Archive for October 2001

Ben Henick has been working his behind off since this whole thing came to light. In talking with him, Shirley, and Zeldman, we realized there was little resources out there to explain the whole deal in English. As much as I have read about all of this, I am still not completely clear on what it means. We did a quick search on articles that explain it better and most of the search results led to Microsoft’s butting heads with W3C back in 1999. But, we did manage to find a few:

c|Net – W3C patent plan draws protests

c|Net – W3C extends patent plan comment time

Newsbytes – A Pay As-You-Go World Wide Web?

The Register – Web standards schism “terrible” – W3C patent policy boss

The Register – The Free Web’s Over, as W3C Blesses Net Patent Taxes

Keep watching Zeldman, Digital Web, and WaSP for updates on this since we only have 9 more days to comment by sending an email to www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org. You can view the comments from others.

Keep up the great work, Ben.

Email is 30. Gosh, almost as old as me??? I’m 31, folks. Several people have announced recent anniversaries / birthdays of their Web sites. I don’t know the exact day I launched mine at URL http://www.dgsys.com/~meryl while living in Washington, D.C. in 1993. Then it became http://www.onramp.net/~meryl when I moved to Texas in 1995. October 1999 — meryl.net was born. So, my Web site is roughly 8 years old (yikes!) and the domain is 2 years old.

All About About

Whoa! Just learned from SearchDay, Search Engine Watch’s newsletter, that About.com does an about face. It has cut 300 of 750 guide sites and 20% of its workforce (about 60 jobs) since it has decided to change its focus from “something for everyone” to “what users need to know.” Known as About 3.0, it will emphasize e-commerce, consumer reviews, and comparison shopping. Some sites will be consolidated while others eliminated.

What led to this? Same thing as everything else – shrinking advertising revenues. Already they’re confusing people with the change. According to SearchDay, some guide sites have been terminated and are no longer accessible. Instead of sending readers a message, it simply refreshes the browser or sends it to the about.com main page. Furthermore, there are guide sites that are terminated, but STILL accessible. I won’t even bother with the rest of the confusing details. Pretty sloppy.

I remember when this company stormed the Web as “Mining Company.” Then, they changed their name to about.com. I used it a bit in the beginning when it was “mining” since it was one of the few places to go for “specialized information.” I used it less and less as more resources popped up without having ads pop up everywhere. Occasionally, I find my way there whenever doing research for an article and whatnot… but before I went there, I made sure I loaded my pop up ad remover program so I wouldn’t get a screenful of popups.

Usual answer. I am not surprised. In a way, about.com had “too much information” and was overwhelming at times. Consolidation is good. Elimination and changing direction to e-commerce, I am not so sure about.

Articles: About.com Cuts Jobs as Shifts Toward E-Commerce

About.com cuts 300 sites, increases e-commerce focus

I finally got a little time to slowly read and absorb Ben Henick’s Digital-Web interview with Carbon IQ, a consultancy firm known for being one of the first User Experience-focused firms in San Francisco.

Henick hit home with me when he started off by saying, “It can be said fairly that user experience as a formal discipline is not something that gets a lot of focus from our audience, if only because it’s impossible to be an expert at everything.” I fear becoming a specialist at one thing because it may or may not get me opportunities or it becomes passe’. Yet, trying to learn a little bit of everything is becoming too much with flux of tools out there waiting for us to grab and grasp.

In defining the objectives of their work, Carbon IQ responded in saying that “the objective of our work is to understand who the user is and what their needs are by going out into the world and observing them, bringing that info back to the development team, designing the site’s blueprints – the site map, the interaction design, the organization of the information-and then testing what we’ve built as well. Understand, architect, test. Lather, rinse, repeat!” This is classic process methodology and how it can help with a Web design project from start to finish while ensuring meeting customer needs. One of the interviewees did indicate that the hottest thing was methodology with a one-size-fits all mentality. This is wrong. Process methodology is NOT one-size-fits all. It needs to be adapted to each company’s needs. Carbon IQ came up with its own grab-bag of techniques that can be customized for each project. Read more on this — they got it going.

The interview appropriately covers the Internet’s heyday and transition to today’s environment of slow economy and smaller design budgets. Carbon IQ is right in saying the client education works both ways. Clients learn about their customers and the need to “slow down” while Web design firms learn about the client’s business.

On Flash – I agree with their feedback that Flash is a great tool and there’s much to be done with it… but it needs interface standards. Web pages using Flash operate differently and it takes longer for the user to figure it out. Not a good thing.

The interview offers much insight into information architecture, user experience, customers, and more. In the end it’s all about communication. If you don’t get this message, then what are you doing in this business?

India

I know little about the Indian culture, but not due to lack of interest. Just simply because I’d love to learn about many cultures and just haven’t put a priority on it. So when someone I know travels and writes about it, I learned a bit reading about the experience. Stephanie’s notes on her recent 6-week adventures to India are up if you’re looking to learn about this fascinating culture. Yikes, the Internet cafe had a standardized 101 key keyboard… that was missing two important keys that made me appreciate my keyboard!

Web Information: And Quiet Flows the Rubicon | The Siren Song of Patenting the Web’s Infrastructure is Ben Henick’s W3C RAND rant. I’ll skip any comments about the whole business because between Ben, Zeldman and WaSP, they’ve said everything that comes to my mind and more.

Webreview has a good article covering Ten Mistakes in Site Planning by Steve Franklin in its latest edition that came out on Friday. Yes, we may have smaller Web design budgets, but you can work around it by knowing your audience. Yeah, yeah, how many times have we heard that? Unfortunately, some Web sites still don’t take its audience into consideration so we have to keep hammering it into Web developers’ brains.

Also from Webreview, Mike Swaine takes a swing at Adobe in his letter to them. How far should Web developers go with usability?

Now you see them, now you don’t. Transparency and the Internet company, a factor I never considered.

69… one to tie and two more to break the record.

Now, onto putting the finishing touches on a search article that has been responsible for my stress in the past week or so. I managed to take a little break to watch and savor Chocolat. Thank goodness I have no chocolate around here… OK, I have some Halloween candy, but it’s for the kids!