David Emery Online

Looz

Rojo – whose current only product is an online feed reader similar to bloglines – have just launched Nooz an integrated news service for MySpace users.

You can link your Nooz account to your MySpace profile, and then embed the Nooz flash widget on your MySpace page showing your selected news items. Much could be said about how MySpace is now big enough to sustain a whole niche of products similar to this – and it certainly is – but this is a fundamentally flawed product.

Could you think of any demographic that is less interested in news then the MySpace demographic?

Out of all the people I know that actively use MySpace (and I know a fair few) I know of nobody that would actually be interested in having news on their MySpace page. The set of people that would be interested in broadcasting their taste in news and websites already do so, via their non-MySpace blog.

Don’t even get me started about the name, either – have you ever seen a name more badly targeted at a “youth” market…

Old tech is not old tech if it's new to you

At work we’ve just launched a Quicktime player for Mojave 3. What’s interesting is that we’ve had a really good reaction from previous QuickTime players we’ve done. I will readily admit that I was very dismissive of them – why would people want to use something as archaic as a QuickTime player? – but people really like them.

I guess it’s the download-ability – you get something you can keep coupled with the current popularity of iTunes and hence Quicktime.

I think the lesson to learn is that while we may well be on the cutting edge and hence be unimpressed by anything that’s not brand new, most people aren’t, and can be.

How open search?

One of the latest “standards” for web browser to become popular recently is OpenSearch. OpenSearch is a fairly complicated way of standardising search results, so that a search engine can utilise the search functions in a website. As a website knows the makeup of its content, it is liable to produce better results then a standard search engine would.

Now, this is all well and good but is being used by the two new major browsers – Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 – in a boneheaded way. Both these new browsers are using the system to enable users to add additional search engines to their search box.

Obviously it’s good to allow people to easily add more search options other then the fairly standard google search, but why should the website have to conform to a complicated standard (which requires the creation of an xml descriptor file, and the provision of search results via rss) just to be allowed in the search box?

OmniWeb – almost certainly the best designed and featured browser on the market (ignoring the fact that it costs money) – solved this problem ages ago (I think in version 4): You can simply click inside any search...

Holding back the waves

The new Thom Yorke album, “The Eraser”, has leaked onto the internet over a month before it hits the shelves.

While pretty much every major album leaks before it’s released, this ones slightly different as the only copies released were watermarked. Watermarking – it’s claimed – embeds an inaudible code in each track on the cd, which is then logged against the person the cd was sent to; hence, every cd can be traced back to it’s owner. This code is still preserved even if you record the audio onto a dictaphone, apparently, so it’s going to be in the files that are being circulated.

As far as I know, this is the first time that a leak of an album has been from a watermarked cd, so it’s going to be interesting on many accounts; firstly, will they be able to trace it back? I’m not sure if this tech has really been tried in anger before.

However, I think the bigger question is: what then? Does the label try and prosecute the leaker? I would imagine that they can probably sue for potential missed sales (number of downloads X price of the cd?), but what does this do to the reputation...

Optimise for the Majority

One of the primary pieces of advice I’ve seen banded about recently is that when designing an javascript powered website, you should start off with a “normal”, non javascript version and then add the javascript functionality.

I don’t agree.

Of course, if you’re designing a site which utilises javascript to simply add minor functionality – such as using ajax to perform a live search – then this principle is great.

But it’s so limiting.

What we can achieve these days with javascript these days rivals the experience we can achieve with desktop applications, and to try and constrain of web page based on the limitations of users without javascript is incredibly constraining. Now, I’m not saying that we should just ignore non-js users – that would be idiotic – but we need to design the two different interfaces on the content in two completely different ways.

So, for example, in the js version you might use an ajax-powered browser – this obviously wouldn’t work without js, so maybe you need to present a selection of results with a click through to more. With the “non-js first, js second” approach, would we even get to the js browser at all?

Javascript is enabled in the vast...

Stupidity 2.0

Ok, so we can’t say Web 2.0 anymore.

What a shame.

I wish I wasn’t exaggerating slightly. Web 2.0, for me at least, has come to signify everything bad about the current state of online development. Yes, we have cool new-ish (I don’t think Ajax can be called new) technology being utilised in interesting was, but what’s new about that?

I find it staggering that people have utterly failed to learn from the dotcom crash of a few years ago. We’re seeing more and more sites that don’t have a proper business model – YouTube being the prime example. Didn’t we figure out that you actually, you know, have to make money.

Another disturbing trend I’ve noticed recently – and this one’s really not new – is a complete lack of thought by web site designers for basic usability. There’s an ever-growing amount of sites that are using ajax exclusively for their navigation, which is stupid in so many ways – the number one reason being that it breaks the back button, but there are other downsides as well (how does it work with a screen reader? What if javascript is disabled?).

Also, can people stop with the unnecessary use of drag and drop?...

Lull Pt.2

Nothing interesting has happened today.

This is when my daily posting schedule really bites me in the ass.

I did consider writing about the whole MacBook Pro thermal grease rubbish, b ut really – there’s no story there. Laptops get hot. Apple laptops, particularly the metal ones, get slightly hotter then some PC laptops do. Big deal. It also turns out that stripping down your MacBook Pro, removing the old thermal grease and painstakingly applying the “correct” about doesn’t really do anything.

It’s not as though that was ever going to be a good idea though, was it?

You heard it here first

What with all the renaming Apple is doing, with the MacBook and MacBook Pro’s, and the widely rumoured change from PowerMac to “Mac Pro”, there is one thing left that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else:

Xserve => MacServe

It’s going to happen. Trust me.

And now a word from our sponsors

You may have already seen that Google have launched a new form of advertising, namely “video” ads. You can read a good analysis over at TechCrunch.

Now, obviously this is yet another bad Google product, but it strikes me a bit odd that it’s coming out of the adwords department, which is of course Google’s main revenue stream. Obviously the rot has set in deep over at Google.

What I’m really wondering is why Google didn’t tie this up with Google Video – advertising based revenue is the way the online market looks to be going, I think. Google could have leap frogged YouTube et al by offering video uploaders a simple check box to enable adverts either during or before/after their video. The adverts could use the same bid-for-keywords model Google uses for regular adverts, and so would be naturally highly targeted and hence effective, and the video uploader would get a easy revenue stream.

Google need to do something to raise Google Video’s profile and usage, and leveraging their primary strength – advertising – would almost certainly be the most effective way of doing it.

Niche Player

Apple and Nike have launched today Nike+iPod

Firstly, no surprise that the iPod interface and features are spot on – the reason the iPod’s successful is due to Apple’s interface design skill after all. I’m sure this will be a hit with it’s target market.

But how big is that market?

To use this solution you have to have an iPod nano (not shuffle or a normal iPod), the Nike+iPod kit, the right sort of brand new Nike shoe and an internet connection. That’s not going to be a huge amount of people, is it?

What Apple seem to be doing now – and it’s a fairly valid strategy, I think – is trying to dominate every niche they can find. They’ve already tied up the main market – they’ve got something like 80% market share of mp3 players in the US – so they can afford to go after much smaller sub-markets, that they might not fulfil already. If Apple can wrap up these markets as well – witness there moves into getting iPods in use in colleges as well – then it really shores up the rest of the business.

However, one thing Apple seems to be going backwards with is...