BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 31, 2008, 03:49PMDel.icio.us Redesign Goes Public
Finally, del.icio.us has made public the new redesign. I'm liking it.
What Is The World's Greatest Brownie?
Basement.org since its inception has rarely strayed from it's usual sphere of subject matter: technology, design and such. So today's post is something of a landmark (or something).
I want to discover the best tasting brownie in the world.
So how do we come upon such a discovery? Well, the criteria is pretty straightforward. You tell me about a particular brand of brownie. I will order some (or if possible purchase some on foot). Then I will eat them. Once I've eaten them, I will make a judgment. Yes, this all sounds very unscientific and subjective. I'm OK with that. There will be one judge assisting me. He is a friend of mine named Larry Becker. He loves chocolate...very much.
There is one other criteria worth mentioning: the brownies can't be flavored. No orange zest. No chiles or peppers. No raspberry or fruit. I'll confess I'm something of a chocolate purist. I don't even want nuts in my brownie (TWSS). They...how shall I say...corrupt the experience.
So let it begin. Please email me or leave a comment below recommending what you believe to be the world's best-tasting brownie.
I'll start things off: The first purchase I'll be making will be from Mari's of New York. They tout "luxuriously rich, artisanal fudgy brownies." We'll see about that. I've ordered the classic box of 6. $25 including shipping. Ouch.
Stay tuned. This is the real Olympics. The Brownie Olympics.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 30, 2008, 06:51PMFight Night : Abstraction vs. Interaction Design
One of the things that differentiate Arc90 from your typical technology shop is our fervent belief in abstraction. Wikipedia has a nice, terse definition (narrowed to computer science):
A concept or idea not associated with any specific instance.
In other words, when we're presented with problems or asked to come up with solutions at Arc90, we'll often go up one level (or two, or three) from the particular problem at hand and think more generically about a solution. This will often result in systems that are more flexible and extensible and less tightly-coupled to the problem at hand. This facilitates reuse and better positions us (and our clients) to deal with similar problems down the road. Very often, we can leverage what we've built with some minor tweaks as new but similar challenges crop up.
There's another benefit to abstraction: it cuts us (or at least part of us) out of the picture. Yes, we could create a new report every time a client asks for one, but why not give them a platform that allows non-technical users the ability to create their own reports as they need them? We just provide the facility, supporting tools and necessary support.
The outcome of such an approach will often lead to establishing and publishing standards around the business artifacts that travel around. XML and loosely-couples services are our friends in this world of abstraction.
Arc90 : Rock Stars!
So all this higher level thinking should give us automatic Rock Star status right? Well, not exactly. We also tout ourselves as a shop that values and imbues design into what we build. Not just software design (we do plenty of that) but experience design and interaction design. There's just one snag: in the world of interaction design, abstraction is not your friend. In fact, it doesn't even exist. Good experience design is paying close attention to exactly what abstraction gleans over: the ugly, exception-riddled reality of everyday business.
A good user interface embraces such realities. Heck, it's based on such realities. Good interface design says: "I want to learn about how your work. I'm here to fit into your world." It's a custom-tailored fit. It's not about meeting a need and positioning for the next twenty needs. It's all about getting it right now.
"And In This Corner...Weighing In At 185lbs..."
So far I've pitted abstraction against interaction design as if they were enemies. This is not the case. Abstraction is all about plotting a strategy around how to build forward-looking software ecosystems. Interaction design is about the very edge of that ecosystem. The edge that is actually touched by people. You can design the most elegant, abstractly-architected system, but if the tools and interfaces don't make sense to end users, what have you really achieved? From the viewpoint of software architecture, experience design is tactical. It's about immediate gratification in many ways. It doesn't care that a particular view requires 20 SQL joins and would "tax the database." It's all about what makes sense to the people using it.
It's an interesting tension that we continue to struggle with at Arc90. We want to build forward-looking, flexible systems but we also don't want to handcuff our clients. Yes, we're empowering them, but with power comes responsibility...and the opportunity to screw things up on a grander scale. Hence the need for well-designed, nicely-tailored tools and interfaces.
"Well Which Is It Young Fella?"
The trick is to separate the two disciplines and to not let one poison the other. An interaction designer shouldn't care about the elegant API that lies underneath. And the software architect shouldn't be designing solely around user goals. It's all about respecting both philosophies and not letting one suffocate the other.
In fact, that separation is critical. Just as it's fatal to think about a software architecture as an afterthought of an interface prototype, it's just as dangerous to view a user interface as an afterthought of a software system. It's about respecting and creating some space for (and between) both disciplines.
This way, nobody gets hurt.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 24, 2008, 09:08AMPhillip Toledano's Days With My Father
Phillip Toledano has published a beautiful photo essay and tribute to his dad. At times haunting but very beautiful (via Boing Boing).
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 19, 2008, 08:57AMFree Full-Length Documentaries At Snagfilms
"At Snagfilms.com, you can watch full-length documentary films for free." And we're not just talking about second-rate homemade films. Supersize Me and Dig are available for example. You can even embed and share them Youtube-style. Very cool.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 17, 2008, 09:20AMKindling Videos Now Available
As if Kindling - the mind-blowingly kick-ass idea management tool - isn't easy enough to use, a handful of videos have just been posted to graciously escort you through the various tasks around using Kindling. Many are under one minute long.
For the unfamiliar, Kindling is an idea management and collaboration tool that makes it easy to submit and vote on ideas within your company, group or organization. We're accepting requests for beta invites, so don't be shy. We're feeling pretty damn generous these days.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 16, 2008, 11:18AMVisiting = Installation
A couple of nights ago, I'm walking through the local market trying to figure out what to whip together for dinner when I quickly convinced myself to just order take-out and save my famed culinary skills for another night.
So I whip out my trusty iPhone (not the new one) and decide to use Modern Technology to order dinner via Seamless Web. So I hit the URL and I wait...and wait...ah here comes some of the interface...I wait some more. I'm still AT&T's crappy EDGE network, so the damn thing is taking forever. But beyond the network, the entire experience of loading the interface before I can get at the content just plain sucks.
Cache Money
One of the slickest features of web browsers, desktop and mobile alike, is the ability to use some smarts to cache the assets that would typically have to go over the wire from servers scattered all over the globe. The dark world of exactly how browser caching works eludes me to this day, but it goes a bit like this:
- Browser makes a request for a URL resource and it's related assets.
- As the content starts to get served up, the browser realizes that it has a lot of this content so instead of just swallowing all the assets wholesale, it actually has a little conversation with the server to find out if it can just use the same content it retrieved last time (since it hasn't changed) or grab it anew. This is called a conditional GET.
The result is a perceivably better browsing experience...maybe. The rub is that the browser has to do this for every resource - referenced graphics, stylesheets, etc. It's admittedly more complicated than this. If you're the masochistic sort, feel free to peruse the wildly engaging prose behind HTTP/1.1, RFC 261, Section 13.
The caching mechanisms built into today's desktop and mobile browsers are designed to handle typically static content. Newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, image galleries and the like.
"Please Wait While I Check For Updates To Your Software Every Three Seconds"
Now back to my ten minutes of pain in a supermarket aisle while I wait for Seamless Web to load up on my iPhone. What am I really waiting for? Listings of restaurants? Menus? Nope. I'm waiting for my iPhone and Seamless Web's servers to have a long-winded conversation about how to deliver the interface around Seamless Web. Buttons. Drop-downs. Interface controls.
It's a complete waste of time because for all intents and purposes Seamless Web is an application. It's an application that should live on my iPhone and its content - restaurants and menus - should be the only thing that is delivered on request. Instead, I wait for an unnecessary dialog to occur.
There should be a way to tell a browser: "I'm not a magazine site. I'm a full-blown application. Don't ever bother checking for new content until I tell you to (akin to a "Software Update"). When a user visits my URL, just load it locally." In other words, when I visit Seamless Web, it's interface should pop up instantaneously on my iPhone. Forget the is-it-last-modified nonsense. It should just be there.
Taking The Long Way Home
I'm as excited as the next person about all the cool new applications springing up for the iPhone. Native, Internet-wired applications are cool. The way we've chosen to address the "Web application problem" is to build native applications that tap data services. This way the interface and controls get delivered once and your computer or device only worry about data interchange. Still, it seems like we're taking the long way to get there. Platform-specific SDK's and development tools are a much bigger pain in the ass than straight-up web development with some new caching directives.
Beyond just caching it's about treating certain URL's like applications. Visiting the first time = installing the app. Visiting every time after that = loading the app locally. The primary responsibility for servers is serving up content. Yeh, they also deliver the app (that first visit) but just sometimes - and rarely. For mobile devices, this distinction takes on a whole new urgency. Such devices are ill-equipped to have a rambling dialogue about whether content is new for every graphic and stylesheet. Why bother?
This way I can quickly order Chinese food while loitering the produce aisle of the supermarket. Can you think of a better cause for such change?
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 15, 2008, 02:44PMBlow Up Flickr Viewer
Blow Up is a sweet Flash-based Flickr viewer that shows your photos in a neat full screen display. Just drop your Flickr name and go. Also downloadable.
Icon Design Unmasked
Icon design is one of the most deceptively difficult tasks to do well. You'd think a handful of pixels would make life easier, but they don't. Designer Felix Sockwell shares the NY Times iPhone app icon-building experience. He nicely captures the struggle and triumph of building attractive and useful art inside a 32x32 pixel box.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 12, 2008, 07:11PMThe Greatest iPhone Application Ever (So Far At Least)
I bitch a lot on basement.org ("bitch" being a slang term for "thoughtful analysis" of course) but every so often, I'm floored by something really, really good. I'm as psyched as the next iPhone user for all the new apps coming out for it, but one really stands out: Instapaper.
Marco Arment's Instapaper (the web version) does a great job as a lightweight mark-to-read-later tool as it is. It queues up articles, blog posts or whatever that you can then come back to later and read in either web or a stripped-down text view. The iPhone app takes it to a whole new lever with offline reading of both web and text views, all delivered in a snappy native app.
Yeh, there are all kinds of cool (and ridiculous) apps for the iPhone, but Instapaper adds a dimension of usefulness that really elevates it to a whole new level. Pass on Super Monkey Ball and iBeer and grab this guy. It's great.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 11, 2008, 08:31AMMark Morford On The Internet's Brain-Sucking Insidiousness
I've been a big fan of SF Gate's Mark Morford for awhile now. For the unfamiliar, he's the Op-Ed equivalent of a raging tornado. Recently, he wrote about how the Internet is turning our brains into steamy piles of mush. It's Nick Carr with an edge. Entertaining and insightful.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 10, 2008, 11:21AMArc90's Ben Sgro At The Last Hope Conference
Arc90's very own Ben Sgro (aka mr-sk) will be giving a talk on Saturday July 19 here in New York City at The Last Hope. The Last Hope is the seventh (and apparently final) Hackers On Planet Earth conference.
Ben is one of our most resourceful and curious hackers engineers. If you're ever in midtown Manhattan, feel free to drop by our offices and pick up some coffee from Crazy Eddie's (our own home-grown in-office coffee shop) via RFID purchase and have the system talk back to you (no I'm not kidding). Here's a summary of Ben's talk:
The 1970s was an era of technological breakthroughs. Exciting projects and groundbreaking discoveries were made by hackers, government, and commercial entities. Today we should consider ourselves lucky to be sitting in the front row for the birth of the robotics industry. Nearly 40 years after the birth of the computing industry, our lives are merged with the Internet. Similar to the 1970s computing industry, early robotic developments are complex and their practical applications are rare. Less than 40 years from now, our bodies and minds will be merged with the robotics and technologies we are creating today. In our lifetime, we will see software merged with robotics that mimic humans, surpass them, and proceed to yield creations of their own. There will be no distinction between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. AI, robotics, and other emerging technologies will result in the Singularity; a fundamental paradigm shift for human kind.
This presentation will dive into the Singularity, current and emerging robotics, and discuss where hackers fit into all this. Various robotic platforms will be on display as well.
Fascinating stuff - or creepy, depending on your point of view. Then again, Crazy Eddy has more personality than your typical Starbucks barista these days.
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 7, 2008, 10:12AMWireFraming Tool For Firefox : The Pencil Project
I'm always on the lookout for decent wireframing tools. The Pencil Project is a Firefox add-on "for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use." (via GUUUI).
Posted by Richard Ziade on July 1, 2008, 12:43PMSelf-Interest, Narcissism And It's Impact On Data Quality (Or: How Broadway Showtunes Destroyed The Internet)
Netvibes, a pretty sweet portal site with a wealth of features just put out a new feature called Buzz. Today, any user can star an article on Netvibes. Buzz essentially lists out the links that have been starred the most by Netvibes users in the past couple of days (sliced up by 1, 6, 12, 24 and 48 hours). The result is a sort of Digg-like tally. Sort of.
There's a really important but subtle distinction here. Netvibes is not asking anyone to explicitly post or vote on a particular link. Instead, it's simply peering over the shoulder of users that are going about their normal, every day usage.
This distinction is important because it ensures that the results are not polluted by hidden agendas, or skewed by the more heavily weighed votes of superstar users. It's fairly safe to say that the integrity of the data is better because the user goals are selfish.
Yeh, we may star an article because we want it get popular (just as we may tag a link on delicious) but the real end goal for most users is to better organize and file away stuff they like. The problem with sites like Digg is that the end is social. With tools like Buzz and Delicious, the end is personal - with a collective social benefit as a by-product.
Google fights this battle all the time. It's constantly on the look out for sites that are trying to game the Pagerank system to end up higher in search results. Google's power lies in its ability to mine and leverage selfish behavior that is oblivious to collective outcomes. If you don't do that, you end up with a collective outcome that starts to have a singular, self-reinforcing identity. Which to me is more akin to joining a club.
Ultimately, this is about the distinction between machines listening in and explicitly asking. When machines observe and unobtrusively listen in, you get the real story. When they put a microphone in front of you and ask a question, you get aspirations of popularity, validation and celebrity. Youtube and blogs are a great example of how much we like to watch ourselves and hear ourselves talk. The problem arises when we try to put all that information together and find meaning in it. The more its about me, the better the collective outcome. The more its about you noticing me the worse the collective outcome.
Maybe we should be ban Broadway celebrities from the Internet.