cathycracks.com

My Social Verbs

Cathy Wang — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:35:26 +0000

It seems that these days people are actively packing up their facebook account over to google+. Different reasons aside, google+ is making a huge splash in the social scene.

One thing that I have noticed is from my personal experience, of how I deal with my online social interaction.

I have always used my on social verbs based on the actual social interaction I perform with these people.. on twitter and google.

Connect
Converse
Learn
Read
Inspire

and other sub circles/groups for specific topics such as #ux and location specific. To me, this makes much more sense, especially that I use these social tools to share and to receive information.

I have always found the default social verbs to be awkward…

Follow

when someone follows you on twitter, you don’t necessary have to follow back. The word “follow” does not commit to such deep relationships. What if the social verb on twitter were to be.. “subscribe”? But either way, twitter connections are pretty casual either way. It’s like asking a girl for her phone number in a bar.

Friend

Don’t you think it’s a bit too much of a commitment to want to be someone’s friend? That’s a very loosely defined term for “friend” don’t you think? This kind of social attitude reminds me of the girl who wants to talk about marriage right on the first date.

Add to Circle

I find my social mood to be lightened with Google+. I don’t feel like I have to commit to someone when I add someone to circle. It’s so refreshing to be added and not befriended. I also don’t feel pressured to add people back if I don’t want to. (because ignoring someone’s friend request seems quite like a gesture of rejection.) This reminds me of real life social interaction of “here’s my card, give me a call sometime.”

about Service Design

Cathy Wang — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:03:44 +0000

These days I am busy working on my own practice at Klik Logik. At the same time, I am also keeping my eye out for the next opportunity.

An interesting opportunity showed up, and I got an email back:

I think your CV is quite interesting, one thing though, you don’t appear to have done any mobile, cross-platform, or service design work.
Persuade me that this is not an issue.

The truth is, I did go to school for interaction design. When we learned it in school, “service design” wasn’t even a popularized term. We learned it as experience design. Do I have the knowledge to explore the different platforms of design? I do. I have done it before? Yes, in school. Most of my professional career has been on the web.

How do you persuade the Head of Service Design on such issue?

Here’s my response:

Hi XXXX

Hope you had a good weekend.

Have you heard of the story of how to become a sushi chef? In Japan, it’s like a traditional art form to make sushi. The master gives the student guidelines and gives critiques to each one of the sushi made. It’s a delicate science. I went through school learning Interaction Design feeling like I am learning to make sushi. I have been given the guidelines and tools to solve complex problems. Interaction design is like a science. User testing is necessary for every project. There’s not a “textbook” way of doing things. I studied architecture in school to learn about the “flow” and how it affects people. I went abroad to Italy for one whole summer to understand the history and the society buy-in to high-end designs. I entered an entrepreneurial competition to launch a product. I believe doing is how we learn to do things better. I am a fast learner and adopter, and I believe that gives me the advantage while exploring new areas.

I am highly interested in mobile and service design. I am especially excited about service design. I like building systems and learning about systems. I believe this is part of the reason why I had always been involved with web applications. It’s the designing of a bigger system that intrigues me. To design a system to serve people better is a much more intimate approach to interaction design. I have also been very highly interested on social science as a system. I am passionate about this, and that can’t be taught or learned.

I believe that I am in this industry because I want to build better systems for people, regardless of the platform. One day, perhaps I’ll even build a city. Learning about the IDEO waiting room case study – Reading up on the Obama marketing campaign – Being an entrepreneur – Building communities (online and physical) – all these have allowed me to know people/users better. I took a career path of mixed experiences so I could see users in all different areas, stages, and industries. I drill down to the detail but design from the big picture. Isn’t interaction design really in everyday life? It is in mine.

I hope to be able to practice different parts of my passion that has been waiting to flourish. I could go on listing all the design methods and pattern libraries, but at the end of the day, the design principle of making everything easier and more meaningful for people will always be the key to my practice.

I look forward to keep learning and keep inspiring.

I am posting this because I spent a lot of time writing this response. I am being truthful about how I value design in my life. I am passionate about what I do. I live and breathe it. I felt good writing it and saying the truth about why I can do mobile and service design. It’s not because I can list all the design methods and throw in big terms. At the same time, is that what’s expected of me?

I am not sure if I have persuaded him yet.

How would you respond to such question?

Facebook Search and Trusted Information

Cathy Wang — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:24:02 +0000

Facebook has just announced its new search ability.

What does this mean to the end-users?

Yay for better search function and UI
Ok now where do I turn this off? (really, How do I have my profile show but not my shared items? or vise versa)

Do you know what facebook is thinking about doing? Dominate the Internet!

What this really means is that, in the future, perhaps when you want to know more about “pancake recipe”, you would search facebook first. There might be a group for recipes, your friend might have shared recipe before. Or even better, read what random people who you don’t know have to say about it.

Sounds familiar? Right. That’s what a search engine is for. However, this is a dangerous step. Facebook might very well be the only place where you can find these information. (Facebook only has public profile listings on google at the moment.) Information is power, and Facebook is withholding some information from Google.

Generally (internet) speaking, there are 3 Types of Information:
1. Main Stream (Your news outlet)
2. User generated. (Like forum, yahoo answers, wikipedia, and all them blogs)
3. Familiar/Trusted (generated by people you know)

The reason why people would use facebook over google is really the “trust”. Your news source will no longer be the main media stream, instead, you go to your trusted sources. In this case, your friends and colleges. It’s a powerful thing to have the first layer of trust. That being said, it doesn’t mean that trust can’t be built. Trust also means relevance. Your friends who grew up in the same town probably have a similar pancake recipe to yours.

Facebook is the Googlezon.

But do we really want a social network that can do everything?

Integrate Twitter Buttons in WordPress (with shortened URL)

Cathy Wang — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:38:45 +0000

How to create a “tweet this” button for your blog post in WordPress? You have many options.

Twitter has become a social network sharing system and you should always provide an easy call-to-action for your readers to share your posts. Also, don’t forget to shorten your URL.

The TinyURL Way

There’s a great tutorial on Smashing Magazine. However, the specific code I am providing is modified to work with MediaTemple since MediaTemple doesn’t support file_get_contents. If you use the code on smashing magazine you will get a Warning: file_get_contents() …

Put this code in your function.php file

// Create TinyURL for post to Twitter
function getTinyUrl($url) {
	$ch = curl_init();
	$timeout = 5;
	curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$url);
	curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
	$tinyurl = curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);
	return $tinyurl;
	}

and in your single.php or wherever you want your “Tweet this” button to show up, put in this code:

Tweet This!

The text after ?status= is the twitter message that your reader will tweet in twitter. You can change it to whatever you like. I like it with my twitter username in it since TinyURL doesn’t provide stats, it’s a good way to track to see if any of your readers is tweeting your blog posts.

The Bit.ly way

Bit.ly offers stats for your shortened URL with their API.

*** Note | edit July 26,2009 *** Bit.ly’s old javascript method still work but it’s much nicer to use the API. I have taken down the code for the javascript method.

There are 2 tutorials that shows how to integrate the Bit.ly API with wordpress: popart.com and David Walsh. The 2 scripts are essentially the same (popart.com’s script is derived from the code from David)

However, since MediaTemple doesn’t support file_get_contents… Here’s the code combined with curl function. Put it in your functions.php

/*
	Bit.ly URL Shortener
	Automatically shorten a URL using the Bit.ly API
	based on code from http://davidwalsh.name/bitly-php and http://blogs.popart.com/2009/07/six-wordpress-tips/
*/
function make_bitly_url($url) {
	$login = 'YOUR BIT.LY LOGIN';
	$appkey = 'YOUR BIT.LY API KEY';
	$format = 'xml';
	$version = '2.0.1';
	$bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version='.$version.'&longUrl='.urlencode($url).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format='.$format;

//get the url
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $bitly);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

	//parse depending on desired format
	if(strtolower($format) == 'json') {
		$json = @json_decode($response,true);
		return $json['results'][$url]['shortUrl'];
	} else { //xml
		$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
		return 'http://bit.ly/'.$xml->results->nodeKeyVal->hash;
	}
}

Remember to change your login and API key, both of them you can find on your account page on Bit.ly.

Next step you have to create the actual link of “Tweet this” function. Put it in wherever you want it show up. Possibly in single.php file. You really need to just call wherever you want to use the shortened URL.

This is what I do:

Tweet This!

This creates a nice little tweet with the shortened url along with the title of the post.

After this, just add some pretty twitter graphic and css and you are set. (tasty twitter graphic resources here and here) ((I am using the Flavours Icon set designed by Oliver Twardowski)) I am currently using the bit.ly way for my blog. Yummy data.

The other options

Help! whatever it is that I am trying to say you just don’t get it?
Let’s try the low tech ways.

Tweetmeme

Tweetmeme wordpress plugin. It’ll allow you to add a Retweet button for your readers to retweet. Also will show how many times it has been retweeted.

Tweet This plugin

Tweet This plugin page. This is a very powerful plugin with added features other than just twitter. (delicious, plurk, ) Comes with its own pretty graphics too. Definitely worth using.

Tweet this with Thickbox

Laurent Kretz developed a twitter script where your readers can login to twitter and post the link to your blog post right on your blog (with the help of Thickbox)

Twit it up

It’s much like the Tweet this with Thickbox but in a plugin form. Automatically shortens URL using http://is.gd/.

Twit This

Twit this is a simple plug’n play wordpress plugin that adds a “Twit this” button. It also has its own URL shortener. (sounds like sweetener but much sweeter)

personally I haven’t tried out these plugins, simply because I prefer more stats

Japanese web services

Cathy Wang — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:53:14 +0000

saw it via twitter from Jeremiah:

@jonathanbrowne was telling me about this Japanese Web 2.0 list: http://tinyurl.com/6dv4vl compares and contrasts US vs Japan

I wrote a comment on the post but decided to elaborate more on the topic. So here it goes.

Since I have lived in Japan for a year in Hokkaido I feel like I might have learned some stuff about Japanese web services and the way people use them from a different perspective. What does this mean? I had mainly been in touch with people NOT in the tech industry, not early adopters.

Booking travel plans online:

If a Japanese person HAVE to book travels online they’d go to: Jalan.net. (entirely in Japanese, also no mobile version)
Jalan also has publications on traveling which ties back to the website. The magazines are popular as they publish specific area or holidays specials.

I tried out Jal tours recently and it was a pleasant experience. It is the tour department of the Japan airline.

However, most of the people I know, being not techies, they still prefer going to travel agency and read the travel booklets and let the travel agency find the best package.

(also, on the topic of traveling in Japan. Most of the hotels charge per person instead of per room.)

Social networking:

The Japanese version of facebook is painful to read. really. My Japanese is not that good but it still hurts my face reading it. They do however use mixi religiously. I have an account and people would add me as a friend and want to be friends with me. lots of random connections. It’s a bit hard to use. Also, it’s a trend in Japan to not put your own photo as your profile photo. Most of the girls have their dog, hello kitty, cute model, or scenery as their profile photo.

Gourmet:

My personal favorite is hotpepper. I am not sure how often the website is actually being used, but hotpepper releases free publication at the end of the month (Friday?) in every major cities. You can find hotpepper yellowpage-look-alike books in 7-11 mostly. (I believe that other convenient stores do not carry them) The publication introduces new restaurants in the area and special deals. In Tokyo area it’s even divided down to the area. Try finding a hotpepper in the Shinjuku area, kinda hard. It’s that popular.

Electronic and such:

The biggest empire is yamada denki. Yamada promises the lowest price possible. I saw it in the news recently that they are being sued for monopoly because such reason like their reward points can be used in many other places (hotels, flights, and more).
((by the way, Japanese culture, big on points & rewards. Every store has a point card))
I am not sure how many people actually use the yamada denki website, but it really is always that slightly cheaper than the other shops. They also match competitor’s price.

Online translation service:

Yahoo Japanese translate. it’s not a good translator, but I don’t think there’s a good one out there…

Artsy:

There’s this Tokyo Art Beat that has design/artsy events in it. Lots of new contents all the time.

Music:

Probably much like the Live Nation website, there’s wess.jp. However, most of the people I know are on their favorite band’s mailing list. (mails to their cellphone.) Did you know that the super popular band in Japan – Exile – has a show on Dec 31 in Hokkaido? More amazingly is that they did not sell tickets in the first while, they were doing a lottery for people who can even purchase tickets. (it really is that popular.)

These are just my 2 cents on what I have observed in Japan during my stay here.

If one thing I have learned about the interconnectivity of Japan, is that the convenient stores really are convenient. It’s where you see new posters for things, it’s where you buy magazines, and it’s where you purchase your bus ticket or movie tickets. You can send your printing to 7-11 photocopier and it’ll print and wait for you at the store. I also pay most of my bills (i.e. cellphone, internet, electricity) with a barcode on my bill to scan in any convenient stores. They call the convenient store combini here. It’s probably my favorite Japanized English word.

Do you know more? As a gaijin in Japan this is as good as I can go.

What’s up with this blog

Cathy Wang — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:31:44 +0000

Back in 2004 I had a blog in wordpress that I kept for a class in university hosted on the school’s server. After graduating I decided to keep blogging and transferred that wordpress blog to my own wordpress. After being around the web industry for a while I decided to transfer my wordpress blog to drupal. The old blog was hosted on everybrandnewday.com (which is now offline). I have gone through many migrations of data and upgrades; however……

Last month I tried to upgrade to drupal 6. I did back up everything like everyone always tells you to. However, when everything failed to work and I was about to revert back to the old database….. That’s when I realized that the database zip file was actually corrupted. It failed to extract. After many struggle and painful times, I decided to ditch my drupal site and start over.

I had never left wordpress, I always had other blogs running on wordpress even when my personal site was on drupal. The new interface and functions won me over. I think it’s ok to have a wordpress site now.

I used the nifty tool in wordpress to import the latest posts from my old site using RSS. It’s quite a nice feature.

Anyways, so that’s it.

I have some old posts on my old blog that I really did enjoy writing, maybe I will copy and paste them over when I run out of new ideas to write. I hope my new ideas and thoughts can keep you entertained as much as I did before.

Search in google reader.

Cathy Wang — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:50:21 +0000

Google reader now comes with search, and it also has a different loading graphic.

However, gmail is still using old school red ugly loading graphic:

Google’s blog post about the new search

I hope Google extends the search bar to all their services, and hopefully update all loading graphics for all services as well.

Craigslist thinking about paid posting?

Cathy Wang — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:15:00 +0000

so it seems like, craigslist is thinking a lot about money….

What’s with the Price after posting something for sale?….

it’s likely that Craigslist is thinking about paid posting?

Salt

Cathy Wang — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:48:03 +0000

hide
uploaded by cathycracks.

I went to Salt tasting room last night. It’s a wonderful amazing place. If you like wine and you like cheese, this place is for you.

I also quite enjoy reading their opening blog. It looks sincere.

As they say on the website:

A restaurant in Blood Alley? With no kitchen or hot food? Which only serves cheese and meat?

If you are walking down Carrall street in Vancouver, going into Gastown. Pay attention when you walk by blood alley. You’ll see a huge salt shaker sign. It’s their smart logo.

I had a tasting plate, which is choice of 3 meat/cheese with 3 condiments. I said I want the oka, and no corned beef and no olives, they just did the rest of the pairing. It was quite tasty. Their menu constantly changes, I can’t wait to go back next time and try different meat and cheese.

Limitation on Flickr?

Cathy Wang — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:32:36 +0000

You must be kidding me.

Flickr is implementing new rules. You can only have 3000 contacts and maximum 75 tags for a photo? That is hilarious. Even though it might seem like a good way of filtering out spams and people using flickr as a social networking tool, but who says that it shouldn’t be how flickr is used. It started out as a photo sharing service but the social networking factor in it is definitely significant to its success. There might be a better way of eliminating the spams, how about allowing users to set who can post images in the comment? Have you seen some groups with huge graphics that it asks members to post in comments? It’s annoying. Have you seen people posting really ugly huge geocities style gif in comments before? I have… Once again, it’s annoying. (Hey if you need more proof, I’ll go dig up a screenshot!)

In terms of the account merging issue? it’s totally old news. Flickr got bought out by yahoo, it would only makes sense if yahoo gets all the users with yahoo accounts. It’s pure business, nothing personal. I guess a lot of people are pissed off. But really, it’s just going to end up like another email account that you never use. I have at least 5 hotmail accounts and 2 yahoo accounts. Purely for the sake of having the accounts.

I just hope I will not have more than 3000 friends. Sorry if I am popular. gee.

more discussion.

Migration

Cathy Wang — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:12:44 +0000

I am in the process of moving all my files and all the things I’ve ever put online to media temple. It’s a lot of work, since I am hosting 2 other domains and have 3 blogs to move. I have decided to move all my domains and all my hosting to media temple. If I really have to tell my old hosting why I am moving, I would probably say that media temple has a kick ass beautiful usable user interface for the admin control panel I’ll skip talking about all the techie goodness it offers because those are just a given.

Therefore, don’t be alert when things seem to be offline. I promise I will get everything back online asap.

Technorati Tags: media temple, hosting, web

Google Tools That Might Just Save The Day

Cathy Wang — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:42:30 +0000

I am very excited today. Google just approved me for the beta of Website Optimizer, it will allow me to create different variation of landing page for my PPC campaign and hopefully allow me to find the best body copy for my landing page. (watch the demo here) Adwords is all surrounded by the ability to give different variation to test out best result.

Google has a whole series of nice tools that they have created to help people like me to do their job in terms of making online marketing work in all sort of ways.

Google Webmaster tools
I think this is a good tool. It’s especially helpful when you are trying to do some very precise SEO for your site.
(If you go to Google Webmaster Central, there are more similar tools google provides.)
Google checkout
This is especially helpful when you are signed up with Google Analytics and Adwords because it can be easily integrated and they sometimes offer speical deals when you are an existing Adwords customer.
Want to integrate Google search on your site and want to customize it? Google Free is Google’s solution. (As far as I am concerned… it is not working anymore.) There’s actually another alternative. Google Co-op Custom Search Engine. If you don’t want ads you’ll probably have to be a non-profilt organization. As Google puts it: Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website.
I love the Google co-op search engine. It’s so easy to use for people who don’t even know how things work.

I will soon implement the Google Website optimizer. If it works well, I will let you know.

Be the first one to get your iphone!

Cathy Wang — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:23:55 +0000

I am not even kidding.

iphone countdown.com

Can you believe it? People are really going crazy over the iphone.

SEM – Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama, MSN AdCenter Customer Service Rundown.

Cathy Wang — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:56:33 +0000

I have recently started doing intense corporate Search Engine Marketing at Laplink. I manage the PPC accounts and make sure they are making lots of money. After dealing with all the different platforms, I have observed more than just interface/usability problems throughout the process.

I have always believe in direct marketing. A face, a person, represent a brand. The customer service department is where the brand/company reaches out and presents itself. It’s extremely important in terms of achieving customer satisfaction. I dealt with Google Adwords through email support and live chat support, Yahoo Panama through email and phone support, and MSN AdCenter through email support. I am going to share my experience.

Google Adwords

After couple clicks into “Contact us”, a live help chat option shows up. It’s not always there but if it’s available it’s a much faster way to get response instead of waiting for emails. The live help is very timely and it usually helps. (One interesting about live chat, I think all the live chat reps are female, or at least they all give out female names. I have used the live chat many times and I’ve never seen a male rep. I wonder if it’s intentional.) The good thing about live chat is that they allow you to send transcript to yourself after the chat. All the chats are saved by Google for future reference. The feedback form appears after the chat ends, with couple very brief simple questions.

Google’s email support is pretty fast and timely. When the Live Chat rep says that she will contact you via email for update on your status, you can usually expect the email in the same working day.

I am very happy with Google so far. They are fast and very helpful. They listen to what the customers have to say and find the best solution. Sometimes I even get solutions to problems I didn’t even know of.

Yahoo Panama Sponsored Search

As an American company, we recently got to be upgraded to the new Panama platform. (It is not available to Canadian customer yet. The other international market places are still in the process of upgrading to this platform.) There were some frustration during the transition because of some technical issues. I figured out that it is always faster to just pick up the phone and ask for help. Yahoo actually gives different levels of user account a different kind of phone support. I was upgraded to a premium account; however, I did not experience enough to tell the difference. I personally find that the email replies are always very “canned” and not really answering the question.The Yahoo email support is decent. However, there is no place where a customer can rate the service. (Both Google and MSN do it) If you are not entirely satisfied with the customer service you got, there’s no where for you to tell Yahoo. In the end, you will probably have to call customer service and be directed to the executive team.

I think the new platform release is probably the main reason why a lot of things are still not in place. After all, it is beta. It’s getting better day by day.

MSN

The first confusing thing about MSN AdCenter is that I couldn’t find a number to call. I found out about the number of customer service after asking it in an email. MSN AdCenter’s respond time is very fast. I can usually expect a reply in 24 hours. The replies are always very detailed and very helpful. A rep is assigned to the account for the case. I was so satisfied with the email support I never needed to call them. During business hour, I can expect an email reply in 2 – 3 hours, which is definitely fast enough even for emergency issues. The only thing that was confusing was after the support. For every case number you get, you will receive an evaluation email asking you to fill out a survey. Here’s the trick, the survey email is really not sent out on the day of the case, it is usually after. However, sometimes a case can expand into different stages of problems, which then have different case numbers. I received around 10 survey emails in 2 days from Microsoft AdCenter, all regarding a different case. I am not sure how you are, but to me, the case number looks something like SRX1024420000ID. I really wanted to give feedback to AdCenter because I had a wonderful experience dealing with one of my reps; however, it was almost too complicated to do so.

The phone support is very good as well. I only had to call AdCenter once because the MSN Sympatico toll free number really doesn’t work on this page. I called AdCenter wondering if they can find out a right number for me to call. It is almost abusing the customer service, but hey, they found me a number and a sales rep.

After all, I am just sharing my experience with customer service and how the business treats its customer service. As a sponsored search platform, I am very satisfied with all 3 of them. (If I like Google better, it’s only because it’s my preferred search engine.)

technorati tags: google+adwords, marketing, msn+adcenter, online+marketing, pay+per+click, ppc, search+engine+marketing, search+engine, sem, sponsored+search, yahoo+panama

Phoenix, the city.

Cathy Wang — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:40:18 +0000

Phoenix Sky Harbor has free wireless internet!
I love free wireless! All airports should have free wireless.

I still haven’t figured out what’s in Phoenix exactly, as in, major attractions. I keep thinking that there was an old TV show based in Phoenix. Was it Twin Peaks? When we got off the plane the lady said â€œwelcome to Sacramentoâ€?! I got confused.

Random fact of this airport, lots of people travel with their dogs.

Anyways.

I am catching up on some work while waiting for my 5 hour layover to Mexico. YAY! I am going to be in Mexico in 5 hours. (or less..) It’s a nice getaway during the ultra stressful holiday season, especially when Vancouver is having storm and snow.

Most random thing, bumped into Bob in YVR. He was on his way to Phoenix. We were on the same flight. What a funny coincidence.

Heavily sleep deprived. Can’t wait for Mexico.

Technorati Tags: airport, arizona, phoenix, phoenix sky harbor, travel

Happy Birthday, Screaming Man

Cathy Wang — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 06:06:09 +0000

Image from: google

This is probably the cutest Google logo I’ve seen so far.

Yaris Works – Podcast clinic

Cathy Wang — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 04:34:45 +0000

I was in Seattle for Yaris works which was hosted to promote Toyota’s Yaris. We had a Podcast Clinic session. We had a good time. (check out some pix I took) The guys from bands for fans were there and giving lots of feedback. We ended up having lunch together. Awesome peeps. Brent dropped by and gave us support as well. Thanks B.

Here’s a little recap of what we talked about:
- different podcast directories. (of course, the links provided are not the full list, it’s just what we mentioned.)

- ways to subscribe/read your feed
online:

local machine:

- different genre of podcast – very specific.
some example of podcasts that we talked about:

craft beer radio talks about beer. (Watermelon wheat rocks
adam curry. One of the attendee said “show me adam curry”
kexp. Discover some local music. (local = seattle)
chris pirillo
rocketboom
delta park project is one of my all time favorite podcast. Jason and Anna talk about pop culture. They are very specific with their audience group and they put in lots of time into their podcasts.
I love bringing up uncle weed as a great example of a special breed of podcaster. His “explicit” content rocks.
special mention: XS in your ear, by Ari, the organizer of the event

- How to create your own podcast
put it on the web:

hipcast support recording/publishing from your phone. Very useful when you are on the road.

Not podcast, but putting video on the web for your videoblog/audioblog? (you know, basically your video/audio is not being sent to the feed)

youtube
you can actually make money from revver, this is what the ask a ninja guys use nowadays
myspace

- when it comes to blogging and podcasting

loudblog (it’s actually meant for podcasting, very interesting. Can be integrated with other blogging software)
wordpress is what I prefer because of the expandable functions through plugins, you can also have a free hosted account on wordpress.com.
drupal is more like a powerful CMS instead of just a blogging software
blogger (probably the easiest to set up)
use technorati to search within blogs
use feedburner to put multiple feeds together and also track your stats)
With creative common you can protect your content

- talk about music and using music in your podcast/blog (and of course, independent music)

ioda promonet is the first that came into my mind. The ability to download music to promote music? Love it.
cdbaby with its wide selection of independent artists
I mentioned project opus just because it’s a drupal site and it’s developed in Vancouver. (and whitfield, a band that my friend manages, is on feature)
melodeo. I didn’t go into detail about melodoe. but you get the idea

- equipments/software

we were using the inspire 1394 for recording
the M-Audio Podcast Factory Podcasting solution is basically podcasting in a box
audacity is a pretty easy to use one
garage band makes it easy to create podcast. It has an option to “Publish to podcast” which formats the file properly
cast blaster
(The quality and choice of media a podcast has should reflect on the content, it’s also the reason why the videos/audios we upload are often raw. It’s a very informal thing instead of a regular podcast show)

- other web tools that we can’t get enough of

flickr, for it’s awesomeness
del.icio.us, for its ability to send other people links. (Hey that’s how I first heard about bands for fans from Brent. (yes you can tag your bookmarks to send to other people
eventful and upcoming
digg for user voted news
community walk for doing your own google map, for free

- other crazy things we talked about?

long tail and net neutrality

Good question we got from the session:
what are the criteria that the artists/musicians consider to decide on what to use to promote their music online?

More questions? Did I miss anything? Fire them this way.

Other things I should know about? Please do let me know.

webvisions 06 – usability for rich internet apps

Cathy Wang — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:52:33 +0000

Usability for Rich Internet Apps

Highly functional and responsive interfaces have long been crafted for the desktop, but bringing that same richness to the web is a still-maturing proficiency for both designers and engineers. In this talk, Nate will share lessons he’s learned from focusing on this specific issue within Yahoo!, and from helping to create the open-source Yahoo! User Interface Library. In particular, he’ll discuss the importance of moving beyond “implementation model” to “mental model”, important new instruments for communicating today’s more complex requirements such as “interesting moment’s matrices”, and a sane approach to creating the toolkits that make it all possible.

speaker: nate koechley

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

(ok I have to confess before I post my notes. I thought Nate was cute so I was staring at him during his presentation. So the notes are a little sloppy….)

we’ve been telling sotires without sufficient vers
- text display
- mouse click
- form submit

primitives
dom collection
event utility
connection manager (ajax)
drag & drop
animation

compounds
idioms

continuous cheap communication
high resolution visual language
- animation (yellow fade )

from implementation models to mental models
(You know, just because it’s the way you think about things does not mean it’s the way that it should be executed.)

don’t confuse “drag and drop” with “mental model”
(As an example, when you eject a CD by dragging it to your trash can on your MAC! it “poofs”, but it’s actually not poofing!)

how the interface shows and how the function is showed does not mean it’s how people would use it.

create new idioms. Use language.
i.e. autocomplete, taggingâ€¦

there is actually a very complex interaction model behind the whole autocomplete function.
- page load
- mouse over input field
- input field gains focus
- user input detected on input field
- ac data requested
- ac container opens
- ac container data loads
- etc.

storyboarding interesting moments.
- moment matrix.
- Think of it as a journey framework. What happens at what point.

Interesting moment catalyze:
- Design
- Development
- Communication
- Thoroughness

A back and forth action to have a perfect moment of interest between different people: refining

Characteristics of rich internet app:

The pieces are small
- bookmarkable
- saveable
- shareable
- reusable
objects, not just tasks
things are working around events: flickr-photo, upcoming-events, del.icio.us-links, webjay-playlist.
And yahoo trip planner. (_but really, it’s really not the best internet app. It annoys the hell out of me_)

Rich internet is not the same as internet applications.

http://www.yuiblog.com
http://nate.koechley.com/blog

Technorati Tags: usability, webapp, web, webvisions, webvisions06

webvisions 06 – mobile development panel

Cathy Wang — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:51:09 +0000

Mobile Development Panel

Thursday, July 20, 4:30 pm 5:30 pm
Category: Mobile/iTV/PDA

Mobile promises to be the next frontier of the web, but to web developers at first glance it looks to be a nightmare. With hundreds of browsers, devices and a battle in standards, how do you even get started?

In this roundtable discussion with pioneers and experts in mobile design and development, we will openly discuss the challenges of mobile, help get you up to speed with what is taking place in the industry and provide some tips and tricks to help you get started in mobile.
Speakers:
Brian Fling
Kelly Goto
Gavin Lew

No presentation for download. There was no slide for this panel.

Notes:

Email is still considered the biggest usage on mobile.

3 types of mobile phone:
Feature phone
- like a razr

smart phone
- more enterprise consumers
- personal computers

pda phone
- keyboard

Do you know that the phone manufactures have to cut down the price of the phones just because the north American customers are so used to getting phones for free from the subscription plan?

It’s interesting to see how behavior is driven by the carrier or manufacturer.
If tv is on the first 5 buttons on the phone, people will use it!

audience question: How to get images onto cellphone?
- image quality of images/screen on phones has been significantly increase after cameras been integrated into phones.
- The problem is how to get the image from the web to resize into mobile friendly size on the fly.
- Mobile web or SMS?

Google – google SMS search
It’s about accessing information in different ways.
Stepping away from the handset.

Can you really make an app on your phone that draws in revelent data all the time and only loads what’s necessary?
For example, If you have GPS on your phone and it tells you that there’s traffic or accident ahead instead of just pulling in random data of what’s happening in all the general area?

_ What about if I can subscribe to different feeds to my phone and it loads those information automatically? (dental subscription. Gps, stock? Without going onto a mobile web, there is such thing already isn’t there? But why aren’t there more people developing such network of directory of things? Is it the technology limiting people? or is it my ignorance.

The way people search for information will hopefully change.

sling -
Control your tv from your mobile phone.

from slingmedia:
SlingPlayerâ„¢ Mobile gives Slingbox owners the most powerful option available in mobile television, combining their unique personal home TV experience with the portability of their mobile phones or PDAs.

people download things:
usually from the carrier website.
Don’t be in any business rely on courier

Mobile user experience:
Word of mouth, see it, try it.

Bluecasting:
Sending information through Bluetooth when you stepping into a specific area.

Amazon mobile services

Very controlled content on mobile network, carrier would jump on it.

Jamster – crazy frog ringtone

Better interaction – scroll, scroll, scroll and click
Don’t force users to type because it’s more complicated and more work.

Docomo – driving for better content

still big money to be made in mobile content. (now think about rich media content. What’s the value? How does it really work? How do we encourage it? is that why the market is not fully tapped yet?)

Technorati Tags: mobile, webvisions, webvisions06

webvisions 06 – social metadata and the relevance revolution

Cathy Wang — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:36:20 +0000

Social Metadata and the Relevance Revolution

Consider this:
* Google now uses over 100 pieces of information gleaned from your online behavior to serve you the most personally relevant ads.
* Applications like del.icio.us and Flickr enable a kind of massively multiplayer information architecture – collaborative structuring of data that supports personal, local and global views of the information space.
* And social networking sites promise to increase the relevance of everything from your personal network (Linkedin) to your RSS feeds (Rojo)

Social metadata – information about who we are, who we know, who we trust and what we do â€“ is the fulcrum for new applications that leverage an understanding of your behavior to bring you meaningful content, products and services. It’s the foundation of the collective intelligence systems we see at work in Amazon, Google and eBay.

When Tim O’Reilly says collective intelligence will change how we live in the next few years, he’s talking about a relevance revolution built on social metadata. It means using our own information â€“ clickstreams, purchases, preferences, blog posts, tags “ to help us find more of what we want and eliminate the billions of things we don’t.

This revolution will bring us powerful new tools to discover and recover information, help us make decisions and maintain connections. We will also be confronted with important questions about authority, identity, security and trust.

This talk will explore how social metadata is changing our information landscape, and the opportunities and challenges it presents. We’ll also look at how we can take advantage of social metadata and design systems that tap into this collective intelligence.
Speakers: Gene Smith

download the presentation at Gene’s website.
My notes from the session:

IA is the structural design of shared information environments.
Shared design of semi-structured information environment.

Using the wisdom of crowds to solve the problems of IA
- Find, use and interact in information environment

Read the book – the wisdom of the crowd. Good book to have around to read.

Example:
Amazon
Wikipedia
And of course, flickr, and its tagging system. (the cluster system. Groups, contacts.)
- the entire experience of flickr is built around user contribution.

Google has this AI system that tracks what youâ€™ve been reading in the passing hour and give you the best system.

Social search:
Rollyo

linkedin
(who ever has the most friends wins)

three ingredients of social IA

capture user actions
- what does user actions mean?
- Things people do online that we can track. (web log file etc.)
- Building blocks for popularity, community, reputation. (it’s important to have the popularity part in order to build a more attractive social network)
- Ignore higher goals & motivation
aggregate and display
feedback

trackback is dead. (why?)
it’s pretty low engagement in terms of a social thing.

Last.fm sends to the server what you listen to.
Once again, low engagement.
(Though, to think about it, last.fm has just launched a new interface to accompany more social interaction for its users. my dearest internet friend was just blogging about it the other day)

Kinds of aggregation:

listing

- example: ebay
- prototagging (basically the weird lingo ebay ues)
- ranking

count an action

- order them
- example: youtube navigation toolbar
- yahoo’s most recommended photo
- (girls in bikini will never be most recommended but will never be most viewed)

clustering
collaborative filtering

- amazon
- netflix

other algorithms

- digg
- whole bunch of factors are being included.

A feedback loop is a system where outputs are fed back into the system as inputs, increasing or decreasing effects – Wikipedia

Exercise of positive feedback and negative feedback.

Positive: All the people around you â€“ if anyone has the hand up you put up
Negative: only the front and left as indicators â€“ you raise your hand after 1 second delay and only raise it for 3 seconds. (it basically creates a wave)

Positive feedback makes it grow
Negative feedback contains it.

Everyone loves to use digg as an example for the social network/community/IA

Places to intervene
- introduce delays
- modify the strength of feedback loops
- who has access to what information?
- Adjust incentives and punishments
- Change the sytem
Example: google. Aggregating links in a different way.

Challenges:
- spam
- gaming
- balance
- relevance
- unintended consequences

design principles:
- allow for different levels of engagement
- monitor and tweak feedback loops
- participate in larger ecosystem
– youtube is viral
- design new actions, aggregators, display

webvisions 06 – design patterns for the web

Cathy Wang — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 03:43:47 +0000

Thursday, July 20, 3:15 pm – 4:15 pm
Category: Trending Issues

A language of interaction has been opened to the community: the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.php. Its goal is to share a vocabulary around designing for engagement. It informs the newest areas of design within Yahoo! and provides a home for sharing the best design and code solutions with the community at large.

Patterns are optimal solutions to common problems. As common problems are tossed around a community and are resolved, common solutions often spontaneously emerge. Eventually, the best of these rise above the din and self-identify and become refined until they reach the status of a Design Pattern.

Design patterns are a nice concept, but how do they fare in the real world? This session will also draw lessons and pose questions based on the experience of that eBay’s User Experience & Design organization.

eBay has implemented an extremely lightweight, flexible approach to challenges in the creation and dissemination of design patterns. This approach was born of necessity (due to limited resources) but has been surprisingly effective. The approach is based on a few core principles:

* Move quickly and don’t think too hard
* Encourage mass documentation
* Allow and acknowledge messiness
* Allow no exceptions (subvert them!)
* Document the pattern and the specification
* Push patterns into code whenever possible

This session will illustrate these principles through real-world examples, including the unsuccessful and the successful.
Speakers:
Bill Scott
James Reffell

A history of creating & using design patterns at ebay

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.php

from james: (jreffell@ebay.com)
- half.com, ebay express

what’s horrible on a website?
inconsistent design and confusing user experience

Back in the days, ebay had a design guideline book. IT DIDN’T WORK. Obsolete the day it was printed.
Why didn’t it work?
- static (printed? You crazy? You are web designers. You are going to learn faster than you can print)
- hard to use (why so big?)
- too genereal (well-lit path)
- too specific (5-pixel padding)
- some things were just wrong

What’s a PATTERN

repeatable design solutions to problems

even if you don’t have a solution, you have the common language that you can talk to other people on the team about to create the interaction.

CODE

Developed xml system
Working with developers and code made patterns deeper.
Encouraged resuse
Some designers picked it up – even non-techies
(there should be multiple ways of getting to things or doing things.)
(you should tell people why you are doingn what you are doing. So they will understand. this is essentially crucial when a company is preparing its process document.

PROCESS

Community of designers to contribute.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER
- Patterns
- Process
- (cross-functional) people
- code/language (so that people speak the same language and understand what each other is talking about)

EBAY EXAMPLETitle – data – actionDeep structure of consistency

2 ways to layout forms:
description on top of the input or on the left.

You have to get everyone to get involved in the process and understand the process to help them to adopt. (If they can’t contribute they really wouldn’t care.) (_so when we have our process document done and hand to new recruits, they should have their say in it as well_)

_ so if we have the pattern worked out piece by piece, can we start creating a community around it so it fosters the academic area to enrich the up and coming new talents _

From Bill Scott
Patterns and beyond
Yuiblog.com
Looksgoodworkswell.comhttp://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.phpThe classic model- page – http request – server
Interaction. Presentation. Data
Because of ajax, now bringing data closer.

Surfacing a vocabulary.
(look up scientific areas and see how they do it) define and structure

All the fancy things we can do:
- drag and drop
- inline editing
- The hovering things, good indication for the users to see what’s going on.
- Expandable content is another good way of fitting more information on the screen.
- Cinematic transition
- Booya script.aculo.us

once the users understand the idioms, they can utilize the tool better.

Light footprint.
- show the users the path of things happening.
- Show the users that they don’t need that many steps to get there.

What’s with the nuclear explosion on flickr stewart? (If you go into organizer and start a batch edit and drag things out of the batch, it POOPHS. in a crazy explosion..)

Oracle is thinking about opening up their pattern library
((( after listening to “pattern” for so many times it sounds like patent)))

http://www.welie.com/

webvisions 06 – Designing for Social Sharing

Cathy Wang — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 04:31:47 +0000

Designing for Social Sharing

Thursday, July 20, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Category: Design

In recent months, a term that has become increasingly popular is “social search”. In this talk, I will argue that we should be designing for social sharing instead of for social search. In order for Page-Rank based search to work, we need people to create hyperlinks to web documents that they feel like linking to. Similarly, in order for social search to work, we need people to share their information, media, opinions and preferences. I will discuss tagging systems such as Flickr & del.icio.us, and media sharing sites such as YouTube as models for the design of participatory systems.

I will discuss three trends that designers working with such systems should think about. First of all the web has evolved from its geeky roots and become a social sphere for a large number of people. People have become used to living their lives on the web, to writing, linking, sharing, and networking online. The second is the rise in popularity of online games that can serve as inspiration for design of such systems. People spend hours playing all sorts of games on the web. With the rise of massively multiplayer online games, millions of people have become used to playing with each other in an alternate space, across geographical boundaries. The third trend is the rise of rich interfaces that update in real time and make the user experience richer and seamless. This allows for systems that update in real time giving you a glimpse of others in the system.

I will trace these three threads and how they can come together in the design of such systems. I will present several principles for the design of such systems, such as serving the individuals goal, creating a symbiotic relationship between the personal and the social; designing to support creative self-expression and emergent behavior.
Speakers: Rashmi Sinha

My notes from the session: (basically I was typing while the session went on. I copied down some good point forms from the slides as well.)

What:
The web has become a social sphere
A lot of Internet usage is about sharing and connecting with family/friends
The whole thing about “go to the web and hangout”

One type of “online hangout”: Massively multiplayer online games.
Example 1: World Of Warcraft.
In a short term manner and long term manner. People can stay on this game for a long time but at the same time it can be a game that is only played for a short period of time.
Example 2: Second Life
The game is about creating a country instead of creating a game space.
The users can creatively make things. At one point, it becomes a marketing vehicle: Wells Fargo StageCoach Island. This is a great example of merging the online and offline void

Four draws of such games:
- the ability to socialize
- an achievement system that gives players an incentive to improve
- complex and satisfying strategy that makes combat fun
- underlying narrative that players want to learn more about
- many games also update periodically.

While you are playing such massive online game, you don’t necessary need to be constantly active. Being an observer and “hanging out” becomes an important sector of the social interaction.
The social space of “Alone together”:

Surrounded by others, feel their presence, but not necessary interacting all the time
performing for audience
Improved performance in presence of others (even if presence is passive)
Observed even in cockroaches.

And it’s not just the younger generation that plays the games anymore. There are lots of adults involved in the games as well. The game becomes a social interaction that they have. This is actually an interesting part. My roommate plays WoW all the time and nowadays he probably talks to the people in WoW more than others. He has started to hangout with different group of people because of WoW.

Now we think about different possibilities of richer interaction, A good example of a more current trend is Ajax. Rich interfaces enable richer interactions. A good social application of ajax is the integration of gmail and googletalk. The seamless integration and interface of contacts make it much easier for people to keep in touch. (After all, email and IM are probably still the most popular usage of the internet) Another example would be Writely, there’s no need to pass documents back and forth between multiple people. Real time collaboration element is an important key for social interaction.

On the topic of “real time”:
http://www.digg.com/spy
You get to see the real time digging. (creating an environment that helps the users feel like there are other people doing things.) I see it as a positive encouragement for more social interaction. People are usually intimated to be the first one to step up and take action. It is also a negative reinforcement by the fact that people would want to take part of the crowd.
In real life, we follow the crowd. By showing the action of the crowd online is regenerating the experience.

WHAT is NOT social sharing?

- Friendster/linkedin
- They are social mapping
Friendster and linkedin can be considered more as the first generation of social network – just playing around with the concept of six degrees of separation. It’s only about the “connection” there’s no “sharing”. (Even though in these days friendster has integrated video/audio/blog and all those fancy things.)

People connect through objects. Objects mediate social networks.

Example of objects that connect people together: coffee, dance performance, tomatoes. How about ideas? Yes, ideas can be an object.
(Yes, do you know people connect through tomatoes?)

Second generation network:
Putting the shared object at the center.
Example: flickr, yahoo answers.
The idea is to share a bit of yourself and everyone will benefit from it.

Types of Sharing

Viral sharing
- one person has shared something, and people pass it around.
example: youtube
Youtube has this nice feature where you can reply to a video with a video. It’s a great feature to encourage more information exchange.
youtube becomes a source of entertainment. It is also a great creative outlet.
(is social sharing about letting people feel belonged and have the ability to be heard?)
tag based sharing.
- linked by concepts
i.e. del.icio.us, library thing
looking at del.icio.us popular and tag.
Social news creation
rating news stories.
example: Digg.
(My thought: digg is a very frequently used example in all the sessions I went to. Something is very interesting with its model. I shall talk look into it more later.)

Objects invite us to

connect
play
react
reach out

create something that’s amazing and then step out of it. let the people take over by using it.

make the system personally useful

let the system remembers you. “memorable personal snippets”

identify symbiotic relationship between personal & social

linking individual things into a social stream

create porous boundary between public & private
- people share for the right retruns
- don’t force people to make it public. Give them the control
allow for levels of participation

let people have the control of how much they want to participate

why do people digg? Why do people share?
- social statues (incentive for being popular) (is this just a popularity contest? ultimately, popularity is actually a great cincentive)

Let people feel the presence of others
And yet moments of independence

The forming of the mob
Bringing the individual contribution, it’s not about just mocking other people.
“prevent mob”

- allow for alternative viewpoints & perspectives

how to create a wise crowd instead of just crowd.

you want many perspectives and viewpoints.
Independence: prevent information cascade from happening.
Decentralization:
Easy aggregation: feedback loop. Good feedback loop on what’s happening with the system.

(this smart crowd sounds like a bottom up system. Definite read on this: linked by barabasi, emergence, and wisdom of crowds Think of it as a design of a system and how to have the system survive within the consideration of these points) (I personally read 2 of these books already and they have been more than just great inspiration.)

enable serendipity
- don’t make navigation all about popularity. (don’t support popularity contest, it loses its point)
allow for play

the game value in everything.

Commercial drive hatred

Cathy Wang — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:29:46 +0000

I love commercial drive, that’s why I live there. (and I live in a turret!)

But I found a link from someone who really hates commercial drive.
wow. I am offended.

Even more offended because it’s the 4th search result on google for commercial drive.

viva italia

Cathy Wang — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:28:38 +0000

Cathy Wang Celebrates Italy’s Victory

Originally uploaded by sillygwailo.

I live on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver. It’s famous for having tons of Italians and hippies. I went down to the drive to watch the world cup final yesterday. The whole street is blocked off. FILLED with people. We were lucky enough to park our truck right in front of a bar and watched the game on the truck. It became a community truck with crazy Italian dudes waving flags and dancing. It was a great celebration. The drive was still filled with people waving flags and honking till late at night. Good times all around.

media content

Cathy Wang — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:26:51 +0000

A while back, I had a great conversation with uncleweed about podcasting. Uncle weed is a podcaster with lots of personality who lives in Vancouver. (You should listen to his shows). At the end of the day, as he said, it’s all about the content you have.

In today’s web, to the recent two-tier internet talk, is about the struggle of content. When everything is about media, creating media content becomes a crucial element in the whole mesh-up of digital age. The media should suit the context of the content. Different styles of media deliveries and technology style determines the final communication of content. Looking at video as one example, all the different ways of recording videos, and putting videos online have changed in its own ways. The fact that everyone can put their video on youtube or any other places allow more voices to be heard, at the same time, more noises being generated.

If we are really talking about videos, we have to talk about podcast. Looking at podcaster directories as an example, podcastalley works as a pool of talent to build a bigger network. It pushes indie producers to bigger places. Some people questions the value of such purpose. In my opinion, it’s much like rumblefish, signing indie artists to promote them into different directions.

We can look at the internet/podcast becoming the next generation of TV. The only difference is that the audiences now have the power to decide what they are going to watch and the kind of content they want to receive. People are paying for media content online. you shouldn’t have to pay for it. If you pay for it, you shouldn’t have to listen/watch the ads. Why should content be free? because for the people who are putting on the content, they are getting the biggest audience group. However, if we pause for one second and think about the relationship of TV and podcasting. You pay for your cable subscription and you see have to watch those commercials. Yes, nowadays you get to record your TV, but that’s a totally different service we are talking about here. Is the content you are getting from your TV free? Not really. Without the big networks, how do TV programs make money in the end? In conclusion, while everyone is having a hard time adjusting to the whole podcaster directory copyright issues at the moment, we should probably think about the same system of media delivery, our good old TV.

I often like to apply one system onto another system to learn more about the possibilities of different scenarios. You can find traits of the social changes of society, the development of the society, in the development of the media on the internet.

Are we hungry for media content? I wonder how soon in the future we’ll start getting reality tv / talent search concept of the podcasting. (or maybe there is already, sorry for my lack of knowledge if there is.)

Seattle Madness

Cathy Wang — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:25:18 +0000

Hackfest!

Originally uploaded by kk+.

After traveling and being on the road for so long, my trip to Seattle this week seems very short. Well, it was short. I went down to Seattle on Tuesday night with the raincity studios crew. We were there for the drupal camp. It was a great success I have to say. Everyone had a great time. If you go through the comments in the Drupal Camp website you’ll find lots of useful information everyone contributed during the sessions.

It was also great hanging out with my raincity peeps. Nice one boys. Had tons of fun.

Some people from the magnificent internet also showed up in town this weekend for gnomedex. I had a good time hanging out with Brent, who is actually NOT going to gnomedex. (Hey Brent, thanks for being such a wonderful host. When you come to Vancouver I’ll make sure you have a good time here.) For all the other peeps at gnomedex right now, have a great time.

Busy with Podcast Hotel

Cathy Wang — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:20:24 +0000

It’s actually pretty embarrassing for me to admit this, but I really haven’t been writing anything on my blog.

Obviously it’s all links from my delicious. I wish I have time to write about each and every one of them because they are really inspiring sites. Let me do a point form here about some random thoughts:

headshift seems like a really cool company based in London. They talk about social web but yet if you search for web 2.0 there are only 2 results. What does that mean to you?
I like the fact the company does some interesting research projects. The way headshift approaches social web/social software just seems like they actually do care. Browse through their projects and maybe you’ll understand what I am talking about.I know about headshift because of bru, who I met briefly when I was in London.
I sent him/headshift some Podcast Hotel goodies to spread some pink >

Happy upcoming birthday by the way bru :)
I stumbled across neurofuzzy. There are some interesting concept regarding the whole movement of social web and information architecture. It’s nothing new, but treemap has always intrigued me as a different way of delivering information
It’s actually pretty easy to tell what I’ve been working on just by the bookmarks I make. They are mostly for research purpose. Yes I work on CMS and yes I do information architecture and yes I am a dork. I found alahup, which claims to be the next generation CMS. From the video teaser I cannot actually know the ease of use, but I am pretty sure it’s ajax packed. The Semantic Editing looks interesting though. Could be an alternative for rich text editor.
I have been watching mooflex very closely in the last couple months. It’s another ajax packed CMS. I personally just like to check out CMS and see how people are innovating the ways of organizing information as well as the whole interactivity that goes on with the users. The company, mad for milk has a really nice ajax fx library. I’ve seen it being used in some wordpress plugins. It’s light and useful. I like companies who develop things and give them out for free. In the end, everything feeds back to the people, for the people.
I was like “WOW” and almost spilled my red bull when I saw meebo. There were some dicussion about having web desktop instead of just web app before. Meebo would fit into the same line. It allows you to sign onto all your IM clients online. I like it. It’s an interesting concept. It’s developed by bunch of well educated people it seems. (dropping the yale and stanford bombs). Of course, Windows Live has its own live messenger Ya and do you know that the live messenger’s url is http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=0eccd94b-eb48-497c-8e60-c6313f7ebb73. good job on that…. Fill the page up with ajax and try to connect the online identity into one, but still can’t give users a friendly url? That bugs me a little. I think mint would be a really good example of using the technology in a smart way in terms of delivering information. It’s about the value and the application of the technology, not so much about the execution.
With all the ajax eating up the web, I wonder how many people are actually using it to improve usability and to deliver information to users faster. Maybe it’s still at a phase where people are testing out the technology, and trying new things. I wonder how easy it is for people to use a fully ajaxed up site without getting confused. Let’s attack Windows Live again. It’s all cool when you mouseover and find out cool feature. But really, in my humble opinion, there are too much happening and it’s distracting. If my mom were to use this I bet she can’t find half of the stuff she’s looking for. (and I shall run a test with my mom and see what the result is.) I am still a big supporter for all the developments google has been doing. They are utilizing the technology, not just “using” it. It’s almost standard now for EVERYTHING to be ajax eh? (sorry for my Canadian “eh”.) There’s ajaxWhois. Usability is a little awkward. I really wish that companies are using technology to make people’s life better and easier. Being able to connect people with technology, being able to connect people to technology would be my ideology.
I am getting busy with Podcast on the Floor, which is just like Podcast Hotel but this time we are doing it on the trade show floor of Innotech. I expect it to be an interesting event, and of course, we’ll have lots of fun there. (and yes, don’t even try looking at podcast on the floor in your window IE. It’s broken in IE and I am too busy right now to fix it. It will be fixed though. I promise.)
It’s interesting that I spend so much time making/maintaining other sites but my own. I remember distinctly telling myself that I should slow down a little and give more time to myself. However, it just seems that my personal time is becoming less and less everyday. Stressful at times but most of the times I enjoy it. I am at a decently happy place in my life right now. It’s exciting to anticipate the future. I am going to get my hands dirty with Ruby on Rails, most likely. Going to play with Sparklines. I just think it’d be fun.

Hey I talk a lot about ajax. Well, I think it’s more like I talk a lot about technology changes. It’s the theory behind things that intrigues me, habit of interaction design background.

What if one day everything is so intertwined and mashed up, information will no longer mean anything because all the layers of technology over it, that would be ironic. What we try to achieve, in the end, turns out to be the total opposite. The sadness of meaningless technology development, oh how it breaks my heart.

podcast hotel

Cathy Wang — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 04:16:03 +0000

I am at the podcast hotel seattle right now. It has been amazing. We had our first event last night with 3 bands playing: 3ce, blame amy, and fiasco. Not only did they play amazing music all night long, they were super awesome people to hang out with too. The night went on with lots of people mingling and talking. I did my virgin podcast as well, holding the official podcast hotel microphone. (It will soon be up after I capture the footage…) Thanks to thinkspot for the awesome venue and help. We will be partying there for another 2 nights.

Today we are at the triple door having our first day of conference. We have some pretty smart people talking here. Right now I am sitting at the very front row rockstar seating looking at Robert Spier from NPR having a video conference with Craig Newmark. You ask, who is Craig Newmark? Craig is famous for his list, the craigslist.

Stuart has been keeping an awesome blog throughout the conference with all the things being covered. We have very frequent update on our podcast hotel blog as well.

It’s time to grab a drink.

More blogging + podcasting coming soon.

ubiquitous identity

Cathy Wang — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 04:06:59 +0000

I remember back in the days when everyone was using ICQ on their dial up machines, one night a big giant called microsoft suddenly took over the sky of the web and had everyone using MSN. I also remember when I started using MSN I was so amazed by how the amazing free hotmail allowed me to import contact from my MSN messenger. It was a glorious year. I was a teenager, I was hooked that moment on. I also remember the day when I started using google instead of altavista, how I was amazed by google’s inner beauty other than its search engine. (*note: Altavista gets a link because I didn’t even think the site exists still)

I remember reading news online and loved how yahoo organized its categories, until one day I found out about RSS and had all my news send to me right to my machine in my own categorization. One day I realized that I do not need to read the news on MSN frontpage when I log in to check my email, and later on I realized I can have great email service by the infamous google. The media war went on. What’s the best way and fastest way to have information send to people? With15.7 million Internet users in 2002, MSN/Microsoft had their footprints in million of households. With the huge existing user group already, anyone would ask: “What can I do to these suckers who use my services like no tomorrow?” Back in the days MSN group showed up. It was great, connecting friends and sharing information and meeting people. Later on I started seeing ads on my MSN messenger and tons of useless dating/finance/entertainment tabs. The communication network is nested together so tightly it’s hard to leave. Google had its own IM which connects everything together. Internet has become a big identity blur. My identity, my MSN passport, my gmail account, defines who I am in most of the “communication” segment of my online life. Google keeps on innovating and creating, the latest google reader is my favorite. The new version 7 MSN messenger had everyone closer to each than ever. Publishing blogs posts, sharing photos, and notifying each other all in one. I think MSN space was one of the better ideas MSN has done in the past couple years. Do I use it? NO, because I have a mac and I cannot see all the new features. I have always believed in the power of bringing people together with one common element, in the war of web, it would be the user identity. How amazing would it be if my msn account can be connected with google account. The point of my rambling is because of this: Windows Live Ideas, I find it amazing. I see crazy ajax all over the place. After google map, msn had its MSN Virtual Earth. (virtual earth is awesome because it tracks down my location by reading my IP) I hope for one day when my MSN address book (or google address book) is synced with the map and I can see all my friends’ location on the map and the places they go to. How great would it be when one day google becomes a real life version of simcity and my friends’ mobile devices will show me where they are and connect me with them? Everyone’s identity is slowly morphing into a realm of surrealism where the online and physical space don’t matter anymore. Ubiquitous computing brings ubiquitous identity. Is it ubiquitous connection/communication or is it ubiquitous monopoly/advertising? Web application and web OS bring people online in ways they do not realize, is it for the good of people or for the good of corporation?

My idea of ubiquitous identity prototype will soon to be posted.

The existence of hubs and emergence in democracy system.

Cathy Wang — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 04:16:34 +0000

In the article from WolrdChanging Blog it talks about Fractal Democracy.

small numbers of people, let’s say somewhere around 7 form the base cell of the organisation. Out of these, the group agrees on who represents their group will the best, and these selected persons form together with others who are selected to form the same kind of grouping, and these people then select one out of their group which goes up to the next level, where the same thing happens again. This method of distributing the will of the people is guaranteed to be totally representative, because it is the collective decision which ultimately feeds up to the top level, which irons out all the kinks.

This bottom-up democracy system is like a spreading of innovation. If we look at the hub as the center of the system, it spreads out. However, to look at this in a more critical way, we will realize that the center is not where everything starts. People get together and agree on one person to present the group. The person becomes the hub. It is an emergence process. (There are also interesting discussion between bill and Jamie regarding the question if the state of emergence take place in linked world. I think if we look at the democracy system that’s being mentioned, we can see how it’s an emergence process along with the hub theory we learned in network. The hub is the pacemaker; however, it is the slim mold that has the strongest trait. In a real democracy system, the hub would be the ant queen. As we all know, the ant queen does not give out orders; however, the system evolves around the person. In a fractal democracy, the hub should not be the real decision maker, the hub should be the a representation of an ultimate goal.

I believe people have different view on democracy; however, I am just expressing my opinion from what I read from the fractal democracy.