David Emery Online

Simply Mobile

It’s interesting what constraints can bring out in people.

The iPhone, and its mobile version of Safari, is a perfect case in point. iPhone optimised sites are – for better or worse – springing up all over the place, but quite frequently they’re actually better then the ‘full’ site they’re complementing. As I linked to on Friday, Fox News actually have a very nice iPhone site which is simple and easy to navigate around, unlike the sprawling mess that is their main site.

A better case in point is Bloglines. As long time readers will know Bloglines is my (current) feed reader of choice, although of late it’s been going downhill. The original interface is very long in the tooth (it uses frames!) and seems to be quite unstable, whereas the new beta version suffers from missing the features I depend upon from the existing version (like a “Read all” function) and uses lots of CPU in Safari at least.

I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, hoping that the beta version gets improved enough before they make it the only version.

Enter stage right comes the iPhone version of Bloglines, which can be found – confusingly enough –...

Friday Links XXXXI

Fear & Self-Loathing Among The Un-Blogged Bloggers
So very true; just blog, don’t worry about the consequences.

IMDb Launching a Database and Social Network for Music?
Very interesting if true – I’ve always thought that there’s been a gap in the market for an IMDB style site for music. Hopefully it’ll have a good api…

Easylistener
Pretty nifty, although I’d like to be able to customise the look a lot more (faux Aqua buttons aren’t exactly stylish).

Scribbles
Watch the demo movie – the UI is quite unique (in a good way).

Flash, meet H.264
H.264 video in Flash is now out there…

BBC iPlayer
... and the BBC are now using it for a flash based version of their iPlayer. Yay!

It’s that time of year again
Lots of awesome work.

Lifehacker interview on the future of Quicksilver
Boo hiss! Hopefully someone will jump in and save the day.

OAuth 1.0, OpenID 2.0 and up next: DiSo
DiSo sounds very intriguing.

Google Chart API
Very useful stuff, although there are quite a few very nice Flash graphing libraries.

Social Blogging
I have no doubt Social Blogging is going to be very, very important.

Fail
Some people still really...

Ambient Interactivity

A small thought today, continuing on from talking about the new Foals site yesterday. One thing we’ve done for the site, which we’ve had great success with when we’ve done it for other sites, is turn commenting on for pretty much every bit of content on the site. Now, this is made very easy by using Textpattern as the CMS powering everything but it leads to far more response then you might think.

I think this may be actually quite an important concept, that of ambient interactivity. Commenting on a site from a users point of view is easy; it doesn’t (at least with textpattern) require any logging in, user registration process or other UI hurdles to prevent the user interacting with the site. For the vast majority of user interaction cases this is really all you need.

Yes, you could go the whole hog and have a massively sophisticated site which is all social-networked up complete with user profiles, in-site messaging, photo and video uploading and gig attendance notifications, but really – what is the point? Do your users really get a huge benefit having to sign up and maintain yet another account on yet another site, and persuade their...

Foals!

As promised I’ve got something show you which has been eating up all my free time for the last few days; behold the lovely new site for Foals:

wearefoals.com

This time the design isn’t really mine – I guess I art directed to a point, but all the pixels were pushed by James (who I’d link to but he still doesn’t have a site); and lovely pixels they are too. Instead, it fell to me to do the html and back-end work, so I had a bit of fun.

The key bit that is probably the most fun and also the bit that lead to the slightly late nights working on it is the fluidness. The wonderful design that James turned in on first glance didn’t look like it wanted to be fluid, but – quite frankly – that wasn’t going to stop me. I’m particularly proud of the footer section – have a go play around with the window width; all the elements down there are positioned independently based on percentages, so they all move at slightly different speeds.

The other key thing I wanted to highlight was the use of microformats. Normally I either end up doing the design, or both...

Feed Pack 3

Whoops… tomorrow has turned into a 4 day gap. Sorry about that – as you’ll find out tomorrow I’ve been a little busy. Anyway, back to the final instalment of feeds for you…

Music

Download the Music feeds as an OPML file (right click and hit “Save to disk” and then import into your feed reader).

4AD Journal
I’ve tried to avoid so far sites have had something to do with, but this one is a great look behind the scenes of the infamous label (home of Beirut, TV On The Radio, The Pixies et al).

The Daily Growl
Not daily, but still a very good uk focused indie music blog.

Daytrotter
One of the more unique music sites on the net, as they get illustrations done for all their stories. Good source for live session mp3s as well.

Drowned In Sound
Other then NME, the biggest UK music site (and quite justly, as they ain’t bad).

Gorilla vs Bear
One of the four big US indie blogs; a must read.

Guardian Music Blog
I find it very impressive how well the Guardian get both music and blogging – their blog is very, very good and features a very high...

Feed Pack 2

Continuing on from yesterdays massively exciting and interesting post here’s some more feeds for you:

Web Development

Download the Web feeds as an OPML file (right click and hit “Save to disk” and then import into your feed reader).

24 ways
Like an advent calendar for web development tips and tricks – yes, it only runs in December but it’s very much worth subscribing to.

456 Berea Street
Accessibility and usability slanted, and none the worse for it.

A List Apart
The daddy of all web development sites – I’m sure every web developer has already heard of this one.

Adactio
Jeremy Keith talks an awful lot of sense about things like semantic HTML, Microformats and the like.

Ajaxian
The best javascript news site on the web.

Alertbox
While Jakob Nielsen is getting a little long in the tooth, Alertbox is still a good read for all things usability related.

Campaign Monitor Blog
All about HTML email, from the makers of probably the best mailout software.

CSS Beauty
Good resource for CSS tips and info.

Dopplr Blog
While obviously focused on product updates to Dopplr (a social travel site), they’re doing so much right at the moment that it’s very...

Feed Pack 1

Recently I’ve had a couple of people who I’ve evangelised the whole using-a-RSS-reader thing at ask me to put together a list of some recommended feeds. I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea, and I also thought that would be a nice easy blog post…

Now, I don’t actually group my RSS feeds in any way – one big list being much quicker to navigate around – but I thought for the purposes of this exercise grouping them might be a bit more useful as the topics covered are fairly far and wide. Oh, be warned – I’m probably going to be over comprehensive, so I would probably filter these down a little. Well I wouldn’t, obviously, as I read them all, but you probably would. Or something. Anyway, without further ado:

Mac

Download the Mac feeds as an OPML file (right click and hit “Save to disk” and then import into your feed reader).

AppleInsider
One of the original mac rumour sites, and still one of the best.

Apple Hot News
Of course, if you really want Mac news you need to go direct to the source.

Cabel.name
Cabel works for the rather lovely Panic and while...

23:59 03/12/2007

Today was my birthday.

It was very nice, thanks.

I now feel old although I’m not.

Friday Links XXXX

In Defense of Lurking
I am a king lurker, it has to be said. For some reason I’ve just never got on with posting on forums…

Apple VP: third-party iPhones apps to use digital signature
Hopefully this won’t mean that it’s difficult to get apps on the iPhone – I hope they don’t screw things up by making the digital signing process convoluted for developers.

Fray
Beautiful design.

New Label Models: Which Will Survive?
My vote goes to the 360 deal model, but most of these options have merit.

Zip Quick Look Plugin
Very useful – I love how quickly QuickLook plugins have spring up.

TuneCore Stocks Videos in iTunes for a Price
An interesting insight into how much it costs to get videos on iTunes.

Would You Watch Commercials Like Music Videos?
The most effective commercials are the ones that contain genuinely interesting content, so there’s no reason that people wouldn’t want to watch them. They’d watch them on YouTube, though, not some completely pointless niche competitor.

Screen Resolutions and Aspect Ratios Worldwide
Mmmm, statistics. One thing this does highlight is the spread of widescreen displays, which adds a whole other element to the whole fluid width...

Universally Clueless

A translation (and comment on) of the Doug Morris – chair and CEO of Universal Music Group – piece in Wired.

”...For the past several minutes, Morris has been listening to Rio Caraeff, executive VP in charge of the company’s digital strategy, tell me how the sagging fortunes of the music industry highlight the need to diversify revenue streams. Caraeff explains that the company will eventually need to transition from running a product-based business to running a service-based one. He talks about ringtones, subscription services, and deals with mobile providers, stressing the need to raise the industry’s “digital IQ.”

Morris seems distracted.”

Sorry, what’s a ringtone?

”...It’s safe to say that increasing his digital IQ and pondering a service-based business model aren’t the topics that get him out of bed in the morning.”

Which is fine; digital revenue really doesn’t matter too much to a record company these days, does it?

”...And in November 2006, Morris parlayed Microsoft’s desperation to establish a true alternative to the iPod into a $1 ransom to Universal for every Zune music player sold — and that’s on top of the licensing fees Microsoft pays to have Universal’s songs in its Zune Marketplace online store. It’s a sign of...