Yandleblog

Human/machine readable format for titling links in Tweets

2010-01-22T14:43:00.005Z

Summary

Give your Tweeted links titles by using the following format:

"This is my link title": http://example.org/

Raison d'être

Link titles enable us to add meaning to links. This is especially beneficial for shortened URLs which are even harder for people to decode than verbose ones.

This format degrades gracefully ie. it is human readable even in Twitter clients that don't support the format.

Enriching links in this way improves the Twitter experience.

License

This Twitterformat Proposal is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

I wrote this to appear on: http://twitterformats.org/2009/12/proposal-ping/

Give me your links

2008-11-06T14:50:00.004Z

Someone just asked me if they can email me stuff from delicious, you can – here's how:

You do it with a for: tag…

When you're adding a link to delicious, just tag that link with for:{{username}}

i.e. my username is danny.hope, so if you want to send something to me add the tag for:danny.hope

Anything tagged in this way goes into my inbox in delicious:

That's it.

Why not, put your username in the comments so I can send stuff to you too?

Trusting the Cloud

2008-07-09T11:48:00.012Z

I've seen various articles recently, asking should we trust ('cloud based' apps such as) Google Docs for serious work?

Overlooking the fact that Google Docs doesn't offer the functionality that some clients seem to need, I think we're well on the way to having an online office.

However there needs to be a change: Our data (docs etc) need to be stored in a distributed way – synchronised across multiple (online) services.

So it won't matter if system-A (say, Google Docs) goes down, because your documents will have been synchronised with system-B (say, Zoho) and system-C, in fact any number of other systems.

As long as one of those systems is your local system, it won' t even matter that you can't get online; you can just switch back to your preferred desktop editor like Word.

So, questions;

what are the technical and security implications of this approach?
will vendors play nice and share your data accross with your nominated systems?
what else needs to happen to make this a reality?
are we already there and I'm just unaware of existing tools?

Logos on Homepages

2008-06-26T09:31:00.003Z

In the context of the homepage, the image itself is part of the content, so it should be shown as an IMG inside an H1 – not a background in that H1.

On other pages, however, it makes sense for the image to be the background element of the 1st H2 (with the text of that H2 being offset out of view). The 1st H1 being the title of that page.

Anyone got any thoughts on this assertion?

Mad Dogs and Enlgish Wine

2008-03-04T14:23:00.006Z

Henry (who talks at the Geek Wine Thing) and Andy from The Butlers Wine Cellar are doing a 2000 KM cycling trip to raise:

money for the the Chestnut Tree House children’s hospice and…
awareness of quality English wine.

Being a bit of a Google Maps junkie, I decided to plot their journey:

View Larger Map
More info is available on the Mad Dogs And English Wine website.

Geek Wine Thing – Back for 2008

2008-01-29T15:21:00.001Z

Having just spoken to Henry from The Butlers Wine Cellar, I'm pleased to announce that the Geek Wine Thing is back for 2008.

You can register on upcoming.

We haven't agreed a theme yet, so please feel free to suggest a theme in the comments.

Also, you can now follow what's going on with the Geek Wine Thing via Twitter.

Emotional Engagement

2007-11-08T21:56:00.000Z

For several months now I've been irritated by a pair of annoying pop-ups (modal dialog boxes to be precise) that appear, one after the other, every time I start iTunes.

This is the SRS iWOW plug-in telling me that my trial period has expired and asking whether I want to buy a license. I do not.

Showing a modal dialog box is bad, showing 2 of them is really bad and presenting no way to remove the software makes the problem inescapable.

These two pop-ups are really annoying:

they interrupt me
they require my input
they interrupt the importing of songs - so that I have to initiate the opening of files twice, and they're ugly.

I resolved never to buy anything from this company!

In desperation I emailed their customer support not expecting either to be ignored or, at best, a dismissive, reluctant response containing complicated instructions. I couldn't have been more wrong - what I got in response was a prompt, apologetic and helpful email written by a real person (someone called Michael Gonzales).

As it turns out, this would completely changed my opinion of their whole brand.

Some time after this email exchange, I came across the TunePro iPod Speaker Charger Alarm Clock (nice name) which bore the SRS logo and, to my surprise, I found myself wanting the thing. Because it had the SRS logo on it. Baring in mind that I'm the sort of person who couldn't care less about having an alarm clock, this is pretty amazing.

It just goes to show how wide and complex the area of user experience is. Who'd could have predicted that I'd reverse my decision to never buy their stuff based on one email?

Emotional Engagement - A Lesson from Darth Vader
Bad experiences engage you as deeply as good ones.

And then, If a bad brand redeems itself, it stays with you but now it's switched and quickly becomes your friend - like Darth Vader at the end of Jedi.

3 Ways to Improve Your Website Based on Statistics

2007-11-08T10:45:00.000Z

Website stats contain so much data that it can be hard to know what to do with that information.

Here are 3 ways that you can use statistics to make your site better:

Look for the most frequent search term and work that term into a prominent link on your homepage.
Find the most popular broken link (AKA, 404 page) and replace it with a real page. Alternatively, configure your web server to issue a permanent redirect response, this way people are unaware of any issue.
Find out your site's most popular entry point and concentrate on the design of that page like you would your homepage.

Week of SkillSwaps

2007-11-01T13:06:00.000Z

I'm helping organize a Week of SkillSwaps as part of the Brighton Digital Festival and I happy to announce that 5 sessions have now been confirmed.

Links for Booking

Photography 101 with Jane Dallaway
Master Screencasting with Ian Ozsvald
Agile: Iterating the Reasons with Joh Hunt & Tom Hume
The Art of Storytelling with Charlie Davies
Software Testing with Rosie Sherry

Venue

The events will all be held at Madgex. Thanks Glenn for sorting this.

Other events in the Brighton Digital Festival

About SkillSwap

If you aren't aware of SkillSwap:

The idea is that on a semi-regular basis, people from the local digital community volunteer to give up some of their free time to train a small group of their peers in a subject that interests them

I hope to see some of you there it's going to be greeeeeaat.

Ugly Beautiful

2007-10-18T10:36:00.000Z

I've recently noticed a trend towards ugly marketing:

I don't know yet whether I love it or hate it.

Keeping Things Public

2007-10-12T10:44:00.000Z

By default I always assume that things are public unless there's good reason to make it private. Of course I would always make sure that those involved are in the know before anything gets published.

A Flickr API Method for Getting Note Coordinates Please

2007-07-18T10:22:00.000Z

I recently did a rough interface design for an image grouping tool that a client has requested. Having uploaded the file to Flickr, I added some notes explaining how it would work.

What I want now is a way of getting high-quality version of the file (including notes) which I can print or send to the client.

Theoretically I could write a little web application which fetches the image file along with it's notes and their locations from Flickr, and combines this stuff into a PDF for me to print.

Unfortunately this can't be done because the Flickr API only lest you add, edit and delete notes - not get information about existing notes.

So, Flickr people, please add a method for retrieving notes for a particular image.

Brighton's Homogenous Networks

2007-07-12T17:20:00.000Z

The Sussex Innovation Centre on the University of Sussex campus houses about 70 companies.

I'm hoping that events like this morning's Open Coffee Sussex meet-up will bring what I perceive to be Brighton's two homogeneous networks (companies based in the town & those working in and around the university) together.

A network is as powerful as the square of the number of members (or something like that) so um, yeah…

What do you think?

Art Meddler Blog

2007-07-12T16:22:00.000Z

Recently I've been working with Ben Sauer on an art-related web application, working title: Art Meddler.

So far we've:

Gone through the ideation stage
Mocked-up a few design ideas in paper (I think we might do more of this at a later stage)
Agreed some key IA issues

Next we're going to build a very rough HTML prototype to get a feel for how the pages flow during common scenarios.

We intend to document the development process as much as possible on the Art Meddler blog.

Idea for a £5 App: Snipget

2007-07-04T14:08:00.000Z

A central repository for your code snippets.

A simple API means you can get (and manage) your snippets from any supporting 3rd party application.

Snippets art discreet, taggable and sharable (and have their own pretty URI).

Showing Impoortance in File-based Bug Management

2007-06-28T14:13:00.000Z

A while ago, when I talked about file-based bug management, I mentioned using colour coding in Apple's Finder to indicate priority…

Since the finder allows labeling of files, some idea of the priority of a task can be given (although unfortunately Windows users will not be able to make this distinction):

Well, I recently spoke to Dan Glegg of Tails fame and he suggested a cross-platform alternative which I like much better: The more important a task the more exclamation marks get added at the start of the filename e.g.

Exclamation marks have a very low ASCII value so they will almost always appear at the top of an alphabetically sorted list (spaces are the only character with a lower value but filenames rarely start with a space so I don't care about them).

Thanks Dan.

Themes for the Second Geek Wine Thing

2007-06-11T11:31:00.000Z

[update June 15th 2007] I've put a wiki up for the event, the only stuff on it at time of posting is a page where you can suggest ideas for future tasting themes (there's a list of past themes on that page too).

The next Geek Wine Thing will take place on the 26th of June at No. 13 Brunswick Square.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/204797

Again the event will be hosted by Henry and Will from The Butlers Wine Cellar.

Theme
If you've got ideas for a theme, let me know in the comments.

Ideas so far:

New world Vs old world (Jane's suggestion)

A Better ReadSpeaker Implementation

2007-05-29T08:00:00.000Z

Ben and I have recently been working on a project to improve the accessibility of a website we've been involved with for some time.

One of the decisions we took early on in the project was to make the page readable–in other words adding a button, somewhere visible on every page, which, when pressed, plays an audio version of the page.

We chose a system called ReadSpeaker who, as part of the service, will correct any mispronunciations (for example it called pronounces wiki wē'kē - to rhyme with sneaky).

But why bother with text-to-speech when non-sighted users all use screen readers?

Well, apart from the fact that not all blind people are comfortable with screen readers, there are people who may have perfect vision that still find online reading a chore. These people fall into what has been called The Canyon of Pain.

ReadSpeaker's not without it's problems though, most organizations seem to deploy ReadSpeaker in it's out-of-the-box configuration but, while it's a pig to make it play nice, we weren't satisfied with this approach.

I'll show you what I mean; this video shows how ReadSpeaker is implemented in the British Museum's Children's Compass 'microsite':

Here's what happens:

You follow a graphical 'say it' link
It opens a new window (or, in this case a tab) thus negating the 'back' button)
It throws the window to the top-left of the screen for some (no?) reason
It makes the window really small
'Success'

A Better Implementation of ReadSpeaker

We thought about using a JavaScript show/hide mechanism to reveal the player when the user clicks on a link–something like "hear this page read out loud", instead of having a popup window we'd have a popup DIV which would be more accessible.

There were two reasons not to do go down this route:

the audio file would get downloaded every time the page is loaded (not very nice for ReadSpeaker's servers)
why hide the player in the first place?

So we decided to use a combination of Flash and direct MP3 links:

This has the following advantages

the file only downloads when the play button is pressed
people have the option to play the file in whatever they choose
we can control over the appearance of the player (including the ability to specify it's size in EMs thus making at scale with the size of the text)

And there it is - a usable, accessible audio alternative to every page in the site.

Innagural Geek Wine Thing

2007-05-23T13:29:00.000Z

Last night was the inaugural Geek Wine Thing and it was a real success. So I want to say thank you to everyone who came, including Henry and Will from The Butlers Wine Cellar.

This was the first time I've taken responsibility for organising an event of any kind, so was a nervous, but once we got into the swing of things that feeling was washed away.

Henry talked us through the basics of Spanish and Portuguese wines. Not only does he clearly know his stuff but also talks with passion about the subject which I think everybody appreciated.

We're already hearing some great ideas for future tastings and if you've got ideas, I'd love the hear them.

The sound of cameras was pretty constant so there should be some good geek-wine-tasting images on Flickr soon.

Also, when I get time, I'll make sure all the bottles we tried are on Corkd so you can add your tasting notes if you like.

StripMe.org

2007-05-18T15:22:00.000Z

Hot on the heels of my recent post about stripping comments from CSS…

Dave called saying he'd written a PHP script which did exactly what I needed. He gave me a test address and sure enough it worked.

I immediately bought stripme.org, set to work on designing a logo, made a homepage and asked Ben to setup a PHP site for me on a live production server.

24 hours later, we had a working site*, with instructions on how to use the service.

In total we've spent about 4-5 hours getting the site up and running:

Concept	15 minutes (including posting the idea on Yandleblog)
Coding the Stripper	15 minutes
Logo/Site Design	1 hour
Domain & Server Setup	3 hours

*It took us a while to suss out is how to get the service working in a way that meant URL's din't have to have question marks on them but that's done now.

If you don't want to rely on a 3rd-party service for your stylesheets, it's OK because we've made the source code available under the MIT open source license so you can run it yourself.

What Next for this Project?

We'll keep an eye on the stats and if the site gets popular we…

will setup caching in Squid
might put Google Ads (or some such) on the homepage
might sell API keys.

If we go down that last route, files that are processed for free will contain link to a 'sponsors' page at the top of the file. This kind of goes against the point of the stripme service in that it puts a comment in so we would have to consider this carefully.

Geek Wine Thing Update

2007-05-18T11:09:00.000Z

I recently posted an introduction to the Geek Wine Thing.

For those attending, a quick note: you have to sign-up on upcoming. Unfortunately all places are taken now. However, if you add a comment saying you want to come then you are in with a chance.

If you've changed your mind and are no longer coming, could you mark yourself as watching rather than attending please?

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Where I work

2007-05-17T15:07:00.000Z

This is also where the Geek Wine Tasting is going to be held.

Zooming into a birds-eye-view of the building I work in.

Other file formats are available on Revver: http://one.revver.com/watch/271594

Done with Snapz Pro and Flash Earth.

Enjoying CSSEdit 2.5

2007-05-15T09:41:00.000Z

I've recently upgraded to a CSS editor called, surprisingly enough, CSSEdit and have been really impressed.

One of things I've been quick to start using is the application's group feature. This allows me to break my CSS documents down into manageable chunks. By chunking the document up like this and then hiding what I'm not interested in, I'm vastly more able to concentrate on the task in hand - the slick implementation of design.

I like this feature so much that I made a little movie to illustrate what I'm talking about:

Grouping in CSSEdit 2.5 from Yandle on Vimeo

Group Syntax

Previous versions of CSSEdit used a made-up group tag, hidden in CSS comments, like this:

and while the new syntax still hides inside comments it differs I that it's not tag shaped:

I doubt that this is a formal CSS standard but I'm interested to see of other CSS editors are going to follow suite. I'm sure PC users would like to have a tool with this feature in their front end development workflow.

By the way, if anybody knows of a way of getting blogger to not f*ckup code, let me know and I'll replace that graphical text.

Idea: CSS Comment Stripper

2007-05-14T17:45:00.000Z

Update: StripMe.org is live. Yandleblog post about it.

I recently read a post on a local mailing list where someone emphatically said "style sheets should not have comments in them. Ever." (or something along those lines). But of course comments are very hand things to have, especially I someone else is eventually going to have to ork with your files.

This got me thinking that maybe someone should build a server-side application that strips comments comments from your CSS.

That's when I hit upon this idea (maybe an idea for a £5 App).

The "Stripper"

Initially, I tought it could work a bit like tinyurl:

Go to http://stripme.org [nothing there yet]
Enter the address of your CSS file (e.g. hobointernet.com/contentStyles.css) in a form
The site gives you a URL for a version of the CSS file sans-comments, e.g. http://stripme.org/234cvfrv.css
(in your HTML) link to this URL instead of linking directly to your CSS

Then, having talked the idea through with Ben, I realized that there's a simpler, more RESTful way of doing it…

(in your HTML) link to http://stripme.org/http://hobointernet.com/contentStyles.css

…the service returns your CSS file without comments.

This method has the advantages that the originating file in not hidden (so people can get to your comments easily), it's really easy to remember and there's no forms.

Got Several style sheets you want to get concatenated into one? No problem, just use a URL like:

http://stripme.org/http://hobointernet.com/contentStyles.css+contentStyles.css

I might talk about this idea after Dan Glegg's talk at the next £5 -Apps meet.

Certificates are Irrelevat in New Media

2007-04-23T10:09:00.000Z

Rosie is against certification , and I have to agree with her.

Certificates measure a persons abilities in a specific area at a given point in time. Whereas anyone working in new media has to be constantly learning in order to be good at their job.

Doing the least amount of work possible to get that certificate is not the same as ongoing self improvement.

Certificates give recruiters with the illusion that they can put less effort into their job.

Certificates may be appropriate in established, stable industries like plumbing, but when the platforms is constantly changing how can they be?

Geek Wine Thing

2007-04-12T12:40:00.000Z

Update: http://yandleblog.com/2007/05/geek-wine-thing-update.html

Some of you may have heard me talk about the 'Geek Wine Thing'. Well it looks like it might go ahead.

Tuesday the 22nd of May is the likely date.

It'll be about £10 (to cover costs).

I'll put it on upcoming soon.

Background
I've done a bit of word of mouth marketing including announcing the 'Geek Wine Thing' at some of the events that I've attended:

http://upcoming.org/event/146386/
http://upcoming.org/event/163823/ (as you can see from the photos on this page, I did a mini tasting as part of this event which went well and gave me the confidence to formally commit to running the evening)

It will be held at the Regency Town House which is being painstakingly restored to it's original regency state so makes an interesting venue.

Photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/regencytownhouse/
Other events at the Town House: http://upcoming.org/venue/49390

Format
I initially thought it might be nice to combine the wine tasting with a geek/tech talk, so the evening would kind of be in two parts geek talk followed by wine tasting.

However I think this is too ambitious to start with so I'd like to make it something like the Pintxo wine tasting evening i.e. wine tasting followed by socializing.

It looks like we the evening will be lead by Henry Butler of The Butler's Wine Cellar fame. The one wine tasting I've attended (a few weeks ago) was lead by Henry and was entertaining and educational.

I have a bunch of ideas for developing the idea in future but we can talk about that later.

Help! We need a name - Geek Wine Thing just isn't catchy enough.
I had though of calling it Wine Testing but that might sound off putting or unfriendly, I'd like to know what you think, so if you have any ideas, add a comment.

[Update: I've added an event on upcoming now http://upcoming.org/event/175136]

Are You Reading This?

2007-03-30T10:39:00.000Z

Well obviously you are but how do I know if you don't comment?

Go on - massage my ego and tell me who you are.

Experimental Desktop

2007-03-29T23:06:00.000Z

Inspired by the following question (from Roger Johansson of 456 Berea St):

Do you maximise your browser window?

…and since I'm always telling people that the best upgrade they can make to their computer is to get more screen real estate, I started messing around with my desktop configuration.

This is what my desk now looks like:

…and here's a screenshot of my Mac's desktop:

Having all this space* is nice but there are some downsides:

My corner of the office looks messy
People will think I'm odd
I remember why I upgraded from that blurry, dark old monitor in the first place

*(1024x1280)+(1900x1200)=3,590,720pixels or 3.6megapixels.

I'm going to leave it like this for a while and see if I feel comfortable with the setup, if not I think I'll take my old Mac home and use it as a TV.

In answer to Roger's question about browser resizing:

I tend not to maximise my browse window - instead I use a couple of bookmarklets to resize my the browser to specific sizes: 800x1111 and 1024x1111 (1111 is the maximum height for my browser window so as not to overlap the dock). If the site has a completely liquid layout and is not text based (like a page of thumbnails, say) I do maximise the window.
My usual screen size is 1900x1200
I use OS X 10.4

Get into Adobe Apollo

2007-03-29T13:37:00.000Z

If you haven't heard of Apollo, this is how Adobe describe it:

Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing Web development skills in HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash and Flex in order to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

To find out what that means:

Watch a demo by some from the DEMO conference
Install the runtime (you need to do this to get a hands on feel for what it does)
Run some example applications

Are you using Apollo yet? Have you done any experiments? Put a URL in to comments.

Will the iPhone Feature Haptic Feedback?

2007-03-28T09:43:00.000Z

A common criticism of on-screen controls is the lack of physical feedback. This article (found via small surfaces) suggests that there may be an answer:

http://touching-people.com/posts/view/23

Will/can the iPhone generate haptic feedback?

More on Haptics:

Why Developers Should Suport non-Internet Explorer Browsers (right from the start)

2007-03-08T11:59:00.000Z

It's a really stupid idea to not support non-IE browsers because one unhappy person counters ten happy people.

Also early adopters who blog mostly use Firefox (or Safari, Opera or Camino). So in the phase where a project needs attention and free marketing, IE users account for less than 50% of pageviews (probably).

Also, if you're deprioritizing my preferred browser now, why should I believe you'll do any different later on? You're setting a precedent - indicating your approach and philosophy and this is what I'm buying into.

To Little

2007-03-07T23:33:00.000Z

Web application designers have been using the 'less is more' mantra now for a few years but there is a growing trend towards applications that, in various ways, don't do enough.

TODOLIST is a good example of this.

I just signed-up and was confronted by this…

…an interface that's oversimplified to the point that I was left with little choice but to go into the help system to find out what to do.

I'm not sure what this aplication's like to use once you get used to it but unfortunately it's so awkward to learn that I'm not going to stick around to find out.

There's too much attitude and not enough research/user-testing/knowledge behind some applications. It's not enough to adopt the trappings of industry leaders, you have to understand where they're coming from too.

By the way, this is how it looks in Camino

Rant over.

A Potential Tipping Point in Translation

2007-03-07T13:55:00.000Z

A colleague of mine asked me how the translation on a the Royal Ocean Racing Club website works, I explained that it was a free service offered by Google and that it could easily be applied to any site for free. (The site itself just uses a little bit of JavaScript to link to the pages.)

He was surprised that such functionality was available for free and said it was "a really good way to add multilingual functionality to client websites" adding that people are likely to be forgiving of the sometimes confusing results if they can see that the translation is done by Google.

I do agree that this is, on the surface at least a pretty cool service, but I wouldn't feel comfortable suggesting this to clients as a long term solution to the issue of translation - the results are not good enough and the URLs are untrustworthy because, like some phishing scams, they use IP addresses instead of domain names e.g.

http://66.249.93.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=en%7Cja&u=http://www.rorc.org/

Assuming you can overcome this problem with some Apache redirection, that just leaves the issue of translation quality, and this is an area that's set to change…

I recently saw that Google are now accepting feedback on their dodgy translations. This will allow them to build up a huge database of translations in much the same way as they have with their database of misspellings.

In much the same way that Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion the Rosetta Stone to decode ancient Coptic symbols, Google can apply their trusty brute-force data mining techniques to spot patterns and effectively teach the machine new languages languages.

I may have simply overlooked this in the past, but I've started to notice the term 'rosetta' in some Google URLs, which I take as another clue that something's going to happen in this space soon.

In any case, if improvements in translation quality are analogous improvements in spell check quality, then I think we can expect to see an explosion of multilingual sites in the next couple of years.

Useful Dashboard Widget: Minutes

2007-03-01T16:40:00.000Z

For those of you not familiar with CRON, 'Minutes' presents an easy way to trigger events in OS X.

This is one of the few useful widgets I've found and it's pretty simple.

Turn the knob to set counting time, the timer just starts. And push the button to stop. Minutes can do three actions at the target time:

- 1. Play iTunes playlist
- 2. Stop iTunes track
- 3. Open a file

Get a better service in Google Mail

2007-02-27T12:52:00.000Z

Long story short: set your preferred language to be English (US) if you want a better service in Google Mail.

I've been meaning to use Google Mail rather than Thunderbird for my email for a while now and just discovered something which helps: the 'Mail Fetcher'.

I've been using Gmail for a long time and have always been able to rely on it for all Hobo correspondence, however I have an old POP account to which I still need access.

Enter the Mail fetcher. Basically it just gets mail from your POP account. Google have thoughtfully allowed you to leave copies of messages on the server, which helps if you want to slowly migrate away from an old account as I do.

However, if you're thinking of using this feature you have to set your preferred language to English (US). I hadn't realised this because the fresh account I set up to replace this my old POP system was English (US) out of the box.

The problem came when I started looking through the various settings, noticed the language setting, and changed it to English (UK). Suddenly no email.

It was only when I remembered that you need to be English (US) to use the chat facility, that I:

realised what I'd done
changed back to English (US)
worried slightly that my spell checker would no longer work properly
went back to the Mail Fetcher help page to check that, as I suspected, there was no note about restrictions
found that there was a note about restrictions
felt like an idiot

(Actually I think if the help page in question had been more thoroughly user-tested, they would have realised that, since users are looking for help (not notes on restrictions), they're easily going to overlook the innocuous little note on the subject)

Why do Americans get a better level of service? Do Google think English people aren't as clever as Americans?

Wouldn't it be better for Google to use some of their big brother information to look into my search history and realise that I'm the kind of person who wouldn't be baffled by the concept of a POP account.

Better still: avoid confusion by creating an interface which doesn't have to be modified at all and looks the same for all users.

Think what you would do if only you had the money then figure out how you can do it anyway 2

2007-02-26T14:18:00.000Z

I'm helping organize the next 'Think what you would do if only you had the money then figure out how you can do it anyway' so come along.

[from the upcoming entry] It is:

- a workshop for startups of any stripe: web app, art
project, green project, invention, vague idea, whatever

- a proper workshop in the chisels, hammers, workbenches
tradition (although these tools might or mightn't be
substituted by mouths, eyes, stuff from Rymans)

Another 'Upside-down' Interface

2007-02-07T11:19:00.000Z

Whenever I've tell friends or colleagues that mobile devices should present a more ergonomic interface where the keypad is above the screen, I'm met with with ridicule.

So it's gratifying that I'm not alone: London inventor Anthony Harrison has registered an international patent for the idea (PDF).

Related article: 'Upside-down' Interfaces for Handhelds: Good. Reins on a Car: Bad

Via: Small Surfaces
Via: IOL

Another Minor Flickr Success

2007-02-06T18:02:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago a mentioned the Fabrica new years card.

Well, now I've had another minor success in Flickr:

This time a picture taken looking down into Victoria Station was used by SHiFT, an organisation that combats the stigma attached to mental illness:

Warning: do not try and take photographs on Victoria Station.

GUI Widgets Broken Link

2007-01-23T13:24:00.000Z

Ages ago I posted a link to an Illustrator file full of useful little GUI widgets to help with web application design. I'm not sure how many people actually got to see the file however because at some point I broke the link. I've fixed this now.

Social Web Application Idea: Open Heuristics

2007-01-17T17:55:00.000Z

There are basically two steps (after registering):

Site owners submit a website (or site section or even page) for heuristic evaluation.
Evaluators submit a list of errors - each tagged with zero or more heuristics.

After submitting these errors the evaluators can see a list of all errors (including those suggested by others) for that site. This is to prevent a bias towards the first person's findings. Evaluators may return to add more findings but these will be marked as potentially biased.

Evaluators are ranked by usefulness, number of errors submitted etc and sites could be ranked by number of bugs found but I'm not sure if that would serve a purpose or be attractive to site owners. Sites could also be ranked according to how much they've improved which might have a use.

Organization Personas

2007-01-17T12:39:00.000Z

Jon Stahl has some Initial Thoughts on a “Plone For Nonprofits” bundle.

The first comment beneath the blog post was to do with Linguaplone a plugin or 'product' for Plone which allows a site to be translated into many languages.

While there are probably plenty of reasons for and against including this (or any other products), it occurred to me that maybe we should define a typical not-for-profit organization, e.g.

Number of employees, volunteers, events, venues, in-house tech experience and so on.

We shouldn't take these numbers and average them out for all organizations because that just ends up creating a fictional 'average organization'. Instead we should pick (or create) two or three typical organizations and make these kind of decisions based on them, sort of organization personas.

I think (in this particular case) we should at least defining a persona for the person in the organization who has to install the product and deal with support and feature requests.

But in general, do you think it would be a useful thing to create these organization personas?

Idea for a Widget: MyBlogPrefs

2007-01-16T18:15:00.000Z

Blogs that display a huge array of little icons asking the visitor to bookmark their site with services like Reddit or del.icio.us remind me of what 80s skaters referred to as victims – the kind of people who acquired as many stickers as possible for their skateboard to show how up to date they were and get attention.

Having said that, I do use del.icio.us and sometimes these little links can be helpful.

I want to be able to choose what tools appear on a page. This could be achieved through a service, lets call it MyBlogPrefs.

Blog owners could then choose to add a 'show-whatever-the-reader-wants' widget in their blog template.

Credit to MyBlogLog and Snipperoo for inspiring this idea.

Fabrica New Years Card: A Minor Success for Flickr and the Creative Commons

2007-01-16T16:35:00.000Z

Just before Christmas I got a phone call from Fabrica (sorry I can't remember the persons name if you're reading this) asking for permission to use a photograph of mine that they'd found on Flickr for their new years card.

All of the photos I've put on Flickr are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license which means that

You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

It also means that they didn't have to ask for my permission but they did any which was nice.

I was chuffed that they might use one of my pics for the card but I wasn't holding my breath.

Well, today a batch of cards arrived and guess what–they did use my picture.

Here's the front:

and here's the back, with a credit to me. Yay.

I think this is a mini success story for Flickr and the Creative Commons licensing system and more so for my ego.

Fabrica's currently closed for the winter but there are plenty of images relating to Fabrica on Flickr. Maybe you can use one for you card, or brochure, or poster or whatever.

Preventing Temporarily-necessary Hacks from Slipping into the Final Release

2006-12-08T14:55:00.000Z

Jason Fried asked:

What techniques have you used to keep ugly temporarily-necessary hacks from slipping into your final release?

Here are some techniques we've used:

Wrap comments in a script which hides the selection based on IP address. In other words, machines outside our network are served pages without comments rendered-in.

The advantage of this is that the notes can stay, even if the page is live.
Add something like '[todo][Danny]' at the beginning of each comment.This can only be trusted as long as the person with responsibility for making the work live knows to check for this terminology. Fortunately we have a pre-publication checklist which includes this check.

File-based Bug Management

2006-12-04T13:37:00.000Z

In 'Using things for other things Jon Hicks outlines little sort of hacks which involve using products in new ways, which inspired me to write this.

Having tried and failed with ~~monolithic~~ more fully featured bug tracking systems such as Mantis and Bugzilla I now employ an simpler method for keeping track of issues across multiple projects.

At the beginning of each new project I create a folder (in a shared, backed-up drive) called 'What's Wrong with [project name]' and a subfolder with ' - done' appended to it like this:

Then later, when reviewing a half done site, I start adding files (like this)

This way each member of the team (myself included) has a constant view of what they need to do. Since these are just files ion the file system they can easily be searched, for example a team member could search for [their name] and instantly get a holistic or per-project view of their tasks.

Since the finder allows labeling of files, some idea of the priority of a task can be given (although unfortunately Windows users will not be able to make this distinction):

As each task is completed the files are moved into the 'done' subfoloder thusly:

I use descriptive filenames and for the most part I use screenshots of the bugs - I find that this combination (for me atleast) is a great way of returning to the mental space I was in when I recorded the problem.

Organizing all these Project Folders

Like many web developers we have a main 'Work' drive which is divided up into projects, eachg containing a set of (mostly) standard folders, this is where I keep these 'What's Wrong with…' folders. I keep a 'What's Wrong with Current Projects' folder in my dock like this:

Future of File-based Bug Management

In future it might be best to do away with the 'done' folders instead relying on filename tagging (i.e. adding [done] at the end of the filename).

Also, when operating systems have better RSS support we might be able to do away with folder views altogether and instead rely on feed aggregators like Google Reader.

Maybe Microsoft will realize thew value screenshots and simplify the PSSPAPPFSO (Print Screen, click Start>Programs>Accessories>Paint>, paste, File>Save, OK) technique. Which is such a distracting and highly GOMS inefficient task that Windows users prefer not to use it. But then again if we want to keep our lives simple maybe we shouldn't be looking to Microsoft for help.

How to Make Setting up an Ecommerce Store as Easy as Logging into Flickr.

2006-12-01T20:47:00.000Z

Here's an outline for a website idea (that we shall call WebsiteX) that could make setting up an ecommerce store as easy as logging into Flickr.

What Shopkeepers Do

(Steps 1+2 aren't necessary for people with Flickr accounts.)

Setup a Flickr account
Upload product images (including the price somewhere in the description)
Give WebsiteX your Flickr details

WebsiteX accepts payments crediting the shopkeeper's account. When a shopkeeper's account reaches a certain value, say £20, they're issued a cheque. This would be a paid service (a percentage of the turnover) which users could opt out of by providing details of a PayPal or merchant account.

What WebsiteX Does

WebsiteX uses the Flickr API to access your pictures and retrieves all the ones with a cash value (this could be records including £, $, or € symbols followed by numbers in the description field).

The products are then presented to users in a really easy to use shop (something like: http://demo.script.aculo.us/shop).

Flickr's title field would be used for the product title, the description field for the product description.

The shop could have categories - an aggregate of product image tags.

d.Construct 2007 Ideas

2006-11-28T17:07:00.000Z

I attended the d.Construct 2006 conference earlier this year and thought it was good but lacking in certain areas.

Here are some areas that I would like to see covered next year:

Ubiquitous Computing

Usability and user centered design, covering things like: how to run your first test session, practicing simplicity in design (and business), maybe even scratching the surface of cognitive psychology.

Findability as in Ambient Findability by Peter Moorville

SPARQL "the Query Language of the Web" (about SPARQL on ITConversations). Some crossover with Microformats here perhaps.

A brief history of the information age - accounts of how platforms have been developed then failed - lessons for the future that kind of thing.

I haven't thought this through at all, I just wanted to get rid of the 'd.Construct 2007.txt' file that's been on my Desktop for months now.

[update: Nov 30, 06] Another idea:

Creating community orientated sites
I've had a lot of clients recently wanting the next MySpace or Youtube and I don't see this stopping anytime soon.

Recent Blogging Advice (another metablogging post you've seen 100 times or more)

2006-11-24T11:35:00.000Z

This morning I attended a Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce business breakfast at Carluccio's and listened to a talk by Kate Hammond (an international healthcare consultant) entitled 'Having it all'.

The talk itself consisted of little more than an entrepreneur introducing them self and telling their professional life story - all in all not very inspiring.

However Kate did impart one useful piece of advice in the form of this ~~cheesy~~ catchy little one-liner:

Write up not down

What she meant by this was; instead of taking notes then forgetting about them, turn these notes into something that can be published. While I'm sure she wasn't referring to blogs, her advice echoes what I've been hearing a lot recently.

So how does a designer go about becoming a better writer?

Here are some tips for becoming a more productive blogger:

In response to my explain that I am primarily a visual person:

Matt Weston who I also met this morning at a little meet-up he runs at the Mad Hatter (in Brighton) suggested blogging in pictures. I had explained that it can be hard for a primarily visual person to put things into words.

I have to say I agree with this relatively off-the-cuff piece of advice (having read Cathy Sierra's stuff on the Creating Passionate Users blog).

Another chap I recently met (at the Sussex Geek Dinner), Stuart Lamour (currently a Cogapp guy who also runs the 20 Jazz Funk Greats music blog), said

Keep a notebook by your side and, throughout the day, write down every little idea, no matter how small or silly. Then, at the the end of each day, summarize these notes into a blog post.

I have a lot of time for the school of thought that says it's better to do something (and iteratively improve on that thing) than to wait until the thing's perfect before publishing (which of course it never is so nothing gets published).

So thanks everyone for these tips, I'll try to implement them.

Clients: Don't Apologise for Submiting Bug Reports

2006-11-16T15:34:00.000Z

Right now Ben and I are putting the finishing touches to a Plone-based website for a client in Bolton.

I just read an email from a client that started like this:

Subject: feed bug

P.B. wrote:
> Sorry Danny these emails seem to be a relentless stream of negativity,
> no reflection on the quality of the site as a whole though!

…and went on to describe a bug that needed fixing.

If you're working with a development company don't be afraid of sending bug reports. Any developer worth their salt should look at your comments in a positive way:

A bug report:

alerts me to a bug that I might have otherwise overlooked
provides an insight into your understanding of our system

Avoid 'Demographics' in Personas

2006-11-16T13:20:00.000Z

In 'Bring Your Personas to Life!' Zef Fugaz suggests ways for us to get into our personas heads but I think there's something wrong with the language he uses in one part:

"…may include information about the persona’s demographics, attitude, goals, environment, and how he or she will interact with your software … More advanced personas will also include detailed descriptions of activities or scenarios"

Instead of 'demographics, attitude, goals' a persona should focus on particular things the person does, how they feel about specific things, what they wear etc.

The point is that words like demographics and attitude suggest something other than personality.

Personas are for everyone involved in a project - the developer and the client, so they've got to be highly descriptive and easy to relate to - any hint of graphs or charts is to be avoided.

'Upside-down' Interfaces for Handhelds: Good. Reins on a Car: Bad

2006-11-02T01:38:00.000Z

I just saw Samsung/Bang & Olufsen's 'Serene' phone (found via a Signal Versus Noise post). These are my first impressions of the device:

I would like to see more devices where the controls are at the top as this is where the fingertips naturally fall (try holding an iPod upside -doesn't it seem more comfortable?).

What I don't like about this device is the dial - how does emulating an old fashioned mechanical dial help users? It would be like early car designers adding a set of reins to control the direction of car on the basis that this is how people have been used to controlling vehicles.

Joining Google's Office Apps

2006-10-31T23:11:00.000Z

Recently I've seen complaints that Google have done a bad job of integrating top of thier office applications like Gmail, Docs & Spreadsheets, etc together - all they've done so far is show a row of links to each application at the top of the page in said applications.

Well now it seems there might be a better way...

Google Acquires Jotspot

According to Joe Kraus (founder of Jotspot and former founder of Excite) Jotspot is a a wiki-ish application which

"at it's heart is a platform that allows you to loosely join web-based information together"

—Joe Kraus at the web2.0 conference, 2004

This is exciting to me (pardon the pun) because I can remember hearing Joe explain Jot on ITConversations, immediately signing up for an account but then not really using the service because a) I didn't like the look of the app and, more importantly b) because it was a paid service and I'm a cheapskate.

If Google integrate Jotspot like they've integrated Writely then these will both be non-issues for me and I look forward to investing some time in this potentially powerful system.

As an aside, since Jotspot prides it's self on bring structure to the wiki, it will be interesting to see if they make use of Microformats.

Update: We're Googlers Now - post on the official Jotspot blog.

Cognitive Biases Cheat Sheet

2006-10-11T13:16:00.000Z

Cognitive biases cheat sheet is now available.

This is just a repurposed Wikipedia page but if you're involved in user-centered design this may be useful to you.

Information Architecture Conversations

2006-09-21T09:13:00.000Z

Some good information architecture-related listening:

Chiara Fox of Adaptive Path: Understanding Your Content

Peter Morville of Semantic Studios: Ambient Findability

Integrating Plone with Other Systems

2006-09-20T19:36:00.000Z

From 'Plone Lovers Unite!: An Interview with Plone Conference Organizer Jon Stahl'

Integration with other systems: Plone is really good at connecting with other technology systems. For example, it's really easy to write content for an email newsletter in Plone, and then use a powerful email newsletter system like WhatCounts to "vacuum" content out of the Plone site and into an email newsletter template. We are about to release code that ties together Plone and the Salesforce.com relationship management database system. Plone is also able to easily connect to relational database systems, and to LDAP servers, which are most often found in larger organizations.

Get Your Ideas Accepted

2006-07-29T15:33:00.000Z

Inspired by "Designing Through the Storm"

If you’re sure that the client has missed an important point or made a decision without understanding the potential consequences, you’d be remiss if you didn’t make a calm, diplomatic argument for your point of view. In many (if not most) instances, you’ll be overruled; such is the nature of client services and professional design.

Here are some suggestions for getting your ideas accepted

Make sure the client knows that you understand thier point and are not just dismissing it out of hand. Acknowledge that their idea has upsides too.
Make it clear that you are not trying to cut corners. Point out that doing it thier way could actually save you time but you still want to do it your way.
Have courage in your convictions. If you truly believe in your point then reassure clients by with an enthusiastic strong voice.
If they still don't accept your point, ask them to send you an email acknowledging that they're not accepting your advice.

Of course nothing can beat having a client who trusts your opinion.

Nice Venue, Shame about the Newsletter

2006-07-28T19:52:00.000Z

Two of the best know Brighton Venues - The Brighton Dome and someday both need to improve their newsletters.

Komedia

I understand the idea that the black background creates a theatrical feel but the dark text just creates a feeling of annoyance.
update: Komedia Finally Have a Legible Newsletter

Brighton Dome

Rather than paying lip-service to accessibility by adding meaningless alt attributes to the numerous images in their template, the Dome would have been better off concentrating on an easily understood subject line.

Cheap ≠ Inaccessible

2006-06-27T09:35:00.000Z

In answer to the question ' 1: Why are so many sites still inaccessible?' (in a recent interview for .Net magazine) Andy Budd said:

…It is the responsibility of the web development profession to educate clients about their legal responsibilities and build accessibility into their projects, whether specified or not. Unfortunately, due to the increased commoditization of web design, budgets continue to fall and accessibility is often one of the first areas to be affected.

Having not surveyed the accessibility of most commoditised websites I'm unable to comment how well buit they are.

However, as director of a company (Hobo) producing low cost, perhaps comoditised, websites I would like to disagree with the assumption that low budgets cause bad accessibility.

The trick is to find clients willing to understand the value of accessibility and recognise the amount of work that goes into creating accessible and usable websites. The trouble is that many businesses are completely unaware of the benefits that this work brings and instead continue to focus on the glossyness of the site.

As awareness of accessibility (and lets not forget usability) goes up, companies will find ways of acheiving good levels of accessibility within tight budgets. One way is to build sites within the framework of a CMS (content management system) that, for example, replaces dodgy tags and encourages the use of alt tags while discouraging the use of tables for layout etc.

What to do about WCAG2.0

2006-06-06T11:32:00.000Z

In this article on A List Apart, Joe Clark, author of Building Accessible Websites says 'To Hell with WCAG2':

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohellwithwcag2

What do you think? Should we:

stick with version 1
try and get to grips with version 2
adopt unofficial standards?

Road Trip Effect in Google Maps (update)

2006-05-23T12:58:00.000Z

In my first blog entry (just over a year ago), I suggested using Google Maps to create a roadtrip effect, well it seems someone's now done it (sort of).

via: Oreilly Radar

Do You Really Need Search on your Website?

2006-05-07T13:15:00.001Z

Gerry McGovern :
Gerry McGovern (a content management expert) asks 'Do you really need search on your website?' saying:

You need to be doing ongoing analysis and refinement to ensure that your customers get the best possible results. If you don’t have the time to do that work, why have a search engine?

The thing is that, if you remove search, you remove the ability for users to easily create a custom page that matches their interests. Why does this matter? Well, it might not right now, but once RSS aggregators become usable (ala iTunes), users will expect to be able to create custom feeds to receive notification of new, relevant, content is posted to your site, for example when a product becomes available.

As it goes, I do agree that you must always weigh-up all aspects of your user experience and refine your interface, as Alan Cooper's Axiom goes, 'No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better'. But what if search does help people, should you not make an effort to improve it?

Is Your Homepage Immature?

2006-04-29T14:59:00.000Z

adaptive path » is your homepage immature?

This article gets across some good principals but when it comes to the 'Six Steps to Help Your Homepage Grow Up' a bias towards large corporate websites is in evedence - how's about some advice for the fortune 5 million?

my del.icio.us tags for this post:
design
interactionDesign
usability/userExperience

Does Search Make Web Designers Redundant?

2006-04-29T14:15:00.000Z

In 'The Search Lurch: Have We Become Lazy Googlers or Smarter Web Researchers?', 4 distinguished internet luminaries answer questions on people's evolving use of search.

While search provides users with a consistent (and therefore easy to use) view of information from any website, web designers must still ensure that their interfaces provide obvious links to related information (that the user may or may not have been aware of).

This is a great little article but it doesn't cover how these points relate to the subscription model (RSS etc) that's emerging out of search.

my del.icio.us tags for this post:
design
search
interactionDesign
informationArchitecture
usability/userExperience

Firefox Flicks

2005-12-02T18:34:00.000Z

Obviously it should have come as no surprise that the folks over at Rocket Boom recorded a Firefox/IE survey today since the Mozilla foundation are actively encouraging a grass roots advertising campaign.

Find out Whether People Prefer Firefox or Internet Explorer

2005-12-02T15:10:00.000Z

Amanda Congdon interviews conducts a straw pole to discover whether the public prefer Firefox or Internet Explorer

Add an Alias to the Applications Folder in Your OS X Installers

2005-11-30T12:37:00.000Z

I recently wrote about how easy the Gizmo installer for OS X was, it seems that this style is becoming a trend for installers, with the newly released Firefox 1.5 following suite.

My only criticism of this design is that they've added a little black arrow which looks like it's supposed to be a mouse pointer. I suppose the point is to make it obvious that you're supposed to drag the Firefox icon to the applications folder. Just doesn't quite work for me.

Fluxiom

2005-11-24T14:32:00.000Z

fluxiom matches about as many web 2.0 criteria as any app I've seen and it's not even available yet.

New Plone-based Website for Local (Brighton) Gallery

2005-11-23T17:31:00.000Z

We just finished a new website for local gallery: Two Kats and a Cow.

It's a fully editable Plone-based website and all the content added by it's owners (3 artists).

Gizmo Installer

2005-11-16T16:55:00.000Z

One of the complaints I have about open source software is that it's not always the easiest to use, however the Gizmo, an open source equivalent to Skype) has one of the best OS X installers I've seen.

Under OS X you simply drag the application icon into the applications folder, to which the makers of Gizmo have thoughtfully included a shortcut.

Nice touch

Movies Showing how to Use the Plone Content Management System

2005-09-29T14:13:00.000Z

Several movies demonstrating how to edit your website using the Plone content management system are now available for your viewing pleasure.

Originally these movies were made available to BPMA (British Postal Museum & Archive) staff only as part of the training/documentation package delivered at the end of the site development.

These ties-in nicely with a recently published essay detailing lessons learned during the design and development of a Plone-based website.

Password-only Login

2005-08-30T16:27:00.000Z

Jason Fried at 37 Signals recently asked:

…What benefits are gained by doing away with the username and password process and replacing it with a cryptic URL that you can’t remember?

Users bookmarking unmemorable, arbitrary URLs will find it difficult to access their account from other machines. You can provide username/password access as an alternative but then you're back to square one.

Randomly generated passwords have problems too; users must either write the gibberish string on paper or change it, usually choosing the same password they use for their web email account. Chances are they've probably given you their email address to, so by this point, you have all the information you need to get into their account which they might see as a bad thing.

So…

Use just a passphrase?

Make it comprise two adjectives and a noun so it's easy to remember, e.g.

blue folded caliper

The user, on signing up, is presented with a choice of five such passwords from which they choose one.

When logging-in they use this one passphrase, nothing else.

The system would ignore spaces and not be case-sensitive, thus allowing for common typos.

Read more about this approach in The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, chapter 6, Navigation and Other Aspects of Humane Interfaces. It'll make a lot more sense than this rambling post I'm sure.

Article about developing editable sites in Plone.

2005-08-17T12:56:00.000Z

After completing work on The British Postal Museum and Archive's Plone based website, I colaborated with the client to produce this article:

Postal heritage and Plone, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love Content Management Systems.

Here's a screenshot of the site in question:

Some Websites I Designed

2005-07-27T14:37:00.000Z

This is not an exhaustive list, I've actually designed more than 50 websites, these are some of the more recent ones.

update: you can see screenshots from these websites at Flickr

GUI Widgets in Adobe Illustrator

2005-05-24T18:43:00.000Z

This is an Adobe Illustrator (version 10) document containg various useful GUI (graphical user interface) elements. I would really like to hear feedback about what needs to be added to make the thing more useful.

Screenshot of part of the Illustrator document

Download GUI Widgets 1.2.ai
(404K)

PHP Password Generator

2005-05-24T18:23:00.000Z

Does anyone know of a PHP-based system which is capable of generating passwords from randomly chosen adjectives and nouns e.g.

- savoury manlike oracle
- exclusive malformed seal
- old free papaya
- etc.

Maybe the question I should be asking is: Where can I obtain large lists of adjectives and verbs?

The reason I want to do this is to create a secure system that doesn't need a username and relies solely on the password, users would be presented with, say, 5 options for their 3-word 'pass-phrase' from which they would choose one. This method was suggested by Jeff Raskin in his book 'The Humane Interface'.

The Road Trip Effect in Google Maps

2005-05-14T00:01:00.000Z

The Road Trip Effect is an OS X application which allows you to create map route animations of journeys. But it's limited to using a straight line between 2 points. A plugin could be written for Firefox that uses the 'directions' feature in Google Maps to output a movie file.