It does what its title says, a neat summary and analysis of your site. Google got a perfect rating, search.yahoo.com got 3 cautions, alltheweb.com got 1 caution. The site itself, looks like it had a lot of data, but got a perfect score. The site also has monthly internet bandwidth reports. “Broadband share in the US should exceed 50% by June of 2004.” If you are interested in more broadband news, you can read, The many paradoxes of Broadband.
Data entry is the bane of computer users. We have to do an action and tell the computer we did it. Qlogger.com is a traditional web logging tool with specialized log type visualization. Do you mind entering detailed data on you daily jogging experience? Visualizing the data collected is a relatively easy task compared to collecting it. How long will it take for your treadmill or pedometer to talk to other apps?
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A number of problems can be solved or avoided completely with communication,says Chris Sells. But, we generally don’t like to show others the process that has been followed to achieve a result. JD points to the sausage story while informing the MX 2004 beta testers not to disclose information about the processes followed. “Talking about what a feature is intended to accomplish a fine, but talking about the path it took to get there, or some of the discussions in the private beta forums, are usually better left unsaid.” A process can be separated into logic and states. Communicating only the different states of a project helps reduce problems and keeps the logic that went through private.
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“You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.” Frank Lloyd Wright. David Crow lists lots of links on paper prototyping. Now, what if using a sledgehammer became as simple as using an eraser. Adding functionality to existing sites is becoming simpler due to reuse of code and components. Tracking user actions can also be done to a limited extent. Testing features live on a sample of users can give concrete results.
It is always better to use paper prototyping if there are lots of options to be tried out and the feature is still in a conceptual stage. Live testing could be considered if better feedback and easier implimentation tools are available.
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Pew has the latest statistics for web usage in US. “Some online activities such as email are universally popular, but others, including online shopping, are favored only in certain regions.” Another set of rankings is the Nielsen//NetRatings’ current events/news sites. According to audience served, CNN, MSNBC, Y! news, AOL are the top 5. Google news ranking is not taken into account, but it is expected to be around 18.
Want to get your hands on Actionscript 2.0 before the books roll out in mid october, here’s the Javascript 2.0 pdf, very similar to AS2.0. From ericd.net.
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JD points to this Guardian article about a remarkable account of a person seeing for the first time since he was three. This article shows that the experience before learning an interface is vastly different from the one after learning the interface. This is an important factor to be taken into concideration in usability tests.
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Micha Alpern writes why we need a WYSIWYG XML editing tool instead of a WYSIWYG html tool.”We often want to manipulate the structure and the presentation at the same time, but it’s important that within the underlying representation these two layers remain separate. It’s because this separation exists that you can copy and past a column from Excel into Word as either plain text, formatted text, a table, or an actual Excel object.” Now the problem is getting users to put metadata along with the data they write. As John Udell points out, the answer is to give the users tangible benifits while they anoint the data. For example if the user uses tag, an ability to list all the quotes on the blog, ability to list of all the posts with quotes, on the blog. Different presentation formats: How the post will look on blog front page, on the blogs internal page, in an aggregator should be available to the user on the XML editor interface.
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Mitch Kapor posted a request for guest blogging he recieved, after removing all the proper nouns to protect the identity of the user. JJG found a way to identify the writer. Just google for a rare phrase used in the text. Googling for “disruptive competitive advantage” gave the answer in this case. Now only if google found patterns in writing. Thanks to Navneet Nair for the link.
Macromedia announces Flash MX 2004 Professional, making it simpler for developers to make Rich internet apps. Flash is now available as MX 2004 and as MX 2004 Professional. Their features are documented here. The new action script books will be released around mid october.
There was a cool web presentation on Breeze publicized on JD’s blog, an hour before it began. I got in a little late but saw lots of cool stuff. The conference administrator sends you a link. You login as guest with your user name and the administrator lets you in. If you are on dialup, voice is available on a toll free number with a passcode. The participants can talk on the side while the presentation is going on. The refresh rate was about 1f/s. A screen shot of the breeze presentation is here.
There is also info about central at actionscript.com.
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