Geeky: September 2007 Archives
The site has been down for reasons unknown to me, and I'm quite sure they're related to the host. Fortunately, the host doesn't usually fail - their track record isn't perfect, but it's close enough for me - so I'll cut 'em a little slack. There's only been a couple of situations where Dreamhost didn't resolve downtime within reasonable periods of time. This wasn't one of them. But it was long enough for me to notice. Pah.
Second on the list in this most recent comedy of errors was the magic triple-entries debacle. For some reason, MT4 decided to post three copies of my last entry. Now, I can understand that MT4 recognized my spectacular writing and decided that such a valuable entry as my eulogy to Savvydata should be printed three times (for effect), but I have much better things to say (and what's it gonna do then, huh? Put 12 copies of it?) No, sir, I'm thinking that this is an error that needs to be rectified, snap quick. Unfortunately (I'm not sure for whom, but unfortunately for someone) I'm not sure the error is actually in MT4 or if it's human error. Because I'm perfect in every way, I'm going to assume it's an issue with MT4 and that the programmers at Six Apart have simply made a mistake. Fortunately, my perfection has given me the skills to: 1. Pay the bills and 2. Fix the issue. So no more triple entries.
Finally, there's geekologie. Here's a few links that should keep you occupied and interested, if not laughing out loud:
Han Solo gets replaced in carbonite.
The most incredible Motorola phone, ever! (and I would know, I work at Moto.)
And finally, this is a pretty darned sweet online toy store. It reminds me of Tate's... only with more crap, and they actually sell stuff online, which Tate's doesn't. For some reason.
Anyway, tonight I'm going to watch Sunshine. Heard it's pretty badassed. Can't wait.
Second on the list in this most recent comedy of errors was the magic triple-entries debacle. For some reason, MT4 decided to post three copies of my last entry. Now, I can understand that MT4 recognized my spectacular writing and decided that such a valuable entry as my eulogy to Savvydata should be printed three times (for effect), but I have much better things to say (and what's it gonna do then, huh? Put 12 copies of it?) No, sir, I'm thinking that this is an error that needs to be rectified, snap quick. Unfortunately (I'm not sure for whom, but unfortunately for someone) I'm not sure the error is actually in MT4 or if it's human error. Because I'm perfect in every way, I'm going to assume it's an issue with MT4 and that the programmers at Six Apart have simply made a mistake. Fortunately, my perfection has given me the skills to: 1. Pay the bills and 2. Fix the issue. So no more triple entries.
Finally, there's geekologie. Here's a few links that should keep you occupied and interested, if not laughing out loud:
Han Solo gets replaced in carbonite.
The most incredible Motorola phone, ever! (and I would know, I work at Moto.)
And finally, this is a pretty darned sweet online toy store. It reminds me of Tate's... only with more crap, and they actually sell stuff online, which Tate's doesn't. For some reason.
Anyway, tonight I'm going to watch Sunshine. Heard it's pretty badassed. Can't wait.
Many moons ago, I was Creative Director for a small Coral Springs (that's in Florida) company that created multimedia (they referred to it as 'new media' there) presentations for a variety of clients. They occasionally did some software development too, although their interface design was horrendous at best. The multimedia presentations aren't any great shakes by modern standards, but back in those days they were pretty swanky.
Anyway, one such client was Savvydata, a security firm that specialized in digital rights management and network monitoring. They had a flagship product called RedAlert that automated a lot of these monitoring services, all pretty cool stuff, and they wanted a multimedia presentation/informational brochure for it. Their fearless leader, one Mike Nevins, was a huge Star Trek fan, however, and he had a vision for his multimedia presentation that included the LCARS interface. For those of you that don't know (and I'm sure there's plenty of you), LCARS is the style of interface used on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Now, just for the record, LCARS is not a good interface design. But, being the awesome Creative Director that I am, I did the research and found lots of resources that actually standardized the LCARS style. Amazed at how nerdy people can be (there were actually discussions raging about the accuracy of the interface standard, based on this episode or that), I applied this to the presentation/brochure. Between that, countless hours of storyboarding and putting together a whole situation for the presentation aspect of it, using Bryce to model some characters to do sneaky stuff, and wrapping the whole thing by the deadline (100 hour work weeks, anyone?), this was a pretty memorable project. And the result wasn't half bad.
Many, many years later I was putzing through my portfolio (don't ask me how to putz... if you don't know, you probably shouldn't know), when I remembered the Savvydata project. I started digging around to see if I could find the Savvydata site, and wouldn't you know it, National Auction has the following listing:
Anyway, one such client was Savvydata, a security firm that specialized in digital rights management and network monitoring. They had a flagship product called RedAlert that automated a lot of these monitoring services, all pretty cool stuff, and they wanted a multimedia presentation/informational brochure for it. Their fearless leader, one Mike Nevins, was a huge Star Trek fan, however, and he had a vision for his multimedia presentation that included the LCARS interface. For those of you that don't know (and I'm sure there's plenty of you), LCARS is the style of interface used on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Now, just for the record, LCARS is not a good interface design. But, being the awesome Creative Director that I am, I did the research and found lots of resources that actually standardized the LCARS style. Amazed at how nerdy people can be (there were actually discussions raging about the accuracy of the interface standard, based on this episode or that), I applied this to the presentation/brochure. Between that, countless hours of storyboarding and putting together a whole situation for the presentation aspect of it, using Bryce to model some characters to do sneaky stuff, and wrapping the whole thing by the deadline (100 hour work weeks, anyone?), this was a pretty memorable project. And the result wasn't half bad.
Many, many years later I was putzing through my portfolio (don't ask me how to putz... if you don't know, you probably shouldn't know), when I remembered the Savvydata project. I started digging around to see if I could find the Savvydata site, and wouldn't you know it, National Auction has the following listing:
This was back in 2004, so well over 3 years ago. A quick search on LinkedIn revealed that the company may still be alive and kicking (or at least, Mike Nevins is...) albeit in West Palm Beach. Oh well, an interesting little research project that ended in a useless little anecdote, and just serves to illustrate how a company can seem to be doing pretty well (the research unearthed many interesting developments in the life of Savvydata) and then suddenly just disappear.Bankruptcy Auction
In Re: Savvydata, Inc.
Auction Conducted in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
While I'm all about standardization (of pretty much everything), I'm not all about just anybody standardizing things. This is especially true when the standardizing body has a track record of terrible standards. Microsoft is a perfect example of this. Thus, the idea of Microsoft attempting to shove another standard down my throat doesn't exactly appeal to me.
Microsoft has been trying to push its own XML standard for the last two versions of MS Office. Thing is, it's a horrifically bad standard - so bad, in fact, that even Microsoft doesn't abide by it! I'm not going to get into the details... there's a whole website dedicated to that, including a place where you can petition to have this standard denied. Go sign the petition. Seriously, it's for a better tomorrow, and it won't take but 10 seconds to do.
No OOXML is The Way Forward. Apparently there's already a standard in place (ODF), which is supported (and used) by such amazing projects as OpenOffice and Google Spreadsheet (both of which are, by the way, worthy alternatives to MS Office.) That being said, why have a second standard, much less one that Micro$oft controls? Exactly. Sign the petition.
Microsoft has been trying to push its own XML standard for the last two versions of MS Office. Thing is, it's a horrifically bad standard - so bad, in fact, that even Microsoft doesn't abide by it! I'm not going to get into the details... there's a whole website dedicated to that, including a place where you can petition to have this standard denied. Go sign the petition. Seriously, it's for a better tomorrow, and it won't take but 10 seconds to do.
No OOXML is The Way Forward. Apparently there's already a standard in place (ODF), which is supported (and used) by such amazing projects as OpenOffice and Google Spreadsheet (both of which are, by the way, worthy alternatives to MS Office.) That being said, why have a second standard, much less one that Micro$oft controls? Exactly. Sign the petition.
NASA is apparently looking for a new tag-line/slogan with which to woo Americans back into loving them. In case you didn't already know it (and I sure didn't) their current one is: "Explore, Discover, Understand." Right, exactly, it's lameness. However, you are talking about a 50-year-old institution of science and exploration - stuffy retro slogans fit in with their oddly shaped 70's architecture. Anyway, NASA is taking submissions now from the populace at large and I can only imagine how much money it's costing taxpayers to have NASA administrative staff sift through what I can only imagine to be hundreds of thousands of submissions to pull out what they will arbitrarily consider 'the best', and then process those into a short-list that will be decided on in the next 15 years.
Phew. It's not that I think NASA is a colossal waste of time and money - on the contrary, I think it's very important to study space and all that. Plus I really think there's something fascinating about exploring The Great Unknown. More power to 'em.
The first idea that popped into my head was "All your space are belong to U.S.". Apparently it was also the first thought in several other people's minds, but there's a whole list of very, very amusing slogans. They'll never be used - or even get past the initial screen - but man, some of them are seriously funny. Take a look. You can vote on people's witticisms. Heck, submit an entry, just for giggles. You never know... "NASA: The Final Frontier" might actually become their new slogan. Oooh, or maybe "NASA: Because apes can't fly on their own." Warning, though: there's a few tasteless ones in there, so those of you with delicate sensibilities should probably skip this one and go back to watching The Lifestyle Channel.
Phew. It's not that I think NASA is a colossal waste of time and money - on the contrary, I think it's very important to study space and all that. Plus I really think there's something fascinating about exploring The Great Unknown. More power to 'em.
The first idea that popped into my head was "All your space are belong to U.S.". Apparently it was also the first thought in several other people's minds, but there's a whole list of very, very amusing slogans. They'll never be used - or even get past the initial screen - but man, some of them are seriously funny. Take a look. You can vote on people's witticisms. Heck, submit an entry, just for giggles. You never know... "NASA: The Final Frontier" might actually become their new slogan. Oooh, or maybe "NASA: Because apes can't fly on their own." Warning, though: there's a few tasteless ones in there, so those of you with delicate sensibilities should probably skip this one and go back to watching The Lifestyle Channel.
That's not a totally accurate statement. OpenID support was already installed - it's a part of MT4's whole 'login framwork'. What I went ahead and installed was support for AIM and Wordpress in the OpenID framework. This means that all of you out there that haven't commented because of the whole "oh, I have to register, that sucks, I don't wanna, it's boring" thing can now use your AOL/AIM username and password, or your Wordpress username and password to log in and leave me tasty comments.
I recently had to make the commenting a little more complicated simply because I was getting 40 comments a day. All spam. I don't even post that often. At first I was excited - getting email notifications about 40 comments in a day is pretty cool. Then I realized that 30 of those comments were advertising Viagra, and the remaining 10 were Cialis. Every day somebody's peddling some random ED medication on blogs everywhere.
This is magic stuff, no doubt about it, but I don't want it all over my site. So, I had to turn on high-powered authentication and registration and things with molecular structures. Fortunately, this OpenID framework makes it much, much simpler for people to use their own, usual u/p combinations. And so, voila! Hope it helps.
I recently had to make the commenting a little more complicated simply because I was getting 40 comments a day. All spam. I don't even post that often. At first I was excited - getting email notifications about 40 comments in a day is pretty cool. Then I realized that 30 of those comments were advertising Viagra, and the remaining 10 were Cialis. Every day somebody's peddling some random ED medication on blogs everywhere.
This is magic stuff, no doubt about it, but I don't want it all over my site. So, I had to turn on high-powered authentication and registration and things with molecular structures. Fortunately, this OpenID framework makes it much, much simpler for people to use their own, usual u/p combinations. And so, voila! Hope it helps.
So after my two-million-mile long rant about Flash and usability and websites, I flitted (yes, flitted) around a few of the Big Corporate sites that I know use Flash (because it's young, it's hip, and it's like crack to the marketing people.)
Nike updated their site, but it's 100% Flash based now. Holy crap that's a gamble, but in the case of what amounts to a glorified brochureware site, I suppose that's not such a big deal. Besides, their marketing has reach that goes way beyond their website, they have many, many websites, and their main point of sale isn't (by any stretch of the imagination) their website. The old Nike site, which I was hoping to find, was a horrendous mess of a nightmare, all Flash (and badly done Flash), with navigation and usability issues everywhere. All for the sake of 'cool'.
Coca-Cola (uh oh.. did I hear ears perk up?)... what is with that stupid pop with the Coke bottle and the slogan? It's like a pop-up for the sake of a pop-up. Their use of Flash, however, is very well implemented (in most places.) Looks like they may have some people on staff that know what they're about. Except for that pop-up. Seriously. There's parts of the Coca-Cola site framework, however, that don't match up... I'm inclined to chalk that up to Coke being Big Corporate, and as such has about a million arms that don't know (or care) what the others are doing. It happens. At Motorola we've got the same issue - just try visiting one of the 20 different moto stores. There's one for each nationality, and each site is completely different. In fact, some of them are so unusable that it's nearly impossible to actually purchase something in that. But I digress; the usability issues of Motorola's web presence are an issue for another series of posts.
It all goes back to Flash in The Right Place and The Right Time. Of course, that Right Place and Right Time are all relative to the creators, but that's a responsibility they need to shoulder. I'm not saying that a site shouldn't be 'cool' - but Flash in and of itself doesn't make a site 'cool'. That's even more important to recognize and keep in mind when developing a site (or having one developed.)
Okay, I'm done. For now.
Nike updated their site, but it's 100% Flash based now. Holy crap that's a gamble, but in the case of what amounts to a glorified brochureware site, I suppose that's not such a big deal. Besides, their marketing has reach that goes way beyond their website, they have many, many websites, and their main point of sale isn't (by any stretch of the imagination) their website. The old Nike site, which I was hoping to find, was a horrendous mess of a nightmare, all Flash (and badly done Flash), with navigation and usability issues everywhere. All for the sake of 'cool'.
Coca-Cola (uh oh.. did I hear ears perk up?)... what is with that stupid pop with the Coke bottle and the slogan? It's like a pop-up for the sake of a pop-up. Their use of Flash, however, is very well implemented (in most places.) Looks like they may have some people on staff that know what they're about. Except for that pop-up. Seriously. There's parts of the Coca-Cola site framework, however, that don't match up... I'm inclined to chalk that up to Coke being Big Corporate, and as such has about a million arms that don't know (or care) what the others are doing. It happens. At Motorola we've got the same issue - just try visiting one of the 20 different moto stores. There's one for each nationality, and each site is completely different. In fact, some of them are so unusable that it's nearly impossible to actually purchase something in that. But I digress; the usability issues of Motorola's web presence are an issue for another series of posts.
It all goes back to Flash in The Right Place and The Right Time. Of course, that Right Place and Right Time are all relative to the creators, but that's a responsibility they need to shoulder. I'm not saying that a site shouldn't be 'cool' - but Flash in and of itself doesn't make a site 'cool'. That's even more important to recognize and keep in mind when developing a site (or having one developed.)
Okay, I'm done. For now.
Things that suck: the Pizza Hut website. I almost forgot about this, and it's a good one. A great example of what happens when the marketing department manages to override the IT department. Either that, or the folks at Pizza Hut's corporate office are drooling idiots.
Okay, that's not fair... that's an insult to drooling idiots everywhere.
Pizza Hut's website opens with... ta-daaa! A big fat flash intro/tunnel page thing. Here, check it out.
Now, normally this isn't much of a problem. 98% of web users have the Flash plugin (or some derivative like gnash) installed in their browser. Personally, I think that number is inflated, but it could be that high, I suppose. Anyway, like I said, normally a big fat fancy Flash-based intro isn't too terrible an issue. But then I think about it.
Even if we use the 98% usage statistic, that means that 2% of the potential user-base don't have access to that first page. From a marketing standpoint, you're losing out on 2% of your potential revenue. Depending on the size of your audience (in this case, the internet users of the world), that percentage could be a huge number. From a usability perspective, that 2% is flat-out unacceptable. If you're going to use Flash that heavily, have an alternative ready. A usable alternative. Otherwise, be prepared to have people turn away from your site and head over to Papa John's or Dominos (like I did.)
For my own experience, I was running Firefox on my Fedora box (that's Linux). I had installed gnash (a Flash-plugin, only open-source) and it wasn't running right. I didn't feel like getting the actual Adobe Flash plugin installed, I felt like ordering a damn pizza. Pizza Hut didn't even have a phone number to call on the home page! How am I supposed to order from them if my Flash plugin isn't working right (or isn't installed at all?) Anyway, Papa John's was closed for delivery so I ended up going to the Dominos site, which runs nice n' fast, and ordered my pizza. Anyway, the point is that my sale was lost because of the fancy Flash tunnel page, and I was so irritated by this that I probably won't score my pizza from Pizza Hut. Petty? Nah.
The problem isn't that the Pizza Hut site sucks. It's that the improper use of Flash by animation-crazed marketing monkeys sucks. A guy I used to work for used to rant about (among other things) how Flash is like crack to the non-technical marketing types. I agree. And I say it's like crack to the technical types too. The potential - the possibly uses - are pretty amazing. You can do quite a bit with Flash. The question is, should you? I believe there's a time and a place for Flash. The home page of the Pizza Hut site (or your site) is probably not it. Use of Flash is usually unnecessary, can generally be replaced by the much more responsive and standardized AJAX techniques, and (I hate to say it) it usually looks like crap. Oh, but the rants about Flash can go on and on - I've been using Flash since 1999 and I've gone through the crackhead phase, so there's no shortage of experiences here.
Things that don't suck: the clothes at Twice Shy. Sure, their servers are slightly overloaded, but that happens. Their stuff is stylish and cool looking, and apparently it's made using recovered/recycled materials. Of course, it's expensive. Everything that is recycled or reused is, for some reason, significantly more expensive than a brand new item made out of pollution-causing materials and assembled at a sweat-shop in Indonesia. Why? I mean, I can speculate - smaller, boutique-style handling and assembly of the product, the processing of the material takes time, and that has to be taken into consideration, etc. Whatever. It's like food - as long as it's cheaper and easier to eat food that is unhealthy for us, we will not change for the better. So long as I can go buy a shirt at the mall for less than it costs to nab one of these 'designer' super cool recycled jobbies, there's a stronger likelihood that I'll do that. It's unfortunate, but hey, economics is economics.
Okay, that's not fair... that's an insult to drooling idiots everywhere.
Pizza Hut's website opens with... ta-daaa! A big fat flash intro/tunnel page thing. Here, check it out.
Now, normally this isn't much of a problem. 98% of web users have the Flash plugin (or some derivative like gnash) installed in their browser. Personally, I think that number is inflated, but it could be that high, I suppose. Anyway, like I said, normally a big fat fancy Flash-based intro isn't too terrible an issue. But then I think about it.
Even if we use the 98% usage statistic, that means that 2% of the potential user-base don't have access to that first page. From a marketing standpoint, you're losing out on 2% of your potential revenue. Depending on the size of your audience (in this case, the internet users of the world), that percentage could be a huge number. From a usability perspective, that 2% is flat-out unacceptable. If you're going to use Flash that heavily, have an alternative ready. A usable alternative. Otherwise, be prepared to have people turn away from your site and head over to Papa John's or Dominos (like I did.)
For my own experience, I was running Firefox on my Fedora box (that's Linux). I had installed gnash (a Flash-plugin, only open-source) and it wasn't running right. I didn't feel like getting the actual Adobe Flash plugin installed, I felt like ordering a damn pizza. Pizza Hut didn't even have a phone number to call on the home page! How am I supposed to order from them if my Flash plugin isn't working right (or isn't installed at all?) Anyway, Papa John's was closed for delivery so I ended up going to the Dominos site, which runs nice n' fast, and ordered my pizza. Anyway, the point is that my sale was lost because of the fancy Flash tunnel page, and I was so irritated by this that I probably won't score my pizza from Pizza Hut. Petty? Nah.
The problem isn't that the Pizza Hut site sucks. It's that the improper use of Flash by animation-crazed marketing monkeys sucks. A guy I used to work for used to rant about (among other things) how Flash is like crack to the non-technical marketing types. I agree. And I say it's like crack to the technical types too. The potential - the possibly uses - are pretty amazing. You can do quite a bit with Flash. The question is, should you? I believe there's a time and a place for Flash. The home page of the Pizza Hut site (or your site) is probably not it. Use of Flash is usually unnecessary, can generally be replaced by the much more responsive and standardized AJAX techniques, and (I hate to say it) it usually looks like crap. Oh, but the rants about Flash can go on and on - I've been using Flash since 1999 and I've gone through the crackhead phase, so there's no shortage of experiences here.
Things that don't suck: the clothes at Twice Shy. Sure, their servers are slightly overloaded, but that happens. Their stuff is stylish and cool looking, and apparently it's made using recovered/recycled materials. Of course, it's expensive. Everything that is recycled or reused is, for some reason, significantly more expensive than a brand new item made out of pollution-causing materials and assembled at a sweat-shop in Indonesia. Why? I mean, I can speculate - smaller, boutique-style handling and assembly of the product, the processing of the material takes time, and that has to be taken into consideration, etc. Whatever. It's like food - as long as it's cheaper and easier to eat food that is unhealthy for us, we will not change for the better. So long as I can go buy a shirt at the mall for less than it costs to nab one of these 'designer' super cool recycled jobbies, there's a stronger likelihood that I'll do that. It's unfortunate, but hey, economics is economics.
I watched several movies this weekend:
Kickin' it Old School - skip it. Jamie Kennedy does his usual semi-retarded shtick as a guy who has come out of a coma after 20 years and suddenly starts breakdancing. It's not funny. It's not even silly. It's Jamie Kennedy. I've already given this movie too much of my time. Unworthy.
Blades of Glory. If you haven't seen it yet, you must be living under a rock. Go out to Blockbuster and take this one back to the DVD player you no doubt have ensconced with you under your rock (right next to your 42-inch LCD). Watch it. You'll laugh, you might cry. You will definitely have watched the latest from Will Ferrel. He's amusing, usually. In this movie, yes.
The finest film I watched all weekend I actually watched this morning, and it's only 18 minutes long: Cashback. G-$ (that's Gee-Money) pointed this one out to me about two months ago, and it's been in my queue on BB since then. Apparently it's a popular film. Anyway, according to G-$, the film was based on this 18 minute short (which has won some awards, and it's no wonder - every woman who shops at this supermarket is stupendously hot). Watch it here. Then try to find the full-length film and watch that. It's a recent thing, released in 2006, and it's not real common, so be prepared to do some hunting. But you will hunt for it. It's that good.
In less interesting news, I got my Linux box to recognize my iPod shuffle. In doing so, I discovered Amarok, a music player that claims to rival iTunes for sheer awesomeness. No. It does not. But it does have some cool features that I can appreciate, and (after beating on it only mildly) it did manage to find my iPod, allowing me to re-up the ol' shuffle to some fresh tunes. Other things I've discovered about Linux in recent history include: don't use Fedora, unless you have a strange graphics card (or an ATI card), in which case use Fedora. If you use Fedora, be prepared for near limitless hassles. They have this whole thing about only including license-free software, blah blah blah, GNU licensing, blah blah blah. Sounds like lots of commie propaganda to me.
Kickin' it Old School - skip it. Jamie Kennedy does his usual semi-retarded shtick as a guy who has come out of a coma after 20 years and suddenly starts breakdancing. It's not funny. It's not even silly. It's Jamie Kennedy. I've already given this movie too much of my time. Unworthy.
Blades of Glory. If you haven't seen it yet, you must be living under a rock. Go out to Blockbuster and take this one back to the DVD player you no doubt have ensconced with you under your rock (right next to your 42-inch LCD). Watch it. You'll laugh, you might cry. You will definitely have watched the latest from Will Ferrel. He's amusing, usually. In this movie, yes.
The finest film I watched all weekend I actually watched this morning, and it's only 18 minutes long: Cashback. G-$ (that's Gee-Money) pointed this one out to me about two months ago, and it's been in my queue on BB since then. Apparently it's a popular film. Anyway, according to G-$, the film was based on this 18 minute short (which has won some awards, and it's no wonder - every woman who shops at this supermarket is stupendously hot). Watch it here. Then try to find the full-length film and watch that. It's a recent thing, released in 2006, and it's not real common, so be prepared to do some hunting. But you will hunt for it. It's that good.
In less interesting news, I got my Linux box to recognize my iPod shuffle. In doing so, I discovered Amarok, a music player that claims to rival iTunes for sheer awesomeness. No. It does not. But it does have some cool features that I can appreciate, and (after beating on it only mildly) it did manage to find my iPod, allowing me to re-up the ol' shuffle to some fresh tunes. Other things I've discovered about Linux in recent history include: don't use Fedora, unless you have a strange graphics card (or an ATI card), in which case use Fedora. If you use Fedora, be prepared for near limitless hassles. They have this whole thing about only including license-free software, blah blah blah, GNU licensing, blah blah blah. Sounds like lots of commie propaganda to me.
