Ok, maybe I'm a bad person who relies upon stereotypes too much, but one would think a site for geeks would actually have great features since geeks are so tech savvy.  Wrong.

While browsing through the magazine rack at Borders Books earlier this summer, I came across Geek Monthly with its cover girl, Tina Fey.  Either way, I read the article about her since I like her show 30 Rock and went home to check out the magazine's site.  I was expecting a great site that was graphically designed well with bells and whistles like easy to search sections, forums, great blogs, social media features, and great content.  I expected something like the beautiful site for Backpacker Magazine (since when did backpackers know so much about designing great websites?). However, as you can see in this image, like how the current cover boy (Rainn Wilson from NBC's The Office) is dressed, the site does not look pretty.

Either way, the Geek site has a rather distracting design, no clear navigation, seemingly no access to articles from past issues or from the current issue, no community features, etc.  It does have a blog, but not a great one.  You can also see an article from the current issue, but it pops up as a jpg…  What? 

So, I'm disappointed.  Were my expectations wrong in the first place?

In putting together the report we released last week, The Use of the Internet by 2008 Senate Campaigns, my co-workers took the time to identify the websites of everyone running for the Senate this year.  Since my co-workers already did the hard part in finding the sites, I figured I’d cruise through the list and pick out my most and least favorites from a design perspective.    Presented below are the best designed homepages of the group, in my opinion.   I’ll write up the worst later in the week. 

(5) Mark Warner (D-VA)

There is no shame in coming in 5^th place. My father said that to me after a disappointing 11^th place finish in the Pinewood Derby.

Although there is a hint of Obama-borrowing here, I liked this site for its generous use of white space and logical placement of content/actions. The splash page sign-up is of course a real slap in the face but at least the skip through link is not hidden. My eye goes directly from the (only mildly annoying) logo to the contribute option to the actions. Everything on this homepage is easy to instantly recognize and quick to find (and then dismiss in my case).

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Announced yesterday on the Facebook blog, the redesign of Facebook has finally arrived. After several delays to the new aesthetic, the developers have finally released the new platform to the masses. More AJAX, tab-centric, and a more versatile API… Here's a quick listing of some personal pros and cons with the new design.

Pros

1. Tabs! I am a sucker for tabs. They are easy to organize and keep content from becoming cluttered. My biggest complaint when the Facebook team released the API was that too many people's profiles were becoming littered with third-party applications. These apps were visually detracting, and had nothing to do with what I found Facebook to be most useful for (keeping in touch with acquaintences). With the new redesign, one can stick all their scrabble-playing-super-wall-poking ugliness on its own tab and I'll never have to go near it.
2. More intuitive photo platform. I didn't post a screenshot of my photos tab, but it is a far more intuitive way to access other users' photographs. It borrows heavily from the minimalistic UI of picasa, and now I don't have to go searching through a user's profile for a link to find their albums.
3. Better use of horizontal space. Facebook finally spread its wings a bit. The redesign makes a much better use of horizontal space, and avoids feeling clausterphobic by combining this new feature with the tabs, mentioned above. The wider limit also allows third-party developers much more freedom when it comes to mapping the UI of their applications, so I expect to see better things than graffiti and super wall.
4. Improved 'friends' module. With the redesign, the friends module was improved. Now you have a choice as to how many thumbnail pictures to display, as well as designating which ones (there were some third-party applications to have "favorite friends" displayed on the previous facebook design, does anybody know what they were called?) if you would rather permanently display your best friends.
5. Smart use of AJAX. The AJAX on the new design is both aesthetically pleasing and purpose-driven. The way I like it to be.

Cons

1. Advertisements in my face. I remember when Facebook had no ads. Then it had text-based ads. Later, they adopted vertical banners. Now, they've put those vertical banners front and center. With the decreased clutter on the pages (which is a good thing!), it leaves the advertisements to stick out like a sore thumb. With the previous design, I found I could largely ignore advertisements if I just pretended they were another annoying application.
2. More clicks. My preference for tabs aside, the prosecution points out that there is something to be said about having all "crucial" profile information contained on one page. When I need to know if the young lady in my rhetoric and composition class has awful taste in music or not, I have an additional click to consider. Multiply this by lots of young ladies and you're talking about a serious time investment.

Overall, I'm pleased with the new Facebook design. I think it's a step in the right direction, which is a personal first. This new implementation puts the criticisms of previous redesigns into perspective. I'm sure the previous flaws helped shape the success of this release. Anything to add?

Catch some pictures of the redesign after the break.

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Due to scalability problems, the micro-blogging platform Twitter has struggled mightily to stay up and running the last few months.  As a result of the problems, a lot of folks are threatening to abandon Twitter for the social aggregator service FriendFeed.

I personally won’t be abandoning Twitter for Friendfeed.  Here’s why:

(1) There is too much noise on FriendFeed.

I’m currently following around 160 people on Twitter.  Some of these people I know well in real life.  Some casually.  Some not at all.  I’m able to follow and learn from this large group of  people because all I see is what they type in their Twitter status bar periodically.  Sure, some people tell you what they had for breakfast.  But most people exert some level of editorial discipline on themselves, and only write when something at least semi-interesting happens.

They don’t tweet about every meal they have, just the really, really good ones.  They don’t share every item they come across on the web, just the interesting ones.  The result is a usually compelling stream of anecdotes that is updated throughout the day.

FriendFeed has no such editorial discipline.  In addition to receiving those few choice anecdotes each day about the people you follow, you also learn what they are listening too on Last.fm, what is in their Netflix queue and what they dugg on Digg, among other things.  I might be interested in knowing that stuff about my 10-20 closest friends, but certainly not about all 160 people I follow on Twitter.  It is just too much.

(2) I have no desire to recreate my Twitter network on FriendFeed.

I’ve been on Twitter for close to a year and a half now.  I’ve amassed a modest network of followers and, more importantly, have developed a good list of people I follow.  This happened organically over time and I have no desire to start over on FriendFeed.   I’m not Robert Scoble - I can’t just say I’m going over to FriendFeed and have everyone move with me.  I’m in the same boat as Patrick Ruffini, a fellow poli-tech blogger who wrote:

But the main reason I can’t brook switching to FriendFeed is the sunk cost of building up my Twitter network, and the fact that FriendFeed is still mostly for elite tech blogger groupies. I now have 898 followers on Twitter, and my posts still generate far more conversation on Twitter than they do on FriendFeed. That’s because most of my followers are interested in politics, and political users aren’t (yet) over on FriendFeed.

(3) For whatever reason I don’t like the FriendFeed user experience.

Tantek Celik wrote a great post a while back about how Twitter is successful due to its dead simple interface that minimizes keystrokes.  On the occasions when Twitter is working, it feels much less like a website than a utility that is part of you.  For me FriendFeed still feels very much like a website, and a slightly disorienting one at that.  It is just not the same.

In light of the ongoing UEFA Euro 2008 football (yes, I mean soccer) tournament – which I must say has been pretty average apart from the Turkey/Czech Republic thriller last weekend – yet another social networking site was launched. The niche? You guessed it, soccer. Or football, or futbol, or footy, whichever you’d like (we aim to please).  So what better time to launch than now? Perhaps the World Cup would be ideal, but I doubt that’s worth pushing the launch back two years. (more…)

Yesterday, the New York Times launched a beta version of Times People, a lightweight social networking feature that allows readers to connect around NYT content.  Currently, Times People can only be used as a plugin in Firefox (this will change soon) and functions as a social bookmarking tool similar to del.icio.us or Mento.  CNET’s The Social has a good overview of Times People, complete with a video interview with the folks at the Times that created the tool.  Mathew Ingram, Mashable Silicon Valley Insider and DigiDave all have good reviews up as well.

When I try out tools like this, my first instinct is to figure out if it is something I will be using on a regular basis.  With Times People, the answer is clearly no.  Although I visit nytimes.com a few times a week, I am not really actively engaged with the site.  I’ve never left a comment.  I’ve never explored the restaurant and theater reviews.  I don’t live in New York.  I basically drop in on the Times site to get the paper’s take on the “story of the day” or when someone links to the site.  In summary, I’m not the target audience for Times People.  The tool is clearly aimed at people who have a stronger relationship with the Times brand than I do.

I think Times People has the ability to grow into a very useful for people who do have that relationship.

Some have criticized the tool for being too limited in focus.  I think its modesty is actually its greatest strength.  Times People is trying to complement the way readers are already using the site, not change the behavior.  That’s smart.

Let me explain.

Sites for newspapers like USA Today have full bore social networks built right in.  Users can set up full profiles, upload pictures, maintain a blog, friend other users, etc.  They function like a mini version of MySpace or Facebook. It just feels like too much. There are many, many better platforms for maintaining blogs, sharing photos, etc.  Why would anyone want to do all of this stuff on the USA Today website?  I’m left thinking about the old cliche that the decision about what to leave out is just as important as what you leave in.

Times People recognizes that the New York Times brand is its content.  Instead of trying to shift activities like blogging and photo sharing to its website, the Times is adding social features that complement activities readers are already performing - leaving comments, reading stories and writing reviews.  The focused nature of the tool also allows it to evolve organically as the Times reviews how people are actually using it.  This is how the best websites always approach thing.

I have no idea whether Times People will be a success or not. But for experimental features like these, I think starting small and taking an iterative approach is always a good thing.

The Las Vegas Sun is known for having one of the best websites of any newspaper in the country. The reputation is warranted.

In my experience as a web developer, I’ve found many sites that do a few things well. A site might have a nice homepage and a few cool features, as an example. However, it is a very unusual to find sites that deliver consistent excellence through the whole experience. To take care of the details that are so important in delivering a great experience. The Las Vegas Sun website does that.

Following is a list of some of those details that make me really appreciate the Sun website, as a web developer.

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The Newseum website has an awesome feature that shows the up-to-date front pages of the print editions of 630 newspapers in 63 countries.  Check it out and kill an hour.

Fledging company UserVoice is attempting to provide focus groups to those companies that cannot afford focus groups.  The site's general idea is to moderate user ideas and complaints by means of formal comment boxes, polls, and ranking systems.  The three-person ‘Team UserVoice' is quoted as saying, "UserVoice adds structure to feedback and reduces the overhead of an honest dialog with our users - It creates a market around good ideas so we get more quality than quantity."

The interface is currently in its public beta stage, allowing (free of charge) access to its platform.  Those who sign up can create a page for their company, product, project, or even blog.  UserVoice just recently released the ability to add custom CSS to a company's page as well as c-name inclusion for a completely transparent user experience.  This means that the customer never perceives that they are on another site.  The idea is to put the UserVoice widget on the company's official site and allow users to comment on their company or specific products.  The company can then do several things:

1. Track user ideas as other users vote on them
2. Provide official responses to comments
3. Mark an idea as ‘planned'
4. Push out new features that users want
5. Collect fan mail

The new site has gained a lot of attention, but I question whether this new company can do things that are not already being done.  Sites like FeVote, Get Satisfaction, and Sales Force are already doing many of the things with which UserVoice claims to be able to help.  The only unique feature that I can discern is that UserVoice allows companies to create a specific page for themselves.  The effort seems to be made in keeping the comments more regulated and organized than the previously mentioned sites, but will that cause users to be less free with their suggestions and comments?  I applaud the company for creating a way for small to medium-sized businesses to have their own ‘focus groups' but it is going to be a couple of months before we will be able to decide if UserVoice shouts or gets silenced.

This is the final part of my four-part analysis of Facebook applications.  (For the preceding part, click here.)  In this section, I will attempt to make some conclusions and predictions from all of the data that I collected.  For a complete list of every single one of the Facebook pages that I analyzed, check at the bottom of the page for an Excel spreadsheet link.  The names of the users have been deleted, but originally I used them to avoid accidental repetition during my research.

One of the most notable aspects when you take a look at the graphs (a PDF of all the graphs from the previous posts is included at the bottom of the post) is that not a single user had recently deleted an application.  After looking at many users, I decided to check a few extended histories, but alas, I still found no deletions.  Personally, I have deleted applications in the past, so I am aware that it happens.  My theory is that users have begun to recognize when they want to add an application or not, and as such, are becoming more ‘picky' when they are presented with a new one.  This would explain why there are still several additions present within the data.  With so many applications now available, newer ones have to be worthwhile in order to garner interest from users.  This is still possible, as Bumper Sticker proves, being a fairly recent application itself and already in the Top Ten.

Speaking of the Top Ten, my inner predictions were accurate.  According to Adonomics.com, approximately 5%-10% of users have each of the individual applications installed, so if I am ranking ten of them, my statistics professor from college would be thrilled to know that I realized about half of the total users would have at least one of them.

It is also interesting to note that users that only have 1 to 2 applications typically had one of the Top Ten as that lone application.  This makes perfect sense, since many of these are Hug Applications.  Any user wanting to receive these pokes and hugs from other users must have the application installed; so many users probably have it simply to receive and not to give.  It's total Christmas Stocking Syndrome.

I was pleased to find that a clear majority of users (of those who actually had applications) have 5 or less applications in their profiles.  When I began this research study, I had a gut feeling that I would find more 9+ entries than any other kind of profile.  Perhaps it is that those profiles simply stand out more.  In my personal opinion, given that some of the user-created applications are fun, and dare I say, ‘useful,' it is perfectly reasonable to have five or fewer.

I was also not surprised to find that the majority of typical usage was for Extended Use.  Some of the notable Extended Use applications–other than the ones already explicitly mentioned in the study–were ones that allowed users to post bigger pictures and give extra information about themselves.  It's somewhat of an old Internet cliché: people do not want to be limited in anything that they are doing, no matter what it is.  I was a tad surprised that Online Games were the least used category, but then again, users of Facebook can find free online games in other avenues.  Why use Facebook when there are better games out there?

As I was researching prior to the study, I saw many web postings comparing Facebook to its main rival, MySpace.  One of the main advantages to Facebook, according to those writings, was that it was not cluttered like MySpace profiles.  I find it ironic that people add applications when this is the popular opinion.  Many of the applications take up much space on a profile, adding a cluttered feeling to the overall page.  Forget Christmas Stocking Syndrome, Facebook users suffer from wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Excel Spreadsheet of Facebook Data Collected

All Pie Charts PDF

I have written a few times about the various options available for the hosting of videos online via third party services. If I have a choice in the matter, I use Blip.tv for all the reasons you’d expect: interface is easy to use, they allow the posting of video in higher quality than most providers, they’ve help when I’ve had questions, it works, etc. It is the best third-party option I have found, as a web developer.

But I think my favorite thing about Blip.tv is their Flash video player. It is awesome for a couple of reasons:

(1) You can remove all Blip.tv branding from the video player and replace with your own site name or URL, meaning you don’t have to turn your website into an advertisement for your video provider if you don’t want to.

(2) You can turn off any options in the player you want to. So if I can turn on/off options like embed code, autoplay, view in full screen, ads for other videos on Blip.tv, etc.

(3) You can customize the colors of the Blip.tv player so that it matches your site’s colors perfectly. This allows for designers to really seamlessly integrate video into the sites they build.

(4) The player is just really good looking.

Basically, the Flash player is super flexible and gives you the ability to do whatever you need to with it to make it fit into your site.

Below are some examples of the Blip.tv player being seamlessly integrated into various sites. Please click on the images to view the player on the actual sites.

WallStrip

This is basicallly what the player looks like by default.

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The Bivings Report is built in Wordpress, which comes with a robust commenting system out of the box. Due to this, I’ve very rarely looked at third party commenting systems like Haloscan. I haven’t really had a comment problem so there was no need to experiment with these third party tools.

But I recently set up a personal blog on Tumblr, which does not have commenting built in due to its reliance on reblogging instead (which is cool). I wanted people to be able to comment on my blog so I spent the ten minutes it takes to integrate Tumblr with the third-party tool Disqus. (Check out Fred Wilson (A VC) or Dave Winer’s blog for good examples of the tool in action).

Here is a quick breakdown of what I see as the pros and cons of Disqus after playing with it for a few months: (more…)

Social networking giant Facebook is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to let users download thousand of clips from the filmmaker’s archives.

The VooZoo application, which launched Monday, was developed by FanRocket. The idea is to let individuals re-live some of their favorite scenes and moments from any Paramount film. Clips last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.

Viacom, Paramount Pictures’ parent company, plans to market DVDs through the new tool.

Though FanRocket aims to garner a few hundred thousand users within the first few months, Paramount hasn’t set any revenue goals to its end.

The application features a double-pane window on top – the left side shows the clips you’ve added yourself. On the right, you’ll find a display of your history, with ‘Featured VooHoos,’ or featured clips, just underneath.

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Version 6 of the open source Content Management System, Drupal, was released last week. We are really excited about this release, as we specialize in Drupal and have been playing with the beta releases of this version for many months now. Version 6 represents a significant step forward for Drupal. You can see a breakdown of all the new features here.

Since The Bivings Group builds a lot of websites that feature multiple languages, we are particularly excited by advances in Drupal’s language support. In previous versions of Drupal, to run websites in multiple languages you pretty much had to hack into the Drupal code and make it work using duct tape. It wasn’t pretty. Drupal 6 is the first release to natively handle multiple languages. The new release allows for:

• On the fly creation of multiple versions of the site in different language, including custom URLs.
• The ability for site visitors to set language preferences themselves, so they can control what language the site is in when visiting.
• Support for both left to right and right to left languages out of the box.
• Most importantly, the ability to manage pieces of content in multiple languages.

This last point is particularly important. Below is a quick breakdown of how this works with screenshots taking from a video demo by birdmanx35.

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uTest is preparing to launch its pilot program for community-based software testing. Tester hopefuls can sign up now to be included in the first round of application testing. Tester profiles will include information on the tester’s education, experience, specialization, and available hardware.

Software vendors can use these criteria to hand-pick testers or release their product for the community to review. Companies pay only for unique, verified bugs which begs the question of how testers will avoid working out a bug only to find another tester has beat them to the report. Vendors who participate in the pilot will have those projects tested at 75% off uTest’s standard rates.

uTest has been putting its money where its mouth is by paying testers who report bugs in its own registration process. I made it halfway through the sign-up only to find that I could not complete the forms. Sadly, someone has already submitted the bug so I neither completed registration nor got paid for finding the error.

A social networking component of the system allows testers to rate each other’s performance, influencing the price-per-bug that testers can command and effectively allowing competitors to determine each other’s value.

This seems like a pretty clever application of crowd-sourcing, but the company’s site leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. How will vendors verify the resumés provided by the network of testers? Will testers spend valuable time testing applications only to find that others have already claimed the prize? How will honesty in the performance rating system be guaranteed? How do I finish my registration so that I can get paid?

Read more on uTest’s blog.