Loosing Site » Uncategorized

You own that site and I own these comments.

Phil — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:25:16 +0000

The following is a comment I left in a SideWiki on Phil Windley’s Technometrica article “Claiming My Right to a Purpose-Centric Web: SideWiki“. I’m repeating it here as I’m basically quite proud of it.

I’m intrigued by the question of ownership of engagement and discussion. I’m seeing a lot of successful bloggers expressing a lot of outrage, and yet normally receiving comments is something that bloggers love, excepting spam, unless it’s really good spam.

As I’m typing this I don’t see what I’m doing as a defacement. My comments are clearly divided from your site. They are in a separate part of my user interface that I have chosen to switch on. When I publish they will appear:

- on one of my blogs
- on my Google Profile
- in my FriendFeed stream
- in my Twitter Stream

These are locations where I like the text that I’ve written to appear.

My choice.
My control.
My browser.

Sidewiki is not the first 3rd party technology to enable the annotation of site, and it won’t be the last. It has a high profile and a high distribution because it’s embedded in the Google Toolbar. It’s not unique, but it is a nice implementation that complements traditional threaded comments. You’ll note that this comment is about a highlighted phrase. That’s a very useful feature for those of us who like to fact check, or to limit our expressed opinions to the narrow scope that we’re comfortable with.

I’d really urge your readers to try before condemning.

Tags: Sidewiki, ownership, conversation

Aviary releases Mynah audio editor

Phil — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:17:00 +0000

Aviary have done it again, this time with an online audio editor that comes with a collection of loops and effects for you to incorporate in your own works.

You can even record directly into the web application.

OpenInternet.gov

Phil — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:30:34 +0000

Video introduction to openinternet.gov an FCC site that promotes net neutrality and seeks consultation on how this can be achieved.

YouTube Videos in Google Product Search

Phil — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:03:19 +0000

The Google Base team has begun integrating Youtube Videos into Google Product Search.

Video product reviews are getting a lot of buzz right now, as shoppers increasingly turn to the web to help them figure out what to buy. We’re excited to announce that we are including relevant and high quality YouTube video reviews on a number of our product pages in Google Product Search. Videos include reviews from sources like USA Today, Wired, and Digital Trends, and they appear above the “Similar Items” section of the page. For example, see the product page for this Nikon D90 camera.

Official Google Base Blog: Lights, Camera, Action!: YouTube Videos in Google Product Search

Through this system manufacturers and distributors are able to link reviews on Youtube to their products using UPC, ISBN, brand and MPN information.

Nikon D90 Digital camera – SLR with Live View mode, movie recording – 12.3 Megapixel – 5.8 x optical zoom via kwout

Consumers are then able to find out more about the product, and also gain an impression of the level of knowledge and service of a supplier.

Tags: YouTube, video, marketing, Google, product, search

An end to keywords?

Phil — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:56:51 +0000

In this video Matt Cutts reveals that Google does not use keyword for ranking “even the least little bit”. It looks like so much spamming had been going on that keywords were effectively rendered useless for ranking sites and pages.

There are two other use cases that spring to mind. Accessibility and composition.

In the UK, the Royal National Institute for the Blind recommends the use of metadata, including keywords, to aid navigation.

“Page information metadata must include a page TITLE, keywords, author and description. This should be as accurate as possible to ensure that users get all the information they need to navigate a site.”

Keywords can also provide a useful focus when composing text for a page. It’s a way of noting the few precise concepts you want to cover in a manner that will survive edits and revisions you make in the text.

Aurora: Envisioning the Future of the Web

Phil — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:17:21 +0000

This is an interesting presentation by Jesse James Garrett about Aurora, a design concept for a web browser. Key ideas embodied in the browser include context awareness, natural interaction, continuity and multi-user applications.

More information at http://adaptivepath.com/aurora/

Good News/Bad News – Google to crawl published docs

Phil — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:33:01 +0000

In about two weeks time Google will start crawling, indexing, and displaying in search results any Google Apps documents that are published and linked to from a public web site.

In about two weeks we will be launching a change for published docs. The change will allow published docs that are linked to from a public website to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. Please note that this only applies to docs which you explicitly publish using the ‘Publish as web page’ or ‘Publish/embed’ option, and which are linked to from a publicly crawled webpage. This doesn’t apply if it’s only set to ‘Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)’. If you don’t want your published docs to be crawled, then you can un-publish them by doing the following:

Published docs will be crawlable soon – Google Docs Help

This is an excellent opportunity for press releases, reports and presentations to find a wider audience. It’s also means businesses might want to pay more attention to the themes used in their documents, incorporating their own branding elements.

Google Docs Help: Styles In Google Docs – a knol by Google Docs Guide 2 via kwout

Some have expressed concern that private or draft information will now be viewable by the public. Though I’m sure far more are unsurprised by the meaning of the term “publish”.

Tags: Google, apps, docs, publish, search, crawl

Blue Anjou built with Concrete 5 by Dirk

Phil — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:37:55 +0000

It’s really useful when designers describe how their built their sites, especially when the site is for a small business. A beautiful example is the revised Blue Anjou site:

Blue Anjou :: Home via kwout

Dirk has a succinct description of how it was put together over on the Concrete 5 forums.

I finally migrated our site from our ‘old CMS’ to C5. Using a modified version of the Superfish plug and the Image Slider. Also 960 Grid CSS framework.Custom Google Calendar block of my own making which is working pretty well and uses Textile filter to supply links to C5 pages.

concrete5 :: Finally Live on C5

Visually I like the way the home page, though quite dense, fits perfectly with the sites nature. The cork bord theme makes me feel like I’m already inside a friendly relaxed studio. I like the discount voucher top and centre, and the instruction to “Breathe” under the prominent list of today’s classes. Beautiful and usable.

Tags: yogastudio, design, concrete5

Data Liberation: Welcome to the Data Liberation Front

Phil — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:14:45 +0000

One of the most important factors in choosing a service provider is knowing you can leave. These days we don’t want to be locked in to a supplier whose service levels have dropped through the floor, whose product features are lagging behind their competitors or who have piled on the bells and whistles until it the one simple job you need to do takes three times as long.

Google’s launch of their data liberation site makes me far more comfortable using, and recommending, their services. Here’s a quote from Monday’s announcement:

But we believe that letting you leave our services easily actually helps us make those services better for you. Rather than locking in our users artificially, it makes us earn our users’ loyalty by building great products and constantly improving them. If we stop making our products compelling and useful, we lose you as a user. It’s just that simple.

Data Liberation: Welcome to the Data Liberation Front

The site has a comprehensive set of instructions for moving data out of Google.

The Data Liberation Front (the Data Liberation Front) via kwout

One important service missing is Google Sites; but the ability to migrate content into Sites and to extract data is promised in the fall.

At the moment data extraction requires a bit of technical knowledge and effort, using a combination of protocols, feeds and data apis. It’s of most use to developers or IT Managers, though I’m sure it won’t be long before someone puts together a nice simple backup application to manage all this.

Tags: Google, backup, migration