(Comments added for week ending Sun 04 Aug 2002) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 48 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:48 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 04 Aug 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 04 Aug |
| Check out MadMans Uncle Jakob statistics game. (Youll need to scroll through the other comments to reach it.) |
| Sun 04 Aug 23:21 | Ron Zeno | What's the point? Why do you waste the bandwidth? |
| Sun 04 Aug 23:27 | Jack Schonchin | Yeah, more porn John. More porn. |
| Information overload: learning to take your time | Sun 04 Aug |
| (Gerry McGovern) The next time you are about to say, Im too busy, ask yourself: Am I really too busy? Or have I not acquired the skill and experience to take my time? |
| Sun 04 Aug 22:06 | Jack Schonchin | Yeah, like I'm really going to take my time to read that article. As if. |
| Sun 04 Aug 22:27 | John S. Rhodes | Jack, think about how much time you lost writing that comment. |
| Sun 04 Aug 22:59 | Ari Bancale | There's no such thing as 'too busy'. It's an excuse not to say 'not my priority'. Even Chris Columbus, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Plato and Mother Teresa had 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Like the song says, 'Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes... How do you measure a year in a life?' Cheers! |
| Sun 04 Aug 23:18 | Jack Schonchin | John, I'm Jack's administrative assistant. He wouldn't trouble himself with such frivolous discussions. He expended approximately 10 seconds approving my post. I did not bother him with reviewing this follow-up reply because his time is valuable and you are obviously baiting him into a money pit. |
| Andrew H. Otwell | Sun 04 Aug |
| A tireless advocate for the user, I am driven by a rigorous curiosity and passion for the transformation of mere data into clear knowledge. From the study of the history of visual communication to the design of web content, I am experienced in the process of structuring information in ways that persuade, explain, and educate. |
| Sun 04 Aug 22:05 | Jack Schonchin | 'It's really a shame that a small company that does good, award-winning work, doesn't really waste time or money, and genuinely cares about giving clients more than they deserve can't survive.' I can't post comments on his site, so I'll do it here. I'm curious whether he uses the phrase 'award-winning work' to mean the company did excellent work, or that they actually won awards. Industry awards are primarily a tool for impressing clients, or your boss. There are too many award-winning sites that suffer from basic usability issues. |
| Sun 04 Aug 22:24 | John S. Rhodes | Jack, that was an award winning comment. |
| Spam: Has it become a stalemate? | Sun 04 Aug |
| (CNN) On a typical day, Hotmail subscribers collectively receive more than 1 billion pieces of junk e-mail. Such spam accounts for 80 percent of messages received not including mail blocked by Hotmails first line of filters. |
| Sun 04 Aug 21:23 | John S. Rhodes | Utah man sues Sprint over spam -- 'Snuffer said Gillman was pushed to the brink of the suit when he had five minutes to access his e-mail one day and spent the first four minutes going through 40 spam messages. He had time to read only one of the two messages he had received from friends that day, Snuffer said.' |
| Growing a Spam Killing Community | Sat 03 Aug |
| (WebWord) The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, lets create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, lets kill the spammers. |
| Sat 03 Aug 14:30 | Jack Schonchin | I've simply given up. When a spammer gets my address, I establish a new address and put a 'vacation' message on the old one. Legitimate people who do not begin using my new address get my vacation message that tells them their mail has been deleted and that they should contact me by phone to get my new address. If you want to do something about spam, complain to your local corporation. Apply corporate pressure to the politicians until they do something about spam. 1) Find the politician who owns real estate in your area, at OpenSecrets.org. 2) Click on 'Top Contributors' to see who funds the politician. 3) Complain to one or all of the corporations about the politician. It's not rocket science folks. When you get bad customer service in a store, you ask to speak to the manager. Same difference. The corporations want us to continue buying their products, so they have a stake in keeping us happy. |
| Sun 04 Aug 17:51 | Anonymous | http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/08/04/spammed.overview.ap/index.html |
| R U Ready 4 SMS Mktg? | Sat 03 Aug |
| (ClickZ) The opportunity is that if companies like Nestlé want to reach people in new ways because they are afraid that theyre not watching TV or not paying attention they are going to where young people are. And theyre all talking on their cell phones. |
| Sun 04 Aug 10:45 | Matt Round | Here in the UK SMS has been hyped as a fabulous new marketing opportunity for the past year or so, but I'm not convinced. It's just too limiting in terms of content (160 characters), styling/branding (none!), interaction (users have to use commands of some kind, which have to be explained clearly within the 160 characters) and cost (either for the company running the promotion or the unfortunate user getting charged something like 25p per message). It's a bandwagon, similar to how email marketing was viewed a few years back, and lots of companies who are still too clueless to make full and responsible use of email are jumping on it (and, of course, email is no more of a 'one-way push' than SMS). I think multimedia messaging, which is just arriving, certainly has some potential though (people are likely to want nice colour 'wallpaper' images for their 'phones, for example). Luckily the cost has kept spamming down so far - I think I've had 1 spam SMS in two years. |
| Response: The Backlash against Jakob Nielsen and What it Teaches Us | Thu 01 Aug |
| (Usability News) Unfortunately, Nielsens pronouncements have all too often been like a restaurant critic insisting we should all eat only a McDonalds, since after all its the most efficient restaurant around. |
| Thu 01 Aug 09:40 | Mac | George Olsen has explained the Nielsen Backlash very eloquently. He describes the problems Usability is facing in a clear and concise manner. His rational tone puts me to shame. damned usability experts, telling me how to hold my mouse grrrrrrrr.... Shut up Erasmus |
| Thu 01 Aug 10:12 | Jack Schonchin | You know, maybe we should just throw a WebWord barbecue and invite Jakob over. |
| Thu 01 Aug 12:15 | Uncle Jakob | Jack, I would be happy to attend. |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:18 | George Olsen | OK, OK, I promise not to be rational again... |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:38 | MadMan | George... Update your damn blog! ;) (Fine case of pot calling the kettle black, I know. But I maintain that Webword is also my blog, given how many comments I post here.) |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:43 | MadMan | OK, I sent this to John by email, but this deserves a mention in a public forum so we can all use the power of the Blog collective to ridicule Adobe. ;) -- START EXPERIENCE -- So I decided to write to Adobe and tell them to fix their site so that http://adobe.com actually goes to their site. I dutifully visited their 'contact us' page at: http://www.adobe.com/misc/webform.html and filled this in: [quote] I would imagine that a company that 'gets it' like Adobe would at least ensure that http://adobe.com also goes to the web site, but it doesn't. Only the 'www.adobe.com' version works. Did you know that your company is ridiculed for this on web development mailing lists? It doesn't help your company image at all. [/quote] ... and I hit the 'Submit' button. What do I get? Guess... No, guess again... OK, I got a... wait for it... 404 'page not found' error. ( http://cgi1.adobe.com/misc/webformthanks.html ) That's right, this is what I got: [quote] We're sorry! The page you were trying to view is no longer here. If you reached this page from another part of Adobe.com, please let us know so we can fix the problem. Use our search engine to locate what you're looking for Where to search: Entire site Product Information only Technical Support documents only [/quote] I guess Adobe doesn't want your feedback after all. ;) |
| Fri 02 Aug 10:43 | Alan Fisher | There's a slim justification for not recognising http://adobe.com - SSL certificates. When you buy a certificate, it must be registered for a specific URL, including the www part, and used on that site. The certificate will still work if the DNS server recognises the URL without the www and resolves to the same IP address, but your browser will generate a warning. On commerce sites, this can be a bit off-putting. One client of ours ran across the problem, and asked for the entry on the DNS server to be removed as a solution to the problem. I'm not sure what the alternative solution would have been, other than setting up a complete mirror of the site, with it's own SSL certificate. |
| Fri 02 Aug 15:06 | JB | I was just on JN site and this is what he is asking for.... We are not looking at traditional multimedia content or splash intros - only 'good' Flash that provides utility to users. What is good flash?...he defines it as 99% bad and then sells out to Macromedia to come up with good design principles....but he hasn't told us what they are, so what is good flash? He is really starting to piss me off. AND he better not be changing Macromedia for this flash usability work because he has been asking everyone to so the work for him. |
| Fri 02 Aug 15:48 | MadMan | 'Good flash' is when my camera gives me the kind of picture I'm looking for. Like Mac once said, even if Nielsen made a 100% improvement in usability, Flash would still be 98% bad. ROFL. Let's now play the 'Uncle Jakob statistics' game! Uncle Jakob is: 05% visual designer 15% clueless 35% without facts or data 70% dictatorial 80% narrow-minded 90% opinionated 92% NNGroup salesman 99% annoying 100% hypocrite Add your own stats, boys and girls! (Hey John, now that's gotta be worth linking to. Then someone else will pick it up and link to it, then more people will play, then more people will link to it... it's the circle of life ;) |
| Sun 04 Aug 07:25 | Uncle Jakob | Someone with an intellect like mine, will never be understood in his own lifetime. |
| A Shift Registers in Willingness to Pay for Internet Content | Thu 01 Aug |
| (New York Times) Generally, the survey found that of the 1,700 sites charging for content, the 100 with the most revenue drew 97 percent of all revenue and the top 50 sites drew 85 percent of the revenue. |
| Thu 01 Aug 07:04 | John S. Rhodes | Right, I almost forgot to add...Thanks MadMan! |
| Thu 01 Aug 10:00 | Jack Schonchin | winner takes most More like: winners file lawsuits or have their puppet politicians criminalize or price-out the underdog competition (think 'net radio). Our Internet is dying. Their Internet is just beginning. Now, go home and be a good little consumer. Sit down, shut up, and buy. |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:26 | JB | Jack Is it possible that the ideal of a free Internet is over? I know that there are many who believe that it should be free but I don't see anyone asking for a free offline world. I mean because it is on the net why should not the offline world and its rules apply - you pay for it offline, why not on? Before you maul me, I am not taking a side, merely being the devil....and his advocate. bhahahahahah (that's my evil laugh!) |
| Thu 01 Aug 15:15 | Darin | Why is it that print, radio and TV ads somehow 'work' by mere exposure to them, while online ads cannot unless you're clicking through? You don't click on an ad in the newspaper but it is valid, and most people flip through commecials or go to the toilet or something else, and advertisers pay out the butt for them. |
| Thu 01 Aug 16:28 | MadMan | A famous quote in advertising goes, 'I know half my advertising dollars aren't workin - I just don't know which half!' |
| Thu 01 Aug 18:39 | Jack Schonchin | JB, the free Internet is over the day we concede it to the corporations. Please note that when I say 'free' I am not referring to money. Free is shorthand for freedom. > you pay for it offline, why not on? Take my radio example. What about pirate radio? In America we the public, at least on paper, own our airspace. Regulation is necessary only because it's technically impossible for every citizen to broadcast their own signals without making the medium useless. Why then has the regulatory process pushed out small-time operators? Because corporations control the politicians. Corporations rule the offline world, and they will soon rule the online world. The mistake the corporations made was in letting a generation of kids grow up with the idea of a free society. That's a dangerous idea that will soon be squashed. |
| Fri 02 Aug 07:20 | Alan Fisher | Well, I'd rather pay for content on some of my favourite sites (e.g. Guardian.co.uk), rather than pay for tools like PopUpCop to stop the bloody popup adverts. As long as they guaranteed no adverts on the pay-for version. As for the discussion on web freedom. Is it just me or do you chaps in the USA get more worked up over this than us lot over here? And if so, what does that say about us? |
| Fri 02 Aug 09:22 | Jack Schonchin | what does that say about us? You're all sheep. |
| Fri 02 Aug 10:38 | Alan Fisher | Baaaaaaa! Actually, I think that Americans are more prone to subscribe to the conspiracy view of history, while we're more likely to subscribe to the cock-up theory. Either that, or you're all paranoid. |
| Fri 02 Aug 10:47 | John S. Rhodes | Alan, what is the cock-up theory? What does it mean? And yes, Jack, I did do a netcheck before I asked this time! |
| Fri 02 Aug 11:36 | Jack Schonchin | Aha, but did you search for the word 'cock-up' at Google and look at the fourth search result? |
| Fri 02 Aug 11:44 | John S. Rhodes | Ballon + Needle = John + Cock-up Search on Google |
| Fri 02 Aug 11:52 | Alan Fisher | John, Jack's reference says it all. In Britain, people tend to believe that things go wrong because of incompetence (or, in the vernacular, a cock-up) rather than malign intent. Perhaps because we have so much experience of incompetence among our politicians etc. The reference Jack found deserves extra kudos for mentioning the Reginald Perrin TV show (an all time classic). |
| Sat 03 Aug 12:57 | Frank Lynch | Yesterday, an Associated Press item reported that a group of newspapers with online editions would start charging for access to the online edition. Loud applause!! Not only does it compensate the publications -- but it also helps ensure some quality. (If only blockheads write for free, we'll only get writing from blockheads unless compensation becomes more widespread. As for whether or not revenues will be concentrated in the hands of a few, yes, undoubtedly; but that's not bad, it only reflects consumption habits. It would be my preference that users were billed on a per page basis, rather than subscriptions: this will enable smaller sites to share some part of the pie. Heck, I get over 50,000 visits a year to my site, and only about $100 in amazon commissions & donations. The free web HAS to change. |
| Sat 03 Aug 19:18 | Jack Schonchin | Hear that John? Frank just called you a blockhead. |
| Sat 03 Aug 20:09 | Frank Lynch | Well, Samuel Johnson would have called him one, at least, unless John were to justify webword.com as supporting his business (that, at least, is why the New York Times offers most of its online content for free: they see it as supporting newspaper sales). |
| Sun 04 Aug 00:42 | Frank Lynch | Oh yeah - - I forgot this additional point re Samuel Johnson and geting money for what you do... |
| Sony Ericsson Campaign Uses Actors To Push Camera-Phone in Real Life | Wed 31 Jul |
| (Wall Street Journal) In one initiative, dubbed Fake Tourist, 60 trained actors and actresses will haunt tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle. Working in teams of two or three and behaving as if they were actual tourists, the actors and actresses will ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures. (Comment: Even if you think they are scum, you have to admit that they are clever scum. I will remain neutral in my opinion. Hat tip to MadMan.) |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:57 | Jack Schonchin | Where will deceitful marketing take us? 1) At a restaurant, 'I'll have what he's having.' Ooops, he's an actor. He only looks like he's enjoying his dinner. 2) Hire my son to invite his friends over to play his new game console. We're the first on our block to have one. We're so lucky. 3) Create web sites by fictional people to post fictional reviews of your products. And employ teams of people to post Average Joe opinions about the products on other web forums. Oh wait, corporations already do that. |
| Thu 01 Aug 06:23 | Lyle | Fake hype is nothing new for Sony. Remember their fake movie reviewer, David Manning of the Ridgefield Press. |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:10 | Lydia | That is pretty clever. I actually don't mind that sort of interface, because they probably won't do a hard sell on me, and I can check out the product. Better than going to a booth at a convention or in an electronics store. |
| Fri 02 Aug 19:59 | Frank Lynch | IIRC a similar effort was tried about 5-7 years ago by Harvey's (in the liquor category). Actors would go into bars and order martinis made with Harvey's and then push it on those around them. The same company placed little classified ads at the bottom of the first page of the NY Times that aimed to look like personal ads: text would read something like 'Remember me? You had the red sweater, I was drinking the Harvey's martini. [etc.]' I objected to it then, and I object to it now: people need to know when they're being advertised to. Otherwise, it erodes the basic credibility of our world, and introduces too much friction. |
| Sat 03 Aug 22:35 | Frank Lynch | John, thanks for posting this... it gave me kindling for my weekly Samuel Johnson rant. |
| WebWord Comment | Sat 03 Aug |
| Giggle. Check this out. I think the funniest part is that MadMan himself submitted this to me. What a guy! |
| Sat 03 Aug 09:48 | Jack Schonchin | It's a question of what you want your name associated with, I guess. |
| Sat 03 Aug 09:49 | Anonymous | Madman ... talk about up himself and conceited ... thats one thing that comes through clearly all the time. |
| Sat 03 Aug 11:07 | Jack Schonchin | Despite the temporal proximity of those posts, I'm not the assclown ragging on MadMan. More importantly, I work my ass off every day nidificating on WebWord. It's total BS that I got overlooked for recognition. This is proof positive that the Assclown Awards are totally political. |
| Sat 03 Aug 11:28 | MadMan | Actually, I sent it to John by private email and never asked him to link to it. I wish the anonymous poster would identify himself, though, and perhaps work on his grammar a bit too. ;) I assume that John logs IP addresses, so if he wanted, he could always trace it back. :p |
| Sat 03 Aug 11:51 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, if I violated your expectations I am sorry. Usually I don't just randomly post stuff you send me. This seemed harmless. Ahh...a day in the life of WebWord. Mea culpa, and all that. Jack, well, you got me. Crap, sucks, turd, puke. You got me good. Anonymous, I do have IP tracking turned on. But, it isn't anything worth worrying about. I'd use that information only if there was true abuse on WebWord. Besides, IP address information is only partly useful in tracking people down. Everyone else, thanks for reading and being here. Enjoy the show! |
| Sat 03 Aug 12:08 | Jack Schonchin | Besides, anyone who would embrace a chimp is not conceited. A python, maybe. An albino tiger, yes. |
| Sat 03 Aug 12:15 | John S. Rhodes | I love the chimp picture. Love it. |
| Sat 03 Aug 14:55 | Matt Round | Is MadMan doing an Indian remake of this..? |
| Sat 03 Aug 15:07 | Mac | Can I just say, that I have just read this item, and laughed so much I almost pissed my pants. Keep it up, I love this stuff. |
| Sat 03 Aug 16:33 | Jack Schonchin | Matt, OMG, I always thought BJ was the chimp and Bear was Greg Evigan. Thank you for setting me straight! Mac, OMG, this is no place to be discussing your urinary incontinence. Damn you. After this Googling, I now know that more than 50% of nursing home patients have UI. I can accept getting infirm and wrinkly, but I tell you this - I don't want to wear diapers again. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| MadMan wants you to know that you can take control of your web experience with Proxomitron. He loves it. |
| Wed 31 Jul 22:23 | TimW | I love it as well... sometimes it works too well though. as with espn.com, although another great feature is the 'bypass' button to turn the filtering on/off at will.. Also its got create features that let you control the in/out headers... such as spoofing referers, cookies and your browser, or kill those as well. |
| Sat 03 Aug 09:51 | Anonymous | Madman loves himself ... |
| Car repair codes get attention of Congress | Thu 01 Aug |
| Heres the problem: Your cars dashboard light says Check engine, but your neighborhood mechanic cant turn it off. He doesnt have the special codes. So a trip to the dealer is required. |
| Fri 02 Aug 18:56 | JB | A new twist on planned obsolesence |
| Bait and Switch: A Moral Dilemma | Fri 02 Aug |
| Very frustrating indeed, but after a few days I have finally decided that if Apple wouldnt hire me because I stood up for the users in opposition to an Apple policy while I wasnt in their employ, then its not a place I would want to work in the first place. |
| Fri 02 Aug 13:01 | JB | It is a shame that Apple has not been able to learn anything from its past. Loyalty is the marketing utopia and it seems that corporate greed (or stock options coming close to execution) are forcing a play that can alienate die hard fans. My prediction...you will see a change it the services to iTune in 6 months. |
| Fri 02 Aug 14:13 | Ron Zeno | Always nice to people standing up to companies that have such little respect for their customers. |
| Fri 02 Aug 14:28 | MadMan | Mac users are as fanatical (or worse) as Linux users. Tell a typical Windows person that Windows sucks, and he or she will just shrug it off without taking umbrage at it. On the other hand... (I'm starting to believe that some Mac people actually think of Jobs as some kind of Messiah, like Moses leading them to the promised land.) Even when the company fucks them, they still worship... (How's that for a troll, eh? Especially from someone who lives in a country where Macs are practically non-existent thanks to insanely high prices.) |
| Fri 02 Aug 14:41 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan...watch the language please...ouch!...my eyes are burning...the kids are screaming... |
| Fri 02 Aug 15:50 | MadMan | Don't expose your kids to Webword, John. It could scar them for life... (Actually, I don't use four letter words here often. I know some others who do.) [At this time, MadMan feels like doing a number like Madonna did with the f-word on Letterman.] |
| Fri 02 Aug 18:53 | JB | MadMan I just read that entire thing...man talk about making Dave sweat! |
| The Jakob Nielsen of Sink Design | Thu 06 Jun |
| All too often, public restroom countertops become lakes and rivers. Wet hands need to adjust or, at least, turn off running faucets. The water drips from the hand whilst over the sink, and continues to drip whilst over the knobs. Messy. |
| Wed 31 Jul 12:03 | Paul | Sorry for not checking back sooner, Jacko. If everyone adopted your philosophy, users would have to visit a 'preferences' page on every site they visit so that the page text is readable for them. Why not leave the text in its native state (resizeable)? I don't see much wrong with the concept of a preferences page, but I do agree that it could get very tedious very quickly. I also think, however, that if a site doesn't allow true customization it should be up to the browser. Two out of the three major browsers I choose to cater to (because of my traffic) do allow text resizing correctly, even with px instead of em. The other point is that it's a personal site. Personal sites are just that, and truthfully do not *have* to be accessible. They can be set in 8 point Chicago for all the designer cares, and that's fine. If I did this on a professional site, obviously things would be different. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:04 | Jack Schonchin | Sure, it is an accessibility issue, but it's also a plain ol' everybody issue. Most people are not using your exact same computer configuration with your same reading preferences. Fixed typefaces, or ones that require additional steps by the user (e.g., a preferences page) to change, are inherently anti-user. The default setting empowers the user. Your change takes power away. I agree with you, personal sites do not have to be user-friendly. Do what you want. You have created a Jack-free zone on the Internet. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:14 | Jack Schonchin | I'm sorry, but I've had this discussion one too many times with designers who insist on using fixed typefaces. The bottom line, for me, is that the designer doesn't give a damn whether I can read his site or whether I have a pleasurable experience there. When I try to resize text and find it locked, I simply leave the site. The same goes for sites with horrendous text contrast (such as the light blue links on boxesandarrows.com). An ugly design I can live with. A site with basic usability issues I cannot. There probably isn't a design issue that pisses me off more because it's so in-your-face. |
| Thu 01 Aug 16:22 | Joshua Kaufman | So Jack, if I switched font sizing on my website to ems, thereby giving control back to the user, would you be more likely to visit and leave comments? If that's what it takes to get you to visit my site, than it just might be worth it. |
| Thu 01 Aug 19:18 | Jack Schonchin | Well, there are two things I look for in a blog. Resizeable text is not one of them. That's just a prerequisite. 1) Daily news of interest. If it's not daily, I get annoyed every morning when there's nothing new to look at. I'm put off when bloggers go on vacation. Never read a German blog. They skip town for months at a time! 2) Users posting comments, or the site owner exchanging e-mails. Reading news is fine, but if I can't post obnoxious opinionated messages, where's the fun? In reviewing your site today, you score points for having a haiku link, even if it leads to dumb Americans who don't know how to compose authentic haiku. The other links are so-so, nothing that makes me want to read more. And you give BoxesAndArrows a prominent affiliate link, which makes me question your sanity. However, because I am full of myself, if you switch to normal text (resizeable text), I will visit your site for a while to give it a chance. I will always welcome another designer into the light. I shall do as Jesus did, saving souls one at a time. |
| Fri 02 Aug 10:51 | Joshua Kaufman | Thanks for your feedback, Jack. Yes, I'm affiliated with Boxes and Arrows. Yes, we know the site needs a lot of work. Yes, we're a loosely organized non-profit just trying to make a difference. What are your criticisms? Perhaps they would help us improve the site? |
| HTML is not an acronym... | Fri 02 Aug |
| (Evolt) As a result many developers (including myself, for a time) use acronym in place of abbr. Unfortunately, this is exactly the opposite thing that should be done: when in doubt, wrap the abbreviation/acronym/initialism with abbr. Even if it is an acronym, the mark-up will be semantically correct. |
| Fri 02 Aug 10:20 | Jack Schonchin | Someone get Craig a date. This boy needs to get out more. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| More magic from Chris Usability Must Die McEvoy: Top Articles and Top Referrers. Check out my web statistics, if it strikes your fancy. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:40 | Jack Schonchin | Yeah, now that's what I'm talking about! MadMan is left in the dust. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:48 | John S. Rhodes | OK kids, gather 'round. Looks like we've got a Zipf distribution. Yeehaaah! |
| Thu 01 Aug 03:47 | Mac | I am also toying with producing stats looking at the relationship between number of items posted and how many comments are generated. As well as longest words used by webworders and the average lifespan of a comment set. And thanks to Anita for her comments about the Rogues Gallery. I think Eszter's picture is my favourite at the moment. |
| Thu 01 Aug 06:09 | MadMan | Jack, I had serious problems with my hardware over July, which is why I was lax. You can bet your candy arse you won't make it twice in a row. Ha! |
| Thu 01 Aug 10:38 | Jack Schonchin | Whuts da matter MadMan, yur Enter key done got broke? I don't know why I'm taunting you from the backwoods of Kentucky, but oh well. |
| Thu 01 Aug 20:35 | Jack Schonchin | Mac, can we get some changes to the Rogue's Galley? For people without photos, adjust the silhouette in this manner: 1) Give Yahoo Mail users a propeller beanie. 2) Give .EDU users a mortar board. 3) Give Hotmail users a Borg head. Ooh, and let us submit our own photos. |
| Thu 01 Aug 20:41 | John S. Rhodes | Excellent. User control of the Rogue's Gallery is an awesome idea. I second the motion. |
| Fri 02 Aug 02:38 | Mac | I am happy to accept photos for the Gallery ( chris@firstcircle.co.uk ) I shall have a look at providing different default piccies, and if anyone wants to mail me some that would be great. I will also accept some words for a bio page that I can publish in the gallery for people who do not have an existing web page. And Jack, don't tell me you're going to start changing your name as well as your e-mail in every post ! Because John does not burden us with a registration system, my stats program has to work out who you are ...... Still, it is a challenge I suppose. Programming with Humility and Humanity |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| Shit. I didnt realize how much I liked using the service. I really miss it. Am I willing to pay for it? You bet. A few weeks ago I made a donation. In fact, I am finding that I have been more and more willing to spend money on useful services and unique products. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:52 | Jack Schonchin | There must be a freeware Perl URL redirection script that we could install on our own web sites. I will publicly proclaim my adoration for the first person to use a search engine thingie to find such a script and report back. |
| Thu 01 Aug 04:26 | Antonio Cavedoni | John, there are other two free services as your beloved TinyURL. One is Urlizer (http://urlizer.com/) and the other is (http://makeashorterlink.com/). Jack, for the URL redirection script, here are some written in Perl: http://www.hotscripts.com/Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Redirection/Link_Based/ And here in PHP: http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Redirection/Link_Based/ Hope this helps. -- Antonio |
| Thu 01 Aug 07:37 | Jed | There are plenty of services of this type. Probably the best is: http://snipurl.com/ |
| Thu 01 Aug 09:32 | Kirk | You should probably use this kind of service sparingly...only for stuff that's practically disposable, since who knows what might happen to these services in the long run. |
| Thu 01 Aug 16:34 | Joshua Kaufman | I haven't used this service, but they also provide link statistics: http://shorl.com Good comment, Kirk. Shorter URLs today, no URLs tomorrow. |
| Thu 01 Aug 18:49 | Jack Schonchin | Antonio, sorry, I cannot profess my adoration for you. Refer me to a *specific* script that would replace the functionality of TinyURL.com. A script with these qualities: 1) Is freeware. 2) Creates a short URL with a single text-entry box form. 3) Has optional security measures. e.g., I could offer the form as a public service, or allow only me to create short URLs. 4) Is so easy that even John could install it. I would append an emoticon to #4, but that seems so tacky now. Oh how I miss the BBS years. |
| Thu 01 Aug 20:36 | John S. Rhodes | Item #4 is the real test. If I have to suffer at all, it must be worth it to me and the Webword community. |
| Thu 01 Aug 20:39 | Jack Schonchin | This really should be a feature of Moveable Type, if it isn't already. Outbound links should be database driven with short URLs based on ID numbers. It'd also give you easy access to click-through statistics. |
| Death to the 3.5" Floppy? | Wed 31 Jul |
| (Slashdot) Does anyone out there still use their floppy? |
| Wed 31 Jul 19:20 | Matt Round | I've not had a floppy drive in my PC for the past year and don't miss it at all. I'm not using the Zip drive either so that's due to go soon, leaving just the combined DVD/CD-RW drive. I use that for backup and occasionally transferring large files, and can boot from it in a crisis. I was strangely nervous about omitting the floppy drive from my new PC, it was like it was some kind of security blanket, yet I knew logically I didn't need it and wouldn't use one. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:58 | Jack Schonchin | The first thing we'd have to do is have the anti-virus companies rethink our 3.5' rescue disks. I don't use floppies anymore, but prefer the security of being able to boot from them in an emergency |
| Thu 01 Aug 09:53 | Mac | I've been using a 20GB Pockey USB hard drive for the past few months. It's great, and I haven't touched a floppy since I got it. Also I don't have to remember to write something on the label to tell me what's on it. |
| Thu 01 Aug 19:59 | Shane | I just used a 3.5' floppy today to burn a BIOS update on my laptop that fixed a CD-ROM issue I was having. I'm guessing they won't go away until hardware manufacturers provide a network solution for firmware updates. |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 01 Aug |
| In some parts of the world, such as China, it can be very difficult to get time on a computer and time on the internet. Heres a thought experiment for you. If you only had 15 minutes to spend on the internet each day, what would you do? Dont just fire off an answer, really give it some thought. What really matters? |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:35 | Jack Schonchin | I'd begin using an offline browser and retrieve content from my regular haunts (the 15 sites I read every day). I'd write e-mail offline and connect only to send and receive. With conservation I bet I could consolidate 90% of my regular activity into 15 minutes connect time. OK, ok, a real answer. I have to divide this into my two worlds - work and home. At work I would use the web only for looking up task-related information, so Google would be my primary stomping ground. (WebWord would be off-limits. Reading WebWord expands my knowledge, but doesn't help me accomplish tasks immediately at hand.) At home I'd visit my local daily newspaper site and a handful of blogs that give me tech news. Again, I would conserve time by launching links into new windows to be read later offline. |
| Thu 01 Aug 02:42 | Daniel | Communicate: Check and reply to emails. Learn: Catch up on daily news events - Headlines, IT Time permitting: For example, last 3 mins ... check on some sports news. Last 20 secs ... webword.com of course :) |
| Thu 01 Aug 09:31 | Kirk | You can look to see what people do when they're on vacation and go to an Internet Cafe...the clock's ticking, so people tend to limit it to e-mail. That's probably the single most important application. For me, looking up random stuff on Google would come in second. |
| Thu 01 Aug 13:20 | John | I would agree with Kirk. E-mail. Keeping up with friends, family, and the various online communities (hobby- and professional-related) from which I derive value. If there's any time left, I would start hitting websites I now visit on a daily basis, beginning with news-related sites. So my priorities are 1. Personal, 2. Professional, and 3. The Rest of the World. :) John |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:06 | Lydia | I would start with e-mail. I don't get much but it takes me forever to respond, so I'd probably just download it and move on to surfing. I'd visit the blogs of my friends to see what's up with them (about 5 mins), then I'd pop by my weekly visited sites (dealmac one day, macsurfer the other, etc.) and end by visiting my 'gauntlet of usability' - as much as I could get in of the five usability related blogs I visit each day. This probably means I work too much or that I have no life. (Is there a difference?) |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:11 | JB | Read my news sites and check out the surf site. Everything else is just filler... sorry JR, but you only gave me 15 mintues:) |
| Thu 01 Aug 14:50 | Mac | I would get together with 6 friends, pool our time and we could all sit round a screen every night for 105 minutes and have a communal surf. Each night someone would take control of the mouse and guide the session.I would also forget e-mail and start writing letters again. My goodness, this is starting to sound good ! |
| Thu 01 Aug 16:11 | Matt Round | - Send/receive email - Check Web stats & server status for my sites - Update weblog - Get my daily dose of Photoshop-manipulated animals/celebrities from B3TA - Visit one of the following each day: WebWord, Metafilter, Jeffrey Wells, Windows Update (can't make things too easy for the script kiddies) |
| Thu 01 Aug 19:12 | Lyle | 1. I'd use IM as an e-mail app, it has minimal spam and the chance to catch family live. After responding to cold IM messages, I'd start multi-tasking - 2. initiate chats with the live IMs I'm interested in. 3. load both Google News and Daypop Top 40. 4. Google News loads quicker, so I'd scan the front page opening anything interesting in another browser window. 5. Daypop is probably still loading, so I'd scan and close an article or two, perhaps send a couple of IM messages. 6. Daypop has finished loading by now, so I quickly scan the page, opening anything interesting in a new browser window. 7. The hunt is finished and I now I split the time left, probably about 10 minutes, between the 12 or so pages open in my taskbar. That is about 20 seconds each for scanning and a couple of minutes each for the couple of articles that stand out from the pack. 8. In the dying seconds I'd say goodbye to whoever is on the other end of the IM client, perhaps sending them the links to the articles they would find interesting. I'd update my weblog via SMS. |
| Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq | Wed 31 Jul |
| Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Japan divided the cost of the 1991 war with the United States, but today none has offered to assist with financing a new military campaign. In fact, each has signaled that it is not eager to be asked, diplomats say. |
| Wed 31 Jul 11:42 | Jack Schonchin | It's another way of saying that even America's allies are not big fans of our global 'activities.' We're an important trading partner who carries a big stick. Lose the economy or the stick and we'll find ourselves playing alone in our room with the shades drawn on a sunny Saturday afternoon. |
| Wed 31 Jul 12:27 | John S. Rhodes | The word 'eager' to me conveys excitement, even happiness. To be eager not to do something strikes me as an odd use of language. Interesting, but odd. That's what I meant to say. |
| Wed 31 Jul 12:40 | Lyle | Being eager not to do something, and not being eager to do something, are two different things. The first suggests opposition to the something. The second just suggests a lack of enthusiasm for the something. |
| Wed 31 Jul 15:42 | Jack Schonchin | 'That's what I meant to say.' I merely meant to use this page to promote my political agenda. |
| Wed 31 Jul 15:45 | John S. Rhodes | ...and a bottle of rum, Jack. |
| Thu 01 Aug 18:53 | Jack Schonchin | Oh John, you know I only drink Root Beer. |
| I'm Sick and Tired Of Spam (Filters) | Wed 31 Jul |
| (Steve Outing) An increasing number of legitimate e-mail publishers are finding that their mail is triggering filter rules in SpamAssassin. Unfortunately, the SpamAssassin system relies on complaints and who screams loudest for changes. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:40 | TimW | >>What does not exist yet is a Web service on which publishers could submit their newsletters for screening -- and it would identify content or technical problems that would likely trigger spam filters before mailing. << What you say ?? http://solutionscripts.com/cgi-bin/check_spam.cgi (your basic perl script... less then 50 lines) SpamAssassin works great for me... If anything the default install misses more then I like.. All newsletters I subscribe to seem to come through untagged, and I haven't gotten a legit piece tagged as spam yet. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:41 | Jack Schonchin | I love it. Spam is ruining the medium, and yet the people fighting this massive burden are deemed to be 'the problem.' I'd gladly accept that problem. It's like a doctor coming up to me and saying, 'I can cure you of your testicular cancer, but the cure will make you hiccup a few times every week.' Ummm, do I even have to think about it? As long as politicians are willing to make us live with this burden, the poor ol' corporations will have to live with some of their bulk e-mail missing its target. Cry me a river. After politicians criminalize server-side filtering (oh believe me, it will happen), we'll fire up our personal filters and fight you in the trenches. Bulk e-mailers do not have a right to send me e-mail. I have a right to refuse it and use whatever blocking tools I wish. Keep your damn greedy hands off my mail box. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:41 | TimW | http://solutionscripts.com/cgi-bin/check_spam.cgi as a link..... |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:48 | TimW | Steve's article scores an 11 on the Spamassassin scale... (the default is everything over 5 is tagged as spam) |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:54 | John S. Rhodes | This posting is spam. I'm ruining blogs. WebWord is going down in a ball of flame! |
| Thu 01 Aug 01:56 | MadMan | It's better to let 1 innocent mail go to the trash than let 10 guilty mails go free. Excuse my bastardisation. :) |
| Thu 01 Aug 09:49 | Mac | This is posting. and I think that Jack's email moniker madness is getting out of hand (90 so far...) |
| Thu 01 Aug 11:16 | Jack Schonchin | Persecuting the victim. You're obviously a corporate stooge. John likes my monikers. I only do it to please him. I know, I know, it's a heavy burden to carry, but ours is not to ask why. Ours is to do and die. |
| Thu 01 Aug 12:34 | Mac | I am the 5th stooge actually, and I have now put some code into my webword stats grabber that will stop me seeing you as a new user all the time. Although couldn't you change your name from Jack to something more unique? How about MadderMan ! |
| Thu 01 Aug 12:56 | Jack Schonchin | I've thought about killing off this pseudonym. It would be more exciting if I had my own blog that would come to a dramatic end. I wouldn't do anything sappy like cancer or leukemia like others before me. I think maybe getting hit by a drunk driver. You know, raise awareness of a social issue while I'm at it. |
| Dave Winer on Free Software | Wed 31 Jul |
| (David Watson) Ill give you this much: theres very little participation by usability experts in open source projects, a fact that some observers have attributed to the open source culture not being very inviting to anybody but the most dried-in-the-wool hackers. |
| Thu 01 Aug 04:42 | Toby Thain | 'dyed in the wool' T |
| Reader Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| Personal sites are just that, and truthfully do not *have* to be accessible. They can be set in 8 point Chicago for all the designer cares, and thats fine. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:50 | Joe Clark | In my opinion, Web-site font sizing is broken in browsers and not in the CSS spec. There's nothing wrong with setting a definite px size in your stylesheet (but not pt, unless it's for printing). That represents your personal armamentarium in the battle of Type Display on the Web. Then the visitor comes along and uses his or her personal armamentarium, the browser, to accept or reject your setting. Browsers should increase and decrease font size irrespective of units specified, which should be used for *initial unaltered display*. Also, the implicationsof em sizing are very poorly understood by designers, which is surprising, since em is exactly the same as % in CSS sizing, IIRC, and % is readily understood. In other words, if I set up 12px as my default in my browser and you use 0.7 em, you are condemning me to 8px type. Not cricket, I don't think. The entire issue is horrible on all counts and it is not fair or necessary to blame anyone for the current state of things, except for browser makers. It's a bit much to leave a site just because you can't increase its font size. I mean, try reading it in Lynx with big fonts, then. |
| Thu 01 Aug 01:11 | Jack Schonchin | You can blame the browser makers for being the cause, but I blame designers who do not adjust to the reality of the situation. Few people specify a default font size in their browser. Even low vision users I've observed will use the browser's +/- on-the-fly resizing, instead of configuring their browser because configuring is a much more complex task from their perspective. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| Entertainment and wisdom. |
| Thu 01 Aug 01:00 | Jack Schonchin | I'm sorry, but MadMan had me install Proxomitron and now I cannot use this whimsical site. |
| Literacy Weblog version | Tue 30 Jul |
| and here is the Austin Powers Bastardized version. |
| Wed 31 Jul 02:08 | Jack Schonchin | Ummm, I first want to know if AOL TimeWarner linked to the 'bastardized' version from any of its web sites. Why? Because it does not appear to be a specific rip-off of his weblog. You could append any URL to the end of their nph-proxy.cgi script and get a bastardized version. For example: http://www.austinpowers.com/cgi-bin/shared/nph-proxy.cgi/000010A/http/www.webword.com |
| Wed 31 Jul 02:19 | Jack Schonchin | Oh yeah, and strictly speaking... if the script is grabbing a copy of the weblog in real-time, AOL is probably not 'hosting' the content (e.g., the fetched page is not stored on their server). If ya don't like it, there are ways to stop them from redisplaying your content. On an Apache server use .htaccess to show their script a blank page. I trust M$ has a similar option. |
| Wed 31 Jul 02:45 | Dennis G. Jerz | Thanks for the comments, Jack. Note that I carefully used language such as 'seems to be' and 'most people may think'! I imagine the ethical/copyright issues are similar to those dealing with framed content. A few years ago, I remember a website called 'The Dialectizer' was temporarily in hot water for operating an amusing feature that 'translated' the text on a target web page into 'Redneck' or 'Swedish Chef'. Since the CGI script changes all the links on the target page so that they all are routed through the move website, I imagine that a spider found some page that has linked to my page. At any rate, I'm one of thousands of users of my university's web server; I'm pretty computer literate for an English professor, but even if I had access to the university's server, I wouldn't know what to do. And if I were a system administrator, I probably wouldn't have the time to block individual websites in order to calm the nerves of irked faculty members, no matter how just the cause. Does anyone want to write a CGI script that serves up pages on the austinpowers.com website, changing the text to a rant against megacorporations like AOLTimeWarner? Yeah, baby! :) |
| Wed 31 Jul 06:45 | MadMan | Oh no, look what the hackers have done to our precious onMouseout='window.status=' '; return true'>Webword! |
| Wed 31 Jul 06:46 | MadMan | Drat, ruined my gag! Click on the link anyway. :( |
| Wed 31 Jul 09:32 | Jack Schonchin | The script in and of itself is not evil. For all I know, AOL uses it on its own web sites for legitimate purposes. I'm interested in seeing proof they are evil doers. Show me AOL linking to your site with this script, actually trying to place advertising over your content. Not the tool doing it when you put your URL into it, but an actual example of AOL intending to co-opt your content. |
| Wed 31 Jul 11:21 | Jack Schonchin | I searched Google for: 'austin powers' nph-proxy.cgi The second result led to this page. At the top of the page they are offering a simple transmogrification service. Users have to choose to view an altered version of your weblog (or any site they type into the text box). It's a simple novelty gag. I doubt many users would mistake the co-opted pages as being part of AOL. They're not placing banner ads on your page, only carrying the Austin Powers theme over to your page. I suppose there's room to be angry, but this seems pretty benign, given the many other far more evil ways corporations and their puppet politicians are trying to screw people today. |
| Wed 31 Jul 13:47 | Lydia | Good sleuthing, Jack! I'm sure that will put Mr. Jerz's mind at ease. I can see why he was concerned... if I didn't know what was creating the page, I would feel the same way. I would want to know if they were framing me in or if they were actually copying my information for display, and I would want to know how they were distributing the information (what links pointed to it, etc.) It's one thing if your average joe points to something, but if a commercial company does the same thing, it might imply a paid endorsement, and I'd want control over that. Blah blah blah... you get the idea. |
| Wed 31 Jul 15:51 | Dennis G. Jerz | Lydia, you hit the nail right on the head. Thanks to all who helped me put this into perspective (especially 'Admiral Browning' MadMan). Thanks, John, for offering this forum. |
| Wed 31 Jul 19:47 | MadMan | For this poor Indian, could you expand on Admiral Browning's role in your country's history? Thanks (and I mean that). |
| Wed 31 Jul 21:28 | John S. Rhodes | Right...Admiral Browning...should I admit that I don't know Admiral Browning either? Oh, I probably shouldn't admit that. |
| Wed 31 Jul 22:11 | Jack Schonchin | I am not familiar with the term, but I learned about this neat new tool called a search engine. It told me all kind of crazy stuff. 'Admiral Browning' is a slang term to refer to torpedo shaped fecal matter large enough 'to sink the Bismarck.' |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:23 | Dennis G. Jerz | Woah. I confess I didn't know what it meant when I used it... when taken out of context, it seemed to be one of the least offensive terms added by the 'Pornolizer' link to which MadMan referred the Webword readership. This has been an illuminating thread. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:25 | Alan | If you consider this joke act as 'stealting' your content, you might as well take on Google for caching your web site and the Internet Archive for making copies too. Or the translation sites that alter your content to Portuguese. Publishing on the web means what you post is available for all kinds of use, most you will never know about. It comes with the territory. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:46 | Jack Schonchin | Aha! I simply must set up an .htaccess file to feed a different version of my web pages to the Internet Archive. What kind of custom message should I have saved for all eternity? Hmmmmmmmmm. |
| Personal investment affects the value of the experience | Wed 31 Jul |
| (In My Experience) Most, if not all Disney rides, are designed to be full experiences, with transitional experiences leading to the core experience (the ride itself). All of which eventually leads to the horrible Gift Shop experience, with tons of merchandise and people in your way. |
| Thu 01 Aug 00:42 | Jack Schonchin | My favorite transitional experience is barfing after coming off a ride. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 31 Jul |
| Two copies of the WebWord Archive CD-ROM have been sold. Here is what folks said the last time I mentioned it. |
| Wed 31 Jul 23:46 | Jack Schonchin | Version 2.0 already? John, you're not in a race with AOL. You'll never reach version 7 in time, and you can't compete with 1,025 free hours*. *in the first 45 days. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 28 Jul |
| I finally created a useful 404 Error Page for WebWord. You should do the same thing. Its so easy it hurts. Read MadMans article if you need some inspiration. |
| Tue 30 Jul 18:18 | meryl | Good one, John. Brief, links to possible places, and doesn't insult the reader. |
| Tue 30 Jul 23:53 | Dave Menendez | You shouldn't need to be asking your readers for information about the page they were trying to access and where the bad link was located. All of that should be in the server's logs. (Except for readers whose browsers don't send referrer information.) |
| Wed 31 Jul 07:31 | John S. Rhodes | Dave, you are probably right. However, what I have now is 100% better than what I had before. I often take things like this in baby steps. I only throw code at a problem if I can't do it any other way. I'm a writer more than a developer! |
| Wed 31 Jul 19:37 | MadMan | Read the whole article, John. :p |
| Wed 31 Jul 21:27 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, you know that when you say things like 'Trap the refererring page (Use the 'HTTP_REFERER' server variable) and automatically send an email message to the Webmaster of the site, notifying him/her of i) The URL with the error and ii) The referring page...' that my eyes glaze over. ;-) |
| Value in Web Services | Wed 31 Jul |
| Are web services overrated hype? Or are they simply immature? |
| Wed 31 Jul 06:26 | (the other) JS | It has come to be accepted that a technology start out as an overhyped novelty. The problem is that there is so much concern with what people might do, and precious little concern about constructing relatively few, tightly focussed usage scenarios. The result is a standard you could apply to most anything, but which soon demonstrates, does few things well enough to have bothered. |
| Wed 31 Jul 08:59 | Mac | We will be using WebServies in my workplace (Financial Services) in the future mainly because it will allow us to share functionality internally in a more efficient manner. I have been playing with publicly available WebServices (google and amazon) and have just published a sample site that makes use of the Amazon services to do something more than just provide a sub-standard interface to amazon.com Why not take a look and let me know if its worthwhile? |
| Wed 31 Jul 11:36 | (the other) JS | Instead of topamazon, I'd rather see: those books [choose a guru from the menu] turns to most often. Not what they think, or own, but pull off the dusty bookshelf and refer to. The difference between data and information: data is what book is purchased, information is what books get dog-eared from use. Value added? I'd like to purchase a book which has notes [choose a guru from the menu] scribbled in the margins of their copy. ...Or took to a conference on the subject covered by the book, and got this or that fantastic idea they used on this or that project. To me this demonstrates what we have (data processing to the Nth degree) compared to what we should have (information). |
| Wed 31 Jul 14:31 | Mac | (the other), I couldn't agree more. I feel like I am stuck in Plato's Cave and occasionally I get visions of what it could and should be. I feel that I am always feebly groping at the shadows of what you're talking about. |
| Wed 31 Jul 18:06 | Anonymous | Xanadu and ZigZag as cure. Well, maybe. |
| WebWord Comment | Tue 30 Jul |
| It looks like Joe Clarks Building Accessible Websites is available for sale. His Bookblog is interesting and worth reading if you are thinking about writing a book. I found out that Mark Pilgrim was hired as a technical editor for the book. Nice. His Dive Into Accessibility (30 days to a more accessible web site) collection is awesome. Speaking of accessibility, Im reading through Accessible Web Sites, published by Glasshaus. It is the first book we are going to talk about for the WebWord Book Club. Should be a good time. |
| Wed 31 Jul 02:20 | MadMan | Funny. It says 'This item will be published on August 21, 2002.' That's not 'available'. |
| Wed 31 Jul 06:53 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, POW! BANG! WHAM!! There's available and there's available for sale. I should have said, available for sale. |
| Wed 31 Jul 17:21 | Joe Clark | No, she ain't done yet. I have the Moveable Type edits and my own edits of Chapter 9 and later staring at me from the floor. I make changes in the HTML, then make identical changes in Quark. (Yes, two instances of two sets of edits.) Then we have another massive read, particularly for reflow issues, given that we have added 20 illustrations since the last read. But we have an astonishingly advanced typographic design (how many ligatures does your computer book use?) and are hell-bent on creating a beautiful object you will love to read. August 21? I dearly hope so. |
| AOL's New Beta is 'Fat' with Graphics | Tue 30 Jul |
| But perhaps more important, it leverages the latest in compression technology in order to feature rich media units, notably takeover ads or click magnets that often float, scamper or otherwise animate their way across a users desktop and are usually associated with fast Internet connections. |
| Wed 31 Jul 08:50 | Bob Robertson-Boyd | The excessive use of and emphasis on advertising that Internet News employed on this Web page made it impossible for me to read the article. After trudging through the first three paragraphs, I decided to copy the text out of my browser and into a word processor. I stopped myself before doing so. Why should I go through all that trouble to read their content? It's not like they're the only newspaper in my town. At that moment I decided to do what I do in the real world, vote with my feet. From now one I will not revisit sites that present difficult user environments. I will not read another Internet News article. As content aggregators and avid readers, we should not support such hostile user environments by linking to them. Or if practicality overrides idealism, we should indicate hostile user environments when linking to them. Like linking to a PDF file. Doing so could help a blogger differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack and just might raise a few marketing eyebrows. |
| Wed 31 Jul 09:40 | jonathan | Agreed with Bob that this article is incredibly difficult to read with all the ads on the page. Another great reason to utilize Opera and it's single-click toolbar icon which removes ALL images on the page and just leaves the text. Funny that the impetus for this feature was most likely for faster loading speeds over slower connections (probably) but I use it to more clearly consume the content I want. jonathan |
| Wed 31 Jul 10:55 | MadMan | Bob's absolutely right. While I don't normally read stuff about AOL (since they don't affect me in India), I decided to read this article to see what Bob was talking about. This is shocking! But you know what's worse? I thought I'd get rid of the ads by going to the 'printer friendly' page. And it annoyed the hell out of me, because right in the middle of the page was this Big Freakin' Flash ad. In a printable page? What the fuck are these guys smoking? Do they think I'm going to 'explore' the Flash ad while reading the paper version of the article? And that's on top of the two separate banner ads on both the top and the bottom of the page. Printable pages should be in black and white, not in colour. If I press the print button on my browser, it consumes expensive colour ink in my inkjet. That pisses me off! |
| Wed 31 Jul 11:50 | Jack Schonchin | Show me a browser that can toggle Flash on-and-off and I'll buy it. |
| Wed 31 Jul 12:45 | MadMan | Jack, you need to download the Proxomitron. The most powerful filter for web pages I've ever seen, dude. Want to turn JS off? How about Flash? Or sound on web pages? Maybe you just want to disable pop-ups. The Proxomitron does all that. I love it. John, please link to it from the main page (with credit to me, of course :) Your readers will thank you. Oh, and the URL is http://proxomitron.cjb.net/. |
| Winning Customer Confidence Online | Tue 30 Jul |
| You can offer all kinds of loyalty points and bonuses, but if you cant get your purchasing process right, why should I stay with you? |
| Wed 31 Jul 11:45 | Jack Schonchin | 'value-added services' That's a nice fat piece of marketing blubber. What is the norm? Valueless services? |
| Who really needs 4WD? I bet you don't | Mon 29 Jul |
| Its skill, not technology, thats going to keep you out of trouble, not Madison Avenues marketers. |
| Mon 29 Jul 23:51 | Jack Schonchin | 'Subaru's all-wheel drive, Audi's Quattro, or Honda's own version of the Pilot and Acura MDX represent the forefront.' As the article briefly mentions, these are exceptions to the rule. I drive a Subaru non-SUV and the All-Wheel Drive makes a significant difference on roads. It's also (IMHO) much safer in situations where you might hydroplane. |
| Tue 30 Jul 01:31 | Nick Finck | I drive a 4WD and I need it. Yes, as Jack started, 4WD does make a difference on the roads especially where I live. I drive my truck on the backroads of the mountains to go camping, on the dunes of the beach to go swimming and on the icey roads of the pass to go snowboarding. I have tried to take 2WDs to those places with friends and believe me, it doesn't work. If I didn't have 4WD I wouldn't be making this comment post because I'd either be stuck in a muddy rut or motor-deep in the sand or lodged into some snowbank. Food for thought. |
| Tue 30 Jul 10:48 | Mike Boyink | I'm surprised this article didn't mention the number of 4WD vehicles that *never* get shifted into 4WD. I can't find the source but I know the 4WD community commonly throws around 95%. Disclaimer - I'm a Jeep nut. I've owned one for 16 years and have driven it in some of the harder places that the 4WD magazines cover. I've even rolled it..:) Yes, there are some folks like Jack who truly do need and use 4WD. But overall I'd agree with the article - and the 95% figure. Even here in snowy West Michigan I always advocate front wheel drive over 4WD for most folks. 4WD gives a false sense of security - you can take off quicker, have better visibility, etc. But you can't stop any quicker and the higher center of gravity is a tradeoff. I sure hear of more wintertime rollovers these days - and I suspect the higher number of SUV's is the cause. I've always wanted to do a 'man on the street' type thing and stop SUV owners and quiz them on their vehicles - how does it go in and out of 4WD, and when should you use it? I'll be it would be fun...:) It's all a marketing/status thing (c'mon, a Lexus SUV? A Cadillac Suburban?) and for most people isn't based on actuall need. |
| Tue 30 Jul 10:57 | John S. Rhodes | Speaking of Jeeps...A Clever Web Site: ollllo.com |
| Tue 30 Jul 13:06 | Mike Boyink | Ahh..yea. We've talked about that site before. That URL bugs me - cute, but it doesn't have the same number of grill slats as the real thing, so how does one remember (or guess) it? The Jeep grill design is a closely protected trademark of DC, I'll bet these guys were scared to use the full 7 grill bars. While you found the site clever, John, my feeling is that there is nothing besides a 'cute' URL to distinguish it from other more popular Jeep sites like http://www.pirate4x4.com http://www.4x4wire.com/jeep/ http://www.jeepsunlimited.com http://www.ilovejeeps.com I spend a ton of time 'online Jeeping' through mailing lists and web-based BBS, and this site has never come up in passing or as a reference for a question asked. On the contrary, what I would consider the 'grandaddy' of Jeep websites is neither cute nor clever, nor groundbreaking in it's design. But it's *the* online early Jeep reference due to it's well written, consistent, quality, researched content. This is a site that the guys writing the Jeep history books contribute to and reference. And it has succeeded in spite of not having a cute (or even tolerable) URL: http://www.film.queensu.ca/CJ3B/ |
| Wed 31 Jul 00:04 | Jeff Albro | I do think that 4WD which is always on, or has to be manually engaged is stupid for a car that is on the road 99.99% of the time. However, on the road, I think AWD is the way to go! I have a Subaru Forrester, and the AWD really makes a difference in the rain or snow, especially in New England winters. I still get 25 mi/gal and can haul 8 ft. long lumber inside the car. -Jeff |
| only $14.99 | Mon 29 Jul |
| via PayPal, plus $3.00 for shipping and handling. As a special bonus, Ill post a link to your web site in one edition of the WebWord Addiction. That bonus alone is worth at $10. Buy the WebWord Archive CD-ROM now. |
| Mon 29 Jul 00:06 | John S. Rhodes | Just one more small note. Since I am personally creating these CDs, I have the ability to write things on them. For example, If you want I'll autograph the CD, or I'll write something else; something personal. The choice is yours. |
| Mon 29 Jul 02:07 | MadMan | And in this corner, we have Mr. John 'Jakob Nielsen' Rhooooooodes! Are you ready? Are you r-r-r-r-r-ready? And now, ladies and gentleman, let's get ready to rumbbbbbbbbblllllle! |
| Mon 29 Jul 05:21 | Mac | Does the 3$ pay for international p&p ? |
| Mon 29 Jul 07:18 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, I'm just throwing something else against the wall! All my material is available free and clear...for now. Ha! I've been toying with the idea of doing more 'rich media' work and perhaps selling that. Stay tuned. For now, I'm just selling some convenience. Mac, the $3.00 does pay for international shipping. I'll obviously take a small loss on this, but that is fine. The margin on the CD-ROM itself is fair enough to absorb the difference. |
| Mon 29 Jul 12:07 | JB | You know MadMan the difference between JR and JN is the last initial....no joking...the difference is JR is not writing lengthy articles with the final sentence being the sales pitch and not the conclusion. Subtle, but as of yet, significant. |
| Mon 29 Jul 12:42 | Jack Schonchin | I can't think of any web site that would be convenient to have on CD. Nix my workstation because it's always connected to the Internet. Therefore, a CD would only be of use when I'm on my laptop and happen to be without an Internet connection... but when I don't have a net connection, I'm usually not working. And besides, what kind of information does a web designer / usability specialist need offline? I've read all the old WebWord articles I'm going to read. The usefulness of WebWord in an archival sense is its collection of links, and they're only useful with a live Internet connection, so... |
| Mon 29 Jul 18:10 | Matt Round | CDs are useful for large files, so it would make more sense if it contained things like applications, video/audio and large reports, with some CD-only content thrown in to appeal to completist tendencies. Keep chucking stuff at that wall though! |
| Tue 30 Jul 23:01 | John S. Rhodes | Matt, the CD is nearly 8 MB, so it isn't exactly small. Also, since it is many files, it would be a pain to rip and set up. As I said, I'm selling convenience. The bonus link in the Webword Addiction is worth some money too...perhaps more than the CD to some people. By the way, at least on person has bought the archive CD. Cool. |
| Tue 30 Jul 23:59 | Eszter | Hi John, I think it's nice of you to offer yet another service to readers. Of course, the more you offer, the more you put yourself out there for critical comments, but hopefully it's helpful. I appreciate all these ideas. I don't think I'll be buying a CD just because I don't want more stuff. I like digital stuff, but only as long as it stays that way, once it materializes into a CD it takes up physical space which becomes a problem for me. But I appreciate that the option exists. (It may also work for people who have slow connections or for those who pay by the minute for connectivity.) Regaring your text ads, perhaps it's only worth it for you to be selling them in $20 chunks, but that's a bit of a stretch for me. I bought $10 worth of ads on kuro5hin.org not because I necessarily wanted to advertise but because I wanted to support their site and they were in need. So I figured I could contribute that much and it was cool that I'd get 10,000 impressions for it. (I realize you don't have quite their traffic which changes things.) But there I got 10,000 impressions for $10 (I think). I didn't need the 10,000 impressions per se, but that minimum I was willing to pay. $20 is too much to contribute not because I don't think your site is great, but because it's just too much for me right now to any site. |
| Maxim Saves Journalism | Fri 26 Jul |
| Make no mistake about it: Our success has caused great consternation in the magazine universe—there is a disturbance in the force. Our competition has been vocal in their outrage, and who can blame them? It’s a humbling experience, after all, to have your underwear yanked up over your ears. |
| Tue 30 Jul 15:56 | Lydia | You're definitely on the right track with the swearing and slang. That's, like, guaranteed hip factor! |
| WebWord Comment | Mon 29 Jul |
| As MadMan says, this is cute and innovative. |
| Mon 29 Jul 11:16 | Jack Schonchin | When I scroll down the page with my mouse wheel, it doesn't scroll. And the text that I can see appears to run off the right edge of the screen. I know, you're going to say that's intentional, but what web designer would intentionally make his site difficult to use for the sake of innovation? Is that innovation? Ahhh, maybe you'll counter that it's really art. So was it the artist's intention to annoy me? Wow, this truly is an innovative way to reach his audience. I am truly annoyed. He's a master. |
| Mon 29 Jul 18:05 | Matt Round | It's vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Bridges' site. |
| Mon 29 Jul 18:14 | Jack Schonchin | I appreciate Jeff's use of areolas as buttons. So titillating. |
| Tue 30 Jul 00:48 | Anonymous | 'i will use alt text' |
| Tue 30 Jul 15:47 | Lydia | I find celeb websites vaguely creepy. Not because the celeb is creepy per se, but because I don't like the personal atmosphere they keep putting on - I much prefer the third person. The William Shatner site is in first person, too. Weird. |
| WebWord Comment | Mon 29 Jul |
| Start here: Design critical, says Web guru. (1) Where is the data showing that you know your customers better than suppliers or consultants or anyone else? It is intuitive, but many companies are clueless about their customers. That is actually a reason why companies hire outsiders. Duh. There are pros and cons to outsourcing. Further, you can know your customers very well and work with others to develop the site. (2) People do care about logos and slogans. They are powerful. Who wouldnt kill to have the brand recognition of Coke, Nike, Amazon, or IBM? Customer service is only one part of the user experience. Good service is critical, but other factors are also critical. A good experience and brand go hand-in-hand. Brand can influence the experience, experience can influence the brand. (3) Does it always make sense to aim for lowest common denominator? And, it is really true that if you satisfy novices you also always satisfy people with moderate experience or experts? The answer is no. I suppose it is a useful heuristic, but it should not be gospel. (4) What about design that has nothing to do with business? What about web sites meant for entertainment? What about government web sites, do the same rules really apply? |
| Tue 30 Jul 00:41 | MadMan | Wow, Uncle Jakob says don't outsource your web design, but please outsource your usability testing to NNGroup, because hey, they know more about your company and users than you're likely to know yourself. Talk about double standards. |
| Tue 30 Jul 06:55 | MadMan | John asks: Is it really true that if you satisfy novices you also always satisfy people with moderate experience or experts? I would respond with a big NO! Novices and experts look for different things in an application. Novices need a lot of hand-holding and for them, ease of learning is the primary concern, which changes to ease of use as they figure out how things work. Expert users, however, already know how things work and are generally familiar with UI conventions. For them, efficiency is more important. This explains why I don't want the annoying paper clip, the 'tip of the day', or the 'click here to begin' (near the Windows 9x start button) to appear, whereas my father would probably find it useful. Let's take a web hosting company's site as an example. Someone new to web hosting terminology and unfamiliar with what exactly he needs for his site may find it useful that a 'wizard' asks questions about number of pages, likely traffic, etc. and then suggests a hosting plan. For an expert user like me who knows exactly what he wants, however, a comparison sheet of hosting plans is the better option. I can then decide which features I need and make the choice. |
| Tue 30 Jul 07:31 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, your first comment gets at exactly the right point. The pot is calling the kettle black. |
| Tue 30 Jul 10:15 | MadMan | For the record, I hereby claim the ownership of the title 'Uncle Jakob', which I've used on this site many times, and in other forums as well. ;) Who knows, one day it might become a familiar term, and I don't want anyone else saying he coined it first. :p |
| Tue 30 Jul 10:43 | John S. Rhodes | Coining the moniker Uncle Jakob... Design the Jakob Nielsen way (Chinwag, 15-Decemeber-2000) -- 'If you want to make a profit, I would suggest that you listen to Uncle Jakob.' wetlog: Neale Talbot's Weblog (Wrong Way Go Back, 24-January-2000) -- 'PERFECT TIMING: Great-Uncle Jakob has written another eloquent Alertbox.' |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 28 Jul |
| I just wanted to let you know that a new WebWord advertising opportunity is now available. Ive set up another auction for advertising space in the WebWord Addiction. The auction starts at ONLY ONE DOLLAR. Insane, but true. For only $1.00 your advertisement would be included in over 11,000 emails. |
| Tue 30 Jul 05:42 | Peter Boersma | As interested parties can see in the bidding history, I tried to bid on the advertisement. The first time I did this I 'naturally' had to fill out a lot of registration forms before I actually came to the page where I was asked to review my bid (which was a strange decision in itself: 'Do I want to review my bid, or should I look for a 'confirm' button first?'). At that time I was so into filling out forms that I totally skipped the part where my bid was shown; I went straight to the 'enter your ID here' field. Only *after* entering and submitting that information, and upon seeing my bid displayed on the page where the adverisement was shown (a familiar page now) did I see that my bid was totally wrong! I had entered a (low & safe) bid of $2.25, but I did so in my local currency format '2,25'; in The Netherlands and some other Europen countries, we use a comma to seperate the two parts. eBay interpreted this as '$225' totally ignoring the comma and increasing my bid with a factor 100! This misinterpretation happened, even though just after eBay asked me what country I came from, it switched the interface to the local language, Dutch. So there is a Dutch version of the interface, eBay knows that I am Dutch, but still it didn't realize that the Dutch way of entering currency is quite different from the English way, nor does it ask me when I enter a bid in a different and syntactically incorrect way! I was lucky to be able to cancel my bid, tried a few times more with small increments, and finally gave up (at $5.00, I am cheap I know), slightly shocked. |
| Tue 30 Jul 07:21 | John S. Rhodes | Peter, Thanks for the great story about eBay. Obviously some companies still have kinks in their systems. Scratch that. All major web sites have kinks. What is more interesting is that eBay, one of the most popular web sites on the web, has this kind of problem. Sorry for the pain, but thanks for bidding! Here is a deep posting... The Usability of eBay's Checkout Feature -- 'The article briefly highlights some frustrations sellers have with eBay's Checkout feature.' |
| U.S. Top 50 Web And Digital Media Properties | Mon 29 Jul |
| Unique Visitors - At Home and At Work Combined in the U.S. Measurement Period April 2002 |
| Mon 29 Jul 11:21 | Jack Schonchin | So am I the only one who thinks these numbers look low? Only 80,000 visitors to Yahoo? What am I reading wrong? Here's another link on the site to Industry projections. Supposedly there's 157.6 million Americans online this year. |
| Mon 29 Jul 11:23 | Jack Schonchin | OK, ok, I realized my mistake during that crucial millisecond after hitting the Post button. More like 80,000,000 visitors. |