Tag - technology

Every web hosting company is the worst

September 13, 2006

I was going to write one of those articles.

You know … the host I used to have … the problems it caused … the downtime this site experienced … the agony of dealing with the optimistically-named customer “service” …

You get the picture. You’ve probably experienced it.

I decided not to. There’s just no upside in it. So I didn’t. But in the course of prepping for the post, I did notice something interesting:

Every hosting company is the worst. To someone.

How can you tell? Well, google hosting company. Check the ads overflowing on the sidebar, bursting onto the page, shoving their pugnacious little faces forward.

Lots of them, huh?

Now google worst hosting company. Or, if you like variety, bad hosting company. A bit of a change, no?

The deal is, when you set up your AdWords campaigns, you tell Google what words you want to bid on. You also tell Google when you don’t want your ads to show.

For example, I want my ads on freaking awesome widget to show up when someone googles for freaking awesome widget. But I don’t want my ads to show up when someone googles for free freaking awesome widget.

After all my widget is freaking awesome, and that degree of freaking awesomeness doesn’t come free. So cheapskates who aren’t likely to pay don’t see my ad. They’ll probably click – and cost me money – but not pay. The buggers.

Looks to me like the hosting companies have pretty unanimously decided that ticked-off bad hosting refugees might be a poor choice to market to … especially if you never know what vagaries of the SEO winds will make your name turn up in the organic search results.

It would suck to be showing your ad for Kwality Hostin’ Inc. just as the number one result on Google for worst hosting company turns up Kwality Hostin’, wouldn’t it?

Because everyone’s the worst – to someone.

[tags] worst, hosting company, web hosting, seo, google, adwords, adsense, john koetsier [/tags]

The long winding trail of a Mac shareware app

September 6, 2006

I’ve had Apimac Timer on my computer for probably over a year.

I downloaded it as shareware months and months ago to handle a tiny, almost incidental need I had for timing software on my Mac. I used it and forgot it.

Fastforward 13 months.

I’m doing some major business process re-engineering. Need timing software. Don’t wear a watch. What am I going to do? A lightbulb appears over my head: Apimac Timer.

So today I bought it. It’s only $15, but it solves a need I have in the right way, right now.

Moral of the story? Never give up on your customers.

Sometimes they just spend an awful long time in your funnel before dropping out the bottom.

[tags] business, leads, shareware, mac, apimac, timer, sales, funnel, john koetsier [/tags]

Disneyland, fingerprints, and invasion of privacy: 1984

September 1, 2006

If only Walt were around to see this: DisneyWorld is scanning customer’s fingerprints. (Story also at BoingBoing.)

I’m posting this not because it’s really within the scope of this blog. I’m posting this because UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT NOW, THIS IS THE FUTURE. And yes, I’m shouting.

How’d you like to be fingerprinted at the mall? In the grocery store? When you vote? In order to buy gas? When you drop off and pick up your kids at school? When you walk into the park?

We already have the “papers, may I see your papers, please” here in North American airports that we used to associate with spy movies set in iron curtained Eastern Europe. How far will it go?

Post this. Talk about it. Raise a stink.

Most importantly, vote with your feet. Vote with your dollars. Refuse to patronize any company that demands privacy violations as a cost of doing business with it. Who is the bloody customer, after all?

When my wife Teresa and I took our kids to Sea World in San Deigo earlier this year, they wanted to fingerprint us as well. I refused, just out of principle. They agreed to just look at my ID. And look in our bags in case we were carrying bombs or guns.

But even that is an invasion of privacy. What we give up arguing becomes the next standard modus operandi. And then the next thing comes along. Pretty soon, we wake up in what looks very much like a police state … just like the lobster who never jumped out of the pot.

The water temperature went up too slowly. They took away our freedoms just one at a time. Death by a thousand tiny cuts.

You want to change that? Start now.

Don’t care enough to resist? Then our children will live in Amerika. In Kanada. In Oceania.

1984, baby.

[tags] disneyland, police state, fingerprinting, privacy, sea world, 1984, george orwell, john koetsier [/tags]

Google library: saving books from themselves

August 31, 2006

Google Book Search is now releasing full books as downloadable PDFs … in some ways similar to what Project Gutenberg has been doing for years.

To me, Google is saving books from themselves. Not hit books, of course, and not recent books either. But the long tail of books.

Related:
Project Connexions … ripping, mixing, and “burning” books:

[tags] google, video, books, connexions, library, gutenberg, john koetsier [/tags]

6 years of Noah Kalina

August 29, 2006

This is a “holy mother” moment:

everyday on Vimeo

Six years of a self-portrait every. single. day.

Wow. Mesmerizing.

(And the music is great, too. I want to know where to buy it.)

The long tail wags best online

August 29, 2006

I started this post about 3 months ago.

The paradox of choice – why more is less is a great video of Barry Schwarz talking at Google about his research on choice. His counter-intuitive result was that more choice leads to less satisfaction.

More products, less happiness. More options, more stress. It’s fascinating – check it out here:

But I didn’t publish the post … something was missing. Now I know what.

I’m currently reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. He mentions this Schwarz’ research too. But the follow-up tells the real story.

The problem is not too much choice. The problem is too little help.

Online, more help is easy. Top 10 lists. Recommended by lists. People who bought this also bought that. Affinities. Reviews. Owner blurbs.

Offlline, all that is missing – so choice is hard. Without guides, we miss the path, and it’s stressful.

Which is why the long tail wags best online.

[tags] long tail, barry schwarz, paradox of choice, poverty of help, chris anderson, google video, john koetsier [/tags]

Google @ school

August 28, 2006

I hate to say I knew it would happen, but 3-4 months ago I put together this strategy map of where I thought Google was heading.

I focused on education because I work for an education company. But this will happen in the corporate world too.

(click for a larger PDF)

Google will offer an integrated suite of single sign-on private labeled applications in all of these areas, and more:

Communications
Gmail, Google Talk
Scheduling
Google Calendar
News, data, education
Google News, Maps, Earth, Book Search, Google Video, Google Trends, Reader, Scholar, Blog Search
Collaboration, sharing, social media
Blogger, Groups, Google Base, Page Creator
Productivity, creation
Writely, Google Spreadsheet, Search (yup, they still do that), Translation, Picasa, Sets, Sketch-up
Safety
Safe search, Google Pack

All roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to Google.

If anyone is still wondering why Microsoft increased their projected R&D spend enormously just a few months ago, you can stop. Now you know.

Splog detection

August 28, 2006

Half of all blogs are splogs, according to some estimates I’ve seen.

Like this one, that I recently noticed because it linked to bizhack.

I wonder if you could detect blogs by using some kind of Statistically Improbable Phrase methodology. Not that any of the phrases individually would mean anything … but a whole bunch of phrases that are statistically improbable to be found on the same website would probably be interesting.

Google? Technorati?

There’s gotta be a PageUnRank algorithm in there.

[tags] splog, blog, spam, PageRank, SIP, Statistically Improbably Phrases, google, technorati, john koetsier [/tags]

The camera phone for bloggers: K880i

August 22, 2006

I’m wondering if the Sony Ericson K800i isn’t the ultimate blogger’s camera/phone.

I’m kind of looking for a new cell phone – have been wondering about the new Treos. And I know I need a camera that is always available.

You want something you’ll always, always have with you … and you want something that will give you at least acceptable quality. This might just be it:

3.2 megapixels
7 hours talk time
more than a week of standby time
2″ screen
real flash

Check out this Flickr pic made with the K800i. Not bad!

More info
Blog posts and reviews: C|Net review, IT reviews, Colorful Blog, PJ’s Site. And, from the manufacturer, the specs, and the full multimedia presentation.

[tags] phone, cell, camera, sony, ericson, K800i, john koetsier [/tags]

From email to RSS: eBay and Paypal scam spam

August 21, 2006

I never, never, never open an email that claims to be from either eBay or Paypal.

Why?

Simple – I get about 3 scam spams supposedly from eBay or Paypal every single day. Every single day.

So I’ll never open another. The scams are just too good. They look like the site they claim to be from. They use the same language as the site they claim to be from. Only if you check very, very careful, by examining the actual URL they propose to take you to will you be able to see if they are scam spams.

You can usually only do that by examing the source of the email – or by clicking to copy the URL of the site they are linking to, and then pasting it somewhere. Both of these are beyond average users, and they’re too much of a PITA for me to do so regularly.

So: if you’re eBay or Paypal, what do you do?

Good question – sucks to be them.

I’m not sure I have the answer. But I wonder if it has to do with feeds.

Not too many years ago, aside from email, the only way a site could inform its visitors of a change or news item was to post it on the site. That might work for continuous, repeat users – if they happen to see it. But it’s not a good solution for people who visit once a month or even less.

Now, however, we have RSS. Now eBay and Paypal – or any website – could notify me of a personalized feed, just for me, whenever I sign up or log in.

I could put that feed in my reader, bloglines, or a desktop equivalent, and be notified whenever there are service issues, or important site news. And I’d get that notification even though I only visit eBay, Paypal, or XYZ site once a month, more or less.

There are issues with this: would people sign up for the feed? And, if they did, would companies ruin it by stuffing it with marketing nonsense? If so, people would soon delete the feed.

But I think it’s worth an option. Because the only other way for eBay or Paypal to get in touch with me today is a personal phone call.

And I don’t think they want to do that.

. . .
. . .

Other blogs referencing Paypal/eBay scams
Trabaca, countably infinite, Digg (and the site referenced: Paypalscam), Tribe, PowerSellerKing.

[tags] ebay, paypal, scam, spam, rss, feed, john koetsier [/tags]

Gmail user interface problems

August 21, 2006

Question: do you design an application for power users or novices?

Ideally, your design is so mindblowingly uber-good that it works perfectly for both. In the real world, however, you make compromises.

Take Gmail, for instance.

I have a Gmail account – mostly so I can publish an email address baldly on this blog and not worry too much about spam. First of all, Gmail’s spam protection is very, very good. And secondly, it’s not my primary account, so I don’t really care too much.

So I’m a Gmail novice … I go there about once a week. (Mail sent to my Gmail account is forwarded to one I check daily.) When there, mostly I just look at what comes in … any email I write, I send from my primary, sparkplug9.com account.

But occasionally I want to send an email from Gmail. And it never fails: I always have to hunt, sometimes for 20 seconds, for the Send Mail button. Of course, there isn’t one:

It’s called “Compose Mail.” And it’s hidden, almost – certainly way less prominent than the Archive, Delete, or Report Spam buttons. (To say nothing of the Search button.)

Is this good design?

There’s no question Gmail is great technology. But I doubt anyone would call it great design … even if it may work for power users.

. . .
. . .

Other thoughts on Gmail’s design
Joel on Software forum, Paul Kedrosky (a great speaker, btw, heard him once at VEF), Walt Mossberg, Richard MacManus, Dan Brown (very comprehensive piece!), Topix blog.

[tags] UI, user interface, GUI, gmail, google, email, design, john koetsier [/tags]

Men & women, usability & blame

August 12, 2006

A recent MySpace sign-up problem reminded me: men and women react differently to software and usability problems.

I first learned this when doing a usability study with theUEgroup in San Jose. Tony Fernandes, the principal and founder, told me that when men encounter problems, they tend to think it’s the fault of the site or software that they are using. On the other hand, women tend to think the the fault lies with them.

We saw this over and over again in our two days of testing. It was a site that was intended for women, and it had been designed by me – male – and built by a few developers who, yes, were also male. We brought in women to test the site, and sitting in a nearby room looking at the video monitors, saw the same thing again and again and again:

“I think I’m doing something wrong.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not very good with computers.”
“Did I do something that I wasn’t supposed to?”

The site was in a fairly early state of production, and it had gaping holes in it that these women were finding – and then blaming themselves for. “I’m sorry” was a fairly constant refrain.

In fact, as I recall, we eventually made over 40 significant changes to the site based on the findings of the usabilty study. They weren’t all technical and programming: some of them were simple wording or order switches. But all were significant. Somehow, though, the women were blaming themselves for our problems.

Lucky us, in a sense. But if the people using our site could not create the products that we wanted them to create and then purchase them, were were sunk. Unlucky us.

Situational versus dispositional
This reminds me of university psychology: situational versus dispositional attribution.

Situational attribution assigns blame or praise based on the environment. Example: she succeeded because she was with a great company. He failed because the economy was really tough.

Dispositional attribution, on the other hand, assigns blame or praise based on personal characteristics. Example: He succeeded because he’s smart. She failed because she made too many mistakes.

Men are more likely, on average, to make dispositional attributions. Women are more likely, on average, to make situational attributions. This is a big generalization, and I don’t fit the mold myself, every time. But I think on balance, it holds true.

Which has interesting consequences for the software and sites we build, and the people we build them for.

[tags] usability, theUEgroup, tony fernandes, women, men, situational, dispositional, websites, software, design, psychology, john koetsier [/tags]

We break (a lot of) stuff

August 7, 2006

OK, I know that’s the site name, but did they really mean their own stuff? I had this odd idea that it was only clients’ stuff.

WeBreakStuff has been, umm, broken, for quite some time now.

Surely, however, knowing the company behind the site and the (very good) stuff they do, they will soon rename themselves WeFixStuff and reappear, bigger and better than ever, with new stuff, better stuff, and (dare I say it) unbroken stuff.

[tags] webreakstuff, broken, site, blog, internal server error, 500, john koetsier [/tags]

YAPPS (yet another PayPal scam)

August 6, 2006

Paypal scams are dime-a-dozen these days.

I’ve been getting several of these emails lately, and they’d be very convincing to someone who does copy the link instead of clicking the link. More details after after the jump …

Read More

Blogs & Podcasts: MSM farm club

July 27, 2006

The discussion about Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail has been absolutely fascinating.

The book makes the claim that in markets where physical inventory is not an issue and transaction costs are minimal, goods that are not top-sellers can be a very significant portion of sales, when taken in aggregate. So, for instance, the bottom half of songs on iTunes in popularity will make up a significant portion of sales … sales that simply would not occur in a bricks-and-mortar industry where carrying costs and inventory are very, very real concerns.

In other words, some markets are moving away from being completely hit-based – only popular stuff makes money, relatively unpopular stuff disappears – towards being more craft-based – more sellers of more stuff, each in small quantity individually but in aggregate forming a large market.

The Wall Street Journal’ Lee Gomes has essentially attempted to quash the meme, saying that the Pareto Principal and the hit machine that modern consumer culture has built are both alive and well in new media.

It would be wonderful if the world as Mr. Anderson describes it were true: one where “healthy niche products” and even “outright misses” collectively could stand their ground with the culture’s increasingly soulless “hits.”

But while every singer-songwriter dreams from his bedroom of making a living off iTunes, few actually do, mostly because so many others have the very same idea. And to the extent that Apple is making money off iTunes, thanks go to Nelly Furtado and other hitmakers. Indeed, you can make the case that the Internet is amplifying the role of hits, even in relation to misses, not diminishing them.

In turn, Chris Anderson has written a rebuttal, which asserts that, unfortunately, Lee Gomes doesn’t know math.

I have no doubt that there are many parts of my analysis and data that could be improved. Unfortunately, Gomes, in his haste to find them, stumbles over statistics and more, and in the end simply makes a muddle of what might have been an interesting debate over the magnitude of the Long Tail effect.

But I think the best perspective on the whole affair is Robert Scoble’s. And, in fact, he’s pretty well positioned to have it … due to previously being in the really, really short (but fat) part of the tail at Microsoft, and now being at the very, very, very long end of the tail at Podtech.

Scoble does a great analysis and then synthesis on the debate and comes up with this: the long tail can be viewed as an enormous farm club for mainstream media.

(That’s obviously not ALL it is – I’m 100% certain that Robert would say that as well. It’s first and foremost a means of self-expression and communication for millions and millions of people.)

But the point he makes is valid: a talented podcaster can make it on radio – terrestrial or satellite. A talented videoblogger can make it on TV – cable, satellite, or terrestrial. The same goes for a talented blogger.

That’s not to say that MSM has figured everything out – far from it. And it’s not to say that radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines aren’t in big, big trouble unless they can find models that make sense in the networked, digital world.

But it is to say that talent will rise to the top, and that revenue will come to those who want it, and are good enough to warrant it.

Which is about the smartest thing I’ve heard on the long tail in a while.

[tags] robert scoble, long tail, chris anderson, WSJ, daniel gomes, MSM, media, blogging, podcasting, videocasting, radio, newspapers, magazines, Sirius, john koetsier [/tags]

Quote of the day

July 24, 2006

Good advice:

“When learning new tools, use familiar tasks; when learning new tasks, use familiar tools.”

(From Helen Barrett’s e-portfolio overview.)

[tags] e-portfolio, education, technology, advice, john koetsier [/tags]

Alexa is clueless, apparently

July 20, 2006

Why is Alexa so freakishly clueless about sites that link into Sparkplug 9?

I’ve never really cared about Alexa, but it seems all the rage lately among people comparing the reach of various sites, so I thought I’d check my main domain. And it tells me that precisely one site links into Sparkplug 9.

Ummm … nonsense.

According to Google, the actual number of links into Sparkplug 9 sites is “about 15,300.” Hmm … about 15,300 is not 1. Not even close to 1. Never mind not being in the same ballpark, it’s almost not on the same continent!

I repeat: how could Alexa be so clueless?

[tags] alexa, web search, google, pagerank, inbound links, clueless, john koetsier [/tags]

Techies of the future: business generalists?

July 19, 2006

ComputerWorld is saying that techies of the future may be generalists with good business sense, not propellor-heads:

The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may be those with no deep-seated technical skills at all. The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with “versatilists” — those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

Well worth a read, whether you agree or not.

Personally, I find this particularly interesting since I am a technology generalist who has been successful leading large technology projects. On the other hand, I don’t think you can be successful in the long term without people on the core project team to grok every single minute detail of the application that you’re building.

There are plenty of examples of MBA knumbskulls who drove dotcoms into the ground. And there are plenty of examples of hard-core techies who ignored marketplace realities. I think the critical thing is to be passionate and smart, but also have an ability to seek out, understand, and evaluate perspectives that differ from your own.

Hearing what you don’t want to hear may just make the difference between success and failure on a given project.

[tags] technology, career, IT, generalist, business, john koetsier [/tags]

The real Apple media center

July 18, 2006

Jason O’Grady has posted an article at ZDnet on MediaCentral, a very nice mac media center application.

Looks very capable, and – critical for a Mac app – has a very nice, understated user interface.

However, I have to say … when I think of a Mac media center, this is the first thing that comes to mind:

Yup – Apple’s iPod. For now, iPod is the media center.

I would dearly, dearly dearly love for Apple to get in the home theater game, because I can’t stand the tangle of wires and complexity that now accompanies home theater … but it’s not there yet.

Apple: set .Mac free (you’ll make more money!)

July 13, 2006

There’s been a lot of discussion in the Mac community about .Mac lately.

.Mac is Apple’s $99/year online service that is basically the online publishing component of the iLife application suite. It incorporates:

webmail
iPhoto publishing and sharing
easy website publishing from iWeb
online file storage
syncing of bookmarks and calendars between multiple Macs
groups

Much of the talk in the Mac community has been around price: is it really worth it? After all, Google gives you Gmail with 2+ GB (free), there are other sources of online file storage such as Yahoo’s Backpack (free), and $99 would easily buy you your own domain name and server space at a lot of web hosting companies … in fact, it could easily be a lot cheaper.

There’s no question that Apple’s integration of the tools with iLife, and the quality of the presentation is worth something. But the number of Mac owners actually using .Mac has to be minimal, even tiny.

So my question is: would Apple make more money if they made .Mac free, and slapped Google AdWords on it?

How much do they make?
Well, even if the percentage of Mac owners paying for .Mac is not high, there’s still a lot of money in it.

If 500,000 people were paying for .Mac, Apple would gross $50 million a year. I think that number would be very high. There’s a story at C|Net from 2002 claiming that Apple had almost 200,000 subscribers, but I seriously doubt that it’s grown immensely, even though pageviews on Alexa have grown somewhat over the past few years. Most of that increased page viewing is likely due to visitors, not subscribers.

Let’s say there are 300,000 subscribers today, and Apple makes $30 million/year from them. Could they do better?

Plentyoffish
Well, let’s take a look at an AdWords example: PlentyofFish. It’s an online dating site, it is entirely free and AdWords supported, and its owner just cashed a million-dollar check. Well, almost a million.

He says his CPM (cost per thousand) pageviews is under $1. Well, let’s do some math:

– $500,000 for a month
– CPM of about $1

He must have gotten about 500 million pageviews. Adjust the number up or down a bit, depending on your inputs, but that’s about where it stands.

A free .Mac: show me the money
Let’s assume, given that .Mac is a fairly good service and it’s tightly integrated into iLife, many, many Mac owners would be users of .Mac if it was free. I think a conservative guess would be that 10 times more owners would use .Mac … meaning that you’d have 3 million people instead of 300,000.

Well, if you compare .Mac and PlentyOfFish pageviews at Alexa, you’ll find that today, they’re almost neck-and-neck.

In other words, .Mac should have about 500 million pageviews a month.

Multiply that by 10, and you’re at a whopping 5 billion pageviews a month. Apply the same CPM metrics of PlentyOfFish, and a back-of-the-envelope analysis would tell you that a free .Mac would make Apple about $5 million each and every month.

Apple, set .Mac free: you’ll make more
Which means, that at $60 million/year, Apple would double its revenue by reducing the price of .Mac to free. Which would seem to be a great idea …

Plus …

A free .Mac would also be an excellent selling point for new Macs. And don’t forget: a wonderful marketing tool for all the non-Mac-owning relatives of Mac users who would visit .Mac to see their cool relations’ funky digital creations.

.Mac is already free as in speech. Maybe it’s time for Apple to make it free as in beer.

. . .
. . .

Some thoughts on the argument above:

Would CPM on a non-dating site be lower, equal, or higher than a dating site? I don’t know, but obviously the answer is important. I could argue .Mac would have a lower CPM (people searching for dates are pretty focused, and if they see ads related to it, will probably click one or two) and I could argure more (there would be lots of profitable niches in .Mac sites, such as vacations, parties, special occasions, etc. … all the things that people take pictures of and blog about).
Would Apple feel that putting advertising from Google on a Mac product adversely affect the Apple brand … even if the online product is full of user-generated content?
Is a figure of 10x the number of Mac users using .Mac if it was free low? I know I’d be using photocasting in a second!
What other tie-ins between iLife and .Mac could Apple make if there was a clear revenue model based on Mac users actually using .Mac? Video from iMovie? Syncing of your .Mac mail and your Mail.app mail?
As Fred has commented below, you could easily have a user-option: pay and get an ad-free .Mac, or get it free and have an ad-supported .Mac.

And whatever else I might be missing …

[ update ]

A quick note spurred by one of the comments below: I did pay for and use .Mac for two years … so I do have some clue as to what the service is. However, if you think I’m missing the real point of it, or a large part of the value of it, please, please do enlighten me (and everyone else) in the comments. Thanks!

[tags] apple, .Mac, web 2.0, iLife, free, CPM, google, adwords, adsense, john koetsier [/tags]

Joe’s Goals: the secret of the slight edge

July 13, 2006

What’s the “slight edge?”

I recently came across a book – The Secret of the Slight Edge, by Dan Zadra – that said “The real key to great achievement is to give yourself the slight edge – that extra 5% – time after time after time.”

That came to mind when I was using Joe’s Goals this morning.

Joe’s Goals is about the simplest tool you could imagine for managing your goals. When building the service, he must have asked himself Ward Cunningham’s question: “what’s the simplest thing that could possibly work.”

You stick a goal in, click Save, and you’re done. You can choose if it’s a positive goal (get more exercise) or a negative goal (eat less), but the default is positive.

But here’s the real magic of the system:

Most goal-setting applications are set up for episodic goals:

you enter a goal
you enter steps to take on the way to reaching that goal
you choose when each step will be done
you track yourself on all the steps, checking them off when complete
when the steps are finished, so is your goal

Joe’s Goals is different. And actually, Joe’s Goals is much better aligned for the goals that most people set and try to reach.

Instead of episodic goals, Joe’s Goals is for setting and tracking ongoing goals. Goals like daily exercise. Like one of my goals: not to eat after 8:00 (because if I do, my middle mysteriously widens).

Goals like these are not set and accomplished and forgotten: they go on and on and on, like the mythical Energizer bunny. And so your accomplishment of them goes on and on, also like the mythical Energizer bunny.

The beauty is that there is exactly one page to Joe’s Goals. Come to Joe’s Goals while logged in, and there are your goals. Right on the home page.

And tracking them could not possibly be easier: for those goals you’ve accomplished for the day, click in the box for today. Done. Goal status tracked, on to the next thing.

It’s such a perfect user interface that there almost isn’t one.

[tags] joes goals, goals, time management, web 2.0, ajax, dan zadra, slight edge, john koetsier [/tags]

PeopleAggregator has trouth-mubble

July 11, 2006

Every since Tara Hunt wrote about PeopleAggregator a few days ago, I’ve been wondering what PeopleAggregator is, precisely.

Marc Canter gave some more details today on his blog, a note that they are launching, and also provided a link to Richard MacManus’ explanation of the service.

According to MacManus, PeopleAggregator is the following (and I’m really, really editing here to try to just come up with the bones of the system, while taking out all of the speculation as to what this could become):

a social network system
that is the first ever open network (meaning you can get your data out)
an identity management system (perhaps not first and foremost, but certainly a necessary part of the service)
a place to create and access all the data you create all over the web (photos at Flickr, blog posts at WordPress.com, song preferences at last.fm, profiles at MySpace, and so on …

While not an elegant and simple message, taken by itself this appears to make some sense, be fairly differentiated from what a lot of other people are doing, and provide some value to individuals. (What value it provides to Flickr or MySpace, I haven’t a clue.)

But PeopleAggregator’s message on their home page is entirely different again. Right on the first page, PA is three things to three distinctly different types of people. The type of people I’m most interested in are people like myself, so here’s what the message to the hoi polloi is:

The PeopleAggregator is a feature rich, personal publishing oriented system.

Hrmm … sounds different. A lot simpler, but not very much like an open hub for all your digital detritus.

So in an attempt to learn more and get the definitive answer, you delve into the multi-slide presentation – a very PowerPoint(less) type of presentation.

Here there’s a ton of jargon (“social network web service,” “identity hub,” “open APIs, “normalized namespace,” before you actually get into the features. Several pages of features, which appear fairly standard for a social network, and then back into the jargon with “Identity Hub Architecture.”

I’m a fairly technical person – I’ve led a web development team, built a simple content management system from scratch, know all the TLAs (three-letter-acronyms), and can be pretty sure I know what they’re doing, but I’m not totally certain. Everywhere I look, the message is a little different.

For instance, the Broadband Mechanics home page (Marc Canter’s company, the creator of People Aggregator) has an entirely new piece of jargon, Digital Lifestyle Aggregators, and a significantly different message.

At that, I give up. What precisely does PeopleAggregator do? I suspect they don’t precisely know themselves. That may be because the company and the concept are in the very early stages, and I think that’s exactly what Tara Hunt said in her first post.

OK. I can understand that. I’ve been there.

My only advice: figure it out fast. Right now, there are too many words, too many messages.

PeopleAggregator: stop talking, I’m trying to understand you!

.Net Passport is .Annoying

July 6, 2006

I wanted to comment on a MSN Spaces blog posting today. Unfortunately, it requires a .Net Passport.

Like many other Mac and Linux types, I’ve always resisted getting one … Microsoft and security and all that. But the thought struck me: I have an account at just about every other web service on the planet. Get over your prejudices and go get that Passport account.

Well. Somebody pinch me and wake me up. Identity management shouldn’t be this hard. .Net Passport is a Microsoft trademarked name that bears significant resemblance to Plug & Play: both are oxymorons.

The first stage (and yes, there are many) starts with way too much information (I don’t want to give Microsoft my email address, or create one with Microsoft) and ends with way too little: the now-ubiquitous prove-you’re-human guess what the squiggly lines mean step:

This is my second chance; I failed the first one. Wonder if I’d pass the Turing test.

That’s minor, though, compared to the next step. It’s titled personal information, and contrary to the name of this whole identity management service, it means what it says. Emphasis on the personal.

Birth date. Gender (they mean sex; there are 3 genders and 2 sexes … well, mostly). OK, I can kind of swallow those.

But occupation? Industry? Job title? Marital status? Children in home?

It seems to me that these questions have a lot more to do with Microsoft’s (or someone’s) ability to classify me as a consumer – a particular level of consumer – and market specifically to me. Sorry, not interested.

I had to cancel – and all I wanted was to post a single comment on an MSN Spaces blog.

I think this is what happens when you have MBAs designing web services. Please, please take a lesson from 37 Signals: only ask for the information you need, when you need it. You can always get more later: if it makes sense. If it’s tied to something your client wants to do.

But if you ask too much, you may not get anything at all.

[tags] microsoft, .Net, Passport, identity, Sxip, MSN, Spaces, john koetsier [/tags]

Why I don’t have HDTV

June 28, 2006

I love gadgets and technology and cool new stuff, but I don’t have HDTV.

Why?

But the biggest problem is now we have 17 different boxes to power on to watch TV, and they have to be powered on in a certain order and with a certain remote control. And running Windows as the core OS of a PVR is just lunacy: I don’t want to deal with the blue screen of death, or spyware, or not having enough RAM to run my TV – I want it to just work. One night, my wife watched for several uncomfortable minutes as I tried to play a DVD on the HP PVR – there was something wrong with the disc, and eventually we gave up and watched it on one of our laptops in bed. All the while, she is mumbling how life has gotten so complicated that she can’t even operate our TV anymore and what is she supposed to do when I am not around to provide the necessary tech support?

Because when I upgrade to HDTV, I want a nice clean simple system that integrates at least three key functionalities with a minimum of boxes. That’s one box, btw, besides the actual TV itself, to do the following:

TV
DVD
PVR

Whether the TV is satellite, cable, terrestrial or something else, I don’t care. I don’t want 5 boxes with 5 million wires. I don’t want a rat’s nest. I don’t want a living room server room. I don’t want mess. I don’t want complexity.

When someone builds that, let me know.

[tags] HDTV, TV, PVR, home theater, david strom, john koetsier [/tags]

Jason Fried on Collaboration

June 24, 2006

I tried to watch Jason’s presentation at Collaboration Loop tonight.

Unfortunately Collaboration Loop uses Windows Media player, and it’s driving me nuts.

it keeps stopping part way
the play head is not scrubbable, so I can’t restart it partway
and when I try to give them some feedback, the feedback form is braindead

I’ve noticed that others are having trouble too. Fix your site and use QuickTime or Flash, Collaboration Loop!

[tags] signal vs. noise, jason fried, collaboration loop, annoying, windows media player, john koetsier [/tags]

War of the spiders

June 21, 2006

What’s up with Yahoo!’s Slurp?

That’s the question I was asking myself last week as I was peering at my blog stats. More specifically, the stats for which robots had been visiting, sucking, spidering my sites.

Yahoo! Slurp is visiting my sites almost constantly … in this 7-day period it requested a file (image, page, you name it) 12,521 times. That’s about 9000 more hits than the Googlebot.

Here’s the graph. (Note: this is only the Mozilla-compatible spiders, which in total account for about half of the spidering on my sites.)

There are a ton of bots that hit any blogs that have more than 20 posts and a few links to them. I think I once counted 50 or 60 – and that was a year or more ago.

But why would Yahoo! Slurp account for 65% of the spider hits to my site? During the same period, the MSN bot accounted for about 1200 hits. I confess I don’t get it.

Somehow, Yahoo! wants to know everything, immediately, repeatedly. That’s OK, I’m just wondering why.

. . .

. . .

Interestingly enough, the Technorati bot is almost nowwhere to be seen, with something like 90 hits on my site in the 7-day period.

[tags] technoratibot, yahoo slurp, googlebot, spiders, MSNbot, john koetsier [/tags]

Flock rocks: first look at the new Flock browser

June 20, 2006

I am not a person who likes to try new core applications just for the heck of it. I seriously value aesthetics in all my core applications. And a web browser is, to me, a core application. Maybe about as core as you can get.

Which explains why I have never switched to Firefox.

But I’m trying Flock right now, and I have to say, I’m really really liking it. No really.

Trying it was a no-brainer, and painless too: Flock imported not only my bookmarks (very few) but also my cookies and saved passwords from Safari. Very cool.

This is not going to be an exhaustive review. In fact, it won’t be exhaustive at all – I’ve only started looking at the product. But, frankly, I’m excited about this new browser, and wanted to let people know.

Some of my first thoughts:

The first look was good: typography seems much cleaner and better in Flock than in Firefox. So good first impressions.
Flock has opened up my Flickr account to me in ways that I didn’t know were possible. It’s show me things I haven’t seen before in my friends’ and contacts’ accounts.
I’m writing this in Flock – a very nice way to write and post articles on your blog. This article was my first Flock-written post; the one you’re reading right now is my second. That’s cool too.
Posting links to my delicious account is MUCH easier than it was before, and much faster as well. Plus, I can search those far quicker with Flock than I can at del.icio.us itself!

I’m just starting to discover what Flock can do, but I’m very, very impressed.

[tags] flock, browser, safari, firefox, internet explorer, web 2.0, john koetsier [/tags]

Blogged with Flock

Just say no to, um, controlled substances

June 8, 2006

In our still-politically-correct values-neutral society where we’re ever so afraid of saying something that someone, anyone, might even just possibly get offended at, could we at least stop using the silly, silly term controlled substances?

Could we please just say drugs? Would that be OK?

George Orwell must be turning in his grave these days. As he said in Politics and the English Language more than 50 years ago:

In one of the most famous sections of the essay, Orwell quotes from the King James Bible, Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 9, verse 11:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

He translates this verse into “modern” English like this:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

and another favorite of mine …

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

(This mini-rant was inspired by some research I’m doing into educational technology, including online lessons and courses … and the frequent use of the neological “controlled substances” that I’m seeing in the health sections of so many sites.)

I mean, how much more euphemistic can you get?

Controlled means illegal. Substance … has there ever been a more meaningless, vanilla, empty word than substance … means drug.

I love education.

So busy teaching us to call spades implements for the purpose of excavation.

[tags] drugs, controlled substances, george orwell, PC, political correctness, jargon, john koetsier [/tags]