heisel.org

RSS subscription usability

Thursday | May 26, 2005 | 12:39 pm  

Veen brings up a good point about the usability of subscribing to RSS feeds.

With the rollout of feeds on our paid sports site, and as we’re beginning to roll out feeds on AJC.com, it’s a question I’ve tried to tackle.

We did the XSL thing on ajcsportsPlus, but I have my worries about it.

I can easily see my mother bookmarking that page to read headlines, rather than getting all the benefits of an aggregator. Yes, despite the fact that our transformed page says not to bookmark it and it does point you to our help page, I still think folks might skip past that as their eyes go into “find the content I want” mode.

Though it may be jarring, displaying the raw XML might prompt users to hit the back button and click on the “What’s this?” link we provide next to all our feeds.

That solution, though, feels like you’re purposefully letting a child touch a hot kettle just so they’ll learn their lesson.

There are two outcomes: the child might learn to use a pot holder when reaching for something hot and the user might click the help link or they might never touch the stove/feeds again.

Maybe instead of a sheet showing the content and instructions, the XSL should render a splashy page that would give instructions for getting and subscribing to aggregators (with screenshots or a screencast). It could tout the benefits of RSS — “It’s like Tivo for news” or some such.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Journalism, Technology, Web design

Cell phone suggestions

Tuesday | May 24, 2005 | 4:41 pm  

Here’s a question for anyone out there… any suggestions on cellphone providers and/or phones themselves?

Erica and I have been considering making a switch from Sprint for a while, mostly because our phone numbers are still Columbia, Mo. area codes.

Our current top contended is Cingular, and the Razr. I normally wouldn’t consider spending that much on a shoephone, but I like its looks, and the features seem pretty nice, and Amazon has a swanky special on them.

On the service side, we’re just looking to not get ripped when it comes to prices/minutes. On the phone side, we’re both looking for Bluetooth.

I also guess I should enter the “text-message/cameraphone” world that everyone by Erica and I are a part of…

Any thoughts?

Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Technology

Quote of the day

Tuesday | May 24, 2005 | 10:47 am  

“It’s a Gmail task in a Hotmail world”

A coworker sent me that quote, and neither of us can find the source… if anyone out there in great wild Web knows, please drop a line…

Update: 5-16-06: Thanks to irayo we now know the source:

“Cross-referencing was impossible; I was attempting a Gmail task in a Hotmail world.”

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

Getting simple

Wednesday | May 18, 2005 | 12:49 pm  

I’ve had a lot of design thoughts floating around my head lately.

At work I’ve either been designing the UI or commenting on the UI for several projects and my goal has been simplify, simplify, simplify.

Then today, I stumbled across Simpley Done, a blog written by the author of Whitespace.

Wow, talk about simplicity. I like the idea of showing one post on the homepage. In this age of RSS and search, how much do you really have to push “out front.”

News sites are especially burdened with this “out front” mentality, newspaper sites moreso, since they’ve got the cultural baggage of “above the fold” from their analog edition.

Newspaper sites should seriously consider cutting back on the number stories they load up out front, in addition to the number of ads, promos, etc. Less really is more, especially on the oft-crowded computer monitor.

From the content side, if you offer up sane RSS feeds and a good search, folks will find what their looking for.

From the revenue side, if you have one — hell, one large — ad spot on the homepage, you can charge more for it and you’ll probably see better click rates on it. (Assuming it doesn’t annoy the hell out of the user, which seems to be de rigeur in the Web adversiting biz today.)

Thought of the day: Why don’t newspapers index the ads they’re serving online, along with their print ads (which should be online, anyway), so they can be included in search results along with articles?

On a personal note, I’ve been meaning to redesign my (blog)[/] for some time now. I’ve been iterating through mental sketches for a few weeks now — yeah I should actually sketch the thing on paper, but rapid mental sketches have been with me since my newspaper design days — and I think it’s time I actually start working on the damn thing.

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