May 2005 Archives
An explanation of the third design of NoahBrier.com.
Well ladies and gentleman, I have finally completed my redesign. Thanks to everyone for being so patient. Now, as one last piece, please allow me to explain my thinking.
(For those reading on an RSS reader, please take the time and check out the site. I put a lot of work into it and would love to hear your feedback.) I really tried to follow
my own advice and design for my content, not against it.
Let me start out by pointing you to a few sites that I was inspired by:
1. Kottke.org: In my opinion, this is about as good as a blog can get. I love how clean it is and how well laid out (except for how hard it is to get to the search bar).
2. GarrettDimon.com: Again, I love how clean this site is and how well thought through every piece is. It's simplicity at it's best.
3. SimpleBits: When it comes to CSS and design, this site is pretty much the cream of the crop in my opinion. Only shared with . . .
4. StopDesign: Maybe I should just change the name of my site to something that starts with the letter 'S'.
The inspiration included a lot more pages than that, but I think those are probably the big four. (I would also include Richard MacManus's article Web 2.0 For Designers and Tom Coates' Plasticbag.org. Anyway, let me explain some of my thinking.
The Basic Structure
The goal with everything was
simple, simple, simple. The only thing that travels from page to page is the top bar you see at the top, which includes a link back to the homepage and a search bar. When I really broke everything down it seemed to me that the site didn't need any universal navigation beyond that. Each page carries with it some other form of navigation as well. For example, the home page has a small paragraph at the bottom with links to helpful parts of the site and individual entries all have a little section to the right I call "vitals." That section includes date, author, category (a new addition) and location within the archives.
The Archives
I think regular old plain archives are a little outdated. How often do you actually read through the archives that way? That's why I gave equal billing to the archive entries and to the archive nav which includes some random entry fun, as well as recommended entries and browse by date OR category.
The Extras
Hmmm . . . if you haven't noticed yet the comment/permalink button (now merged) is huge. The comment form looks pretty (in Firefox and Safari at least -- by the way, that HTML was mostly stolen from
GarrettDimon.com). Another new nifty feature is the little entry description (known as a dek in "the industry"). Truth is, it's nothing more than some extended entry text (which is why old pages don't have them).
I think that's about it. I worked quite hard on the page and I'm pretty damn proud of it, so any feedback is greatly appreciated (even negative). I really think that it's well thought through and usable and I hope you feel the same way. Of course it looks best on Firefox/Safari (thank goodness for standards). If anyone runs across any issues in other browsers please let me know.
Finally, for those interested, here are the Movable Type plugins I used in creating this page:
- Archive Date Header: Handy little plugin that allows me to organize the archives by year and month.
- FilterCategories: Man did I search around a while for this one. This is what helps me create a Recommended Reading section by filtering out the recommended category whenever it appears (at least in theory).
- GetXML: Finally I'm displaying my del.icio.us bookmarks without javascript. All rejoice!
- MTEntryIfComments: This is how I keep the comment number centered in the big orange button. I have two different CSS classes depending on whether it's below 10 comments or above. Couldn't do it without it.
- MTSwtich: Quite possibly leave the best for last. This allows you to create an if/then statement for almost any attribute. That's why my comment boxes look different and also why "Recommended Reading" is it's own section.
I think that about covers. Hope you enjoy the new site and don't hesitate to let me know how you feel.
Update (6/1/05): Stupid me just realized GetXML only refreshes my bookmarks when I rebuild the site. Oops . . . Guess it's back to the drawing board, gonna have to find another answer to my displaying del.icio.us bookmarks problem.
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Mrs. Fields doesn't trust employees to take home cookies. What does that say about the company?
Just read a great entry over at
Creating Passionate Users all about
trusting your employees. It tells the story of Mrs. Fields cookies and their refusal to allow employees to take home cookies at the end of the day. Instead, they're forced to throw them all away. The thinking behind this is apparently that if you allow employees to take home cookies, they'll probably do something terrible like bake extra cookies at the end of the day just to take home. (Say it aint so!)
So what does this do for employees of Mrs. Fields? Well, first it signals to them that they're not trusted. The company doesn't believe that you're a good, honest person, it chooses to believe the worst. What kind of message is that to send? Why do I want to do a good job if I believe that I'm not trusted? How can I feel as though I have a stake in the business if you don't even think I can handle the responsibility of not taking advantage of a "take home some cookies" system?
I can't.
People want to work somewhere where they feel like they're making a difference. Somewhere that they feel as though they have a say in what happens. Clearly Mrs. Fields is not that kind of place. It's funny, because I heard a story recently about Starbucks employees. Apparently each employee has a certain amount of money that they can work with (say $500 . . . which may be completely wrong). If a customer is unhappy about something they can use that money to fix it. No questions asked. If that means an extra cup of coffee. Fine. If it means towing a car for a customer whose car won't start in the parking lot, that's fine too.
What a great way to show customers you care and employees that they're part of the team. Also, how much is the word of mouth of a situation like that worth to you? If it costs $200 to tow a customer's car, you can guarantee that person will tell well more than $200 worth of people. It seems like a no-brainer.
Every part of your business should be considered marketing. Your employees on the ground level are your most important assets. They are the ones that interact with customers directly. It's not the CEO in his corner office, it's the pimply-faced kid behind the counter. Prove to him that he means something and he'll prove to your customers that you care about them.
It all seems so simple.
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A look at Feedster's "Tag This"
Scott Rafer and the
Feedster crew are at it again. This time they've come up with a way to add a form to any post that allows any user to tag an individual entry. It looks just like this:
After trying the code on the page multiple times I can not get it to work. Here is what I'm using:
<form name="tags" method="get" action="http://bookmarks.feedster.com/submit.php">
<input type="text" name="tags" size="15">
<input type="hidden" name="uri" value="<$MTEntryPermalink valid_html="1"$>">
</script>
<input type="submit" value="Tag this">
</form>
Not sure what's going on, but I'll continue as if it works (since I already wrote it).
In fact, that is it. It's an interesting idea and one I discussed with Scott at some length. I love the idea of allowing anyone to tag a post, because, as Scott wrote in this post introducing "Tag This," "not all his readers have or want delicious accounts or want to learn enough to create them, though the benefits of a full social bookmarking account are numerous." While I agree with that, and think there are many advantages to allowing users to tag anonymously, there are still a outstanding issues.
First, for me at least (and I've mentioned this to Scott), I really would like a way to dynamically display the tags users have given to my entry. This doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to implement and I expect we'll be seeing it sometime down the road.
However, even that function doesn't answer a bigger question for me: Will readers tag a post when it has no real advantage for them? I tag things on del.icio.us because it will be easier for me to find them later. They are my bookmarks and I use tags that make the most sense to me. However, when you take tagging out of that context, what value does a user get out of it? (Please, someone reading this correct me if I'm wrong.)
I just feel like if I go to a page and am able to tag it, I probably won't unless I want an easy way to find it again and in that case, I'll just use del.icio.us. Now I know this service isn't necessarily designed for me, but who will want to use it?
I guess the bottom line for me is that tagging is only useful when I can see a direct benefit. Call me selfish, but I'm not really going to tag someone else's post to help them create a better organization system. I can see how something like "Tag This" can work on a larger scale, say for a website like the New York Times, where the benefit of tagging an article is the belief that someone else will be doing the same and creating a better organized site. But I don't get it on a small scale. This may be my shortsightedness, though, because I do see the irony in saying that this will work on a site with a large, community-like readership but not a smaller site like mine (therefore implying that I don't have a community-like readership).
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. What else can I say?
Update (6/12/05): Looks like I got it working with a little help from the Feedster crew, here it is
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Another day without anything seriously resembling a proper post in my mind. No good explanation on this one, except I have behind very behind on the old aggregator and finally got a little caught up today. So many different articles means my mind is going in a thousand different directions, which makes writing about any one thing fairly difficult.
So, how about a roundup of what I'm reading? Sound good? Does it?
Well, here it goes anyway.
But before I begin, how about a pledge? I'm going to try to write an entry a day this week. I feel as thought I've been neglecting the site, so it seems like the least I can do.
For Your Amusement
- Merriam-Webster lists the top ten favorite words that aren't in the dictionary. (Ginourmous is included.)
- A McSweeney's three-peat: An Open Letter to the Couple Who Found My Panties in Their Yard Last Summer, Pickup Lines Used by Mario and Things That Are Just Barely Thicker Than Peter Gallagher's Eyebrows.
Apple, Apple, Apple
- Sidney Morning Herald article about Steve Jobs and how the iPod came about. (It may just be an excerpt from a book, but either way it's damn fine reading.)
- Apple recalls batteries on PowerBook's purchased in the last year or so. (Hey, I have one of those.)
- How do you stay organized on your Mac? (Another fine Ask Metafilter question.)
Thinking, Creativity and the Brain
- Want to be more creative? Try these 12 easy steps.
- Five ideas for teaching/brainstorming from the famous design firm IDEO.
- People perform poorly when they encounter situations that they stereotypically should perform poorly in.
Three More Links (That Don't Fit Nicely into a Category)
- The next installment of the The Education of Elisabeth Eckleman on The Morning News.
- New York Times story on Simon Curtis, a Lower East Sider who stole a photograph as a joke and ended up in prison.
- Finally, everything you need to know about grilling. (Word. It's almost Summer. Let the grilling begin.)
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I'm not quite sure what to do with all these. So here they are, for your enjoyment (in order of preference):
1. Forget-me-not panties: Sensatech technology keeps track of your girlfriend for you, look better and fit more comfortably than the chastity belts of yesteryear.
2. The Guns N' Roses Self-Similar Midi Synth: What happens when you speed up entire GNR songs to a less than a second than use entire songs to make up another GNR song. Just listen.
3. Ringtone Dancer: This guy really loves to dance to ringtones (and to dress up in absurd outfits).
4. Miss Beazley Bush: Help educate Bush's dog to attack liberals.
5. TheBrainFreeze: Watch people get brainfreeze. Always funny.
That's it. If you're really interested, here's an explanation.
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I feel like I've been neglecting my duties as blogmaster general at NoahBrier.com. Things have been quite busy at work and in most of my other time I've been working on
redesigning.
I'll start off talking about that. I think it's going fairly well (but I would really appreciate more feedback). I'm having fun with it. What it has really been is an excuse to think about every aspect of how people use blogs. How important is the location of the date? How do people use sidebars? Lots of fun questions like that. It's really been a research exercise for me and I hope the final result will be a better website.
Otherwise, it's been the regular geeking out. For those RSS readers out there, you may notice that you've started getting a post of links everyday (some people have been getting them for a while). That's because I finally got around to pointing all my feeds to FeedBurner and am currently burning the RSS feed with a daily post from my "posted" tag on del.icio.us. I try to include links that I think people will find interesting, but I'm sure you're not all into what I am. That's why I'm curious to know if people would prefer an option to receive my feed with or without links. I personally like to think that the links add something, but Scott Rafer mentioned to me that he'd prefer not to receive them. I'll most likely just add a second feed, but if people could let me know what they think it would be appreciated.
What else you ask? Very little. Still loving my PowerBook, a big entry is in order. Also loving Textdrive, which is so much faster and more reliable than my last host (plus WebDav is fantastic, synchronized iCal can't be beat).
Wow, this has been really boring. Apologies. Let's spice it up a bit.
1. By reading about hoodies (yes, I mean hooded sweatshirts)
2. By finding out that Dave Chappelle is not in a mental institution (he's actually in South Africa)
3. By preparing for tonight's OC season finale with this list of ways to save the OC (not that I necessarily am in the camp that believes it needs saving)
4. By putting an end to this entry.
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I just got finished reading Clay Shirky's new piece on tagging titled,
"Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags". It's a good piece, not groundbreaking I didn't think, but worth the read if you have some time to get through the 15-plus pages. One quote that really jumped out at me from the article is about the reliance on physical constraints behind categorization methods. Shirky writes, "The essence of a book isn't the ideas it contains. The essence of a book is "book." Thinking that library catalogs exist to organize concepts confuses the container for the thing contained."
Books contain ideas. Libraries contain books. Libraries organize books by ideas because it made the most sense to them. You can't expect people to know titles, but you can expect them to have a general idea of the subject of the book they're looking for. The problem is that most books contain more than one idea.
Shirky continues:
It isn't the ideas in a book that have to be in one place -- a book can be about several things at once. It is the book itself, the physical fact of the bound object, that has to be one place, and if it's one place, it can't also be in another place. And this in turn means that a book has to be declared to be aboutß some main thing. A book which is equally about two things breaks the 'be in one place' requirement, so each book needs to be declared to about one thing more than others, regardless of its actual contents.
This is simply not true online. We're not locked down by space constraints. That's what
the long tail's all about, folks. So why do we continue to organize things in that way?
Well . . . because that's how we know how. That's what we're comfortable with. It's easy to throw a category option into Movable Type to provide people with a second way to allow users to browse their content. Problem is, it doesn't really make all that much sense in this context. What I mean is, the same lack of physical constraints that allow us to use other categorization methods also makes traditional categorization methods make very little sense.
The web has no boundaries. It's not limited to square footage or shelf space. Therefore, if you were to use a traditional categorization scheme it would be essentially useless. If you were looking for US History online and you just got a long list of web sites organized alphabetically that were "about" US History you'd be lost in a sea of clicks. So instead we use search engines to find specific words within those pages that relate to our interest.
Now it's finally time to return to blogs. Why then do we use categories as a way to organize blogs? We've moved away from it in other places (even moving toward user-tagging in the most forward thinking web apps), however, it seems that blogging software is stuck in the past.
Why can't we come up with a more imaginative solution to our blog organization needs than simply slapping on a category label and being done with it? Most things I write about can't be categorized by one word or term. In fact, I don't think you could categorize this site with one word or term. But MT doesn't offer a user-friendly way to add multiple category labels (yes I know it's possible . . . I said user-friendly). It also doesn't offer a way to allow users to categorize content themselves.
At first as I was reading this I thought that maybe that was a good idea, but then on second thought, there's no value to a user tagging a post on my website unless they plan on revisiting it and want an easy way to find it. So I am stuck.
This really boils down to how to organize the archives on my redesign (or whether to include an archive at all). Are they useful or is it us being stuck in an old paradigm? I'm offering easy search access on every page, so do you need to browse by date and category too?
I think the final decision I've had is this: The archive page will consist of two columns. The left will allow you to browse by date. The right, will offer you three options, three "r"'s in fact (not those three). They will be "random entry," "recent entries" and "recommended reading." So you will either be able to browse by date, let your luck decide and read a random entry, check out what five entries I've written most recently (though I'm not sure this is useful) or allow me to guide you through some of the entries I suggest you read.
Does this make sense? Does it need anything else? I'm sorry to keep talking about this stupid redesign, but I'm having a blast thinking through every step of the user experience and trying to design a blog without adhering to the standards that have been set up by our forebloggers.
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As I've mentioned multiple times now, I'm in the process of redesigning the site. I've been struggling with a few things and the process is going fairly slowly because I really want to get it right. As I was thinking about it this morning I realized something:
Why am I hiding everything from you?. Why am I designing it behind this wall? I occasionally show friends and family to get their feedback, but why the hell not everyone who enjoys this site? Yeah, it would be exciting to roll out a redesign all of a sudden to everyone's surprise, but if I let people get involved, won't it be all the better.
With that said, this redesign (NoahBrier.com 3.0 for those counting) is now a communal affair. Just check out the design in progress at http://www.noahbrier.com/test (note to Internet Explorer users: the top bar of the site doesn't work yet, give me some time). If you could give your feedback in the comments on this post I'd appreciate it.
Critique it. Be tough! It's a work in progress, this is the first step. Tell me everything that's wrong (other than links not working . . . that's a given). Here's what I wrote over there:
Excuse the mess. Most of this stuff doesn't work yet. But this is a look and feel. So tell me what you think. Be tough. Hate something? Tell me. Love it? Tell me that too. Color too bright? Font hard to read? Design just stupid? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.
So go ahead. Have fun and help me redesign my site.
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Just got everything moved over to the new host, no new design yet, but it's on its way. Just thought I'd let everyone know things should move fairly smoothly from here on out.
For those interested, I switched to TextDrive because it had a lot more options (and wasn't a damn Windows server). Everything's been quite good so far and the site seems a bit faster as well. Word up.
Hopefully I'll be back on a relatively normal posting schedule soon.
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As I move everything to a new server and put the finishing touches on a new design NoahBrier.com may be down sporadically. I apologize. If you need anything feel free to email me at nb [at] noahbrier.com. Also, you can keep up with things pretty well by looking at my del.icio.us bookmarks at
http://del.icio.us/nrb210. Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope I'll have a better site when this is all done.
- Noah
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I spent most of today walking around New York City and enjoying the weather (including a good time in Central Park that included an Uma Thurman sighting). While I wasn't soaking the weather in (and some of the time I was), I worked on my redesign. One of the things I'm really struggling with is how many people use the links on the right side of my page? Do you like them? Do you click on them? Should I include them in the redesign?
I feel like they need to be there because I've talked to lots of people who have referenced something they've seen there. But how about some feedback? Please. Pretty please.
Tell me how you use the site. Tell me anything. This redesign is really only happening because I want to create a blog that makes sense. To do that I need to understand the intricacies of how you use this.
Also, if anyone would like to critique the design-in-progress, drop me an email at nb [at] noahbrier.com.
Enjoy the weather and go have a scotch, it's good for you.
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I've been working on a redesign lately and thus have been thinking a lot about how people use blogs, and more specifically, how people use this blog. I think I've charted out the four kinds of people who use this site. Please let me know if you use it differently or think anything needs to be added.
Person #1: The RSSer: This person is kind of geeky and enjoys reading what I have to say about technology (or they're a friend who I've convinced to start using RSS . . .). They don't actually visit my website except to make a comment. The only thing they need once they get here is the comment form. After they finish they close the window and go on their way (maybe they bookmark it first on del.icio.us or other like-minded service).
#1 Navigation Needs: None. Most of the time the RSSer is in and out. They'd rather not be bothered with lots of navigation since there only here for a very specific reason. They might click to the home page and see what's going on there, but that's about it (and unlikely at best).
Person #2: The Not-so-geeky Geek (or family/friends): This person is any member of my family or other casual fan of my site that doesn't use RSS. They are interested in seeing if there's anything new on the site and they like to see the links I post. They read entries on the front page and occasionally click through to comment on them. Otherwise, they come to the site, read the front page and then leave, either by way of one of my links or boredom. (In a way, I actually fall in this category, but only by accident.)
#2 Navigation Needs: This person needs an easy to click comment button. They also need an easy way to get back to the home page once they've finished commenting and want to read more. Other than that, they need a search function for the occasion they want to go back and read something they read earlier but don't know where to find it.
Person #3: The Searcher: This is the person that comes across the site via a search engine. They are looking for something fairly specific and are not here for any other reason.
#3 Navigation Needs: This person needs an easily accessible search box. As my stat logs tell me, often people come here looking for something specific and end up in the archives for a month. What they end up doing is searching the site for the same search term they used to get here. Other than search, they'll need to get to the home page in case they want to read other things I've written and they need an easy to find contact info, in case they want to get in touch with me.
Person #4: The Linked In: This is the person who gets here from someone who was nice enough to link to me. They clicked through so they're interested enough in what I have to say that they'll most likely read it. If they've ended up on the front page, they become very similar to Person #2, except they might be a little more interested in who I am.
#4 Navigation Needs: This person needs to be able to get back to the home page from an individual entry. They also need accessible about information on the home page.
I think that about wraps up my four kinds of users. Have I forgotten anyone? What you should have noticed by now is that none of the people who use this site really need a direct link to the archives or almost anything else on every single page. They come for different reasons, but most of them have a specific reason for coming here. I haven't figured out exactly how to reconcile this in my design, but I thought I'd share my thinking and see if I could get any feedback. Let me know what you think.
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Went outside for lunch today and read two very interesting articles I thought I'd share. They really couldn't be much more different, but both include lots of worthwhile thinking material.
The first, and more disturbing of the two, is an article written for Foreign Policy by Robert McNamara warning the United States that it needs to adjust nuclear policy before it's too late. The article, titled "Apocalypse Soon" speaks for itself, so I'll just include a few excerpts.
To declare war requires an act of congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes’ deliberation by the president and his advisors.
. . .
There is no way to effectively contain a nuclear strikeâ€â€to keep it from inflicting enormous destruction on civilian life and property, and there is no guarantee against unlimited escalation once the first nuclear strike occurs. We cannot avoid the serious and unacceptable risk of nuclear war until we recognize these facts and base our military plans and policies upon this recognition.
. . .
Human beings are fallible. In conventional war, mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousands of lives. However, if mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no learning curve. They would result in the destruction of nations. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe. There is no way to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, other than to first eliminate the hair-trigger alert policy and later to eliminate or nearly eliminate nuclear weapons. The United States should move immediately to institute these actions, in cooperation with Russia. That is the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Just go
read it now.
Next up is a New Yorker review of Steven Johnson's new book Everything Bad is Good for You by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's discussion of the book is quite interesting, but actually my favorite part was this excerpt from Johnson's book. What follows is Johnson's imaginary critique of books had video games been invented hundreds of years ago and books within the last few decades.
Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplayingâ€â€which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movementsâ€â€books are simply a barren string of words on the page. . . .
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. . . .
But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashionâ€â€you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . . This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one.
Falling into one mode of thinking is dangerous and that's what Gladwell is highlighting. The
book sounds interesting and
Gladwell's review is worth a read.
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I just read
this article about Disney and the Muppets. I'm hoping to convince my mom to write her feelings about it for me to post (although she doesn't know that until now). She's a huge Muppets fan and needless to say, so am I (I mean seriously, how could you not be)? Anyway, the article includes lots of scary things Disney is going to do to the Muppets (including ringtones and J Lo), but what upset me the most was that they had identified (that's right identified!) the five core equities of the Muppets. They are: humorous, heartwarming, puppet-inspired, topical and irreverent.
Ummm . . . I imagine Jim Henson is currently rolling in his grave. Kermit has been imprisoned by the awfulness that is Disney and no Miss Piggy karate chop can save them. I think a part of my childhood may have died when I read those "five core equities." Very sad.
Not all is lost, though, the article also reminds me about what made the Muppets so great. It was exactly because you could never label the five core components. It was about frogs dating pigs and weirdos dating chickens. The beauty of the show was in just how far-flung and unidentifiable most of the characters were. They were just Muppets. They taught us that labels don't matter and that everyone's different and they made us laugh the whole time. They were funny and smart and encouraged us to be the same.
I like to hope that no corporation could ruin those memories. My fingers are crossed.
UPDATE (5/10/05): My mother took the bait and wrote this response:
My congratulations to Caitlin Moran on "The Disney Muppets: why that just isn't funny". Her story really went a long way toward capturing the Muppet gestalt – the integration of body, soul, spirit, wit and wisdom which made the Muppets real and true on so many levels.
It therefore surprised me that she failed to pick up on the pivotal evidence of Disney's failure to understand the Muppets: the inclusion of "puppet-inspired" as one of the five core equities of the Muppets. Yes, the Muppets were humorous, heartwarming, topical and irreverent. But they were NOT puppet-inspired, they were Henson-inspired. I mean, DUH!!!!!! These may have been puppets in form, but they were fully human in spirit. That was Henson's, and in turn, the Muppets' genius.
I do not use the word genius lightly. When I was raising my children, Sesame Street and the Muppets made me laugh, drove away the boredom of typical children's entertainment and gave me hope that the children of the world would share the understanding that a pig and a frog could indeed find happiness as a couple. Sesame Street and the Muppets made me believe there was still goodness left in the world.
It may sound melodramatic, but the news that the Henson family had sold the rights to the Muppets to Disney saddened me more than word of Henson's death (which sent me into a tailspin for days.) The thought that Disney will undoubtedly bastardize this precious franchise still brings tears to my eyes. At least we had memories to share. Jim Henson left the world a great deal better for his having been here. I wish I could shake the feeling that that, too, will be lost.
- Barbara Rubin Brier
Thanks Mom. Didn't mean to upset you, but I thought you would have an interesting perspecitve.
Which you did.
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Has anyone actually come up with a sufficient answer to this question yet? Seriously, we all use the word "blog" all the time, but we can't define it. Is it a website that's updated consistently? (If that's the definition don't we have to define consistently? I may post one thing a day, while someone like
Scoble posts 15.) Is it a website whose updates appear in reverse-chronological order? (What about sites that only include the most recent update on the front page?) Is it a website that is run by "blog" software (say
Movable Type or
WordPress)? (What about sites that only use MT as a content manager. I built a high school website entirely with MT and would hardly call it a blog.)
Where does that leave us? Well, I think it leaves us with the components of a blog. Mainly RSS, permalinks, date-stamps, trackbacks and comments.
Well, first off, I agree with Tom Coates who says trackbacks are dead, so we can knock that off the list. That leaves us with four components.
Today I read a great entry over at BlogTyme on this very topic. The argument there is that it's comments that make blogs different.
If a “blog� doesn’t have comments then it’s not a blog, it’s a web site. Interaction not only with the author(s) but amongst each other is what makes it different from a web site . . .
I agree 100%, comments make blogs different. But you can't just say a blog is a website with comments. There's got to be more to the definition. So here's my attempt at something a little bit more well-rounded:
Blog: A website written by an individual or a group that includes permanent links for each dated entry, the ability for readers to comment on a per-entry basis and is syndicated via RSS or a similar technology.
I think that covers the four basics: permalinks, date-stamp, comments and RSS. What does everyone think? (I know there are those that disagree with the RSS thing, but I think it's an integral part.)
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I don't really have enough to say about any one topic to jusity an entry, so how about a brunch roundup? This is best enjoyed with a side of french toast, bacon and black coffee. Enjoy.
Apple OS X Geekery
- From The Unofficial Apple Weblog: "If you are on Tiger, highlight place your cursor over any word in this post. Now, with the word highlighted hit Apple + Control + D. Instant dictionary definition."
- Just discovered this delimport which allows you to make all your del.icio.us bookmarks searchable by Spotlight. Sweet.
Tips, Tricks and Tutorials
- Great tip from Tricks of the Trade:
When all that is left are the middle seats on the plane, ask the person at the counter if you can be seated between two people with the same last name.
Typically they will be family members travelling together and hoping to claim the whole row. If you split them up they will offer you a trade, and you'll wind up by the window or on the aisle.
- I was trying to figure out how to make a nice horizontal list with CSS to use as buttons and finally came across
this great tutorial from Listutorial.
- More CSS stuff come from this great CSS cheat sheet. Most every comman you'll need in one place.
Digital Dorkery
- An interesting post from Seth Godin about the new digital divide that's opening up between the net geeks and everyone else.
Getting Things Done
- Fast Company interview with productivity guru David Allen.
Media Goodness
- Stephen Colbert is getting his own show on Comedy Central right after the Daily Show. He is a funny, funny man.
- Hilarious Spiegel interview with Tom Cruise where the interviewer grills him about Scientology.
Marketing/Business
- Great post over at Creating Passionate Users about the need to market products by tellilng users what it will do to make them great, instead of telling them how great you and your product are.
- Interesting interview with Mark Ecko, the rhino guy. Includes this choice quote (in response to the question, "what's the next big thing?": "Convergence. Blurring lines. Brands existing dynamically in real time in multiple places. And being more purposeful and meaningful than just being a commodity. You don't really see companies who make one product and that's it. That's the old-fashioned, dinosaur way of thinking. In order for a brand to exist and survive and be relevant you must exist in multiple space."
- What's the problem with American beer?
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Forgive me please, but I have to share another pic. This one came with this photo description and is currently on the front page of the Houston Chronicle Tech section:
"Noah Brier surfs the Flickr photo Web site in his New York apartment. Brier regularly looks for bookmarks tagged as "lifehacks" -- for everyday productivity tips -- and recently ran across an article on better ways to shave. Tagging makes it easier to find objects and more useful information on Web."
I apologize for the incessant egotism lately, but come on, if you can't brag on your blog, where can you brag?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm picking my nose in the picture, so that's cool. At least I can't take myself all that seriously.
On a more lighthearted note, check out the logo for the Instituto de Estudos Orientais (thanks Waxy).
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I was reading an article titled
Web 2.0 for Designers" today and I ran across a quote that got me thinking:
What does this mean for Web designers? It means designers have to start thinking about how to brand content as well as sites.
Web 2.0 is a shift to web as platform. Take Gmail or Flickr, for example, they both utilize the web to create software that runs online as well as it could run offline (and in some cases better).
To get back to the quote, though, it struck me that there's really no better way for businesses to brand content than to give it a human voice. Since everyone's RSS feed looks essentially the same, there's no real chance for branding there. So you need to figure out ways to connect with you audience in writing. Enter the blog. The human voice of bloggers naturally connects with readers who are so used to corporate speak that they embrace the honesty that blogs offer.
The whole Web 2.0 thing is a very interesting idea, that I've though about a fair amount, though not always under that specific title. Here's one of the most interesting paragraphs from the article, which should give a better idea of just what this Web 2.0 thing is all about:
Enter the Web 2.0 world, which is not defined as much by place and is less about visual style. XML is the currency of choice in Web 2.0, so words and semantics are more important than presentation and layout. Content moves around and is accessible by programmatic means. In a very real sense, we’re now designing more for machines than for people. This may sound like we’re in the Matrix, but in the words of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, “Web 2.0… is about making the Internet useful for computers.�
It's interesting to look at in relation to the latest trend of stripped down blog design, specifically looking at
Tom Coates' Plasticbag.org and
Ben Hammersly's Dangerous Precedent. Both have stripped back their design and in turn made their sites all about the content. Both are incredibly readable and simple, somewhat reflective of the early web.
In a way they are supporting Richard MacManus in the "Web 2.0 for Designers" article, showing "words and semantics are more important than presentation and layout." On the other hand, though, it's the presentation and layout that is bringing out the word and semantics, so the real answer may be that Web 2.0 is about merging these world together and using the web for what its meant for. The web is the ultimate platform to test McLuhan's theory that the medium is the message. Sites that strip back are realizing that design should reflect and reinforce the message. They are designing for their content, rather than against it. When you see a site like that is there any question that the content is the most important thing? Nope.
For those sites, the medium is the message. I like that.
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I'm not normally a sucker for jumping in on memes, but this was just too good not to. Found it over at The Unofficial Apple Blog (who found it at RobotJohnny). It is the definition of blog from the Dashboard dictionary program (for those that aren't down with the lingo, Dashboard is a new feature on Tiger that has all these little programs that do various functions like define words). I haven't actually tried it myself, but assuming they're not making this up, I'm quite impressed with Apple's definition prowess.
If you ask me, that's the best definition of blog I've ever heard. They nailed NoahBrier.com to a "t."
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Noah Brier surfs the "flickr" site,
looking for bookmarks tagged "lifehack."I feel like now I've officially hit the big time (kidding, don't worry). The photo you see is attached to the AP article on tagging running on CNN.com. I kind of look weird and I'm not looking for bookmarks tagged "lifehack," but other than that I have no problems.
For those that don't feel like reading the article, here's my big one sentence quote (and preceding paragraph):
Noah Brier regularly looks for bookmarks tagged "lifehacks" -- for everyday productivity tips -- and recently ran across an article on better ways to shave.
"I'm sure the author of this never imagined this was a lifehack, but a del.icio.us user decided this falls into that tag," Brier said.
Just wanted to let everyone know, please return to your regularly schedule programming now. That should be enough chest thumping from me for one day. I don't get to do this very often, so please forgive me.
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Today I was reading a
Seattle Times article about search and I ran across this quote:
See how long it takes to find the top five university marine-biology programs, or the store with the cheapest tires in Seattle. You searched for java, but did you mean coffee, the island or the programming language?
Nothing revolutionary, but it got me thinking. What if you added tags to search to add that kind of context that's missing? Say you search for "Java," then when you get your results on the right side of the page are tabs with the most popular tags for the pages you returned (minus the most popular, which would most likely be your search term). Say the top tag is "programming," followed by "language" and then "coffee" (I just totally made that up). Now, if you click one of those tabs you can filter the results to only see those pages with the term "java" and the tag "coffee." That means the results should be a lot more accurate.
I'm sure someone has come up with this, but when I thought of it this morning I felt pretty smart. Thoughts?
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Today I was on the
Target website looking for one of those little things that squeezes the toothpaste out of the tube for you. I didn't find it, however, I did run across this cool little navigation feature:
For regular Target.com shoppers, this is probably not a big deal, but it really seems like a great idea to me. It has the ability to make the online shopping experience much closer to the real thing. Essentially, Target realized that as important as regular categories were, people often shop purely based on aesthetics. Therefore, giving them the ability to filter items in that way should make their shopping experience more fruitful. It's always nice to see websites actually addressing the needs of its users (which I admit, this site fails to do in many ways -- but I promise I'll work on it soon).
Now that I mention it, what do you think of the site? Be honest. Do you hate it? Is something in a bad place? Give me the lowdown. Another redesign could be in the works (hint, hint).
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I wanted to point everyone to a fascinating
Fast Company article all about the brain science that explains why it's so hard to change and suggests some recommendations for how it might be made easier. The article is titled
"Change or Die" and well worth a read.
Change is always a fascinating topic. Why is it so hard for people to change their behavior?
There was one part of this article that really hit close to home for me. A few years ago I lost a lot of weight. Eighty pounds to be exact. To be honest, it was one of the easier things I've done in my life. Most people don't say that. But for me, it just happened. One day I woke up and decided I wanted to start eating healthier. I stopped eating junk food and started going to the gym. About a month-and-a-half later I had lost 20 pounds or so and I though, "wow, this is really working." Once I got to that point, there was no turning back.
So why was it so easy for me? Well, according to this article, it's because I went about it the right way . . . all the way.
. . . radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often easier for people than small, incremental ones. For example, he says that people who make moderate changes in their diets get the worst of both worlds: They feel deprived and hungry because they aren't eating everything they want, but they aren't making big enough changes to quickly see an improvement in how they feel, or in measurements such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. But the heart patients who went on Ornish's tough, radical program saw quick, dramatic results, reporting a 91% decrease in frequency of chest pain in the first month. "These rapid improvements are a powerful motivator," he says. "When people who have had so much chest pain that they can't work, or make love, or even walk across the street without intense suffering find that they are able to do all of those things without pain in only a few weeks, then they often say, 'These are choices worth making.' "
I haven't given up my healthy eating since I started it over three years ago. I can't remember living any other way. I've essentially reprogrammed my brain to work a different way.
"Radical change" is just one of the sections of the article. Don't miss the rest, go read it now, it's definitely going on this year's "best of" list.
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Just wanted to point everyone to an AP article on tagging titled
"'Tags' Ease Sifting of Digital Data". The article features a quote from your's truly (unfortunately, the photos don't appear to have made the cut). The whole article is worth reading, lots of really interesting people got interviewed for it, including Caterina Fake (Flickr's co-founder), David Sifry (Technorati founder), Clay Shirky and on and on and on (which makes me wonder how I made the cut). Anyway, here's my quote (and the paragraph before it . . . drumroll please):
Noah Brier regularly looks for bookmarks tagged "lifehacks"  for everyday productivity tips  and recently ran across an article on better ways to shave.
"I'm sure the author of this never imagined this was a lifehack, but a del.icio.us user decided this falls into that tag," Brier said.
I'm not quite sure how the interview came about, but I think it had something to do with
"needsafeed". Obviously I said lots more that didn't make the cut, but I'm happy to just be quoted. That stuff is exciting. I got to see my name in print lots of times at American Demographics, but never as the quoted one. It's kinda cool in a very geeky way.
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After a week of using my new PowerBook, and more specifically, Quicksilver, I'm ready for my first serious Quicksilver post.
Let me start by saying Quicksilver is as amazing as people say it is. It's one of those pieces of software that changes the way you use a computer, the same way an RSS aggregator changes the way you read things on the web and tabs change the way you browse.
On the website, Quicksilver is described as "an evolving framework for accessing and manipulating many forms of personal data." Put simply, Quicksilver allows you to access anything on your computer at the click of a button. For instance, I have Quicksilver set up to appear when I hit CMD+Spacebar, at that point I start typing in a program or folder I want to access and I can open it or perform any number of other functions on it. That, however, is just the beginning, as described on the "What is Quicksilver page:
Quicksilver’s greatest strength, however, is not search. Any item you are able to find, drag, or otherwise pull into its universe is endowed with many potential uses. Hitting takes you to the action field, where you can use the same adaptive search to select what you would like to do. Among other things, files can be emailed, copied, compressed. Text can be modified, transmitted between programs, or searched for on the web. Some actions even support an indirect object, so you can send an item to a person, move files to another folder, or open files with a specific application.
Put it this way: anything you want to do to or with a file is now available in one place and the command can be typed in rather than searched for through levels of hierarchy with a mouse.
Alright, now that you've got (and I've got) an idea of just what Quicksilver is all about, let me fill everyone in on some of the tips and tricks I've picked up in a week of use. Some of these may seem simple, but too understand Quicksilver you need to understand just how customizable and expandable it is. There are lots of plugins to perform lots of things I don't even understand and I've heard the integration with Tiger and, specifically Spotlight, rocks (I can't wait).
Anyway, without any further ado, here are some tricks I've picked up. Hope you enjoy.
1. Not really a trick, but here are two Quicksilver tutorials that I highly recommend starting with: "Quicksilver Changes Everything" (The Apple Blog) and "Quicksilver - A Better OS X in Ten Minute" (Dan Dickinson). (Also, just as a note, thanks to Dan who has been incredibly nice and answered lots of Quicksilver questions for me. It's easy to tell how good a piece of software is by how its user evangelize for it. And Quicksilver users are quite the evangelists.)
2. All of a sudden browser bookmarks become useful again thanks to Quicksilver. Since you have access to all of them at the click of a button, you can save things in lots of random folders and actually get to them easily. I love the bookmarks toolbar and keep everything important on it but haven't kept other bookmarks because of the hassle of getting to them in the past. Now, with everything only a few keystrokes away I've started bookmarking sites that are important to me, but I frequent less than things like a list of lots of other searches that might be useful. (To set up a Quick Search, just search on a site and when the results come in, replace the word you searched for in the address with "***," for example, the Google quicksearch looks like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=***)
3. To combine more than one thing together use the "," button. Say you want to open three bookmarks at once, just type commas in between and hit enter to open. It's that simple and with Firefox it should open in separate tabs. Quite a sweet little feature (and also can be used anywhere, just used bookmarks and Firefox as an example).
4. This tip comes from Dan Dickinson in the comments on one of Merlin Mann's Quicksilver posts (actually pointing to Dan's tutorial -- damn, this whole thing sounds really in-bred doesn't it?):
And Alcor pointed out one more feature to me last night - if you hold down a key in the target field (preferably the last key you typed in your search), after about three seconds it will automatically run the action displayed. The *next* time you do it, it's much quicker (about half a second of holding), as you've taught Quicksilver you want to run the action with that key.
That's it for now, I'm sure I'll have lots more soon, but that should be enough of an idea of just what this thing can do to get you thinking.
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Hi, I'm 