June 2005 Archives
Showing my support for evolution.
Someone at Swarthmore has taken the original Obey Giant sticker and repurposed it as a way to show their support for evolution. I've been reading a fair amount about the fight against evolution lately and I like this novel way to show your support. I like Obey Giant and I like evolution, so this seems like a good match to me.
For those of you looking for some more reading on all the fights going on against evolution, here are some links for you:
1. Opting Out of the Debate on Evolution: New York Times article about how scientists are refusing to debate evolution because they don't want to give the impression that there's actually something to debate.
2. Creationism: God's Gift to the Ignorant: A good explanation of what creationists think and the arguments they're using to fight evolution.
Go download the stickers. Print them out. And show your Darwinian love.
Update (7/01/05): It appears I had the wrong link to the Charles Darwin has a Posse page, it's fixed now.
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Jumping off points for some writing about viral marketing.
Looks like I'm going to be writing an article about viral marketing. So, as a way to get thinking about it, and hopefully get you guys to think about it for me a little bit, I'm going to get my thought process started right here.
Here's what they want:
What we're interested in is ways in which marketers can successfully exploit, stimulate and even (a little) manage the generation and progress of referrals (buzz, virals, etc). This means understanding more about how the process actually works (research) and seeing how successful operators have got it to work (case studies). There are a number of classic cases out there - BMW Films springs to mind - but not very many really good ones; and I've seen perhaps one decent research paper trying to analyse the process.
Here are some of my first thoughts/general jumping off points and links:
1. I think a lot of interesting stuff has come out of the Contagious Media Showdown. While it exists in a bit of a different realm because it was a competition, there are definitely some lessons to be learned about how links travel, what people enjoy, who's enjoying it, etc. (Links: Slate article by the person behind Crying While Eating, Interview with Jonah Peretti, a director at Eyebeam, OJR article about the Contagious Media Showdown, David Galbraith looks at Blogebrity)
2. What's the impact of "accidental" virals. These are the ads that companies claim they had no part in, and usually have some bad taste to them. The VW suicide bomber commercial is a good example.
3. Follow these links and find lots of good viral: Fimoculous post on why Rex doesn't entirely hate viral marketing (includes lots of great viral marketing examples and resources), my American Demographics article about word-of-mouth marketing.
4. Scoble had some interesting comments on viral marketing. It's especially interesting to think about how easy it is nowadays to find the connectors online (bloggers). It's easy to find out what they like/don't like and work from there.
5. This Danish paper on viral marketing. Unfortunately, only the executive summary is in English, but it's got some interesting stuff.
Sorry for the lack of focus here, but it's a start. What would you add/suggest I look at?
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Three things that really bug me when I read articles about blogs.
It seems like there's an article in a newspaper or magazine every day about blogs. The thing is, they all seem to contain the exact same ideas. What's worse is that they all do these stupid little things that bug me every time I read them (which is often). So, in the hopes that maybe some journalist who writes about blogs will read this, here's the list: (And, just as a note, I have done some of the things I have written about here. Just wanted to get that out in the open.)
1. Explaining that blog is short for weblog: Alright, there are two things that bug me on this one: First, I think everyone knows at this point that blog is short for weblog and second, who cares what it's short for? Does weblog really do that much of a better job of explaining what a blog is? Has anyone ever wondered what a blog was and miraculously understood when informed for weblog? No. It's stupid and I'm sick of reading it.
2. Discussing the ethics of blog writers versus journalists: Stop! Stop! Stop! It's just dumb. It totally misses the point. It doesn't matter what the ethics of blog authors are. It's not the same as traditional journalism and it never will be. That's not to say that bloggers aren't "journalists," just to say that making the comparison is dumb. You can't always trust the media and you can't always trust blogs. What the hell is the difference?
3. Hearing about how blogs will "rock" the business world: Blogs as a whole will not rock the business world. Certainly a (single) blog will rock a (single) business, but it's pretty serious to make a broad pronunciation about business as a whole. Yes, some of the lessons of blogging will change the business world, but "rock" implies some immediate impact and that's not what happens. Blogs reinforce Cluetrain ideas. They help push conversations and make companies start to realize that in the future they're going to have to speak to customers as equals. But "rock" the business world? Enron rocked the business world. Maybe it's only semantics, but there's a big difference.
I'm sure I'll think of more in the future, but this seems like a good start. What do you think? What have you read that bugs you?
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Why waste time learning a new and overly confusing product when there are twenty competing products for you to use?
Things should be easy to use. I know it's kind of a broad statement, but it's true.
I was explaining my feelings on this just last night. My feeling on any new technology is that if I can't figure it out in five minutes it's probably not worth figuring out. I know that's a tiny amount of time and probably a bad way to live, but if you haven't created something that I can figure out in a short period of time, then why should I bother. Chances are if it's that confusing your company/product/webapp won't exist six months from now anyway.
Yeah, it's a little egotistical, but it's also a way for me to weed out the static. If I put lots of time into every new thing I saw I'd waste a whole lot of time. So I don't.
Garrett Dimon echoes this idea in a post titled, appropriately enough, "If It Needs Instructions, It Doesn't Work".
If it needs a lot of explaining it's probably too confusing.
So why don't you or your company take that time it took you to write your forty page instruction manual and make your product simpler?
An interface tells you a lot about a product. You know why it was always so hard to program a VCR to record your favorite program? Because the powers that be didn't want you recording your favorite program. The VCR was a device made for playback, just compare the size of the play button and the record button and you'll see what I mean.
So what's my point?
If your interface sucks, your product does too.
In fact, in a digital world most often there's no difference between the two. Your interface is your product. So why don't you think about it?
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A long, rambling, link-filled entry to make everyone's Friday a little more exciting (or boring, depending on how you look at it).
This is a random post because I feel like it. Since it's my page I can do what I want.
1. I made a slight change to the page by redoing the bar at the top, I made it a background image that stretches the width of the page. I felt like it had to be grounded rather than floating because it was the only constant element. I also indented the content a bit more so that it creates a nicer visual hierarchy.
2. I've had some requests from a friend who will remain unnamed to allow people to comment on the links. Is this interesting to anyone else? What if I did a random post every so often that you could just comment on anything? Does anyone care? (I'm sure the answer is no.)
3. Here are some links for your Friday enjoyment:
3a. Here are the top 10 signs you spend way to much time thinking about web 2.0 from the (God)father?? of Web 2.0 (I thought making up jokes about postmodern semicolons was dorky, Richard seems to have trumped that nicely)
3b. Here's the story from one of the guys behind Crying While Eating (On a separate note, I'm happy to announce Forget-Me-Not Panties won the Contagious Media Showdown)
3c. A great list of design cliches (Word)
3d. Read an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind pretty much every important Nintendo game (I miss my old Nintendo)
3e. You know that guy who wears the suit covered in question marks? Of course you do. Read all about him.
4. Finally, yesterday I ran across this entry about a lecture given by Andrew DeVigal, a professor at San Francisco State University, who apparently mentioned this site at the end of lecture as a place he goes to keep an eye on developing trends. I'm honored that there are people out there who think highly enough to say something like that and I hope I can live up to it. (These kind of entries certainly don't.)
I think that's it for now. I'm off.
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In a world of infinite choice, emotional connection means more than ever before.
Why is creating passionate users such a hot topic? It could be because of the
fantastic blog of the same name, or it could be something bigger going on. Kathy Sierra, author of that fantastic blog, believes it's the latter.
Commenting on the popularity of the Creating Passionate Users tutorial at an open source conference, Kathy writes:
I think it means that after years of being enamored solely with the technology itself, and the various methodologies and approaches to crafting it, the geek world is starting to look at the larger sphere around the use of the technology. In other words, not just the content but the context in which technology is created and used. That means caring about the quality of our lives, as developers, as well as the quality of our user's lives and the role we play in that.
In other words, people are starting to get it.
I've said it before, and I'll restate it, Marshall McLuhan, who I believe to be one of history's most brilliant media theorists, explained that "the medium is the message." It's not about understanding a medium, but understanding the people who use/watch/interact with that medium. Just as Sierra explains, it's about understanding not just the content, but also the context. As McLuhan said, it's not about watching TV, it's about watching people watch TV.
This always takes time. It's hard to get passed the flashy outward appearance of new technology. Just think of Flash. Remember all those stupid intro animations? You know, the ones that offer to let you skip them. Well, how many of those do you see anymore? Once people got past the initial blindness that came with using a new, powerful tool, they started to understand how people actually use. With that came an understanding that this isn't TV and people don't feel like sitting through commercials (obviously people understood this in some way, after all they did add the "skip me" link).
People are developing a better understanding that it's not about the tech, but about the people using the tech.
It doesn't matter how great your product or your code is if it doesn't make my life any better.
What's so cool here is that this idea goes well beyond just technology. Businesses are realizing that it's not enough to just sell products in this world of infinite choice. In order to be relevant companies must move beyond products and provide real meaning to their customers.
Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks, understands this. He explains the need for emotional connection like this:
The fracturing of our humanity, fracturing of trust in public institutions and corporations has created significant cynicism. However, people want to be a part of something that they can believe in. They want to be associated with a product or service that they can rely on. Companies that are serving these emotional and human needs of the customers will really stand out amidst this cynical backdrop.
I think he's onto something. I'm not sure it's entirely the breakdown of traditional institutions, but there's no question that people are looking to return to those values that they believe business once stood for.
After all, for business whose customers have the world at their fingertips means that their competitors are more accessible than ever before.
Time to rethink some strategies.
(Additional reading I couldn't stuff in this post: Users don't care if you are the best.)
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My solution to the comment problem and some links to celebrate.
Finally fixed my stupid
Internet Explorer comment problem and for those of you scoring at home, all it took was adding this to my IE stylesheet:
#comments blockquote {
border-width: 0;
}
#comments blockquote.noah {
border-width: 0;
}
Man, do I feel stupid for wasting all that time.
All is not lost, however, and for those of you who have been kind enough to follow my HTML sagas, here are some links for your enjoyment:
- No one bothered to inform Snapple that even the biggest ice pop in history will melt in the sun
- Awesome McSweeney's List #1: "Ad Slogans That Would Be Perfect for Levitra, But, Unfortunately, They Have Already Been Used."
- Awesome McSweeney's List #2: "Things Not Overheard at a Conceptual-Art Gallery Opening."
- Disney and company crack down on the underground Pinata marketer (yes, you read that right -- LA Times article, registration/BugMeNot required)
- Expiration dates for all your favorite household products
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What happens when open source goes mainstream and consumers begin to understand the real relationship between cost and value?
As I was reading
this article about open source companies slashing prices to compete with each other, I made a quick note.
Product = Free, Support = $$$
While I've certainly thought about open source before, for some reason this simple equation popped into my head as revolutionary. This is a huge shift in the way we understand business, specifically in the software industry. It's basically the opposite of what we're used to. However, I really wrote it back because I wondered what could this mean outside just software? What lessons do we learn from open source? What products might we see free in the near future as a result of those lessons?
First off, it's important to note that this is a kind of subscription model (to put it in terms we already understand). You are paying for an ongoing service, just in the same way you would pay for your phone service, cable, etc. Only difference is, that in those examples, and most subscription examples, the product is what you're paying for, not the support. A notable exception to this is extended support plans. Like when you buy a new computer and you decide to pay an extra few hundred dollars for it to be under warranty for three years instead of one. In that case, we are paying for support, however, that support is going along with a product we paid for, and has a concrete cost, so the purchase is easier to justify.
Open source support on the other hand, is paying to keep something running that costs nothing. Using our current understanding as a consumer, it's hard to justify. Why pay for support on something that's free to begin with? How is it worth it?
What's interesting here, is that if there were some cost attached to the software, it would probably be easier to justify the support expense. In other words, the reason open source companies who exist on paid support will struggle is exactly the same reason they will succeed. We have trouble seeing value in something that costs nothing, despite the fact that it's obviously worth more than that. We as humans are not very good at separating cost and worth, at least not at the moment.
That's where things get exciting. Imagine if open source really takes off and people start to take the lessons they're learning offline. All of a sudden we have a real understanding of value regardless of cost. This makes us much more powerful consumers because we will be better at seeing the real value in products despite what price points companies have set for them. It's no secret that companies price certain products at premium levels just to make them seem more valuable than competitors, despite little to no difference in the products themselves.
For the first time, consumers will have a real opportunity to fight back. To understand the real value of things.
And that's good for all of us.
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A beg for help with a weird HTML problem.
I'm looking for someone to help me fix a problem I'm having. If you check out
this or any other page with more than one comment in Internet Explorer you'll notice that every comment is slightly to the left of the previous comment. The BLOCKQUOTE is in the right place, but the text appears outside of it and by the time you get to the comment form it's way off to the left. It's really a bizarre problem and I've spent some time poking around this morning to no avail. So, if anyone feels like checking out the source and lending their skills, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm sure it's something dumb, but I can't seem to get to the bottom of it (at least not in the hour or two I've spent on it).
Thanks in advance
Update (6/18/05): Since I have a few minutes before I have to get out of here, I decided to use the time to rant a bit about Internet Explorer. Why must it be so obnoxious? Why do they decide not to follow the standards? I don't get it. (Although this HTML problem is probably my fault, no theirs.) Anyway, I spent hours trying to figure out how to get the stupid nav bar to work on my site in IE and finally had to hack together a different CSS script (I'm sure there's a more beautiful way, but this is working for now.) It just bugs me. Plain and simple. Phew, that feels much better. Thanks for listening. Please return to your regularly scheduled day.
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Isn't it time we stopped using the verbs "browse" and "surf" when referring to our activity online?
On my walk to work this morning my mind somehow wandered to the term "surf" as it refers to the internet. I began to wonder if the verb makes sense in this context? For as long as I can remember people have talked about "surfing the net," but what does it really mean?
When you surf in the ocean you ride a wave of water, so what kind of wave are you riding on the net? I guess it could be referring to packets of data going back and forth over connections, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. More likely, the verb "surf" is just a holdover from the television days when people referred to hopping from channel to channel to see what's on as "channel surfing." So with that in mind, doesn't it make sense to think about using another verb that might be a little less outdated?
Another term I've heard used in the past is "browse," as in "browse the web," but does this get at what's going on here any better? I guess that browsing is a more reasonable comparison, since you can poke around and look at lots of different sites (which "surf" can mean too, I guess). However, "browse" totally misses the other side of the net, the side that allows you to interact. In other words, browse was all well and good back in the web's categorical days, when you could browse by topic on Yahoo!.
But what about today, does browse do justice to creating a dictionary entry on Wikipedia or commenting on a blog? Is surf a valuable metaphor for what I do when I visit Bloglines and have hundreds of sites deliver their content to me?
Nope.
So Noah, now that you've debunked the two most popular metaphors for the action associated with the inernet, what do you propose people call it? (Wow, that sentence is way more obnoxious than it sounded in my head.) Unfortunately, I don't quite have an answer to that question. But I'd love to discuss it, which I hope would reinforce one of my big points:
The web is different!
What I think we need is a multi-disciplinary word, since we're dealing with multi-media. It needs to speak to the person who seriously interacts with the web, creating new things, all the way down to the person who sits back and lets the web smack them in the face. It needs to speak to more than just the traveling you're doing from site to site, but also the things you're doing once you're there.
So, anyone got any ideas?
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Imagine if Google were to use del.icio.us tags as a way to refine search results? Imagine I said!
I very randomly ran across
this DM News article about adding context to search results and thought I'd share. (I was actually at a photo shoot and told to look busy, so I picked up the latest issue of DM News that happened to be sitting there and turned to this article.) The article suggests that search engines should add some additional bit of context to results to help users find what they're looking for faster. What kind of context you ask?
Well, Glenn Barnett, the article's author was kind enough to answer:
What is navigational context? Navigational context, also known as faceted browsing, enhances the search process by letting users provide additional information to a search input. Consider two cases in which a user is searching for shoes. In the first case, the user enters the term “Nike� in a search box. In the second, the user sees an area of the page marked “brand� with a set of hyperlinks for brands such as Adidas, Converse and Nike, and then clicks the link for Nike. In this second case, the application derives much more value from the input, as it knows not only what term the user wants to search for (i.e., Nike), but in which context to search for it (i.e., brand).
Now, tell me what that sounds like to you . . .
If you answered "tags," you win!
Back at the beginning of May I wrote this:
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.
Imagine if you will that
Google were to buy
del.icio.us. Wouldn't be that crazy, right? After all, "Google's mission
is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." [Italics are mine.] Now, every time you search Google it shows you your results with some refinement options based on the most popular tags associated with the group of results the search returns. Do you have your own del.icio.us account? Well, then it can make your searches more accurate by returning results based on your tagging patterns.
Yeah, it's far fetched, and Google probably isn't buying del.icio.us anytime soon. But it does kind of make sense, doesn't it?
Just an idea I had as I sat in the background of a photo shoot.
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A look at the writing process.
I just discovered a great article over at
Poynter Online all about the
writing process. The author, Roy Peter Clark, suggests this process:
Sniff. Explore. Collect. Focus. Select. Order. Draft. Revise.
I couldn't agree more. Although I no longer write in this style very often, when I was writing for a magazine this is pretty close to the steps I followed. The
sniff is constant for me, I'm always looking around, reading interesting things, keeping my eyes open. After I'd sniff out a good topic to write about, I'd dive in and really
explore. I'd find out what the real deal was, read as much as I can, get a handle on the major players, the major products, etc. I'd then follow that by
collecting everything I could. That included research, writing and, of course, interviews. I'd do as many interviews as I could get. Sometimes whole interviews would get shelved, sometimes I'd only use a single line from an hour interview. It's that kind of cutting that I did during the
focus step, though I must admit that I usually focused during my
ordering/drafting, rather as a separate step.
Then came the most important step, and the most important lesson I learned from writing for a magazine.
Revise, revise, revise.
Never hold on to your words, cut like crazy. Take other people's advice. Read it over again. Cut again. Just get rid of filler, no matter how much you love what you've written. Hold on
ideas not onto
words. That is a tough lesson to learn, but an important one. Too often we become attached to what we've written and we're not able to make good and logical choices about what's good/important/necessary and what's not. That's why you let someone else read it with a big red pen. I know it's scary, but it's necessary.
Just to be clear, this by no means is the process I follow here. This place is all about ideas for me, I get them written as soon as I have them and explore them in writing. It's a different approach and a different goal. In reality this is part of my sniffing: The very first step. I explore ideas, explore my mind and get feedback. There are countless things I've written here that could easily turn into larger pieces if I wished them too.
It's for that very reason that I love this space and this style. It's a fun way to think through ideas in public.
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My attempt at answering the $10,000 question: What are the hot web trends of the moment?
Today I was asked a pretty loaded question:
What are the hot web trends of the moment? Obviously that's a tough one and I wrote a quick answer, that I decided to put on my site in order to give it some more thought and hopefully get some responses from all of you.
Here were the three "trends" I thought of in the five minutes I wrote this email:
AJAX
It stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML and it's the language used for Google Maps and some other great applications (Backpack, etc.). It allows you to refresh content without refreshing a page, bringing us closer to web as platform. (Check out this article that gave it it's name:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php). There's a ton of buzz around it lately, whether or not it will live up to the hype is the question, the first round of backlash is already upon us.
Simplicity in Design
I may be making this up, but I'm seeing a move towards a simpler approach to web design. People are beginning to understand the web better and blogs especially are being redesigned to work with their content, rather than against it. (This article by Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter is a pretty good rundown:
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers/)
RSS
Still picking up steam, especially on the advertising side. What I find most interesting here is that it's still misunderstood and ignored by so many, despite it's adoption by influencers. I recently saw a study of RSS users that had a huge percentage of journalists using the technology (I know I did when I was writing), as a business that tells me that if I want to get PR I better have a feed.
Tagging
Oops, just realized I forgot all about tagging. That's another good one. Tagging allows users to organize information in a non-hierarchical way. See
http://del.icio.us and
http://www.flickr.com. I expect we'll be seeing some major sites jump on the tagging bandwagon in the coming months.
API
It stands for Application Program Interface and it allows programmers to create web applications using the features of existing sites. Want to
combine Craig's List and Google Maps? Try APIs. Want to send an
e-postcard with a Flickr image? Try APIs. The best APIs out there give programmers nearly the full functionality of the site to play with. For a great overview of APIs, especially
Amazon's (which is one of the most open), check out this great
MIT Tech Review article from January.
So those were my three (five as of 6/15), I'm sure there's more and I will keep thinking about them. But what do you think, what "hot web trends" are you seeing?
Update (6/13/05): I didn't include Joshua Porter's name as the co-author of Designing for Web 2.0, I have since fixed it. I apologize Joshua.
Update (6/15/05): Thanks to some good advice by Richard McManus, added APIs to the list.
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Introducing The RidicuLOUs Five, a "weekly" roundup of enjoyable, non-geeky links
For those that don't know him, Lou is a fairly obnoxious, formerly smelly law student who enjoys superlatives. In honor of his return as a reader to NoahBrier.com I've decided to institute a new "recurring" series: The RidicuLOUs Five. These links, while not necessarily ridiculous, are chosen for Lou's reading pleasure. Maybe that way he'll stop bitching about how boring this site is.
Without further ado, here are this weeks RidicuLOUs Five:
1. An 80-year-old New Jersey woman was running a prostitution ring to supplement her Social Security checks
2. A list of five movies people need to stop quoting
3. Six requirements for being a hipster (of which you must meet five)
4. New York City bars that BBQ for free
5. The Collins English Dictionary has added definitions for "going commando" and "drunk dialing"
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An explanation of my choice to use giant orange comment buttons.
As I've explained on many occasions, I gave quite a bit of thought to the redesign of this site. I've been incredibly happy with the feedback I've received and have made some changes because of it (notice the deks are now a darker blue). The following exchange was my favorite because it brought up a point I think I failed to express, but explains my blogging stance quite well. In the comments to my
New Design (3.0) post, Amanda had this to say:
I had a realization last night about why I didn't like the fact that the comments button was so large.In making it one of the largest things on the page, it seems as though you are putting more emphasis and importance on the comments made rather than on what you have written. While the opinions of others are important and do result in interesting conversation, this is YOUR site and therefore emphasis should be placed on what you have written rather than on what others have to say about what you have written.
I replied with this:
Fair enough, but I do want to make it very evident that this is supposed to be an interactive experience. I very much want to encourage people to comment and I'm not afraid to take emphasis off my own words if that means someone will feel more invited to do so. That was actually one of the goals of the comment buttons, they should grab you and make you want to click them and, in turn, want to speak up.
They may be too big, but that was very much on purpose. I'm not sure I'm ready to change those yet.
Without a doubt, the comment buttons are huge, probably oversized, but that's because comments are huge. Comments are what differentiate blogs from everything else. Comments are what make this such an exciting form. Comments are what keep me from going on and on without considering other points of view (well, sometimes I do that anyway). Comments are a huge part of the reason I write here at all. It's much more fun to talk with other people than to them.
I want to encourage everyone to speak up, and if that requires a big, obnoxious, bright orange button, then so be it.
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Flickr tagging is designed as more of an annotation system, while del.icio.us tagging is designed as more of a filing system. But are the two sites moving towards a single tagging culture?
Over at
Plasticbag.org, Tom Coates has an interesting hypothesis on the
shift in tagging from a filing to an annotative process. Coates explains that tagging on
del.icio.us was designed as a filing process while tagging on
Flickr is much more of an annotative one.
While I agree with that argument, something occurred to me today that I found rather interesting. While posting to del.icio.us I thought realized that part of the reason it's tagging system is more closely related to a filing system is because of the importance placed on the "extended" input box. For me, that is where I annotate my bookmarks, meaning by the time I actually get to the tagging them, there is no real reason to use the tags as a secondary form of annotation. The fact that you can search extended fields in del.icio.us only increases their usefulness and power as an annotation tool.
When you compare this process to Flickr, I think something interesting emerges. On Flickr, you can place notes on a photo, however, this is not a primary activity. One look at the Flickr interface and you realize that adding a note to a photo is a secondary process, something that can only be done once the photo is uploaded and clicked on.
There's a difference in the user experience of tagging across the two sites that can't be denied. It's quite possible that people are beginning to use tags in a more Flickr-ized/annotating way on del.icio.us (as Coates suggests by the shift in the tag "blog" from "blogs," the singular being an annotation versus the plural being a category). However, I would tend to believe that we will continue to see a large difference in the way tags are used across both sites thanks to the interface design.
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Is tagging individual posts on a blog the next tagging trend? (Question 2: Am I going to write about "the next trend in tagging" every week?)
If you ask me,
Jonas Luster has come up with the killer tagging app for blogs.
tags4WP is a
WordPress plugin that he's created to allow users to tag a blog entry. Essentially (as I understand it) what it does it change the way WordPress handles categories to allow people to create and categorize in the way one might tag something.
I've thought about this idea before and while I maintain that I'm not sure how successful this idea will be, I think it looks like the best offering out there for bringing tags to the mainstream.
The problem I have with it remains that I understand tagging as something done for personal gain. I tag del.icio.us posts so they're easier to find later, it's all about me. I use the tags that make the most sense in my own head. So why then would I tag a blog? In most cases, I don't think I would. However, as I was giving it more thought, I realized I could imagine tagging articles somewhere like the New York Times. That's because on a large site like that, with many users, if I believed that others would tag articles and that those tags might add value to my experience I would tag articles. I would add to that community.
That's when it dawned on me, what's the difference between my blog and the New York Times (no jokes . . . please). Seriously, other than the quality of writing (NYT over me) and visitors (again, NYT wins), what's the difference? They're both just web sites that include writings on different topics. Yet because the NYT has a massive amount of visitors I understand it as more of a community. But why? In reality, this is much more of a community to me than the New York Times site could ever be. Lots of friends and family read this site, people I have known for some time. If that's not a community, what is?
I don't know that I have answers to all these questions, especially whether tagging makes sense in this context. I still suspect not, but I say it's worth a try. All I've got to do is build the MT plugin.
So tell me, would you tag this post if you could? If so, what would you tag it with?
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I was so taken aback by the experience of waiting for a return bus from Atlantic City this morning that I decided to write down my experience as soon as I got home. This is a rough transcript of what I wrote in my journal this afternoon
After an evening of gambling and drinking those looking to return to New York City head down the escalator to the bus terminal. It's a depressed place without any of the plush amenities of the Casino floor. Yellow plastic chairs line the walls of the smoky room. Overpriced snack machines sit in the corners. It looks like any bus terminal in America except for two odd features. First there's the fence in front of the information booth, which instead of being a normal window instead resembles the fence you'd see on the Casino floor. The fence that seperates the cashiers from the gamblers. The only other sign is the throngs of people walking past clutching clear envelopes with cash. This is the money they're given as a reimbursement for taking the bus, it's supposed to be a way to encourage travel to Atlantic City.
The bigger differences lie outside the aesthetics. In this place catching a bus becomes a competitive pursuit: One last chance to get those juices flowing before returning to the reality of the big city. Crowds of returning gamblers congregate in the parking lot outside the actual terminal, in order to guarantee their spot on the next bus. No one wants to be left behind, missing out on one of the remaining seats after the bus has made its prior stops at the other casinos.
Everyone develops their own strategy for securing a seat. Some stand far out on the sidewalk islands, keeping watch beyond the rear of the parked buses, always ready to rush to the correct parking space, which has been numbered for their convenience. Then there are those who choose one spot and claim they are in the front of the line, no matter where the bus may end up. It's the last gamble of the weekend as people shift around the parking lot, betting on which spot the Academy bus to the Port Authority will pull into.
They wait as other buses arrive and depart, tourists given their gambling money as they step off. Some buses don't show up at all. Many people become restless and leave to try their luck at another casino's bus depot.
With every bus that pull in and pulls out, strategies are refined. The first parking spot seems to be the most appealing during busy times, while the middles sports are where to park when the lot is empty. People move accordingly. Frequent reports come in on the status of the NYC-bound bus. It's due any minute, then it's fifteen, then it's around the corner. None seem to have any truth behind them, all are simply stated to give the increasingly agitated masses something to chew on.
Then, finally, it arrives. The blue of the Academy bus starts to sneak around the corner. Everyone plans accordingly, picking up their luggage, moving around, trying to get to the front of the line, wherever that line may form. It's a completely empty lot, the driver has his choice of the litter. Everyone tries to predict which he'll choose.
When he finally pulls into number seven everyone congregates into an amorphous shape that is supposed to resemble a line. Pushing ensues as people jockey for position. No one wants to be left behind, not after the bus is an hour late. Everyone wants this experience to end, they've packed themselves up and have already mentally left this place. People are packed so tight and close to the door that the driver has to ask people move back in order to open it. Finally he peaks his head out to inform the crowd that there are fifteen seats remaining. At that moment that everyone raises their ticket in the air and pushes it in his direction. The idea is that no matter where you are, if he counts your ticket as one of the magic fifteen, you're in.
Fifteen are chosen and board the bus as onlookers who didn't make it look as though they missed the cut for freshman baseball. They've got to go through this whole experience again. Despite the fact that the schedule says thirty minutes from now, no one knows when it will really show up. Those who missed this bus have to go through the whole experience again, further refining their parking lot strategies.
How is it that an hour wait for a bus feels far longer than twenty-four hours spent in this town?
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Five links for your enjoyment before I get on the bus to Atlantic City.
I'm headed down to Atlantic City for a friend's bachelor party so I figured I'd leave you all with five links to read for the weekend. (I wish I could come up with a good reason there are five. Maybe it's the number of drinks I'll have tonight? No. Number of dollars I'll gamble. Nah. Number of minutes sleep I'll get. That could be it.)
1. This New York Magazine article about Lawrence Lessig's molestation at the hands of a choir director is incredible. Lessig is arguing for another abused student in a case against the Boychoir school. The article's long, but well worth the read.
1a. When you're done with the article, read Lessig's response to the outpouring of support.
2. On a lighter note, want perfect sideburns? Here's your answer.
3. Is the future of television in piracy? This article argues that hyperdistrubtion has changed the laws of television and the industry will be forced to embrace new forms of distribution.
4. Business Week article about how the government is fighting hackers.
5. Finally, if you're ever walked around New York and seen little stickers covering WALK/DON'T WALK SIGNS, you were looking at the work of Thundercut.
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The story of my plunge into full-fledged computer nerdom.
I just finished getting the links on the side of the page working with the help of
Magpie RSS and
this handy PHP script. But that wasn't quite geeky enough for me, so while I was in the mode I decided to finally buy a book I've been meaning to pick up for a while . . .
PHP and MySQL Web Development
Yikes. That is officially my first computer programming book. Once it arrives I can no longer make any arguments against being called the following names:
Geek
Dork
Nerd
I'm sure there's lots of other ones that I've failed to mention, but you get the point.
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Seven fantastic OS X applications that cost ZERO dollars and ZERO cents.
It's been just over a month since my big switch and I haven't given a good Apple rundown lately. So, in the style of
some great Mac OS X inventories, here's my guide to essential free OS X Apps.
 | It's called Quicksilver, it's free and it's the definition of essential OS X software. It is a launcher, a finder interface and just about anything else you want it to be. It's really an amazing piece of software that makes using OS X a faster and more fun experience. |
 | It's called TextWrangler. It's a free text editor that's great for writing HTML and CSS. You can have multiple documents open at once. It breaks stuff up with colors. I've got no complaints. |
 | It's called Adium and it's the answer to all your instant messaging needs. Use more than one service? No problem, Adium can handle them all. It's easy to use, clean to look at and, of course, it's free. |
 | It's Firefox and if you don't know about it yet, you've probably been living in a hole. (Nothing personal to all those hole-dwellers who enjoy the site.) Seriously, it's my favorite browser, extensions are amazing and once you tab you never go back. |
 | It's called Sidenote. What it does is give you one little box to keep all those random notes in. It takes the idea of stickies and gives them a central location with lots of other options (most of which I haven't tried). Oh, and it's free. |
 | It's called Fugu and it's an SFTP client. I've been using it since I moved to TextDrive (which requires SFTP because it's more secure). It's got a great and simple interface and . . . dum dum dum . . . it's free. |
 | It's called BitTorrent and don't pretend like you don't know what it is. It's only the P2P app of the moment and like all the great P2P apps, it's free. |
That just about concludes this edition of Essential Free OS X Apps. I'm sure you can expect other exciting installments in the future, like Essential Free OS X Plugins and Essential Free OS X Widgets, but until then, may you enjoy many hours of free software goodness.
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A look at videogame ideas as clues to bigger trends in our increasingly mobile world.
Just read a great article over at
Guardian: Gamesblog titled
"Ten Interesting Ideas in Videogames". While the article may not be all that cutting edge, most of the ideas are quite good and trends I believe we'll see both within videogames and without.
All ten have writeups associated, but here they are in a list:
1. Augmented reality
2. Location-based gaming
3. Creative gaming
4. Communication gaming
5. Personalization
6. Spontaneous multiplayer
7. Ad-hoc networking
8. Emotional gaming
9. Pervasive gaming
10. Multiple perspective gaming
What I find so interesting about the list is that while they are about videogames, they're really more trends that will result from living in an always-on world. These are the trends that we'll see from being constantly connected to the internet at home and on our mobile phones/portable game units. These are the trends we'll see as mobile technology becomes smarter and adds things like GPS to track our location. These are the trends we'll see as we get even more comfortable with our mobile devices and they further integrate with our lives, becoming even more of an extension of self.
As we get more comfortable with the possibilities of our newer technologies, these things we understand with other media (like multiple perspective in movies), will begin to make sense in new places.
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If my calculations are correct this is the fourth in the "Newly Discovered" series where I highlight something cool I've recently found.
By know pretty much everyone's heard of
Daily Candy. It's a daily email basically aimed at women that keeps them informed of the latest "thing." As explained on their webpage: "DailyCandy, a free daily e-mail newsletter and website, is the ultimate insider's guide to what's hot, new, and undiscovered -- from fashion and style to gadgets and travel." I get it, but most of the time I'm not so interested in what it's got. As much as I love spas and pedicures, I end up ignoring the vast majority (I'm not the audience, I know).
A few weeks ago I got an email from someone inviting me to sign up for a new daily email/website called Thrillist. The email described it as "a thorough, edgy, hilarious guide to restaurants, bars, events, and general debauchery in NYC." I'm always looking for some good NYC debauchery, so I decided to sign up. (Just as a note, I'm not sure where they got my email, but I expect it's because I'm registered on NYC Bloggers.)
After a few weeks I'm happy to report that Thrillist was indeed a good find. The daily tips are much more aligned with my interests, focusing on dive bars and bacon instead of nail polish and sample sales (not that I'm against sample sales).
Thrillist even let me know about Hotel QT, which includes a lobby pool with a bar. This kind of information is especially helpful when you have a friend who's had delusions of opening "Pool Bar" for about a year now, but it seems like fun for everyone.
The only problem is that Thrillist is currently available to everyone, but if you're interested in landing yourself a preview code just drop me an email (nb [at] noahbrier.com) or leave a comment. If you live around NYC or would just like to know about Bacon of the Month clubs, why don't you give it a shot?
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Hi, I'm 