A few weeks ago, I signed up for Google Voice. It’s another promising service from Google, where I was able to register a free phone number in any area code and have it forwarded to another number. It’s great for virtual companies looking to offer local numbers to pockets of clients around the country.

One very interesting feature is that voicemails are sent via Email to your account.  While I was expecting an audio file attachment similar to 800 services like Kall8, I was greeted with a full text transcript of the voicemail in my inbox.

Google Voice Accuracy

So, how accurate are Google Voice transcripts?  Consider the one I received below (with phone numbers omitted).

The shades of grey are supposed to be a guide to the accuracy of the content with the dark text considered to be a confident transcription and the progressively lighter text less and less accurate.

My first impression upon reading the transcript was that I received a very cryptic message on my voicemail, maybe even a wrong number were it not for ‘Andy’ and ‘development’ in the transcript.  However, upon playing the actual voicemail through Google Voice, I heard a very clear message from a contact I am familiar dealing with.  The actual voicemail is transcribed below:

“Hey Andy this is [omitted]. Um, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Joomla development and get probably like an estimated price of actually building a template based on a PDF file for a design. Okay, give me a call, my phone number is [omitted]. Thanks, bye.”

Needless to say, I was a bit surprised how the transcript could be so far off and so devoid of meaning while the voicemail was straightforward and to the point.

Here’s how the accuracy broke down across the message:

Dark words: 88% (23 / 26)

Medium gray words: 92% (12 / 13)

Light gray words: 29% (7 / 24)

Phone numbers: 100% (1/1)

Overall, it looks like Google Voice is at around the same level as automated call waiting services that ask you to speak your answer. The biggest detriment to the transcripts seems to be when longer words are broken down into short one syllable words that dilute than meaning of the message.  For example, “estimated” in the voicemail was translated into “next to me at that”.

Despite the seemingly high accuracy rate of the dark and medium colored words, the transcript was still meaningless and I had to listen to the voicemail to get the context of the message.

It looks like Google Voice has a ways to go in terms of accuracy, but it’s certainly an interesting feature on an already useful service.

Ruby on Rails error messages out of the box are not exactly user friendly. Here’s what I’ve ended up using to enhance their usability: using ‘errors.on’ to control the error message.

Current Rails Error Messages – The Problem

If you’re using the restful_authentication plugin, a blank form submission will result in the following output:

No one ever wants to see a message like this when they’re signing up for a new site.  It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the website and certainly isn’t user friendly.

The usability problem with this default approach are as such:

1. The title and intro to the errors are vague and “tech” sounding
2. There are multiple error messages for a single input field
3. The field requirements are stated in one dense paragraph, then the user is expected to remember or scroll back to the requirements as they attempt to enter valid data

Better Custom Error Messages – The Solution

So, we have three major usability issues with the default error formatting.  Here’s how we fix them.

Error Title and Intro Paragraph

Write a custom helper in /app/helpers/application_helper.erb:
def error_intro(title,paragraph)
  intro = '<div id="errorExplanation" class="errorExplanation"><h2>'
  intro += title
  intro += '</h2><p>'
  intro += paragraph
  intro += '</p>'
  return intro
end

In your view, write:
<%= error_intro("There was a problem creating your account.","Please correct the following fields below:") if !@user.errors.empty? %>

In this code example, I’m validating my User model to see if any errors have occurred while processing the ‘create’ method. The ‘error_intro’ helper will server to duplicate the Rails default error messages and will allow us to bypass the ‘error_messages_for’ helper. This will be important for fixing the other two usability issues.

Creating a Single Error Message for each Form Field

Now, with the intro error message easily customizable from form to form, we need to consolidate the error messages. Once method would be to traverse the errors array returned on the model and using a join to produce some coherent output:
<%
  if @user.errors.on(:login)
  @user.errors.on(:login).each do |e|
  %>
    <li>Login <%= e %></li>
  <% end
  end %>

This is a scalable approach that will adapt as you add additional validations, but it still seems redundant as telling me that a required Email field needs to be in a valid format also tells me that an Email field shouldn’t be blank, so why write both?

Another method is to write custom error message for each field with another helper method in application_helper.erb:
def field_error(err_desc)
  error = '<span class="fieldError">'
  error += err_desc
  error += '</span>'
  return error
end


Then, inside your form, display the custom error if errors were produced for that field:
<p>
  <%= field_error 'Pick a 3-20 character login (letters and numbers only)' if @user.errors.on(:login) %>
  <%= label_tag 'login' %><br/>
  <%= f.text_field :login %>
</p>

While you do run the risk of providing too much info in your error messages (if a user entered a 10 character login with an ‘@’ symbol, they’ll still be told about the 3-20 character limit), it provides a nice, clean way to consolidate error messages right above the form field, where they should be. And if you’d rather have the app scale as you add new validations, you can always use the other method mentioned above.

Today, I was installing the restful_authentication plugin again for the first time in a few months.

Downloading the source from GitHub (http://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication), produced a zip file that only extracted the /generators folder and nothing else. As a result, trying to run the initial setup produced the following error:
script/generate authenticated user session --include-activation
invalid option: --include-activation


Deleting the plugin and attempting to reinstall via the command line produced another error:
script/plugin install http://github.com/technoweeine/restful-authentication.git restful_authentication
Plugin not found: ["http://github.com/technoweeine/restful-authentication.git", "restful_authentication"]


The fix was to add a trailing slash to the end of the plugin URL:
script/plugin install http://github.com/technoweeine/restful-authentication.git/ restful_authentication


I’m not sure why this is needed, but it did the trick.

Some Twitter users may start to see the following Beta invite for Twitter’s new Retweet functionality.

The functionality has been in the work for a long time, but is finally making it’s way out to a select group of Twitter users. Basically, the functionality allows you to easily (well with 2 clicks), retweet any tweet in your timeline.

Below is a screenshot of what happened when I clicked the new retweet button on a tweet from Mashable.

This is certainly better than the old method of copy/pasting from within Twitter, but this functionality has been available for a long time in 3rd party online and desktop tools.

Nonetheless, for those Tweeters using the web interface, it’s a nice UX improvement from Twitter.  It also comes quickly on the heels of the recent Twitter lists Beta release. It’s great to see that Twitter is actively looking to improve the usability of the site and respond to requested features from it’s user base.

Tweet Psych is a new Twitter-related app from Dan Zarella, an expert in social media marketing.  It examines a user’s tweets and builds a psychological profile on the fly. I first read about Tweet Psych in a great post by Brian Solis about the science of retweets.

The data TweetPsych spits out is relatively basic at this point and divided into two categories: “Cognitive Content” and “Primordial, Conceptual & Emotional Content”.  When I typed in uptrending (UpTrending’s Twitter Profile), I got back the following results for Cognitive Content:

An interesting breakdown and about what I would expect from a company-focused Twitter account.  Of course, the “Up” in “UpTrending” might have skewed the “Upward motion” statistic slightly.

What Does this Mean for Social Media Optimization?

Of course it’s fun to psychoanalyze your Tweets (and those of your friends), but integrating this data into an effective Social Media strategy might be a bit premature at this point.  The tool certainly shows promise though, but I’d like to see some additional factors in the analysis:

• Passion – Does this user use strong or weak emotions?
• Action – Does this user ask others to do things or are they more informational?
• Attention Span – Does this user come back to the same subject frequently or do they move on quickly?

Of course, this might not be the focus or even intent of the tool, but those additional metrics could provide some more actionable data for finding passionate, aggressive and dedicated influencers on Twitter.

Twitter Lists are here.  Well, in Beta anyway.  For selected users, lists are rolling into action and they promise to make a big splash once they are released to the public.

What Are Twitter Lists?

Twitter Lists have been a much hyped feature of Twitter, that is just now making it’s way to selected users.  There is now Beta signup, you need to be selected by Twitter to start using the feature.

Lists essentially allow users to group other Twitter users into organized lists.  For example, I’ve started a ‘Social Media’ list in the screenshot below and will add UpTrending to the list.

Your lists can include anyone on Twitter.  The new ‘Manage Lists’ button in the screenshot above appears next to each Twitter user in your followers list, those you are following and in search results.

Once the list is created, the URL appears as twitter.com/[twitter username]/[list-name], allowing the list to easily be shared, tweeted and retweeted.  This can also help a Social Media manager to break out influencers in a certain market segment into a particular list that can be monitored individually.  In the past, campaigns used to require multiple Twitter account to achieve the same desired effect.  Twitter Lists will help improve efficiency in monitoring brands and staying in touch with niche market segments.

Below is my ‘Web Development’ list.  Just getting started as you can see, but will prove extremely useful in terms of monitoring the industry once I’ve finished importing my list of web development influencers.

How Will Twitter Lists Impact Your Social Media Campaign?

Lists are going to be the “who’s who” of Twitter.  Search will still be relevant, but lists will use the wisdom of crowds methodology (think Digg or Delicious) for organizing people into groups.  Just like an exclusive membership, if you’re not on a Twitter list, you’re nobody.

Once lists make it into the Twitter API, 3rd party tools can easily mine this data to aggregate multiple lists, creating an authoritative, crowdsourced list for niche subject matters.  For example, my ‘Social Media’ list above can easily be combined with other users who also create ‘Social Media’ lists to create an authoritative list on ‘Social Media’ influencers on Twitter.

I’m sure you can already identify some key lists that you’d like you or your company to rank high for.  Identifying the lists will be the easy part.  Using Social Media Optimization (SMO) to help promote a user on those lists is going to be where the heavy lifting takes places.  A Smart, effective SMO campaign to gain prominence on lists will be the differentiator between influencers and non-influencers on Twitter.

Today, WordPress released version 2.8.5.  You can read the full release notes here.

Some of the welcomed improvements include:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

This is more of a maintenance and security release.  Meanwhile, the WordPress team is working hard on Version 2.9.

Helpful resources this week:

• 21 Amazing CSS Techniques You Should Know
• Adding Custom Google Maps to Your Website
• 25 Unique and Outstanding Website Designs
• 40 Free and Essential Web Design and Development Books from Google
• 50 Essential Web Typography Tutorials, Tips, Guides and Best Practices

Google’s getting into some really interesting stuff with Google Wave.  There’s a long demo video from Google IO earlier this year, showcasing some of the interesting features:

• Real time chatting
• Intelligent content fetching
• Gadgets to extend Google Wave to do just about anything

Some of the functionality seems like information overload.  For example, is seeing what a user is typing in a chat window going to make you more productive than waiting for them to finish typing their thought?

Other examples, like highlighting a location in an Email and being able to attach a map with a single button click seems like a sure productivity win.

I’m sure we’ll learn much more about Google Wave as more Beta invites are accepted and the product pushes towards an official release.

Earlier this year at UpTrending, we did an SEO campaign for a small startup in Silicon Valley: Living Green Marketplace.

The SEO worked and the site has seen an exceptional increase in traffic for the terms we targeted. Sales are increasing too, allowing the site to expand their product line and execute their growth strategy.

The site fit the perfect profile for an effective SEO Campaign:

1. Great company with great products, content or services
2. Small budget and little existing website traffic
3. A plan for growth

With Living Green Marketplace meeting all three of these criteria, we put together a quick and aggressive SEO campaign. After the initial upfront cost, Living Green Marketplace was able to reap the benefits of the high Google rankings and quality, “free” traffic.

Over the years, we’ve seen this same strategy work for other similar small businesses and it’s becoming a growing portion of our service offerings as a result.

For more details on small business SEO, visit us at http://www.uptrending.com.