If you tried to visit earlier today you would have noticed my bandwith had been exceeded. I didn’t realize WordPress was set to display the ‘last 105 posts’ on the home page. Each page load added up to over 2G pretty quickly. Ooops. Sorry, Brad.
Let me be one of the last people to point out the obvious: it’s about time we had some delete buttons on Gmail.
Okay, I know I have a problem, but I was ‘poking’ around on Facebook today (pun intended) and I usually click around and see if I can find anything new. It’s kinda hard to find out if there’s a change anywhere becuase Facebook doesn’t have a blog or anything (ahem, Noah?) but that’s okay, I clicked on ‘My Privacy’ today and bam!, it’s different. I refreshed the home page like 20 times and haven’t seen any mention on the ‘Next Step’ either.
I hated this page because it was like, 2047 check boxes with 32 different radio buttons to select. But now it’s narrowed our privacy settings down to ‘Normal’, ‘Reserved’, ‘Paranoid’ or a custom mixture of options.
This seems like one of those little things, but for some it’s kinda a big deal. With a lot more people jumping on the site now (alumni, staff, even parents!) it’d be nice to make sure you can be as open as you want without the whole world knowing about you.
It also looks like you don’t need to know a person’s email address if you want to block them anymore. It’ll do a search for you and let you select them to be blocked. This is much simpler and almost one of those no-brainers… it’s about time.
Also, for those who aren’t yet married yet but are planning on it, it looks like ‘Engaged’ has been added to the relationship status. Very exciting! I’m sure this applies to plenty of people. I already added a girl friend of mine as ‘Engaged’.
Since she already accepted it I don’t think I need to buy a ring…
I bring to you another Shoddy Site of the Day. This one comes from the clothing retailer, American Eagle. I’ve always had a problem with AE’s style because the girl’s clothing looks so nice and sophisticated whereas the guys dress as if they can’t really see the mixture of colors they just put on.
Now I feel the same about their ‘All Access Pass’es website. I don’t know if their designers really saw what they put together. Heck, I don’t even know if they tried it out themselves.
I guess what everyone is trying to do with websites these days is stand out. Yes, a weird unusable website is what makes you unique… just like everyone else.
In any case, this user-interface is laughable. I don’t even want to share it but you can see just from opening up aeallaccesspass.com and clicking one of the buttons. Warning: yes you indeed are at risk of having a seisure from all the movement. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It gets worse if you actually login. Honestly, I don’t pay $60/month to watch the website load itself. I thought the point of high-speed was no waiting.
Again, this looks like a classic designer’s case of ‘I can do it so I should‘. Hovering navigation windows and popup windows are so ‘cluttery’ that I absolutely detest having to take on so many active objects at once.
Plus, in Firefox the page loads, you can see it but there’s something in the background that takes another (literally) 5 minutes to load the page. During this time you’re held hostage and you can’t click on anything else.Oh, and when you click any of the navigation the image breaks and shifts down and does all sorts of troubling things. Essentially the one way to get around the website breaks when you want to use it.
This website sucks as much as the men’s shirts. This site alone is too much trouble. I don’t care how much I can save on jeans next time I stop in, I’m done with the ‘All Access Pass’.
Keep it simple, stupids!
A while back, Seth posted on ‘stuck systems‘. Seth talked about turning a list of ISBN numbers into a fully functional bibliography (and more). I figured, ‘that can’t be too hard’ so I made a quick page to demonstrate how simple it is. He agreed it was pretty simple by showing the world my quick creation.
So what’s the problem?
Unfortunately, concepts like bibliographies are too far engrained in our behavior that any kind of change seems nearly impossible. Making an idea like this ‘stick’ with people is the real marketing challenge. Unfortunately, as he mentions, it’s hard for anyone to readily accept this concept.
But, I’ve always loved a challenge.
That’s why I’d like to take my ~100 line script and turn it into a fully functional resource. I’ve run into another student, Jonathan, who has already embarked on this (ThatsCrazyHot.com) and it’s a good start. I hate the name though. Sure, it’s one thing to be radical but the name does nothing for anyone. It tells us nothing, it sounds sopohmoric and I don’t see many people embracing it to begin with.
So, I’ve decided to start developing this project a bit furthur. I think, as with any service, it has to be exceptionally easy and fully functional. No logins, no forms, just add the ISBN and go.
The biggest problem I’ve run into is getting all of the required information. Sure, Amazon.com has the publisher and date.. but almost no one has the publisher’s location. I’ve found a site but it doesn’t allow automatic scripts to load their page. Anyone else with it requires you to license their content. This should be fun to get around. My only thought right now is load the available data I can into my own ‘ISBN database’ from Amazon.com and allow users to either comfirm or edit a located ISBN’s information.
I was thinking I’d take that aforementioned site and load it in a frame below the page. This page will have already loaded the correct book (apparently that’s allowed) but then the user will need to enter the publisher’s location manually. In other words, there is an input box at the top that says ‘Location’ and a page loaded at the bottom that says ‘Location: New York’. Keep in mind, this is just at the beginning as the database is populated.
I don’t know, I keep tossing the idea around. I wish the information were more readily available. That would certainly solve the ‘easy’ issue.
Then, and only then, could I even consider marketing this product and making it, as Seth said, “viral”.
…but I guess the product itself should be viral.
Hmmm…
I’d like to introduce you all to The Shoddy Site Of the Day: Breckenridge.Snow.Com. Overall the site is pretty nice. Very informative. I popped online last night to figure out the conditions for today. I can find everything I need on this site…
Except a useful map.
Seriously, at a ski resort, your product is the mountain. Why do you force me to look at what you’d like to call a ‘new interactive trail map‘. People are not so dumb that they need a drop down to show them what a trail is. I’d guess its all that space inbetween the green tree-looking stuff. I wish I knew what that stuff was… but it’s not labeled on the interactive trail map. Sigh…
Seriously, I have to look at this thing first to then realize what I really came for is a little link at the top of this window.
You be the judge: stupid, useless, busy, and animated map or practical, even printable, trail map.
This is a classic designer’s case of ‘I can do it so I really should’. I find none of this to be useful. If I want to find the black trails, I look for the… black colored trails? Honestly. Look at the compass in the bottom corner. If you hover over it the compass blurs.
What the hell? Why? It does me no good to see a blurred compass!
“Hey Mark, look, its called ‘onmouseover’, I should really make it do something!” “Yeah man, since you can you really should.”
…and that is why I call this my Shoddy Site of the Day.
?Meh.?
But seriously, if I had known this was coming I would have spent the extra 2 seconds (times 300 friends) to go through and append the ?date? that I met everyone. Now all that time spent has been almost for no reason. On the good side, I was able to filter out like 10-20 people that I didn?t really have as friends.
Now this new feature requires me to go back and add the date to each person. In my honest opinion, Facebook should do a little bit of math to figure out when high/middle/elementary school was for me. That way I don?t have to go through dozens of contacts and add the years. You guys already know I graduated from Lakewood High School in ?04. Let?s put all those ?high school friends? somewhere near 2004?
Also, why does it assume that when I put ?met in an organization? that it was in the past? We?re still in that organization. So, unless I put a year in (the past) how about you a) assume it was this year and b) put ?You and ____ are (not were) members of _____??
The idea is pretty neat but right now it all seems a bit? cluttered. Since I have so many friends from only one or two years can we make it an iframe or something? Something that I could scroll if wanted but it?s so obnoxious. Perhaps making a ?wall? of friends above the categorization of them? That would look a bit neater I think. You could easily quadruple the number of people on each line then (thus saving precious scrolling time).
Can we start adding previous classes to this timeline? Like a new page on our profile to put all semesters of college? Then maybe it can start highlighting people that were simultaniously in those classes? This way I don?t have to manually think about who did what with me. They can add it to their own profile and then Facebook will do the dirty match-up work. Come on, make it easier for me, please? Plus, I feel I could start to trend how I met people (friends of friends from class last semester, etc). Can our current previous jobs and activites be included in this timeline profile (for the same reasons)? That way I don?t even have to pick a year (mentioned two paragraphs ago), Facebook figures it out for me, again.
Also, can you announce this to people the same way you announced the high school version of Facebook? (A message at the top to be ?hidden?) People will not find this very easily. In fact, I showed a few people today and they admitted they would never have noticed it in the first place.
Okay, thats enough stream of consciousness for now.
Today Noah and I decided to launch the yopos network and I?m excited for the potential it has. The direction of the network is to be decided by our founding members but the two Noahs (Kagan/Brier) and I have some thoughts on what to do with it. Our intention is to essentialy create a group of smart and capable yopos (young professionals). We?ve invited a number of individuals and I?m looking forward to working with our members.But wait, what is our purpose? Well first, it?s to create relationships among yopos such as ourselves. Second, its to spotlight our members and their blogs. Finally, it?s to create an environment for collaboration. The Noahs and I, as I mentioned, have some great ideas and I look forward to seeing what we can do.
Anyway, we sent out our first wave of invites and are starting to receive confirmations back. Be sure to check out yopos.com, bookmark it, subscribe, do whatever, because we?re gonna be big?
