J . M A I L

New bottom bar on TwitCritics

From the TwitCritics Blog:

Slight tweak to our bottom bar. We are in the process of working on a lot of exciting big things but we are still paying attention to the little details that make your experiences on twitcritics as easy and understandable as possible.

Our careful and considered solution to the bottom bar design was to group items according to who we think will be using them.

General Users:

Home, About, Press, Contact

Developers / Power-users:

Blog, Widget

Business (is self explanatory)

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Here at TwitCritics we believe, “Little things can make a big difference”.

Remove, Remove, Remove

Dieter Rams’ last of ten principles to “good design”:

• Good design is as little design as possible

Or in other words : remove, remove, remove…

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What does this mean for IT and its hardware and software solutions?

My personal opinion is that apple has been removing too much lately. USB ports, standard monitor ports, until recently form factor rigidity, separate headphone and microphone ports, ect.

I bet apple has studies to show they features are hardly ever used. True, I have never missed my cd-rom drive on my current laptop, I have never had more then two USB devices plugged in at once, I have never used my stand alone microphone port but they are removing my security net by telling me disuse means that simple presence doesn’t have meaning of a more abstract nature.

Sometime when we remove we lose more then we think. We can’t just keep removing forever. Remove one atom of H20 and you no longer have water. Just removing one of the smallest parts can show that the whole is often more than the sum of its parts.

Remove, remove, remove should be the mantra of many designers, including those working on interaction design (ie software design). However, this mantra should be tempered with careful and considered solutions to problems.

Time to do some removing of my own.

P.S. I am gonna start linking my blog posts to my FB account. The direction of my personal blog has changed and I feel it is OK to link it to my FB again.

What’s in a name? The usability of web names

I learned today that on the web a name is not just a name.

Example 1: http://pixelposition.com/hyphens-underscores/

On twitcritics we were using underscores on our links to movies ie: http://twitcritics.com/movies/men_who_stare_at_goats

This is not the best practice. FTA:

Concensus of “repeat opinion” is that hyphens have an SEO value. Why? We know hyphens are seen as word separators. We don’t know, for sure, how Google, Yahoo! and Live Search interpret underscores.

Google’s does give their recommendation for URL structure in their Help pages.

Consider using punctuation in your URLs. The URL http://www.example.com/green-dress.html is much more useful to us than http://www.example.com/greendress.html. We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs.

Vanessa Fox wrote about best practices for image filenames on Jane and Robot. She discusses the issue in the following paragraph:

Make image filenames descriptive

If your filename includes multiple words, use hyphens to separate them (search engines tend to see a hyphen as a separator and an underscore as a joiner (so lavendar_plant would be seen as one word and lavender-plant would be seen as two).

The following is from April 2006 from Matt Cutts’ blog, Google’s chief engineer:

And speaking of putting a dash in URLs, hyphens are often better than underscores…

I made a mistake when thinking about the design of our web links on twitcritics. I will learn from it and hopefully you can learn from my mistake before you do it too.

Example 2: Picking a twitter name

Users on twitter with number or underscores just get less followers. Don’t use them.

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Do:

• try to make your name as short as possible, when people want to retweet your posts every character will count and 140 characters go quickly (why waste them with your user name?)
• use your real name in your twitter user name, people are already hard enough to find online

Don’t:

• use gimmicky names on twitter
• use numbers or underscores

Where is the snail that used to deliver all my mail?

I want to discuss three things. (1) A cool news website. (2) Things worth spending $$$ on. (3) Start ups and umbrella companies.

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(1) I have been using the site Newsmap (http://newsmap.jp/) for a while now and I really like it.

“Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.’

It allows me to quickly scan Canadian and American news stories. I started really liking the boxy size relevant design implementation after using SequoiaView to see files on my hard drives.

For news, this information visualization technique is awesome. I highly recommend giving it a try.

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(2) Things worth spend $$$ money on, and I mean big money if necessary. It was just a passing thought today and I will come up with some things as I type.

• Nice Bed Sheets (we all sleep a lot, me especially, nice sheets make life better and they don’t have to cost to much $$$. Costco has the best sheets I have ever used.)
• Cellphones (while some might disagree a nice phone makes geeky people like me joyful. I am just waiting for something like the moto Droid to be release in Canada.)
• Bikes (bikes are fun, they require very little upkeep and money once built [unlike cars] and they get you places fast while allowing for a bit of exercise along the way.)
• Books (they can literally change your life. Books are something I should spend more time with.)
• Bags/Knapsacks (I carry my chrome messenger bag with me everywhere. It has paid for itself in usefulness over and over again. You get what you pay for when it comes to bag so why not treat yourself.)
• Food (you get out what you put in. Having said that I still like a few questionable things, “McDonalds, I’m loving it!”)
• Money Clips (once you try a good one you will never go back to a bulky wallet - http://www.aperfectwallet.com/)
• Dark Chocolate and Coffee (needs no explanation.)

Have any other suggestions?

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(3) Start-ups and Umbrella Companies

The more press www.twitcritics.com gets the more I realize that a lot of it comes from start up new sites. Out there on the web there is a whole sea of start-ups of every imaginable nature. I guess this should have been obvious to me as starting a business is a very common thing.

But, I also realize that a commonality between a lot of these start ups is an umbrella company that contains them. These umbrella companies are typically small, offering a number of small products. For example: http://www.83degrees.com/ the makers of 30 boxes (a popular online calender). It is really amazing what a small agile team can do. Sure big corporations like Google and Microsoft do amazing things with their armies of employees but I think people often underestimate the work of a few good people. The web lends itself especially well to the small team approach. Take a small group of motivate and talented people and let their imaginations run wild and you will be left with a whole bunch of awesome small projects.

TwitCritics itself is moving in this direction, diversifying and dreaming big. Seeing all the other people out there dreaming big is inspiring. A small number of people can do amazing things and amazing things are awesome!

Variations on an Appreciation Theme

Wanna get a quick review of a movie? There’s a tweet for that.

This week TwitCritics.com launched. This is my first foray into a business oriented internet app. I have learned a lot already. It has been awesome to see the initial idea go from prototype to production. It is a very different thing to see this project take flight as opposed to seeing a school project being realized.

I am also facing new problems that I never really though about when setting up a business. Who owns what? Do we get a business number? A business bank account? What does it mean for a site to be successful? What metrics can we use to say we are doing well?

I am also learning that when you I ask these people about these issues I get a wide range of answers. Some answers are scary and others a relief. It all really depends on who you ask.

I plan to start another web business in the new year and think that all this stuff I am learning now is going to be instrumental to me when I do. Much like I have learned a tremendous amount about what it means to be a grad school through the hardships of my masters I think that the problems we encounter with TwitCritics will make me stronger.

This whole project has also really made me appreciate the friends I have. Maybe the most important part of my CIS degree will be the friends I have made. Having smart, creative, and supportive people all around me is wonderful. There is always someone to turn to for help, suggestions, and a kind word. Having compatriots going through the same challenges makes the whole journey more exciting and enjoyable. Thanks everyone ( :-) love )

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I have started back at the gym and in doing so I realize how tiring it can be. Once I get into the habit I usually feel great after a workout but just getting back into I feel I am getting the strain a new person to the gym might feel. After working out I kinda feel like poop and can empathize with people going once and then never going back. The secret is I know it will get easier, then really awesome. I am happy just to be able to work out. To get to a place of harmony between my body and mind and get out there are work hard and push myself. This may not always be the case and I am glad that I can take advantage of my abilities to do so now.

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My thesis survey had a few hiccups. Gonna get it back on track tonight.

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