Archive for September, 2006
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Google Reader gets a makeover
RSS is one the best things to hit the web. Unfortunately, it is one of the hardest things to explain to non-technical users. What does it stand for? Well, some confusion there. What does that orange icon mean? Is Atom different from RSS? What are XML links then?
As an industry we’re still struggling to explain how it all works in an accessible way. And until we do, RSS can’t quite tip over into being the everyday tool for millions that it can and should be.
Google, with its makeover of its RSS reader Google Reader has had a real go at explaining it in simple terms, complete with a short video - “your inbox for the web”. I like that.
Here at Precedent, we all have our own preferences for reading RSS. Some, like me, swear by Google Reader, others extol the merits of Sage, a simple extension for Mozilla Firefox. Others will tell you FeedDemon is the way to go.
If you haven’t used RSS before, Google Reader’s new look might just be the reason you need to give it a go and see if it works for you.
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Answers trump questions
If you live or work in London and travel on the tube you may have seen posters and ads for Yahoo! Answers, it’s a pretty good idea I think. Users post questions and other users post answers. I believe it’s one step forward from the whole wiki idea, where the community comes up with the explanation of a concept.
Twice this morning the site has come up, we’re doing some work around communications and are thinking of using the concept of an answers page where members of staff or a community could provide solutions rather than problems.
If RSS is the new email newsletter, and blogs are the new discussion forums, could Answers be the new FAQs?
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Good things do come in three’s
We have just received copies of the Postgraduate Prospectus in the studio, which we recently designed for Middlesex University. Interesting points to note include the lovely spot varnishing on the covers and the excellent job that the internal design team at Middlesex did of typesetting the internal pages.
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I said 85mm not cm!!
2 Offices, 49 different names, 4 different quantities, 5880 cards in total, all printed in 6 different colours!The brand new Precedent business cards are finally being printed, and if you want to get your hands on
one of these masterpieces… Give us a call and arrange a meeting!
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Dialogue, monologue or none of the above
The latest edition of the FT’s Martin Lukes (registration req’d) column really made me chuckle. Martin Lukes - for those who don’t know - is a fictional director at a fictional company (creatively called a-b global). Think Beavis and Butthead meet Wall St.
Martin pays the price for having comments available on his website when one of the people who work in a-b global anonymously calls his blog post “drivel”, says his ego has “run riot” and refers to all his posts as “lame”. Martin tries to convince the IT director remove the quote, and then demands hiring external consultants to find the culprit and bring him his head.
It’s an interesting example of when communication can go wrong. When users can give their comments and have anonymity you see conversations become disruptive rather than constructive.
It’s an issue a lot of blogs and other sites struggle with when asking for or allowing comments. How do you keep the dialogue open and encourage the community to contribute, but ensure that the comments actually add to the discussion and not take away from the intent to build a positive experience.
Here are a couple of ideas which could be incorporated (and I’m sure my colleagues will add some more to the mix)
- Have comments authorised, either ask people to register to be able to submit comments or do not allow comments without an email address - as of my colleagues likes to say “make them traceable”
- Only enable comments when you want to have a discussion about something, not when you really have no interest in what anyone really has to say in response
- Participate - don’t let the comments and the community exist without the author, write back when you’re being challenged and show that you are a part of the community and not seeing yourself as some authority.
There’s a real difference between a monologue, a dialogue and an artificial dialogue, be sure you know which one you want your blog to be.
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It’s showtime
When was the last time someone got excited about itv? No, not that ITV, iTV.
Apple product launches tend to cause a certain amount of hyperventilation amongst the design and technology masses and yesterday’s announcement, adding films, tv shows and games to the iPod was no different.
John Gruber’s reflections on Daring Fireball on what Apple actually announced contrasts with some of the more fevered commentary and is well worth reading - not least for the insight into what a minefield Apple is entering.
Market response is fundamentally changing what Apple is for. The iPod has been such a runaway success for Apple - a case of delivering just what the consumer wants - that it has changed the impact Apple (once a humble hardware niche computer vendor) has on our daily lives. These stats from Gruber’s piece make amazing reading:
- Apple claims 88 percent of non-bootleg music downloads in the U.S.
- 70 percent of 2007 model year cars sold in the U.S. have iPod
connectivity built-in. Not “MP3-player” connectivity. iPod
connectivity. - 450,000 Nike + iPod Sport Kits have been sold in fewer than 90
days. Not Nike + MP3 Player Sport Kits. Nike + iPod. - The iTunes Store is the fifth-largest music reseller in the
U.S., and expects to pass Amazon early next year, at which point
they’ll trail only Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target. - Apple has sold 1.5 billion total songs to date.
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We’ve come a long way…
My girlfriend’s birthday is this coming week. While searching for the perfect gift for my sweetheart, I realized that I completely forgot about the World Wide Web’s birthday! The World Wide Web actually turned 15 last month and is now in its late teens (perhaps that’s why there are so many social networking sites popping up).
According to Wikipedia: On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.
“The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. […] The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!” —from Tim Berners-Lee’s first message
I usually celebrate the birthday by looking at embarrassing baby pictures. The photos are stored in a little something called the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine is a Web site that enables anyone to see what a particular Web site looked like at some time in the past - from 1996 to the present.
I’m sure a lot of current web developers would hate to have you see their baby pictures. Mainly because the internet in 1996 appears like it had been created in its entirety by 14-year-olds with Geocities accounts who had about half an hour to spare each night before bedtime.
One outstanding exception is the Precedent website from 1996, don’t you think?
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Of blogs and books
Finishing a book can be bittersweet. I love that sense of completion and knowing that it’s another notch on the bookshelf, but at the same time it opens up a sense of emptiness - a sense that something that was there before is missing now.
That’s why I’ve really enjoyed reading the blogs that have “accompanied” books I’ve read recently. I discovered The Freakonomics blog while I was about three-quarters of the way through Freakonomics. It’s been a great way to continue some of the thoughts that started in my head as I was reading the books. Both of the authors contribute to the blogs with really incisive posts that continue along the themes in the book. This is a great way to keep the experience going.
Malcolm Gladwell started his blog shortly after I read the Tipping Point. I’ve sinced moved on to reading Blink. I found getting into the Tipping Point to be a bit challenging - MG’s style takes a bit of getting used to. But after finishing the book I found the blog was a great way to keep me in his writing rhythm. So when I started Blink, I’ve been able to dive right in with little adjustment needed.
Books and blogs, wine and blogs (see Stormhoek), not to mention sport, food, music, and almost any other experience and blogs, can be a great way to continue the experience between the audience and the enterprise. So if you’re offering someone an experience think about blogs as a good way to continue the experience after it would typically end.
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Microsoft Vista News
It will come as no surprise that Vista will mean a change, but how much?
The Down side..
0) It’s a Microsoft product
1) It will cost more
2) Your machine will need to have a higher level of performance, both in terms of CPU and Graphics card
3) New user account protection means that you will not be able to perform installs or many ‘normal’ functions
4) Laptops will have more issues in terms of battery life as certain versions of Vista drain the power like never before
5) Reports suggest that Microsoft a missing a raft of drivers and support of other products.Good news to follow…
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Are web stats irrelevant?
One of the questions we ask people is how will you know if your website is a success. A lot of the time people respond with “Web stats”, but with the advent of things like Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), and other innovations online, in my opinion current web analytics are becoming less and less relevant .
Evhead has a great post taking this idea further and Mike Davidson wrote months ago about the case of Myspace and its page views statistics being misleading.
The bottom line is Page views and other web analytics tools may tell you how many “pages” users are viewing, but they don’t tell you a great deal about the user experience, or how satisfied the user was when they left your site. To find this kind of information you really have to talk to your customers or whoever your audience might be, and talk to the rest of your organisation and get feedback from the primary source and not from a tool which performs analysis at a very superficial level.
