September 2005 Archives
How a bunch of passionate geeks are all set to take on Google . . . and win.
I love it when a bunch of people rise up and fight against the man. I love it even more when I know that I will directly benefit from said revolution. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, TextDrive, the fabulous hosting company I use (and just purchased a lifetime hosting plan with), has been trying to renew it's Urchin license for about a month now. (Urchin is a web statistics program owned by Google.) For whatever reason, the people at Urchin/Google are not interested in letting TextDrive renew. It appears they're considering restructuring their pricing. Here's an explanation from a blog following the debacle:
Since about mid-August or so, the fine staff have called, e-mailed, and otherwise tried to hunt down someone at Urchin that could help them pay the company money.
Since the Google acquisition, it seems that Urchin has moved datacenters and is “re-evaluating� their pricing model. Looks like they’re pushing hard for a subscription-based, Hosted model.
Meanwhile, thousands of TextDrive’s loyal customers have no web analytics package because Google’s done gone and swallowed them up.
That’s HORRIBLE customer service. I can’t imagine not responding to someone who wants to BUY MY PRODUCT!! Furthermore, a company, that is quite popular, who is ALREADY A CUSTOMER!!!
So, what are the TextDrivers gonna do?
They're gonna build their own freakin' web-analytics software.
And you know what, I have no doubt it will kick Urchin's ass. When you put together a bunch of smart, passionate, geeks who have been wronged, you can build a hell of a piece of software. I suggest everyone watch the drama unfold at the blog and also respond to the survey about your current webstats software (doesn't matter if you're an Urchin user or not).
This is gonna be good. (Props to Garrett Dimon on the link.)
Update (10/1/05): Just to be clear, I don't actually believe they're going to take down Google or even create a program that outsells Urchin. However, I have no doubt it will be a whole lot more kick-ass than Urchin ever will be.
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There's a new learning theory on the block and it really embraces the internet.
Last week I wrote about bringing on an education revolution. A few connections away from that post was an essay titled Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens, which I finally got around to reading this afternoon. In the essay Siemens clearly sets up why it's time for a new learning theory, explaining that "Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments." I would even take this a step further and say that it's not only reorganized all these things, but it's also changed how cognitive we are of this organization. It's allowed us to be aware of our awareness, metacognitive if you will. As I've mentioned in the past, this perfect picture of networking we call the internet gives us unparalleled peeks into how our networked brain operates.
With all that said, Siemens presents the principles of connectivism:
- Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
- Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
- Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
- Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
- Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
- Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
- Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
- Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
Before we continue, think for a minute about just how those principles are from the ones currently subscribed to in traditional education.
. . .
Time's up and if you said a lot different you were correct. These are all the ways the internet changes our world. One trend Siemens mentions earlier that has led to his theory is that " Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)." That's a skill that was not all that important before the internet when there were so few knowledge bases, however, with the mass distribution we see online knowing where to find something can be just as important as actually knowing it. We're [especially young people] using computers as a bionic brain, why should we remember it if we know right where to find it online?
With that said, how could we really expect a school system that hasn't dealt with the invention of the calculator to deal with the internet in any timely fashion?
It's all kind of sad when you think about it that way, but theories like Siemens begin to give us some hope that at least there are some minds thinking about the problem. This is really about a paradigm shift, as my mom wrote in the comments to last week's entry, "So what we are really talking about here is the redefinition of the teacher/student relationship. Undoing that truly ancient paradigm is huge; the revolution may need to be nuclear." She's right, and so is George Siemens, this is about changing the very theory of what learning is, and in turn gaining a clearer understanding of how we interact with our 21st century world. Siemens writes:
The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
The shift to individuals at the center of their media/learning universe is something I've dubbed idiocentricity, in a post from last year, I explain:
[Idiocentricity] is what makes the internet such a powerful medium, and what makes blogs and other social software such a great addition to the web's landscape. We have now begun to shift away from messages being broadcast to us by traditional media, instead opting for the route of the internet. This allows us to sit at the center of our media universe and pick and choose what we receive. We are no longer held hostage by the television schedule, rather, we can just tune into an aggregator and receive all the news or entertainment that we've decided we want.
But with that freedom comes great responsibility (and this is where a lot of the skill/learning starts to come in):
When we want to know something, we no longer look it up in the encyclopedia, instead we Google it, which gives us any number of answers ranked in order of how many other people thought those answers were good enough to link to. From there, we have to choose what information is reliable and what information is not and make a final decision on the answer to our original question. Answers hardly ever come from one source anymore. Now, thanks to search engines, we put together our own answers and explanations, we own the final product, it is an amalgamation of any number of sources. Rather than the traditional top-down mediation of old media, broadcasters decide what is and is not news, we are able to make the final decisions and create our own stories. Thanks to blogs, not only is more information being reported on than ever before, but also now everyone has a chance to add the debate by publishing their own opinions. It is a truly democratic medium.
In an entry titled "It's not what it is, it's what it enables" on Siemens' Connectivism blog he explains connectivism like this:
"The concept centers on a person’s ability to create his or her own personal learning network. Rather than learning only through courses, we learn by creating and forming connections to information and people. The sources we select are dynamic. When they change, our whole network gets smarter."
This is huge. This is different. I don't exactly have answers on how to implement it, but it seems like we need to start somewhere. Young educators being taught in colleges should understand this stuff. It's important. It's different. Who's in?
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Now that we know thinking is all about connections, isn't it time we started teaching it?
I've always said that the most important thing I learned in college was how to think better. I attended a fairly free program that allowed me to follow my own interests throughout my four years, not tied down by any majors or requirements. What that did was allow me to evolve and connect my own thoughts. In fact, I can basically chart back, semester-by-semester, how I arrived where I am today. (For those interested it goes something like this: urban studies to educational reform, educational reform to Black studies, Black studies to hip-hop culture, hip-hop culture to postmodernism, postmodernism to digital culture.) When I finally arrived at digital culture everything made sense. It was the thing that finally connected everything together. That webbed network that we all play with was the perfect way to illustrate how the world connected together.
The problem is that most people don't have this experience. Most people aren't given the freedom to follow their own path. Especially in pre-college education, so much of school is about teaching subject matter than learning often becomes the forgotten stepchild, left to watch from the corner. In the past, the reason for this was that there was simply no other way for students to learn the things the need to know. Things about math, government, etc. But that's changing. That 10th grade history book is tiny when compared with the vast universe of knowledge on the web that's available to students around the world. This should cause a major shift in the way both students learn and teachers teach. Educator Will Richardson explains:
I mean, at some point, we're going to have to let go of the idea that we are the most knowledgable content experts available to our students. We used to be, when really all our students had access to was the textbook and the teacher's brain. But today, we're not. Not by a long stretch. And we don't need to be. What we need to be is connectors who can teach our kids how to connect to information and to sources, how to use that information effectively, and how to manage and build upon the learning that comes with it.
It's all about the connections, but before the web showed us just what connections looked like this was hard to understand. The web has fundamentally shifted the way we understand how we think and, in turn, should shift the way and what we learn. Konrad Glogowski at the blog of proximal development, in response to Will Richardson, explains this change quite well:
Learning is no longer an internal, solitary activity happening inside an individual learner - it is also a process of creating knowledge. This connection would not exist without the nodes created by Will Richardson and George Siemens. It would not exist without a personal network of nodes that I created with my Bloglines subscriptions. It cannot exist unless it is reified in this very entry where it becomes another node in an ever-growing network. My learning is therefore dependent on my ability to perceive some sort of connection or pattern in the available chaos. “The value of ‘pattern recognition,’� to quote George Siemens again, “and connecting our own ’small worlds of knowledge’ are apparent in the exponential impact provided to our personal learning.�
When I read the line, "My learning is therefore dependent on my ability to perceive some sort of connection or pattern in the available chaos," it rung especially true. That is what learning and thinking is all about to me. Those aha moments in life come from realizing a connection between two seemingly disparate entities. It's how problems are solved. It's how scientific breakthroughs happen. Yet instead of encouraging students to think about the connections between the information, we just teach them the information. We force feed history dates and the periodic table, but we don't encourage them to try to find the connections.
That's what always drove me nuts about tests. A multiple choice test is looking for very little other than basic learning. People who can memorize well do great on tests for that reason. It's not asking people to think. Ask a student to write an essay and all of a sudden they've got to develop thoughts and communicate ideas. It encourages more interaction with the information and opens up the chance for connections to happen. But even that's not enough.
Today's teachers must begin to encourage students to make connections. To think about connections. To realize the importance of connections. Whereas teachers of yesterday were DJs, serving up one piece of information after another, today's need to be producers, giving students all the tools and assistance they need to create their own remixes. Guide them through the process. Encourage interaction.
The question becomes is the average teacher/administrator even cognizant of this shift? It gives me hope to read someone like Will Richardson, but I can't help but worry. It's time for a revolution.
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An update on my Crunch customer service story where this time Crunch employees bash me in the comments.
For those of you that remember back in December when I told my story of the terrible customer service at Crunch gym, I just wanted to update the situation. Since December I have been a happy member of New York Sports Club and CrunchReallySucks.com has been getting about two comments a month. There are lots of good ones, many highlighting how Crunch sucks.
There are a few that are negative towards me, which I can deal with, but there were two that really stood out, mostly because they sounded quite similar. One was from a Bob Highlander (MysheI42@aol.com and read:
Whaaaa....
You all sound like whining crybabies! The 1st poster sounds like he was scamming his way into the club...when he knew full well that he was no longer a corporate member. THe way I see it...you owe CRUNCH MONEY!!!
I go to the gym to workout and mind my own business...quit your bitching and hit the iron!
The other was from Michael (burnt2o47@aol.com) and read:
If you had been working out there for six months, what was there to think about.
Did you need to try out the gym again.
Obviously no one here is a business owner.
Think about this, you are one in how many people who try the same thing.
If they let you in for free, then where is the value in someone elses membership that they paid for. You people should understand something that simple.
I could understand if you were a potential customer, like NYSC just let you work out hoping you would join their health club. Does your landlord let you live in your apartment if you don't pay your rent?
I'm not posting to bash you in anyway, and I can appreciate a person who will go to such lengths to put his/ her point across. But it just is another example of people; not just you, trying to take advantage of others. Good for you.
Now I can deal with people disagreeing with me, but there was a certain amount of similarity to the tone of the two comments and a quick look at the logs showed me that's because they came from the same IP: 206.205.135.11. At this point I figured something was up so I did a whois on the IP and wasn't overly surprised to get returned with this:
CustName: Bally Total Fitness, Inc.
Address: 300 East Joppa Road, 5th floor
City: Baltimore
StateProv: MD
PostalCode: 21204
Country: US
RegDate: 1995-10-24
Updated: 1995-10-24
Bally's owns Crunch. Crunch employees left me comments bashing me on their work computers. It's all pretty amusing and I thought everyone should know. Just reinforces the fact that Crunch really sucks.
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After doing a lot of thinking about design lately, it's time to start trying to articulate my thoughts.
I've been thinking quite a bit about design lately. In fact, I would be tempted to say it's taken up a majority of my mindshare as of late. It's not that I'm abandoning the super-geek world of tags and RSS, it's just that my interests are evolving and I see design as a natural place to go next. I like to follow things and see where they take me and design seems to be a missing piece in my other interests.
Design is that which mediates nearly all our experiences. It's one of the things that makes tags so appealing and it's one of the things keeping RSS from going mainstream. It can be seen in the beauty of the iPod or the simplicity of the Google homepage. The interesting thing, though, was that I never really thought about it until I got into advertising. Up to recently I had ignored an entire world that I saw and touched every day. I took it for granted, thinking things like I'd never buy an iPod because I didn't want to be one of those people who bought things just because they looked cool (for the record, I still don't own one, but for other reasons).
Things have changed. I've begun to realize that design isn't just about looks, it's about functionality. In fact, I'd argue in many cases it's more about functionality than anything else. The iPod, I believe, would never have seen the popularity it has without the brilliant interface that finally made browsing huge libraries of music simple. The fact that the thing looked beautiful only added to that interface, you can't have one without the other. Design is all about communicating something. You're doing your best to help the user understand what you're trying to say (in the case of print design) or how to use the device (in the case of personal electronics). It's all about paying attention to everything, all the way down to the smallest detail. John Maeda explains it like this:
Design is, to some extent, about prioritizing the foreground experience, but providing a low-energy means of gently shifting focus to the background whenever the greater context of an activity might matter more than the activity itself. Once you have properly situated yourself, you're free to get lost in the foreground experience again.
Or, put more simply, "The key is to provide the hiker, the user, or the viewer with enough -- but not too much -- information."
I was thinking about design in relation to fashion the other day. The well-dressed person looks naturally well-dressed; it doesn't look like it's taking a great deal of effort. It's those people that try to hard that tend to stand out. (I, by the way, make no claims to be a fashion expert . . . on the contrary, I am mostly a fashion mistake.) The goal of design, in my mind, is the same: to communicate a message without people noticing you're communicating it.
Boy, for a closing line about trying to hard . . .
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A very enjoyable New York Post article by an anonymous NYU freshman.
[Editor's Note: A friend of mine sent me the full text to this article about what life is really like for a freshman at New York University from the New York Post. It was a little too funny not to post in it's entirety. Hope you all enjoy -- especially those of you who are also NYU alum.]
LET ME MAKE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT I DID NOT WRITE THIS. IT IS THE FULL TEXT OF AN ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK POST.
Confessions of an NYU Freshman - The Sex, Drugs and Poker that Tempt One City College Kid
By Anonymous
COLLEGE is exactly like it is in the movies. Well, movies like "Animal House"
and "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle." Less like "Mona Lisa Smile."
I realized this after watching a red-faced New York University senior
stuffing a keg in a computer box in hopes of smuggling it past dorm security.
That was last week, my first as a freshman in the Stern School of Business at
NYU. It's been a time of excitement, stress - pure joy and pure fear. I'm
overwhelmed by how many distractions there are here, going to college with
39,000 other students in the middle of Manhattan. I'm amazed, but not
necessarily surprised, by the alcohol, sex and drugs on campus.
Yet I'm also thrilled to be here, a university that was my first choice
growing up in Rockland County. This was the place I had always wanted to go to.
It's a chance to party, date and, yes, study in a village made up of my peers.
And I've already learned the most important lesson:
I really need a fake ID.
HOOKING UP
I live in Hayden Hall, a building right on Washington Square Park, with a
well-founded reputation as a party dorm.
I have friends who live in University Hall uptown, and it's pretty boring.
Everyone has their doors shut, and no one really socializes. I also have friends
who live in Weinstein, the other freshman dorm, and they kind of hate it, too.
It's more like a prison block than a dorm.
In Hayden we all keep our doors open all the time, and people room-hop all
day and pretty much all night. My three roommates and I have met a ton of people
this past week. I think everyone is much more social because we've all been
drinking our faces off.
I didn't know my roommates, and that made me kind of nervous. Four guys in
two adjoining rooms is a lot of testosterone. But, thank God, I was pleasantly
surprised. We get along really well, and it's been fun so far. The mess? That's
a whole other issue.
A lot of people have fake IDs, so they get the liquor and then we all share.
Vodka, Captain Morgan's and beer are the dorm favorites. When I first got here,
I really feared meeting new people and hoped that getting comfortable with my
chaotic surrounding wouldn't be too difficult. It turns out it was much easier
than I thought.
One of the first things I did when I moved in was sign up for Facebook
(facebook.com), an online student directory. It's the greatest thing ever -
Cliffs Notes for your classmates - where you post your name, hobbies and
picture; a virtual extension of yourself. You can also post your schedule, which
is helpful when you want to know the name of the hot redhead who was sitting
next to you in Bio 101.
Most of the upperclassmen use Facebook, also known as the "hook-up book" the
"hooker booker" and the "get face book" to get a look at the hot freshman girls.
It works both ways. If the hot redhead from bio is much more into the
upperclassmen, my chances are slimmer.
As if we need more distractions, every room is linked to a high-speed
computer network. I haven't quite figured out how it all works but, despite
anti-piracy efforts, it's an endless supply of free and very illegal music and
movie sharing. There's also plenty of porn, supposedly even one made here in the
dorms and a video going around of some poor shmuck professing his love for some
girl.
A TOUCH OF CLASS
Yes. We go to class. For now, pretty much everyone is making it to the
lectures and discussions. I have a feeling that all this is going to change
soon. There's a lot going on around here, and class could end up becoming a side
act for some people.
It's not so much the bars and drinking that is as distracting as the idea of
just lounging around all day hanging out with friends. You can play chess in the
park, head over to Broadway and do some shopping or just sit at home and watch
hours of television. Plus, most classes don't have mandatory attendance, so no
one would really miss you.
At first, I was really intimidated by the library; I mean so many people
killed themselves there last year. But now I think it's a good place to go and
study and get away from the insanity of the dorms. I love dorm life, but it's
really not the most productive place to pore over lecture notes and do finance
homework.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Drugs are not hard to get in the dorms. They're readily available, and
although I don't know anyone personally who deals, I've heard plenty of stories.
I have a friend who's a sophomore, a photography major, who lives in the
Palladium. Palladium is mostly apartment-style housing for upperclassmen and an
awesome place to live. There's a guy who runs a poker room, and there are
parties three or four nights a week. People do lines in the bathrooms, some kid
makes like 700 bucks a week dealing and you can pretty much get any drug you
want without ever leaving the dorms.
Ritalin is no longer the drug of choice for studying. It's Adderall, and it's
really easy to buy. It's only like $5 a pill, and people love it. People buy
Vicodin and Perks, too, from kids who have had muscle strains and stuff. They're
not dealers, they're just NYU entrepreneurs.
What blows my mind is that I heard someone paid $50 for two Vicodin pills.
Some of these people just have so much money. I mean, people probably spend an
average of $250 to $300 a week in restaurants and buying alcohol. It's difficult
being a student who doesn't have a lot of disposable income or a trust fund.
WORDS OF WISDOM
My cousin is a senior at NYU, and he's told me some wild stories about what
he did his freshman year at Hayden.
You know that Red Hot Chili Peppers poster, the one with just a sock? They
did the same thing, a strategically placed sock, some towels and they ran around
flashing people. They didn't even get caught.
There are tales of drinking gone awry, of tasteless pranks played on
unsuspecting New Yorkers, of failed tests and all-night crash study sessions.
I don't tell these stories to my parents. I'm pretty confident that I'm going
to be fine. This place is like Las Vegas and Sodom rolled into one, and the best
advice I've heard is to not get sucked into a 24-hour party lifestyle.
I'm sure it will work out. But for now I'm kind of scared s---less.
Update (9/19/05): NYU's Washington Square News responds.
Update (5/18/06): Due to a site improperly crediting me as the article's author I added the extra warning at the top.
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It's time to officially announce my first foray into sports blogging.
I briefly mentioned this last Sunday night, but now it's time to officially introduce Da' Bears Blog.
I'm a Chicago Bears fan and had the idea to start a blog a few months ago. I've since recruited two friends to help me write and we officially launched for business last week. After a week of working out the kinks and a big Bear's win today against the Detroit Lions, it seemed like a good idea to start spreading the word to the world.
So if you're a Bears fan, or just a football fan in general, pop over to Da' Bears Blog and enjoy yourself. (And if you've got any comments, let me know.)
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Are tags actually anything more than easy-to-deal with categories?
I meant to write up this great entry on tagging when I read it last week. Unfortunately I didn't have time, but now I do and better late than never, right? The entry is a bunch of points about tagging (hence the "bottom up"), some are very interesting, some are less. The one that jumped out at me most was actually the very first one:
Tags are not organizational innovation they are an interface innovation. The difference between a tag and a category is non existent except that the interface threshold to create a tag is so low that people actually do it regularly.
This is a very interesting argument and one I agree with in many ways. For me, tags on del.icio.us act as a categories. I organize my links into all these various buckets. The big difference between this scheme and the folder scheme you encounter in normal file structures is the ability to cross-post something. Again, though, I could cross-file anything, even in a real file cabinet, if I felt like making multiple copies and keeping them all updated across multiple folders. With that said, I think it's true that it's just an interface innovation: tagging makes it easy to categorize and cross categorize. There's no clicking, dragging or anything else, you just type in a bunch of words and viola, you're done.
That, however, is not the only use of tags, and I think this is where it becomes an organizational innovation. Once you remove tags from your own personal area and extend them across an entire system you've got a whole new way of organizing. Because one most systems tags can be viewed across multiple users, they become a way to easily organize without any interaction. They become the ultimate bottom-up organization tool. As I've written in the past, "Tagging is a great way to create a community without having to develop any additional backend." There's no need to start a new email list or a new forum topic, you can begin to organize, or join others simply by tagging something with the same term or terms. In that way it's more than just an interface innovation.
I also believe that the possibilities of tagging as an organization innovation will become more and more apparent as we use tags for more. Tags are a form of metadata and their biggest impact may come down the line, as people become more comfortable with tagging and thus metadata. With a population used to attaching this additional information, we can begin to analyze and even ask them to attach additional levels. The deeper we go, the more context we add. The more context we add, the more value. The more value . . . I'm just not sure.
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Looking for a few talented writers.
Renegade, where I work, is looking for some writers for a few jobs.
1. A copywriter for a job we're doing for a technical company. The writer doesn't have to have technical writing experience, but should like technology enough to immerse themselves in it and learn a bit about it.
2. A writer from a major city (NYC, LA, etc.) who likes to go out. The more trouble they get in, the better.
If you've got any questions, or think you fit the bill, either leave a comment on this entry or contact me.
Thanks a bunch.
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The big guy launches a blog search service . . . Technorati and co. tremble . . .
Yes my friends, you are seeing correctly. Google has launched a blog search. Now I don't want to rain on Technorati and co.'s parade, but didn't they see this coming? What happens now? This thing allows you to organize results by relevance or date (a choice I believe Technorati removed some time ago that I found quite useful) and it even includes feeds . . . ooh and ahh (not only that, but you get a choice between Atom and RSS). With that said, here's the feed for a search on "Google blog search" so go ahead and follow all the fun.
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Talking about Gap.com's redesign. Part one of a two part series covering today's big redesigns.
The second big redesign to talk about (following up on my discussion of The Guardian), is Gap.com. After shutting the whole thing down for a few weeks and forfeiting a couple million bucks, this was (apparently) a much anticipated relaunch (I must admit I knew nothing about it until reading the Times article this morning). Luckily for me (and you), this redesign is a little more in my area of expertise than a newspaper. I'm fairly comfortable with web design and webapps and so it was with a careful eye I headed over to Gap.com (a careful eye? What is that?). Anyway, here are some screenshots:
Now if you pop over to Gap.com you'll notice that they're using technology (AJAX nonetheless) to help replicate the store buying experience. In this Times article titled New Approach From Gap to Cut Down on Clicks quotes Toby Lenk, president of Gap Inc. Direct:
"A lot of this was borrowing metaphors from the store experience," Mr. Lenk said. "When a woman walks into one of our stores, she can process things really quickly. Like when she's browsing the racks, she takes a quick look at what the sizes and colors are, picks up something and keeps going. We're trying to let her stay with the fashion.
The article continues:
"In the old world, it'd take dozens of clicks to hack through pull-down menus for size, color, style," Mr. Lenk added. "Nobody had figured out how to let someone put together an outfit and buy off one page. It's just very hard to do."
There is a lot of cool stuff going on the page, starting from the constant shopping cart floating on the right side of the screen. Rather than a little static shopping cart reminder, Gap.com is using a floating box that actually pulls down to show you its contents. What that means is there's no more need to click through to your shopping cart to see (or change) it's content. Now you can access it from any screen.
The next very noticeable change comes when your browsing clothes. Rather than forcing users to click through to find out more information and see a larger picture, which seriously disrupts the experience, Gap.com allows you to access more information as a sort-of popup within the page (this is a good popup, not a bad one). Now you can take a closer look at what you're interested and, should you decide it's not for you, check out the next item without click any back buttons at all.
There seem to be a bunch of other small things which I can't really talk about now because I can't access the site. These few screenshots and comments admittedly only scratch the surface, as I only spent about 10 or 15 minutes on the site. The big point here, though, is that these companies are realizing that they need to innovate online. The online shopping experience is still a far cry from walking into the store. Of course, that may not change until you can virtually try on clothes, but there are still ways that companies, like The Gap, can streamline the online purchase process and help make it a little more pleasurable. It's nice to go through a website and get the feeling that the company has truly thought about how people use it. Nice job Gap.
Update (9/13/05): Speak Up does a nice job of walking through the puchase process on OldNavy.com.
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Talking about The Guardian newspaper's redesign. Part one of a two part series covering today's big redesigns.
Redesigns seemed to be all the rage today. Between The Guardian paper edition and Gap.com, I don't remember a day of reading more coverage of design. I have very little expertise in the are (of design), but that's never stopped me from discussing things before. With that said, let's get started with The Guardian (or should I write "the guardian"). Anyway, here's a peek at the first edition of their new design, dubbed G2 (and for those interested, here's my commentary on the Gap.com redesign).
Before I even get started talking about this, let me direct you to a real critique over at cityofsound titled "Assessing the new Guardian, with brief nod to the avant-garde (aka Grazia, Heat and The Sun)". The first thing you'll notice is they've moved to tabloid. That's a pretty big deal for a well-established paper like The Guardian, I mean, imagine if The New York Times was the same shape as the New York Post. Would people take it as seriously? It's a great illustration of just what "the medium is the message" means. The layout of the newspaper tended to let you know how "serious" the paper was. That is the case no more. Many of the world's most important papers (including Le Monde) are now tabloid. This move by The Guardian (and others) is mainly about making it easier for people to read the paper. The fact is, broadsheets are a bit outdated, especially in crowded cities. Have you tried to read The Times on a New York City subway? You always end up smacking someone in the face as you try to turn the page. It's just no fun, especially compared to the page-turnability of The Post or the Daily News.
Beyond the switch of format, the most notable change is the new title. The paper has chosen to go with an all lowercase approach. It's kind of interesting to see a paper do this, as those capitals and elegant fonts seem so attached to the newspaper world (at least in America). Again, imagine if you saw "the new york times" across the top of your Sunday paper. How would you react? Throw in a little color behind the title and it's hard to tell you're even looking at a newspaper anymore. In fact, the whole thing looks a lot more like a cross between a magazine and a website than it does a "newspaper." I mean the cover has little arrow icons pointing you to the page where the article continues, ala a web link, and a photo/caption montage across the top, ala magazines.
All in all I like the way it looks. If you'd like to take a closer look, here's a PDF of the front page. Also, as I mentioned, for a much better analysis, visit cityofsound.
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Three semi-unrelated thoughts for you to snack on.
Again, I've got lots of random stuff to talk about/link to, so rather than going for an all out post, I'm going with bullets again. Sorry for the inconvenience (not really). (Just as a side note, if anyone is actually reading this, do you mind the bullets? Do I need to apologize for not writing full posts lately? Just curious . . . ) Without any further ado, here are my thoughts/links I think you might enjoy:
- I've gotten a few notes asking me why I haven't posted anything about Katrina. To be honest, I've been so busy lately that I haven't kept up with what's going on to a level that I feel comfortable writing about it. I invite anyone who feels as though they have something to say about the hurricane and devastation it created to comment here or email me your thoughts and I'll post them. Also, here's a fairly moving account of what life was like in New Orleans. (Via my Aunt)
- Rolling Stone published Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt."
- I'll probably go for an extended writeup at some point, but in celebration of the 2005 NFL season I have launched Da' Bears Blog. At the moment Jeff is doing most of the writing, but I hope to add my two cents more now that I've finally finished designing the damn thing.
That's it for now. I hope to get on a more normal posting cycle sometime soon. Until then, I'll be posting links like normal, so come back often for tasty tidbits.
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The real value of RSS may be in it's ability to make web links bi-directional.
Just when you think it's safe to come out, I've got some new thoughts on RSS. Really it's only one new thought:
RSS completes the loop.
In other words, the real power of RSS could be in the fact that it provides real time feedback on links. It completes the loop. It finally allows us to track inbound links just as easily as we create outbound ones.
But why does this matter?
Well, I started thinking about it today as I was reading Steven Johnson's Emergence
(I know, I know, I should be done with it by now). In a chapter called The Pattern Match, Johnson talks about just why he feels the web is so disorganized, specifically pointing to the uni-directional nature of links as the culprit. "All emergent systems are built out of [the] kind of feedback [where you influence your neighbors, and your neighbors influence you]," he explains. "The two-way connections that foster higher-level learning."
We all know that up to this point the web has primarily been a one-way outlet. The shift were seeing (often referred to as the read/write web) is fostering two-way interactions by way of things like blogs. But my big point here is that read/write is much bigger than just comments and trackbacks. Read/write or feedback is about changing the very structure of how the internet works. (Man, the more I write this, the more I feel like someone's gonna send me a link to something Richard McManus or Joshua Porter wrote two years ago that says the exact same thing.)
Anyway, Johnson goes onto explain in detail just what the effects of this one-way linking system are:
You can point to ten other sites from your home page, but there's no way for those pages to know that you're pointing to them, short of you taking the time to fire off an e-mail to their respective webmasters. Every page on the Web contains precise information about the other addresses it points to, and yet, by definition, no page on the web knows who's point back. It's a limitation that would be unimaginable in any of the other systems that we've looked at [ant colonies, cities, etc.].
Up to now, the best way for us to find out if people had linked to a site was to check the referral logs (dependant on people actually clicking through on a link) or conduct frequent and exhaustive searches (far from a perfect solution). RSS on the other hand, allows us to monitor the activity going on around us. I, for instance, have RSS search feeds on "noah brier" and "noahbrier.com" informing me anytime someone mentions my name or links to me. When a mention or link comes through the feed I check it. (What can I say? I like to read what other people have to say about me.) But I think this is much bigger than ego, I think it's a possible beginning to a smarter web.
Basically, it's a pretty safe bet that if someone linked to something I've written we share some similar interests (unless they're bashing me, I guess . . . although even then, if they care enough to bash me we probably have some things in common). Once I read what they've written, I'll often decide to read more. Often, if it's a blog, I'll end up subscribing and frequently reading their content. In time, I'll end up linking back and a relationship will begin to form.
Now look at what happened there, the ability to track feedback eventually led to a relationship. Put a bunch of these relationships together and you've got a community: based around similar interests, all conversing separately, tracking feedback with the help of RSS. Rather than the traditional hub-and-spoke formation you would see when you visualize internet links, a balanced network appears, with links bouncing back and forth and all around.
It's like lots of satellites conversing independently and it wouldn't be possible without RSS.
(Just as a note, I got so excited that I didn't finish the chapter. So if all this gets said in the next four pages of the book I'll let you know.)
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A list of blogs all about information visualizations. Mmmmmm . . .
I like information visualizations. It's with that said that I point you all towards a few blogs that specialize in finding great examples:
1. Information Aesthetics: This site specifically covers cool ways that people visualize information. The blog's fairly telling description is "form follows data - towards creative information visualization." I'm constantly awed by links on this site. It's really a must read if you enjoy this stuff.
2. xBlog: xPlane calls themselves "the visual thinking company," so it's no surprise that their blog is "the visual thinking blog." The company designs visual explanations for complex ideas (for magazines and the like). Their blog is a collection of links to articles and examples of visual thinking at work.
3. swissmiss: This is the site of Tina Roth, a swiss designer living in New York. It's got a leaning towards information design, but it varies. This site is a recent discovery and it's quickly become one of my favorite reads. She finds some great stuff, like this Rubik's cube solver.
Enjoy and please pass along any other great visual thinking blogs.
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Lots of links, a little commentary.
I've been very busy lately, hence the serious lack of posts. I've got a ton of stuff to talk about, so I'm going with a link roundup instead of a 'regular' post.
Hurricane Katrina
Flying Spaghetti Monster
Advertising
I think that's it for now. Thanks for sticking around. Hopefully I'll have some more time in the next few days. Until then, take it easy.
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Jon Stewart understands that the internet is more than just a thing you access with your computer.
It's the idea that the content is no longer valued by where it stands, in what neighborhood it lives. What matters is what you put out there, not its location. I think that's what people have come to learn from the Internet - it doesn't matter where it comes from. If it's good, it's good. Just because our channel is after HGTV and right before Spanish people playing soccer doesn't make it any less valuable than something that exists in the single digits on your television set.
Jon Stewart said that. He's right. The lessons of the internet are beginning to extend outward to all parts of culture. These changes we're seeing (customizing your Scion, television On Demand, etc.) are all happening because the internet changed out relationship with content. It put the world at our fingertips: Made it easy to remix, simple to publish and a cinch to search. But it's incredibly important that people realize that the internet is/will be bigger than just something you reach on a digital device. It's reverberations are and will continue to be felt across all media and culture.
Hope I don't sound too much like a broken record, but I like this stuff
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Hi, I'm 