May 2006 Archives
May 31, 2006
Looking at Edgeio
Edgeio has been much touted as a neat web 2.0 application that takes listings a step ahead of the currently prevalent eBay model. I wanted to have a look at how it might have improved on that very successful model. I was very impressed with one little widget during the sign-up process. The first form element you have to fill in is your username, and then you gradually go down to set a password and give your email address. Even...
May 30, 2006
Ineffective Flickr sex spam?
One of the risks with social networking sites is that they can be susceptible to both human and robot generated spam. I was on the receiving end of what I think was a rather odd attempt at sex spam on the Flickr site the other day. Last week I was added as a contact by someone I didn't know, who already had 109 other contacts. Almost exclusively all of them were Flickr members who specialised in erotic or softcore content...
May 29, 2006
Looking at the new BBC search - part four
I've been taking a look at the new version of BBC Search which was launched earlier this month. In the news story accompanying the redesign my friend and ex-colleague Daniel Mermelstein is quoted as saying "People expect a certain way of displaying the results and for data to follow that convention. It's a much more standard search interface". The visual appearance of the results is certainly simpler and more conventional than it used to be. I do have some reservations...
May 26, 2006
Looking at the new BBC search - part three
I've been taking a look at the new version of BBC Search which was launched earlier this month. One thing that the design has done is to focus the search interaction even more tightly onto the one search box by removing the global search box from the toolbar at the top of the page. It looks slightly odd to me, but then I've spent nearly five years staring at the toolbar on the top of the pages of bbc.co.uk, so...
May 25, 2006
Looking at the new BBC search - part two
I've been taking a look at the new version of BBC Search which was launched earlier this month. One of the real focuses of the project looks to have been the greater integration of audio and video assets into the results. For years the BBC was essentially just publishing a text-plus-pictures information magazine on the web - now it really seems to have woken up to the fact that increased broadband take-up in the UK can help it push its...
May 23, 2006
Looking at the new BBC search
Earlier this month the BBC did a long overdue revamp of the site's search facilities. Of all the services I worked on at the BBC, search is the one I spent the most time on, and the one I am most curious about the continued re-development of. Before I left the BBC I had seen some concept work for the new design, but when it launched on May 11th it was as much of a surprise to me as it...
May 22, 2006
Reboot:bbc.co.uk - the designs so far - part two
I've been looking through some of the designs in the gallery of the BBC's reboot:bbc.co.uk homepage competition, where I have been contributing to the blog. I wasn't sure about the intended use of frames in h2g2bob by David Batley, but I liked the pictoral icons helping people to understand the classification. I was intrigued by the "freak penguin accident" in the news on that page, but I wondered how 2 people could get injured in a regular penguin accident? Perhaps...
May 19, 2006
Reboot:bbc.co.uk - the designs so far
Ever since I began using bbc.co.uk I have always thought it looked as if someone had discovered FrontPage and decided to use tables to make a site, filling the cells with nasty colours. Just one of the frank bits of feedback the BBC's reboot:bbc.co.uk competition has received. I have been contributing to the blog, and the competition closes next week. So far there have been around fifty entries put on show in the gallery. The standard has been quite varied,...
May 18, 2006
Trying out T3h Blox0r - part two
I've been testing online RSS aggregators, to see if any of the services out there are able to tempt me away from Bloglines. Yesterday I started looking at T3h Blox0r, and have so far found it a bit short of my requirements - notably it doesn't extract data from the RSS, but displays the original site in a small frame, regardless of whether it can shrink to less than 500px wide or not. One thing that I found strange was...
May 17, 2006
Trying out T3h Blox0r - "The best online aggregator ever!" - allegedly
I've been testing online RSS aggregators, to see if any of the services out there are able to tempt me away from Bloglines. So far I have had a look at FeedLounge, and Rojo and Google Reader. Next up is T3h Blox0r. T3h Blox0r is a web-based aggregator with a 5tup|d1y spelt name for the Firefox browser. On the plus side T3h Blox0r is open-source - so at least I could potentially get in and fiddle with the bits I...
May 16, 2006
Who is paying for this "free" BBC content after all?
Yesterday back in the UK the shadow chancellor George Osborne fell back on one of the Conservative party's traditional sabre-rattling topics - that of curbing the BBC's website. At the time of writing, the Conservatives website didn't carry the full text of the speech, only a press release with snippets, so I can only assume there is a bit missing from this sentence: we should consider establishing a clear set of rules about what areas the BBC should focus on,...
May 15, 2006
Google.co.uk in Greek
Now that I have moved outside the UK I have more of an interest than I used to in the successful localisation of products. I came across a strange one I wasn't expecting the other day. I am doing some research on search in the UK, so have been specifically requesting google.co.uk. However, because I was in an internet cafe using a Greek installation of Firefox I got this page - Google.co.uk in Greek. Firstly I was surprised that there...
May 13, 2006
Localisation comes to coComment
Well, coComment are not letting the grass grow under their feet. When I wrote about the service a few days back, I was told that localisation was in the pipeline, and in the last couple of days they have launched German, French and Spanish localisations of the service. Following the advice left by one of the coComment team in my comments, I started using the Firefox extension - which works really well and overcomes my inability to remember to click...
May 12, 2006
Testing Google Reader - part two
I've been auditioning online RSS readers as potential replacements for Bloglines. Yesterday I started taking a look at Google Reader, and have been distinctly unimpressed so far. I liked the concept of being able to use search to find types of content that I might want to subscribe to, but I found in practice it was lacking some finesse, and actually became quite frustrating. For example, searching for RSS content about Doctor Who bought up the expected feeds from Outpost...
May 11, 2006
Testing Google Reader
I've been testing online RSS aggregators, to see if any of the services out there are able to tempt me away from Bloglines. So far I have had a look at FeedLounge, and Rojo. Next on my radar is the Google Reader. Technically it still claims to be a beta service, but then, so do products like Google News and Google Mail which have been "in beta" for some considerable time. When I first logged into the service using my...
May 10, 2006
The BBC's Glass Wall is transparent at last
One of the biggest positives to come out of the BBC's reboot:bbc.co.uk competition so far is buried in eyedropper's "A brief history of bbc.co.uk" post. Finally the BBC has linked to a copy of "The Glass Wall" PDF available for download. It describes the process of redesigning the BBC homepage in 2002, and caused a right uproar when it originally "leaked" onto the interweb....
May 9, 2006
coComment - a solution to a problem I didn't know I had? - part two
Yesterday I started looking at a public beta of a system called coComment, which seems to be a solution to a problem that I wasn't aware I had - that I can't currently follow the response to any comments I have left around the web without clicking back on all of the sites. From an architecture point of view they seem to have a nice balance in the system. Although they need a central architecture to maintain the "your conversations"...
May 8, 2006
coComment - a solution to a problem I didn't know I had?
I've been taking an interested look at coComment over the past few weeks. It seems like a reasonably neat solution to a problem that I wasn't aware I had - namely that unless I make the effort I can't follow the response to any comments I have left around the web. It was launched as a beta in February of this year - and speaking to one of the team it seems it took them around five months to get...
May 5, 2006
Losing the Firefox Searchbar
Until a few days ago I you'd asked me why I preferred to use the Firefox browser, I would have given a couple of answers - tabbed browsing, good range of extensions and handy bookmarklets, tabbed browsing, the ability to tweak it to browse faster, and did I mention tabbed browsing? One thing I'm sure I wouldn't have mentioned was the little search box up in the top right-hand corner. I know it is there, after all Yahoo! recently reminded...
May 4, 2006
My space on BBC.co.uk
So after a week some of the dust has settled following the BBC's Creative Futures announcements. A lot of the coverage in the mainstream 'new media' media has focussed on the BBC's apparent aim to "creating a public service version of MySpace.com". My friend Kim has already pointed out the huge gap between what was actually said by the BBC, and what was reported. Whether aiming to replicate MySpace or not - and for what my opinion is worth the...
May 3, 2006
Exploring Rojo - part three
I've been auditioning online RSS readers as potential replacements for Bloglines. In part one of my exploration of Rojo I looked at getting feeds in and out of the system, and in part two I looked at the feed-reading experience itself. This final part will mostly concentrate on the tagging and topic aggregation features of the site. One of Rojo's boasts is that because of the 'Mojo' system, it is able to aggregate user reading behaviour to produce categorised lists...
May 2, 2006
Exploring Rojo - part two
I've been auditioning online RSS readers as potential replacements for Bloglines. In part one of my exploration of Rojo I looked at how to get feeds in and out of the system, and how to get rid of what I felt was an excessive number of feeds that the wizard approach had pre-populated my account with. The main reading screen displays your unread items in one stream of entries, sorted either "by date" or "by relevance". Whilst I like the...
May 1, 2006
Exploring Rojo
I've been using Bloglines as my web-based RSS aggregator of choice for some time. However, coming back to working with an aggregator on a day-to-day basis after having been travelling for four months, I got a little bit of wanderlust, and wondered what else was out there. To that end I have been trying out some of the alternatives. Last week I wrote about my experience of taking the FeedLounge 24 hour tour. The next web-based aggregator I looked at...