Kicks and Kisses

What is a media type in context to the internet? I would say images, video, text, would be the basic ones. Now say someone wants to create a web application which supports uploading and display of images. On top of that also wants to create a social network which helps the uploader share and comment on images.

Now this is not a  new idea and many people have done this. The formost 3 which come to mind are Flickr, Picasa and jpgMag. All three support uploading of images. All three have support for comments on images. And in all three users have the ability to share with friends and other users. Then what makes them different? The basic mediatype is same and the basic features are also same.

Mediatype and basic features are the skeleton, what differentiates these applications are the outer details. And especially here the GOD is in the details.

If you compare the upload restrictions in flickr and in picasa(for the free version):flickr - 100MB per month , picasa - a nerdy 1024MB (which makes it exactly one GB). Now people with digital cameras and who shoot even on and off if they upload regularly will cross the 1024 Mb limit in picasa soon. Then they would either have to delete some images or stop using it. While in flickr theres a continues flow of fresh images even for a free user. That keeps a users page continously fresh. What I have personally seen is people use picasa to upload 200 pics from one trip, all the images to it. While in Flickr they might only upload the better ones, so that they don’t cross the 100 MB per month mark. This difference in itself changes the quality of the pictures in both the sites.

jpgMAg caters to an even niche audience. They have a voting feature which they use to select some pictures and then print them to make a magazine. So here the submissions are mostly based the the current running theme which they declare. And needless to say such serious business brings in the experts. The satisfaction (and the money) which the selection of your picture for print brings increases the quality of pictures manyfold. And their upload restriction is “only 10 a day” which makes the pages even fresher. So these and plenty more features determine what kind of social network these sites have.

The whole point of this post was that only a mediatype doesn’t make a web application. I have seen people saying kwippy, plurk, twitter in the same breath. As for kwippy just give it some time to work on those outer details which would set it apart.

kwippy pages are open now for your viewing pleasure. Check it out, if you like it add your email for an invite. And do get in touch if you have any suggestions/criticisms, etc.

i m here: http://www.kwippy.com/kaa/

I use two different computers. Both have Mozilla Firefox. I spend significant time over internet. When I am in office I make some bookmarks as I do at home. My search engine settings also differ based on requirements. Both might have different add on, preferences, settings. I always try to make settings same for both. This helps increasing my efficiency. Do I always need to customize browser to get seamless user experience

I was just thinking of sync mechanism of multiple browser settings. Can Mozilla assign me a log in / password. Once I log in to browser it stores all my setting including bookmarks, add on, search engine settings, and search history, browsing history, browser version at one central location. Once I log in to another PC and enter my user name password. It makes the browser exactly I have. I can do this sync once in a while based on need.

I will feel as always I am working on same browser. If I update something it should automatic update in all other browser once I log in, if I log in to that browser. Once I sign out the browser, it brings back to its normal settings.

The idea can be extended to thick client applications with a server in between. This server keeps track of settings, versions, additions, customization to a thick client application on particular machine. Consider IM Client.

Can this idea make both the browser function seamless?

I was having a watermelon yesterday, when this thought came into mind. A seedless watermelon would be so nice. No fussing around with the seeds. No fumbling with the tongue to get the seeds out.

Then found out on the net that there is indeed such a watermelon. Surely all of you have eaten seedless grapes. I guess 99% commerical grapes are seedless. So I guess due to their user friendly nature these seedless fruits would qualify for “usable fruits”, wouldn’t they?

A little more research gave me this:

All of the above techniques for seedless propagation have one serious flaw: they lead to a decline in biodiversity. Because they involve essentially making carbon copies of one plant, if an agricultural disease which targets that plant evolves, it can spell big trouble. Many famous cultivars of seedless fruit, for example, are grown all over the world, and these stocks could be extremely vulnerable to disease or pests. The decrease in biodiversity is also bad for the species in general, as the more diverse a species is, the more likely it is to survive, as a general rule. read more here.

So I guess there’s nothing called a free lunch. On one hand these are useful to the customers. On the other hand very vulnerable to disease. Which explains the need for industrial pesticides. And how these pesticides find their way into our bodies.

Are their any other examples where usability has a really bad side effect?

Just back from the barber. While he was working on my hair, with massages in between, between bouts of sleep this thought came into mind. And this I have been seeing for around 2 years. Whenever they have to use the razor they’ll make you see that they are removing the old blade and throwing it in a container, which would have a pile of these used blades. The idea behind this is that they want the customer to know that he is using a brand new blade for him. So AIDS awareness has been good I think.
But what becomes a side effect is that each blade gets used only once.
Which means:

So the market dynamics for the razor blade companies whose main customers where the barbers would have changed in the last 2-3 years.

I like nike sites. Though they are made in flash, which takes away some things I am quiet used to nowadays like permalinks. They have this emotional quality to their site which makes me feel to get up and go running. So I guess they have partially succeeded. Full success would have meant me running to their showroom and getting their sneakers.

One thing I absolutely hate about them is as soon as you type “nike.com” you get a splash page which asks which language you want to see the site. Which is okay for a site in multiple languages. When I click English. It shows me a list of countries. Now India (where I live) is’nt there. Also there is’nt anything called “Others” or “Other countries”. What do I do know? Why are they treating me so partially? Isn’t India worth their attention?

I have written earlier about sites in multiple languages here.

I realize that they might not support online purchases in India. And thats the only valid reason I can think of. But why can’t they at least have a “Other countries” where the less fortunate of people come and just window shop?

People love them not just for the torrents, but for their attitude as well. There are a vast number of other torrent trackers around, but Piratebay makes news most often. On their home page their is a link called Legal Threats on which they post the legal notices/emails they get. This one was really funny, in reply to an email from Linotype. They have composed the entire email with different pirated fonts of Linotype.

Based in Sweden they have somehow bypassed the copyright laws till now. Piratebay’s legal advisor Viborg claims. “Until the law is changed so that it is clear that the trackers are illegal, or until the Swedish Supreme Court rules that current Swedish copyright law actually outlaws trackers, we’ll continue our activities. Relentlessly,”

Whatever their legal stand maybe, I love the way they use the anarchist dissension to grow more popular.

Most site headers are a generic image which is common throughout the site. What if the header also serves a purpose. I really liked how opensourcefood uses the food images as header background.

How to make users do stuff. To get them to check pending emails, comments, notifications?
My gmail has 150 unread mails. Now most of these are random mails which I don’t want to read. But still there is this momentary thought of marking them as read just to clean up my inbox. But the task of going through all the pages searching is a task I am not very fond of. So the task remains.
Similarly in facebook whenever a friend invites me for an app, a notification comes up. And the number of notifications which I haven’t checked has increased to quite a number. I noted today that facebook is taking a few number of tasks from the whole and showing them apart. These pictures will give a better idea.

And I realized how this is better than showing just “40 new notifications”, as I actually clicked on the smaller task. The comedy in this is both these links go to the same page even. Still people will click it. I think this is a lesson in human psychology.

Do you think big corporate websites should have a sense of humour? whatever you think some of them do. If you type “chuck norris find” and press “I’m feeling lucky” you would see what I mean.

Earlier I had written about Flickr’s use of pop culture lingo here.

via mayank

updated on 5th may ‘08 —-

on swamy’s comment i checked again and found this text at the bottom of the page

This page has no affiliation with Google
Created by Arran Schlosberg

and the “Support this site” leads to a page which says this

The goal of this site is to have the top Google ranking with the keywords “Chuck Norris” so that when these are searched for using the “I’m feeling lucky” function this page will appear.

So swamy you were right :).