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February 17
Why? Because I just don’t get it. I wish I did, but I don’t. Those crazy kids today, and all that... I may never be able to truly get what’s going on just because I’m a grey-haired father of a toddler who lives in suburbia, drives an SUV and would rather watch a movie on Saturday night rather than hit the clubs
MySpace gives me the shivers as well- but not because of how different it is, but because of how quickly it sprang into existence. Unlike Russ, I actually think I "Get" MySpace... after spending a few weeks poking around, it makes sense to me. I'm just in awe of how quickly the web is evolving.
Context is the differentiator that MySpace brings to the table. In the classic blogsphere, each person's blog is their own unique corner of the web. each blogger starts with their own blank slate- they then use their words and pictures (and voices, and videos) to define themselves. With MySpace, you define yourself through relationships.
Old-School Blogging is Imperative.
New-School Blogging is Declarative.
As with every other Imperative->Declarative phase transition in our industry, the Declarative doesn't exactly bring anything new to the table, it just makes it easier to produce and consume. On my old school blog, I could keep a blog roll, and I could use comments and trackbacks to link people to my entries, and if I were really ambitious, I could use Foaf or some other madness to do really rich linking between my site and my friends sites... but that would be much more time than the average user would ever consider investing.
With MySpace, the natural thing you do while interacting with the site is declarative blogging. You add friends. you choose your "top 8". Your friends comment on you. You comment on your friends. Yes, you can actually write blog entries... but that's not where the interesting stuff happens. The meat is in the connections. The connections happen because the membership, presence, authoring, reading, aggregation, and commenting frameworks are so tightly integrated into each other.
Of course, this is larger than MySpace. The suite of web apps around 43Things ( 43Places, 43People, etc) provides the same declarative experience; as you surf around, you collect stuff, and make declarations. When your done, your declarations essentially define you. the 43 sites add some great technical cruft, like tagging, tag clouds, a point based reputation system, and some great syndication options. For example, Heres my unified profile of people, places, and things, with my blog entries mixed in: Chris Hollander. And, heres the rss.
Basically, blogging as we know it is officially over. In the good ol' days, people wrote blogs. From here on out, People will compose their blogs, declaratively. January 30 I apologize in advance to my non-geek readers (both of you!), but I felt compelled to grade the recent "improvements" made to MSN spaces...
The original list of improvements is here, on Torres Talking:
Spaces Search. Search for my name, get no results. No Buzz! though there's a disclaimer that the search will be ramping up for a few days, simple ego surfing should work by now... its been a week. Grade: D, for poor execution.
Mobile Search "from Mobile Spaces! Search for spaces from your mobile device." when was the last time you wanted to 1.) search for a space? 2.) from a mobile device? Grade: C, for weak concept.
Kanoodle Integration lets you opt in to paid advertising on your site. I've opted in. I'm getting no adds on my site, and what i can only consider outright spam in my RSS feeds. Where are my millions? Grade: F, for attempting something good and ruining it.
Book lists with Amazon integration. SO DAMN HOT!! gotta love this feature... now, If only MSN would pull album art from its own MSN Music store property for uploaded playlists? Grade: A. note: if you wanna get amazon associate credit, make sure you put your amazon ID in BEFORE you have msn generate your links for you...
"Better blog navigation" and "Customized blog entry display". Great feature! Grade: C, because everyone else did this in 1997.
Integrated Help. Confused? Click the Learn link in the header above to figure out what to do next!
Enhanced Profile don't quite get this yet- all I know is that my picture used to be big, now its small. TNX!
Live Contacts Beta! I think i need to Learn more here.
Better commenting for blogs and now photos as well! Man, this makes me happy... actually, it MADE me happy when i first read it, then it made me sad when i tried to use it. :( are the comments per picture, or per gallery? I'm not sure... but when i tried to use it, it was outright broke, either which way; i simply couldn't comment on a picture in a friends space. Whats up with that??? Grade: F, for breaking my heart.
Photos are no longer limited to 30MB; you can now upload 500 photos per month. Wow, the per month limit instead of per MB limit is really interesting, actually. however, where is the solemn promise that you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever delete any of my pictures? Grade: A-.
MetaWeblog API Cheaters! this isn't part of this update. :)
Better URLs! Good! http://<spacename>.spaces.msn.com would have been better. ;) Grade: B.
Xbox Live integration. I checked, my space doesn't come with a free Xbox360. NO BUZZ FOR YOU!!! no seriously, this seems like cool functionality, based on what i've seen on other blogs. Grade: A.
New themes and categorized theme picker. We now have well over 100 themes! and they're ALL UGLY!!! yay! how about just opening up a bit, and allowing custom style sheets or XSLT, like every other blog engine out there? Grade: C.
publish from 3 email addresses instead of just one. yay- Grade, B.
request access to spaces via anonymous email. cool. should have taken about a week's worth of work? Grade, B.
- in general, It seems like a lot of work went into pushing the envelop instead of just stuffing it with all the stuff that every other envelop has been stuffed with for years.
- How about temporal based URIs?
- why in the world are permalinks hidden under a javascript?
- why can't i put a post in multiple categories (seriously, are you kidding me with that one?)
- why did you butcher albums? albums were one of spaces best features; now, the filmstrip is gone, the visual quality is reduced, and the commenting features that were added don't work. One step foward, 3 steps back? and, how about a high res option for MSN Premium members? How about integration with printing services? tagging? anything?
- can i get a "Buy This Playlist" option?
- I've come to the conclusion that trackback simply doesn't work... further, why doesn't the MSN toolbar "Blog it" feature automatically pick up trackback URIs for me?
- just wondering, has anyone ever asked for oh, i dunno, spell check?
December 21 I (along with a bunch of other Microsoft Professional services folks) will be in Seattle in January (1/8-1/13) for a Corporate event- it would be fun to get together and have a Blogger's Meetup (had a blast last time i was in town...). Anyone interested? December 16 Tim Bray's blog has been a stable of my weekly blog reading for over a year now; I find his opinions to be consistently wel thought out, fair, and readable... which is why im suprised over his glowing review of Adium.
And I quote:
Software of the future will be Open Source, will have a sophisticated and smart user interface, will take responsibility for making sure it’s up to date, and will meet essential human needs. Like Adium. ¶
I can't help but wonder if theres some sort of inside joke that I'm missing. 
- Adium's interface is quite nice, but its certainly not revolutionary, and I honestly don't see how its remarkable at all in comparison to just about every other IM application that I've seen.
- Just about every major software component on my computer automaticaly downloads its own updates in the background, and then quietly and un-obtrusively patches itself after asking my approval. For at least 2 years now.
- My essential human needs are food, shelter, warmth, and security. I really don't think Adium helps with those. :) Now, I can understand how Adium makes goofing off with my buds easier, or typing to far-flung teammates who are adverse to voice conversations or video conferencing... but thats far from a essential human need, and I don't see how Adium has a leg up on any other software package in that particular arena?
the only "Software of the future" attribute that I didn't address is the open-source aspect of Adium; perhaps because its the aspect that matters the least to me, as a user. If package A and package B both provide a sophisticated and smart user interface, take responsibility for making sure it’s up to date, and meet essential human needs, who cares how the source code is liscensed? My mom, my wife, and my friends sure don't... December 08 When you search for Chris Hollander, this site doesn't come up in the top 5 results of any search engine. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Based on my limited understanding of search engine black magic, I think that I need all of you (yes, if your reading this, and you have a blog, I mean you) to help me out; please link to this site, with my name as the text of your link (like this: Chris Hollander - see, not that hard!). If you want, trackback to this entry, and i'll reciprocate with a named link to your site. Jeff McManus is terribly unimpressed with Local Live. Apparently, the name is crap dumb, the features are crap lacking, the AJAX implementation is broke (causes the equivelant of a blue screen of death), and the search results are poor (assuming, of course, that less results means poorer quality results).
As stated on Jeffs blog, emphasis mine:
1. Dumb naming/branding. "Windows Live Local" doesn't even parse for me, and they URL they chose ( http://local.live.com) is a little thick-headed, too.... 2. It doesn't look better or have more features than either ours or Google's comparable product.
3. ...[I fell into ] a usability dead end that forced me to have to re-load the page. This is the AJAX equivalent of the blue screen of death
4. (Most importantly) The actual local search I did returned fewer results
Ironically, these issues aern't bothering any of the folks that I've seen using it. As i wandered around the cube farm when I came into work today, Local Live was on everyone's screen. Everyone wanted to see what the front door of their house looked like using Bird's Eye View. One dude found a new burrito place in the neighborhood.
Many said that the new UI and features made google maps look "quaint". When i asked them what they thought of it in comparison to Y!Maps (great name, btw...), most responded by asking, "wow, yahoo has maps?"...
I've spent some time with yahoo maps in the past few weeks, and have some questions and comments:
- live traffic is great! very cool feature. Is it available through the API? can i embed traffic into my own maps? is there a limit on how much traffic i can pass through the API?
- does yahoo maps only offer street style maps? or is sat. imagery available as well? i couldn't find the option in the beta interface...
- One thing I *love* to do in local live is have multiple searches open at the same time, so that i can find things close together... like, for example, cuban restaurants near nightclubs. Can I do that with yahoo? or google? or a9?
- I really wanna link to stuff from Y!Maps, but I can't seem to find a "Permalink" feature... where is that? Do i have to sign in to do stuff like that? how can i get maps like this onto my blog? is that possible?
February 06 first, Mike Torres posted 5 things he disliked about MSN spaces. then, Dare followed up with 5 things he would like to see fixed in MSN spaces. so, following suit, here are 5 ways to make MSN spaces better: - Even better comment support. Right now, Spaces does some good things with comments; a URL to the comments for each post is included in the RSS, and comment spam is all but eliminated thanks to Passport Authentication. But, they can do better. RSS feeds for the comments of a post. including the comment count in the RSS. possible support for the comment API. allowing users to enable "anonymous commenting", as a choice.
- Even better photo sharing. the photo galleries provided by spaces are great, but they can be better. In fact, MSN already provides a better photo sharing experience in with MSN Premium, Photo Sharing. Since I'm a premium member, why can't I use Premium Sharing on my blog?
- Let me use my Hotmail storage space for my blog.
- Let me share videos as easily as I share Pictures.
- Photo Tagging. I organize all of my pictures locallly, using PictureIt Library. I have 6000+ pictures, all tagged with keywords (who's in the picture, where the picture was taken, even meta-meta tags, like "laughing", "smiling", "dancing", etc). When I upload them to share, the tags dissapear. why? in fact, why not show them? why not use them for a folksonomy?
Wait, i have some more! - Allow me to import an RSS feed from my old blog.
- Allow me to export all the entries in this blog so that i can back them up locally.
- calendar like archives.
- human readable URLs.
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