blog.fredrikohlin.com
A weblog by Fredrik Ohlin (@fohlin),
CompSci Lecturer and PhD student,
from Malmö, Sweden.
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- Huh, you’re not filming?
- (Nod) For about 2 minutes.
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The Web Has No Versions, Only People
2.0. So many blog posts have struggled to define exactly what this version number means. Content aggregation and ubiquitous access to information? Focus on social objects and social networking? Transparency and openness? Long-tail mentality and niche markets? Open source software and standards?
Whatever.
While the human urge to categorize and group information is strong, there are no versions of the Web. There are however continuous improvements, each one building on the last. And I think we can see one overarching trend that has shaped, and will continue to shape, the Web and we who use it: Democratization.
You see this trend in how people communicate - blogs and later microblogs have given everyone a platform to publish and interact. The barrier to entry continues to be lowered, and your ability to reach a large audience, as well as the specific group of people that you care a lot about, continues to increase.
What needs to happen, and therefore will, are two things (at least):
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Bringing the Web to more people, more places and more contexts. The mobile Web will play a huge part in this, giving affordable Internet access to many, and giving more Internet access to those who already have it.
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Using the power of the crowd. Companies and services have already begun to tap into our collective wisdom. As it stands, most of these initiatives are crude, unintuitive and frankly, not that relevant to most people. The signs are here however - the fact that some have left RSS-readers behind in favor of Twitter is just one. With time, social recommendations will be perfected and become the norm. The Semantic Web will power social classification and create social navigation.
So, Web 3.0? Whatever. But the future of the Web is spelled “people.”
This entry was originally posted as a comment on ReadWriteWeb.
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4560 pixels wide (how wide is yours?). The keyboard and mouse are connected to a PC (right monitor), but seamlessly control the Mac (left monitor) as well. What makes this possible? Synergy!
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Respect
A basic value that everyone seems to agree on is respect. How this is defined may vary from person to person, but the notion of its importance i universal (as far as humanly possible, at least). No one wants to spend time with people who constantly are being disrespectful, and to show a real lack of respect just once could put a real dent in a relationship.
Why then, do companies, services and applications continuously disregard this all-important value?
Just the other week, Last.fm used its monopoly-like status to force users to pay. It’s not about the money - it’s about only charging users in certain countries. Last.fm may have its reasons, but the message they’re sending is that international users are worth less. It’s also about the fact that users already are a source of revenue. By contributing their music habits - scrobbling - users provide Last.fm with massive quantities of data, to sell to the highest bidder(s). (I actually deleted my Last.fm account as a protest.)
On an even grander scale, entertainment companies continue to treat their customers as criminals by using onerous DRM schemes. See the Spore fiasco. Or the Sony CD protection scandal. Or the non-playable BioShock. Or the… you get the idea.
The idea of respect also extends to user interfaces. Every time you force someone to go through an arduous sign-up process, present crappy error messages (as seen on The Daily WTF), or overload your site with ads, you are being disrespectful.
In the long run, every form of dissrespect will cause frustration, badwill and a lost customer/user/friend. Don’t let this happen.
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Obviously, it’s very easy.
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The 200 most common tags from a set of 455871 tags and 30863 images (from Flickr). Proximity represents tendency to appear together. Size represents number of occurences with other tags.
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This was intended to be motivational, but I think it has quite the opposite effect. Clearly, we don’t have to write anything until March 23rd, or there about.
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Tumblr, simplicity and 210 lines of HTML
I’m a big fan of simplicity as a design principle. Whether it’s a website, an application or product packaging, it should fulfill its purpose in the simplest possible fashion. This means removing elements that do not support the core functionality, as well as reducing users’ mental workloads by providing a clear interface to access this functionality.
This is why I’m now writing in a brand new tumblelog from Tumblr, instead of a traditional blog, based on software like Wordpress. There are no sidebars, no blogrolls, no plugins. There is just content.
“But Wordpress has custom themes,” you might say. “Why not just make a simple theme?” One reason: 210 lines of (mostly) HTML. That’s how long the entire theme for this blog is. I’m pretty sure that you can read 210 introductions to Wordpress and still not know how to make the theme you want.In the spirit of simplicity, I plan to post short to medium form content. Insightful but not pretentious, to the point but not boring - that’s my goal. Just to give you an idea, here are some thought that may or may not accumulate to a post:
- Design principles of Twitter clients.
- Pinging of blog services is no better than email spam.
- Why Balsamiq Mockups makes you happy and creative.
You can also expect screenshots and some photos that don’t make it into my Flickr feed. Hope you’ll enjoy it!
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