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Blasting the Myth of the Fold

Blasting the Myth of the Fold – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design: Stop worrying about the fold. Don’t throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end.

Advertisers currently want their ads above the fold, and it will be a while before that tide turns. But it’s very clear that the rest of the page can be just as valuable – perhaps more valuable – to contextual advertising. Personally, I’d want my ad to be right at the bottom of the TMZ page, forget the top.

The biggest lesson to be learned here is that if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling content, users will scroll to see all of it. The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page. You’ve done your job and the user scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page because they were so engaged with your content. Now what? Is a footer really all we can offer them? If we know we’ve got them there, why not give them something to do next? Something contextual, a natural next step in your site, or something with which to interact (such as a poll) would be welcome and, most importantly, used. [Nice report.]
Source:

Time to write our own rules

Time to write our own rules: My own version: Stop petitioning Facebook and Google to solve our problems for us. They’re not creating those problems alone. We’re been allowing them to create those problems in the first place, and we’ve been doing that for too long. Time to come up with some new rules of engagement — ones that work for us as well as them. [A continuing problem as the inversion of control will take time to build strength.]
Source: Doc Searls Weblog

Making Rules, II

Making Rules, II: What matters is the first point. (Forgive me, but the others are red herrings, even if you’re an entrepreneur hoping to make money on the advertising gravy train.) Facebook crossed a line here. They lured us into a vast stockyard, and then began to monetize us in ways that violated our quaint notion that we are not in fact cattle.

Treating users of free services like cattle is as old as TV, radio and billboards. It may be as old as people painting in caves with charcoal and spit. The difference now isn’t in Facebook’s manners, which are no different than those of NBC or the New York Times. The difference isn’t even that this time it’s personal. That’s been a holy grail for advertising since the beginning as well. Facebook is reaching for a golden ring here, and I’m inclined to forgive them for doing that. [A must read about marketplaces and understanding our role in it (or what our role should be).]
Source: Doc Searls Weblog

SpiralFrog Loses $3m in 3 months: Not “Getting It” is Getting Expensive

SpiralFrog Loses $3m in 3 months: Not “Getting It” is Getting Expensive:
That’s a whole lot of money to throw away but it shouldn’t come as any surprise. The SpiralFrog model is awful. Users get free downloads of DRM laden songs that they can listen to in Windows Media Player, but they have to periodically answer survey questions and view ads in order to for the songs to continue playing. The site itself looks like one big ad with music appended to it.

For a totally different take on free music downloads as an ad supported business, see our coverage of Peter Rojas’s startup RCRD LBL. RCRD LBL is hardly a dream come true, either, but it sure leaves SpiralFrog in the dust.

[Terrible. Simply an incredible misunderstanding of what the markets wants…]
Source: Read/WriteWeb

Amazon Announced Kindle

Amazon Announced Kindle: You’re going to see two kinds of reviews: bad ones from people who haven’t used it and good ones from people who have. It’s that kind of product—plus Jeff Bezos’s reality-distortion field isn’t as large as Steve Jobs’s. I have used it and if someone gave me a choice of receiving an iPhone or a Kindle, I’d pick the Kindle. [Here’s what I don’t like… Guy doesn’t mention that Truemors is carried before he starts opining (although he does note it with an exclamation point later on). Second he sets you up by saying “bad ones from people who haven’t used it and good ones from people who have.” which immediately dismisses the opinion of people who haven’t used one as invalid, and further suggests that anyone who has used on has written positively. Wow. No wonder he was a world class evangelist. It’s a bit overstyled IMHO. but check out Mark’s take on it, and Seth’s. Granted each with their own agenda, but still. My take? It’s a digital rights issue. BigCo’s are always trying to grab them and give nothing in return. Not such a good thing. I’m trying to teach my son right now that it’s OK to give away toys he doesn’t play with anymore. Same for his books. How does this lesson fit into these corporate interests? Not.]
Source: Guy Kawasaki

JumpBox Inc.

Applications | JumpBox Inc.: We take popular Open Source server applications, remove all the install headaches and make them much easier to use. We call our virtual appliances JumpBoxes and they are free to download and use. To earn our living, we sell access to enhanced features of the JumpBox platform and additional support options in the form of JumpBox Assurance plans. Feel free to browse around, there’s something in the library for pretty much anyone. [Nice. Where’s a Rails setup?]
Source:

The serverless Internet company

The serverless Internet company: They have about 15,000 people already creating live video channels. They have one of the most innovative Web sites I’ve ever seen.

But they don’t own a server.

How else has the world changed? Where the hell is Microsoft in this whole business? How did Microsoft screw this up so badly? Let’s get this straight. Amazon used to be a book store. Now they are hosting virualized servers for Internet companies. So much for having billions of dollars in the bank like Microsoft does, some of the smartest people in the world working in your research arms and having “monopoly” market share in operating systems. [Wow.]
Source: Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger

Caught in Apple restart hell

Caught in Apple restart hell: Oh, and if you think I have something against Apple, no I don’t. But my computer, a 17-inch MacBookPro, has already been in the shop twice. My son’s MacBookPro 15-inch has been in the shop twice and has a dead USB port now so both of our machines need to go back into the shop.

What’s ironic is lots of other computer companies would LOVE to give me free stuff (I don’t take it) but Apple is the only company that’s never raised a PR finger to help me. Instead I feel so honored to spend my money on this crap. Why? Just to have a shiny machine?

Well, sorry. The shine is wearing off. Screw you Apple.

[I really wish he hadn’t mixed these two issues… that of him having problems and the lack of PR love. The second issue shouldn’t even be brought up, especially in this context, as it makes it seem like the problem is that Apple’s given him no free stuff. Now, as far as problems are concerned, there’s nothing more frustrating than a dead machine for most of us who live on one machine and don’t have a shelf full of replacements. So I feel his pain as Apple’s theme of “It just works” can be annoying, since it doesn’t always, and despite an OK track record things still things do go wrong for everyone at times. I wish Apple didn’t claim this, since it isn’t true, but still, the issues here got mixed beyond my ability to parse them. ]
Source: Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger

Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone and Apple Mail

Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone and Apple Mail:

Much more complete setup instructions than Google’s own. By mapping Apple Mail’s special folders (Drafts, Trash, Spam) to Gmail’s built-in special folders, the “right thing” just happens. E.g., all of your sent mail goes into the same Sent Mail mailbox, whether you sent it from Mail on your Mac, MobileMail on your iPhone, or Gmail’s web interface.

[Soon, very soon…]
Source: Daring Fireball

DSL book Work In Progress

DSL book Work In Progress: Updated web site: Over the last few months (actually many months),
I’ve been working on a book on Domain Specific Languages. I’m
now at the point where I think it’s worth pushing out my work in
progress. This page will keep you informed on where things are
(and there’s an atom feed too). Rather than drop it all out in
one huge dollop, I shall release what I have so far in bits over the
next few weeks. Once I’m caught up I’ll release material as I’m
writing it. [Cool.]
Source: Martin Fowler