EuroIA linklog special: "Implementing 'Identity' on Guardian.co.uk"
by Martin Belam, 24 September 2010
A special edition of the linklog today. If you were at EuroIA and saw my presentation "Implementing 'Identity' on Guardian.co.uk", then here is a list of links to things I mentioned in the talk. If you weren't there, then this is a taster of what you can expect to see discussed when I publish it.
- The Guardian.co.uk brand - information about The Guardian's website
- An ABC of R2: D is for domain driven design - a blogpost from Nik Silver on how our CMS was based in domain driven design
- The Guardian iPhone application
- paidContent: UK Times' Traffic Has Dropped, But Nobody's Gaining - an illustration that even registration acts as a barrier to entry for news sites, let alone payment
- Caitlin Moran at The Times - a glimpse behind the paywall shows the columnist of the year struggling to generate reader comments on her online columns, despite being very active and entertaining in a more open sphere like Twitter as @caitlinmoran
- Prezi - a flash based presentation tool that I have dabbled with
- Silverback - guerilla usability testing software from Clearleft
- Guardian MPs expenses crowdsourcing exercise - with 'lazy' registration on The Guardian site
- The Huffduffer sign-up page asks the user to fill in the blanks in a sentence rather than the usual form
- David Pereira's sketch wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle on Graffletopia
- Lanyrd - social conference tool that uses Twitter accounts
- Drawar - a design community site which insists on social registration, and appears to be throwing everybody's content away as part of a software upgrade
- Guardian and Observer subscriber - this print subscription product means we have an offline as well as online relationship with our users
- Compromising Twitter's OAuth security system by Ryan Paul on Ars Technica
- User Interface - design Q&A section of Stack Exchange
- currybetdotnet: Whitehaven shootings illustrate the Facebook 'Like' problem for news - a blog post about why Facebook's buttons should not be deployed universally across news sites
- CP Scott: "Comment is free, but facts are sacred" - an essay on journalism from 1921 that still shapes The Guardian's values today
- Facebook Graph API documentation - gives you an idea of the scope of personal data that is available to application and website developers
- Dark Patterns - Naming and shaming sites that use black hat, anti-usability design patterns by Harry Brignull
- Dark Patterns: Friend Spam - a particular 'dark pattern' that reduces trust in using social media sites for sign-in
- Identengine - Javascript library for aggregating personal data from the web
- "Re-using data people have left around the web" - Glenn Jones at London IA - a presentation by Glenn Jones about Identengine
- Webfinger - a project to make email addresses on the web work like 'finger' used to on UNIX
- Rapleaf - a service which allows a user to see how much information can be aggregated about them
- currybetdotnet: "Real name" comments on news websites - the up and the downside - my blog post about why I think insisting on "Real names" and verifiable social media accounts as the only way to leave comments is the wrong approach for news sites
My inspiration for doing so much sketching has come from meeting and seeing the following people give presentations on the topic:
- UX London redux video: Frances Eida on sketching
- "Visual note-taking": Eva-Lotta Lamm at London IA
- Anna Lena Schiller on how to start visual note making
This is a video of Frances talking at one of our London IA events:
I used the following Creative Commons licensed image in the presentation:
I like the article regarding paid content causing many people to not visit the site. I used to love reading The Times Online, but when they made it available through purchase only, I stopped going. Because some days or months I might visit a ton, then others I won't at all and it's a waste of money. On the other hand, I also believe that news should be paid for. It's a tough one, but I think in the end if ALL the papers do it, then things will return to how they always were which is people paying for their news.
Why, if so many other websites (including big ones such as facebook) can achieve funding through advertising, can newspapers not be funded using this same approach?
Hi Lyndsey, not many other big websites, including Facebook, also have the expense of a massive print operation and distribution system. Print advertising revenue used to offset the huge cost of physical production, but that has been in a steep decline over the last couple of years. That is what is really making the problem for the newspaper business model at the moment.
@Sarrah Harris – I completely disagree with you. News is one thing that should definitely be free. If news are paid for there is a possibility to make money of it and you could see couple of capitalist owning everything. Then you have to go through them to get your news and they can choose what to print and what not to print. I am from Italy and we have that problem with Berlusconi.
I completely agree with the opinion that news should be free. Because if we are to pay for so basic a need as news of the world, we better shut ourselves up in a room and sit. But then, of course, quality news does have a price, because journalists who go to gather news sometimes risk their lives too, so maybe it is worth a price, a reasonable one, though. And I loved the Huffduffer sign-up page. It's such a fresh approach, I wonder if any other website has one like this. Thanks for letting me know!
I would rather pay more for a newspaper on the days i want one (there is still something nice about sitting on a sunday with a coffee and a paper) to cover the print costs, but I see this as a luxury. I see day to day news as something that I expect to be able to get for free, assuming I access it online.
I appreciate this solution isn't great for people who don't have internet access. Interestingly, I'm starting to use the news feeds of twitter and facebook updates, particularly for instant news when I'm aware something is happening but there is a delay in it getting onto the newspaper sites.