BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 31, 2009, 03:38PMCommon Sense In The Wonderful World of Warez
Ah, the weird, twisted world of software piracy. Installous (a free app for jailbroken iPhones that lets you grab pirated versions of iPhone apps) has declared war on Mega (a service that does the same thing, except they charge money).
The created an app called Grabulous (you with me so far?) that makes all the apps on Installous freely available. The rationale:
“Grabulous should be saluted and applauded by consumers AND devs. This is common sense, it’s not cracking , it’s not hacking. Paying for cracked apps is a crime against common sense.”
Someone needs to help me sort out the 2009 definition of “common sense.” Nonetheless, it makes for very entertaining reading.
Found via Waxy.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 27, 2009, 10:33AMThe Internet’s New Inconveniences
The Internet is awesome, right?
It’s so awesome that it’s changing entire landscapes and uplifting whole business sectors. The music industry is all confused. Newspapers are gasping for air. Television and film are trying to sort themselves out. During the dot-com era, we just thought the damage would be contained to bricks & mortars (“Watch out Home Depot!”).
You can debate the good or bad of it and wax nostalgically about how good books and newspapers feel in your hands, but you can’t question the undeterred march of the Internet. It is rendering once vibrant and alive business models dead.
The latest flailing victims are the newspapers. News is dead by the time it gets on paper today. The stranglehold on the dissemination of information is no more. News is everywhere, all the time and delivered to us not by some cabal of journalists but by everybody. Say a prayer for the specialized magazines of the world as well. The day of hyper-specialization (outdoor speaker fetish anyone?) is upon us. Anything you want is out there for you, immediately.
Asking how newspapers will survive is like asking how a terminally ill patient will survive. It’s the wrong question. In their current form, newspapers won’t survive. They may exist in some new form with their brands and good will in tact, but good’ol survival isn’t really in the cards. So the question remains: in this day and age of all-the-information-you-want-all-the-time-instantaneously, what could we possibly want newspapers for?
Well, it turns out the Internet brought along its own baggage. It isn’t just the information I want or the information I care about. It’s everything. Everything is coming at me all the time. I am left flagging, tagging, saving, emailing, printing, starring and occasionally ducking for my life as all this stuff comes at me from all sides.
Here’s why I still visit the NY Times regularly: I know that the staff of the NY Times is adhering to a certain level of quality and integrity around what they publish. The NY Times has reserve of good will it’s afraid to lose. As such, they care about what they put out. Everything that lives under their domain name can make or break their reputation.
The outcome for me isn’t just that I get quality journalism and Op Ed pieces. For me, it’s significant: I know that what lives underneath their masthead has been scrutinized and filtered for my benefit. There’s an implicit contract between the NY Times and myself. They deliver content of some basic level of quality and I continue to value their good name.
Swarms of bloggers are not going to replace newspapers because for them there is no masthead. There is no brand to squander away with shoddy reporting or idiotic commentary. The ones that do gain my respect do so by doing two things:
- They consistently put out quality content.
- They don’t leave it to me to be editor-in-chief.
The second point is the real kicker. I love Andrew Sullivan and I enjoy Gizmodo, but you’re doing me no favors by posting 45 times a day. At that rate, you’re talk radio. I may listen in for 15 minutes but the rest of the time you’re not talking to me.
Newspapers already have a head start today. Any average editorial piece will garner hundreds of comments. As an independent blogger, I can only dream of such a discussion around anything I write. The question that remains is what to do with all those eyes and all that good will.
Newspapers need to dive into that swarm of content out there and provide a service: find the good stuff for me so I don’t have to. I trust the NY Times and if they decide to publish or republish something, I know they’ve made certain that it isn’t garbage.
The Internet is amazing, but it isn’t tailored for me. I need help figuring out what's worth my time. The cockroach that survives this annihilation isn’t the means of distribution, it’s the brands. Whether it’s the old brands like the Times or someone new, the value of editorializing and filtering will be associated with some brand that I trust and respect. Those brands that make sense of all this insanity will win.
So where’s the business model in all this? I’m not really sure. I can only speak from a prospective customer’s perspective. I spend approximately 35% of my time sifting and the rest of my time digesting all the information that comes my way.
If someone can give me that time back and only hand over the quality stuff, I' would pay for it. I’d pay a pretty penny to make those inconveniences go away.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 24, 2009, 10:50AMSlick Desktop Social Aggregator : Skimmer
With minimalistic flair (is there such a thing?) Skimmer blends together your various social streams (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into a single, elegant interface. Powered by Adobe Air so both Macs and PC’s can play along.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 19, 2009, 06:21PMTwitter Observation #2 : The Boy Who Twittered Wolf
There’s a basic rule when it comes to streamed broadcasting of any kind. I’ll just hack something I said two years ago about RSS:
The perceived importance and value of
entriestweets toreadersfollowers is inversely proportional to the frequency ofentriestweets on any given day.
I’m not going to pass judgment on any given thing someone says on Twitter. Enough has been written about how nobody wants to know that someone else just finished boiling their potatoes. I’d rather tweak the sentiment a bit: if you rarely speak, whatever you say will matter more to me.
But that’s not really fair. Twitter users want to express themselves any way they like and different recipients will have different sentiments about what is worth hearing and what isn’t. If my kid is off at college I want the constant stream of what goes on in her life. Everyone else following my kid? Probably not.
Twitter users have done a great job hacking Twitter. The @ call actually evolved into real functionality and hash tags have been helpful as well. So let me throw out another:
Prefix all your messages with a decibel level. It would go something like this:
- (No Prefix) – I’m about to share some inane normalcy about my life. You probably don’t want to hear this unless you really want to hear this.
- * – You might find what I’m about to say or share interesting.
- ** – I’m announcing something major for everyone to hear and pay attention to.
On the receiving end, I can filter out tweets that have no prefix. This would spare me the everyday bullshit that goes on in your life but still allows me to tune into your insights and occasional blockbuster announcement. If people start utilizing this, we’d be glad to build a simple bookmarklet that filters on decibel level in Twitter (yes, we like building bookmarklets).
The other option is for people to start giving a bit more consideration to what they throw onto the airwaves. Because let’s face it, the big bad wolf will actually show up one day…and nobody will care to listen.
Twitter Observation #1 : Nice Thought, Mind If I Follow You Home?
Making the call to follow someone on Twitter has no social precedent. I’m not really talking about Shaq or other celebrities or people that you may know personally. I’m more referring to following someone for some other reason.
Usually, we’ll follow someone because they said or shared something interesting – once. This is the equivalent of walking by a newsstand, catching a quick glance at a blurb on a magazine cover and then – right then and there – subscribing to this magazine for a year.
The act of following is trivial in Twitter. It takes just a second. The consequence of following, on the other hand, is a whole other story. Before I knew it, I was in someone else’s world and 99% of the time I didn’t care to be there.
In the world of Twitter, following equals flattery. In the real world, following leads to a restraining order. Still, users of Twitter love to be followed. It implies leadership. Charisma. “I have followers.” Well, you may have followers, but take my word, if you’ve got more than fifty and you’re not a celebrity, you’re not being followed. People just forgot to turn your volume down. The issue of information overload in the age of the Internet has been discussed ad nauseam. Twitter runs the risk of people overload. Too many people saying too many things to too many other people. The outcome is incessant noise that drowns out the worthwhile sounds.
Still, we’re playing with the knobs right now. Speaking for myself, I’m still trying to sort out how to make this thing click. Yes, I’m fumbling around, confused and disoriented…and you’re following me around.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 17, 2009, 03:26PMObservations & Meditations On Twitter
It’s been about a week now since I fessed up and started using Twitter. Now that I’ve been in the mix a bit, I’d like to share some observations about this strange, strange world. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll put smaller, bite-sized observations about using and experiencing Twitter.
I could draft one long blog post, but nobody has the patience to read anything that long anyway.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 16, 2009, 09:14AMThe Human Quality Of The Analog
Here’s a wonderful quote from John Kolko of Frog Design. John is sharing thoughts about the transition from old, traditional media to the highly specialized digital world of today:
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 12, 2009, 09:57AMOur memories are crafted by experiences, and the richest experiences I recall have a multisensory and substantially real – physical – foundation. Until the niche style bloggers can find a way to offer this resonate physical quality, I can’t see it offering the same richness of the old media. Even in a customized, personalized, and direct way, digital news reporting still lacks the human quality of the analog.
Jquery Gestures
Very sweet JQuery plugin that supports simple gestures. As the world goes more tablet, this stuff will become more relevant.
NY Times iPhone App Updated, Now 70% More Respectable
The NY Times app for the iPhone has sucked since it came out. It was slow, buggy and crashed a lot. The new version 2.0 is a big improvement. It’s faster and more reliable. It even has some new features. Nice job!
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 10, 2009, 06:11PMNew Version Of Readability
Readability, the bookmarklet that everyone loves (or hates) has just been updated. The main focus of this update is effectiveness.
With this release, Readability has gone from a respectable success rate of about 80%-ish to a success rate somewhere well north of 90%. Don’t hold us to this statistic. We’re not scientists. We just happen to work in a lab.
We’ve also added an often-requested “Reload Page” button in the footer in case you sorely miss all the noise Readability strips away.
How To Install
If you’re already using Readability and would like to install the new version, all you have to do is…nothing! Readability will automatically update. If you’re still new to Readability, you can install it by visiting the setup page.
Thanks to everyone for all the kind words on Readability. We’re glad it makes the Web more…readable. If any feisty little pages still slip through the cracks, feel free to post them in the comments below.
Readability Updated (Now 25% More Obsessive-Compulsive)
The mad scientists at the Arc90 lab have just updated Readability to make it even more diabolically effective. Details on the update are available here. No re-install is required if you’re already using it. It just gets automatically better (like wine).
iPhone Wallpaper Photoshop Template
I was about to sit down and put together a nice Photoshop template for creating iPhone wallpapers. Then I realized that everything has already been done on the Internet. No complaints here. Nice work.
Color Scheme Designer
I’ve pointed to color scheme makers before but this is completely badass (well, as badass as a color scheme tool is going to be). Color Scheme Designer let’s you mess around with color schemes, try them on a mockup Web page and then export the CSS. Many options. Really impressive.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 9, 2009, 09:31AMFollow Me On Twitter
I am a hypocrite.
First I share with the world that I hate all Mac users. One year later, I cave in and buy a Macbook Pro. Around the same time I picked up my beloved Macbook Pro (and simultaneously began hating myself), I said this about Twitter:
[Twitter is] inherently evil. It combines two things I despise: unnecessary noise and people who need to be acknowledged every three minutes. It's as if we didn't exist unless we twittered.
Bzzzt! Wrong again. Follow me on Twitter.
My goal is to condense insights into a highly-concentrated, fully pasteurized 140 characters. I’ll use it sparingly and wisely. And for now, I will use it with just a tinge of shame.
Above all else, I want to learn more about it. It’s proving to be a great way to make “announcements” around your company or product. RSS was supposed to do this but it never stuck. It also seems to be a great way to get a question answered. And last but not least, there’s Twitter search, which seems to have mind-blowing potential.
I’m wary of fads and trends. I’m also very wary of speaking to the same ol’ technically inclined audience and getting stuck there. I’m also fairly certain (nearly 100% certain) that you don’t care to know what I had for breakfast.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 5, 2009, 01:22PMThe Revenge Of The Readers
Readability, our sinister plan for world domination (or a humble attempt to make reading easier on the Web, depending on your perspective) really took off this week. Thanks to the nods from the blogging elite ( Swiss Miss, Lifehacker, Kottke, Daring Fireball and ReadWriteWeb among many others pointed the way) the bookmarklet has been hit nearly 100,000 times (and counting). Pretty insane.
Its release also seems to have hit a nerve for many users of the Web. People are just tired of all the junk that seems to be getting piled on (and around) readable content. The comment thread on the corresponding post spawned an interesting debate as people questioned the potential evil of such a tool. Is it evil to effectively block ads and make reading easier for everyone? Mandy Brown gave the most lucid response. In part:
In regard to ad revenue: it is a mistake for any content site to heed the needs of their advertisers at the expense of their customers. The advertising/content discussion up until now has occurred in the advertiser's lap, with the assumption that consumers of content must bear any and all matter of obnoxious advertising as the price of said content. But this vision of the conflict fails to heed the effect that advertising has on the value of content: the more cluttered the content becomes, the less worth consuming it is, and so on, with the end game scenario looking very much like the one million dollar homepage: all ads, no content, and not much reason to visit once the gimmick is up. That's a dead end for advertisers and consumers alike.
Bingo. It’s really too bad that Readability should have to exist at all. The mayhem that people are forced to experience just to read is a dead-end for everyone involved. We would like nothing more than to see content providers rendering a tool like this useless (or at very least frivolous), not through a code arms race (that’s a waste of time for all involved) but through thoughtful, friendly design that evinces a real concern for consumers.
Ancillary to this discussion, and most satisfying to us, is the great feedback we’ve gotten from those that have vision problems or cognitive disabilities that make visiting Web sites with clutter difficult. Numerous people have thanked us for providing this tool. Content providers should be aware that they’re not only providing a distracting experience but shutting an entire segment of their readership out entirely.
Maybe this is just an awkward time in Web advertising? Maybe this is the equivalent of the “Brought to you by Geritol” phase in TV and radio where sponsors plastered themselves all over a given program. Maybe we’ll look back on all the lousy, noisy pages of today ten years from now and laugh at how ridiculous the Web used to be.
I hope that’s the case. Until then, we’ll just have to find our own ways to turn down the volume.
Readability Bookmarklet Now On Google Code
The inherently evil Readability bookmarklet is now on Google Code. Mangle it. Rewrite it. Add to it. Host it yourself. Licensed under Apache License 2.0.
The Revenge Of The Readers
Readability, our sinister plan for world domination (or a humble attempt to make reading easier on the Web, depending on your perspective) really took off this week. Thanks to the nods from the blogging elite ( Swiss Miss, Lifehacker, Kottke, Daring Fireball and ReadWriteWeb among many others pointed the way) the bookmarklet has been hit nearly 100,000 times (and counting). Pretty insane.
It’s release also seems to have hit a nerve for many users of the Web. People are just tired of all the junk that seems to be getting piled on (and around) readable content. The comment thread on the corresponding post spawned an interesting debate as people questioned the potential evil of such a tool. Is it evil to effectively block ads and make reading easier for everyone? Mandy Brown gave the most lucid response. In part:
In regard to ad revenue: it is a mistake for any content site to heed the needs of their advertisers at the expense of their customers. The advertising/content discussion up until now has occurred in the advertiser's lap, with the assumption that consumers of content must bear any and all matter of obnoxious advertising as the price of said content. But this vision of the conflict fails to heed the effect that advertising has on the value of content: the more cluttered the content becomes, the less worth consuming it is, and so on, with the end game scenario looking very much like the one million dollar homepage: all ads, no content, and not much reason to visit once the gimmick is up. That's a dead end for advertisers and consumers alike.
Bingo. It’s really too bad that Readability should have to exist at all. The mayhem that people are forced to experience just to read is a dead-end for everyone involved. We would like nothing more than to see content providers rendering a tool like this useless (or at very least frivolous), not through a code arms race (that’s a waste of time for all involved) but through thoughtful, friendly design that evinces a real concern for consumers.
Ancillary to this discussion, and most satisfying to us, is the great feedback we’ve gotten from those that have vision problems or cognitive disabilities that make visiting Web sites with clutter difficult. Numerous people have thanked us for providing this tool. Content providers should be aware that they’re not only providing a distracting experience but shutting an entire segment of their readership out entirely.
Maybe this is just an awkward time in Web advertising? Maybe this is the equivalent of the “Brought to you by Geritol” phase in TV and radio where sponsors plastered themselves all over a given program. Maybe we’ll look back on all the lousy, noisy pages of today ten years from now and laugh at how ridiculous the Web used to be.
I hope that’s the case. Until then, we’ll just have to find our own ways to turn down the volume.
Note : this post was also published on the arc90 blog.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 3, 2009, 10:44AMAn Arc90 Lab Experiment : Readability
Last night, we released Readability, a small but powerful little bookmarklet that cleans up Web pages worth reading:
Readability was created because prose on the Web is becoming increasingly painful to read. It cleans up a page and presents only the content worth reading in a customizable “reading view.”
More often than not on the Web, we find ourselves standing in the middle of a junkyard when we’re trying to read. As content providers attempt to monetize their Web presence, they’re undoubtedly reaching a point of diminishing returns. All they need to do is check their server logs for the number of “print view” clicks they’re getting. Users aren’t printing. They just want some semblance of normalcy when they’re trying to read.
Readability finds its inspiration from a few different places:
- Mandy Brown’s thoughtful In Defense Of Readers published on A List Apart.
- iA Japan’s seminal post The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard that lays out the importance of clean, readable typography on the Web.
- Marco Arment’s infinitely awesome Instapaper – a great tool for marking items for reading later. An equally impressive iPhone app is a first-class citizen on my iPhone.
- Joe Clark’s rant on the shortcomings of reading on the Web entitled Unreadable.
The reception so far has been great. People are clearly frustrated with all the insanity that surrounds posts and articles these days.
You can install Readability in your Safari, Firefox or IE7+ browsers by visiting the setup page. It takes just a few seconds.
Posted by Richard Ziade on March 2, 2009, 11:23AMSpeaking at the IA Summit 2009
Tim Meaney (fellow partner at Arc90) and myself will be giving a talk at this year’s Information Architecture Summit in Memphis. It’s called Discovering & Mining The Everyday. A brief summary:
In our world today, machines are an indelible part of our everyday lives. We rely on powerful devices to help us find information, organize our lives and make decisions. What if all these machines that help us in our everyday lives actually “listened” to our actions? One of the most challenging aspects of the Semantic Web is introducing its concept and benefits to the everyday population. But do we really have to?
In this talk, we’ll contrast the way we make discoveries today by testing theories within controlled environments to a world where correlations can be discovered by simply peering into and querying data gathered out of our everyday actions.
We’ll provide examples of technologies that are partly doing this today. We’ll alsotouch on the privacy concerns that arise out of such endeavors. Finally, we’ll outline examples of how we may benefit from such a “universal semantic store.”
There’s been all kinds of press of late around the ability the derive answers out of our actions and how machines can help (e.g. Google predicting flu trends based on search patterns). It should be an interesting conversation.
Tim will be posting periodically on this topic at the Arc90 blog leading up to the conference. You can find out more about the IA Summit by visiting the conference website.
Finally, if you’re going to be there for the summit, or live in Memphis, don’t hesitate to drop me a line so we can meet in person.