heisel.org

(Word)Pressed into service

Friday | February 25, 2005 | 3:10 pm  

heisel.org is now powered by WordPress 1.5.

I had the site up and running under various nightly builds for a while now, and it was mostly pre-occupied-idness that delayed me from making the switch.

I love the new WordPress theme capability. I can honestly say I wouldn’t have made the switch if they stuck with the everything-in-one-index-php-file approach from 1.2.

I also love the pages system they built. It addresses a need that just about everybody has, and it makes managing these pages much easier than the bunch-of-index-templates or seperate blog workaround in Movable Type.

I’m also a big fan of the Staticize Reloaded plugin that gives you alot of the stability of MT’s static pages, but most of the dynamic funness that WP offers.

I wish the interface was a little more vertically-oriented, though. Maybe it’s something intrinsic about the Web or Web applications. Maybe I’m just used to Movable Type, but I find the predominantly horizontal sections of the WordPress interface jarring.

I also wish that it didn’t have so many bloomin’ wp-*.php files litered all over the root directory. Maybe I’m anal, but I like clean directory structures. I set up my installation in a seperate folder, but that means I have to manually edit my .htaccess anytime I add a new page. But since I haven’t done that in a looooong time, I figure I’m OK there.

My blogmarks now appear throughout the site, as opposed to just on the index. That’s accomplished by my del.icio.us importer — that yanks bookmarks from del.icio.us into WordPress. I’ll write more about it and release the code soon, it could probably use some clean up.

Anyway, if things are broken, please contact me or post a comment.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Technology, Web design

The ‘new business’ paradigm

Thursday | February 10, 2005 | 1:55 pm  

I don’t think that the vast complex web that is the Internet can really be boiled down into a PowerPoint-able bullet point. But for those media executives who need such a thing:

• On the Internet, it’s about users first, not money

That’s a paraphrase from this E-media Tidbits item about Craigslist.

In short, Craigslist only starts charging for its listings when the volume of crap listings gets so high, that a charging a small fee makes the listings more usable.

Remember, users can leave your site in an instant. How long does it take to hit Apple-W?

On the Web, content is king. The corollary being that content plus a great interface is emperor.

Give the users the content they want, and the interface they need, and you’ll stand a much better chance of “monetizing”, “enterprising” or otherwise making money off your site.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Web design

Teens: No respect for First Amendement, what about blogs?

Friday | February 4, 2005 | 8:41 am  

The Knight Foundation recently released a study showing a disturbing lack of respect by teens for the First Amendment.

One question that went unanswered, or at least unmentioned in the Knight Foundation’s release, was what do the students think about First Amendment protection for forms of speech closer to a teenager’s heart?

What about blogs?

I’m just guessing here, but say you’re an average American teenager. You get this survey from the Knight Foundation, which is probably pretty heavily infused with the idea of “Big Media” ™ — newspapers, TV, radio, etc.

What reason do you, the average American teenager, have to trust “Big Media” ™? Not much:

• Newspapers: Increasingly becoming less relevant to teens — they don’t cover (or cover well), the issues facing them. And even if they do, lugging a newspaper around isn’t as hip as a cell phone, iPod, or laptop.
• Radio/Music: Chances are, you or your friends could be/have been sued by “Big Music” because they refuse to sell you singles on-demand electronically. Sure, Apple is making the situation better, but Apple isn’t “Big Media” ™ — they’re hip.
• TV/Cable: Tivo and Bittorrent has made your TV experience enjoyable again, but you keep hearing about how the MPAA is getting ready to fight those two outlets.

My point is that teenagers, among others, have very few reasons to support or trust “Big Media” ™.

So, the question is, what if you asked: “Do you believe the government should be able to censor your LiveJournal?”

Or what about: “Should the government be able to monitor your IM/text message sessions with your friends?”

A big part of the future of mass communication is personal publishing and end-to-end communication via the Internet.

The question is, how do teenagers feel about the government regulation of their media not “Big Media” ™.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Journalism

iMac delivery: officially freaking out

Tuesday | February 1, 2005 | 11:40 am  

You don’t ever want to see this:

What, in God’s name, is a delivery exception:

myiMac.deliver()
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'AppleProduct' object has no attribute 'deliver'

That’s a delivery exception! :-)

Methinks FedEx needs a call tonight when I get home.

And methinks FedEx should hyperlink their “exceptions” to a FAQ about these status codes, rather than worry us poor would-be iMac owners.

Update: FedEx redeems themselves, somewhat, by the fact that when you call their 1-800 number and it notices your package is marked as having an “Incorrect address,” it automatically puts you in touch with a person.

When it said it had the wrong address, I had visions of phone-menu hell trying to find a person. So, thank you FedEx, for making that usability decision.

But FedEx should still link their error codes to a FAQ/glossary, and when a package has an “incorrect address” the site should link that to a page saying that the user need to call to clarify things and list the phone number prominently.

I don’t know whether it was Apple or FedEx but someone put in an entirely wrong address. The only consolation is that it was in Georgia — lord help me if my iMac had gone to different state, or region, or coast. Who knows when it would arrive?

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Technology, Web design