9 Things I Love About the Las Vegas Sun Website
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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Newspaper Front Pages
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.
Is UserVoice New or Recycled?
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:
- Track user ideas as other users vote on them
- Provide official responses to comments
- Mark an idea as ‘planned'
- Push out new features that users want
- 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.
Facebook Applications Analysis – Part 4
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.
The Awesome Blip.tv Flash Video Player
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.
