(Comments added for week ending Sun 21 Apr 2002) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 32 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:32 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 21 Apr 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Google Answers | Sat 20 Apr |
| Live Researchers answer your questions on any topic for a fee. |
| Sat 20 Apr 21:37 | Jack Schonchin | In other news: Google has run out of ideas. |
| Sat 20 Apr 22:23 | Jack Schonchin | OK, ok, some constructive commentary... I suspect the key audience for a Google search assistant would be someone who is very busy and is gainfully employed. (#1 to save time, and #2 the expense is affordable). However, I also suspect the people most likely to like this service already have search assistants. They're called 'support staff,' or 'clerical staff.' |
| Sun 21 Apr 18:50 | PeterV | I think it's a good idea. Google is just copying the business plan of a few such services that ran a few years ago (don't know what became of them), and adding it's own trust factor. You can't really say 'search' isn't Google's business right? I think if they can manage the trust factor in a cost effective way, they can pull this off. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with ways to generate revenue. |
| Sun 21 Apr 20:29 | Anonymous | while others have tried this idea, they have failed. google is doing this to increase the page views and usage of its site.. for the most part, google is the most relevant and fastest route to information... see the synergies? exactly |
| Sun 21 Apr 20:59 | Jack Schonchin | Or... it could be said that introducing this service is making a statement about the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the search engine. Think about it. They are offering assistants to help you use their product. IMHO, Google is the last engine that should embrace this idea. I realized yesterday that about 1 in 8 of my Google searches now fail. I'd much rather Google concentrated of the engine and not these varied services they've been unveiling. My number one wish is that they'd let us toggle the various ranking criteria so that we have more options when a search fails. |
| Sun 21 Apr 21:35 | Eric Scheid | Google is a tool, nothing more. I know from personal experience that doing good searches, via google or otherwise, is heavily dependent on domain and contextual knowledge. I have developed several strategies for finding good information ... but none of them could be codified as an absolute to be applied to *all* searches. I need to select according to the situation. For example, when searching for technology keywords I add '-resume' to the request. Very useful, but not globally so. Similarly, I often restrict my searches to .edu when in search of scholarly work. Sometimes I add 'recommended reading' to narrow a search, or even 'bibliography' to help find essays and papers. Not always though. There are a few other tricks up my sleeve that makes me a cut above Joe Googler when searching for stuff, and that is without getting into specific knowledge domains. Chauffeurs learn special driving skills. It's not really possible to design the motor vehicle to perform those maneuvers for Joe Driver. Same really with most tools. |
| The Voyeur Web | Wed 17 Apr |
| (WebWord) The purpose of this article is to explain the voyeur web. The central idea is that it is easy to view what other people are doing and experiencing on the web. A list of voyeur tools are provided. |
| Fri 19 Apr 13:02 | Anita Rowland | I always was interested in the Stockcharts.com Chart Voyeur page, at my former employer's site. We created the page to help folks see the variety of charts possible with the server-side charting tool. |
| Net thieves caught in action | Wed 17 Apr |
| (MSNBC) He then planted links to the Web site in a few Internet chat rooms. Within 15 minutes, 74 carders from 31 different countries arrived to peek at the data. |
| Wed 17 Apr 00:50 | Jack Schonchin | A cheap promotional gimmick. Publish credit card numbers on the web and mention it in chat rooms. Huh? You mean the information proliferated? Wow. |
| Wed 17 Apr 04:32 | Alan Fisher | It would be interesting to see if they publish a follow up telling us how many credit card criminals they catch. I'm guessing the final figure will be approximately none. Never mind though - great publicity, eh? |
| Thu 18 Apr 19:54 | JB | Good to see that they are making the web a place for commerce by scaring the sh*t out of web users. Bravo Cardcops.com on setting back eCommerce another 2 years. |
| Reinventing the automotive UI or just another gimmick | Wed 17 Apr |
| - the BMW 7 Series (kuro5hin via Ion Collider) Driving is a learned skill and one that becomes almost instinct, a driver reacts in the way they have been trained to do so to a given situation. But what load will be placed on the driver who is trying to drive on a freeway at the same time they are setting the climate control or entering a destination into the navigation system? |
| Wed 17 Apr 04:37 | Alan Fisher | We can only hope that Citroen don't try and do this. With their build and reliability quality, the car would be uncontrollable. An electronic handbrake? Exactly what's wrong with an old-faashioned mechanical one - it's an appropriate design for the purpose. |
| Thu 18 Apr 12:36 | jan | One of the purposes for a mechanical emergency brake is to provide a braking mechanism regardless of other system failures. It seems to me that an electronic version of the brake defeats this purpose. The wired steering mechanism worries me for the same reason. I have power steering, but if I were to lose that power assist, I would still be able to steer, albeit with more difficulty. If steering is also electronic in these new models, what happens if the chip goes bad or the computer fails? Not only are you not able to steer the car, you also cannot stop it. I didn't read anything in the article that indicates the presence of a fail-safe should system failure occur. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 14 Apr |
| Movable Type is now the official content management system of WebWord. If you are reading this, the installation was successful. |
| Mon 15 Apr 02:09 | MadMan | Yeehaa! Go John! Hey, how about posting an article on how easy (or difficult) the installation process was? Usability note: The first time I hit 'Post', I hadn't entered my email address (don't want spambots harvesting it) and there was absolutely no indication that it was a 'required' field. Two suggestions: a) Put an asterisk to show that it's required or b) Get rid of the restriction altogether. I recommend option b. |
| Mon 15 Apr 02:28 | Manuel Viloria | What made you decide to switch from GM to MT? Just curious... |
| Mon 15 Apr 09:54 | Jack Schonchin | I'd really like to be able to use HTML in my posts. Bold, italics, and bulleted lists, anyhow. |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:26 | MadMan | And... leave at least one more line break between posts in the design. That allows me to scan more efficiently. This is a test of HTML. Please ignore. |
| Thu 18 Apr 05:56 | saneman | Getting a little tired of your non-useful comments madman. Take a rest for a while and give us all a rest from your comments!! |
| Thu 18 Apr 10:28 | Jack Schonchin | I get 8 hours of sleep every night. I don't need any additional rest. MadMan, post away! My brain can take it! |
| WebWord Comment | Tue 16 Apr |
| I have a question for you. Why are web pages so static? For example, Ive written a several articles yet I rarely visit them again after publication. They seem fixed in time. I treat these pages as if they were pages in a book or magazine. Yet, the reality is that I can easily change them at any time. If I found new and interesting information related to an article I wrote, you would think that I would add that information to the article at least in a resource section or something. But I dont. Web pages are so much more flexible than printed pages, or radio spots, or even TV shows. They arent stuck in time. They can be editied and changed. I am not talking about changing the core nature of articles or news. Instead, I am talking about some simple things such as adding links, updates, and so forth. Wouldnt it add so much value? Weblogs change, but why not other pages too? Thats the question. Why are web pages so static? |
| Wed 17 Apr 00:43 | Jack Schonchin | You had the interest and inspiration when you created the web page. You likely do not have that same interest and inspiration a year later to keep the page updated. It's a chore. |
| Wed 17 Apr 05:14 | Eric Scheid | Is the 'page' the atomic unit? I have seen weblogs which have categories annd provide transclusion of all posts in that category to appear in one page. So, although an individual post may not be updated itself, the agglomeration which is that category does get updated, and individual posts can get updated if they have an attached comments section. The main problem though is 'out of sight = out of mind'. I notice that the most recent version of MoveableType includes a 'most recently commented on posts' function, and that goes some way towards surfacing old content. However, for a different approach entirely, do consider taking a look at the various wikis. |
| Thu 18 Apr 09:07 | Joshua Kaufman | NUblog recently published a short article about keeping Web pages up to date (scroll down a bit to #2). |
| Examples of cool web design | Mon 15 Apr |
| (Gerry McGovern) An essential focus of web design is the effective communication of text-based content. Web design that is truly cool seeks to organize and communicate information in innovative and useful ways. Quality web design is concerned with getting the right content to the right person at the right time and at the right cost. |
| Tue 16 Apr 01:36 | George Olsen | Gerry's fixation that the web is for text-based content reminds me off the railroad barons who failed to see they really were in the *transportation* business. Text is only one type of content -- and the web is about content, form and behavior in various mixes. There is no One True Best Way to present these, there are only ways that are more or less appropriate to given contexts. Many times text is appropriate way to present content. Sometimes form is. For example, try to describe a spiral. And, no, you can't use your hands... See what I mean. |
| Tue 16 Apr 05:31 | MadMan | 'Watching a webpage download quickly is such a cool treat.' CNN.com - 146K (158 hyperlinks!) Computers.com - 100K Amazon.com - 89K What the f*** is he talking about? Oh, and he also throws in the 'people always scan-read' myth. Good design is about communicating, yes. It's not necessarily about communicating information. |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:13 | Jack Schonchin | I was not impressed with the article simply because it was a run-on thought of what Gerry considers to be 'cool.' It's too bad the article did not stick to the lead sentence. e.g., discussing communication of text-based content. |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:14 | Richard Lehoux | M. Olsen, in the article, the author never say content should always be text-based. He only says great fonctions is cool. Did he express this point of view in other articles? Madman, fast download don't mean small file size. Because CNN and Amazon mainly use Html text instead of gif text, it appears to download fast even if the home page is in fact heavy. Also, why do you proclaim that the user scan-read is a myth? |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:19 | Richard Lehoux | Oups, sorry M. Olsen! Just saw the text-based comment in the article. Forget what I said. |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:40 | JB | I think his arguement is flawed in the opening sentence. The web is not just for text communication....that is an extremely narrow-minded view of what the web is and can be. |
| Tue 16 Apr 12:09 | Jack Schonchin | Am I reading the same article? I read no assertion in the article that the web is for text-based content or that text is the only way to convey content. He just says an essential focus is 'effective communication of text-based content.' I agree with that, but was disappointed he gave such poor examples. |
| Tue 16 Apr 16:12 | mcw | The word 'cool' is used 23 times in this article. Remined me of the goof-offs in the movie '3 Ninjas' who said nothing but 'dude'. After while, the repitition fails to communicate clear meaning. |
| Wed 17 Apr 07:52 | Alan Fisher | Surely he used the word 'cool' so many times to make a point? We constantly hear about 'cool' websites, and the sites usually turn out to be clever Flash-based monstrosities. What the article is trying to say is that all of these straightforward features can be cool too. At least, that's my reading of it. |
| Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children | Mon 15 Apr |
| (useit.com) Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation. |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:39 | MadMan | Most of Nielsen's 'articles' lately have been oozing with sales pitches. Guess he has to make money too. Hey, $10,000 per day can't put too much food on the table. I found something hilarious in his last email Alertbox notification. Here's what it said: -- JOB OPENING, Experienced Usability Testing Professional More info -> upper right corner of http://www.useit.com -- No URL at all! 'Upper right corner'? (Maybe it's some new navigation scheme experiment - *Tell* the users instead of giving them URLs.) And if you're running 800*600, it's actually in the LOWER right corner. Bah! Usability guru, my arse. |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:54 | JB | I have also noticed that sublte (originally) shift in tactic. I think it is an ill breeze for the credibility of the useit.com site for unbiased views of usability. I actually do not read his articles any more as they nothing more than a cross sell. I aslo find these reports very underwhelming. It is a shame. |
| Tue 16 Apr 19:37 | Jack Schonchin | 'Usability Problems Hurt Kids' Wow, what a great subhead. You don't want to be a child abuser, do you? But seriously, John's comment about the link was, 'This is basically a sales pitch...' So, uh, let's set a precedent. Let it begin here and spread to all web design and usability sites and mailing lists. Our prime directive: do not refer people to a Nielsen article that is only a sales pitch. |
| Wed 17 Apr 04:29 | Alan Fisher | Hold on. One of Jakob's much loved themes over the years is that people will eventually have to start paying for internet content. Having drawn us all in over the last 2 or 3 years, he is now applying this principle. At least he's consistent. In fact, this article contains much more information than some others he's published recently, which were also sales pitches. Personally, I wouldn't pay the sort of prices he's asking for. I don't think his research results are that jaw-droppingly original. We all have that choice. |
| WebWord Comment | Mon 15 Apr |
| Here is some important housekeeping. Ive made two changes to WebWord. First, you can now enter comments anonymously. Second, you can now use HTML in your comments. I listened to your feedback and I think it makes sense to relax the rules. Please don’t abuse these privileges. Thank you! |
| Tue 16 Apr 04:23 | Matt Round | It might be a good idea to put some information alongside the comment form explaining that paragraphs are automatically inserted but other HTML can be added (with examples of tags). It's awkward when commenting systems don't let you know whether to simply put in the URL (which it'll then automatically make clickable) or insert HTML. |
| Tue 16 Apr 07:54 | John S. Rhodes | Matt, that is a good idea. I'll see if I can take care of it in the next day or two. Also, I still need to add more space between each comment. I really thought that I took care of that. All things considered, the conversion over to Movable Type went well. I really expected more problems. For the most part, people are sending me usability advice (cool!) and minor tweaks. Nothing really bad has happened. When I have a chance I'll write up my experience. The summary is that it took about 20 hours and was tedious. However, as I focused on the tasks and read the documentation, the transition from Greymatter to Movable Type was very reasonable. Just think about it...a transition from one content management system to another in about 20 hours. Not too shabby. I think it says more about Greymatter and Movable Type being excellent systems than anything else. (Remember, I'm not really a developer or system administrator!) |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:24 | Jack Schonchin | John, a suggestion... Remove every 'Add Your Comment' link Rename every 'Permanent Link' to 'Add your comment' Take a look. Both pages contain the same content, but the permanent page is superior because it is permanent. The user is not served by duplicated services. Or is there some failing of MT that prevents this? |
| Tue 16 Apr 11:28 | Jack Schonchin | Rats, I just realized the one difference is on WebWord's front page, where 'Add Your Comment' also indicates the number of posts in the discussion. Is there a way to add that functionality for permanent links? |
| Tue 16 Apr 13:48 | Will | Yes, MT can add the number of comments to a permanet link. It's just one of their template tags. The place where you might run into an issue though is communicating the fact that you can add comments, and communicating the fact that there is a permalink. I solved it on my site by just linking the time stamp and the comments stamp to the same individual archive page. |
| Theory: Unpacking alternate timeline-views | Mon 15 Apr |
| (Jorn Barger) Basic info-design theory rightly favors sorting by chronological rather than alphabetical order chronological timelines add value where alphabetical-sorting adds none. |
| Mon 15 Apr 23:10 | John S. Rhodes | This is a quick test to see if I can use HTML. Here is a link to Jorn Barger's web site. (If you can see a link above, it worked!) |
| It's Not Americans That Arabs Hate | Mon 15 Apr |
| (Business Week) Indeed, Arab and Islamic countries are more enthusiastic about old-fashioned Yankee capitalism than they are about American concepts of freedom and democracy. Most Muslims think highly of U.S.-made products, particularly American technology, scientific advances, and American films and TV. |
| Mon 15 Apr 09:53 | Jack Schonchin | Article says: 'large numbers of Muslims described the U.S. as unfriendly, untrustworthy, and easily provoked.' Jack says: Dang, we see eye to eye. That's how I'd describe our government too. Unfriendly: Department of Motor Vehicles Untrusthworthy: Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court Easily Provoked: Internal Revenue Service |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:46 | Richard Lehoux | What's the difference between government progagenda in USSR and in US ? American believe it! There's no place in the world who think US foreign policy is clean. How can the US government hope to change arabe point of view when even us, in Canada, there closest allies, think the same way about america? |
| Mon 15 Apr 13:41 | Jack Schonchin | I admit, in looking for cable/broadcast news on the Jenin massacre, I could not find it. After reading about it from non-U.S. web media Sunday night, then watching the first 10 minutes of NBC's Today Show on Monday morning, I wondered about the difference between government-controlled and corporate-controlled media. Yeah, ok, corporate media is actually a lot more open, but when it wants to obscure a story, it does it with ease. |
| Mon 15 Apr 15:28 | Deli | For those of you who are interested in this topic I recommend you read Noam Chomsky. He has very clearly explained how goverments (especially US) use the media to propogate their thoughts and fill our minds with all kinds of sluggish US propaganda... |
| When Small is Better | Mon 15 Apr |
| (New Architect) If text ads are significantly outperforming banner ads, perhaps it is because they are a better fit for their medium. That, plus ease of implementation and the self-service sales and production process, make text ads an attractive and low-risk proposition for sites ranging from giant search engines to personal Weblogs. |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:50 | Jack Schonchin | I clicked a Google text ad a couple weeks ago while searching for a new web host. The host looked so good I decided to check for consumer opinion through a regular Google search. Not only did I not learn anything about the company, but the company's own web site didn't even show up in the search results! I e-mailed Google, and of course they never responded. It's a serious liability for Google's autoresponse e-mails to say they try to personally respond to e-mails when possible. Last year that may have been true, but I never get responses these days. Second Google gripe... I did a news.google.com search and turned up 0 results for my search this morning. I then did the exact *same* search at www.google.com and got two results. Sad. |
| Thumbs up for handheld gadgets | Mon 15 Apr |
| (MSNBC) The growing reliance on thumbs — on top of the many game consoles which already require fast thumb action — makes Deborah Quilter, a consultant and author of books on repetitive stress injuries, cringe. |
| Mon 15 Apr 09:59 | Jack Schonchin | Makes her cringe? Is she really shrinking back in fear and cowering? Or is she licking her lips in anticipation of the future? Mmmmm, healthy career. Tasty. Hey, anyone notice John quoted from the second-to-last paragraph in the article? If this is the essence of the article, it's very poorly written. What happened to pyramid style? |
| Mon 15 Apr 11:26 | John S. Rhodes | About 1/2 of the article is about the *problems' people are having with these keyboards versus the 'thumbs up' (good stuff) that is implied by the title of the article. |
| Mon 15 Apr 12:42 | MadMan | John, After reading that article a couple of times, it hit me that the 'thumbs up' was supposed to be a pun about using thumbs for typing. That most people wouldn't get it (like Jack, you, and I) just shows that it was bad writing. :) |