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Monthly Archive for October, 2007

AdBlock: Why An Advertising Based Business Model May Not Scale Toward the Future

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 24, 2007
in Advertising and www
. 10 Comments

Spent a moment reading this NYTimes article, Whiting Out the Ads, But at what cost?

Within the article is the revelation that some website owners actually seem to take it personally that their readers may not want to be assaulted with advertisements. There are even some, apparently, who will reroute requests from the Firefox browser to whyfirefoxisblocked.com.

The aforementioned site is what prompted me to actually start writing. My first thought is, You have got to be kidding me.

Your readers are not obligated to view your advertisements. Readers who block advertisements are not stealing, being dishonest, underhanded, sneaky, malicious, or any other such thing.

It’s not for no reason that the various sorts of web publishing are being referred to as “New Media.” They are new, and even if they are most often (right now) being used in ways that mirror old media (text, audio, video), the method of distribution makes it new.

Distribution on the web is nothing like old media. There is absolutely no guarantee that your user will see what you meticulously designed in Dreamweaver; they may have larger fonts, they may have JavaScript turned off*, they could be using their own stylesheets, they could be using Greasemonkey to alter the way a variety of sites are displayed, they could be using hoodwink.d to comment on your site behind your back. They could be using Adblock to subvert your plans of World Domination Through Superior Content Supported By Advertising.

* This is always brought up whenever a discussion of the merits or demerits of Javascript takes place. In this day of Ajax applications… does anyone, anywhere, actually turn Javascript off? I submit that anyone who does is also capable of turning it back on in a flash if they want it.

The trouble with an ad-based business model is, the visitor is under no contract to view, read, or click on your ads. Yes, you can pull out a lot of statistics that say at least a certain number of visitors will click on the ads, and at the moment I’d say that it’s still a very valid business model if you have sufficient traffic. However, it may not be a valid business model 3 years down the road.

In fact, there’s no real reason that someone couldn’t make a fork of Firefox that includes Adblock, or something like it, turned on by default. (I only say “fork” because Mozilla’s relationship with Google is such that it is very unlikely they’d do this themselves.)

To go a step further — there’s no reason (other than the inherent absurdity of the suggestion) why Microsoft or Opera couldn’t start blocking advertisements by default in their browsers. It sounds ridiculous, but take a look at Tivo. Yes, the real power feature of Tivo and any DVR is being able to watch your chosen shows whenever you want. However, in any given conversation about Tivo’s features, I guarantee you that “You can skip ads!” is mentioned as a feature. Who’s to say that it won’t be considered a major browser feature only a few short years from now?

I have a few Google ads on my site; they don’t bring in much of anything. In two years of running ads I’ve brought in one check of just over $100, one time. So — yeah. Not quitting my day job to start blogging full time any time soon. Ad income pretty much has reimbursed what I’ve paid for various domains and hosting; I’m probably breaking even (if you don’t count that I’m not paid for the time I spend designing, redesigning, maintaining, and writing).

But I don’t expect visitors to click those ads. I don’t get bent out of shape at the idea that a good portion of my visitors probably have Adblock installed, as I do on some of my machines. That’s fine.

If you really think your content is that good, then charge for it. It’s been done, it’s being done, and it will probably be done more and more in the future. But don’t get all worked up because some one (a remarkably small percentage of the online population, I believe) is choosing not to view your ads. Blocking Firefox for that reason is tantamount to networks attempting to arrange it so their shows are not watchable on Tivo.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Danny O’Brien On Evil

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 24, 2007
in Asides and www
. Comments

I’m re-listening to an old speech by Danny O’Brien (EFF, NTK, To Evil!), from some O’Reilly conference or another. The speech springs from the “To Evil!” column he was writing at the time, is only about 15 minutes long, and is hilarious.

It is also still available on IT Conversations.

Flock? Flock!

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 23, 2007
in www
. 2 Comments

The unknown is considerably more interesting than the known. I think the practice of having semi-closed beta periods for applications serves not only as an extended period of testing, but also as a way to generate some buzz and anticipation on the part of those who are not yet in the beta group.

I was as interested as anyone when Flock was announced a couple years ago (wow… time flies.) I signed up for the beta. I checked the site regularly for more information. I probably blogged about the new browser, sight unseen. When I finally received a beta invite, I was decidedly underwhelmed; Flock was basically Firefox with a few custom-made extensions built in.

That being said, it’s two years later, Flock is still around, and I figured I’d give its latest version another chance.

What I love:

  • Automatic Import of Bookmarks. Great usability. Everything I want to have bookmarked came right over.
  • It’s Firefox. Yes, it’s Flock, but it’s built on Firefox, and in some ways that’s very nice; all the same keyboard shortcuts, most extensions work; I’d qualify that as a good thing.

What I hate:

  • The UI. Someone obviously spent a lot of time on it, and the graphics are very well done, but it looks like IE7 to me (albeit not as obnoxiously glossy), and I’ve never liked that UI either (to put it mildly — okay, I hate it fervently). Despite this being just about looks, the UI is how you use an application, and it does matter what it looks like. Some people may prefer the Flock theme, but for those who don’t, the problem is exacerbated by Flock’s lack of any other themes; they promise that themes will work “later in 2007″. Running out of time on that one.
  • Hate’s a strong word. I can’t find anything else to hate just yet.

Other thoughts:

  • The “My World” (about:myworld) page is an interesting idea, and sounds like a winner, but… It doesn’t seem necessary to integrate it into the browser. Aren’t there a half-dozen or more websites I can use to integrate this sort of information? The advantage to a website is that, once I’ve aggregated the services I use, I can share them (like FriendFeed — it’s not perfect, but a good example of this). about:myworld can never do that… I honestly don’t see the point.
  • Many of the other integrated features — the blog editor, for example — just don’t seem like features at all. Doesn’t a bookmark to my Wordpress admin page, and the password memorized in the password manager, accomplish the same thing?

I guess that’s enough with the 2-point bullet lists. What I’m seeing is more or less what I saw two years ago; a browser with a UI that I dislike that doesn’t give me any more “web 2.0″ functionality than Firefox once I’ve set it up with my favorite bookmarks and add-ons. Since Flock requires its own set up of all these various features, the fact that many of them are integrated really doesn’t save me any time. It just feels like I’m setting up Firefox over again, but clunkier and less conveniently.

I don’t mean to give a scathing review; other than the UI, there’s nothing I really hate. But there’s also nothing that makes me want to keep using it.

Let Me Delete My Account

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 20, 2007
in www
. 3 Comments

I sign up for a lot of beta web applications. A lot of beta web applications. Usually I use them only a few times and don’t go back. (As someone who would someday like to release web applications, this does give me pause… mental note, your web app MUST make a fantastic first impression).

Recently I got a couple automated messages from some of these reminding me that they existed, so I thought I’d go ahead and delete my account.

Guess what? Surprise, you can’t! There was no built in feature, in either, to delete or cancel your account.

Now, as a developer I can understand this; you’re excited about developing your application, and you’re hoping to get more and more users — not to have your current users abandon you. Even if it occurs to you to allow users to delete their profile, it’s not a feature that is likely to make the top of your list for any given iteration. A “Delete Profile” feature? No, first I need to add tagging and customized RSS feeds and tag clouds and a microblog….

Check that impulse. Add this feature. Add it first.

Why? Because then when I go in to delete my account, I’ll find the link to do so, and I’ll be happy. Then, should your application explode in popularity and I one day decide to give it another chance, my memories of it will be positive, rather than negative.

I first signed up on Facebook in early 2006. I didn’t use it much, and IIRC it was still open only to college students, it hadn’t yet opened up to The Great Unwashed. I don’t socialize much within college, so it just didn’t have a lot of value to me… so I canceled my account.

I went in, looked for the link to delete my profile, found it, and deleted. End of story. I did decide to give Facebook another chance when they opened it up to the world, making it seem a little more useful to me. I haven’t thought about that since, until today when I tried to delete two accounts in other applications, and found that there was no way to do so.

Let me delete my account.

Google Street View For Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 20, 2007
in Asides
. Comments

Cody Hanson spotted what is almost certainly one of the Google Street views fleet here in the Twin Cities.

Cool! I was hoping this would be done for the cities soon; now, if Google will just open a local office here. I’m sure I’d toss my hat in along with the likely several thousand others who’d apply. If my current employer is reading this, please ignore that last sentence. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Cool Tool: Hearos

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 20, 2007
in Asides
. 1 Comment

I know you can get professionally fitted earplugs, and I expect that those can’t be beat, but I’ve never wanted to get that expensive.

Hearos are awesome. I first heard of them through the other guitar player in a band I was in about 4 years ago. If you play in a band, habitually visit live shows, or go to anything else that is Really A Bit Too Loud, these are what you want. More comfortable than simple foam plugs, you can still hear what you want to hear (let’s assume you’re at a loud concert, playing or listening), without blasting your eardrums out before their time.

Again… this is not an ad, I’m not being paid, I just think they’re great.

If I keep doing posts like this, I’m going to have to think of a title other than “Cool Tool,” I think we should leave that to Kevin Kelly.

The Marble Of Doom

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 19, 2007
in Asides
. Comments

Lest we give anyone the impression that we think Mac OS X is “perfect” — well, of course it’s not perfect. (See All Software Sucks).

Witness the Marble Of Doom, the maliciously spinning testament to countless aggregate wasted hours. I’ve also heard it called the “Spinning Pizza Of Death,” but maybe that domain was taken.

On Minimalism In Website Design

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 19, 2007
in Design and www
. Comments

There’s a definite trend towards minimalism in web design. This is offset by a parallel trend towards bright, flashy, web design.

I like bright, flashy web design just fine, as long as it’s done well. There are a lot of great examples of this sort of design, but I’ll save that for another post.

I think there are quite a few compelling reasons for the attraction of minimalist web design, and I don’t think “I’m not a designer” is the main reason. It’s probably a common reason, and it’s better to go with a minimalist design that looks good than it is to go with a graphic design that looks bad. I don’t think “minimalist” should be equated with a lack of graphic design, however. A strong, primarily text-based, design is still a graphic design, as anyone who has studied typography, grid layouts, and/or publication design will attest. However, blogs like Subtraction and InformationArchitects are great examples that minimalist designs can also be stellar graphic designs.

There are some compelling reasons why minimalism in web design is more than just a way to avoid spending hours in Illustrator or Photoshop.

The first is the one I’ve already alluded to: minimalism in graphic design is still a graphic design. Now, as far as web design goes, there are a couple different extremes you could go towards: I’ve already mentioned Khoi Vinh’s excellent Subtraction design. It’s very calculated, well-planned, and well-executed. Other websites give the impression of having been barely styled at all. Dave Winer’s Scripting News would seem to fit well here, though he’s recently added some Ajax, and though he tends to favor many styles that look like HTML defaults, there’s obviously a lot of CSS going on there — it’s just a very different style of minimalism than Khoi Vinh’s. (I can’t think of any weblogs or sites that are left completely unstyled, thought I recall that Bryan Veloso left AvalonStar unstyled for awhile once when he was between theme-designs.)

The rest of the benefits flow from that first observation. I want to write that a minimal design will accentuate usability, but that’s not necessarily true. You could have a very minimalist design and still hide your navigation or RSS feed in the bottom right corner of a long page that I have to scroll down to find. You could hide your navigation links behind nice, modern-looking icons, but provide no text to tell me what the links point to. There are a lot of ways you could be minimalistic and still have a pretty un-user friendly web interface. However, I do think that choosing to do a minimalistic design makes it a little easier to notice and consider these things. If you’ve decided you’re only going to have a few links in your sidebar, you’ll probably consider which links you decide to put there. You’ll probably stop to think that the one(s) you want people to notice should go at or near the top. And so forth.

Thirdly, even though a minimalist design is still a graphic presentation, the design is played down to the point where it is (hopefully) nearly invisible. Hopefully, this will shift the focus to the content of your page, which may or may not be what you want.

As I write this, I’m aware (and hopefully you are as well) that a well-designed page that is heavier on graphic elements should ideally still have all these characteristics; it should be usable, should accentuate content over style, should be easy to read. Basically then, other than the fact that you need not be a Photoshop or Illustrator wizard, a minimalist design is just another one of many choices you could make. It’s a design style that says something, just like the current glossy “Web 2.0″ style says something, the chaotic clash of colors that is a typical myspace page says something, a clean, colorful graphic design says something… it’s just one choice among many. I think a good minimalist design takes just as much thought and planning as any other type, even if you go completely unstyled — you still have to measure the pros and cons of that, and decide in what order your elements should appear on the page.

Minimalism is not necessarily better, more readable, or more usable; it’s just a different design mode.

Cool Tool: Leatherman Micra

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 17, 2007
in Asides
. 1 Comment

leatherman micra

With apologies to Kevin Kelly for swiping the “Cool Tool” slogan… this thing is awesome. I’ve kept the micra in my pocket constantly for about a year and a half now. I use it several times a day, every day. Mostly the knife (opening boxes, etc.), occasionally the scissors. It even has passable flathead and phillips-head screwdrivers, they work great if it’s all you have.

I don’t know what I ever did without this thing; every time I’ve forgot it or misplaced it, I’ve always missed having it handy.

Find the Micra.

This is completely unsolicited, and is not an ad; I just think this tool is awesome.

Embedding YouTube Videos In A Fluid Design

Published
by
Phil Crissman
on October 17, 2007
in Asides
. Comments

So, I had embedded a YouTube video in a post the other day, then turned that post back to draft when I changed themes, since it seemed obvious that it would break the theme — this design being fluid, the left content column will shrink as you resize the browser to a smaller size.

I tested, and found that if you change the widths in the embedded video to “100%” and remove the height values… it seems to work. It will display the video at it’s “actual size” (which is a little smaller than YouTube’s default of 425 in this case) but it will also shrink it along with the left column if you keep making the browser window smaller. Kind of nifty.