele says: you say facets...
[1:48:16 PM] peterkevandijck says: i just have some suspicions.. :)
[1:48:33 PM] Emanuele says: but interesting ones, I suspect
[1:48:34 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[1:49:33 PM] Emanuele says: and hey, I will be there to listen to your talk
[1:49:34 PM] Emanuele says: ;)
[1:50:09 PM] peterkevandijck says: cool
[1:50:21 PM] peterkevandijck says: The competing talks are also very interesting!
[1:50:29 PM] peterkevandijck says: I think it'll be one of the best summits so far...
[1:50:50 PM] Emanuele says: it will be great, I know
[1:51:13 PM] Emanuele says: your main idea is
[1:51:17 PM] Emanuele says: facet + tags
[1:51:21 PM] Emanuele says: right?
[1:51:38 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes... and other types of structure: what happens when we build structure and semantics into tags?
[1:51:49 PM] peterkevandijck says: using mefeedia as example case study
[1:52:20 PM] Emanuele says: i talked with you about that
[1:52:46 PM] Emanuele says: i love the idea of bottom up structure between tags
[1:52:58 PM] Emanuele says: created by users with a wiki approach
[1:53:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: one of the interesting things is: if you build semantics into tags (like: a tag is a person), then translation becomes sometimes easier (like: we don't have to translate names of people)
[1:53:15 PM] Emanuele says: uhm semantics
[1:53:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes this is another dimension
[1:53:49 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, I'm not sure I'm using the word 'semantics' correctly, but it's the best word I can think of... giving meaning to tags
[1:54:35 PM] peterkevandijck says: and once you add some semantics (like: a tag is an event), then additional structure becomes very easy (like: an event is in a place, a time, ...)
[1:55:14 PM] Emanuele says: how to describe the semantic relationships
[1:55:20 PM] Emanuele says: a sort of ontology at the end
[1:55:20 PM] Emanuele says: ?
[1:55:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: but: it can also be confusing, for example: if I have tags that are people, and I have users that are people too, then my semantics start crashing into each other... you can browse users (people)... and you can browse tags (people)... how are they different?...
[1:56:01 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes, it turns into ontology...
[1:56:23 PM] peterkevandijck says: but I think the problem is limiting it: you have to only choose a very few types of relationships and such...
[1:56:26 PM] peterkevandijck says: and make the most of those
[1:56:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: if not, you just get a really big and messy ontology that's rather useless
[1:56:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: it becomes like a big topicmap
[1:57:10 PM] Emanuele says: very complex...
[1:57:15 PM] Emanuele says: and me feel is simply
[1:57:22 PM] Emanuele says: let the people do the work
[1:57:42 PM] Emanuele says: you cannot impose a centralized structure or sematic
[1:58:01 PM] Emanuele says: it's people with their mental models
[1:58:03 PM] peterkevandijck says: well.. but you do impose a UI, right?
[1:58:13 PM] Emanuele says: that create structure
[1:58:15 PM] peterkevandijck says: the UI makes the whole thing useful
[1:58:17 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[1:58:26 PM] Emanuele says: but maybe you can think to a GUI
[1:58:38 PM] Emanuele says: that doesn't restrict users
[1:58:47 PM] Emanuele says: for example
[1:58:51 PM] Emanuele says: my structure
[1:58:57 PM] Emanuele says: could be different from your one
[1:58:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: so you can't just tell people, add any kind of relationship, do whatever, because you won't be able to build a useful UI on top of that.. and without useful UI, why would anyone tag?
[1:59:11 PM] peterkevandijck says: i don't think that's possible...
[1:59:18 PM] Emanuele says: maybe you are right
[1:59:22 PM] peterkevandijck says: i have never seen a good, generic UI for generic ontologies
[1:59:22 PM] Emanuele says: i don't know yet
[1:59:34 PM] Emanuele says: but in a social environement
[1:59:42 PM] Emanuele says: you have the power of people
[1:59:54 PM] Emanuele says: that decides what is useful and popular
[2:00:07 PM] Emanuele says: this could make the difference
[2:00:18 PM] Emanuele says: if my tag organizing is useful
[2:00:19 PM] Emanuele says: it will emerge
[2:00:22 PM] peterkevandijck says: right... so people make up their own stuff.. like special tags and such.. like the tag1/tag2 hacks in delicious...
[2:00:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: but that's very limited in UI usefulness
[2:00:53 PM] Emanuele says: delicious is not made to support structure in tags
[2:00:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: exactly
[2:01:00 PM] Emanuele says: not yet
[2:01:05 PM] peterkevandijck says: so some users hack it a little bit...
[2:01:13 PM] peterkevandijck says: but: the UI support for that is very little...
[2:01:16 PM] Emanuele says: yes but this is a stong signal
[2:01:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: so the motivation to do it is very small
[2:01:20 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:01:22 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:02:15 PM] Emanuele says: give them an empowering GUI
[2:02:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: so.. my idea is: build in a minimum of structure.. just a little bit... and create empowering UIs on top of that
[2:02:51 PM] peterkevandijck says: the UI will hopefully motivate people to use the structure...
[2:03:01 PM] Emanuele says: so you decide the structure flexibility
[2:03:02 PM] Emanuele says: ?
[2:03:08 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes...
[2:03:21 PM] Emanuele says: i mean the types of relationship
[2:03:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes... I could decide to let users enter their own types of relationships...
[2:03:45 PM] peterkevandijck says: I'm not doing anything with relationships right now
[2:04:02 PM] peterkevandijck says: or I could decide to set a few standard relationships and limit users to those
[2:04:25 PM] peterkevandijck says: which gives me more UI possibilities than letting users enter any relationship.. but limits the bottom-up creativity...
[2:04:35 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:04:44 PM] Emanuele says: don't you believe that restricting
[2:04:55 PM] Emanuele says: is against the original folksonomies' spirit?
[2:05:27 PM] peterkevandijck says: no.. it's like creativity: restrictions can set you free. For example: ask someone to draw "something". They'll be stuck. But ask them to draw "the dream they had yesterday". That's a lot easier...
[2:06:09 PM] Emanuele says: so a powerful small set of things
[2:06:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: so I guess it's a balance.. but I don't believe in the idea of just "everything is a tag, and everything is a relationship"... because it is impossible to create good UI's without the semantics, without knowing what it *means*
[2:06:26 PM] peterkevandijck says: if you know what I mean.. ;)
[2:06:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, I think so...
[2:06:58 PM] Emanuele says: and what about facets in this scenario?
[2:07:05 PM] Emanuele says: do they still fit?
[2:08:06 PM] peterkevandijck says: Well... facets are useful.. yes: they let you assign semantics ("nyc" is a "place"), PLUS they also let you then use all the powerful faceted browsing techniques that we know and love... as opposed to just letting people assign semantics ("person", "...) without them being facets
[2:08:14 PM] peterkevandijck says: making any sense?
[2:08:33 PM] peterkevandijck says: the great thing about facets is that they allow for crazy efficient browsing
[2:08:34 PM] Emanuele says: yes of course
[2:08:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: if not, we might as well let people tag tags, randomly, without restrictions... but then we'd loose the great facetbrowsing...
[2:09:02 PM] Emanuele says: but you thought to a one level faceted approach
[2:09:24 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, for now.. I don't see much gain in adding hierarchy for example.. not on mefeedia
[2:09:55 PM] Emanuele says: hierarchy gives context IMHO
[2:09:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: perhaps if I was organizing something else, like products, that would make sense... but if you're gonna get users to do it, it's gotta be simple
[2:10:16 PM] Emanuele says: my point here is that
[2:10:23 PM] Emanuele says: users only knows if Venice
[2:10:26 PM] Emanuele says: is in Italy
[2:10:29 PM] Emanuele says: or in US
[2:10:49 PM] Emanuele says: and they could help to create "foci"
[2:10:59 PM] Emanuele says: for your faceted organization
[2:11:13 PM] Emanuele says: a sort of polyhierarchy
[2:11:16 PM] peterkevandijck says: it just seems like too much work for the user (and me!) for too little payoff...
[2:11:33 PM] peterkevandijck says: why add so much structure? I don't think it's really needed...
[2:11:38 PM] Emanuele says: did you conduct any test?
[2:11:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: remember, we don't need 100% recall
[2:11:45 PM] Emanuele says: no ok
[2:11:53 PM] Emanuele says: but a little more precision yes
[2:11:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: just some informal usability tests... and I haven't rolled out everything yet...
[2:12:13 PM] Emanuele says: as an user
[2:12:20 PM] Emanuele says: serendipity is great
[2:12:40 PM] Emanuele says: but what if I want a more targeted "browsing"
[2:12:49 PM] Emanuele says: at the end facets have the same aim
[2:13:11 PM] Emanuele says: making easier to understand the tags' mess
[2:13:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: yep
[2:13:31 PM] Emanuele says: i could have not only Us
[2:13:35 PM] Emanuele says: but also Utah
[2:13:43 PM] Emanuele says: in a big system
[2:13:52 PM] Emanuele says: and delicious, flickr or an IBM intranet
[2:13:54 PM] Emanuele says: are big systems
[2:14:06 PM] Emanuele says: this could improve the findability
[2:14:09 PM] peterkevandijck says: but wait, are you like, looking for pictures on flickr, or looking for a tech doc on IBM? It's very different...
[2:14:24 PM] peterkevandijck says: in IBM, you need to find the right doc
[2:14:28 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:14:32 PM] peterkevandijck says: in Flickr, you just have to find something nice..
[2:14:36 PM] Emanuele says: but in flickr
[2:14:42 PM] Emanuele says: i want a Cork's sky
[2:14:48 PM] Emanuele says: (Ireland)
[2:14:58 PM] Emanuele says: or a Cork's Monument
[2:15:02 PM] Emanuele says: but i don't know it's name
[2:15:13 PM] Emanuele says: i could click on the Ireland
[2:15:21 PM] Emanuele says: or maybe Cork tag
[2:15:32 PM] Emanuele says: and have a chance to find it
[2:15:43 PM] peterkevandijck says: right.. and you might not find the best picture, even though it exists in flickr... but that's the way it is...
[2:16:02 PM] Emanuele says: yes but here the point is not the known-item search
[2:16:10 PM] Emanuele says: i don't want "the righ one"
[2:16:31 PM] Emanuele says: but i want one believing at the "right category"
[2:16:44 PM] peterkevandijck says: so you need to find the right tag...?
[2:17:00 PM] Emanuele says: no, one that approximates well enough
[2:17:09 PM] Emanuele says: and structure is needed
[2:17:23 PM] Emanuele says: also to surf the big amount of photos
[2:17:27 PM] peterkevandijck says: ok... so you want to find a good-enough tag... and facets clearly help with that.. and hierarchy would help even more...
[2:17:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: right?
[2:17:33 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:17:45 PM] Emanuele says: why not put them together?
[2:17:46 PM] peterkevandijck says: but letting users add hierarchy is really hard...
[2:17:57 PM] peterkevandijck says: I don't think it's possible
[2:18:07 PM] Emanuele says: adding geography tags is not impossibile
[2:18:18 PM] Emanuele says: you gave me the "Space Facet"
[2:18:21 PM] peterkevandijck says: what do you mean by "adding geography tags"?
[2:18:33 PM] Emanuele says: you decided to have a space facet
[2:18:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes
[2:18:45 PM] Emanuele says: i will add a Europe tag under it
[2:18:52 PM] peterkevandijck says: and I add antwerp :)
[2:18:53 PM] Emanuele says: then tomorrow
[2:19:04 PM] Emanuele says: i will add italy under Europe
[2:19:18 PM] Emanuele says: and one of my friend will add Rome to Italy
[2:19:29 PM] Emanuele says: a wikipedia of tags
[2:19:36 PM] peterkevandijck says: and another will add rome under new york state
[2:19:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: it might be possible..
[2:19:55 PM] Emanuele says: ok.. also wikipedia needs some disambiguation
[2:20:07 PM] Emanuele says: but this is quite rare
[2:20:13 PM] peterkevandijck says: true
[2:20:24 PM] Emanuele says: to avoid restricting users
[2:20:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: except in other facets... like topic
[2:20:33 PM] Emanuele says: the system has to be ambiguos
[2:20:39 PM] peterkevandijck says: right
[2:20:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:20:47 PM] Emanuele says: topics are messy
[2:20:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: so add hierarchy in certain facets...
[2:21:12 PM] Emanuele says: don't know exaclty
[2:21:21 PM] Emanuele says: maybe it could work with every facet
[2:21:27 PM] Emanuele says: the system could converge
[2:21:39 PM] Emanuele says: wikipedia is improving its quality
[2:21:56 PM] Emanuele says: because people put it their very different point of views
[2:22:05 PM] Emanuele says: and it makes sense
[2:22:27 PM] Emanuele says: but you are the expert
[2:22:28 PM] Emanuele says: :D
[2:22:35 PM] Emanuele says: it's only an idea
[2:22:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: who knows...
[2:23:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: :)
[2:23:06 PM] peterkevandijck says: we'll have to try it and find out..
[2:23:36 PM] Emanuele says: you could give it a try
[2:23:49 PM] Emanuele says: and paying me a beer if it works
[2:23:55 PM] peterkevandijck says: mefeedia should be working now.. :)
[2:23:55 PM] Emanuele says: ;)
[2:23:57 PM] peterkevandijck says: :)
[2:24:44 PM] Emanuele says: Am I crazy?
[2:24:55 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, probably
[2:25:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) we all are
[2:25:05 PM] Emanuele says: a lot of experts say that structure does not fit tags..
[2:25:06 PM] Emanuele says: but..
[2:25:07 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:26:07 PM] peterkevandijck says: oh whatever "experts" :)
[2:26:22 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:26:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: A little structure.. how bad can it be? Optional structure...
[2:26:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes optional bottom up free structure
[2:26:43 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:31:30 PM] peterkevandijck says: ok, gonna log out :) nice brainstorming with you..
[2:31:37 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:31:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: mind if I publish this chat trasnciprt on my blog?
[2:31:49 PM] Emanuele says: no, i would love it
Simple group chat for business: Campfire
Simple group chat for business: Campfire: I am trying out Campfire. It is very, very good in the sense that it's chat with a home. I have the feeling this will improve productivity a lot, and I have the feeling it will be one of the default tabs in my browser (together with Gmail and Bloglines). Not sure yet though, there are a few things missing (or: they did a great job resisting feature rot), so we'll see.
The only annoying feature now is that, to look to yesterday's chat you missed, it opens up in a separate window. That's no fun.
LiveJournal.com has a new homepage - it now looks 2001 instead of 1998! Progress!
Why Yahoo! is releasing their UI patterns and code
Yahoo didn't just release their Yahoo! Design Pattern Library today, they also have the ajax code for it available for free. Yes, you can use this Yahoo-tested, mature code in your own commercial projects.
What's in it for Yahoo!? They are releasing it under a BSD open source license, but I don't think their main motivation is to get outside programmers to help improve the code by open sourcing it. I think their motivation is to become leaders in setting new UI standards for the web.
Let me explain. Web UI's are becoming pretty rich pretty fast these days. However, there is no clear leader that sets standards. If Yahoo can make their own standards become adopted by many web properties, it inforces the familiarity users have with the Yahoo! UI standards. If Yahoo! uses a slider widget, and that works the same on a bunch of other websites too, the slider becomes a standard for users, something they can rely on. And all Yahoo!'s properties become standards too.
I like this strategy, it's clever. It's saying: follow us in UI design, we're the leaders. And giving people the tools to easily follow them (how hard will it be to convince a manager to use drag&drop if it is "good enough for Yahoo to use"?). This way, Yahoo's UI becomes a standard rich web UI.
Google, meanwhile, is showing how bad they really are at UI. The new chat implementation in Gmail is really, really bad, to the point of being unusable.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library is now public! Lots of user interface knowledge in there..
TIME.com: Meet The Google Guys -- Feb. 20, 2006 -- Page 2
TIME.com: Meet The Google Guys -- Feb. 20, 2006 -- Page 2:
"DO YOU THINK YOU'VE CHANGED PERSONALLY SINCE THE COMPANY'S CREATION?
PAGE: Things weren't too bad until TIME wanted to put us on the cover. But seriously, I like the fact that I can meet anyone now and have a conversation.
BRIN: Larry is more relaxed.
PAGE: Sergey is more confident."
USATODAY.com - Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter in face, chest
USATODAY.com - Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter in face, chest.
The new Ion: screenshots on Flickr
Videoblog reviews.: The Mefeedia recently reviewed section is one of the better ways to keep up with what's going on in the vlogosphere.
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Confirming a penalty: "I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html."
Lucas Gonze: "The situation whereit's too much work for the average user to dosomething is a pretty commonpattern in net software. There is
sometimes a workaround: designyour application to magnify the impactof the few people who do do the work.
CDDB is an example of that workaround. Most people didn't type insong titles, but the few who did had a huge impact."
"Invasion from Space": I am a digikid, and today I'm gonna show you how to wardrive with your PSP!
Techie kids. Gotta love it.
Watch movie (, 4.5 min, 17.7 MB)
Original post, from The digiKID:
This is a stop motion animation created by the digiKID along with two of his friends. They made heavy use of Apple's iMovie
Current style in web design
Current style in web design: a quick analysis of the visual design of recent. It's a bit superficial, I'd like to see a discussion of which elements will feel "old school" fast, for example. Or how this compares to previous "design waves".
In general, I don't see a lot of deep thinking about design coming from the design world. Any specific blogs I should be reading?
I have to say I am stunned by what FeedBurner
is doing. They are the perfect web 2.0 business. Sure, there are no tags. No Ajax. But they've taken a piece of the new infrastructure (feeds), and turned it into something much more powerful, when nobody thought (even today) it mattered. And they execute very, very well. Their stuff just works. And it builds and builds on a vision. Amazing.
Strangely, they are rarely mentioned in the web 2.0 lists.
At DEMO, they're charging US$ 15,000 to do a demo. That's like only worth it if you're looking for VC cash. In other words, DEMO is only for VC companies, not web2.0 companies (who are supposed to do without VC cash, right?).
Not only is Wordpress doing an "etnerprise" version of their blog stuff, it seems that Drupal is going that way as well.
The Rocketboom advertisement sale on eBay is at US $15,099.99 (Reserve not met). It's a cheap deal, if you consider the amount of publicity this will get, and the audience of Rocketboom. Send your advertisers that way.
And more on URLs: "When Flickr started, made some bad URL decisions (e.g. link to the actual photo file). Originally was flickr.com/photos/12.jpg - really hard to scale. You have to support the old style URLs for ever. Lesson learnt the difficult way."
Tips for scalable websites: I did this wrong: "Dont expose your unique id's to the outside world (php?id=1 etc.) people can scrape through everything very easily. This is why del.icio.us uses MD5 hashes of links instead."
You know how IA's always talk about search and browse? And integrating them?
Are tags search? Or are tags browse? Or are they something else in between?
So I went to the Apple store, showed them my disfunctional iPod video (less than a year old), within a few minutes they gave me a brand new one.
Nice.
They told me: for 6 months, they'll replace it for free, after that it's 30$ to replace it.
We are sorry: "In the middle of all the mayhem surrounding the Danish cartoons controversy, a group of Arab and Muslim youth have set up this website to express their honest opinion, as a small attempt to show the world that the images shown of Arab and Muslim anger around the world are not representative of the opinions of all Arabs."
Celebration is quality control - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
Celebration is quality control - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals): "Inevitably, âUpload Status works!â? turns into âMaybe the image should be smallerâ? or âLetâs eliminate a step.â? By sharing and celebrating the accomplishment, an opportunity appears to focus in on the details and make it even better."
37 Signals continue to reverse-engineer why their approach to product development works. And you know what? It does! I do the above. It works. Now I do it a bit more consciously.
"Topical Mishmash" Josh leo is one of my favourite vloggers. He'd never make it through the first audience for anything on television, but strangely, he's got tons of camera presence. More than 90% of tv people. Check out the first part, in which there is horrid dancing.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 6.5 min, 35.4 MB)
Original post, from Josh Leo's Vlog:
A lot of stuff has been going on recently, here are many of those things... Forgive me for the length, horrible dancing, and the ugly goatee Topical Mishmash Music: Belle and Sebastian - Cover (Version)
(Via Mefeedia)
John Battelle's Searchblog: Google Talking to Dell: It's All About Distribution
John Battelle's Searchblog: Google Talking to Dell: It's All About Distribution: "Google pays it $1 for every PC that ships with a Google toolbar -- a strip that sits atop a browser and enables users to easily operate Google's search engine -- and another 75 cents the first time a home-computer user taps the service, says a person familiar with the matter."
Mozilla also makes loads of cash from that Google searchbar it seems. But it's such a difficult strategy: they're always having to bid for it, pay for it. Where's the Googlebrowser? All this stuff should be in the browser. Where is Google hiring more Mozilla developers to work on it?
tagging and wikis
mefeedia video tags: I am experimenting with wiki-like tag descriptions at Mefeedia. Basically, we take a wiki approach to coming up with what are supposed to be "objective" descriptions for tags.
Apart from this approach, I'm also playing with facets and tags. Right now, they're only used on the main tag page (facets are Place, Language, Event, Person and Topic). And only admins can assign facets. That's gonna change soon too.
Slowly mixing semantics and various structures with tags seems to be working so far, and it provides dozens of beautiful UI and experience possibilities. I'll keep you posted on the progress.
More comments on Apple's appalling upgrade policies: Steve Portigal: "It’s one of the reasons I stopped using Real, that they’d screw around and confuse you with complicated download/upgrade interfaces. I expected better of Apple, at least from a design point of view, if not necessarily a respect for your customer point of view."
More discussion on FON: David Weinberger: "Fon is aimed at the 99.9% of the people with broadband who donât have open hotspots. Fon gives them some incentives to share their connection and tries to make it dead easy for them to get set up."
Me: "I guess my problem is this: try to encourage people to âopenâ? their hotspot by closing it off to all non-fon-subscribers? It just doesnât seem like a model thatâll work, or thatâll make people enthusiastic."
My Gmail is looking set to become not just an email client, but an RSS reader too. And now it's showing Chat history (if you use Google's chat thingie). All in one, I might like that.
ONLamp.com: Better Search Engine Design: Beyond Algorithms
ONLamp.com: Better Search Engine Design: Beyond Algorithms: I read this article again that I wrote a while back, and it's pretty interesting! I had forgotten a lot of that stuff.
Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth
Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth: "this monstrous conversation". Indeed. When a conversation this large is at your fingertips, what do you do?
Skype Places Bet on FON Revolution - Gizmodo. I'm sorry, but this FON stuff all the A-bloggers are hyping up just sounds stupid.
I have an open wifi spot. How is FON different, except that you can have an open wifi spot if you sign up with them? Oh, yeah, if you do, you get free wifi anywhere in the world. If you can find the hotspots. Sorry, but that's just useless.
"Michelob - Touch Football" I found a feed of superbowl commercials showing up in Mefeedia.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 0.5 min, 3.1 MB)
Original post, from 2006 Superbowl Commercials
(Via Mefeedia)
A girl in Jay's elevator told me her cellphone was stolen ("right out of my hands!"), and that the cops told her the kids who steal them get 40$ per cellphone.
That's a lot! I have some old cellphones lying around. Could I get 40$ for them?
ranked aggregation
robhyndman.com: "but also because ranked aggregation is kind of a holy grail in Web 2.0 right now - everyone is trying to figure out how to replace the human editor and make aggregation of quality content scalable."
Social aggregation is another obvious candidate (let your friends help you find the good stuff). What you find interesting is different from what I find interesting, so ranking things by amount of comments, incoming links and such can only be part of the picture.
Apple - QuickTime - Download - Standalone QuickTime Player Apple try to make you download iTunes with Quicktime - this is the place to go if you want to download ONLY the QT player.
"Mobile Cooking": can you really cook an egg with nothing but 2 cell phones.
Watch movie (Quicktime, 4.1 min, 23.3 MB)
Original post, from life with kellybelly:
filed under: cooking videos, videosThe other day I found a website that explains how to cook an egg using two mobile phones [link]. Of course I had to try it. (23.3MB) This movie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 2.5 License.
(Via Mefeedia)
After I learnt basic PHP (I coded for a living for a while), I became an information architect, and never really had to code again. All my little projects didn't need more than my basic PHP.
Since I'm working on Mefeedia.com though, I finally feel I'm becoming a better coder again. In the sense that I'm learning to really set up an object model, a db model and a set of actions on those, and keep that pretty separate from the service or website itself. I might play with Rails a bit in the future. If there is time for playing.
IA Summit - Architettura dell'Informazione
IA Summit - Architettura dell'Informazione The Italian IA summit looks like it'll be a great success. Emanuele told me they're almost full, but since it's FREE, he's still accepting registrations because he's not expecting everyone who registered to show up. So register soon if you want to go!
Mike Davidson: Lessons From The Roundabout SEO Test
Mike Davidson: Lessons From The Roundabout SEO Test: Mike made up a word (lodefizzle), tested it on Google, and got these conclusions:
- yes, you should use h1 tags and such
- using tables for layouts is not a problem
- you should have more or less valid html code
- and the final conclusion: "Although good semantics are somewhat valuable in optimization, simple things like proper titles, descriptive filenames, and incoming links are dramatically more important."
Life With Alacrity: On Being an Angel
Life With Alacrity: On Being an Angel: "Thus when entrepreneurs complain that VCs will not invest in their company, it is often because the VCs can't figure out how to invest a minimum of $25M and turn out at the end with $250M."
Good thing that, for many internet projects, you don't need VC's. Pfew.
Boxes and Arrows
Boxes and Arrows. Great articles, but I really dislike their new design. Star ratings everywhere? Apart from the fact that they are fairly meaningless (so 3 people rated this article 4 stars on average. What the hell does that mean? Nothing at all is the correct answer.), they really throw the visual design of the page out of balance. And then the cropping of text. Why is the sidebar full of text like "Wireframes f..." or "How to: ment..."? Come on!
Enough bitching - I'm lazy too. But these are all things IA's would care about, so I'm surprised B&A would get them so wrong.
I *do* really like the fact that they don't only indicate who wrote an article, but also who edited it. That's good.
A social analysis of tagging
A social analysis of tagging: "After being on many mailing lists for many years, let me say, conversation is often overrated. Often, I like to be in the company of others, without needing to follow threads and participate. It is the same reason that I like working in a cafe - enjoying the presence of others without the burden of active interaction. Similarly, tags provide a companionable social hum that I enjoy."
In the continuing rise of information architects coming up with online tools and services, Rashmi and Uzanto present MindCanvas. Rashmi is one of the most thorough researchers I know, so if she stands behind these methods I'd believe her. Fascinating.
I just registered for this years' Information Architecture Summit - it looks like it's gonna rock. A LOT of people will talk about folksonomies (including me), so let's see if the IA profession has come up with an answer to bottom-up classification after having taken some time to think about the whole thing. IA's tend to be balanced, careful people. Some of us at least. Not me. Anyway, last year there was a lot of confusion about folksonomies, perhaps this year we'll have actually something interesting to say. Something like: "Sure, they're cool, but here are a few ideas of taking them to the next level." Perhaps.
Six Apart - Movable Type News - The benefits of static web pages: "# Static pages are easier to index.
# Static pages show a better face to external search engines."
I can not believe that the Typepad guys would put such self-serving bullshit on their website. The above are patently NOT true, and pretty much everyone with an ounce of technical understanding knows this.
Of course they list these as "Byrne's" list. This tactic is known as willfully spreading lies or myths that benefit your product. I didn't believe Typepad would do that.