BASEMENT.ORG

Posted by richz at 1:32 AM

The New Readability: Betting On The Web

item-tablet-ssAfter months of work, we’ve finally let loose the new Readability. Jenna Wortham has a great write-up around the launch that nicely summarizes the trends around technology and the reading experience.

We’re really excited about the new Readability. It’s a massive leap from the 150 or so lines of javascript that snuck out of the Arc90 lab almost two years ago. The response back then, both by the development community (Readability is baked into Apple’s Safari browser and the Amazon Kindle, among other places) and users in general really blew us away.

About six months ago, we were sitting around wondering what to do with this thing. We could’ve just left it alone and moved on, but the sentiment surrounding the tool and reading in general was so powerful that it just didn’t feel right to just move on. And so, we gathered to brainstorm what to do next with it. We tossed around features and various ideas around how to make the “product” better. Amidst the brainstorming banter, partner and Arc90 lead strategist Tim Meaney went ahead and dropped the proverbial bomb on the conversation. His pitch was essentially this: let people pay and give the money to the writers and publishers. The features are great, but let’s use this as an opportunity to wrap a great reading experience around the web we all know and love. No apps. No walls. No micropayments. No hardware requirements. Build it on the web and let’s put forward a mechanism that connects the money readers give us with the people who create all that great content that flows through the web every day.

I’ll be the first to admit that this approach hasn’t been without its fair share of anxiety and heated discussion. There’s not a whole lot of precedent to lean on for comfort. We’re putting out a service that asks people to pay money on the web (challenge #1), that asks people to pay more if they can afford to for the same suite of features (challenge #2) and we’re effectively providing a service that, in its current incarnation, presents no new or exclusive content of any sort (challenge #3).  There are probably other challenges, but there are also a lot of reasons to head in a new direction.

We believe the time is right to try something bold and innovative on the web. And “on the web” is what this service is all about. Our goal is to create a platform that embraces the web without compromising it. It’s rare that you find an opportunity to create something that embraces the openness, the fragmentation, the mayhem of the web. We believe Readability has that chance.

We also believe that quality content is worth paying for. The rat race for page views and impressions has not only led to an oftentimes painful experience on the web, but also to a diminishing of quality content on the web. Today’s reality isn’t anyone’s fault but ours. We won’t hesitate to spend $4.00 for our daily cup of coffee (that’s $80.00 a month if it’s part of your daily routine) but we’ll balk at even a modest attempt at supporting the volumes of content we consume on the web. Readability represents an opportunity to show all the great publications, writers and bloggers out there that we care about quality and we’re willing to pay for it.

We’ve got some amazing plans and announcements lined up for Readability. Be sure to follow @readability on Twitter to stay in the loop. If you have thoughts or feedback on the service, don’t hesitate to contact us.

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Posted by richz at 1:55 PM

Negotiation And Speculation: The Risk Of Selling Low

Happy Cog’s Greg Hoy posted a must-read post that covers a profoundly important topic for consultancies: how to avoid the apocalyptic scenario of not charging enough. Or as Greg coyly phrases it: “What’s your budget?” If you sell your time and services to anyone you don’t want to miss it. Greg shares some great tips.

As a partner at a consulting firm myself, I’d add one more thought: the cost of your time is speculative. Yes, your competitors and your prior work will steer the conversation towards a particular range, but don’t be fooled, those factors are hardly reliable.

Near the end of his post, Greg finally gets to the dance that inevitably ensues:

The prospect says, “We’re accustomed to firms charging $75/hour”. That’s fine. I’m accustomed to my martinis slightly dirty. Just because you’re accustomed to something doesn’t make it a rule. Explain why your services cost what they do. Explain what truly differentiates you from your competition.

Let’s translate:

“You’re not that beautiful.”

“What? Of course I am. Look at me.”

“I mean…you’re moderately attractive, but not beautiful.”

“Well I don’t agree. I think you’re wrong. Look! Look at my eyes! My lips!”

“Yeh. I don’t know.”

That prospective client isn’t negotiating pricing. He’s telling you, in a not-so-roundabout way, that you aren’t worth what you think you’re worth. It’s a perception tug-of-war.

So what to do?

Here’s what you do: move everything else around except what you believe you’re really worth. Maybe they get less. Maybe they don’t get your senior people. Maybe it’s six components instead of nine. All those variables can change except your worth. That can’t change. It’s an undeniable fact beyond subjectivity and beyond the reality-bending rhetoric of your client-to-be. You are worth what you are worth and unless you’re feeling charitable something else has to give.

Now, I realize competition can get heated and this may be the marquee client you’ve been dying to work with. If that’s the case just understand that perception hasn’t just been shifted for pricing but for who you are, what you deliver and most importantly, what you are worth. In a sort of automatic process, perception leads to real, objective valuation. You may sell low now, but know that the market is listening and pricing accordingly.

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Posted by richz at 10:16 AM

Talking About Reading at the Web 2.0 Expo

If you’re in New York City at the Web 2.0 Expo and you’ve got twenty minutes to spare this Thursday the 30th, then join us for a brief talk on the reading experience and the Web. I’ll be joined by Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper and former tech lead at Tumblr.

Since time is short, we’ll share some thoughts for a few minutes then open it up to questions. We’ll also probably hang around to chat afterwards. If you’re at the conference, try to stop by.

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Posted by richz at 7:15 AM

Lab Experiments, The Web & Death: Our SXSW Proposals

There are two SXSW talks that I’d like you to vote for, not because I’m asking you to but because they will be awesome.

Content, the Web and Death

The first is a panel called The Content Economy and the Web’s Rumored Demise. I’m joined by an amazing group of people: Jeff MacIntyre, content strategist and freelance journalist, and principal of Predicate LLC, the infinitely entertaining Paul Ford, contributing editor to Harper’s and consultant for Predicate (and the man behind Ftrain), Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper and finally TED alum Jennifer 8 Lee, former journalist for the New York Times.

We’re going to talk about content, reading, and the presumed death of the Web. If this talk makes it through, I think it could be one of the better panels at SXSW, and I’m not just saying that because I’m involved.

SXSW Talk = Laboratory Experiment

The other proposed talk is a bit out of left field. We’re going to use one of the presentation slots at SXSW to debut our next Arc90 Lab experiment. It should be interesting (or catastrophic, depending on how things go). The talk is entitled: Toss the Projector: Redefining the Presenter/Audience Dynamic. We’re going to build a service that attempts upend the way presenters and the audience interact. You can get a sense of what we’re going after by reading this blog post on the Arc90 blog. Also, don’t miss Tim Meaney’s post on attention for a great background.

So if you can find it in your heart, please take a minute to vote:

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Posted by richz at 11:20 AM

Incredibly Good Non-Technology Related Deliciousness: Sam’s Bakery is Open for Business!

Disclaimer: I am woefully and helplessly biased in the following endorsement:

I’m a big fan of the Family Owned Business. I’d personally jump on any chance to experience the distillation of years of experience, knowledge and just that indefinable family-ness of a business. You can manufacture history, nostalgia and authenticity or it can be real.

And it doesn’t get any more real than Sam’s Bakery. The Cafe at Sam’s Bakery is located in Brooklyn, New York. Sam is my mom, short for Samia and…how do I say this subtly:

SHE MAKES THE MOST INSANE BAKLAVA YOU WILL EVER TASTE.

low_angle_sheet_large I’m no food critic, but you really have to experience it to fully appreciate why Sam’s baklava is so special. It isn’t soppy or doused in honey. It’s a subtle, rose water-infused flavor that plays between flaky, crunchy and moist. It’s an old family recipe that is under 24 hour lockdown in my mama’s mind.

If you care about eating awesome things, go order some. As a special promotion to my loyal baklava-loving readers, enter coupon code BASEMENTBAKLAVA to get 30% off any order. There’s other tasty stuff on there as well. It makes for a great gift too. We’re talking marriage-saving gift here folks.

To all the Brooklynites (which seems to be just about everyone I meet these days), I highly recommend visiting the cafe in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. It has amazing wood roasted coffee from  Millar’s Coffee, shipped all the way from Washington state, a communal table for making friends and of course, free organic wifi.

If you order some or visit, I’d love to hear your feedback. In fact, you can email my mom directly. She’d love to hear your feedback too. Just be warned, she’ll email you back…every day…forever.

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Posted by richz at 11:46 AM

Pulse App Pulled For I-Don’t-Know-What

So wait.

The Pulse iPad app gets pulled because the New York Times put the squeeze on Apple to remove the app from the iTunes store. The key text from the New York Times legal:

The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use*. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.

So be warned, Netneswire, Reeder or any other feed reader out there. Hell, anybody that is pulling in content via RSS into an iPhone or iPad app be warned. This is big news. Consuming content freely available on the Web crosses a line, a brand new frickin’ line that didn’t exist yesterday.

Now, this can’t be real right? There has to be some nuanced fine line that Pulse crossed. The New York Times cease and desist letter goes on to say:

I note that the app is delivered with the NYTimes.com RSS feed preloaded, which is prominently featured in the screen shots used to sell the app on iTunes.

Emphasis mine. Ah, now I see. It’s because the Pulse reader preloads the New York Times feed as a default. If a user pulled it in, then that’s OK (I guess) but if Pulse preloads it, they’ve crossed a line?

Guess what else crosses a line? Apple Safari on the iPad or iPhone. By default it comes preloaded with the New York Times among a host of other news sources.

This is an incredibly dangerous precedent. I predict the New York Times will come to its senses and reverse their position. I can’t imagine this sticking.

Update: Position reversed. I’d love to hear an explanation behind what happened.

Update #2: Wait, The Times Company still wants it out. Stay tuned!

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Posted by richz at 3:20 PM

The Museum of Magazine History

Interfacelab and iA do an admirable job of ripping the new Wired iPad app to shreds. I don’t need to add more to what they’ve already said. I will add what they didn’t say:

Fundamentally, what makes Wired so good is the content. It’s a good brand because its content is good. This app is the equivalent of Wired taking its content, throwing it in a pit and pouring cement over it. It’s an instant fossilization. The content is mummified. Never to be touched or dissected or shared. I can’t even circle a paragraph on the fucking thing. 

With technology, shit is supposed to move forward. You’re supposed to be able to do stuff and experience stuff that you couldn’t before. This app is more like a tribute to magazines than a reimagining of where publishing can become.

It’s anti-Web, anti-sharing, anti-copy/paste - anti-everything. It’s a disservice to what was created. On the Web, content lives and breathes. This isn’t a digital magazine. It’s a tomb.

One final thought: there’s an odd irony about the whole experience. The iPad brings us closer to content – physically – than any technology to come before it. The whole experience is almost a tease. You’re swiping and touching all these “pages” and you can’t do a single thing with them. Welcome to the Museum of Magazine History.

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Posted by richz at 10:46 AM

IPad Impressions (Because The World Really Needs One More F#*%ing Blog Post About the iPad)

Yes, everything that can be said about the iPad has been said, except what I’m going to say (which is hopefully different than what others have said - maybe):

These are my impressions after a couple of days. What’s fun about a device like this is that I can honestly say I don’t know what my impressions will be in a week or a month or 3 months. For all its strengths and faults, it is different, and it’s forcing us to ask new questions about design, technology and how we want things to work. That’s always a good thing.

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Posted by richz at 6:38 PM

Come Say Hi To The Basement.org Guy At SXSW

First off, my apologies for the lack of postings on Basement.org. I am still alive and I've got thoughts I badly want to get down, but time is sparse these days unfortunately.

If you're attending SXSW Interactive, I will be there along with some of my partners in crime from Arc90: Tim Meaney, Avi Flax, and Rama Poola. Tim and I will be giving a talk that should've been called The Revenge of People, but instead it's called The Revenge of Editorials. It's about the Web, people, craftsmanship, content and all sorts of other stuff. We're excited to about it and hope you can join us. It's our first time at SXSW. We look forward to the sensory overload.

In any case, if you'd like to meet up, feel free to email me or ping me on Twitter.

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Posted by richz at 11:34 AM

Basement.org Turns 5 Today

Five years ago today, I launched this blog, www.basement.org. I actually can’t believe five years have passed. I’ve tried to cover the things that interest me (and hopefully interest some readers) around technology and design. Looking back, it’s been a lot of fun, if at times daunting to post something, anything. Still, no regrets.

Basement.org has often been pegged as a bitch-and-rant blog that just does a whole lot of complaining and not much doing. That’s probably true to some extent. I like to think basement.org is for bitching, while Arc90 is for doing.

image Still, I’m kind of proud of some (by all means not all) of the stuff that’s made it onto this blog. It’s still a young, fumbling kindergartner today. Hopefully it’ll pay attention at school, eat its vegetables and have a generally well-adjusted childhood.

Above all else, I hope I can keep the curiosity and desire to look forward in place. In many ways, this blog is about daydreaming, as corny as that sounds. The real world gets plenty of press these days. It’s more fun to daydream.

Note: If you’d like to check out some of the more popular posts, here’s a list from 2007.

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Posted by richz at 3:55 PM

Introducing: Arc90

Nearly five years ago, a sort of resurgent movement was starting to take hold on the Internet. From the ashes of the dot-com apocalypse rose a new view of the Web as not only a place to serve up “Web pages” but as a platform. This was incredibly exciting to me. A series of trends seemed to all be converging at once: RSS, AJAX and the Rich Web and of course simple approachable API’s.

Beyond the technology that seemed to be materializing, a new philosophy was taking hold. This new movement was demystifying and knocking down the walls that had surrounded software building since software building began. Technology was no longer the sole domain of engineers and computer scientists. It was now capable of being exposed to good strategic thinking and thoughtful design. The walls were coming down.

Or at least they seemed to be. In my eyes, I wanted those walls to come down. As a non-technologist who loves technology, I relished the idea of creating a place where the walls no longer exist and everyone, from “business people” to the most hardcore of technology architects all worked together to achieve the same thing: build great technology products.

clip_image002Back in 2004, as I paced around my apartment in Atlanta all giddy with optimism, my cousin, an MBA student at the time, decided to sober me up and demanded I write down my thoughts of what I thought this so-called company represents. At first I was agitated that he didn’t want to just join the celebration. Eventually, I begrudgingly agreed to do a bit of homework.

He asked me to draft a vision document. I’ve actually been able to dig it up. Here is Arc90’s mission statement from five years ago :

Arc90 is a consulting firm that provides strategic and tactical talent that is trained and skilled in learning and understanding business domains and the challenges business face. Once domain knowledge is obtained, a unique problem-solving methodology is applied that welds together a strong grasp of technology trends and sound design methodologies to deliver tangible, compelling solutions to businesses.

Not bad. That vision has actually held up pretty well. Beyond that definition of “consulting firm” we’ve ventured out into product as well with Kindling, our idea management tool for companies. We’ve also been fortunate enough to have partnered with forward-looking clients that were in tune with our vision and had faith in our ability to deliver.

Looking back, it’s been an incredible five years. All the while, we went to great lengths to share our ideas and occasional experiment on our lab, and talked about all sorts of topics on our blog, but we never really bothered to tell the world who we really are…until now. Our new Web presence has just launched and it’s incredibly exciting to finally share a bit about ourselves and what we do with the rest of the world.

If you peel back all the marketing buzz and catchphrases, Arc90 is the sum total of a great group of people that share a passion for creating awesome, game-changing technology products. It’s this talented group that has made that vision a reality…and then some. This team is Arc90.

While it’s great to look back and share some of our achievements, we are all about looking forward and peeking around the bend. It’s part of our DNA. Whether for a particular client or in the halls of our lab, it’s this innovative forward-looking approach to design and development that has allowed us to thrive over the years.

I can’t wait to see what we come up with next…

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Posted by richz at 9:53 AM

Google’s Fast Flip : Breaking The Internet & User Experience In One Fell Swoop

So Google decided to break the Internet paradigm today by releasing a new tool called Fast Flip. It’s essentially a visual browser for news. Google apparently has far too much spare CPU time in its datacenters so they decided to take image snapshots of news pages.

This is solid evidence that Google has lost its collective mind. The Internet is about links and connecting content to content. I felt slightly stupid when I clicked on what looked like a search box in one of the snapshots only to find out it’s not a search box but an image of one.

Is there research out there that supports the theory that people want visual artifacts (in the form of snapshots, thumbnails and the like) vs. the actual content? Searchme, a cover flow-style search engine, tried to fulfill a similar phantom need. They raised a ton of venture capital to deliver this visual browse search engine. Nobody cared and now they’re gone.

What’s interesting about this tool is that it’s the anti-Readability. Instead of helping us get rid of the junk around what we’re trying to read, Google fossilized the layout - junk and all - in images.

Bizarre.

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Posted by richz at 2:17 PM

Elsewhere Links Are…Elsewhere

Y’all may have noticed that basement.org’s elsewhere links have dried up a bit these days. They actually haven’t. They’re just not happening on this blog. If you’d like to follow the links I’ve been sharing, the easiest way is to just visit (or follow me) on Twitter (@richziade). There’s also an RSS feed fed by that account.

It’s just so much easier to publish quick tidbits this way. I primarily use TBUZZ to share links out. Eventually, I’d like to let that stream show up here on basement.org as elsewhere links. As soon as some time frees up, I’ll make that update.

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Posted by richz at 11:40 AM

TBUZZ + Readability

Since I started using TBUZZ (all-caps required), I’ve gotten into the habit of a nice one-two punch with Readability. First use Readability to get rid of all the bullshit, then invite in people who are talking about what I’m reading. It’s sort of like peanut butter and chocolate, except with technology:

readability-tbuzz

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Posted by richz at 10:26 AM

1:27 Of Monday Morning Zaniness

This brought a smile to my face. It’s wacky and nostalgic (in a lo-fi video game sort of way) and it’s called 8-Bit Waterslide. And then, about half way through, it yells out “Super Mega Hyper Boost Pipe.” What else can you ask for?

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Posted by richz at 9:16 AM

The Better Project

Implicit in the pervasive message of “change” that swirls around us these days, is “change for the better.” After all, nobody would suggest change for the worse. To date, there really hasn’t been a platform that taps the collaborative power of the Web to help change things for the better…until now.

The Better Project let’s anyone create a place where they can meet and collaborate with others who share a common goal. It’s a completely free to use.

Arc90’s very own Jen Epting sums it up nicely in 90 seconds:

So what are you waiting for? Act now!

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Posted by richz at 3:38 PM

Common 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.

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Posted by richz at 6:21 PM

Twitter 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 entries tweets to readers followers is inversely proportional to the frequency of entries tweets 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:

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).

2129257593_54bab10c92The 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.

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Posted by richz at 3:01 PM

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.

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Posted by richz at 3:26 PM

Observations & Meditations On Twitter

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.

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Posted by richz at 9:31 AM

Follow 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.

Right?

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Posted by richz at 8:50 AM

The Revenge Of The Readers

footer 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.

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Posted by richz at 10:44 AM

An 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.”

cgfa_meissonier1 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:

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.

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Posted by richz at 11:23 AM

Speaking at the IA Summit 2009

iasummit 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.

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Posted by richz at 10:13 AM

Kindling 1.3 Released

kindling-logo Last week, the All-Star team behind Kindling, our idea management application, released version 1.3. This release has all kinds of great features and tweaks including a leaderboard (where you can track the top participants in Kindling), email digests, volunteering, instance-wide announcements, advanced search and more. The Kindling Blog has all the glorious details.

Congratulations to the Kindling team on this impressive release!

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Posted by richz at 8:58 AM

Two Excellent Documentaries On The Financial Crisis

If most of us weren’t interested in global or U.S. economics, we sure are now. The flow of news over the past twelve months or so is pervasive. I’m the first to admit I’m a layman when it comes to this stuff.

If you’re looking to understand things a bit better, there are two documentaries that recently aired that are well worth viewing:

Who needs the Bourne series when real life is as exciting as this?

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Posted by richz at 9:41 AM

What $800 Billion Looks Like From 10,000 Feet

I’m bad at visualizing numbers, especially 800 billion numbers. This helps. Click to view it in all its glory:

gr2009020100154

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Strip Generator

strip Strip Generator is a charming Flash app that lets you create comic strips by simply dragging and dropping elements onto a row of comic cells. Fun and the artwork has a great style to it. The site also catalogs strips created by others.

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Swiss Miss Redesigns

Swiss Miss, Tina Roth Eisenberg’s consistently excellent design blog, recently launched a redesign. It’s a nice upgrade. Of course, I would’ve never noticed it because I pretty much live inside my feed reader.

The grid view works beautifully with a site like Tina’s:

swiss

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Posted by richz at 11:24 AM

America’s Creation : Lessons In Collaboration

Our very own Tim Meaney has a brilliant post that talks about the power of collaboration and draws from the dialog and heated debates that ultimately shaped the U.S. government. It’s not only inspiring but sheds light on how great things can collectively come out of a mish-mash of motives, agendas and personalities. Don’t miss it.

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Posted by richz at 11:43 AM

Arc90 NY Tech Get-Together (Keywords: Beer, Beers)

beer-bottle-chilling-out-funny-humor-picture As I surf around my usual tech destinations, I’m always hearing about this event and that Foo camp happening in Northern California. Well, as residents of New York City (the greatest frickin’ city on this here earth), Arc90 has decided, in a fit of jealousy and latent envy, to have our very own networking get-together.

There will be beer and there will be something to eat with the beer. If you’re in the NY technology and design community (or, umm, want to be in) well then RSVP and join us. It should be a lot of fun.

It’s on the evening of February 12. You’ll find all the info here. See you there!

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Posted by richz at 10:34 AM

Flight Simulator’s Last Flight

The big news yesterday in the tech world is that Microsoft will be laying off 5,000 people over the next year or so. It’s a sobering reminder that just about nobody is insulated from this downturn.

For me at least, it’s hard to fully grasp numbers when people start talking in the thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions. It only translates into “a lot” in my head. It’s only after I dive in and hear about the stories of what got affected do I start to appreciate the gravity of things.

It turns out one of the franchises is a casualty of the cutbacks. It looks like Flight Simulator will be no more. I’ll be the first to admit it. I don’t play Flight Simulator anymore. I haven’t played it in years. But I remember the first time I took off on an old 386 PC. The graphics were beyond crude. It was all a silly trick back then, simulating flight. But man was it awesome. It was my first taste of real-time control of 3D. The whole experience pretty much solidified my love for technology and computers.

coco3fsII

Flight Simulator wasn’t really a game back then. It still isn’t for the most part. You didn’t really shoot at anything or kill anything and nobody was keeping score. It was just so much fun to pretend to fly.

It makes you wonder what’s left to invent in technology that conjures that type of “Holy shit! How the hell…” reaction.

I hope Flight Simulator somehow survives. It’s a big part of gaming and personal computing history and the latest version looks amazing (though I have no clue how commercially successful it is). We’ll just have to see.

Ah the good ol’ days! Nothing impresses these kids nowadays. Oh wait…

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Posted by richz at 3:28 PM

Cue Up Your Brilliance : Kindling Escapes!

For the better part of 2008, we’ve been using a tool for harvesting and collaborating around ideas at Arc90 that we built ourselves called Kindling. Kindling proved so valuable for us that we decided it was something that many other groups or businesses would find useful.

Fast forward to today, and the shingle is officially up. Kindling is available to the masses at www.kindlingapp.com.

In a matter of minutes, you can have a place to share ideas with others in your group or company. Here's the two-minute pitch :

Kindling is the brainchild of Chris Dary, one of the talented engineers here at Arc90. While Chris planted the seed for Kindling, it was truly a group effort. Nearly everyone in the company visited the effort in one capacity or another. I’m standing on my chair at this very moment (don’t ask how I’m typing) applauding everyone at Arc90. We’re really proud of the results. Kindling’s ease-of-use belies its true power: providing a platform to find, bubble up, build upon and cash in on great ideas within groups.

Kindling is available under a no-obligation 30-day trial. It takes less than a minute to get started. You don’t even have to enter your billing information. We hope you’ll find it as useful (and fruitful) as we have here at Arc90.

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Posted by richz at 1:36 PM

Arc90 Well-Represented At Mashable’s NYC Event

For anyone interested in meeting the good looking people behind all that good looking technology at Arc90, be sure to look for us at Mashable’s New Year NYC Networking gathering at 212 Restaurant and Bar. Five of us (yes, FIVE of us) well be attending. It’s happening this upcoming Thursday, January 15 from 7-10pm.

If you’re not sure how to find us, just yell out “Hey Arc90 people!” at any given time. Or just look for me (Rich), Jen, Jess, Chris or Bobby. We might (emphasis on “might”) be wearing one of our legendary t-shirts.

See you there!

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Posted by richz at 3:51 PM

A Trip Through Lebanon

Recently, Tina Roth of the popular Swiss Miss blog shared some photos of her trip to Switzerland. Her photos give us a glimpse into the order and tidiness commonly associated with Swiss culture. I myself passed through Switzerland recently as well, but it was just a waypoint to a markedly different destination: Lebanon. To counter Tina’s post, I thought I’d share some thoughts about life in Lebanon and how design lives in the public space.

For most, Lebanon conjures up notions of conflict, political turmoil and a nearly chronic state of crisis. This characterization isn’t without merit. Lebanon has suffered through a grueling civil war, a mess of a war with Israel in 2006, and countless assassinations of political figures, journalists and most notably, one of it’s most popular prime ministers, Rafik Hariri. To say the least, Lebanon has had a troubled past.

IMG_1610 Driving through the streets and highways of Lebanon today, one thought prevailed: the place is a mess. Its shared, public spaces are run down, unkempt and often-times filthy. The buildings and streets feel like the residue borne from fits of capitalist progress, snuck in between periods of conflict and unrest.

As you take in the scenery, you can’t help but connect your surroundings with the way people behave in the public realm. One trip down its main coastal highway and you’re quickly caught up in the anxiety and altogether sense of hurriedness that seems to grip everyone on the road. A trip to the nearby bakery feels like an evacuation.

IMG_1599 A society’s shared space can reveal a respect and reverence to the past and hope and aspirations towards the future. When an otherwise forgettable building boldly soars in its architecture, it can signal something bigger and better than the present. When people live and work around and within something they view as worthwhile, it engenders a certain relationship between this “place” and it’s inhabitants. A valued place asks to be taken care of and in return is a source of pride and cultural identity.

Lebanon doesn’t cover its wounds. It’s streets and buildings mutter of a difficult, tortured past. A difficult past is not unique. Most nations have suffered through them. But Lebanon is unique in that its wounds never get a chance to heal. It’s civic spaces suffer from neglect because there is no faith in the future. Why invest in anything when it could all come crumbling down next year…or next month?

So what is left for Lebanon? With a past worth forgetting and an uncertain future, all that’s left is the present. And in today’s Lebanon the present exudes a heart-pounding energy that is both exhilarating and painfully aggravating all at once. The present is all Lebanon can bank on and its people live…and race and compete and cheat and lie to survive because tomorrow, well tomorrow is not for Lebanon.

I can’t help but wonder if this nation of worn down spaces can rise above its current state. What if Lebanon’s goal was not for political revival but something far smaller: a greater attention to the place everyone lives in. What if things like order, cleanliness, civility and respect became the pivot points of a national movement? What if just a bit of the care and attention most in Lebanon give to their private spaces (most Lebanese homes, even among the less affluent, are very well kept) were channeled to the public space? Can physical surroundings change how people think and behave?

I’m not really sure. I do believe that if a society creates places worth caring about or cares more for its existing places (no matter how decrepit they are), it’s collective psyche will be all the better for it.

But it’s not all bad. You can’t help but be struck by Lebanon’s audacity and charm. While it may have a dysfunctional collective psyche, it wears it on its sleeve. Lebanon is an extreme manifestation of human frailty. Its buildings, its shops, its roads and sidewalks tell stories, often painful stories about its past. Dubai may have the tallest this and the largest that, but all its wealth can’t create the rich experiences and history the Lebanon of today embodies. You can create man-made islands, but you can’t construct character. For all its faults, Lebanon bursts with character. It’s all at once glamorous and decrepit. Frustrating and liberating. Invigorating and suffocating. It’s difficult to fault Lebanon for what it is today because, like any one of us, Lebanon didn’t choose its history.

38619497_8eea9985c2 It’s difficult to just say “clean up Lebanon and make it like Switzerland.” To sterilize Lebanon is to couch it in hypocrisy. The balance lies between embracing Lebanon’s past and evincing pride and attention towards its future. Great design is about balance. You can’t drop a Walmart in the hills of Tuscany.

While in Lebanon, I was coincidentally reading, fittingly, Alain De Botton’s Architecture of Happiness. It’s an excellent exploration into the relationship between people and the things and places we create. It’s one of those books you feel compelled to mark up and highlight. I highly recommend it.

One passage carried special weight for me while in Lebanon:

[The Street] offers a lesson in the benefits of surrendering individual freedom for the sake of a higher and collective scheme, in which all parts become something greater by contributing to the whole. Though we are creatures inclined to squabble, kill, steal and lie, the street reminds us that we can occasionally master our baser impulses and turn a waste land, where for centuries wolves howled, into a monument of civilisation.

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Posted by richz at 2:21 PM

Need Gift Ideas For Your Favorite Hipster?

Mighty Goods has nice gift ideas for hipsters. While you’re at it, if your hipster friend happens to be smart, there’s gift ideas for smart people. If these hipsters and/or smart people (yes, hipsters are sometimes smart) happen to work for you, there’s gift ideas for employees.

Now let’s all do our part to help the struggling economy by buying all kinds of stuff for each other. Oh, and for Jesus too.

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Posted by richz at 5:59 PM

Some Good Reading At The Arc90 Blog

The Arc90 blog is often laden with highly technical tips on everything from SQL to Flex to JQuery. It’s nice to see some non-technical stuff show up: Kamni Khan’s When We Were Young talks about Arc90’s early years (Brooklyn!) and Jennifer Epting’s The Liftoff Moment expounds on the struggles (and triumphs) of doing that thing we do here at Arc90.

They’re both really well-written and not laden with code snippets…so have at it!

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Does Anybody Use Trackbacks Anymore?

Does anyone use trackbacks anymore? Is it dead and/or de facto dead? I’m thinking of removing it from basement.org.

Also, while I’m at it, does anyone give a crap about Technorati tags? Heh.

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Posted by richz at 2:10 PM

Elsewhere Links RSS Feed Fixed

Just a small Public Service Announcement: the Elsewhere links RSS feed was botched up for awhile and wasn’t getting updated. It’s now fixed and working just fine. Note that the full basement.org RSS feed includes all the Elsewhere posts as well. Sorry ‘bout that.

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Posted by richz at 10:14 AM

Three New Google Apps Lab Applications

Google Apps has released three new experimental applications that look pretty frickin’ cool. Here’s a quick summary from the Google Enterprise Blog:

Hey, free stuff is always good. You need a Google Apps account to play with these.

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Posted by richz at 9:26 AM

Opera’s MAMA Project : Peering Into Web Pages

A few days ago, the kids at Opera Software launched a search engine that studies what most typical search engines ignore: what’s going on inside of a web page. It’s called MAMA for “Metadata Analysis and Mining Application.” MAMA is a “structural Web-page search engine—it trawls Web pages and returns results detailing page structures, including what HTML, CSS, and script is used on it, as well as whether the HTML validates.”

The initial results are insightful and occasionally fascinating. A few choice statistics:

Opera has published key findings as well as a view of what “the average page” looks like.

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Posted by richz at 9:19 AM

Meet Green Thing

Green Thing “is a public service that inspires people to lead a greener life.” What I like about Green Thing is it focuses on the little things people can do. Rather than just focusing on some big foundation or event, it speaks at a personal level and it does it with style. The stories are told through creative work by people from around the world. Here’s the Meet Green Thing video:


Meet Green Thing from Green Thing on Vimeo.

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Posted by richz at 5:06 PM

Everlasting Love In Product Development

As Arc90 continues towards redefining itself as not only a world class technology and design consultancy but as a product company, I’ve come to some realizations.

The path from product inception to product launch is a long one. Initially, there’s a high. The idea and vision feels fresh, strong and invincible. We throw around cool ideas that get us jazzed up. It’s a giddy time. It’s no wonder. It’s in that phase that we tend to idealize the great potential of what may come about. It’s a “honeymoon” phase.

As time goes by, and as the “newness” of it all begins to wear off, a harsher reality sets in. That newness is replaced by a feeling of being around each other just a bit too long. Still, we’ve committed to each other (us and the product that is) and we must see this thing through. Doubt and uncertainty inevitably seeps in. A desire for something fresh and new lingers, but there’s work to be done.

At Arc90, we’re nearing the homestretch for Kindling, our exciting new hosted idea management tool. It actually hasn’t been that long of a road compared to other ventures that can take years. Still, we’re in the midst of the less glamorous, less differentiating aspects of the effort. Things like security and payment gateways and handling all sorts of mundane logic. In other words, we’re in deep: for better or for worse.

People say “relationships take work.” You have to make certain you’re truly committed to one another and willing to work through the tougher and less idyllic times. Above all else, make sure someone (or even better, a few people) are passionate about and are in love with what you’re creating. That passion will carry you through the tougher days.

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Posted by richz at 12:43 PM

The 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics : The Winner!

A few days ago, we announced the World Class athletes that competed for the top prize in our 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics. It was a tough race but the time has come and results are in.

indexchunknobox The winner, after much deliberation (preceded by much ingestion) is New York Brownies Chocolate Chunk! As we’ve mentioned previously, this is a big, moist (but not too moist) fresh and very tasting brownie. New York Brownies didn’t go over the top with fancy packaging and other silliness. Even their website is a bit Spartan. But pay that no mind, the focus is in the right place. This is the best brownie of the bunch. Don’t fear mail-ordering these brownies. As soon as you open that white box, the rich cocoa flavor kicks you in the head.

Honorable mention also goes to Dancing Dear for delivering and solid brownie as well as Schmerty’s Blazer variety for its original style and salty flavor.

Now that the quest is over, it’s back to basement.org’s regularly scheduled programming…

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Posted by richz at 9:55 AM

The Single Most Effective Way To Completely Mock Any Video (Pretty Much Not-Safe-For-Anything)

No, I have not lost my mind and forgotten about design and technology and the Internet. Yes, we will be returning to our regular programming, but first…I must share this:

A few weeks ago, I stumbled on a Youtube gem that involves Russian children sliding down what looks like an inflatable…umm…well just look:

Now before you unsubscribe and never visit basement.org again, hear me out. Yes, this is very funny for all the wrong reasons but if you turn your audio on, you’ll witness true genius at work. See, whoever stumbled on this most ridiculous video felt compelled to marry it with someone hand-farting Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. You can find a video of the performance right here. Whoever chose to merge such visual and sonic absurdity is a true genius.

Soon after discovering this gem, I came to appreciate something more about that audio: it is, universally, the single most effective way to completely mock and ridicule anything else you're watching. Try it. Pull up any video, whether T. Boone Pickens rambling on about wind power or Bernanke and Paulson expounding on matters they don't seem to fully grasp in the first place, mute the audio on the video and then just play the hand-farting Rhapsody. It works like a charm.

To make life easier for everyone, I've extracted the audio and put it into an mp3 file which you can download:

Note, I’m pretty sure this interpretation of this Queen classic falls within the realm of “fair-use” or “derivative work” or something, so the RIAA wouldn’t want to come near this one.

Let’s just say it makes the world a better place and leave it at that.

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Posted by richz at 10:32 AM

The 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics : The Athletes!

coldmud_3 In keeping the theme of this blog around design and technology, it was feeling a bit too narrow of late. So I decided to expose yet another passion of mine: chocolate, or more specifically: chocolate brownies. A couple of months ago I decided to use this blog as a platform to launch a Brownie Olympics of sorts. The kind folks at Cold Mud offered to co-sponsor this extravaganza of deliciousness and thus, The 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics were under way.

Today, we’re going to run through the various participating brownies that are up for this most prestigious award, as well as our assessment of how tasty their brownies were. Before getting into the various brownies we tried (and we tried many), a brief summary of the ground rules:

And now, on to the…err…athletes!

Dancing Dear – Chocolate Chunk

br-choc-chunk Dancing Dear products can be found in many gourmet/higher-end markets. Their stuff is generally of very good quality. Their Chocolate Chunk is a solid, rich brownie. If you’re looking for decadent, you won’t be disappointed here. If anything, the Dancing Dear leans on the butter a bit too much, leaving little room for subtlety. Butter in brownies is sort of like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Yeh, it’s important to the story, but it’s not the star. Chocolate is the star. As to texture, one of our judges found it a bit “spongy” for a brownie, though I found its density just fine. Overall, a very good brownie.

Mari’s NY (Classic)

classic Mari’s NY heralds itself as a whole other level of brownie experience. The packaging is nothing short of stunning. It’s the equivalent of confectionary lingerie. As I unwrapped the box (oh so gently), I couldn’t help but think I was in for some sort of insane chocolate experience. Lord knows we paid for it. Mari’s brownies were far-and-away the most expensive of the bunch. As soon as I got to the actual brownie, I knew it wasn’t going to live up to the hype. It’s really not a brownie. It’s more like fudge. And calling fudge a brownie in these Olympics is the equivalent of taking anabolic steroids before the 100M. This was a real disappointment. It lacked the complexity of texture (flaky to dense and moist) we would expect in a quality brownie. Instead it was just one big block of chocolate mud. Pretty disappointing.

Schmerty’s (Blazer)

 56-a Schmerty’s Blazer (no it does not contain marijuana, despite the name) is a very interesting brownie. It’s texture is a bit too crumbly but it somehow does come through in terms of flavor. It is a salty brownie, but not to the point of repulsion (think chocolate-covered pretzels). You can taste the quality ingredients within. The blazer clearly stands on its own as the most unique of the contestants.

Geoff & Drew’s (Chocolate Chip)

4100There’s something very likable about Geoff & Drew’s brownies. They came in an old-school tin casserole and you had to cut them up yourself. They could have easily been mistaken for being bought at a church bake sale. So right out of the gate, we felt a nice, homemade vibe. Once we tasted them though, things got a little weird. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a pretty good brownie. They just sort of lacked that chocolate punch we want in a brownie. They were a bit too…bready. Still, you’ve got to give them points for that homemade feeling. They just don’t have that close-your-eyes-once-you-bite-in-and-make-that-stupid-face quality.

New York Brownies (Original)

indexoriginalnobox We’ll try to put our New York bias aside as we assess our next contestant: New York Brownies.  The package lacked the seductive qualities of Mari’s nor the homemade qualities of Geoff & Drew’s. It was all business. A big box with two packs of dry ice to ensure quality. As soon as you get to the brownies, the first thing you’ll notice is how big they are. This is a large brownie. Once we unwrapped it and took a bite, we knew this guy was special. Nice, dense texture. Strong cocoa flavor. And above all else, it tasted fresh. This was a serious brownie.

Pret A Manger Brownie

img_0032 For posterity’s sake, we wanted to include a more, umm, pedestrian brownie. Pret A Manger is cropping up all over New York City these days. Pret prides itself on its quality lunch menu. As you step up to a Pret counter to pay, you’re always confronted with all sorts of tasty treats, including their brownies. The Pret brownie is an average brownie. It’s tasty, fairly dense and has an agreeable chocolate flavor.  If you’re grabbing a sandwich and drink for lunch, you’re going to do just fine with one of Pret’s brownies. It isn’t as bad as a Lil’ Debbie’s brownie, but still falls short of gourmet.

And that’s it folks! In the next couple of days, we will announce the winner of the 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics!

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Posted by richz at 2:42 PM

Dabbleboard – A Nice Virtual Whiteboard

Dabbleboard_logoIn the spirit of sketchcasting (sort of), Dabbleboard makes it really easy to create illustrations and share them with others. This is less about recording a narrative with voice-over but rather just sharing drawings. What I really like about Dabbleboard is it’s ability to create clean line art out of scribble (circles, squares, straight lines, etc.). I could see it really serving a nice purpose for interface designers, information architects and anyone interested in sharing birds-eye or conceptual diagrams. You can also embed your created content in other web pages a la Youtube.

Time to break out the tablet PC!

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Posted by richz at 9:38 AM

Boards Of Canada + Processing = Perfection

Glenn Marshall, a computer artist, has married the awesome electronic sounds of Boards Of Canada and the wonders of the Processing programming language. The result is magic:


Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.


Music Is Math from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.

I’ve wanted to put up a blog post listing out the best music to code or design to for awhile now. Boards of Canada would definitely be on that list.

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Posted by richz at 9:08 AM

Arc90 Lab : Yammer PHP Client Library

The kids at Arc90 are liking the Twitter-gone-enterprise vibe of Yammer. Yammer won the Techcrunch50 Top Prize. Of course, rather than sending “Congratulations” cards, we at Arc90 tend to express our enthusiasm by writing really well-documented client libraries. Hey, to each his own.

You can grab the Yammer API Client Library by visiting our lab. Kudos to our very own Matt Williams for giving birth to this bad boy. Matt is also the brains behind our popular Twitter API client.

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Posted by richz at 9:18 AM

The Weird And Wonderful Flash Art Of Hans Hoogerbrugge

Flash as a medium is still relatively young and is rarely treated as it's own creative platform. Design You Trust pointed me back to one of my favorite Flash artists, Hans Hoogerbrugge. You can find his oddly entertaining Flash work here. What's great about Hans' work is that it doesn't serve any other end other than to entertain you. It's not navigation. It's not informational. It's a mildly interactive form of art that is both stylish and engaging.

hans

Now all Hans needs to do is make his "pieces" embeddable so we can share them alongside all those inane Youtube videos.

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Posted by richz at 11:10 AM

Arc90 Wallpapers Theme : Brooklyn, Guns And Technology

One of the fun little traditions we have here at Arc90 is the semi-annual unveiling of oddly-themed T-shirts. We've had three designs done so far but the first design is the most interesting:

bk-tshirt

In essence, it's a shirt with a gun on it. I wanted to do another run but we opted to view it as a rare commodity and leave only 20 or so existing in the world (don't be fooled by imitations being sold in Chinatown).

So what's the gun and military-style font all about? I'm not entirely certain. It's partly a reaction (with a bit of a snicker) to where we've ended up: from an apartment in Brooklyn to the monolithic glass towers of Midtown Manhattan.

Above all else, the "gun" shirt is about disruption. It's about challenging convention and questioning the typical groupthink that plagues most traditional tech shops or IT departments. Back in the day (the "day" being four years ago), Arc90 formed its philosophy: a bold reaction to the stagnant, follow-the-nonsense-you-read-in-eWeek world where CIO's scrutinize gap analysis reports of which bloatware they're going to buy and "implement" next. We embraced and welcomed new, creative ways to build great technology.

Now in the spirit of all this, I'd love to give every one of you a t-shirt, but that's obviously not going to happen. Instead, I whipped up some desktop and iPhone wallpapers that attempt to capture some of that grittiness. It's a nice contrast from our fairly conservative corporate web site. Simply click on the image below to download a zip file with all these images:

arc90-wallpaper-samples-v1

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Posted by richz at 10:22 AM

The 2008 Cold Mud Brownie Olympics!

I was going to blog about the definition of "design" or the end of Pandora, but those will have to wait. Glory awaits. A team of chocolate "experts" have been scouring the globe to find the world's greatest brownie and now that we have an impressive roster of candidates, we can now begin.

coldmud We're also proud to announce that this event is being co-sponsored with Cold Mud. Cold Mud is a cool food news portal based in Australia.

And now, the opening ceremonies! (insert bombastic trumpet music here). Here are the competitors so far:

It is not too late to recommend another competitor for the Cold Mud Brownie Olympics. Just email me if you're interested in competing. Just a few things to keep in mind:

So who will be the Michael Phelps of brownies? Stay tuned!

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Posted by richz at 10:27 AM

Help Wanted

I'd like to use the massive(?) population of basement.org readers here to help out Arc90's recruiting Master Plan. We're looking for strong software people with a good grasp of web technologies (HTTP, REST, Ajax, Frameworks, PHP, Java, you-name-it). Specifically we're looking for:

As you can see, our quote-unquote job positions aren't very formal. That's sort of by design. We're just looking for smart, creative thinkers that appreciate working in a loose, dynamic environments. It is, after all, one of the greatest jobs in the world (or Midtown Manhattan).

If you're interested, don't hesitate to drop me a note (or resume, or portfolio).

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Posted by richz at 8:39 AM

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.

classic 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.

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Posted by richz at 9:20 AM

Kindling Videos Now Available

kindling-watermark 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.

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Posted by richz at 7:11 PM

The 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.

screenshot4 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.

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Posted by richz at 10:46 AM

"I've Got A Great Idea! Now What?"

Ideas are what make any organization evolve and adapt. Whether large or small, new ideas challenge the status quo and aspire to a better of way of doing things. The germination of an idea is an oddly singular, individual experience. Yeh, you may pitch something to your office neighbor and a furious brainstorming session may ensue, but in the beginning it's just you and your idea.

In any organization today, it's tough to get ideas out. Yeh, you may blurt out an idea at some company meeting (even though it's slightly off-topic) or you may let one fly at the tail-end of an email thread, but let's face it: sharing ideas is hard.

Antenna And the bigger your organization, the tougher it is to share your ideas. Only the most arrogant and presumptuous among would hit up the all@yourcompany.com email address. So how do we get our ideas across today? Well, the brave among us will politic and plot subliminal propaganda campaigns to insinuate our idea into an organization. The reality is that most of us will do nothing. And that's too bad, for both ourselves and more importantly the collective good of the organization as a whole.

Introducing : Kindling!

imageI'm very proud to announce Arc90's very first product endeavor: Kindling. Kindling is a web-based idea harvesting tool for groups and organizations. Simply sign up, invite some users and start sharing, voting up and acting on ideas. You can learn a bit more about Arc90's daring foray into the Wild World Of Products by reading Tim Meaney's post on the Arc90 blog.

Instead of hearing me ramble on about how much cuter Kindling is than all the other kids, just watch this brief intro video:

We're now accepting invites to our public beta. If you'd like to set up your group, company or organization with your very own instance of Kindling (e.g. mycompany.kindling.com), don't hesitate to request an invite.

Update: ReadWriteWeb has put up a quick review of Kindling.

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Posted by richz at 11:03 AM

The Right Thing vs. The Status Quo

When Arc90 was founded nearly four years ago, the motivation was clear: create a cool environment where smart technologists and designers can create powerful, innovative tools for our clients unencumbered by the typical nonsense associated with large, bureaucratic organizations. We strive to create a place where the best and smartest ideas always win out and where politics, jockeying for territory and positions and status amount to very little.

That vision has mostly come to fruition. We've been fortunate enough to have the leeway to create some incredibly powerful, innovative tools and applications for our clients...sometimes. As I think about the things that frustrate us today, I've come to realize that Arc90 is a slow trod towards independence. The sequence goes something like this:

  1. You work in a company where you deal with bullshit, politics and all sorts of nonsense that gets in the way of doing the right thing. If the right thing is disruptive in any sort of way, the status quo quickly starts to bear down on you. Frustration ensues and you eventually quit...
  2. You break out on your own and quickly enjoy the liberating feeling of not being surrounded by morons. You engage a few clients and revel in your newfound independence, for awhile...

Eventually, even as an independent entity, you're sucked into your client's world of spectacular bullshit. You assess their world and cue up some valuable feedback (i.e. the right thing). You show up for meetings and enthusiastically share your strategy that will get them to a better place.

Welcome back to bullet #1.

Ah, there lies the rub. You thought you'd found independence but alas to really make a difference for your clients, you need to live in their world. And the Battle Royale between the Right Thing and the Status Quo begins again.

So what to do? At Arc90, we often talk about the "strategic entry point." Going in at a high level and collaborating with our clients to formulate strategies together. As an external entity, our vantage point (which is devoid of history, politics and organizational inertia) allows us to focus on the problem at hand sans the typical bullshit that can pollute a strategy. Nevertheless, in the end we still have to play within that same arena. We still must step into that same history, politics and organizational inertia.

And so we're left with an interesting dilemma: do we take our clients' money anyway and just "play along" or do we tell them to go to hell because it's not the right thing? The leadership at Arc90 has a responsibility to keep Arc90 afloat and prosperous so it's hard to just brush off what we may view as "bad work." On the other hand, bad work can badly impact morale and diminish the brand value of Arc90. A firm like ours will rarely come out looking good if it just bows down and does bad work.

http://www.mozes.com/blog/uploaded_images/Far%20Side--gifted%20school-726975.jpgSo what to do? For Arc90, we've been fortunate enough to have had a good amount of autonomy to date. As for the rest, the struggle goes on. We navigate stealthily to somehow drop the right thing in anyway, all the while stroking the necessary egos at play. Any organization worth its weight should on occasion audit themselves to see just how much they do to neutralize the tyranny of the status quo. Do good initiatives make it? Are the right people heard? Do you have a mechanism that makes it easy to call out bullshit? In the end, it's about getting personalities out of the way. The right thing has very little to do with personalities.

There's a great saying. I can't recall where I first heard it but I repeat it often :

The right thing is easy, unfortunately people are involved.

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Posted by richz at 9:35 AM

Rounded Corners, I Still Love You

Basement.org has been rolling for a few years now and I have to confess that I have a bit of a mini-relationship with every blog post. They're sort of like your kids. You do what you can, but in the end you really don't know how they're gonna turn out.

Early on, when Digg was actually still cool, basement.org got slammed a few times after landing on Digg's front page, and one of my favorite posts made it up there. The headline tells the whole story: Why Do We Love Rounded Corners? (It's also with great pride that I'd note that a "love rounded" search on Google yields this post as the top result).

Frankly, the post is ok. I put forth some interesting thoughts, but it's far from exceptional. But the comment thread. That's a whole other story. Yeh it's on my blog (so apply the usual bias disclaimer), but it's really one of the most entertaining threads I've ever read. In essence, people decided to give their own theories on why we love rounded corners. It's all well worth reading, but here's a few choice samples:

Why? easy: women have rounded 'corners'. It is something you can stroke... :-)

Rounded corners render objects less susceptible to damage and wear, and less likely to cause the same. Sharp corners can rip pockets etc. Rounded corners simply make the object more robust.

As children we discover sharp corners hurt, so we quickly learn to avoid them and develop a preference for smoother, rounder corners.

Breasts are curved.
Ergo ....

"some guy designed the room I'm standing in
another built it with his own tools
who says I like right angles?
these are not my laws
there are not my rules"
-ani difranco

Who gives a fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it is just the designer conspirator so they will make more money and give the developers and manufacturers hard life!!!!!! Long live simple design!!!!!

There is actually a basis in human vision for rounded vs. squared corners. Studies that track eye movements have shown an attraction to features such as corners. Use of rounded corners will serve to exert less distracting pull on a viewer's gaze.

In chinese, we have a word similar: "無菱無角", describes people do not figtht againt other, like a rounded object, never smash others.

Then there's my personal favorite:

I love rounded corners, i think it's DNA...Woman have already round boobs, for over thousands of years...

I won't speculate as to the shape of women's breasts prior to thget ie "round era" outlined above.

I've since shut off comments on the post (too much spam pollution). I can safely say that this post has that rare trait that most blog posts don't: it's an unplanned work of collaboration.

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Posted by richz at 10:10 AM

Core Value And The Package It Comes In : What The Record Labels Can Learn From Tony Montana

Core Value & The Packages It Comes In

If I purchase a Playstation Portable, I own it. It is my property. So what motivates me to buy a PSP? Well, to answer that question, we have to consider the core value that is inherent in a PSP. Yes it's really just a physical object but its core value is it's a great little entertainment system.

moving-boxes-kitch-bun One could argue that there are other values to be derived from possessing this physical object, e.g. it's a status symbol that boosts my popularity with my friends, but few would dispute that it's inherent value lies in its capabilities as a video game machine, portable movie player and handheld web browser. It's impossible for me to replicate or share that core value with anyone else unless I give up possession of the physical container that houses that core value.

This is all just a long-winded way of saying that the core value of the PSP cannot be decoupled from the physical container that carries it. While this all may seem like metaphysical babble, this inextricable pairing of perceived value and physical representation is what creates business opportunity. Without that lock-in of value, Sony can't slap a price on a PSP and generate money.

Sixty-Eight Glorious Minutes Of Wonderful Core Value

music notes When I purchase a compact disc, I own it. It is my property. I can lend my CD to a friend. When I do so, I no longer enjoy its use. Let's assume for a second that its 1982, and I really can't easily or affordably replicate the music on the CD. So applying the same test as the PSP, why is the CD valuable to me? Is it because it has great cover art? Is it because it's shiny and round? Obviously not. Nearly all of its core value comes from the music encoded on it. Take away the music, and it's pretty much worthless. And so, the physical CD is really just a container. It's no more valuable than the PSP that is never turned on.

Here Come The CD-R's!

CD spindle Fast forward 20 years, and hand us 50X CD burners, MP3 encoding and 100 blank CD-R's for $12, and the proverbial plot thickens. Today, anyone can easily decouple the music (the core value) from the container (the CD). CD's used to cost $18 or $20 because the ability to extract that core value wasn't there. This barrier to decoupling created an incredible business opportunity. In other words, a large portion of that $18 wasn't derived from packaging or paying artists, it was derived from the tight entanglement that once existed between the music and the physical container that housed the music. It's sort of like a tax that's been artificially slapped on after the fact.

Now that we've untangled things, the opportunity for record labels to tax us is disappearing. So what is that core value really worth? $3? $5? $10? Who knows. We need a reappraisal because the world doesn't need the containers anymore. Or stated differently, that physical artifact which gave record labels a place to slap on a price tag is disintegrating.

What we're witnessing now is the flailing and screaming of an entire industry drowning.

Laws Shmaws 

The laws that everyone points to: copyright, "fair use", DMCA and such are hardly worth entertaining because they really amount to feeble attempts to reconcile laws that protect creative works that are indelibly tied to some physical representation (like a painting or sculpture). Nobody's bothered to speak of how to deal with creative works that simply don't need physical objects. Our economy is primarily grounded on the ability to buy and sell goods and services. To date, we lumped in creative works with "goods." Well, we don't need the goods anymore. Now what?

When In Doubt, Load The Shotgun

I'm a premium MP3Tunes customer. MP3Tunes allows me to store my music online so I can access it from anywhere via a web browser, Winamp or iTunes plugin. A few days ago, I received an email from them stating that they were being sued by EMI records for what I guess is copyright infringement. EMI is freaking out because their core value is now flowing over wires. They're trying to somehow apply the container tax when we don't need their containers anymore.

"Say hello to my...(eh, you know the rest)"

scarface-4 It really isn't surprising that record labels are putting up a fight here. It's a very large and slowly dying industry that is going to go down swinging. There's a lot to lose here. Still, the carpet bombing approach is just plain ugly. It reminds me of the closing scene of Scarface, where Al Pacino, surrounded on all sides, decides to go out in a blaze of gunfire. College students, grandmas, storage services, software companies. The whole thing borders on silly. It's sort of like to nut who goes into the mall and just randomly starts shooting.

It would serve the record labels well to replace litigation with dialogue and a broader view of intellectual property. Lawsuits suck. They require time and money. They create stress. They rarely result in a positive outcome. EMI and other labels should put their guns away and start to embrace this inevitable shift.

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Posted by richz at 10:02 AM

Source Of Inspiration : Brooklyn, New York

For most of my life I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After traveling around a good amount, I can confidently say Brooklyn is an amazing place. It's wildly rich and diverse. It's unique from Manhattan island in that all these cultures and nationalities plant roots in Brooklyn (rather than just pass through as many do in Manhattan).

07storefronts.span

Brooklyn is the antithesis of everything we've grown to loathe about suburban sprawl and American homogeneity. Like anything or anyone with real character, it's flaws are what make it so unique and memorable. After experiencing the sterility and predictability of Anytown, USA, I've come to really appreciate what Brooklyn is all about. It's in a constant state of transformation and change, all the while retaining it's dizzying kaleidoscope of culture and ethnicity. It is, at its core, a very human place.

The New York Times has a nice write-up and slideshow on Brooklyn Storefronts. It's a new book of photographed Brooklyn storefronts taken by Paul Lacy. From the publisher: Brooklyn’s storefronts are a vibrant canvas that reflects the changing trends and distinct character of this dynamic community.

If you're a designer, artist or just someone interested in how people from just about everywhere live and interact in the same place, do yourself a service and make it out to Brooklyn. It's not only about the Dodgers and Coney Island.

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Posted by richz at 9:51 AM

Arc90 Lab : Subversion Notifier Apple Dashboard Widget

Subversion source control is the tool of choice for many software development shops. It's slick, fairly straight-forward, and free. One of its biggest benefits is that it's so loose, allowing anyone the ability to grab a file and start working on it. Of course, this can cause some snags if two people start modifying the same file.

The image “http://lab.arc90.com/tools/svnnotifier/screen3.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.Wouldn't it be cool to have a little widget that taps you on the shoulder whenever a file you're working on is modified elsewhere by someone else? That's exactly what's been added to the Arc90 Lab today: an Apple Dashboard Widget SVN Notifier. It "monitors working copies and repositories to make sure that it's always clear what's what." If a file is changed, your OSX desktop will show a notification with details of who changed it, when, and any notes they left behind. Sweet!

If you love it (or hate it), be sure to let our very own Chris LoSacco know!

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Posted by richz at 11:28 AM

Arc90 Lab : The RESTService Flex Library

Over at the ol' Arc90 ranch, we love our rest. No not the usual kind of rest that involves afternoon naps and taking off your shoes. I'm talking about some good ol' Representational State Transfer. We like the simplicity and human-friendliness of REST and XML.

The image “http://www.onflex.org/images/Fx.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.We're also big fans of Adobe's Flash and Flex platforms. Unfortunately, AS3 isn't exactly REST-friendly out of the box. There's some HTTP support, but we needed more robust support for REST. To remedy this, we've built our own AS3 library: RESTService. It's a "class that makes fully aware HTTP service calls. Fault and Result events contain all response headers and status messages, as well as the response body." It even supports HTTPS by leveraging the AS3 Crypto Framework.

This is a great library if your application or org leverages REST-stye services. Our very own Andy Lewisohn gave birth to this bad boy. If you're liking it, be sure to give him a virtual hug (or something).

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Posted by richz at 9:02 AM

Arc90 Lab : Flex Collapsible Panel Component

Here's some more Arc90 love for you (I'll stop after this post, I swear). We've put out a handy little collapsible panel Flex component. It's pretty slick and dead simple to implement in your Flex or Air applications.

Look out for more Flex and Air components and libraries on the Arc90 Lab & Blog.

Until then, start collapsing (and expanding)!

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Posted by richz at 2:34 PM

Grab Some Tasty Treats From Arc90's Blog And Lab

arc90_logo The Arc90 blog and lab are all abuzz with activity these days. This is partly due to a flurry of "Quick Tips" that the kids at Arc90 are sharing with the world these days. Tips on a whole slew of technologies including PHP, JQuery, Flex, Coldfusion, Unix...and many others, are making their way onto the blog in lovely, snack-sized portions. Be sure to catch'em by either visiting the blog or subscribing to the blog and lab RSS feeds.

So don't be shy, feel free to partake in the gifts of knowledge (and chunks of code) that the wizards at Arc90 are sharing with you. It's like a technology all-you-can-eat buffet (sort of).

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Posted by richz at 12:01 PM

Microsoft Is Having Trouble Indexing Itself

Somebody should pass this along to the kids at Microsoft:

When you put out a product or service, check your search results to make sure that your brands end up higher up in your search engine's results than your competitors.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft introduced Windows Live Sky Drive to the world. It's a web-based storage locker for your files. A few days ago, I decided to give it a whirl...so I searched for it. As of this post, here's a snap of the Google results:

goo-skysearch 

And here's Microsoft's Live Search results:

live-skysearch

The first result on Microsoft's own search engine? A UK-based distributor of aircraft engines (side note: this result doesn't come up within the first 50 results on Google).

Maybe someone at Microsoft should send Google a Thank You note?

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Posted by richz at 3:22 PM

Arc90's Looking For A Few Good Men (Or Women)

UncleSam Arc90 is yet again looking to recruit a few lucky souls into the cult. If you're a Java, PHP or Coldfusion developer and find yourself "workin' to pay the bills" at the day job while you leave the cool projects for evenings and weekend, send us your resume or link to your blog.

If you're curious and passionate about technology, we'd like to hear from you. From Day One, we've tried to create a place where you get to actually get to do that evening-and-weekends work. If you like to dabble and touch many facets of web technologies - PHP, Java, Coldfusion, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Flash, Actionscript - then you're the guy (or gal) we want to talk to.

We're based in New York City and are looking for either full-time or contract people. Hit us up!

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Posted by richz at 3:37 PM

Shed The Extra Weight With JSON!

At Arc90, we're all about XML. It's smart, flexible and runs circles around that two-dimensional database table nonsense. Still, XML can be a bit, how shall I say, verbose for some tasks. Enter JSON (aka Javascript Object Notation). It's got the flexibility of XML without all that bracket and CDATA nonsense.

before-afterYes, it's a slimmer, more svelte way to carry data around. To illustrate, the photo on the left is after a steady diet of XML. After moving onto a steady JSON diet, look how much slimmer (and happier!) they've become. No, it doesn't get any dorkier than this.

While few would doubt JSON's virtues, it hasn't seen many tools come around to help spread the gospel...until now. Fellow Arc90er Chris Dary has put together JSONLint. It's a dead simple way to test out and validate your JSON strings. You can learn a bit more about JSON Lint and other fun toys for the entire family at Arc90 lab.

Enjoy! And if you've got questions, or can't contain your glowing compliments, feel free to let Chris know.

Oh...and be sure to send us your before-and-after photos!

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Posted by richz at 5:57 PM

A Message From The Coach's Office

Arc90's Tim Meaney put up a great blog post today directly addressed to the developers of the world on behalf of all the project leads an product managers. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but I'll include a choice quote here:

So what's all this about? What do I want from you? Mostly, I'd like a little empathy next time I ask you a question about how you're implementing something. Not only do I need to understand this stuff in order to champion it, to articulate it and to test it, I'm simply just curious about it.. Remember, it's our software you're building. Pull me into your world, talk me through your decisions, do a code walk-through with me - you'll be surprised how much I understand. I sometimes even have killer implementation ideas, as I bring a different perspective from yours.

The lack of control and insight not only can lead to anxiety and uncertainty for those outside of the development bubble. From my experience, when that bubble exists and is impermeable, the outcome is a less-than-ideal product.

There is no more powerful driver than when all the actors lock in and see one another. From developers to product managers to quality assurance, when they see into each other's world and see the same vision, you'll consistently get better product.

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Posted by richz at 9:08 AM

Ok. Time To Reboot Your Life : Happy New Year!

Ok I'm admittedly a little late on this one...

Times Square I hope everyone had a happy, relaxing and safe holiday and a great 2007-was-ok-but-let's-really-blow-the-doors-off-their-hinges-2008 new year. It's a new year and people love to reboot around this time. Let's clean things up, wipe the slate clean and start fresh.

With luck, 2008 will hopefully bring some interesting and thought-provoking ideas from basement.org. At least that's the plan. One of the most challenging things I face with writing is to somehow continue to come up with fresh ideas that challenge old ones. I'll admit it got a little tougher in 2007.

But hey, that was 2007. It's now not 2007. It's a whole other thing! So let's see what '08 has in store. So it should be good. Hell, it has to be good.

Oh, and keep a close eye on the kids at Arc90 (between both the blog and lab). We're cooking up some nice surprises for the upcoming year.

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Posted by richz at 8:11 PM

Crossing The Dictator : Apple's Ugly Side

[Disclaimer : This post isn't intended to provide legal guidance or advice of any sort and should not be taken as such.]

See the thing with dictators is they can appear to be really good people. They can do good things that help their subjects. Yeh, the elections are rigged, but so what? They give everyone jobs and prosperity. They speak with clear direction and unbounded confidence. The masses need someone to lead them. Hell, many societies don't even have a value system. Yet things don't get out of hand because their Dear Leader will get out the big stick if he needs to and they know it. And that's ok. Because he knows best.

A couple of months ago, I blogged here that Apple knows best. I was primarily talking about design in that post. I noted that Apple doesn't do things like beta programs or illicit feedback. They just put stuff out. For the most part, the stuff is good...really good. So we blindly follow.

The blogging community does its part and then some. We spread gossip. We talk about their products. We point to their patent filings. We do our part to contribute to the Apple mystique. We create buzz. And Apple has slyly used the viral aspects of the Web and blogging in particular to spread their religion.

stalin_victory Well now the dictator's cleaning house. The thing with dictators is there actually doesn't need to be a real threat, just a perceived one. A few days ago Think Secret, a popular Apple gossip blog, shut down in compliance with an agreement they reached with Apple.

Now, Fake Steve Jobs has been visited by Apple's goon lawyers. He's been notified that a few of his posts are "actionable" (legal-speak for "we can sue you"). The letter politely ends with a list of Fake Steve Jobs' personal assets.

Fake Steve Jobs is Fake Steve Jobs. Not real Steve Jobs. Fortune magazine and the Wall Street Journal haven't once confused the two. He is a commentator commenting on a public figure. It is a parody blog. What that means is that Daniel Lyons, the author behind the site, knows he's not the real Steve Jobs (unless of course, he's suffering from delusions of grandeur). He isn't attempting to spread false truths. The entire premise of the site is grounded in parody.

Twenty years ago, Hustler magazine put out an especially nasty parody where it portrayed Jerry Falwell, a popular Protestant minister, having sex with his mother in an outhouse. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Hustler magazine prevailed. In essence, the case clarified the right to parody, make fun of, mock, deride, imitate and crudely insult public figures.

Apple is picking off the easy targets. Fake Steve Jobs is not Time Warner or the New York Times. He's a blogger that can more easily be bullied by dipshit lawyers that can threaten his livelihood. Also, regardless of the merits of their assertions, they can drag Lyons into a protracted, costly, ugly fight that would most likely lead to him backing down.

What the blogging community needs is clear precedent that extends the free speech protections outlined in the Hustler v. Falwell case to include bloggers. I'm a blogger myself that has criticized behemoths like Microsoft, Google and Apple. I don't want to think twice before I blog.

Apple is setting a frightening precedent. It's signaling to other companies that with the right amount of bullying, you can shut down the bloggers you don't like. It's ironic considering that the blogging community is generally extremely supportive of Apple. Microsoft takes beatings on a daily basis yet we don't see this kind of nonsense from them.

One thing the blogging community can do is stop hyping and spreading the buzz about Apple's products. Popular sites like Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog can help signal to Apple that they need to back off or the free ride is over.

Apple needs to know that the same makeshift PR machine that helps hype its products isn't actually its own PR machine. Putting out shiny new products doesn't afford you license to selectively muzzle certain voices.

From the Falwell v. Hustler Magazine opinion:

At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty -- and thus a good unto itself -- but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.

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Posted by richz at 11:11 AM

Asha Veza : Using Design For A Great Cause

imageI wanted to share a great story of using design for good. There's a little shop in Brooklyn's Park Slope called Asha Veza. Asha Veza (the name combines the words "hope" in Hindi, and "connection" in Bosnian) sells women's clothing but with a twist: all of the apparel is created by women surviving and at risk of trafficking or sexual exploitation in Calcutta and Bosnia. 100% of Asha Veza profits go to create sustainable economic opportunities for women with few options and little hope.

I've been to the shop myself and the clothing is both unique and really beautiful. The care and craftsmanship that goes into the blouses, jackets, scarves is truly exceptional. Asha Veza is the brainchild of Shanti Crawford, a field worker who was born in India. She also designs many of the garments sold at the shop.

Asha Veza is located at: 69 5th Avenue (between Prospect Place and St. Marks), Brooklyn, NY 11217. Their telephone is (718) 783-2742. The shop is a short walk away from the Atlantic Ave/Pacific Street station in Brooklyn. If you're looking for a truly unique gift for someone, be sure to check out Asha Veza.

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Posted by richz at 1:16 PM

Flash : All Things To (Almost) Everyone

adobe_flash_8~s600x600 A few days ago, a major update to Adobe's Flash Player (specifically Flash Player 9 Update 3) was let loose. This was a major update for Flash. It includes enhanced video support (H.264) as well as multi-core processor support for better performance. If you visit Adobe.com as of this posting, you'll see that Flash video is a major part of Adobe's Flash story...and rightly so. Flash is an excellent video delivery platform.

But Flash is a lot more than that. It's evolved into a full-blown software platform. It does a lot of different things these days. Along with its leadership position in delivering Internet video, countless games have been built on Flash. It's also the medium of choice for ultra-glossy promotional destinations for big budget movies and high profile games. On top of all that, along with Flex, Adobe's excellent RIA platform, it's a cross-platform for delivering business applications. That's a lot of hats to wear, and for the most part Flash wears them well...for the most part.

At Arc90, we invested early in the Flex strategy. Not long after Flex 2 was released, we had applications running in production on the platform. There were a few kinks here and there - many expected with a young software platform - but overall it's been the right decision for ourselves and our clients.

With the update to Flash last week, all hell broke loose. Through an obscure, poorly-documented change to how Flash handles Basic HTTP Authentication (in short, it hardly did before, and now it doesn't at all), every one of our Flex-based software applications broke. The modification is not a bug. It's a security fix as far as Adobe's concerned.

A few things went wrong here:

In all fairness, Adobe has been very responsive on this issue. Emmy Huang, product manager for Flash player, got back to us very quickly and conceded they could've done a better job at informing the development community of this change. Also, it's worth noting that we appear to be in the neglected minority in terms of utilizing truly RESTful protocols to talk to Flash applications. Still, if you're going to support HTTP services, why not properly do so?

At Arc90, we are big believers in Adobe's strategy around Rich Internet Applications. The sheer power of the Flash runtime, the elegance of the Actionscript 3 object model and the exciting possibilities of bringing all these great applications to the desktop via AIR are all key reasons why we are steering our energy in Adobe's direction.

Still, we need the right backing to continue to confidently evangelize Adobe's platforms to our clients. We quickly patched our current applications to work around the change. Still, we can't help but feel hesitant about what comes next.

I'll end this post with a quote from one of our key clients in response to this whole episode: "How do I know this isn't going to happen again?"

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Posted by richz at 9:13 AM

Fear & Self-Loathing Among The Un-Blogged Bloggers

I'd like to share a little experience I've had within the walls of Arc90.

At Arc90, we put enormous value on contributing and being active in the Arc90 Blog and Lab. We view the blog and lab not just as fun diversions, but a key part of our marketing and PR. We've found its a great way to share our ideas with the community as well as showcase some of our capabilities.

About six months ago, we'd put in place a semi-controversial "(dis)incentive plan" that actually amounted to some disincentive if you didn't contribute to either the blog or lab. In other words, your contributions to the blog and lab would be factored into your review - positively or negatively.

http://www.machelpmaui.com/blogart/scared-monkey.pngThe plan was met with some controversy. Many at Arc90 didn't like the sound of it. Nevertheless, for a good couple of months following, blogging activity ramped up. Still, a frighteningly large percentage of Arc90'ers never bothered to blog at all...to this day.

The lesson learned, for me at least, is this: not everyone blogs. In fact, despite the staggering growth numbers, most people don't blog. In fact, most people don't want to blog. I'm not just talking about Arc90. I'm talking in general.

So what is the old blog-o-sphere left with? Loud mouths? Extroverts? People who obsess over their Feedburner subscription stats? Dare I say...Scoble-types? Um, yeh. Pretty much. Bloggers, by design, are a bit full of themselves. You sort of have to be to presume that anything you write hundreds of times a year is worth reading.

Throughout this exercise, a common occurrence at Arc90 was what I like to call "The Great Blog Post Struggle." People would labor over draft over draft of that ideal blog post. Revising, tweaking, lopping off chunks only to feel painfully unsatisfied when it came time to publish. Very often, the work never saw the light of day. The possibility of a stupid or ill-received post was paralyzing to them. Fear and their lack of Hubris did them in.

So I say to the un-blogged bloggers-to-be at Arc90 - and everyone else out there in the world: just blog! Your flaws, insecurities, fumblings, idiosyncrasies are the secret sauce of blogging. Don't bother trying to become a journalist. You're not one...and nobody wants to read a magazine article anyway.

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Posted by richz at 5:08 PM

Facebook's Biggest Crime

Between privacy concerns, an ugly lawsuit and a ridiculous valuation, Facebook is wading through some rough waters these days.

The Onion has that special ability to somehow capture shades of truth in their satire. Facebook - and it's founder Mark Zuckerburg - has no doubt made some bad moves, but few could deny that their biggest crime is their successful rise to date. Enter The Onion:

The Smug Little Shit Behind The Latest Internet Phenomenon

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A Handful Of Free Stuff From...Microsoft?

There's a lot of really good free software out there. There are many lists out there that flaunt free software for just about anything. And you've gotta love the freeware/open-source story: the lone developer (or small team), churning out something cool for the betterment of mankind...and the well-deserved ego stroke. It's a very cool thing.

So it's just a little bit funny to throw out a few excellent tools from the big bad Evil Empire from Redmond: Microsoft. Everyone knows about Google's well-publicized "20% of your time to do whatever you like" rule. Well, it turns out the kids at Microsoft have some time to play around as well. Here are three excellent free tools that I've stumbled on:

XML Notepad 2007

http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/xml-notepad-2007.pngAnyone that grapples with XML in any sort of way can appreciate XML Notepad 2007. It's a visual (read: not code-centric) XML editor. No more breaking XML markup or squinting to decipher where something lies. XML Notepad presents a tree view of the XML structure along with editable fields for filling in values. This is a great tool for business users that need to edit XML.


SyncToy 2.0

http://www.visualbeta.es/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/synctoy.jpgA Microsoft tool that's easy and intuitive to use? Welcome to the (hopefully) new Microsoft design aesthetic. SyncToy is an excellent just-the-right-set-of-features syncing tool that doesn't do too much but nails what its advertised to do very well. If you've ever needed to sync external drives or backup documents, SyncToy is perfect for the task.


RSS Bandit

RSS Bandit isn't officially handed out under the Microsoft banner, but the pet project of Microsoft's own Dare Obasanjo (you can track his RSS Bandit work here). It's a full-featured RSS reader for Windows that isn't the most user-friendly, but has a breadth of features (Newsgator syncing-support, meme-tracking, and many others) that is seriously impressive for a free RSS reader.

You can find some other free stuff from the caring folks at Microsoft by visiting their download center.

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Posted by richz at 4:47 PM

Introducing...Nothing!

Anyone else notice something unusual around the last handful of big, splashy press releases in the techno-blogo-digerati-sphere?

About a week ago, Open Social debuted. It's a way to embed mini widget-style applications in other web destinations. It's not anything tangible. It's just a way to do it that they're getting out there. So, for anyone else in the world outside of technology, they pretty much released nothing.

Today, Facebook announced their new "advertising solution." It's a way to become friends with that jacket you can't afford. But more relevant to this blog post, it's yet another way to do something. It's actually not really anything either. It's this new advertising...framework. But again, to the rest of the world, it's actually nothing, except now a Prada sweater can ask you to become its friend.

And finally, we have the new Google Phone...or Android...or Open Handset Software Alliance. Here, it's most painful. It's a new phone. A Google phone! Except its not really anything real or tangible at all. It's a software suite for mobile phones and devices. But there's nothing to pick up and hold and play with.

At the risk of sounding like an Apple fanboy, we never hear Apple trumpet the announcement of some ephemeral idea or collection of ideas. They just put stuff out. In fact, when they announce stuff, you can often buy it the same day they announce it.

Another lesson learned is HTML. It was a game-changing invention on a technical level. Yet what HTML really needed was something real to light it up for the world. Mosaic and Netscape completed the invention. Until someone completes these inventions, they aren't real for 99% of the world.

...except for Facebook. People are befriending their favorite sodas and boxer shorts as we speak.

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Posted by richz at 10:24 AM

8 Reasons To Work At Arc90

Yeh I know, I was complaining about lists just last week, and now I've come up with a list of my own. But this list is different I swear. First off, it's short. Real short. And second, it's awesome. It's a really amazing list.

We're looking for some talent to join the ranks at Arc90. We're looking for web-centric design and development talent of all sorts. Specifically, if you're a strong web guy (or gal) and enjoy building applications with rapid development platforms like PHP and Coldfusion. If you appreciate (or violently defend) standards-based technologies like XHTML, CSS. If the smooth-as-silk interface experience of dynamic Web applications powered by AJAX and the likes of JQuery makes you giddy, then read on! Here are a fistful of reasons you'll want to work at Arc90:

  1. kid We don't care much about experience or 4 (or 5 or 6) page resumes. We're looking for smart, curious people that are passionate about technology.
  2. tieman We lack a dress code. We let the social dynamics (read: insults and outcasting) drive how people dress.
  3. images-5 We're not religious about particular technologies. We just want to build beautifully designed, compelling experiences that deliver real value. Technology is our bitch. It's just a means to an end.
  4. images-5 We lack core hours. "What the hell are you still doing here?!" and "You should probably go home and shower." are commonly heard.
  5. images-5We're in New York City. The greatest city in the world. Where else can you find over 20,000 pizzerias ranging in price from $10 to $1,000?
  6. images-5 We allot part of your time to do non-client work. Go ahead, hack together that idea you've been psyched about. It may even end up on the Arc90 lab!
  7. realmario We have a Wii room (yes a room dedicated to the Nintendo Wii).
  8. images-5 We already have awesome people working at Arc90 that are open to sharing and brainstorming approaches and ideas. It's a dynamic, highly collaborative environment that doesn't wall people off from one another.

logo-1 If the above strikes a chord and you're looking to mix things up a bit and advance, or if you have some questions about us, be sure to drop me a line (I'm one of the partners at Arc90, so I've got some serious pull).

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Posted by richz at 1:52 PM

Your Free Multi-Million Dollar Idea For Today

We all SMS these days. Either we're thumbing away on a smartphone with the little Chiclet keyboard or we're T9ing ourselves to death on a conventional mobile phone. Also, we're often near a computer during the work day. We stop working, leave our big finger-sized keyboard and go over to our phone and thumb away. It's dumb.

Just about every phone today has Bluetooth. There are also numerous keyboards out there that work/connect via Bluetooth. So the question begs to be asked:

Why hasn't anybody come out with a keyboard with a little toggle switch: in one setting, it lets me type into my phone via Bluetooth; in another setting it's in standard, PC input mode.

It makes a lot of frickin' sense and I'd easily pay $100 for it. So come on Logitech? Microsoft? Anyone?

Note, if anyone thinks this is a good idea and has the means to make it a reality, then by all means go ahead. Just send me a free keyboard when you're done.

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Posted by richz at 9:16 AM

No Excuse Not To Sketchcast

So now that sketchcast.com is out in the wild, all the software and hosting tools needed to sketchcast are ready to go. There was however, one more snag: you can't sketch with a mouse. You need either a tablet PC or a drawing tablet. Now if you're feeling extravagant, the Wacom tablets (pronounced "wack'em!" I think) are great.

Of course not everyone wants to spend $300 on a tablet so they can occasionally scribble. Well have I got a deal for you (read with a late night infomercial tone). Computer Geeks has USB tablets for as little as $29.99. Yes $29.99!

Now mind you, I can't vouch for the quality of such devices but hey, it's $30 bucks. That's what, four cups of coffee at Starbucks?

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Posted by richz at 11:30 AM

Awesome Person Wanted

http://daveintexas.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/underdog.gifDo you enjoy solving design problems? Do you enjoy interacting with others to learn about, probe, investigate, experiment with, and finally create awesome, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, knee-buckling user experiences that make others sob with joy (and a tinge of envy)? Do you want to see your ideas, concepts and creations come to life once you share your blueprints with a best-of-class team of architects and technologists?

If you found yourself screaming "Yes! Yes! Yes!" with each "Yes!" louder than the last, then we need to talk to you ("we" being Arc90; our lab is here; our blog is here). We're looking for a (or two) talented information/experience/interface architects/designers/experts to join the team.

In short, we're looking to arm someone with a mandate to create experiences that blow people's minds on a regular basis.

We're based in New York City, USA. If you think you've got the proverbial goods, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

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Posted by richz at 5:37 PM

Sketchcast.com

About two months ago, I debuted sketch.basement.org with an introduction to a new style of blogging: sketchcasting. Sketchcasting is essentially podcasting with a whitebaord. Draw, talk and describe some stuff while you draw. It's a neat, and in some cases, more effective way of conveying ideas and concepts. It was also released as an Arc90 Lab Experment.

There was one problem with sketchasting: it's pretty hard to sketchcast. It require a set of tools and and a level of tech-savvy-ness that a lot of people don't have. I took a crack at showing people how to sketchcast, but I think that served as more of a reality hit of how much work it actually takes to start sketchcasting easily.

http://sketchcast.com/images/splash.pngEnter Sketchcast.com, a really neat Flash-based web app that lets you record your sketches and share them or post them Youtube-style. Very, very cool and well executed. The debut of Sketchcast.com was actually covered by Techcrunch today.

It's pretty exciting to see an idea take hold and watch others build something cool around it. Best of luck to the team behind Sketchcast.com. They've built a really accessible tool for the masses.

Now let's see what the masses come up with!

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Heading To Adobe Max

A fairly large contingency (six of us to be exact, including myself) from Arc90  will be attending the Adobe Max conference in Chicago next week. It should be a lot of fun. We're looking forward to meeting new people there and spreading the Arc90 Love beyond New York City.

If you're going to be attending and you'd like to meet up, email me and we'll exchange contact information. We can share a few ideas, technical approaches...and beers (depending on the time of day).

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Posted by richz at 10:49 AM

Run Web Apps On Your Desktop In 10 Seconds : Introducing Airifier

Back in 2004 and a few times thereafter, I've rambled on about how your browser is leaking. About how a confluence of web technology trends would bring applications to the desktop. This trend is slowly becoming a reality today.

A major player in the web-to-desktop space is Adobe with their compelling AIR technology. AIR is "a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop." So with AIR, you can take a web, Flash or Flex application yank it right out of your browser and throw it on your desktop.

Well, this is all great...for developers. But we ("we" being the crew at Arc90)  wanted to give end-users the ability to grab any web destination and create an application out of it. Just visit Airifier.com, punch in the URL, click Download Now and create a desktop install of any web application. It works great for applications like Google Reader or Gmail. The Airifier site also lets you share your installable applications with others.

For the less technical among us, here's a sketchcast on Arifier and why it will change your life (or something) :

Here's a helpful tip: All those shiny new iPhone applications out there work great right on the desktop. They're small, lightweight and specifically designed for the bite-size web. Check out Pickleview and Netvibes for iPhone.

Airifier is an Arc90 lab experiment.

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Posted by richz at 8:50 AM

Coming Soon : The iPod (Don't) Touch

Let me get the disclaimer out of the way first: I go to Starbucks. A lot. It's good coffee. It's just outside our offices. So yeh, we ("we" being the handsome crew at Arc90) go there a lot.

Our frequent visits have at times led to a cultural crisis of sorts for us. The White Stripes. Beck. Wilco. They're playing at Starbucks. And we're not sure how to react. "Hmmm...do I not like Wilco now?" "Is Beck no longer cool?" We're not sure. We usually just grab our coffees and quietly shuffle out without an answer.

Cause & Effect?

Starbucks is everywhere. Along with its coffee, its creepy monolithic culture is everywhere too. The charming mugs. The seasonal treats (I think it's time to put pumpkin in everything). And of course, the music. Starbucks, in its tireless drive to be the cool "third place" is constantly seeking out, playing, and peddling music.

ce The problem is that Starbucks underestimates the force of its own brand. Rather than the likes of Beck & Yo La Tengo helping make Starbucks cool. Starbucks makes the artists lame. Today, I sit in fear wondering if my current artist of choice is bound for the Starbucks counter. Propped up right next to that weird gum they sell in little tin cans.

The Apple Adhesive

Against this backdrop, Apple announces that you can now grab whatever's playing at Starbucks and purchase it right there and then. That's right. Starbucks' creepy little hands are going to reach into your pocket and grope your music collection. So even after you leave, you don't really leave. With help from Apple, the Starbucks monoculture is getting...stickier.

Hackers Of The World, Save Us

Since the iPhone's release, hackers have been tirelessly working to open up the iPhone. Custom ringtones. Homebrew applications. Even SIM activation. They've done a very impressive job. Well, we need their help again. We need a feature that would cleanse our souls and protect us from the rampant homogeneity of Starbucks.

When we stroll into a Starbucks and a song is playing that is already in our iTunes library, our freshly-hacked iPod needs to show this:

DELETEBUCKS

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Posted by richz at 10:03 AM

Lookin' For The Coolest Job On Earth?

Are you a smart/curious/passionate/intelligent individual looking for a cool environment? Are you content, yet not really challenged with your current job? Then Arc90 is the place for you!

Yeh I know, I'm ridiculously biased since I"m a partner at Arc90, but still, Arc90 is a damn cool place to work. It's a loose, dynamic and energetic environment that encourages creative thinking and the occasional venture out into untrodden territory. Here's what we're looking for:

At Arc90, we try to encourage an environment that nurtures and rewards out-of-the-box thinking and problem solving. To get a feel for us, take a look at our lab (where ideas run a muck) and our blog (where Arc90'ers run a muck). If you're hankerin' to get out of the cubicle and get your brain moving in all sorts of directions, contact me.

If any of the above seem enticing, send along your resume, and if you have a portfolio and/or blog to rich@arc90.com. We're based in New York City but don't let that discourage you, if its the right fit, we'll help make it happen.

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Posted by richz at 10:03 AM

Basement.org Is 2nd "Basement" Result On Google - Cool(?)

I was digging through the often enjoyable /Message and found a post where Stowe Boyd (proprietor of /Message) searched the word "message" on Google and found that his blog came in 9th. Not too shabby. Wikipedia came out on top (as is often the case).

So I decided to give "basement" a whirl and oddly enough, as of this post, it comes in second:

image

This is kind of exciting...or it isn't, depending on how you look at it. I see two possible explanations:

  1. Basement.org is truly a first-class destination for the more cerebral among us interested in design, technology culture and emerging Internet trends.
  2. I'm competing with web sites that are about basements and cellars - not exactly a hot topic on the Internet these days (or any days for that matter).

I'm going to go with reason #1.

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Posted by richz at 9:34 AM

The Tug-O-War Between Value & Complexity

There's what's right and good and there's what it costs do what's right and good. Product designers and managers always want to create great product, but as always there's a price to pay: cost, time, complexity and risk. Mastering that tension between the value we want to bring and the complexity and risks associated with it is what can distinguish a successful product from one mired in bloated time frames and missing key features.

My last sketchcast explores this tension and highlights what I like to call the "product management trap." That place where complexity rules and the product team loses sight of what really matters to their users/customers.

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Posted by richz at 9:32 AM

Google News Debuts A New Image View (Sorta)

 The freaks at Google News have put out (in a rather stealthy manner) a really cool news photo browsing view. If you hit the regular Google News destination, along the left side nav you'll see "Image Version." Clicking on it will get something like this:

newsimage

Mind you, that link seems to come and go. They seem to be toying with the new feature. You can get there directly (at least as of this post) by adding a "imv=1" URL parameter to your link (here's a direct link). It's pretty slick and works against news searches as well as the main categories.

I still very much enjoy Google News. It's a great way to dig around for perspectives from lesser-known news sources.

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Posted by richz at 6:31 PM

The Mobile Internet For The Rest Of Us

We've all seen how beautifully the iPhone renders web pages. It really is something. But there really are two major problems with the iPhone:

  1. It's still too frickin' small to surf the Web on until you zoom into to a readable level. Unless you really enjoy straining your eyes, you'll find yourself reading "Printer Friendly" pages on it. The human eyes are the new printer.
  2. I don't own one...and neither do 99.9% of you.

Number two is really a deal-breaker here. While I doubt I'll ever find myself spending hours a day reading on my phone, I do enjoy the occasional read in bed or while waiting somewhere...and alas, I don't own an iPhone.

awesome old-school mobile phone-1 The kids at Arc90, in their infinite altruism, have put together a killer tool for browsing news on the Internet. It's called Rio and it's a dead simple way to read some of the most popular news sources on just about any Internet-enabled mobile phone. We've tested it on a slew of mobile phones including Blackberrys, Treos, Razrs and Windows Mobile devices, and yeh it looks pretty awesome on that iPhone thingy.

Just point your sub-par mobile phone to http://rio.arc90.com and bam a lean, mean mobile surfing machine is at your disposal. You can do one of two things here. You can either enter a news source or topic in the search box (like "lacrosse news" or "recipes") and you'll get the most popular news content for that search, all scrubbed and cleansed for your mobile reading pleasure. Alternatively, you can pick from the list of 50 or so popular news sources on the default Rio page. Once you find an article you fancy, simply click through it and it'll also be stripped down for mobile consumption.

Rio is the product of a wonderful mixture of RSS (RSS is a great way to deliver content to smaller devices - it's already stripped out the web junk), Live.com's excellent feed search (pretty much nothing out there like it) and Google's excellent little mobile web view. Rio is inspired David Winer's River of News style of news reading.

Awesome work by the Arc90 team on this one. I no longer need to pretend friends are SMS'ing me. You can learn all about Rio by visiting the Arc90 labs page.

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Posted by richz at 11:33 AM

Moleskine Hard Drive Enclosure

Man, Moleskine notebooks sure are dashing. Even more so when you can encase 160GB of pure MP3 and xVid goodness. Who needs to sit around a jot down poetry in a cafe when you've got all that highly-compressed goodness at your disposal?

Zonageek understood this well and went ahead and devised a Moleskine hard drive enclosure. The lovely details are here.

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Posted by richz at 9:23 AM

Help Wanted

For the less informed, I'm a partner at Arc90. We're a New York City-based design and technology consulting firm that is laser-focused on doing cutting/bleedling/leading-edge work in the realm of rich web applications.

We're a small group to date - 24 people - but we're modestly and methodically growing to build the best possible group of technologists, interface designers and software developers.

I've worked in many places over that past 14 years. Big honkin' banks. Rabidly growing Internet start-ups. University research groups. I can say without hesitation that this is the smartest and most dynamic group I've ever worked with. It's a fun, dynamic environment where people are always challenging each other and introducing new ideas and approaches.

You probably guessed by the headline that we're looking to hire. We are. In fact, we're always looking for good people who are passionate about technology to join the team. Of late, we've been on the hunt for a few people that could help fill some gaps:

If you fall within any of the above and are:

...then by all means, get in touch with us. Send along your resume or just email me with some background on yourself. To be clear, we really aren't looking for people to fit exact positions at Arc90. We're looking for smart, intellectually curious people that love technology. If you fit that criteria, we'd love to hear from you. We're open to various employment possibilities from consulting/contract-based to full-time.

If you're interested, email me directly at rich@arc90.com.

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Posted by richz at 10:17 AM

Situps For The Brain

Clay Shirky (an always insightful and sometimes brilliant thinker on technology) has written up an interesting piece entitled The (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth. In it, he considers why so many young entrepreneurs are so...young. He asserts that, as we get older and gain more experience, we're less inclined to buy into something potentially revolutionary.

Instead, we brush it off as a mere anomaly. He elaborates:

The mistakes novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But the experts make the opposite mistake, so that when a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, they are at risk of regarding it as a fad. As a result of this asymmetry, the novice makes their one good call during an actual revolution, at exactly the same time the expert makes their one big mistake, but at that moment, that’s all that is needed to give the newcomer a considerable edge.

For a 37 year-old partner in a relatively young firm that is locked into emerging trends in technology, his perfectly reasonable assertion feels a bit...wrong. While past experience no doubt shapes us, I think there are a handful of factors - some in our control, some not so much - that contribute to the lack of older entrepreneurs.

My own case is an interesting example. Looking back on my professional career, some of my best and most aggressive moves occurred when I was nearing my mid-30's. Even today, I'm sitting on new ideas that I'd love to find the time and money to experiment with and prove out. As Arc90 nears its third year in existence, we're well into one of our own, dare I say bold, product initiatives.

So, why did this all happen for me so late? One word: liberation. Over the past ten years I've worked in large corporations (investment banks and the like) as well as an Internet startup that crashed and burned. But only in the past four years, through both chance and conscious choice, did I break off and work on my own. In 2004, I dabbled with a product that was effectively an RSS news aggregator (only Bloglines was around back then). Eventually, I took some work as an independent consultant trying different things. Soon after that, that ended with the launching of Arc90.

During that period, I met new people, heard new ideas, was confronted with new problems and challenged to come up with new and creative solutions. All the while, I was reading what was happening in technology, closely watching RSS and Ajax emerge from trends into full blown movements. The last four years have been, without a doubt, the most fulfilling and enriching years of my professional career.

Am I the exception, or did my surrounding circumstances play a large part in my "later years" entrepreneurial thinking? I firmly believe that I am not the exception, and that we can consciously do a lot more to keep the creative mind going. I do believe that this is less about the weight of our past experiences and how they drag us down and more about mindset. How do I improve my mindset so that (a) I come up with fresh, new ideas (and keep coming up with them and (b) how do I condition myself to not fear going after them .

I think the above two points are inextricably related. If you have fears, you will undoubtedly stunt your ability to come up with fresh ideas. If the fresh ideas stop coming, when they do arise you'll be far more inclined to crush the rebellion and go back to your routine. So how can we keep the fearless flow of new ideas flowing? Here are some things I try to do that you may find helpful (budding entrepreneurs in your 20's, you can skip over this part):

I should probably disclaim that I'm no expert in psychology or anything of the sort. I'm just sharing my own tricks for staying creative and maintaining a more intellectually aggressive mindset. I think the one common theme for me has been: don't stop growing and learning.

Oh, and one last thing...get yourself a juicer.

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Posted by richz at 9:57 AM

Mass Media, Mass Murder And The Narcissistic Web

At the end of last year, Time magazine anointed their Person of the Year. Surprisingly, it was you (or us, or me, or whatever). In essence, the Social Web was Person of the Year. The collective community that is sharing ideas, photos, videos, thoughts, writings and such. It's a bold and intriguing choice.

There's an uglier side to this however. An ideal view of the Social Web has us thinking and collaborating together. A less than ideal view casts us as celebrities that feed on the attention and validation of being seen, read or heard. The Last Psychiatrist (a fascinating blog, by the way) said it best:

Being on YouTube, having a blog, having an iPod, being on MySpace-- all of these things are self-validating, they allow that illusion that is so important to narcissists: that we are the main characters in a movie. Not that we're the best, or the good guys, but the main characters. That everyone around us is supporting cast; the funny friend, the crazy ex, the neurotic mother, the egotistical date, etc. That makes reminders of our insignificance even more infuriating.

Youtube, Myspace, Flickr and blogging, they are, in many ways, a massive infrastructure that breeds and feeds an unhealthy level of narcissism. The result is an unquenching desire to be the lead in our own film, the star of our own show. The problem with promising narcissism is that, for some, the notion of not being recognized and acknowledged is nearly unbearable. It's a slippery slope.

During his killing rampage in Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui found the time ship a multimedia package to NBC. It's a disturbing collection of writings, photos and videos that look more like a sliced-up movie trailer than a manifesto of some twisted ideology. It is the modern day Zodiac letters. Except this time, it isn't an article in a local newspaper. It's an all-out media blitz.

Cho knew full well where his media package would end up. This was his movie. Everyone else was an actor. With a bit of work, you could take any one of his photos and turn them into a movie poster. His desire to be seen, to be the star, spiraled to an extreme.

I'll close with another, frighteningly prophetic quote from the same Last Psychiatrist post cited above:

If society chooses to make narcissism the default, it's going to have to deal with society-wide narcissistic injuries - when we suddenly realize that it isn't solely our movie and we're really not the main character. And no one wants to see this stupid movie anyway. This inevitably leads to violence[...]

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Posted by richz at 10:22 AM

Here Come The Flex Components

Without a doubt, we're starting to see a migration from various development circles towards the power of Actionscript 3 and Flex. The first of hopefully many component library sites. Flexbox already has over 100 components. And over at Google Gode you've got Flexlib, another nice collection of components.

I've got one gripe with both sites: where are the RSS feeds for the latest additions???

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Posted by richz at 3:48 PM

Blog Junk Food

Over the past month or so, since Anna Nicole Smith's death, the media has been criticized for spending way too much time on what is effectively a sensational bit of news that is hardly newsworthy. The cable channels like MSNBC and CNN have spent countless hours dissecting, analyzing and reporting on the mildly ridiculous sequence of events since her death. Meanwhile, a a fairly serious war plays second fiddle.

As a result, the time-tested argument that the media is irresponsible rears its ugly head. "This isn't journalism. This is entertainment." or "The news media outlets are failing us." In these arguments is a tinge of high-mindedness towards the masses. The masses, the argument goes, should not be patronized in such a way. We're way too smart and scrupulous to be served such drivel.

Well, it turns out there's a really great way to get a sense of what the masses really want to talk about: search queries and blogs. What information are people seeking and what kinds of conversations are happening out there? Let's take a look:

The most searched term for the week ending February 25, 2007 on AOL is: Antonella Barba. What's the top topic on blogs last week? You guessed it: Antonella Barba.

Who's Antonella Barba you ask? She's one of the finalists on the wildly popular American Idol TV show. Apparently, some provocative pictures of her have surfaced on the Internet and people are going insane showing them, talking about them and even dissecting them for authenticity.

So much for blogging being the tool that elevates us to some sort of higher collective consciousness. Whether it be trash television, tabloid newspapers, or blog junk food, they're all mere symptoms of the underlying condition: most people don't really care about all the serious things in the world. Well, they may care. They just don't care as much.

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Posted by richz at 9:11 AM

We Me Apologize For The Inconvenience

Something went wonky with DNS yesterday and basement.org was effectively down for about eight hours. It's now back up and pointing to the proper "stuff."

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Posted by richz at 10:38 AM

A Blogging Milestone (?)

Well this is sort of neat. Basement.org, your favorite blog (ever) has reached something of a blogging milestone. Feedburner reports 1,000 subscribers today.

I'd just like to thank everyone for reading, sharing and providing feedback to basement.org. It's been much fun so far. Hopefully it'll stay that way. :)

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Posted by richz at 9:19 AM

Jobs: DRM Is Dumb

appleSteve Jobs has put out a pretty gutsy memo that essentially lays out Apple's stance regarding DRM and what an immense waste of time and energy it is for everyone involved. In short, Jobs asserts that if the big record labels agreed to drop DRM protection altogether, Apple would wholeheartedly embrace it.

I for one have never and would never buy music from iTunes precisely because of the restrictions associated with that music. Put another way, if iTunes sold plain vanilla MP3's, I'd be all over it. I may actually never take advantage of the "freedom" of purchasing unrestricted content, I just like knowing that I can. I think this is partly why CD's so drastically eclipse online sales even to this day. People know that when they buy a CD, they truly own it and can do with it what they wish.

I also think this is less about the DRM restrictions that are in place than it is about the lack of knowledge around DRM. People don't feel good about what they don't know. They're confident about their ownership when purchasing a CD, not so much when buying a song on iTunes.

Also, Jobs points out that the entire DRM cat and mouse game is a losing (and extremely costly) proposition for everyone involved. The gain is nowhere near the cost.

Oddly, this isn't about legal minutia and content ownership. It's about human nature. Hackers love the challenge of cracking the code as an end in itself, not as a means to steal music. And consumers want to know that when they buy something, they really own it. Acknowledging these two nearly obvious facts can get everyone to a better place.

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Posted by richz at 3:21 PM

Basement.org's Greatest Hits

Basement.org's first post happened on October 22, 2004. While on some days I do have that "s#$t, I really should blog" feeling, it's usually a blast. And some posts definitely blasted off more than others. Some posts have been served hundreds of thousands of times. Frightening.

And so, thanks to my trusty server logs, here are Basement.org's Greatest Hits:

10. Working Some New Muscles

9. Taking RSS Beyond Headlines - Part Two

8. "Uh Oh, Your Browser Is Leaking"

7. Give'em Room Folks : The Importance of Open Space In Design

6. Stealing Metadata

5. Google's Laser-Guided Missiles

4. I Don't Hate Macs, I Just Hate Mac Users

3. Reality Check 2.0

2. Taking RSS Beyond Headlines - Part One

1. Why Do We Love Rounded Corners?

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Posted by richz at 11:32 AM

I Hate...Myself

The Apple fanboys will be frothing at the mouth today. As I type this, Mr. Jobs is picking up his legendary dry cleaning as he gets ready for the big show today. What could it be? More new iPods? More new iPod colors? Macbook Pro "Ultra" (or something)? Apple knows how to generate buzz. And the sound of Apple-related blog chatter is absolutely deafening.

But if you're looking for the big announcement today, it's not happening at Macworld Expo. It's happening right here.

I bought a Macbook Pro.

Yes, the man who doesn't hate Macs, but just hates Mac users, bought a Mac. It took quite a bit of energy to conjur up enough self-loathing to purchase one, but I finally did.

So have at it people. The target doesn't get much bigger than this. I finally gave in to all smoothly transitioning shininess; all those drop shadows and rounded corners; all that...brushed metal!

I'll blog again some time soon to explain why I finally caved in. For now, all I ask is that I not be likened to that smarmy pseudo-hipster from the Mac ads. That's not me. Really. I swear.

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Posted by richz at 2:11 PM

Merry Christmas...Sorta

"You should have seen the look on her face"

"His expression alone was priceless."

"Her eyes just lit up."

It's a pretty awesome thing to watch someone you care about open a gift - a gift they really wanted badly. The younger they are, the better. With age comes the sobering ability to mute our emotions with "refined judgment" and a dash of cynicism. When we're kids, that filter isn't really in place yet.

Even for grownups like ourselves, it's always fun to see the kid in us come out when we open a gift. It's fun to experience - whether you're opening a gift yourself or watching someone else.

As the Internet continues to seep into our lives, we're watching a transformation of sorts that is compromising the experiences we have with one another. Things that we give each other are no longer really "things" anymore. We're digitizing everything. Google is indexing everything. Movies. Music. Writings (like magazines and books). The physical artifacts - the things we carry, and cherish, and wrap, and give one another - are disappearing.

Gift cards. Spending credits. "Points" of some sort or another. It really takes something away from the entire experience. With the digitization of things comes an inability to really appreciate the things themselves. There's so much stuff out there we're overloaded. I'm as guilty as anyone else for wanting a 60GB mp3 player.

What the hell am I going to do with 60 gigs? It's an incomprehensible amount of music. I find myself never letting songs finish. Flipping around aimlessly. There's simply too much stuff and it's everywhere and easily attainable. Yet, we seem to have less to really enjoy. Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River and an eloquent writer, sums it up nicely:

The internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less...These days, with all the choice in the world, it’s hard for me find the attention span for a single album. I put my iPod on shuffle and skip impatiently to the next song before each one’s over. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

I don't think we realize it just yet because we're still adjusting to all this change. But something has changed. Even though there is this wealth of digital "stuff" out there, there is somehow less to enjoy. Less to focus on and dive into. Less to truly savor and appreciate. Less to give one another.

In software, it's oddly ironic that we seem to be reproducing how the real world works and feels. Apple's latest iteration of iTunes has a great little feature where we can flip through virtual CD cases in our collection. It's a convincing reproduction of the real life experience - except it's not the real life experience. We can't throw that CD in a bag. More importantly, we can't wrap it in gift wrap and give it to someone to borrow.

Today, retailers are enjoying record-breaking gift card sales, and the funny thing is...many people don't even bother using them.

So get out there. Shop! Buy someone something they can rip open and get all giddy about. That's half (if not more) of the fun...

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Posted by richz at 10:49 AM

Creative Gift Ideas

Need some great gift ideas? Tired of sending gift certificates and those awful Russell Stover pre-wrapped boxes from your local drug store? Wanna really impress your friends, colleagues, girl/boyfriend, wife/husband?

A great place to start are Core77's (for gifts under $77) and Inhabitat's (for gifts under $30) gift guides.

There are also some great blogs out there that somehow always find the cool stuff that you're not going to stumble on at your local Target. Dig through these ultra-cool, design-inspired sites:

If you're looking for some nice geek gifts (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are), check out Thinkgeek and Firebox.

So get out there and help fuel our relentlessly disposable economy by buying more stuff for the people you love (and like).

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Posted by richz at 10:03 AM

The Weird World Of Comment Spam

Maybe someone can help me out with this...

I've come to accept comment spam as a general part of life here on basement.org. A handful of Movable Type plug-ins has taken the daily number down to a much more manageable number.

There are really two categories of spam. The first is just outright offensive. Sex, drugs and...umm...ringtones. Then there's the manic depressive spammer. These guys just can't find the motivation and are really down on life. My guess is they're depressed because they make a living submitting comment spam, but that's just a theory. Here's an example of a depressed commenter:

I haven't gotten anything done recently. I've just been hanging out doing nothing. I haven't been up to anything these days, but it's not important. Today was a total loss.

Pretty uplifting eh? I've actually blogged about this phenomenon before. It's just plain weird.

Now just last night, I got a comment that really doesn't fall into either category. I'll just drop it here and see if anyone can make heads or tails of it:

It is a very good site and I want to know some more about it ..... that's why I want become a member of this basement mouse and this is the reason of my first visit to basement mouse I have been a member of mumbai hangout and from there I am know that this basement mouse is very good site and that 's why I finalised that I want to become the member of this basement mouse and from this first visit I think that this is a very good site and I am not even think that there is not any problem with this site and every person fears that a harmful virus would enter his or her computer and I am not sure about this that If any virus will enter my laptop enter my laptop then what will I do for this this but this not to worry ..... ok ......

I'm not sure if it's a language barrier. He keeps calling my blog "basement mouse" which sort of freaks me out. He did leave a link behind to the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing (or IIITDM for short).

Hey, at least the comment isn't depressing.

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Posted by richz at 2:08 PM

I *BLEEPED* her on *BLEEP*

I envision a bizarre beeping sound. It comes in out of nowhere and momentarily overwhelms your conversation. You mis-spoke. Well, you mis-spoke in how you used the word "google." You mis-spoke because Google said so.

Yep. You heard it right. Google wants you to speak a certain way when you use the word (and yes, it's a word now, not just a brand) "google." People are already pretty annoyed about this.

Is this unprecedented? Asking the general public to speak a certain way? Probably. Before blogs existed, how would a company even try to get the word out without appearing like a bunch of jerks?

As far as I know, trademarks exist so other businesses don't piggyback the goodwill you've built atop your brand. We are not businesses. We are people talking. Is this blog entry a warning? What if we keep doing it? Do we get sued? I particulary enjoy the "Our Lawyers Say" bit in the entry. Why are lawyers involved at all?

Frankly, I'm surprised this not-so-subtle warning to speak a certain way got past Google's PR people. Google's brand is pristine these days. This bit of blogging can't do anyone any good. Especially Google.

So let's ask again. Is Google evil? Nah. Well, maybe.

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Posted by richz at 9:47 AM

Lawyers Are Like Programmers (Or Vice-Versa)

With apologies for the title...

I was mired in reviewing, commenting on and drafting portions of a contract this past weekend. While I bask in the world of technology and design (I couldn't imagine being anywhere else), work often demands that I dust off my law degree and play lawyer for a little while.

As I was reviewing an old contract and folding in agreed-upon terms, it dawned on me how similar contract drafting is similar to writing software (bear with me on this). I've often been forced to justify my law education in light of my sharp left turn after law school. But oddly, the parallels are there.

You don't learn the law in law school. Most exams are open book. It's not really about memorizing and regurgitating information. Instead, it's about thinking a certain way. It's about gaining an ability to understand, deduce and optimize rational arguments. It's also about foreseeing weaknesses in your adversary's arguments.

Just before I dove into the contract, I was coding and I couldn't help but notice a few parallels:

A good legal agreement, like a good codebase, is a product of forethought, planning, and an economic use of words. Hmmm....maybe I can tell people I'm a lawyer after all...

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Posted by richz at 9:39 AM

Windows Live Writer

This entry was submitted with Windows Live Writer. A new blog editing tool by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I've just started playing with it so I'm not sure how reliable/useful/powerful it is. It looks somewhat promising.

Update: After playing around a bit, the app caused some minor issues, but after some tweaking it seems to work pretty well. Stay tuned...

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Posted by richz at 5:27 PM

Link Thumbnail Craziness

As you gracefully glide your mouse over the links on basement.org, you'll notice that you'll get an oh-so-subtle preview of where that link will take you. It's the Link Thumbnails tool from the Arc90 Lab. No, I didn't manually create thumbnails for each link. It does some sort of cross-service craziness and whips out a thumbnail automatically

I've set it to default to all links. Let me know if you find it too annoying. Credit goes out to Joel Nagy of Arc90 for the excellent work here. Very impressive stuff.

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Posted by richz at 9:35 AM

Two Great New Tools From The Arc90 Lab

My colleagues at Arc90 are right to call me a "filthy bastard" for not pointing basement.org to the last couple of experiments to come out of the Arc90 Lab.

First is the deceptively cool Link Thumbnails (example). It's a simple little script that turns your hyperlinks into little screenshots that display on hover. There was some confusion at first as to how this worked. People thought they had to actually create the thumbnail images. They don't. The script actually calls out to a service and automatically retrieves them for you. Very sexy ("Sexy" is one of our goals at the Arc90 Lab). The tool has been Dugg over 1800 times and the response has been great.

A lesser-known but also very cool little experiment is the Image Captions tool (example). This one is pretty sweet too. With a simple script, you can drop images into your flowing text with captions without having to deal with much CSS or div positioning trickery.

The Arc90 team did a great job with these...and there's still more to come! Check into the lab and blog regularly for updates. The easiest way to stay on top is to subscribe to the Lab RSS feed.

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Posted by richz at 10:17 AM

3D 2D Racing Games!

As a kid and through a good chunk of adult life, I was really into video games. Now that I'm an...ahem...adult, I've sadly more or less given up on them. I got into the PSP for a bit, but now that I no longer have a commute, I rarely use it.
I also don't think it's entirely my fault. Really great games have very little to do with all the graphical wizardry we see these days. Most games are overwhelmed with Hollywood-style production and unnecessary complexity - thus making it all the more difficult to really convey - or capture - the essence of a really good game. I've played many of the fancy new baseball games, and none seem to capture the essence or sheer fun of the sport as Earl Weaver Baseball, Electronic Arts' 1987 classic for the old Commodore Amiga. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but none of today's titles are anywhere near as fun.

With all that said, and with apologies to Gran Turismo 4, I've always loved good ol' classic top-down racing games. This morning I stumbled on a great list of freeware 2D racing games (a la Super Off Road and such). Get your old joysticks out! Or maybe...paddles?

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Posted by richz at 10:06 AM

Availabot Now Available. Act Now!

Do you have that extra-special buddy in your instant messaging buddy list? Do you always want to know when your buddy is online? Too tired to just look up at the screen like everyone else? Is this sounding like the rapid fire questions that kick off a TV infomercial? Then read on!

The Availabot is a little USB-powered toy thingie that stands at a attention when a particular buddy is online and crumbles into a heap when they're offline. Here's a video of the Availabot in action. The product is just a prototype so it isn't actually for sale. Regardless, we can all appreciate it's relatively useless yet oddly appealing qualities.

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Posted by richz at 9:29 PM

The Harm of Industry Gossip Memes

So the web is all abuzz right now because Amanda Congdon the girl behind Rocketboom, a popular video podcast, will no longer be...booming or rocketbooming (or something).

It's fascinating to watch this unravel in the blogging community. It's an absolute soap opera that I thnk highlights how truly immature the blogging world really is. I enjoy movies, but I don't really care who Russell Crowe is dating (or marrying, or divorcing). I also don't care about how much Colin Farrell got paid for his last movie, or whether he's still with his agent or not.

For me, this highlights a key and rarely spoken of motivator behind blogging: the need to be heard and noticed. Partnerships and work relationships come apart all the time, but in the blogging world you get out there and take your stand. It's cheesy and disingenuine. The community, strangely, jumps on the bone like a pack of rabid dogs. Jason Calacanis has offered Amanda a job at Netscape via an oddly slimy blog entry. Dave and Robert have chimed in.

The general strategy seems to be: take your personal conflicts public and build consensus that way - at the expense of others. Administer the first blow before your opponent knows what happened. It's a strange type of PR attack that the community seems to assemble and riot around rather than just ignore. It's too bad. I think these types of "industry gossip" memes take blogging a step away from the broader population. There are plenty of interesting topics to talk about. Just because people like TV and movies doesn't mean they read Variety.

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Posted by richz at 2:41 PM

Can Digg Sue Netscape And Win?

A quick glance of Netscape's new beta front page and one thing comes to mind: it looks and works a lot like Digg. The differences aren't even subtle. It's a blatant rip-off. And so, the question arises, can Digg protect it's creation in some way? Or more specifically, can you legally protect a user interface?

I can sort of speak to this issue because I have a law degree and my essay for my Copyright Law class was about the copyright-ability of user interfaces. I'm by no means an expert, but I'll try to sum up what I learned there as it would apply to Digg and Netscape.

The answer to the above question takes us into the world of copyrights and patents, the only two viable options for protecting the “look and feel” of an application.

Copyrighting Digg

From the U.S. government’s own copyright FAQ:

Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.

Copyrights protect:

…original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.

Now don't get all giddy at the sight of “computer software” in the excerpt above. What they’re talking about there is the actual source or object code of a piece of software. That code is filed as a “literary work” (go figure) and is protected under copyright law.

But what if the code is entirely different but the result is clearly similar? It’s obviously the case that Netscape did not steal the Digg codebase but rather studied the end product and wrote their own code to create a similar end-user experience. Can Digg protect itself, under copyright law, from others copying the “look & feel” and general functionalty of Digg?

Under U.S. copyright laws, no, they pretty much can’t. While there is no perfectly concrete basis for this rule of law, the case precedents of previous years have made it pretty clear that you can’t copyright a user interface. From the same FAQ, under what cannot be copyrighted:

Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration.

Ouch. There are some seriously broad and general terms there. You can make a pretty strong argument that the “Digg experience” is a “system” or “concept” that is comprised of a set of functionality (i.e. “methods” or “procedures”). The Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. case that ended in 1994 seemed to primarily assert that you cannot copyright the “look & feel” of a software application. In that case, Apple went after Microsoft’s Windows product asserting copyright infringement of its Macintosh operating system, and lost. Wikipedia nicely summarizes it here.

There are public policy arguments against protecting user interfaces under copyright law. For one, a good user interface makes us all more productive and it’s a better thing for society if others can benefit from it. Another argument against copyrighting user interfaces is that they’re not really creative works – the primary domain of copyright law – but rather tools or devices in and of themselves. Which brings us to the patent option.

Patenting Digg

A patent is the grant of a property right to an inventor for an invention. An inventor can patent an invention under various criteria (listed here) but the one that best relates to Digg is the ability to patent “any new and useful process.”

Now unlike copyrightable works, where by simply completing the work and calling it yours it is copyrighted, the patent process requires the inventor to be a lot more proactive about filing a patent. In other words, even if you invented something, if you don’t patent it, it’s not protected.

As to whether user interfaces can be patented, that’s also debatable. Amazon successfully patented and has since defended it’s patent for 1–click shopping. The patent caused a pretty widespread backlash against patenting on the Web but the patent itself is still standing today. Apple, on the other hand, failed to patent the famous iPod interface (blocked due to a prior application).

As for Digg, well we can spare ourselves the discussion on patent protection because it doesn’t appear that Digg has attempted to even to try to patent it’s service. There is no mention of patents or patents pending on the site and a search of the patent database reveals no such filing.

And so, it seems that Digg will just have to bite it’s tongue and watch as the, umm *cough* “new Netscape” makes it out into the world. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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All Sorts Of Drama In The Digg World

So AOL/Netscape put out their Digg clone (and you really can't call it anything but a "clone"). Techcrunch has a good summary. Meanwhile, Digg is upgrading (maybe to this?). I'm not sure. But as of this posting, Digg is down. In it's place are favorite links of the various Digg members. It's resulting in an absolute slamming of servers on the other end.

One observation about Netscape going this route: to the rest of the world - the legions of Internet users that are not 2.0-savvy, this very well will be perceived as a new, neat invention. However viral ideas may be within the realm of the tech savvy, it is a huge population outside of it. You think Netvibes is doing well? Let's compare it alongside live.com. Ouch.

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Posted by richz at 2:38 PM

Umm...Hello Netvibes Users?

Looking at my Feedburner stats today, something pretty flippin' weird is going on. It's showing over 50,000 (yes 50,000) subscribers. The great majority of them, according to Feedburner, are coming from Netvibes?

Does anyone have any clue why this is? The Feedburner folks say the stats look real. Did basement.org's feed end up on some default page? Ah. So many questions.

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Posted by richz at 1:49 PM

An Inspiring Photoblog

I share a lot of links here on basement.org and every so often I'll stumble on something that, while not necessarily informative or educational, is inspiring. A site i stumbled upon recently is Kathleen Connally's photoblog A Walk Through Durham, Township Pennsylvania. Kathleen takes photos within a 10 mile radius of Durham, Pennsylvania. The photography is, in a word, stunning. They look more like paintings than photographs. Very impressive.

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Posted by richz at 4:21 PM

Introducing...

Basement.org has been cited/quoted a fair amount by other sites and blogs. On occasion, others will refer to a basement.org post as written by "them" or "the writers at basement.org." Well, there is no them (except for the other voices in my mind). It's just me: Richard Ziade.

I've never really said much about myself on here (I'm not exactly sure why)...until now. I've added an about page that briefly describes myself. You'll also notice, on the right-hand column, some new links...

Today, I'm a lead strategist and partner at Arc90 - a New York-based technology and experience design firm. We've just debuted our web presence, including a blog where we'll share our ideas, thoughts (and occasional rants) with the community, and our lab, a place where we'll introduce code, examples, standards...and the occasional experiment.

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Posted by richz at 10:37 AM

Ominously Depressing Comment Spam

Below are the last four comments posted to Basement.org:

My mind is like a bunch of nothing, but I guess it doesn't bother me. I haven't been up to anything recently. I've pretty much been doing nothing to speak of.
My life's been basically bland today. More or less nothing seems worth thinking about. My mind is like an empty room. I've more or less been doing nothing to speak of. Not much on my mind recently.
Not much on my mind lately. My life's been completely boring these days. I've just been hanging out not getting anything done. So it goes.
I haven't been up to anything these days. So it goes. I can't be bothered with anything these days.

Can anyone out there shed light on why my comment spam filters seem to pity and thus spare comments posted by unmotivated, completely depressed, borderline-suicidal posters? The impact of such gloomy commentary goes beyond just cluttering this blog and reaches to my very soul - bringing me down a notch or two as I scan through them on a daily basis.

What we need is a Cry For Help Movable Type plug-in that somehow detects joyless, melancholic tone and promptly deletes it.

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Posted by richz at 2:20 PM

Is Flickr Protecting Photos From Download?

A friend of mine pointed me to this oddity. If you visit a Flickr page (for example this one) and try to save the displayed image either by dragging it to your desktop or right mouse-clicking "Save Image As...", the downloaded image isn't there.

I'm sure this is pretty easy to hack. It might be some sort of weird layering trick where the image is overlayed with another blank image or something. Regardless, it's sitting there in my browser so it can't be too difficult.

The real question is: why is Flickr even bothering?

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Posted by richz at 5:28 PM

I Despise James Blunt

The great majority of posts on Basement.org have dealt with things like RSS, Web 2.0, the Semantic Web and the like. Because of this, I was hesitant to post a rant of any sort. But I couldn't hold out any longer. I'd exhausted all of my own social circles yet still felt the need to express myself.

I can't stand James Blunt.

For the unfamiliar, James Blunt is a UK singer/songwriter type that sings mostly ballads. He's our generations Michael Bolton. Woefully cheesy. Devastatingly sappy. Predictably formulaic. Maybe it's because his music sounds like a Kodak commercial. Maybe it's because he's been featured on a Starbucks compilation CD. I'm not really sure.

I am hoping that this post will help start the healing and extinguish the deep, seething hatred I feel towards James Blunt. I'll make it through this. My only fear is that there will be others.

There will be others.

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Posted by richz at 1:27 PM

Paranoid Rich

So the previous posting on Google's impact on privacy got Dugg yesterday (nearly 700 times) and the comments on both Digg and here have been, to say the least, entertaining and somewhat enlightening.

Some thoughts...


First, I'm apparently a paranoid conspiracy theorist who is freaking out for nothing. This may be true. I'm not even going to bother trying to convince anyone otherwise. I'll only look more paranoid.

Nevertheless, the argument often brought up about how our privacy is compromised everywhere (online, credit cards, mobile phones, etc.) and that it's unfair to single out Google has some merit. What I think people are missing about Google is that there is very little prerequisite to using its various services. We have to do a fair amount of work to sign up for a mobile phone or credit card (though it is getting a lot easier). Also, these are very often specialized services. While Amazon is gathering a lot about my buying habits, it's fairly limited to just that.

Google on the other hand is trying to be everywhere. It wants you to search, shop, write, store, email, chat, publish, sms...and the list goes on. They want to be everywhere because they have to keep growing. And they've made it very clear that their ambitions are not small by any means.

The other observation I'd make is how many people (to my surprise) strongly defended Google. It's testament to the loyalty and trust they've been able to generate thus far. People genuinely believe that Google is going to do the right thing. And for me, that's the rub. The "right thing" lies in a very murky, subjective place. Will Google sell your habits and content to a cartel in Central America? Obviously not. Will they triangulate your search habits, documents and emails to deliver a targeted ad? Probably. Is that bad? That's up to the person I suppose. But I'm guessing that for most, they wouldn't even guess that Google was doing such a thing. It's nearly impossible for Google to convey all the things they're doing with our data in a clear and concise way.

So it's up to us to have some faith or simply stay away.

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Posted by richz at 8:58 AM

Performancing Metrics

The freaks at Performancing have released yet another blog tracking tool: Performancing Metrics. Solution Watch has a good summary. It looks promising.

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Winamp + Ajax = Mmmm, Tasty

Gabriel Levy is obviously a lunatic. He went and created a web/Ajax interface to Winamp that allows you to control Winamp over a network in any browser. The web version of Winamp looks nearly identical. It supports media libraries, playlists and such. Slick.

I'm guessing this would work over the Internet as well? I'm not sure how it sends the music across (streaming, etc.). If anyone toys with it and finds out, I'd love to know.

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Posted by richz at 9:05 PM

Measure Map Acquired By Google

Adaptive Path's Measure Map has been acquired by Google. Congrats to Adaptive Path and the Measure Map team. Basement.org has been beta testing Measure Map for a couple of months now and I enjoy using it. It feeds the blog writer's ego. Why do we blog after all? To be heard and validated. It's also good to see a company like Adaptive Path - which stands for the virtues of good interaction design - get this sort of validation.

As a side note, I wonder if Google, and Yahoo for that matter, are going to be more aggresive with acquisitions since their stock value has been on the skids of late.

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Posted by richz at 8:51 AM

Yahoo Buying Digg?

So the rumor mill is churning this morning on news that a Yahoo! buyout of Digg is imminent. If it happens, Yahoo! will be the undisputed Big Chomping Monster that ate all those neat folksy Web 2.0 startups.

Maybe I'm just not picking up the right signals regarding the merits/value of these acquisitions. I've talked about it before. With a Digg buyout you've got an even more interesting scenario: from what I can gather, Digg's primary source of ads is from...(dramatic pause)...Google.

I can see the headlines now...

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Posted by richz at 1:41 PM

Google, China And Murky Waters

At the risk of trudging into the murky and sticky waters of politics, somebody help me understand this: Google agrees to censor certain content on their new China service but refuses to cooperate with the U.S. government on turning over search histories.

Mind you, I don't even want to get into the merits of the U.S. government's request. I know too little about it. It's just sort of curious to see obviously different standards applied. The cynic in me says that the China decision is about money and the U.S. decision isn't.

Regardless, the cynic in me uses Google all day long and doesn't want my search patterns passed along to the authorities. Then again, the cynic in me isn't in China...

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Posted by richz at 1:42 PM

Widgets Via Firefox : Firefoxit

Here's an interesting alternative to Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as Konfabulator). Firefoxit is a Firefox extension that allows you to create widgets that live outside of Firefox. I haven't tried this yet so take it all with a grain of salt. But the download is 600K - far leaner than the 11+ megs required to run Yahoo! Widgets. It's probably worth looking at.

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Posted by richz at 7:30 PM

Basement.org Operational Again

Subscribers to basement.org may have noticed their feed readers tripping on retrieving this site's feed. A few days ago, Movable Type barfed up on me. I've moved the whole site to a new hosting provider and a new MySQL instance of MT. All is well now (so far). Hopefully its smooth sailing from now on.

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Posted by richz at 10:28 AM

Basement.org's New Home

Welcome to the new home of basement.org. The site crashed yesterday so I decided to move hosting providers and finally use MySQL instead of the embedded database that comes with Movable Type. Hopefully this result in much less pain in maintaining the site.

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Posted by richz at 11:55 AM

I Don't Hate Macs, I Just Hate Mac Users

Ok, before I dig into the substance of this post, I’d like to preface it with an explanation of the title. I don’t really hate anyone. Hatred is an awful thing. When I say “hate,” I mean it in a casual, chatting-over-lunch sort of way. Like when we say “I hate the Red Sox.” It doesn’t mean you wish to kill them all (though you may say that as well). It just means you, well, hate them. It’s like…Hate Lite. Now on to the substance of this post…

Xoxide X-Ventilator Case - BlackI consider myself a tinkerer. I enjoy opening up a PC box and just messing around. I’m into the intricacies of the different components and how they can be tweaked and optimized and customized. Hell, there’s a whole subculture of PC modding out there. I mean, who wouldn’t want to trick out there PC case with neon lighting and water cooling? Yeh, I subscribe to Maximum PC. What’s wrong with that? In fact, I think there’s a lot right with it. The willingness to crack open your “rig”and replace the hard drive controller is a virtue. There’s something inherently endearing about someone willing to roll up their sleeves and work on something.

Yes, I know it’s not for everyone. Sure, you can hire someone to do it. Of course you can just buy a custom PC with all the bells and whistles. The hardcore techies of the world scoff at the masses that brush this sort of stuff aside. “They don’t understand us. We will make them pay handsomely for their ignorance.” They are the Left Brain.

At the other extreme is the bratty computer user. They simply can’t be bothered with such details. They don’t have time (or better yet, their time is too valuable to be wasted on such trivialities). They have…more important things to do. As such, they “love” and “adore” their Macs. Because admittedly, Macs are inherently better designed. From hardware to software, things just seem to work. As a designer, I often reference Apple for their unwavering belief in the power of good design. It really is the differentiator.

It’s a great thing when you can design products that make your users feel good about themselves. Good design is inherently complimentary, subtly flattering the user as he interacts. People wonder why there is such rabid loyalty towards Apple. This is why. Apple has spoiled them. They’ve been treated with such dignity and high regard that their collective self-esteem has been inflated beyond belief.

So now the rest of us (your humble blogger included) are left to hear their ramblings about how great Apple products are. How much they love their Macs and iPods. And how lame it is for us to have to worry about things like PCI slots and firmware. The Mac population’s view of the PC user base is nothing short of elitist. All those hugs and support growing have led them to snarl at the “lower class” PC users of the world.

The misunderstanding arises from the fact PC users actually like defragmenting their hard drives and upgrading their firmware. We enjoy replacing our graphics cards every six months. We love TweakUI! We share a firm belief that our struggle in this world will lead us to heaven. You Mac users, on the other hand, are on your way to hell. A weird, glossy white plastic hell.

So there you have it. Mac users are the bourgeoisie of the computing world. PC users are the lowly, struggling proletariat, harboring bitterness and resentment towards their snooty counterparts while they toil away at their machines.

And what of the Linux users? Well, they’re just lumpen.

Updated January 9, 2007 : Yes, that weird glossy white plastic hell has frozen over. I bought a Mac.

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Netvibes Introduces Delicious Module

The Netvibes crew continue to churn at a frightening pace. They’ve just released a nice implementation of delicious. I like how the tags  lay out. Nicely done.

Another reason I like Netvibes over the Google/Microsoft/Yahoo! variety is that, unlike the others, Netvibes doesn’t have their own services to position above others. Instead you get a more “neutral” front page experience.

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Posted by richz at 10:46 AM

Right-Mouse Click Package Tracking

Here’s a neat little Firefox extension for all you shopping freaks out there. Simpletracking.com’s Package Tracking Extension allows you to track a package with a right-mouse click. It supports UPS, FedEx & USPS.

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Posted by richz at 10:07 PM

Google Pack : Umm....Ok?

Somebody help me out with this one. CES is all about getting a peak at the next big thing. Hardware and devices. New tools. New software. It's the stuff that isn't out yet. Neat new gadgets and devices and such.

Amidst all this stuff is....(long dramatic pause)....the Google Pack. A collection of already available software and trialware all bundled together. The release of the Google Pack isn't what's interesting. What's interesting is the leeway and deference allowed to the Google name right now. Who else could introduce what is essentially nothing at a CES keynote speech? What's also interesting, is the oddly warm reception the blogging community has given it. A few have shown some skepticism. Nicholas Carr thinks it's a trojan horse - a way to get an updater on your PC so Google can pump its wares right into your desktop. That's sort of icky (and possibly evil?). But I'll avoid the conspiracy theory bait for the time being. I'm far more interested in the strange state of sedation the Google brand has cast upon so many.

Over the past 24-36 months, the Google Brand stockpiled a lot of goodwill from just about everyone - and it was often well-deserved. The search really was (and pretty much still is) second to none. And Google Maps - well that was just plain sexy.

But this thing? In my eyes at least, they've cashed in some of that brand equity. Somebody should tell the Iranians they're not missing much.

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AJAX Desktops : A (Very) Quick Comparison

The Second Coming of personal portal pages has been fun to watch. I'm not a big fan of portals from an interaction design perspective. I find them to be too...generic (that's for another blog entry). Regardless, they can be very useful if designed correctly and with the right set of features.

Of course, the big players have their offerings:

Then you've go some of the lesser-known upstarts:

In my oh-so humble opinion, the hands-down winner is Netvibes. It's fast, straightforward, and constantly growing. It can pull in your email (POP or IMAP), supports sticky notes and to-do lists, along with your usual weather and RSS support. It handily took care of my 200+ OPML feed list import (many throw up on it or hang). What is really impressive is the speed with which the Netvibes team is improving upon and fixing Netvibes. Their blog provides insight into an impressively agile development process. Take a look at how many features were introduced in the last 20 days alone. Frightening. The big boys should stop and look at what these guys are doing. Very impressive.

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Posted by richz at 11:44 PM

Google Safe Browsing Extension For Firefox

Google keeps spreading that Firefox love. They've released a useful little Safe Browsing extensing for Firefox. It nicely highlights the URL box when the web address ain't what it seems.

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Posted by richz at 1:13 PM

Performancing For Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is a blogging tool that integrates with Firefox. I'm using it right now and really liking it. It integrates with most blogging tools (Blogger, Movable Type and others). I'm a big fan of Blogjet, but I'm liking the in-browser drag-and-blog capability. If you're a blogging fiend like me, check it out.

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Posted by richz at 8:09 AM

Google Homepage API Now Available

Google has just made available their homepage API. In short, it's a simple XML syntax that wraps existing web content or applications for display on Google's personalized home pages. There are already a few modules available.

This is effectively Google's version of Microsoft Gadgets - a similar technology that drops modules onto their Live.com personal start pages. Wow, Google came in second on this one. Funny.

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Posted by richz at 12:25 PM

We're Outsourcing The Good Stuff Too!

I'm all about equal opportunity. In our globalized world, if there's a capable and ambitious dude 11,000 miles away who wants to contribute to the World Economy, hey, why the hell not.

But now, we're outsourcing softer, less tangible parts of our lives. Fleeting, ephemeral things like Fun and Understanding and "Time Together." The New York Times reports that we're now outsourcing video game playing to China.

What's left? Love? Chivalry? Or maybe even more abstract notions like Warmth and Kindness. Wait, someone actually already tried this...

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Posted by richz at 6:56 AM

Yahoo! Answers Debuts

Knowing full well that machines can't do everything, Yahoo! just released Yahoo! Answers, a service that allows people to ask questions that can be answered by other real people.

I'm not sure about the purpose of this, but it's interesting nonetheless. I think people love to share knowledge. We are social anmials after all. It makes us feel good to talk to each other. This is partly why Wikipedia and Amazon's vast collection of product reviews are so compelling.

As to its utility, that's yet to be seen. Yahoo! seems to have taken the categorization route (a la Ebay) for organizing the stuff. Will there come a day when humans are contributing to search results? Why the heck not.

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Posted by richz at 10:53 AM

Protopage 2.0 Released

For the unfamiliar, Protopage is a virtual desktop. I'm liking it. It's all AJAX-y and Web 2.0-y (sort of). You can maintain stickies, news, RSS on public or private pages. Version 2.0 just came out and it supports OPML import and Bloglines. This is a very slick little toy. Very dynamic and relatively easy to use. The Protopage Blog has all the propoganda on the new release. Check it out.

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Posted by richz at 9:25 PM

Animated Favicons

Let the hate mail pour in. It turns out you can animate favicons (those little icons that land in the URL box, tabs and bookmarks. You'll find a few examples here. Apparently, they're simply comprised of animated GIF's. This of course has the potential to annoy the living hell out of people. So let's be good little desginers about it.

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Posted by richz at 3:51 PM

New Elsewhere Links RSS Feed

Those delicious bite-size morsels of linkage - the Elsewhere links, are now available in their own feed (in case you'd rather just get the links without my long-winded ramblings). The main feed still contains a mix of my entries along with the elsewhere links.

You'll find links to both feeds at the top of the menu options on Basement.org's main home page.

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Posted by richz at 11:06 AM

Dang. Basement.org Got Dugged

I'm not sure of the proper verb. Dugg? Digged? Diggied? Dug up? But the Rounded Corners entry from a couple of days ago definitely caught fire (relatively speaking) on the Blogosphere.

Some statistics (as of this posting): The entry was dugg 1280 times; it's been tagged on del.icio.us over 170 times; and, get this, the web log shows the page was hit over 30,000 times. Scary.

It was actually a lot of fun to watch it spread around. I think once it ended up on Digg's front page, it just took off from there. I think the entry itself touched a curiosity about how design, psychology, fashion, etc. affect how we see things. If you haven't caught up on the comment thread, don't miss it. The article itself pales in comparison. Some really interesting thoughts there.

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Posted by richz at 9:44 AM

Microsoft & Oracle Give Away Their Stuff

Microsoft is giving away Express editions of their Visual Studio 2005 software. Oracle is giving away the express edition of their Oracle 10g Database.

I think the big boys are watching a lot of buzz get created with free tools and they want in on the party. Free up the API's, give away the tools, and let everyone have at it.

I think what open source was missing for so long was a good, strong coordinated marketing message. Maybe blogging, as a sort of "organic marketing," fills that void. One thing's for sure, the big boys are listening.

Posted by richz at 9:43 AM

Google Local For Mobile Now Available

Google has taken yet another step towards permeating your whole life. Their Local/Maps products are now available for mobile phones. It's got a neat little wizard to get you going.

We are one step closer to Google knowing who you are, how you behave, where you are, what you want to do next, and feeding ads directly into your brain.

Yippee. (I think).

Posted by richz at 1:35 PM

Blog Spammers Are Extremely Supportive People

I’ve come to terms with comment spam on basement.org. I’m too lazy/busy to upgrade Movable Type. So every few weeks, I clean out all those nonsensical comments that point to Viagra ads and the like.

I did notice one thing as I was cleaning them up today: the comments are often very supportive and some times inspirational. Some snippets:

Now, I’ll spare you the fact that the above are linked to sites like http://size-genetics.penis-products.info/ (I’ll also spare you a clickable link). Regardless, I’ve chosen to blindly accept these little boosts to my self-esteem. I will look past their hidden (or not-so-hidden) agendas. As I delete them for all time from Movable Type, I will not shove them out the door. Instead, I’ll kindly show them out.

“This way sir.”

Comments (1)

Posted by richz at 7:03 AM

Microsoft's del.icio.us: Windows Live Favorites

Windows Live Favorites also quietly debuted. It’s essentially remote storage of your Windows favorites a la del.icio.us.

Microsoft Debuts(?) Live.com

Timed to coincide with Microsoft’s Microsoft Live announcement yesterday, Live.com debuted. It’s essentially start.com rebranded to fit into the “Live” branding. What’s weird is that while start.com supports Firefox pretty extensively, live.com does not – only promising a “Firefox support coming soon.” Regardless, it’s also not fully working. I couldn’t import my OPML feed into it (whereas I can with start.com).

I’m gonna write some more on Microsoft’s announcements later. For now, take a look at Ideas.live.com to get a sense of where things are going.

Posted by richz at 9:42 PM

Google Adds Tagging To Search History

Google quietly added tagging to it’s bookmark/search history feature. Inside Google has the scoop.

Posted by richz at 8:51 PM

Truth Follows Fiction

Wildly off-topic, but too ridiculous to ignore: Gillette has unveiled a razor with five (yes, five) blades. It is a very odd thing when truth follows fiction (especially when the fiction is a product of The Onion).

Via one of the best link roll’s out there: Waxy.org’s links.

Posted by richz at 11:15 AM

Long Time, No Post

It’s been over a week since I’ve posted on basement.org. I was actually away on a brief vacation. Of course, I should have probably posted this before I left. Spilt milk I suppose.

Anyway, it’s good to be back and I’ll be rolling out some new posts on a regular basis again.

Posted by richz at 1:59 PM

MSN & Google Focus On Mobile

Both MSN Search and Google updated their mobile phone search capabilities They’re essentially paired down, very simplified web pages that are viewable on phones.

A few weeks ago, MSN Mobile opened up local search and maps thru mobile devices. MSN Search’s WebLog has info in it here.

Now Google has countered with the ability to find local stuff as well as driving directions through Google Mobile.

You can play with both interfaces in your desktop browser here and here.

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Posted by richz at 3:37 PM

NY Times Article: Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain

I’ve previously posted about how Google’s Willy Wonka, “Do No Evil” image was going to eventually bite them in the corporate rear. Now the New York Times has surprisingly chimed in with an interesting article about the perception shift that Google is experiencing, most notably in Silicon Valley.

I think this is partly Google’s fault for setting the bar as high as they did, and also partly just crowd psychology against a dominant player. In any case, in the years ahead, I think Google is going to have bigger challenges than just brand perception.

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Posted by richz at 4:42 PM

Thoughts On Google Desktop 2

After allowing this thing to linger on my desktop for a day, I have to say I’m not very impressed. Some points:

Overall, this is pretty disappointing. Google is obviously getting nervous about being stuck inside the browser. With Vista, Microsoft’s guns are aiming right for it.

The real challenge for Google (and Yahoo for that matter) is maintaining brand relevance in a world that is starting to see Internet applications proliferate beyond the web browser. While Google may have the best search engine, the others will eventually get to “good enough.” Couple that with the discrete ability to search without going to an actual web site (i.e. visit Google.com first then search), and you’ve got a pretty dangerous scenario for Google. I think we’re going to see a lot more scrambling like this before its over.

 

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Google Desktop 2 Released

Google has released a new version of their Google Desktop.

Anyone who had any doubts that this was going to turn into a Microsoft-Google thing as much as a Yahoo-Google thing will probably change their view after seeing this thing.

It is Google’s most serious attempt to reach your desktop. It includes a sidebar that sticks to the side of your desktop that does all sorts of things like scratch pad, headlines weather, etc. There are too many features to list here. One of the more interesting is it’s ability to monitor the sites you visit and just steal RSS feeds from within and start displaying entries (under a “Web Clips” category).

By the way, the sidebar is one of the more prominent features in Microsoft’s upcoming Vista operating system. Also, you can grab a popular (and free) implementation of Sidebar for Windows XP here. This is hardly revolutionary stuff on Google’s part. Regardless, it’s clear they’re on a mission to break out of your browser and somehow seep into the rest of your life.

I’m going to play with this awhile and I’ll probably post some impressions later on.

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Posted by richz at 5:01 PM

The Blatant Exploitation of Ajax

Consider this pitch for a new book:

The latest Tom Clancy novel, The Teeth of the Tiger, will captivate you from page one. It utilizes an exciting and powerful new publishing technique for printing and displaying fonts that are far more readable to the human eye. Pick up a copy today!

Pretty ridiculous right? Yet, this is what we’re starting to see with software and consulting shops heralding the inclusion of AJAX as a feature of their products. AJAX, while exciting and kind of neat, is little more than a means to an end. Can it improve a user’s experience? Absolutely, but that doesn’t make it a feature. The improved user experience is the feature.

I bring this point up because I think we have to be careful about two things here:

While AJAX is the whipping boy in this post, this applies to any sort of buzzword that is flying around the Internet these days (Web 2.0 anyone?). If anything, the last thing user’s need is another cornball acronym to get in their way.

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Posted by richz at 8:56 AM

Google Bans CNet

I’ve mentioned in the past that Google was going to step into it’s own poop with their “Do No Evil” nonsense. Well, one way to help things along is to ban a well-recognized publication from talking to you for a year.

Google has decided to stop talking to CNet after a News.com story highlighted how easy it is to dig up personal information on someone through Google. To illustrate, they Googled Eric Schmidt, their CEO.

In response, Google has decided that CNet will not be spoken to for one year. Lovely.

Of course, this story has seeped out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream press, which generally speaking, loathes this sort of arbitrary boycotting. The New York Times as well as the major news wires have picked it up.

Now, the metaphysical question we’re left with is: Did Google do something evil? Who are we to draw that sort of conclusion? It seems like a bit of an over-reaction; bordering on almost childish behavior. Does it merit all this press and attention? Probably not. Which I think leads us to the real problem for Google: it ain’t about what you did, it’s about perception. Their cheery, almost candy-like image is going to actually work against them when issues like this arise.

Hey, we didn’t raise the (perceived) bar. They did.

In other news, Howard Stern(?) has filed a class action suit against Google for allegedly fudging around with AdWords fees. Read all about it.

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Posted by richz at 7:38 PM

Pardon the Movable Type Garbage

If you’re reading this post on an index page, you’ll notice some posts with question marks for titles. This, my dear friends, is Movable Type’s Berkeley DB crapping all over itself. The database is corrupt but surviving (for now). I’ve rebuilt this thing a bunch of times because of this exact problem and I just don’t feel like rebuilding it again, right now at least.

So, if you see “?” at the top of post, please move on, nothing to see there.

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Posted by richz at 3:57 PM

Programming Cheat Sheets

For all you lazy bastards out there, nice little programming cheat sheets for Javascript, MySQL, CSS, PHP, and some others.

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Posted by richz at 5:50 PM

Blog Neighborhoods

I’m always looking around for new blogs to track and I noticed something as I was flipping through a bunch today. Bloggers – especially the technically inclined – sort of create their own neighborhoods where they track and contribute to one another’s blogs.

This is sort of logical if you think about it in terms of technologies that are often the subject of discussion. Microsoft folks are going to talk about .Net, XAML and the like; Macromedia folks are going to blog about Flash, Coldfusion and Flex; and the list goes on. Then

While it makes a lot of sense, I think it’s unfortunate that ideas – many of which are platform or technology neutral – never leave these blogging neighborhoods. Many technologies today like XML, RSS, ReST and others have little to do with platform.

For example, I track Dare Obasanjo’s blog. Dare is an XML guru at Microsoft and his writings about RSS, ReST and XML in general are always intelligent, well-thought out and often insightful. Here’s an example:  Misunderstanding REST: A look at the Bloglines, del.icio.us and Flickr APIs.

My point here (and yes, there’s a point to this post) is that, as readers and contributers, we shouldn’t be afraid to venture out into other blogging neighborhoods. There’s lots of good stuff out there.

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Posted by richz at 2:39 PM

IBM: how to write cross-browser HTML

IBM has put out a pretty comprehensive article on how to properly code across Internet Explorer and Mozilla. Pretty useful.

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Posted by richz at 6:38 PM

Microsoft Long...I mean...Vista

You knew it wasn’t going to last. Microsoft woke up yesterday and realized they aren’t in the chewing tobacco business. So out goes Longhorn, in comes Vista.

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Posted by richz at 2:41 PM

Flash Player 8 Beta Is Out

Macromedia has just released a beta version of their new Flash player. Without some fancy demos, it's sort of hard to see the difference. Nevertheless, here it is.

There’s a whole slew of improvements/features with this release. Colin Moock has a bunch of links to a movie demo that showcases it’s new capabilities.

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Contributing to Macromedia's XML News Aggregator

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before. This blog contributes to the Technology category of Macromedia’s XML News Aggregator (MXNA).

I’ve always been a big fan of Macromedia’s products – especially their Coldfusion, Flash and Flex technologies. Their focus on user experience has always attracted me to their message. Let’s hope that the Adobe merger keeps that vibe going.

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Posted by richz at 2:10 PM

Please Excuse Our Appearance

Movable Type shit the bed on me (again). I've used this opportunity to introduce an new style to basement.org.

Unfortunately, the transition isn't entirely complete. So until then, please excuse our appearance.

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Posted by richz at 9:32 AM

Microsoft is Lovin' that Flash RIA Stuff

Powersdk : Ted pointedly points out that Microsoft has introduced shades of Flash RIA's (albeit they're kinda marketing-ish):

www.windows.com
www.xbox360.com

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Posted by richz at 8:34 PM

Microsoft Now Offers Tabbed Browsing

The nutjobs at Microsoft obviously can’t wait to release IE7 to give the gift of tabbed browsing to the masses. With the release of the new MSN Toolbar, tabbed browsing is here for IE6.

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Posted by richz at 12:50 PM

One More Angle on Macrodobe Merrger

Just what we need, one more commentary.

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Posted by richz at 8:30 PM

Macromedia's (Adobe's) Dilemma

Let me preface this post by noting that I’ve always been a big fan of Macromedia’s (now Adobe’s) products – specifically their Coldfusion platform, and more recently their Flex presentation server (it compiles an XML syntax in Flash .swf files and delivers them to browsers ). I’ve always respected them because their products always fit into a larger vision. About a year and a half ago, they released a presentation called The Business Impact of Rich Internet Applications. As an interaction designer, I was inspired. These guys got it right. This is where things were headed. Of course, Macromedia presented all this as a backdrop for repositioning their Flash player as a powerful way to deliver rich applications over the Web.

Against that backdrop, enter two key milestones into the wacky world of web development:

With Google’s help, Ajax is slowly taking over the world. Developers everywhere are playing with the stuff. The momentum is pretty obvious and the business case for it is compelling. Macromedia got it right, experience does matter. What they didn’t bet on was Google showing up and showcasing an application that used none of their technology but rather bits and pieces of things that have been laying around for years. Now we’re starting to see it applied in many different places.

How active is the community out there? Take a look at the ironically titled Ajax Matters. It’s filled with links, libraries and code samples.

And this isn’t some grass-roots trend. We already know Google’s done it. Ebay is doing it (very soon). Amazon is doing it. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. Yahoo! is doing it within their news articles as well as their My Yahoo! portal site.

So how does all this bode for Macromedia? Not very well. Their predictions were dead-on, but their goal to be a key player in the RIA space is severely threatened. Flickr, the popular photo management site (now owned by Yahoo!), has decided to move away from Flash to Ajax.

In my opinion, the race is already over. Macromedia chose to take the high road with Flex. It is a very nice piece of technology – but it is costly and as a result, the user base is very small (at least compared to Ajax). They’re trying to encourage users to play around with it, but the community is just not responding. In my opinion, Macromedia should open up the hood and give the thing away. They simply can’t compete with the community momentum that’s out there now. Take a page from Microsoft: arm the development community and adoption will follow.

I’ll admit that I haven’t thought much about the business implications of this. It will no doubt hurt the bottom line in the short term if they did open it up. But that’s the short term. As long as Macromedia keeps innovating (as they’ve done in the past), they’ll be OK. I’d bet the house that they’re not going to have much of an asset there in three years anyway if the current trends continue.

Throw on top of all this the pains and chaos often associated with a merger and you can’t help but wonder if these trends are even going to be addressed.

Of course, Flash will still have its niche. People will still test paint colors on houses and customize shoes with some cute marketing applications, but Macromedia was shooting for more than that. They wanted Flash (with the help of Flex) to be the RIA platform. That’s not going to happen if things remain status quo.

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Posted by richz at 4:34 PM

populicio.us

Drawing on the most popular (or delicious) del.icio.us  links, Populicio.us provides the tastiest link treats from the last 24 or 48 hours.

If there’s an RSS feed to add to your roll, this is it.

The clock is ticking before someone snatches up the scrumptio.us domain name. Oh wait.

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Posted by richz at 10:39 AM

Google Maps + Craig's List = Nice

Paul Rademacher soldered together the Google Maps and Craig’s List web services to create a map-based application of real estate for rent/sale.

An awesome example of what’s possible with some creative, out-of-the-box thinking. I bet this didn’t take more than a few days to whip together. Very useful and very impressive.

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Posted by richz at 9:04 AM

Conscience & Etiquette

At the risk of posting something trivial, I’ve been thinking about two habits I’ve acquired when writing this blog and whether they’re right or wrong (or not even worth discussing).

First, anyone who reads basement.org knows that all links open new browser windows - an arguably obnoxious proposition. I do this because if a reader is reading a post, the clicking of a link should not disrupt the flow.

Then again, most savvy users know to hold down the SHIFT key to open in a new window (CTRL to open a tab in Firefox). So…maybe forcing new windows is obnoxious (or just short of). I don’t know. In any respect, I’m going to stop doing it.

The second issue is the notable lack of via references to articles I point to. I often have little to say in a post other than “go here” followed by a link. Admittedly, I often find these wonderful tidbits on the Web through posts on other blogs. Waxy, for example, always provides a via link, pointing to the source. Kottke, on the other hand, doesn’t.

And so, on this particular issue, I will not be pointing to the source because (a) I’m not an academic journal (b) it’s more work and (c) if the source doesn’t add anything to what I’ve already said, then there’s no need. In the spirit of transparency and openness, you can find my blogroll here.

Now I can sleep better at night.

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Posted by richz at 3:01 PM

The Comeback Kid

There’s been some buzz of late about how Yahoo! is proving to be more innovative and intelligent about its offerings than…gasp…Google.

Ben Hammersly sums it up nicely for the Guardian UK. 

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Posted by richz at 10:53 AM

Google News + Flash = Newsmap Flash App

Here's a very cool application of Google's services in Flash. It grabs headlines from Google News and draws them in Flash - emphasizing popularity and highlighting subjects to color. A neat example of using visual cues to help users digest large amounts of information.

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Posted by richz at 2:34 PM

The Difference Is In The Design

Apple has really become the poster child for how design can truly differentiate a brand and its product and produce rabid customer loyalty. In an industry where every piece of hardware is susceptible to commoditization, Apple is uncompromising in its commitment to produce well-designed products.

The results speak for themselves. A discussion with a Mac or iPod owner will often garner emotional praise. Just about any business - especially technology - can learn a lot from committing that time to good, thoughtful design.

HCI pioneer Don Norman talks about Apple in a recent BusinessWeek article.

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Posted by richz at 9:04 AM

More Great Free Stuff

Everybody loves free stuff.

Some cheap bastard was kind enough to post an exhaustive list of freeware alternatives at Neowin’s forum.

So before you get tempted by the bogus shiny boxes at CompUSA, check out this list.

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Posted by richz at 9:33 AM

New Version of Google Desktop Search

The nutjobs at Google have released a new version of their Desktop Search. Among the new features:

So...what are you waiting for? Act Now!

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Posted by richz at 7:50 AM

Pardon Our Appearance

For anyone that actually visits this corner of the web, I’d like to quickly apologise for the, um, “utilitarian” appearance of Basement.org. Movable Type crashed on me a few weeks ago and I put up this “quick & dirty” version.

Hopefully by next week, something a bit more aesthetically pleasing will be up.

 

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Posted by richz at 5:14 PM

Basement.org...Reincarnated

For those that follow this blog, you'll notice (if you visit the site and not just read the feed) that the look & feel has drastically changed.

This is because Movable Type's database became corrupt and I could no longer post to the site. I was forced to export the postings and start from scratch. All of the previous postings are back and online.

I could spend the time to recover the old templates, but frankly, I got tired of the old design very quickly. And so...here is basement.org in dramatic minimalist form.

Posted by richz at 9:10 AM

Yahoo Contextual Search

Everyone's going bonkers with all the flavors of search features that are cropping up everywhere. The latest is Yahoo's new contextual search tool (shorthand Y!Q). Here's an example of it in action.

Search Engine Watch breaks it all down very nicely with some beefy analysis (as usual). News.com also reported on it.

Is it me, or is all this stuff coming out of the big three search engines starting to sound more like noise and less like anything really useful? Google and Yahoo let you search videos (um why?), A9 (Amazon's bastard child of a search engine) let's you walk up and down streets in major cities (no, really). Everyone needs to just take a deep breath and calm down.

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Posted by richz at 11:01 AM

Search for...everything

Is it me, or is the race to index and provide searching for just about anything getting a bit out of hand?

A couple of days ago, Google revealed Google Video, a search engine for video clips, TV shows and the like. It pulls up clips from programs with descriptions associated with them. Beyond novelty, it seems pretty useless to me (except for a providing another source of ad revenue for Google).

Just yesterday, A9 (an Amazon.com experiment) released its new Yellow Pages with the ability to find businesses on a map and the ability to navigate up & down streets (with photos) near the vicinity of results. That's right. A9 hired some drivers to take pictures of every storefront in a bunch of major cities.

Beyond the brief "Holy Shit" moment, what the hell are we supposed to do with this? I know there's all sorts of theorizing flying around as to how we're going to index everything that moves, but there comes a point where the question of utility has to creep in. Do I really need to see a picture of the dry cleaning place near home?

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Posted by richz at 7:37 PM

Firefox on the cover of Wired

Wired magazine has put Firefox (and one of its creators) on its cover.

On just about every level, Firefox is a superior browser to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. One can only wonder why Microsoft essentially abandoned IE development. Nevertheless, they're supposedly paying attention now. The IE has a blog that tracks progress of IE development. Too little to late? With Longhorn coming, does it really matter?

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Posted by richz at 12:07 PM

Google's Image Problem

The problem with Google's touchy-feely "we're here to make the world a better place" image is that, well, it doesn't exactly jive with being filthy, stinkin' rich.

I could just see the boys at Microsoft: "Welcome to the fold."

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Posted by richz at 11:40 AM

Apple's Next Big Thingie?

Gizmodo points to some pics that look surprisingly authentic - revealing Apple's ihome(?).

What else can Apple throw an "i" in front of?

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Posted by richz at 12:52 PM

Kick Spyware's Arse - Microsoft Style

Yeh. You heard it right. Spyware's days are numbered because Microsoft released Antispyware.

This is really just Microsoft slapping their logo on a product they obtained through their acquisition of Giant.

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Gates Interview at C|Net

Bill Gates rambles on and on about all kinds of stuff - Xbox, Apple and *cough* Firefox. Good reading.

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Posted by richz at 3:07 PM

Ready and....Go!

I hope everyone's holidays and new year were happy and safe. It's been an odd last few weeks. The disaster in Asia really put things into perspective (celebrations and all).

Well 2005 is upon us and I think this is going to be a very interesting year in the Web. Microsoft and Google are poised to take the battle to the next level; blogging and RSS will probably continue to grow and expand; and I'm sure we'll be surprised by the new and exciting applications and interfaces to be released in the year to come.

Basement.org will try to do its part.

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Posted by richz at 10:16 AM

Google's Angle on 2004

The 2004 Google Zeitgeist is out and about.

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Posted by richz at 1:19 PM

A Great Search Tool Thingy

I just rebuilt my PC recently (that's right ladies) and a really good way of knowing which apps are most important to you is the order (and urgency) in which you install software back onto the OS.

One of the apps that ended up in the Top 5 is Dave's Quick Search It's a free and highly configurable little search box that sits in your taskbar or deskbar and allows you to conduct hundreds of different types of searches from a single place.

For example, if I'd like to check something on Pricegrabber, I simmply type: pgrab canon powershot. Or, if I'd like to search IMDB, I'd simply type: imdb godfather. Very cool and once you're hooked you won't look back.

What's even cooler is the ability to create your own search shortcuts to any web site that has a form. All the searches are stored in XML files on your machine. Don't feel like whipping together XML files? Then just use Dave's Quick Search Deskbar Search Wizard. It sits in your Internet Explorer toolbar and creates them for you.

I could go on and on about this thing. Just go get it. It's free for chrissake.

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Posted by richz at 11:45 PM

Cool Firefox Extension

We all know that taskbar real estate is so gosh darn valuable. That's why this neat little extension minimizes Firefox and Thunderbird to the tray. Good stuff.

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Another New Google Service

Sorry for all the Google-related stuff lately, but I had to link to this new Google service.

Heh.

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CSS Reference on your iPod

Is it just me, or does anyone else think its infinitely cool to have a CSS reference available on your iPod?

Ok, maybe it's just me.

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Posted by richz at 3:56 PM

Microsoft vs. Google

So I've installed the MSN Search Toolbar. It works nicely. I was able to find what I'm looking for pretty easily.

Now I'm going to uninstall the Google Desktop Search. Is the Microsoft search that much better? It is actually.

It's not better because it beats Google's feature-for-feature. It's better because you can immediately see how it is more intimately tied to the Windows operating system. It's available in Outlook. It allows me to click on email search results and pull up the email in the Outlook interface in case I need to respond to or forward it. It's just "closer" to Windows.

These differences highlight something critical about this Battle Royale between Microsoft and Google: Microsoft owns the batte arena. This is not a match between two formidable opponents. It's a match between one opponent (Google) that is doing some smart things and another (Microsoft) that seems to be reacting rather than coming up with some innovations of their own.

You'd think Microsoft would be shaking in its boots. Hardly. Let's face it foiks, Microsoft is in a far better position to take an idea and seamlessly integrate it into the Windows experience. The examples I gave above are not trivial.

I've read about all sorts of theories about the Google OS and the like. It's some interesting stuff. But that reality is far away and Microsoft has proven in the past that they are well positioned to survive, and often-times crush, an innovative player. I'll leave it to the Slashdot forums to extol on the inherent evils in all this (or lack thereof).

So yeh, it's a battle alright, but Microsoft happens to own the arena , and in many cases, the rules of the game.

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MSN Toolbar Beta Released

Speak of the devil. Here she is.

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Desktop Search Insanity

Let the desktop search insanity begin. Google started it. X1 is selling its soul to Yahoo. Microsoft is expected to throw something down this week (today?).

C|Net breaks it all down.

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Posted by richz at 1:30 PM

A Lesser-Known But Wicked Firefox Feature

This isn't going to impress the ladies, but a lesser-known but nice feature of Firefox is the ability to set your home page to open up mutliple sites in tabs. You simply seperate your sites with the pipe character like so:

http://www.yahoo.com|http://www.cnn.com|http://www.cnet.com

Good stuff, I must say.

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Posted by richz at 10:49 AM

New Google Feature: Google Suggest

Now I've got to admit, this is pretty neat. As to how useful it'll actually prove to be? Well who cares for now. It's still pretty damn cool.

It's called Google Suggest and it spits suggestions in drop-down below the search box as you type. Pretty neat (and impressive stuff).

As to its usefulness, if you're looking to explore - i.e. you have a general inkling of what you're looking for but not a very good idea of where to look - it's potentially useful. If you're going after something specific, like: Italian food downtown manhattan, you'll have to let Google do its thing and show results.

Regardless, neat stuff.

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Posted by richz at 12:50 PM

U.S. Tech Workers: Wake Up

Over the past three years I've consulted at a large financial institution, a well-recognized university and a major publisher. I've worn various hats but my roles have typically put me pretty close to the embedded technology groups within them. These groups are typically clearly segmented and are viewed as internal services arms of their respective companies.

Looking back, I can't help but notice some really bothersome patterns that the tech groups in the various organizations had in common.

For one, they perceived technology as an end in itself. Rather than taking approaches that could solve problems quickly and easily, they often made technical decisions that were simply wrong for the task at hand. The rest of the company couldn't say a word because, well, they don't know enough about technology. Unless you know cars, you aren't going to argue with your mechanic about the validity of his conclusions. You simply trust him (or find another mechanic).

And so, these companies trust their technology groups to make the right decisions to fit their needs. Instead, these groups often bake factors into their decision-making that are irrelevant and often unhealthy for the organization as a whole. They either take on technology because (a) they've already invested in it professionally (i.e. they’re well trained) or (b) they think a particular technology is "cool." It is exasperating to see heavy-lifting, costly technologies applied to some of the most basic corporate needs.

Far more telling than the strategic decisions these groups make is the absolutely chronic aversion to risk that technology groups suffer from. In these large organizations, you will commonly run into outlandish timeframes, endless disclaimers and an absence from any desire to "step up" and proactively seek out efficiencies and productivity gains for their users. The larger the company, the more ominous the perceived risk. Instead of appreciating the mandate handed to them, tech groups collapse into a territorial mindset. Their corporate survival – the battles for budget dollars and head counts – take precedent over the reason they exist in the first place. The result: your company is taken hostage.

In light of the outsourcing explosion that American tech workers need to contend with, I think this is cause for concern. There are some very bright and very hungry people out there that would love to replace the typically stagnant American technology group. The outsourcing of routine and mundane tasks should be embraced by American tech workers. It should be perceived as a "freeing up" for Americans to do what we're known for: innovate. Instead, there's a groundswell of anger towards companies that outsource. This anger comes from an unhealthy place in my opinion. Tech workers in the U.S. need to be less concerned about outsourcing and more concerned with reinventing themselves as indispensable players in technology.

I'm well aware that my experiences are far from a representative sample of what is happening in corporate America. Nevertheless, I can't help but notice the trend. Personally, there are few things that give more satisfaction than solving a pressing business need with a simple and elegant technical solution. In the end, it is about making the customer happy. Rather than being occupied about defending their territory – whether against internal encroachments or outsourcing – the American tech worker needs to stay focused on the customer. If the customer is happy, the territory will take care of itself.

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Posted by richz at 11:13 AM

Google Gets Smart (Or Something)

Google introduced another flavor of search today: Google Scholar. There's a big fat FAQ for the curious.

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Posted by richz at 8:12 AM

Winamp R.I.P.

This is somewhat sad. Winamp, one of the best media players for the Win32 platform, is no more.

For me (and for many early on), Winamp was the MP3 player to use. It was lean and worked great. It's safe to say it was my stereo system for the last few years. Ah well, so long Winamp.

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Posted by richz at 11:43 PM

Microsoft Search Engine Released

Microsoft has unveilved its new and improved search engine.

There are even headlines comparing the counter-attack to the Microsoft-Netscape drama of years ago. I don't know about all that. Google sure ain't no Netscape. Nevertheless, healthy (i.e. ruthless) competition is always fun to watch.

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Google Desktop Ain't The Only Guy In Town

Turns out that Google Desktop isn't the only player in town. Tools to scour and index your hard drive for easy searching have been around for a while now.

Cnet recently did a roundup of the various desktop search tools out there. They selected Copernic as their Editor's choice.

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Posted by richz at 10:24 AM

Firefox 1.0 Released

The sexiest browser alive - Mozilla's Firefox - has been released.

The popular Firefox/Mozilla sites are going bonkers today. You can try hitting one of the mirrors. Here's a Google cache listing of mirrors. Be sure to navigate back up & out to the final release folders.

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Posted by richz at 11:09 AM

Links are up

The basement.org links are now up. It's a collection of some of my favorite design, development and general interest sites (RSS feed links included).

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Posted by richz at 11:54 AM

Welcome

Welcome to basement.org - the Blog-face of me - Richard Ziade. Here, I'll share thoughts mostly on interaction design, technology and all things Internet. Some of things that tickle me silly these days include: RSS (or feed syndication in general), rich Internet apps, and the challenges of making machines work better with people.

I hope I can add something to the community and maybe spark a few interesting discussions here and there.

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