Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Boxes and Arrows. Great articles, but I really dislike their new design. Star ratings everywhere? Apart from the fact that they are fairly meaningless (so 3 people rated this article 4 stars on average. What the hell does that mean? Nothing at all is the correct answer.), they really throw the visual design of the page out of balance. And then the cropping of text. Why is the sidebar full of text like “Wireframes f…” or “How to: ment…”? Come on!

Enough bitching - I’m lazy too. But these are all things IA’s would care about, so I’m surprised B&A would get them so wrong.

I *do* really like the fact that they don’t only indicate who wrote an article, but also who edited it. That’s good.

A social analysis of tagging: “After being on many mailing lists for many years, let me say, conversation is often overrated. Often, I like to be in the company of others, without needing to follow threads and participate. It is the same reason that I like working in a cafe - enjoying the presence of others without the burden of active interaction. Similarly, tags provide a companionable social hum that I enjoy.”

In the continuing rise of information architects coming up with online tools and services, Rashmi and Uzanto present MindCanvas. Rashmi is one of the most thorough researchers I know, so if she stands behind these methods I’d believe her. Fascinating.

I just registered for this years’ Information Architecture Summit - it looks like it’s gonna rock. A LOT of people will talk about folksonomies (including me), so let’s see if the IA profession has come up with an answer to bottom-up classification after having taken some time to think about the whole thing. IA’s tend to be balanced, careful people. Some of us at least. Not me. Anyway, last year there was a lot of confusion about folksonomies, perhaps this year we’ll have actually something interesting to say. Something like: “Sure, they’re cool, but here are a few ideas of taking them to the next level.” Perhaps.

Six Apart - Movable Type News - The benefits of static web pages: “# Static pages are easier to index.
# Static pages show a better face to external search engines.”

I can not believe that the Typepad guys would put such self-serving bullshit on their website. The above are patently NOT true, and pretty much everyone with an ounce of technical understanding knows this.

Of course they list these as “Byrne’s” list. This tactic is known as willfully spreading lies or myths that benefit your product. I didn’t believe Typepad would do that.

“GeekBrief.TV” Girl talking about gadgets. Tis gots to be popolaro!

Although. I would like people to try to be less TV-like, not more in their videoblogs. Thank you so much. And don’t try so hard to be cute. Only americans like that.

Watch movie (Quicktime, 2.9 min, 18.9 MB)

Original post, from GeekBrief.TV:

1/15/06 - GeekBrief.TV | Download GBTV #0006 or Stream in Quicktime The Tunebuckle keeps a nano safely tucked inside the buckle of your belt. Company: TuneBuckle Source: The Register MicroMemo is a digital voice recorder for the iPod with Video Company: Xtreme Mac Source: Engadget The Mini Three is a paired down three button model of the The Optimus Company: Art. Lebedev Studio Source: Engadget Clocky is a fluffy, robotic alarm clock with wheels. Company: Clocky Source: Coolbuzz

(Via Mefeedia)

I’ve been running Google adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher network ads in an A-B test for over a month now. I had a script randomly serve either a Yahoo or a Google ad in the same place. The ads looked almost exactly identical (in color and layout) too.

The end result is that Yahoo (right now, for my site) is paying 10% more than Google ads.

Each ad network got 9000 page impressions per day, for over a month. That should be enough to be statistically relevant. But then the stats start to diverge in interesting ways.

Google’s ads got an average of a 2.3% clickthrough rate per day. Yahoo only got an average of 1.3%. BUT: the average daily revenue per day from Yahoo is 10% higher than the average daily revenue from Google.

In other words: Yahoo seems to serve (for my site) higher paying ads than Google. So even though the Yahoo ads get less clickthrough, the end result is that Yahoo pays 10% more.

Of course, these numbers will probably differ for your website. The 10% difference is statistically valid for my website, but you can not extrapolate that to other websites. The content will be different, so the ad inventory that each service has will probably be different as well.

Your final conclusion should be that Yahoo and Google pay pretty much the same, although there may be small difference (5, 10, perhaps up to 20%) in what they pay for specific websites. The only way to know for your website, is to run them both, next to each other, for a month or so, and see which one pays more for your website. If you are making 100$/day or more, 10% can end up being quite a bit of money and doing these tests and optimizing may be worth it. If you make less, don’t bother, just use one of the two for now.

And of course, you should repeat the test a few times a year. These things always change.

» Mashup ecosystem poised to explode: a good explanation how the new internet API will hopefully create a new ecosystem on which lots of software can be easily written - just like the PC!

Exploding the conference business

thailand3 007

Originally uploaded by Peterv2.

mmmm… More pictures at Flickr

I live quite far away from many of my friends and family, and lately I feel like I’d like to be in touch with them more.

What tools have you find really, actually useful to keep emotionally in touch with your loved ones. I’m not looking for “cool” web stuff. I’m looking for things that you use to keep in touch.

Email and phone of course. I am starting to use Skype more.

braintag: vlog year+1.: “Although the cameras are getting smaller and the players more portable, the automatically captured metadata isn’t getting any bigger or better. Yet.”

Hardware for videoblogging (and generally, for consumer media creation that’s web-savvy) is ok, but a lot is missing. Videocameras should focus less on image quality (it’s fine for the web) and more on sound, for example. For vlogging, at least. But we’re slowly getting there.

del.icio.us/url/94ddbb945ebaac34095a802d002dd1ab: bookmarks at delicious of the Mefeedia videoblog directory, which has the amount of videoblogs in its title, hence it’s a strange view of the growth of videoblogging. Yey.

“Socks and Sandals Record Release Party

I am trying to find good podcasting tools. Here’s what I need: record Skype conversations, mix some audio, then upload it somewhere (preferably the internet archive for longevity). Should be easy, and on Windows. Google is no help at all. I am willing to pay 50$ for a good tool that does it all. I don’t want to pay for crappy tools that do 1 thing kinda ok. I want an easy solution.

Does anything like this exist yet?

I’m checking out performancing, a Firefox plugin that lets you write blogpost with a nice editing window from within your browser.

“Live from Las Vegas #029: the Google Keynote…”

Watch movie (Quicktime)

A pretty long video of the Google keynote. Enjoy. Rboin Williams is rippin’ like crazy in this one, I think this must be the corporate presentation with the highest density of sex jokes eva.

Original post, from Rodrigo A. Sep

“Tony Kahn on Podcasting and Videoblogging”. A pretty cool interview with NPRs Tony about podcasting..

Watch movie (Quicktime, 3.4 min, 13.3 MB)

Original post, from Steve Garfield’s Video Blog:

Tony Kahn talks about how podcasting and videoblogging are revolutionizing the way people consume media. Click here for video. [ QuickTime ] Video in this interview: Jay Dedman Shaving: Momentshowing David Pogue Interview. Subscribe to Tony: Tony Kahn’s Morning Stories…

(Via Mefeedia)

So Yahoo! has recently bought Flickr, Oddpost, Upcoming, Konfabulator, Webjay and Delicious. In other words, a lot of the 1 to 5 people small startups that have good “web DNA” (which means: whose creators understand the web) and do innovative stuff. Have I missed any?

Sounds like a plan to me.

“This Old Man”. I love these collaborative movies Mica does.

Watch movie (Quicktime, , )

Original post, from Tap Diva Project 2005:

You know how your teachers always say to sing your rhythms? This little movie proves the point. click on the picture to watch/6.3 MB…

(Via Mefeedia)

I am working with a starting Indian development shop, and even though it is challenging sometimes, and we’re still trying to make it work, answers like this about last months’ bill really make my day :)

From my provider: “payment: I dont know what the best way to bill for the last month is. Since various people jumped on various tasks at various times. Why dont you decide on the value of delivered items. If its more than zero we are making progress!”

Conference schedule - ASIS&T 2006 Information Architecture Summit.

Oh man! Day 3 looks fantastic. If only I could clone myself in 3 people and thus attend all 3 tracks. Damn!

Is there a (preferably free) and easy way to track the responsiveness of a site? As in: how fast does it serve its pages. Something that checks a number of times a day would be perfect. Thanks!

(Yes, I’m back from my holiday. It was great.)

“T-Shirts!” Buy some Node101 T-shirts to help the cause!

Watch movie (Quicktime, 1.9 min, 6.5 MB)

Original post, from Michael Verdi:

Check out the NODE101 T-Shirt store! Help support NODE101 and FreeVlog buy buying some cool vlogger swag. Also, if you’ve got an idea for a T-Shirt that you’d like to donate, just email me and we’ll get it figured out.

(Via Mefeedia)

“I will never fly United Airlines again” says Steve Garfield. It makes me think though: sound is THE most important thing with videoblogs. All beginning videobloggers obsess over picture quality. But it doesn’t really matter, really. Sound quality does though. Good sound means the video looks better. Anyways, don’t piss off videobloggers - their anti-company rants are even more home-hitting than those of text bloggers.

Watch movie (Quicktime, , )

Original post, from Steve Garfield’s Video Blog:

(Via Mefeedia)