Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Column Two: Full site redesign? Start by addressing the home page. I have a lot of respect for James, but that’s the WORST advice ever. Starting with the homepage is a direct road to political hell in any company. I usually do my best to keep the homepage out of discussions until we’ve done other parts of the site. These days, I’m doing the same with the main nav - it all comes out of working on the rest of the site. James, this one’s just wrong, I find it hard to imagine you won’t go straight to politicohell (don’t pass by START).

Sifry’s Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging: “The first is that we are using automated language analysis software (based on languid), and it may have bugs, thus over or undercounting a particular language or group of languages.”

Joho the Blog: Karl Rove would sing in Spanish: “The immigration bill has turned into a fiasco, leaving the Republicans as the party that would build a wall between two countries — a wall! — and forcing the President to have to clarify his party’s position by saying that, no, putting 12 million people on deportation trains probably isn’t such a practical idea.

Then our President is forced to take a stand on a symbolic, wedge issue: Does the national anthem have the same value if sung in Spanish? Karl Rove would not have let the President get backed into that corner. And once in the corner, he would not have let Bush snarl his way out of it. How can the president of country of immigrants find our national song less beautiful sung in the language of those citizens who have chosen to come here? Why does it make him frightened — I do believe fear is behind this reaction — instead of bring a lump to his throat?”

BBC - Programme Catalogue - Programmes classified as pirate radio stations. The new BBC programme catalogue looks beautifully.. IA-like. Somehow. Check that black and white. Check those sparklines. Oh baby!

Lucas wonders where the chinks in Myspace’s armour are.

Two words. Innovation and mullets. Myspace is locked into a certain model of interaction because of their history and size, and their innovation attempts don’t seem particularly successful (video).

Their interaction model is centered around identity creation: here I am! This is me! Be my friend! This works great with teenagers. Myspace will never be a LinkedIn, for example (LinkedIn seems to be doing great, by the way). MySpace also will never be a SecondLife, and not just because it’s a website rather than a gameclient. There are other interaction models around things that are not identity.

And mullets, of course, went way out of fashion.

All this chittah-chattah: “When you sign up online for Skywards, which is the frequent-flier program of Emirates, the international airline of the United Arab Emirates, you enter your name, address, passport number, and other information, and you select an honorific for yourself from a drop-down list. A few of the choices, in addition to the standard Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, and Dr, are: Admiral, Air Comm, Air Marshal, Al-Haj (denoting a Muslim who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca), Archbishop, Archdeacon, Baron, Baroness, Colonel, Commander, Corporal, Count, Countess, Dame, Deacon, Deaconess, Deshamanya (a title conferred on eminent Sri Lankans), Dowager (for a British widow whose social status derives from that of her late husband, properly used in combination with a second honorific, such as Duchess), Duchess, Duke, Earl, Father, Frau, General, Governor, HRH, Hon, Hon Lady, Hon Professor, JP (justice of the peace?), Judge, Khun (the Thai all-purpose honorific, used for both men and women), L Cpl, Lt, Lt Cmdr, Lt Col, Lt Gen, Midshipman, Mlle, Monsieur, Monsignor, Mother, Pastor, Petty Officer, Professor, Senor, Senora, Senorita, Sgt, Sgt Mjr, Shaikha (for a female shaikh, or sheikh), Sheikh, Shriman (an Indian honorific, for one blessed by Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, wisdom, luck, and other.”

In information architecture, ratings are overrated. Not only do ratings often create competition around the wrong attributes, also, ratings often end up being meaningless in particular implementations. What does a 4.5 star rating mean? Usually, the answer is: nothing.

Ratings are overrated. Except when they’re not.

When you spend more time on design than on grammar: “You can specify your interest in some topics, pick from what other people’s interests, and even customize it by providing a reading list.”

uiGarden.net - Weaving Usability and Cultures: Practicing Usability in Hong Kong: “Here at the uiGarden, we have been having discussions on whether there are cultural differences between practicing usability in the West and the Far East. In an exploration of the theme, we interviewed Apogee’s own Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong. They give their own uptakes of the discussion and offer us their insights from their own experiences of working in Hong Kong.”

I was just at an anthropology conference where they were talking about the importance of the race/gender/… of the interviewer vs. the interviewee. A black lady said: “When I was interviewing in Africa, people told me they opened up to me because of my color and grey hairs”. The discussion was interesting, it made me think of the importance of a diverse team. In web development, usually everyone is white male, and I think it shows in the systems we build.

Rosenfeld Media - Card Sorting. Donna Maurer, about THE expert on cardsorting, and definitely someone with a lot of practical experience, is writing a book about cardsorting. I can’t wait. I really like the approach Lou Rosenfeld is taking with his new book company. Practical UX books. Just imagine!

Through it’s API, Google is starting to define its OS for outside developers. The main characteristic of the OS seems to be its web simplicity. Everything has of course a URL. Google defines “kinds”, which are major content types, like “event” or “message”. A message can be an email, a blog entry, a comment or anything like that.

So Google’s services (calendar, mail, …) use a common language and common content types (”kinds”). This promises to be powerful stuff, and as we’ve seen with the opening of Amazon’s S3: we’re just getting started.

Common Elements:”Kinds”: “The collection of elements that together describe a contact is called the Contact “kind.” Some of the elements in the Contact kind are ordinary Atom or RSS elements; others are defined by Google in a namespace called the “Google data namespace.” By convention, the Google data namespace is usually referred to in XML code using the gd: alias; for example, the element that contains a telephone or fax number is . The schema URL for the Google data namespace is http://schemas.google.com/g/2005.

Google defines other kinds as well: Event (a collection of standardized elements that together represent a calendar event) and Message (a collection of elements representing an email message, discussion group posting, blog entry, or other message).”

If you have a Visio doc with lots of pages, and need to get them in PPT, what I do is to Save As Webpage. Then click the Publish button and you can increase the resolution of the pictures (I choose .png and the highest resolution), and save it. Then I just pick out all the images from the folder Visio generates, and paste those into PPT.

The reason I have to go through these steps is that if you do Save As .gif or .png or something, Visio only saves the current page, not all pages. So it’s faster to use the Save As Webpage trick.

Joi Ito’s Web: Japan’s “Free Press”: “I heard an interesting theory that I’d love for any Japan experts to confirm or debunk. Apparently, during the drafting of the Japanese constitution, the phrase “freedom of the press” was proposed by the US team. This was a big problem for Japan which had never really allowed any free speech. Instead of translating it as “freedom of the press” in terms of free speech they changed the meaning to freedom of “printing press” sort of press.”

Google has always been good at minimalism, but as they expand into more complex apps (UI-wise), there seems to be a move towards getting “designers” involved. Google calendar got help from Douglas Bowman, Google got Jeffrey Veen to join them with their purchase of measuremap from Adaptive Path.

The challenge will be to: a) create a somewhat consistent feel in all their new ajax apps (which is somewhat happening), and b) instill a culture among engineers that values “design” enough for their products to be usable.

They seem to be well on their way. The word on the street about Google is that they’re actually getting very advanced at doing usability testing and measuring results. I have the feeling they’ll be like Amazon: no apparent focus on design and such, but a very deep, measuring, “engineer”-like way of doing usability and design. So far, some of their apps have been horrendous to use (RSS reader), others I quite like (the new calendar).

Powazek: Just a Thought: Death to User-Generated Content: Derek Powazek: “So let’s not give in to the buzzphrase du jour. Let’s use the real words. Those people posting to Amazon pages? They’re writing reviews. Those folks on Flickr? They’re making photographs. And if we must have an umbrella term to describe the whole shebang, I have a suggestion. Try this on for size: Authentic Media.”

I like.

Joho the Blog: [f2c] Christopher Sacca, Google: “Chris Sacca is head of Google’s Special Initiatives. There are about 5 million terabytes of info in the world and google has collected about 170T so far.”

USATODAY.com - Google’s hidden payroll: “Because Adsense earnings can vary widely depending on a site’s traffic or subject matter, many Web publishers in the developed world don’t bother participating. Whereas a $25 monthly payout may not be worth the trouble to a blogger in Manhattan, it can mean the world to a blogger in Manila.”

Bloug: From consulting to products and services: a LOT of information architects have been starting to build products lately. Lou made a list. It’s in the air!

I’m back from the IA Summit. I wish I had time to write about it, but I have other fish to fry. It was a really good one. My talk went really well, I kept it down to earth and the jokes really worked, even though I lost my notes and thus was kinda nervous. But I had practices it 4 times before going to the summit, so I had the material pretty much down.

I also reconnected with a whole lot of people. I didn’t party much - the conference information and social overload isn’t for me - all the noise and buziness makes my head hurt.

So all in all, perhaps the best IA Summit so far. It just keeps getting better. I also really like the efforts the organizers make to make it a social experience for everyone, newbies included, and to tear down the “old boys club” feeling that this and many other conferences suffer from. Fantastic work.

I also realized that I see most of my (few) role models at the IA Summit. Role models, people you can look up to and learn from, are really important in life. I met Lou Rosenfeld the first time at an IA Summit, I saw Steward Brand speak at an IA Summit (an ongoing inspiration!), and this time I was honored to meet David Weinberger (another inspiration). I was also very pleased to have an opportunity to listen to Dana Boyd and Rashmi Sinha talking about social aspects of the web. By the way, Rashmi’s upcoming Mindcanvas product rocks very, very much.

And that’s enough for now.

A Zulu In Silicon Valley: Mefeedia - Video feeds for iTunes and your Browser: “I like mefeedia. Why? Because unlike Yahoo! Podcasts (which I like), I can accumulate all my video feeds into a single feed which I can stream into my iTunes player.”

I always felt Dave Winer was onto something when he was talking about the “River of news” that an RSS reader should be. You gotta give it to the man.

Last Monday, we did an emergency launch to fix some bad SQL that was taking the server down, and as a sideeffect we launched a new homepage for Mefeedia if you are logged in. I call it the river of vlog.

The page is quite simple, it lists new videos that have been aggregated into your queue, including the description of the original blogpost. There wasn’t a page like that on Mefeedia yet.

And strangely, suddenly, I am addicted to Mefeedia.

This river of vlog homepage has become useful. Useful is a powerful word. Addictive might be a better one. I check it many times a day, on the lookout for new videos. It is surprisingly simple yet really really powerful.

I always had a dream: the day I would visit Mefeedia as often as I visit Bloglines, I would know I succeeded. After 2 years of working on it, that day still hadn’t happened. But now, I think we’re there. The difference one page can make! I can spend years doing informationarchitecturitis, but without this 1 page, the site never hit that tipping point of usefulness.

Here’s a screenshot:

Today we did something I haven’t heard before: an emergency release.

We were building a bunch of new features, and weren’t gonna release for another month or so. But the server was slow lately, to the point of being unreachable - the old features were taking down the server.

So I uncommented a bunch of new features that weren’t ready yet, and for the sake of having a site that’s not hyperslow (it’s still somewhat slow), we released the site. At least performance should be better.

Emergency release. Live and learn!

From building Mefeedia, I’ve learnt quite a few things.

I’ve learnt that half of the features I’ve come out with in the past year don’t matter. The other half are ok, but they are still not there.

Usability testing matters. Even if you’re an experienced usability reviewer.

Engineering matters. The site has been very slow lately.

Featuritis? I give you informationarchitecturitis! Too much thought going into IA structures. Not enough in talking to users.

Yep. I am learning. Building something real is great for that.

“G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide”: “Designers who work with networks must face these tensions and design to take advantage of the global while not destroying the local.”

A must read.

Asia, Far East, news and analysis Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times: “The Ministry of Public Security has drawn up new rules and babies’ names must in future be drawn from a database that excludes thousands of rare Chinese characters. Out go indecipherable names. With the introduction of electronic identity cards, the authorities will register only names that they decide to include on their database.”

In other words: a new controlled vocabulary of characters (imposed by technology standardization) means you can’t call your kid what you want anymore.

When you need to localize and categorize — CMS Watch

Pricing is hard. A lot of new businesses are trying to figure it out. One startup wants to let people charge for their content. But their system doesn’t let me sell a video for 1.99$. So that’s out for me.

It’s all about convenience and value. Can I backup my pictures folder? I’ll pay 35$/year for that. No need for it to be highly available, I’ll only need it when I accidentally delete something or my computer crashes. Can I backup my business files? 4.99/month sounds reasonable. The backup needs to be automated.

It’s very hard for the creators of a service to understand what people will pay for. Ringtones sell for 2.99$ a piece! For a ringtone! It’s the convenience and the value - not the data. iTunes set the price of a song at 99c. A movie at $1.99. And it’s convenient.

I wonder if there are any good ways to research pricing in a new market?

Email Peachpit

Meetup: World’s largest community of local Meetups, clubs and groups!

I really like Meetup’s homepage. No feature lists, just lots of examples of meetups (which give you an idea of what it’s like), some endorsement quotes, and then a long list of cities and topics. (And a searchbox and featured meetups.)

In other words: let the data speak for itself. Compare with Basecamp’s homepage, where it’s all about benefits (not features) and endorsements. For their service, a good approach too I guess.

From a Clay Shirky talk writeup, a pattern langauge for social software, just stating out. Great stuff. I’m involved in some social software stuff lately, and not just in Mefeedia, and it’s hard. But interesting.

Mashable* » Ma.gnolia - Because You Really Need Another Social Bookmarking Site: “How many more photo sharing sites, social bookmarking services, ajax start pages and online calendars can the market withstand? [...] I think it’s a shame to see talented developers and designers building me-too applications when there are so many great ideas still up for grabs.”

I’m chatting with Emanuele about tags and structure, getting ready for my talk at the IA Summit this year. Here’s the chat transcript for prosperity. We talked about adding structure to tag spaces, and whether that’s a good thing, and if so, what kinds of structure, and such.

[1:45:20 PM] Emanuele says: Peter
[1:45:27 PM] Emanuele says: I cannot reach mefeedia
[1:45:44 PM] peterkevandijck says: hi emanuele
[1:45:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes, it’s down…
[1:45:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: being worked on…
[1:45:59 PM] peterkevandijck says: wanna talk about tags? :)
[1:46:13 PM] Emanuele says: heheeh i’m thinking hard about the future of tags..
[1:46:33 PM] Emanuele says: today Monthly Vision has published an interview with me
[1:46:36 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) I’m preparing my talk….
[1:46:41 PM] Emanuele says: inside an article about tags
[1:46:46 PM] peterkevandijck says: cool
[1:46:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: online?
[1:46:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: congratulations!
[1:47:08 PM] Emanuele says: no it’s a physical magazine
[1:47:13 PM] Emanuele says: and it’s in italian
[1:47:14 PM] Emanuele says: :(
[1:47:19 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) oh well
[1:47:31 PM] Emanuele says: i’m talking about the future of folksonomies
[1:47:39 PM] Emanuele says: with the guy who wrote the article
[1:47:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: so what *is* the future?
[1:47:53 PM] Emanuele says: you know
[1:47:57 PM] Emanuele says: you are the international expert
[1:47:59 PM] Emanuele says: :D
[1:48:02 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah right ;)
[1:48:13 PM] Emanuele says: you say facets…
[1:48:16 PM] peterkevandijck says: i just have some suspicions.. :)
[1:48:33 PM] Emanuele says: but interesting ones, I suspect
[1:48:34 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[1:49:33 PM] Emanuele says: and hey, I will be there to listen to your talk
[1:49:34 PM] Emanuele says: ;)
[1:50:09 PM] peterkevandijck says: cool
[1:50:21 PM] peterkevandijck says: The competing talks are also very interesting!
[1:50:29 PM] peterkevandijck says: I think it’ll be one of the best summits so far…
[1:50:50 PM] Emanuele says: it will be great, I know
[1:51:13 PM] Emanuele says: your main idea is
[1:51:17 PM] Emanuele says: facet + tags
[1:51:21 PM] Emanuele says: right?
[1:51:38 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes… and other types of structure: what happens when we build structure and semantics into tags?
[1:51:49 PM] peterkevandijck says: using mefeedia as example case study
[1:52:20 PM] Emanuele says: i talked with you about that
[1:52:46 PM] Emanuele says: i love the idea of bottom up structure between tags
[1:52:58 PM] Emanuele says: created by users with a wiki approach
[1:53:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: one of the interesting things is: if you build semantics into tags (like: a tag is a person), then translation becomes sometimes easier (like: we don’t have to translate names of people)
[1:53:15 PM] Emanuele says: uhm semantics
[1:53:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes this is another dimension
[1:53:49 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, I’m not sure I’m using the word ’semantics’ correctly, but it’s the best word I can think of… giving meaning to tags
[1:54:35 PM] peterkevandijck says: and once you add some semantics (like: a tag is an event), then additional structure becomes very easy (like: an event is in a place, a time, …)
[1:55:14 PM] Emanuele says: how to describe the semantic relationships
[1:55:20 PM] Emanuele says: a sort of ontology at the end
[1:55:20 PM] Emanuele says: ?
[1:55:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: but: it can also be confusing, for example: if I have tags that are people, and I have users that are people too, then my semantics start crashing into each other… you can browse users (people)… and you can browse tags (people)… how are they different?…
[1:56:01 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes, it turns into ontology…
[1:56:23 PM] peterkevandijck says: but I think the problem is limiting it: you have to only choose a very few types of relationships and such…
[1:56:26 PM] peterkevandijck says: and make the most of those
[1:56:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: if not, you just get a really big and messy ontology that’s rather useless
[1:56:47 PM] peterkevandijck says: it becomes like a big topicmap
[1:57:10 PM] Emanuele says: very complex…
[1:57:15 PM] Emanuele says: and me feel is simply
[1:57:22 PM] Emanuele says: let the people do the work
[1:57:42 PM] Emanuele says: you cannot impose a centralized structure or sematic
[1:58:01 PM] Emanuele says: it’s people with their mental models
[1:58:03 PM] peterkevandijck says: well.. but you do impose a UI, right?
[1:58:13 PM] Emanuele says: that create structure
[1:58:15 PM] peterkevandijck says: the UI makes the whole thing useful
[1:58:17 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[1:58:26 PM] Emanuele says: but maybe you can think to a GUI
[1:58:38 PM] Emanuele says: that doesn’t restrict users
[1:58:47 PM] Emanuele says: for example
[1:58:51 PM] Emanuele says: my structure
[1:58:57 PM] Emanuele says: could be different from your one
[1:58:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: so you can’t just tell people, add any kind of relationship, do whatever, because you won’t be able to build a useful UI on top of that.. and without useful UI, why would anyone tag?
[1:59:11 PM] peterkevandijck says: i don’t think that’s possible…
[1:59:18 PM] Emanuele says: maybe you are right
[1:59:22 PM] peterkevandijck says: i have never seen a good, generic UI for generic ontologies
[1:59:22 PM] Emanuele says: i don’t know yet
[1:59:34 PM] Emanuele says: but in a social environement
[1:59:42 PM] Emanuele says: you have the power of people
[1:59:54 PM] Emanuele says: that decides what is useful and popular
[2:00:07 PM] Emanuele says: this could make the difference
[2:00:18 PM] Emanuele says: if my tag organizing is useful
[2:00:19 PM] Emanuele says: it will emerge
[2:00:22 PM] peterkevandijck says: right… so people make up their own stuff.. like special tags and such.. like the tag1/tag2 hacks in delicious…
[2:00:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: but that’s very limited in UI usefulness
[2:00:53 PM] Emanuele says: delicious is not made to support structure in tags
[2:00:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: exactly
[2:01:00 PM] Emanuele says: not yet
[2:01:05 PM] peterkevandijck says: so some users hack it a little bit…
[2:01:13 PM] peterkevandijck says: but: the UI support for that is very little…
[2:01:16 PM] Emanuele says: yes but this is a stong signal
[2:01:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: so the motivation to do it is very small
[2:01:20 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:01:22 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:02:15 PM] Emanuele says: give them an empowering GUI
[2:02:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: so.. my idea is: build in a minimum of structure.. just a little bit… and create empowering UIs on top of that
[2:02:51 PM] peterkevandijck says: the UI will hopefully motivate people to use the structure…
[2:03:01 PM] Emanuele says: so you decide the structure flexibility
[2:03:02 PM] Emanuele says: ?
[2:03:08 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes…
[2:03:21 PM] Emanuele says: i mean the types of relationship
[2:03:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes… I could decide to let users enter their own types of relationships…
[2:03:45 PM] peterkevandijck says: I’m not doing anything with relationships right now
[2:04:02 PM] peterkevandijck says: or I could decide to set a few standard relationships and limit users to those
[2:04:25 PM] peterkevandijck says: which gives me more UI possibilities than letting users enter any relationship.. but limits the bottom-up creativity…
[2:04:35 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:04:44 PM] Emanuele says: don’t you believe that restricting
[2:04:55 PM] Emanuele says: is against the original folksonomies’ spirit?
[2:05:27 PM] peterkevandijck says: no.. it’s like creativity: restrictions can set you free. For example: ask someone to draw “something”. They’ll be stuck. But ask them to draw “the dream they had yesterday”. That’s a lot easier…
[2:06:09 PM] Emanuele says: so a powerful small set of things
[2:06:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: so I guess it’s a balance.. but I don’t believe in the idea of just “everything is a tag, and everything is a relationship”… because it is impossible to create good UI’s without the semantics, without knowing what it *means*
[2:06:26 PM] peterkevandijck says: if you know what I mean.. ;)
[2:06:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, I think so…
[2:06:58 PM] Emanuele says: and what about facets in this scenario?
[2:07:05 PM] Emanuele says: do they still fit?
[2:08:06 PM] peterkevandijck says: Well… facets are useful.. yes: they let you assign semantics (”nyc” is a “place”), PLUS they also let you then use all the powerful faceted browsing techniques that we know and love… as opposed to just letting people assign semantics (”person”, “…) without them being facets
[2:08:14 PM] peterkevandijck says: making any sense?
[2:08:33 PM] peterkevandijck says: the great thing about facets is that they allow for crazy efficient browsing
[2:08:34 PM] Emanuele says: yes of course
[2:08:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: if not, we might as well let people tag tags, randomly, without restrictions… but then we’d loose the great facetbrowsing…
[2:09:02 PM] Emanuele says: but you thought to a one level faceted approach
[2:09:24 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, for now.. I don’t see much gain in adding hierarchy for example.. not on mefeedia
[2:09:55 PM] Emanuele says: hierarchy gives context IMHO
[2:09:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: perhaps if I was organizing something else, like products, that would make sense… but if you’re gonna get users to do it, it’s gotta be simple
[2:10:16 PM] Emanuele says: my point here is that
[2:10:23 PM] Emanuele says: users only knows if Venice
[2:10:26 PM] Emanuele says: is in Italy
[2:10:29 PM] Emanuele says: or in US
[2:10:49 PM] Emanuele says: and they could help to create “foci”
[2:10:59 PM] Emanuele says: for your faceted organization
[2:11:13 PM] Emanuele says: a sort of polyhierarchy
[2:11:16 PM] peterkevandijck says: it just seems like too much work for the user (and me!) for too little payoff…
[2:11:33 PM] peterkevandijck says: why add so much structure? I don’t think it’s really needed…
[2:11:38 PM] Emanuele says: did you conduct any test?
[2:11:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: remember, we don’t need 100% recall
[2:11:45 PM] Emanuele says: no ok
[2:11:53 PM] Emanuele says: but a little more precision yes
[2:11:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: just some informal usability tests… and I haven’t rolled out everything yet…
[2:12:13 PM] Emanuele says: as an user
[2:12:20 PM] Emanuele says: serendipity is great
[2:12:40 PM] Emanuele says: but what if I want a more targeted “browsing”
[2:12:49 PM] Emanuele says: at the end facets have the same aim
[2:13:11 PM] Emanuele says: making easier to understand the tags’ mess
[2:13:20 PM] peterkevandijck says: yep
[2:13:31 PM] Emanuele says: i could have not only Us
[2:13:35 PM] Emanuele says: but also Utah
[2:13:43 PM] Emanuele says: in a big system
[2:13:52 PM] Emanuele says: and delicious, flickr or an IBM intranet
[2:13:54 PM] Emanuele says: are big systems
[2:14:06 PM] Emanuele says: this could improve the findability
[2:14:09 PM] peterkevandijck says: but wait, are you like, looking for pictures on flickr, or looking for a tech doc on IBM? It’s very different…
[2:14:24 PM] peterkevandijck says: in IBM, you need to find the right doc
[2:14:28 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:14:32 PM] peterkevandijck says: in Flickr, you just have to find something nice..
[2:14:36 PM] Emanuele says: but in flickr
[2:14:42 PM] Emanuele says: i want a Cork’s sky
[2:14:48 PM] Emanuele says: (Ireland)
[2:14:58 PM] Emanuele says: or a Cork’s Monument
[2:15:02 PM] Emanuele says: but i don’t know it’s name
[2:15:13 PM] Emanuele says: i could click on the Ireland
[2:15:21 PM] Emanuele says: or maybe Cork tag
[2:15:32 PM] Emanuele says: and have a chance to find it
[2:15:43 PM] peterkevandijck says: right.. and you might not find the best picture, even though it exists in flickr… but that’s the way it is…
[2:16:02 PM] Emanuele says: yes but here the point is not the known-item search
[2:16:10 PM] Emanuele says: i don’t want “the righ one”
[2:16:31 PM] Emanuele says: but i want one believing at the “right category”
[2:16:44 PM] peterkevandijck says: so you need to find the right tag…?
[2:17:00 PM] Emanuele says: no, one that approximates well enough
[2:17:09 PM] Emanuele says: and structure is needed
[2:17:23 PM] Emanuele says: also to surf the big amount of photos
[2:17:27 PM] peterkevandijck says: ok… so you want to find a good-enough tag… and facets clearly help with that.. and hierarchy would help even more…
[2:17:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: right?
[2:17:33 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:17:45 PM] Emanuele says: why not put them together?
[2:17:46 PM] peterkevandijck says: but letting users add hierarchy is really hard…
[2:17:57 PM] peterkevandijck says: I don’t think it’s possible
[2:18:07 PM] Emanuele says: adding geography tags is not impossibile
[2:18:18 PM] Emanuele says: you gave me the “Space Facet”
[2:18:21 PM] peterkevandijck says: what do you mean by “adding geography tags”?
[2:18:33 PM] Emanuele says: you decided to have a space facet
[2:18:37 PM] peterkevandijck says: yes
[2:18:45 PM] Emanuele says: i will add a Europe tag under it
[2:18:52 PM] peterkevandijck says: and I add antwerp :)
[2:18:53 PM] Emanuele says: then tomorrow
[2:19:04 PM] Emanuele says: i will add italy under Europe
[2:19:18 PM] Emanuele says: and one of my friend will add Rome to Italy
[2:19:29 PM] Emanuele says: a wikipedia of tags
[2:19:36 PM] peterkevandijck says: and another will add rome under new york state
[2:19:50 PM] peterkevandijck says: it might be possible..
[2:19:55 PM] Emanuele says: ok.. also wikipedia needs some disambiguation
[2:20:07 PM] Emanuele says: but this is quite rare
[2:20:13 PM] peterkevandijck says: true
[2:20:24 PM] Emanuele says: to avoid restricting users
[2:20:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: except in other facets… like topic
[2:20:33 PM] Emanuele says: the system has to be ambiguos
[2:20:39 PM] peterkevandijck says: right
[2:20:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes
[2:20:47 PM] Emanuele says: topics are messy
[2:20:56 PM] peterkevandijck says: so add hierarchy in certain facets…
[2:21:12 PM] Emanuele says: don’t know exaclty
[2:21:21 PM] Emanuele says: maybe it could work with every facet
[2:21:27 PM] Emanuele says: the system could converge
[2:21:39 PM] Emanuele says: wikipedia is improving its quality
[2:21:56 PM] Emanuele says: because people put it their very different point of views
[2:22:05 PM] Emanuele says: and it makes sense
[2:22:27 PM] Emanuele says: but you are the expert
[2:22:28 PM] Emanuele says: :D
[2:22:35 PM] Emanuele says: it’s only an idea
[2:22:58 PM] peterkevandijck says: who knows…
[2:23:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: :)
[2:23:06 PM] peterkevandijck says: we’ll have to try it and find out..
[2:23:36 PM] Emanuele says: you could give it a try
[2:23:49 PM] Emanuele says: and paying me a beer if it works
[2:23:55 PM] peterkevandijck says: mefeedia should be working now.. :)
[2:23:55 PM] Emanuele says: ;)
[2:23:57 PM] peterkevandijck says: :)
[2:24:44 PM] Emanuele says: Am I crazy?
[2:24:55 PM] peterkevandijck says: yeah, probably
[2:25:00 PM] peterkevandijck says: :) we all are
[2:25:05 PM] Emanuele says: a lot of experts say that structure does not fit tags..
[2:25:06 PM] Emanuele says: but..
[2:25:07 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:26:07 PM] peterkevandijck says: oh whatever “experts” :)
[2:26:22 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:26:28 PM] peterkevandijck says: A little structure.. how bad can it be? Optional structure…
[2:26:41 PM] Emanuele says: yes optional bottom up free structure
[2:26:43 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:31:30 PM] peterkevandijck says: ok, gonna log out :) nice brainstorming with you..
[2:31:37 PM] Emanuele says: :)
[2:31:41 PM] peterkevandijck says: mind if I publish this chat trasnciprt on my blog?
[2:31:49 PM] Emanuele says: no, i would love it

You know how IA’s always talk about search and browse? And integrating them?

Are tags search? Or are tags browse? Or are they something else in between?

mefeedia video tags: I am experimenting with wiki-like tag descriptions at Mefeedia. Basically, we take a wiki approach to coming up with what are supposed to be “objective” descriptions for tags.

Apart from this approach, I’m also playing with facets and tags. Right now, they’re only used on the main tag page (facets are Place, Language, Event, Person and Topic). And only admins can assign facets. That’s gonna change soon too.

Slowly mixing semantics and various structures with tags seems to be working so far, and it provides dozens of beautiful UI and experience possibilities. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

My Gmail is looking set to become not just an email client, but an RSS reader too. And now it’s showing Chat history (if you use Google’s chat thingie). All in one, I might like that.

ONLamp.com: Better Search Engine Design: Beyond Algorithms: I read this article again that I wrote a while back, and it’s pretty interesting! I had forgotten a lot of that stuff.

Sifry’s Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth: “this monstrous conversation”. Indeed. When a conversation this large is at your fingertips, what do you do?

robhyndman.com: “but also because ranked aggregation is kind of a holy grail in Web 2.0 right now - everyone is trying to figure out how to replace the human editor and make aggregation of quality content scalable.”

Social aggregation is another obvious candidate (let your friends help you find the good stuff). What you find interesting is different from what I find interesting, so ranking things by amount of comments, incoming links and such can only be part of the picture.

IA Summit - Architettura dell’Informazione The Italian IA summit looks like it’ll be a great success. Emanuele told me they’re almost full, but since it’s FREE, he’s still accepting registrations because he’s not expecting everyone who registered to show up. So register soon if you want to go!