Scripting News

The user experience has been a disaster

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:31:04 GMT

The NY Times has a piece today where they say the mobile web is so close yet so far.

"The user experience has been a disaster," says Tony Davis, managing partner of Brightspark, a Toronto venture capital firm that has invested in two mobile Web companies.

The NY Times has totally ignored the NY Times River, which makes the Times work on mobile devices with ease of use that they so often report is eluding them.

It's like a fly perched on the end of your nose. You can feel it but it won't come into focus. Please, Times people, I beg you -- use it to read the Times while you're riding on the subway or waiting at a red light, in line at D'Agostinos, Katz's, Junior's, Original Ray's, The 2nd Ave Deli, Sammy's or Zabar's.

You'll fall in love. I promise. (At least someone will. There must be some news junkies at the Times??)

PS: I don't think the Times has a mechanism to cover itself as a technological innovator. As far as I know they never ran a story explaining what RSS is and the role the Times played in making it a standard. It's vexing. It's not as if the Times doesn't report on itself, it does.

PPS: Thanks to the Times for the link love from the main Tech page today.

Digging into the latest Facebook privacy issue

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:10:30 GMT

In response to yesterday's piece about gaining control of our data, jmdelaney says that the newest Facebook issue is serious. I don't doubt that it is, I just don't fully understand the issue, and I bet a lot of other people don't either.

To restate my point -- there is some kind of disclosure we want them to do, and others we don't. Let's not say all disclosure is bad. I might not mind having a purchase of an electronic gadget be a public act (with conditions) where I would mind disclosure of medications. Clearly this should be up to the individual to decide. Until I understand how it works, I'd like the default to be opt-out, and I decide to opt-in on a case by case basis.

What conditions might apply? Well, if they're going to disclose that I bought a Slingbox, there ought to be a way for me to attach to that reference a diary of my experiences with the product. The link shouldn't be without risk to the vendor, it should carry information that's useful to other potential purchasers.

To say that I bought a ticket on American Airlines to fly from New York to San Francisco via Dallas should allow me to add that I missed my connection because the first flight was delayed, and AA refused to cover my hotel expense. Otherwise, of what value is this to the user, and why shouldn't we switch to another network that gives us the ability to communicate about products. Or do they give us that ability?

How little we know about what they're doing. Please post links to screen shots. Help us figure it out. As far as I know Facebook hasn't leaked any of my data (or have they?)

Scott Rafer has two excellent posts on this topic.

Ethan Zuckerman explains, with screen shots. "Pardon me while I switch all my embarrasing purchasing behavior over to another browser that doesn't know anything about my social networking sites."

Om Malik in Berkeley

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 02:11:16 GMT

Subscription list interchange may be prior art

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:55:31 GMT

I have to write a piece about how OPML came to be the defacto standard for interchange of subscription lists. I hadn't thought about it this way until just now but it's actually the model for what I want Netflix and Yahoo to do with movie rating data, and now it's just been suggested that the model be used for interchange of social network data. I know the gurus of this probably won't like it, but it actually a good use case. This could be the beginning of an interesting comment thread.

I want control of my data

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:50:20 GMT

A few weeks ago I not only gave $100 to MoveOn.org, but I also encouraged readers of this blog to do so. Now I regret it. Why? Well, I gave them the money thinking I was supporting a group that was working to end the war in Iraq. Now they've launched a campaign against Facebook, a naive one, and in what way is that consistent with the goals of the organization I gave money to?

Every time Facebook moves, they stir up stuff. It happened when they first implemented the innovative news feed feature. All of a sudden you could keep up to date on who's-with-who without visiting their profile page. The users of Facebook had been counting on lack of interest, on obscurity, to keep information they consider private out of view of people, who, because they're "friends" have been granted access to the information. By automating the process, much as RSS readers automated news gathering for blogs and newspapers, the information was no longer obscure.

Facebook held their ground, and now the news feed is part of the fabric of their community, and people presumably are a bit more careful about what they post. That's what they should have been doing all along, a safe computing expert would likely say.

Now they're breaking down another barrier and of course there's a sense of violation, and I'm not saying that Facebook is right, but before we claim they're wrong, let's understand what's going on.

There are thorny issues here, but we want these companies to give up control of our information, and we don't want them to be overly scared of public opinion as they do it.

And this is hardly the most important giving up of control. Most important, I want them to give me control of my data.

So before we overly politicize the leading edge of technology, let's get together on what actually does and doesn't serve the user's interest.

I want Netflix and Yahoo to give me an XML version of my movie ratings, for me to decide what to do with. I've been asking for this for a couple of years, I still don't have it. This is information I created. I want to keep a copy. I want to make sure that Netflix knows about all my Yahoo ratings and vice versa. I'd like to give a copy to Facebook (assuming they agree to not disclose it) and maybe to Amazon, so they can recommend products I might want to purchase (again keeping it to themselves). I want to begin a negotiation with various vendors, where I give them something of value, and they give me back something of value.

The leaders of Silicon Valley begrudgingly gave up their view of us as couch potatoes, now they think of us as generators of content they can put ads on (and pay us nothing). We still need to work on that respect thing. When I have an XML file here on my local hard drive that they want they'll make me a better offer. Two companies that are not as shiny as they used to be, Netflix and Yahoo, have the power to take a leadership role in a what will be the next revolution of the Internet, but neither of them are moving.

That's something worth fighting for, because once one vendor gives us power over our data, the dominoes will start falling, I bet it'll happen very quickly.

Today's impulse purchase

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:55:10 GMT

Okay it is Black Friday...

And I want to help the world economy, so...

As an act of patriotism...

I purchased one of these babies...

For Saturday delivery!

Click the pic for the Amazon product page.

PS: Thinking about getting one of these, to capture over the air broadcasts. Is that what it does??

workspace.folderToRss

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:45:05 GMT

This OPML Editor script takes a folder of images, and turns it into an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures, and optionally uploads the images to S3. It could easily be converted to handle other data types.

I'm publishing this so it shows up in Google, making it easy for me to find it later. If you want to use, feel free, no support, every caveat applies. You're probably better of coding this from scratch yourself.

Pink hardhat

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:53:35 GMT

I took this pic in Dec 2005 in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Another, less impulsive, purchase

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:29:46 GMT

I also bought three of:

Because...

1. They're easy to lose or misplace.

2. They're damned useful.

3. On sale, 3-for-the-price-of-1!

Hope you had a great party yesterday!

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:27:59 GMT

Now comes the aftermath...

Cold turkey in the fridge.

Turkey soup on the stove.

Did you go shopping at 4AM?

Yawwwwn. Time for coffee.

Newspapers and url shortening

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:23:51 GMT

Commenting on yesterday's piece, Hanan Cohen says that newspapers in Israel use TinyUrl to publish web addresses on paper. This is both a good idea and not such a good idea.

First, it's a good idea because it saves space and in print, space is at a premium.

But they're leaving money on the table. If they used their own web address they could monitor traffic, see how many clicks each location in the paper generated. Maybe stories on the op-ed page generate more clicks than those on the front page? Maybe stories by Ms. Jones get more clicks than those by Mr. Smith? There's also a chance to reinforce the brand, and drive more traffic to your site as opposed to tinyurl.com. And it's good for the web, because it helps keep us from centralizing too much on one site. Lots of reasons to put up your own url shortener.

So someday you might see urls like this in the NYT...

http:\//nyt.us/7h

It's going to be a busy day here, so probably not too many posts. If you're in the US, good luck in your travel or prep for the big holiday tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also the day when the OPML 2.0 spec is finalized. If you have any further comments, this is the last minute! As they say, speak now or forever be a ~~troll~~ turkey.

Otherwise, we'll have a new official format to deploy starting tomorrow.

Thanks everybody!!!

Party in London on December 7?

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:21:21 GMT

I'll be in London the evening of December 7, probably fairly jetlagged (my flight from SF gets in at 1PM), but ready to have dinner and fraternize with British readers of this blog. Can anyone help put on a little dinner? I can promote from this side, but admit to knowing little to nothing about London. If you have an idea, please post a comment.

Building TwitterGram into a really big thing!

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:06:16 GMT

I love TwitterGram. It's a really cool tool, I use it when I have an idea to communicate and I'm nowhere near a laptop or desktop. I call the special number, 646-716-6000, speak for up to 30 seconds and the system takes care of the rest.

Yesterday I did a gram as I drove across the Bay Bridge and was amazed that I could tap into the wifi signal of a nearby AC Transit bus.

It's for little ideas that you want to share quickly. All you need is a cell phone.

I want to keep TwitterGram competitive, to make a business of it. I need a smart young person with lots of energy to manage the product. We'll need a CEO, if it's going to turn into a company. We need to lobby Twitter to add a key feature, or figure out how to provide the functionality without Twitter. And we could use a programmer and a site designer too, to get started.

I'm interested in ideas and looking for people to help me build this tool into a product, and maybe a company.

Whit is editing Seesmic Daily

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:23:01 GMT

Hanging with Loic

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:33:52 GMT

I'm here in San Francisco hanging out with Loic Le Meur of Seesmic. We just read an announcement on TechCrunch that Mike Arrington has invested in his company. Now seems like a good time to say that I too have invested in this excellent multimedia startup. Good luck to all of us.

I also did a brief interview with Loic where he tells who else has invested. You have to watch the video to find out!

Photo: Whit is editing Seesmic Daily.

Solving the TinyUrl centralization problem

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:50:13 GMT

Following up on yesterday's bit about centralizing and TinyUrl, this is one of those vexing problems that actually has a solution!

Every web app that produces long urls should provide a built-in url-shortening facility. The user interface would be similar to the one in Google Maps they call "Link To This Page." You click on it, and up pops a box containing an address you can use to point to the page. Screen shot.

But look at the size of the url that Google gives you. It should be short. Why not something like: http:\//goog.us/8uj9oj.

In other words, why doesn't Google have a built-in shortnener?

When blogging software gives you a permalink, it should be short. It's okay to make the user ask for one, why clog up the system with shortened urls no one uses.

Another key point, when they give you a shortened url, it should point back to the software that gave it to you, so the shortened link will be exactly as long-lived as the thing it's pointing to. In other words, the URL shortener wouldn't contribute any extra link rot, to use an old term coined (I believe) by Jakob Nielsen.

It's a mistake, in hindsight, for Twitter to give us TinyUrl urls, because the link depends on two companies and two servers. It would be better if it just depended on one, less likely to break.

Now that URL length has become an issue for users, it might be even better for designers to view URLs as part of site design. Look at the address for the page for the Wii at Amazon. Wouldn't it be easier to find if the address were:

http://www.amazon.com/wii

Try clicking on it -- it actually works!

Why should a user ever see the longer crappy url?

In other words, url-shortening isn't just for Twitter users, it's for everyone. Maybe most people don't look at the urls, but some do, and maybe more would if they made more sense?

Update: This reminds me, I have my own url-shortener, as I mentioned earlier, but it's a dynamic app, and that bothers me. I'd much rather put a static file in my web server folder that would be understood by a browser as meaning "redirect to this location." I know there are htaccess files in Apache, and other mechanisms in other servers, but I keep coming back to this. I know that there is a <meta> option to redirect, maybe I should use this for a all-static url shortener. Hmmm. I wanted to do one of these conventions for RSS, but I couldn't sell it to other aggregator devs.

I did a test, it's not nearly instantaneous. The source.

Kindle's most interesting feature

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:52:46 GMT

The most interesting thing I've heard so far sbout Kindle is that it is untethered. It does its own synching, it doesn't depend on a computer to do it, eliminating the chief hassle of iPods.

Can it subscribe to a podcast feed? Can it play audio? I don't know.

Kevin Marks says that Kindle requires DRM. "It makes things do less and cost more, and means they will break suddenly without warning when the service inevitably goes bust."

David Rothman is an eBook expert with a blog. I'm subscribed. Apparently he's been following the development of Kindle for a long time. Thanks to Amyloo for the pointer.

Apple's most annoying feature

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:18:41 GMT

I don't use a Kindle (see above) and I suspect I never will, I couldn't get myself to spring for the $399, which is relatively cheap for a new device with EVDO built in. There's something about Kindle that creeps me out, like reserving a seat on an airplane in row 13. It feels unlucky.

I don't feel that way about Macs. I use them all the time. I'm typing this on a Mac, for example.

Until yesterday, the most annoying feature of a Mac was that it automatically launches iPhoto, a program which I loathe, every time I connect my iPhone or digital camera. I seem to remember, vaguely, giving it permission to do this, but where did I do that, so I can go back there to turn it off.

I did figure it out, but it took a few Google searches. It's in one of the stupidest least obvious places. It should be in the System Preferences app, since it's a system function. Another place I looked was in the prefs for iPhoto.

Post your theory in the comments for this post. If no one gets it in an hour or so, I'll post the answer here. But I suspect you guys already know, cause you know so much about Macs!

A Mac user you don't often hear from

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:16:01 GMT

Here's a comment from a photographer who is new to the Mac.

"I've been thrilled with the Mac so far and now Leopard just threw a major stumbling block in the road to getting a really simple task accomplished."

It's a must-read for people who who think that most people find the hidden features.

London and Paris in December

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:44:01 GMT

I'll be in London on December 7 and Paris on December 10.

Scoble will be in both places. The Americans come to town!

Looking forward...

"cheesecake"