I'm not sure I like where the Internet is going.
This social network stuff has ultimately been a double-edged sword in my mind. They are absolutely convenient and fun. It's an easy way to keep people up to date on your life, fill your calendar with events your friends are going to, get the skinny about your favourite bands, just about any information you could want. I remember in late 2003, when I first joined MySpace, I was excited. It was a great way to share photos and information for a person with little to no experience in web development. This finally meant all of my friends would be able to join me online. Wonderful?
Long before any sort of talk about social networks, beginning around 1998, I kept consistent with my own website, shaped with my own blood and tears. I kept everyone close to me up to date with my life, utilising blogs, pictures and graphics. It was truly exciting and very rewarding to be able to do that. It was fun because I was unique and it was something not everyone could have. I was also doing it long before any of this was coined as "Web 2.0". A certain skill set was required to have a fully functioning website.
Come around 2005, inevitably, everyone I knew owned a MySpace account and/or a Facebook account. At the time, it was really nice to see everyone online. I could keep tabs with close friends that were away for the school year, have a full calendar of events I could choose whether or not to go, get the latest gossip on who's going out. It's amazing how much I could know about friends, family, acquaintances and strangers without even speaking a word.
Let me ask this... How much information is too much information? Facebook is the king grapevine report with their mini-feed. There is so much information that goes through that thing that I'd have rather learned from the source directly. There's also a lot of information I would rather not have known at all. A said this to B, C is sad, D is flying to X, E broke up with F, G is interested in men, H added "Titanic" to their movies, J joined the group, "Pray for 35W survivors", K joined the group, "Minneapolis Bridge Collapse", L is now a Zombie.... The list of personal and stupid information goes on for gigabytes upon gigabytes. The Rumor Mill does not run dry.
I swear, it's going to make our world socially retarded. Every conversation will be some form of gossip, or every coffee-talk will start with "So I saw on Facebook you blah blah blah..." Most casual pictures are already ruined as they are seldom printed (which are great conversation pieces) and always whored on the Internet to tally up a couple comments. Who knows, People may forget how to carry an authentic conversation all together. It will make you wonder who you are even close to.
I had a direction I was going with this, but I'm drawing a blank. I guess I'll end on the basis that I am going to spend less time scrounging around Social Networks and spend more time connecting with people on a more personal basis. I am also going to elaborate on my own website. I got the skills, might as well use em'!
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Over the past week, I have transitioned to Windows Vista at work. So far it's not too bad. I did, however, have to jump through a lot of hoops to make everything work on it. It's pretty fancy shmancy and there is actually a lot of good functionality to it. Give it a year, once everyone catches up to it, and it'll be a great OS.
Also, it seems to have a great effect on the cleanliness of people's cubicles. I guess a clean OS makes you want to have a clean surrounding. Hey, I fell for it, too.
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For almost a decade now, Mac's primary selling device is the fact that they are cute, trendy and very eye-appealing. Sure, people can debate as much as they like about how the software is better or how the hardware is better. Today, however, Apple now manufactures their computers with the same Intel-based hardware that PCs do. Also, any software that was once uniquely designed for Mac's is now available on PC. In my opinion, really, the only selling tool they have left is the fact that the name "Apple" portrays a feeling of quality, prestige, media productivity, etc. the point of this blog isn't to bash Apple, if you run an Apple and enjoy the experience, that's cool.
The point I am trying to present is this: Apple has made a point to develop a feeling around their product. It feels good to own an Apple. People view you differently. It makes the person look and feel creative. This is something Microsoft has not even remotely attempted in the past. Microsoft is Microsoft. It's boring, nothing new, nothing different.
Well, not until now, anyway. Though most of their marketing is geared towards productivity and business, they are making an effort to get people to view Microsoft Windows Vista differently than previous versions.
http://clearification.com/
When I first saw this site, it instantly grabbed my attention. It's creative, beautiful, simple, but will have something new every time. I'm not sure what the actual purpose is behind the site. I don't' know if they have unveiled yet. It's apparently a series of chapters about a man that has an over achiever disorder and is admitted to an institute for it. You'll notice a lot of shots displaying Vista. I'm sure they will wrap it up showing "how awesome" Vista is. If not, Microsoft is advertising their new OS on a trendy site, anyway.
Basically, it looks like Windows is trying to tap into the younger and/or creative crowd and attach a feeling onto their new OS while there is still some mysticism to it. I have a beta of Vista installed on my laptop currently and puts-ed around it for a while. I will admit, it's very attractive. They added a lot of bells and whistles as well as a lot of graphic enhancements. I assume that Microsoft is going to try and battle Apple with a cuter OS and a newer creative feeling to win a few mac users over as well as keep their current media-rich user-base amused.
As for me. I get into creativity, but I am also a huge fan of practicality. I'll probably stick with XP until I find Vista worthy of my computer. Office 2007, however, is a different story. That baby is going on as soon as I get my hands on it.
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The night before, I read an interesting article written by the editor in the latest Communication Arts magazine we got in the mail a few days ago. From what I understood of the article, the gist of it was about user-end functionality in the ever-evolving career in web design. The editor wrote a couple paragraphs explaining how it is important to not only design the site with the client in mind, but also the end-user that will be interacting with the website. The site could have all of the latest and greatest in web design and look sleek, shiny and new. Or it could be tailored to the client, exactly how they wanted it. However, if it is not easily readable or learned by the user, the user will quickly give up and look at the next search result on Google because they couldn't easily and enjoyably find the information they were looking for on the website.
There's a lot of sweet, innovative ideas out there right now. O'Reilly coins it as "Web 2.0", I simply see it as the natural progression of the Internet. Within the last two years, AJAX, RSS syndication, streamlined video and the blog, have evolved into something amazing (despite all the baby talk). A lot of the technology and ideas behind a handful of the Web 2.0 movement is actually pretty cool and exciting to be a part of. I mean, we are one step closer to 100% interactive websites. With all of this great, revamped functionality, the average web designer has the potential to create very powerful and interactive websites. It gets me excited and very interested in what's coming up next.
With all the new and awesome technology, however, the very core basics of a website is often lost. When a user goes to a website, they are looking for a product. It could be a physical shelf product, a piece of software, an article, an idea; if they can not easily identify the product on the website, then the site just lost a consumer. It's possible that the product pertained to them, but since it was difficult (or sometimes near impossible) to grasp what the website was trying to portray, they are going to high-tail out of there.
In my eyes, this has always been an issue since the beginning of the Internet. The Internet itself, is a new technology and is still in development. There's no true standards yet. This gives the designer a ton of flexibility, which can be used and abused. It's a fine line, balancing the cutting edge of technology and pursuing an intuitive design. New technology is very important as it expands the functional boundaries of the Internet. Intuitive design is also very important, as it gives the end-user a clear direction on where you want them to go. The bottom line is, the goal of a functional website is to give the consumer the information they anticipated and expect to receive.
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Alright, lately I've been feeling the need to get into some serious SEO. Lately, over at Dream In Code, it seems as though there is a spark of interest with optimising sites for search engines. I'm trying to keep up, but man alive, these kids know how to do it. So here's what I have done... an experiment, have you. I have basically started fresh with my site structure (which goes unnoticed by the average viewer) in an attempt to climb in the Google search queries. But before I can climb with such drastic changes, I must fall at the foot of Google. Here's a few steps I have taken so far:
- I moved my entire blogs from Blogger.com and Myspace to a home-brew blogging system I have periodically been working on with my free time. I also resurected blogs between 2002-2004 from old home-brew systems I have made. The MSN Spaces era in my life is all that's left. My Blogger account is slowly diminishing in google (when searching for "Nick Davis")
- I have decided to stick with the domain of http://www.nicholasdavis.info. For the most part, I was sick of the ".org" look. It's funny and all, having the organization domain, but alas, I'm not an organization. I figured .info was alright, as it is information on me. Unfortunately, I believe it kind of puts me at a disadvantage compared to it's .com and .net brothers.
- I changed all my page titles to something a little easier for google eat up. On Analytics, people do more searches for "Nick Davis" than "Nicholas Davis". I took that knowlege and figured "Nick Davis" was probably better in the title, especially if I want to tackle those keywords more.
- I created an RSS feed for the mass populace to consume, of which I have created a modified version for Google to eat up, using Google Webmaster Tools.
- I submitted my site to Google.
- I reconstructed my blog template so that it will be easier for search engines to pick up on. Technorati seemed to enjoy it a lot.
So far, my Google presence seems to be improving a little since last week. Searching for "Nick Davis", my blog page shows up at the very bottom. I'm hoping the next couple days, it will be my home page and a couple notches higher than the bottom of the first page. I suppose I also need to work on blogging about things that are interesting.
This blog is my personal experience and for the most part very speculative. So if you have any information or tips, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you.
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Alright, Still in process of tweaking my blogging tool, Europa, for SEO success. One of the points on the list from Chris was to make my URL's cleaner. Before today, I was using the standard querystring method of reaching pages. The problem with these, is that search engines have a hard time digesting them (Let alone humans.)
At first, this project of converting my links sounded very tedious. Initially I was thinking I'd have to write some elaborate routine on publishing an HTML page after writing a blog, similar to how blogger does it. Not only would I have to make an HTML page for each blog, but I would have to update the extra content (such as "last 10 blogs") in case I wanted to archive them, keep tabs on a main page, rss feed, etc etc etc. Didn't sound appetising at all.
Dissapointed and overcome by this method, I set on a search to find a nice and easy route. Lo' and behold, Microsoft never ceases to amaze me. URLmappings totally made my life easier. They allow you to set a sort of virtual path to your page, yet, still taking in querystring information.
For example, the link to my recent blog, "Lucky Man". It's original (and working) path is:
http://www.nicholasdavis.info/blog.aspx?bID=346&Blog=Lucky+Man
The after effect of URLMappings is as follows:
http://www.nicholasdavis.info/346/2007/9/27/Lucky-Man.aspx
Sweet, huh? All I had to do was create an XML file that is referencable to my web.config file. For example, I have a file called URLMapping.xml. This contains all my URL Maps. Example:
<? xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<urlMappings enabled="true">
<add url="~/346/2007/9/27/Lucky-Man.aspx" mappedUrl="~/blog.aspx?bID=346&Blog=Lucky+Man" />
</urlMappings>
Now, I reference URLMapping.xml from the Web.Config file of my website:
< configuration>
<system.web>
<urlMappings configSource="URLMapping.xml" />
</system.web>
</configuration>
That's all there is to it! So now when I save a blog, it opens the URLMapping.xml into a Dataset, quick add the links and save it back. Couldn't be easier.
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w00t! Zune just released their 2.0 firmware. So far it's got a lot of sweet additions that I will be dure to take advantage of. First off, they caught on to the podcast movement, which (to me) is a very fresh experience that I will have to take advantage of. They also sort of revamped their "Social" aspect, allowing the Zune user to share music from Zune-to-Zune, but also off their new social network (don't quote me, I'm still running off of excitement). it kind of appears their social network is similar to that of last.fm in regards that it displays your last play. Anyway, check out my Zune card:
http://social.zune.net/member/nickcdavis
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A few days ago, a guy walked into our office at Famous Davis, interested in potentially becoming a part of the programming world. He wasn't sure where to begin. He has never touched a line of code, tested software or answer calls for a support line. He didn't know the potential in the field or if it's even worth a shot. I was impressed that someone with no prior experience in computers beyond normal use would be interested in such a field. Yet, he is looking for something new to try for a line of work as his current field is something that he wants to make a closed chapter in his life.
 After a quick talk with my Dad on what is available in the wonderful profession of software development, he was on his way. I told him I would check into a few resources to get him start in Microsoft development. I knew Microsoft had a good deal of resources and a free version of Visual Studio, but what I had not realised is exactly how much they offer beginners. Complete beginners at that. I managed to find their Beginner Developer Learning Center, which has everything needed to start coding, even with no prior coding experience. I've always been a Microsoft Fanboy, but th | |