last updated:11 Sep 2003 04: 57 Webword time, or 11 Sep 2003 09:57 UK time
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(Comments added for week ending Sun 07 Sep 2003) | View Other Weeks
Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content | Sun 07 Sep
(Clay Shirky) What is interesting is the way the failure of micropayments, both past and future, illustrates the depth and importance of putting publishing tools in the hands of individuals. In the face of a force this large, user-pays schemes cant simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they dont address the cause of that change a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator. (Comments: Thanks Frank.)
Mon 08 Sep 00:00 | Doris | The real reason micropayments fail: They ignore existing infrastructure and ways people transact business. Take Salon.com. I am referred to Salon articles every week by blogs, but I NEVER pay to read the full articles. I have never signed up for a free 'day pass.' Why? It takes time. I'm not going to go through a login or registration procedure for each web site that charges for content. Some news sites only want me to tell them my age and zipcode - no name. I don't even fill out that simple form. Forgetaboutit! Recipe for success: 1) Major credit card companies collaborate and issue a secure procedure for micropayments. 2) All web sites charging micropayments adopt guidelines dictated by the card companies. Every web site displays the same image or descriptor to denote paid content. Your browser could also flash an alert in the status bar to indicate a link leads to paid content. 3) Users clicking onto paid content either have their browser set to make automatic payment, or to be prompted to authorize the transaction. 4) Card companies give card holders, by default, micropayment accounts. Your micropayment ID number is different than your credit card number, but you receive a combined bill at the end of the month. 5) Micropayment accounts are small by nature. Your line of credit on your card could be $4000, but your micropayment credit line is much smaller, say $100 by default. If a thief accesses and abuses your micropayment account, you pay $15 and the card company writes off the rest like they do regular card theft. 6) A browser button or bookmark allows quick review of your micropayments to date, to alleviate theft concerns and allow quick retrieval of paid content. 7) Card companies do not charge transaction fees for the first two years, to secure acceptance of micropayments in society. Why would card companies do this? A couple years down the line they charge 1 cent per transaction. The shear number of transactions (billions per day) provides the profit. The biggest barrier to micropayments is the lack of a painless method of conducting micropayments. No company has presented us with an easy micropayment system. You cannot declare defeat before the game begins.
WebWord Comment | Thu 04 Sep
280 email messages in less than 8 hours. All of them spam. Ugh!
Thu 04 Sep 21:14 | Frank Lynch | Was this unusually high for you, or just a time you decided to count them? (It's probably the 'mailto' links on your site...)
Thu 04 Sep 21:56 | John S. Rhodes | ...unusually high. And it keeps getting worse.
Fri 05 Sep 07:08 | daniel szuc | SPAM is just so annoying. I use Cloudmark and this has really helped, but there is still enough SPAM for me to notice daily. What are the solutions?
Fri 05 Sep 10:25 | Mac | Question: Could you live without e-mail? Perhaps we could communicate in shared spaces, in something like a discussion site or web log type of thing?
Fri 05 Sep 12:13 | Francis Wu | It seems to me that we already have a web log type of thing :).
Fri 05 Sep 15:09 | Anonymous | 1) Stop hyperlinking your email address on your web site. Replace with contact form instead. It's going to tough finding all your previous site entries with your address in it, so this is probably a lost cause. Alternatively: Stop using the john at webword.com addresss, starting 2 weeks from now. Send mail to all your known contacts, telling them about the change. Change it to say mail at webword dot com instead. If you terminate your other account, all mail to the john address will bounce. 2) Start controlling your spam. I know you use Outlook Express. Download SAProxy for free, which is the client-side version of SpamAssasin. URL: http://saproxy.bloomba.com/ This will tag all recognised spam which you can automatically filter into a 'Spam Trap' folder like I do. Once every 2-3 days, review the folder to see if legitimate mail has been caught. Do it, John. Do it now. 4+ years of leaving your address linked from your site has taken its toll.
Fri 05 Sep 15:12 | MadMan | Damn Google AutoFill screwed up. That was my comment, of course.
Sun 07 Sep 01:06 | Eric P. | Posted by eric_at_shepard_dot_com :) Good & practical article on dealing with spam at Good Experience ... 'This spam solution, and many other e-mail management tips, are in my free report, 'Managing Incoming E-mail: What Every User Needs to Know.' (For those of you who read it last year, I've just updated it with new pointers to recent articles on spam.)' http://www.goodexperience.com/reports/e-mail/
Interview with Roy Want | Sat 06 Sep
(Intel) In looking at ways to improve mobile computing, we focused on three technologies, which in combination, offer a potential solution: high-density, small volume storage; low-power, high-performance processors, such as StrongARM and XScale; and standardized, high-bandwidth radios, such as Bluetooth. The personal server represents the integration of these three technologies. Its a small, mobile device that eventually will hold most of the data you use from day to day. It has none of the standard physical input/output capabilities — no keyboard, buttons or display. For this purpose, it relies on the computing infrastructure that happens to be in the locality and short-range wireless-connections to make use of these resources. (Comments: The Ghost)
Sat 06 Sep 21:18 | Jim Tule | Sell personal servers under $300 and stock new minitowers with two 'personal server' slots. One for your storage, the other for copying onto other users' personal servers. It'll make zip drives and CD/DVD drives legacy media. I realize the device wireless, but people will want drive slots. Many users won't backup their personal servers onto their primary desktops. We'll hear horror stories about people losing years of data when they misplace their personal servers. Smart cookies will tie a clapper to their server. Clap your hands and your personal server lets out a 'Here I am!' beep.
THE REVOLUTION USABILITY REPORT sponsored by fhios: Real user testing - Reality check | Fri 05 Sep
With usability testing with real users, youll still have the tea and biscuits, and the people behind the one-way mirror if you want, but the participants will be actually using your site.
Fri 05 Sep 22:49 | Lyle Kantrovich | I was just going to blog about this same article, but Blogger's down at the moment - &!@#!. Here's my take: Decent standard article on usability: why do it, overview of methods, blah, blah, blah. Not much new to read here (experienced) folks, move along... The interesting part of the article? There are 2040 words in the second paragraph. No, that's not a typo -- 2040 brain-busting words in ONE paragraph -- I copied it into MS-Word and checked. Line length is very long as well -- roughly 25 words per line. Can you say 'line break?' Can you spell

? I thought you could. But evidently Revolution magazine has a hard time with implementing those things. =:-) Don't even get me started on their font size issue...
Fri 05 Sep 22:58 | Jim Tule | I hate font nazis. I hate living life as a second class citizen, employing homebrew javascript to make a site accessible for reading without aspirin. I don't visit, I don't shop such sites anymore.
Fri 05 Sep 23:53 | daniel szuc | This was *one* hard article on the eyes, thats for sure.
Fri 05 Sep 23:53 | daniel szuc | This was on hard article on the eyes, thats for sure.
Sat 06 Sep 02:26 | Philip Chalmers | Plus: Horizontal scrollbar at 800x600 (I wouldn't be able to read it at higher res because of the small font). No left margin on the menu. No sub-headings. Whatever else you can find.
Sat 06 Sep 05:05 | Mac | On the actual content, I work for one of the companies quoted and can tell you that it's just a puff piece that contains little valid information.
Sat 06 Sep 05:36 | Mac | From - THE REVOLUTION USABILITY REPORT sponsored by fhios: Work to rule So, can usability experts and creatives live in peace? 'We did hire a usability expert once, but found they added very little to our process. Unless our creative people understand usability, how can they design sites?' asks Margaret Manning, chief executive at agency Reading Room. This is what happens when the Marketeers get their hands on usability. The usability people are playing into their hands by putting the brand before the users. 'There's no point in having something people can use if it doesn't inspire to be interested in the product or engage them with the brand,' argues Julie Howell, campaigns officer (accessible internet), at the RNIB. How can anyone who calls themself 'Head of User Experience' get away with saying something like this! 'One of most unusable sites, yet one of the most successful, is eBay,' says Paul Dawson, head of user experience at Conchango. If usability people think they have problems working with us programmers, then wait until you get one of these fellow 'professionals' on your team.
THE Zoom Demo | Fri 05 Sep
(Jef Raskin) Another example is with web sites. When one refers you to another page or section, you get a link on which you can click. With THEs zooming interface, instead of a link, you have the page itself there. We can only show bitmaps in this demo, so not all links have their referents there, but a few do to give you the idea.
Fri 05 Sep 22:40 | Joshua Kaufman | That's quite interesting. I'm currently writing a paper on file saving and file systems so that will help me think of some new ideas.
Suspect device 004: Personal mobility systems | Fri 05 Sep
(V2) Youve seen Boblbees. Theyre beefy, toboggan-looking things balanced delicately at the point where geek meets chic, truly the Buddy Holly glasses of gear. The funky look derives from one of the few significant innovations in stuff-hauling technology to come down the pike in, oh, five thousand years or so...as we shall see.
Fri 05 Sep 12:21 | Francis Wu | Kinda reminds me of eHolster, but for smaller stuff. I'd like to see more ways to organize/wear the barrage of gadgets we carry nowadays. At one point, I had a virtual bat-belt: cell phone, digital camera, PDA, knife/pliers, and even a yo-yo. Stopped wearing the knife/pliers and the yo-yo though 'cause they didn't go well at airports.
Writing Photo Captions for the Web | Thu 04 Sep
(First Monday) Captions should provide information, they shouldn’t mislead or confuse, they shouldn’t be excessively didactic, they should refer to people or objects in the photos without ambiguity, they should be relatively short and to the point.
Fri 05 Sep 09:48 | Anonymous | Do we really need such a long article to explain this? The say the captions 'should be relatively short and to the point' -- shouldn't everything be?
Fri 05 Sep 11:22 | Mac | That's what my summary is for.
what is Jakob smoking? | Wed 27 Aug
(V2) I do not want a machine whose UI and form factor and power-consumption profile are based around watching movies and editing long text files. I mean, thats what I have a laptop for.
Mon 01 Sep 15:08 | Adam Greenfield | Jim, you're abundantly welcome to disagree with me. I love disagreement. It's how I learn. However, like most people, I don't enjoy being called a 'hipster doofus' by someone who's never even met me. So, consider: is this about me? Or is it really about you?
Mon 01 Sep 17:58 | Jim Tule | My reference was regarding all web designers who bitch and moan about Jakob. You took is personally and lashed out in a mean fashion. This may be par for your course, but I, for one (or two, as it's apparent I'm not alone), won't put up with abuse.
Mon 01 Sep 17:59 | Jim Tule | My reference was regarding all web designers who bitch and moan about Jakob. You took is personally and lashed out in a mean fashion. This may be par for your course, but I, for one (or two, as it's apparent I'm not alone), won't put up with abuse.
Tue 02 Sep 16:45 | Adam Greenfield | Why, then, insult folks in a broadbrush fashion, when it's clear you wouldn't enjoy the same? It's not as if 'doofuses' or lightweights are the only ones to have lost respect for Nielsen's work over the last couple of years. More than a few well-known, high-profile usability professionals of my acquaintance share similar opinions (if generally expressed more diplomatically than I care to). Your self-righteousness mystifies me. Why are 'hipsters' entitled to less respect than you are?
Tue 02 Sep 18:17 | JT | Self-rigehteousness? I'm done 'talking' to you. Go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under.
Thu 04 Sep 15:51 | Adam Greenfield | Well, OK, I will. But only after I say hi to John and Mac, whose voices I miss here under my rock. Seriously, Jim: relax.
Fri 05 Sep 08:58 | Mac | Hi, right back at you Adam. Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is. - George Santayana
Is Java Finished? | Thu 04 Sep
.NETs ease-of-use characteristics are forcing Sun to try to simplify Java development. When J2EE first came out, there were many developers using distributed computing, so J2EE was targeted at a very high-level developer, said Ralph Gallantine, group marketing manager at Sun. Now, however, Sun is trying to make J2EE development easier.
Fri 05 Sep 03:07 | daniel szuc | Same old story - Technology for technologists. Perhaps one day development tools will become easy enough for anyone ... Is this something that should be encouraged?
WebWord Comment | Tue 02 Sep
Marvels Dot Comics. Cool.
Thu 04 Sep 12:58 | Mark | Check out the difference between the Marvel online comics interface and DC's PDF format--follow the link {http://www.dccomics.com/features}to features, then select a title, then 'sneek peek' and then download Adobe Acrobat file.
New Bush official to delve into vanishing factory jobs | Tue 02 Sep
Of the 2.7 million jobs the U.S. economy has lost since the recession began in early 2001, 2.4 million were in manufacturing. The downturn has eliminated more than one in 10 of the nations factory jobs. (Comments: Mystery of the jobless recovery)
Wed 03 Sep 17:24 | Brian Curtis | And let's not forget that many IT jobs are heading overseas, too. You remember those? The supposedly 'safe, middle-class, white-collar' jobs that would always be available here once the low-skill manufacturing workers 'retrained and re-educated' themselves? Well, guess what--they're going bye-bye too. The middle class continues to vanish. And Bush & Co. couldn't be happier. See how everyone's spending themselves into debt while wages stagnate or fall? This is a good thing! It means everyone will soon be at the mercy of corporte executives and that pesky ol' labor movement will finally dry up. I'm not sure where to turn next... if the Republicans don't know how to run a sound economy, and the Democrats are trying to imitate them... who do we vote for?
Thu 04 Sep 10:32 | Jim Tule | The last ballot I voted on had five or more candidates running for each office. If you can't see past elephants and donkeys, don't be surprised that your trip to the zoo goes horribly awry. Carefully examine your ballot. Please, don't feed the corporations.
What Does 'Simple' Mean? | Wed 03 Sep
(Dans Comments: Thanks Gerry Gaffney)
Wed 03 Sep 23:38 | Jim Tule | 1. Having or composed of only one thing, element, or part. 2. Not involved or complicated; easy. 3. Being without additions or modifications. 4. Having little or no ornamentation; not embellished or adorned. 5. Unassuming or unpretentious; not affected. 6. Having or manifesting little sense or intelligence. 7. Not guileful or deceitful; sincere. 8. Ordinary or common. 9. Being a fundamental or rudimentary element.
Linux vs. Windows: Choice vs. Usability | Thu 28 Aug
(DevX) The average user doesnt know—or care—about the underlying operating system, the idea of GUI interfaces, the various types of file systems, or about any other technical aspect of using a computer.
Tue 02 Sep 13:30 | mcw | People want choice, creativity, and control - - but they want it where it matters to them. For system admins this is in the O/S and the associated tools. For people who use the system to do other tasks, such as composition, editing, number crunching, communications, variety in the O/S is a distraction not a benefit. But when dealing with the tools they use in their tasks of most importance, and plenty of passion surfaces. 'I want to use (name of some program). Oh, it only runs under Windows? Then I will run Windows, leave off talking about this Linux thing, I'm not interested if it doesn't run my favorite program, and I don't want to talk about something almost as good.'
The Gender Genie | Fri 29 Aug
Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. (Comments: Thanks Dennis G. Jerz)
Tue 02 Sep 13:05 | Wolf | Jim - And, unlike at the Carnival or Circus, you don't get the prize for the other 50%. Now I anticipate the release of the Weight Genie!
Software Customer Bill of Rights | Mon 01 Sep
Id rather stand back from the current crisis, consider the legal debates over the last 10 years, and make some modest suggestions that could go a long way toward restoring integrity and trust and consumer confidence, consumer excitement, and sales in this stalled marketplace. (Comments: Web Usability Bill of Rights)
Tue 02 Sep 08:17 | Matthew Oliphant | Declaration of Usability
Buy a New Beetle. Get a new iPod. | Mon 01 Sep
(Dans Comments: Interesting promotion, but I think it would have smarter to intergrate the 2 products - beetle and iPod - to make for a more complete customer and listening experience. What do you think?)
Mon 01 Sep 13:34 | Matthew Oliphant | Not to be a thicky, but what do you mean by 'integrate?' I haven't seen anything in real life, but it looks (from the commercial) that there is an iPod dock of sorts. I guess true integration would be the ability to fold up the VW into the size of an iPod and never worry about parking again. All while listening to your fav iTune.
Mon 01 Sep 13:41 | Jim Tule | Why are people fixated on portable music? Or are they? It's an isolationist technology. I would only consider headphones when jogging, and even then, jogging with a friend is far more enjoyable. When you're wearing headphones in public you are not talking to or interacting with other people... nor do other people want to interact with you because to talk would be an excessive interruption.
Mon 01 Sep 19:52 | daniel szuc | Integrating to play tracks directly through the speakers in the Beetle, displaying the iPod UI (track playing, duration, volume etc) on the car player (bigger screen), providing controls that can be used on the steering wheel etc Perhaps one day we will not need this at all because you car system will work via a wireless internet connection with your home system anyway :)
Tue 02 Sep 03:09 | Mac | What about the iTrip from Griffin Technology, which we aren't allowed to use in the UK
Tue 02 Sep 03:17 | daniel szuc | Look forward to the day where you will be able to connect directly to your own entertainment hub at home and play from your own list. No ads! Perhaps a keyring with thousands of songs pre-loaded. Too much choice :)
What lies ahead? NECs advanced designs may come soon | Sat 30 Aug
(gizmodo.net) Thankfully, NEC is looking to breathe new life into the industry. Although these new-age devices are currently in the design phase and hold no immediate plans for production, they prove that not every one is content with the current standstill.
Mon 01 Sep 09:03 | Anonymous | Users are abstractions, living there, doing unfathomable 'stuff.' The computer sitting in front of the techie, that's real. It gives immediate, urgent (if trivial) 'feedback.' The stuff the techie's company is also real. Users are simply the abstract notions which exist outside the project.