Social media and the mob mentality failings.

Alas - Digg is having some serious growth problems (I will post about it soon).

The best example: Muslim community offended by NYC Apple 'Cube' Store

The sensational headline made me initially shake my head.

Reading the article made me incredulous. An uncited posting by one person on a single random website constitutes a community? Even more so, the organization that posted the no-references no-proof senationalist story has been accused of being pretty biased.

Alas, the mob went wild. ZDNet posted the raticle without even bothering to read it. So did TUAW. And then it hit Digg (and spread like wilfire onto other blogs). The comments were disgusting. People decrying a billion people because of a completely unsubstantiated report. Comments stating how the title made no sense were quickly buried. Mob mentality at its mind-numbing finest.

Update: Looks like Apple Gazette is help spreading truthiness.

11 Interesting thing about Google's Latest Offering - SearchMash

Hidden by all the noise about its Google Gadgets for webpages, Google has quietly launched SearchMash.

Stop reading this. The link above will open in a new window. Click on it, and give it a whirl.

The features page covers what they do pretty well, but a quick summary with a bit more detail:

1. The search box automatically has focus. Google, Yahoo, and MSN already do this on their frontpage. The difference with SearchMash is the search results page also has the input box have focus automatically. I personally don't like this (and wrestled with this choice over at iBegin) - I use FireFox and love the fact that if you start typing it automatically starts searching. This is very useful for me on the search results page, and forcing the input box active does not make me happy. The general population? I can see it useful there.


2. The [cached] [similar] etc links have been moved - while the page title links to the result page, the url is actually a drop down of those options (including open in this window, open in new window, etc). Not bad, but for non-JS users, it would be nice if the link worked like normal (instead of having nothing happen - always frustrating).


3. No ads. Not that big of a surprise there.


4. Image results right on the main search results page. Clicking on 'more images' gives you ... well ... image results. Clicking on an image simply takes you to the page where the image was found. I'm not a big fan of this as an image can easily 'roll off' a page that is being actively updated. The third image I clicked on - I could not find it anywhere on the resultant site.


5. AJAXified search results. I *much* prefer this than the stupid MSN live-infinite scroll bar. Click on 'more web pages' and the next 10 results are pulled inline . The only downside is that it will only go as far as the 90th result. After that - shucks for you.


6. CSS. While classic-Google has embedded and linked stylesheets, SearchMash is only linked. Incidentally they load up an additional stylesheet for IE. I don't blame them - I've done the same. Resizing the font-size did not cause the design to break (which I've seen happen quite regularly with CSS designs). No XHTML


7. Clean URLs. Search for 'toronto' gave me this: http://www.searchmash.com/search/toronto. The image search results is this page: http://www.searchmash.com/search/images:toronto


8. The frontpage has a 30000 ms 'idle' timer. If you don't do anything, it asks you to try exploring popular searches. The link: http://www.searchmash.com/explore. Clicking on that link forwards you to a random (popular) search.


9. No submit button. Sort of an odd choice, but it seems to have been killed. Not even on the inner pages.


10. Hiding the Google ownership. Not even the about page mentions Google. The Privacy and ToS page give it away.


11. Do a search (eg toronto), and the search results are numbered. Move your mouse over a number, and re-order the results (the original rank stays). They say they have no use for it ... for now.

Overall I have to say it is impressive. No ads, easy way of browsing results, and blazing fast. For now I am going to add it as my default search for FireFox and give it a extended whirl.

iBegin Toronto Donation Drive

iBegin Toronto is having a donation drive. For every review or picture added until October 15, 50 cents will be donated to The Assaulted Women's Helpline.

We want to raise $10,000 - please help make it happen.

AJAX Feedback Mechanism

A little peice we released over at iBegin - an AJAX Feedback Mechanism to quickly get a feel for what your readers think of your site/blog.

AJAX Indicators

Get your AJAX indicators here. Simple yet useful.

Oh Web 2.0, can you stop sucking?

I'm a bit sad. There is all this hype flying around all these promises, all these dead ideas from the dotcom-era brought back, and the amount of critical feedback is almost nil.

The entire idea of creating sites in the hopes of being acquired is one of the most idiotic 'movements' I have seen in a while.

What was Done Right

Oh you say, what about Flickr, Delicious, and others? How are the latest sites not the same?

Lets look at some of them carefully first.

Flickr. Yahoo was extremely smart in acquiring these guys. There was a huge photo-sharing problem. People wanted to share photos, and it was hard. A tricky task that left people like my mother absolutely befuddled. Flickr made it easy. And not only did they make it easy, they packaged it beautifully. So what did Yahoo do? They acquired the leading website for one of the most basic functions of the internet - sharing photos. Not only that, but this was a great blow to the competition. Google would have loved to have been able to integrate Picasa with Flickr. Lastly, and something that no one seems to be mentioning, is that Yahoo basically bought and guaranteed massive amounts of pageviews, which will directly help extend the reach of their advertising platform. And I could be wrong, but I think Flickr used to use Google before.

Conclusion: leader in photo-sharing, lots of goodwill, blocked out a competitor, insured millions of adviews. Where is the downside?

Del.icio.us. Again, I have to say people are missing the trends. The valuation of link-text has been basically obliterated by SEO. Search engine technology seems to have stagnated - sure Google (and others) introduce measures to remove shopping/product sites from the organic listings, but the genius that was anchor text is no longer there. Furthermore, in order to maximize revenue, they need to macro-target. I could be on a sports site - do they show general ads, basketball ads, hockey ads, or baby products?

What both need is the ability to find out what interests you. Both have toolbars, basically created as harvesting tools to find out our habits. Lets say I visited sports.com, and Google knew that I liked basketball. Imagine how much more a targeted basketball ad could earn vs a generic sports ad. The upside is enormous.

Furthermore, Google and Yahoo need to gauge the trustworthiness of a site. Again, not a simple task - they need data and more data to find out what truly is relevant and useful to the end user. And not only tons of data, but data they can trust.

Enter del.icio.us. Here we have people happily posting their bookmarks, sharing with others what they believe to be ‘quality’ sites. Not only that, but you can also see who else likes the same link. Throw in time-based tracking (eg a news event hits and some link suddenly becomes extremely popular) and instantly you have a very credible way of gauging authority. Sure the audience is tech/geek oriented, but the voting power of 300,000+ users is astounding. Just like PageRank was one factor in the grand scheme of ranking (albeit a strong one), so can the delicious popularity of a site.

Conclusion: the search engines desperately want to find a way of gauging relevance. What better way than to track behavior through the toolbar and the ‘bookmarkability’ of a site?

Upcoming.org, Writely, and etc: I don't believe these have large-scale plans (maybe Writely), but they are again a way of tapping into audiences. Upcoming.org brings another social interaction site, tracking events, and the popularity of each event. Writely of course brings tons of information, which Google just loves. Writely could also be a tool to be integrated into their own products - the product is slick and nice, so why not? Lastly are just protective measures - make sure your competition doesn't get to it first.

So the above all make sense. Some more than others, but the two most popular examples make a lot of sense. 300,000 users telling you what is relevant and what isn't allowing you to make your search engine more relevant? Easily worth 50 million+ in a multi-billion industry.

What Most of Them are Doing

Now we come to the 'other sites'. The latest sites getting buzz that hasn’t been seen in a long time. It is important to remember that the abovementioned sites are in the minority. The majority is as follows:

A few differences between the hopeful and the established immediately arise:

1. They aren't first movers. Flickr and Delicious and Digg all were early to the game, and gained a strong following. Nowadays web 2.0 'startups' are like rabbits, spawning left and right. These new sites just can't match the critical mass.
2. They don't solve a problem (to cite Seth Godin). I don't have an invite problem, and I don't have a problem of blogging through my browser (to name just two). Sure at some point in time I may, but their brands are so weak that I won't even know to go to their site. They may have the most amazing and slick and easy to use interface, but it doesn't matter if no one wants it.
3. The entire model is to get acquired. Without critical mass, Flickr and Delicious would not have been big deals. There is no focus on making money - the entire idea is to coast until you get gobbled up.
4. Hype, stealth startups, and other insipid crap. None of my previous examples did that - they created a product, released it, and then continued to work on it, making it better and better. No talk about 'we are going to bring the world together everyone will love it' or 'just you wait and see this will blow your mind' or 'we are going to make 15 web 2.0 companies in the next 3 years but in the meantime will steal a design from another company and then replace it with a template straight from 1997.' It almost feels like a state of circle jerking with one insider hyping the other insider, and vice versa.

Some Hope for the Future

But, there are a few that have made me go 'wow'. Websites that have bright futures.

NetVibes (AJAX Homepages): People keep talking about how they have no business model, and it blows my mind. The internet is a massive jungle. There is content on every topic imaginable. To get to this content, most people go through a search engine. A lot of people have search engines as their front page. And this is the important part - the company that acts as the interface to the internet for the masses has immense (money making) power. Case in point - NetVibes. For a second, let us say that NetVibes is getting 100,000 repeat users a day. And then they decide to switch from weather.com to AccuWeather. Instantly the brand-awareness of AccuWeather goes up. Next time people talk about weather, they will think ... AccuWeather. Now extend this to any other category. How about search? People in general, once happy, stick with what they’ve got. So now, instead of having Google as the default search engine, you have MSN. *BAM* - 100,000 users who would have used Google and now use MSN. If MSN’s results quality is near Google, the user won’t care to go back to Google.

The start page area will become one of the most competitive areas in the next coming years. Imagine NetVibes striking a deal with a PC company to make their site the default homepage. The power wielded by being the starting page for millions of users is simply astounding. Not only could the leader in the homepage area easily be worth a lot and be acquired, but at the same time it could make a ton of money.

These homepages are a case where AJAX truly freed them.

Visual Link Tracking: Over at Blog Flux, we have developed our own JS-based link tracker, that tracks user clicks - the pages they clicked on, the text that was clicked on, breakdown per URL clicked, and so forth. And we have done the same for AdSense. But what really excited me, and we couldn't solve it properly, was building a dynamic heat map. And then I came across sites like crazyegg (there was a site I found earlier but unfortunately I couldn't find it). Now this is amazing. Not only do the link tracking, but then visually display it. For power users, this is basically ClickTracks put online. Perhaps not as powerful, but the instant heatmaps are simply fantastic. Another fantastic use of where AJAX let this happen - a non-AJAXed solution would have been cumbersome and slow, whereas this method unlocks so many doors it simply has me buzzing. Something like this could by the perfect fit for ClickTracks, or it could go with a paid subscription and make a good bit of money.

And in the End ...

And there you have it. 99% of web 2.0 is crap. The 1% that isn't can stand on their own or be a smart acquisition. Note that the 'or' part is the key element. Some good early products, some interesting ones coming out, and the rest just burning money.

Of course, I wouldn't mind being wrong here

iBegin:15 things that it does right (or just plain well).

I have mentioned iBegin here a few times. It is a project I have been working on for a while now, and today I finally released it for public consumption.

Obviously it is impossible for me to do an independent review. With that in mind, I have decided to point out 15 things that iBegin does right (or just plain well).

1. The front page is focused on search. There is no extra information to distract you - no tag cloud, no listings, nothing else in the way. The majority of users want to search, and don't need any distractions. The page loads fast (roughly 0.5 seconds form) and the search box is automatically focused.
2. We trust the user. You submit a listing, and it immediately goes live. Are we potentially open to spam? Yes. But as I had mentioned earlier, 99.9% of users are 'good' and have no intention of messing up the system. Trust the majority, and also trust them to help moderate the site.
3. Important search tips (highlighted on the first visit). There are various types of queries you can do, and it is important that the user can quickly see what different ways they can perform a search.
4. I sort of inferred to that on my public transit is important post, but iBegin does more than just simple text matching. The search attempts to give you the most relevant results on top (just like a normal search engine).
5. The results can be toggled between table-based or map-based. A small touch perhaps, but in some situations geographic location matters, whereas in others it doesn't.
6. The detailed page gives you the information you want immediately: contact info and address, summary review averages, details, and description. You can then scroll to see the map, pictures, and reviews. Pictures are embedded (thank you lightbox) so that they load immediately, instead of spawning a popup (which may be blocked) or loading another page. I can say that this can be slightly counter-intuitive to the power user, but after a few times it becomes much faster to just click or press 'X'
7. In-line (AJAX) ability to add/remove a favorite, add/edit tags, and to rate the usefulness of a review. 'Small' actions such as those should happen in the current page.
8. A searchbox to search for locations nearby on the details page. Make it easy on yourself.
9. Ability to toggle font size. A small feature, but if older people are going to be using the site it, it is a nice little feature. It uses JS cookies so it is remembered between pages (and visits).
10. A user system that ranks a user according to their contribution to the system. Imagine Google's PageRank but 'UserRank' instead. You can see how iBegin Toronto users rank.
11. Easily see what people have contributed. Unlike most social sites, users can submit a variety of different content. For example, see my own contributions to iBegin.
12. More of a social feature, but a user page that lets you view their contributions, personal information, and contacts all at once. Still the guinea pig, see my profile page.
13. Badges. A fun little addition that lets you 'earn' badges through contributions to iBegin. I only have five badges, whereas the #1 ranked user has six (but I have one that she doesn't). There are a total of 26 right now. Gotta catch em all.
14. A complete invitation system. This sort of boggles my mind - all this talk about the 'social web', and you get an invitation system that sucks (or doesn't even exist)! With iBegin, you can email your friends one by one, copy+paste, or import your contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo!, GMail, AOL, or MSN. Furthermore, you can automatically have the system re-email the user after 7 days if they haven't signed up. Lastly, any user that does sign up automatically becomes your friend (and vice versa).

So there you have it. 15 points that elucidate how iBegin is a better local search solution than what you have experienced before.

Now stop reading, go check it out, and tell your friends!

UPDATE: digg iBegin.

Ask.com Maps - Color me Impressed

So while browsing around the 'new' Ask.com I ran into their Map section. Hrmm I thought - with their fancy AJAX menu had something slipped in here?

After a bit of testing - color me impressed.

First off, I live in Canada. That immediately puts almost 50% of services on the web out of reach. Movie times, traffic info, etc etc - oh how I wish I could use them, but alas I can't.

So first thing - search for my old address.

An immediate big difference over Google. Instead of asking me 'did you mean?' the system automatically picked what it thought was the smartest choice, and had a little list of alternatives. Good start.

Furthermore, the map interface just seems a bit cleaner. I think the combination of the over-sized font + bold font weight + translucent popup made it look a bit nicer. to me. The colors also seemed a bit less bland. I also liked the zoom in controls - again, they seemed nicer.

So right off the bat I want to see how well it handles directions. Big plus here. Instead of having to click on a link, I Just 'add a location'. This of course opens up a lot of avenues - instead of just doing Point A to Point B, you can now do Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D and so forth. On top of this, the system remembers your recent locations. Why type in again when you can click! The location are easy to erase.

It doesn't end here. You can also see driving versus walking directions. In a developed downtown like Toronto, there are a lot of one way streets. It is nice to differentiate between a driving route and a walking route. Great job separating the two. You can also 'play' a drive through where it goes through instructions from each point to the next, showing you every time you have to change roads/directions.

Furthermore, removing locations is a snap. I decided to remove Point B, and the system automatically showed me directions from Point A to Point C.

All of this wrapped up in snazzy AJAX. I did not run into a single page refresh. Everything reloads inside the page. The only time the page 'refreshed' was when I did my initial search. After that, everything was brilliantly packaged within.

The system comes with a mix of street, mixed (hybrid), and aerial (satellite) views. All were strong for me in Toronto. In the top right are quick links for Print, Email, Bookmark, and Link to this page. When viewing Aerial view you also buy a print through GlobeXplorer. The Bookmark linked worked perfectly in both FireFox and Internet Explorer. The Email link was just a direct mailto: - I would have preferred a nice DHTML popup form. Speaking of which, if you do go directly to a link (example), a nifty little AJAX animation is seen as the left menu 'slides out'. You can then click on the sidebar to make it disappear so you only have the map. Again, a very nice touch. And best of all, my scroll wheel works for zooming in/out. Fantastic!

In conclusion, I have to say that this is the slickest map system I have seen online. I cannot speak for the US and/or international coverage outside of Canada, but what I have seen has impressed me greatly.

Just waiting for the API

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AJAX Chess

While never good at it, I have always had a soft spot for Chess. A truly thinking person’s game, chess lets you spend away your time just flexing your brain. And really, we just don’t get to flex our brains enough.

So when I ran across an AJAX driven Chess board I was rather excited. And as I progressed, the excitement only grew.

To note, I first ran across this site when it got frontpage on Digg. While it did admirably survive and stay online, the game was very buggy. I could not see the game pieces half the time, and my opponent couldn’t see half our moves.

But I revisited it a few days after, and it is a wonderful game. The homepage is as simple as can be, and it has a dynamic iframe/chat where you can talk to find a random opponent.

Creating a new game is as simple as can be. Just click on the link, enter in a room name, and instantly get transported to your new game (provided the room name is not taken of course). As the creator, you get to choose if you are white or not (white goes first). Once in, you idly wait until someone joins. The game is multiplayer only.

The game itself is very easy to play. Click on your chess piece, click where you want it to go, and viola. Wait for your opponent to do the same, and repeat. While doing moves, the game also records all moves on the right (I never did understand what they meant, but it is a nice touch – more on that later).

The game of course comes to a conclusion when you checkmate. There is no direct checkmate checking – my poor hapless opponent lost quickly (of course!), and every move he attempted resulted in a warning of 'Not possible - would be chess.'

The game also has some very nice touches:

Firstly, replays. Because it records your moves, you can watch a replay of your game. Even better, you can also copy paste replays from sites like ChessGames.com. For the true fan, a great way to learn from others.

The game also boasts a freestyle mode. Just an empty chess board where you control every move. A good way of playing vs a friend on the same computer.

Furthermore, the game remembers you after you quit. After the vicious drubbing I gave my opponent, I revisited the website, and was notified that the game had ended, along with a list of moves. This 'auto-save' option also is a great way of playing for an hour, leaving, and then coming back to renew the chess game.

Lastly, the entire game is open source. Released under GPL, right now you can only get the core javascript, but there is a promise that the rest of the source code + documentation will be released soon.

A great way of showing off what AJAX can do, AJAX Chess is definitely worth checking out.

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SiteVista: Webdesign testing made too easy

Any serious web developer knows how important it is to make sure their website looks great in all browsers. But that is no easy task - common solutions (and used by me previously) include buying a Mac and installing various software packages, using online sites (especially to view what it looks like on a Mac), or just harassing your friends.

I ran into SiteVista a few months ago, and whew am I happy I did.

The site is wonderful. It allows you to input a URL, and their system will test across 12 different browser versions, three different resolutions, and three different color depths in showing off what your site will look like. Support browsers include IE4-6 (including IE5 for Mac), NN4-8, FireFox 1, Safari 2, and Mozilla 1.7. Resolutions supported are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. Color depth support is 256 colors, high color, and true color.

The entire system is packaged into one very slick system. Once logged in (I have a monthly account), just enter your url, choose what browsers/resolutions/colors you want tested, and away you go. You can opt to immediately view results, where, driven by delicious AJAX, the site will update the thumbnails as they happen. Even better, you can opt to retest a specific test (eg 800x600 resolution). Even better, the system takes a normal window screenshot, and also a full-page screenshot (which is the entire document, even if it includes scrolling). Brilliant! Best of all, you can opt to be emailed when test results are confirmed. Simple and easy - I like it.

All tests are stored and archived online so that you can quickly and easily view them again if needed. The system also provides some raw statistics from w3schools to help you gauge the browser, resolution, and color distribution. Not a big deal, but a nice little touch.

My only qualm about the system is that there is no 'check all' option. It frankly drives me mad when I see more than 5 checkboxes and a website does not have a 'check all' option. Bad SiteVista for making me click excessively! One thing that might be nice would be to use lightbox (or offer it as an option) when viewing test results.

The 'tests coming soon' have me really excited. Loading speed and color blindness will be wonderful tests, and I look forward to those

This app is highly recommended. I have been using it for almost 6 months now, and it has been worth every penny.

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