Posts tagged ‘development’
Here’s the key indicator that Twitter is different - it sucks. It really does, look at the list:
1) Unreliable - site is slow to moderately unusable to abhorrent almost all hours of the day. How slow is it? Bush can get through two whole Family Circus comics before the damn page paints.
2) Clients are the victim of API suckage - Twitterific and Snitter are both well designed, useful tools that live precariously at the edge of completely worthless and “Did that tweet ever get sent?” because they must rely on the service issues of the Twitter API
3) Web Interface is mean to me. It seems to find joy in never remembering my login. Ever.
4) SMS seems to kill my iPhone. I turned the flood gates on earlier in the week so I could find out how Merlin Mann likes his waffles no matter where I am, but that SMS deluge leaves my iPhone groggy, tired and makes the speaker cackle like a Christmas Witch. I ultimately had to bail on that.
So after all of this, I can’t seem to let it go. It’s a useful, verging on necessity at this point. And after all of this hassle I still come back to it. Just think of what it would be like if it worked well, for real. That would be cool, until then back to waiting for the damn pages to load and wishing Twitterific would stop filling up with my tweets and show me what other people are saying.
This is exactly why I never check a domain until I’m ready to buy it. I’ve been afraid of this every place I’ve purchased domains. This is downright shitty behavior. Awful stuff.
It’s 2007 (nearly 2008) so stop with the damn .SIT files. Seriously just stop it. ZIP it if you have to compress, Stuff**it it a pain on Leopard/Tiger. So knock it off, thanks.
So I’ve begun to migrate some of my desktop-based apps to the web in recent weeks, primarily to adapt to PC work-life - Mac home-life. The most recent ‘victim’ has been NNW. I love the app, and really like Brent and the work he’s done. However, I’m seeing less value in a desktop app for feed reading when there’s a viable web-alternative. I’ve started to stray from ‘flagging’ items and instead, if I deem a post worthy of archival, it get’s marked in ma.gnolia. This way I have a tagged/social record of the posts I like that’s easily retrievable and contextual (via posts/marked date/etc). It’s cross-platform, portable and clean. I hate the Google Reader look & feel, and the ajax lag for onClick kills me, but those issues don’t diminish the overall value. And as a result my love for Ma.gnolia continues to bloom…
I’m a WordPress guy. I’ve been working in WP for over 2 years, theming and scheming my merry way. In many cases the theme designs go hand-in-hand with some level of customization, plug-ins or CMS-y PHP work. Strike that, in every project I’ve been a part of this has been the case. Which is one of the things that concerns me about WordPress’ announcement regarding a Theme Marketplace. The emphasis seems to be on theme visual designs, not the site design, not plugins, not customization, not CMS. I’m concerned that this marketplace will be a clearing house for low-budget, low value visual skins rather than giving users resources and tools to build compelling sites. The 50/50 split seems steep to me as well, a further step in devaluing design ala design contests and spec work but making the ‘agent’ rich in the meantime.
I’ll happily wait it out before I get snippy, WordPress (Matt et al) haven’t let me down in the past, and I assume their model can benefit the community. I just hope users are satisfied in getting what they pay for. Something funny happens when money is exchanged, the expectations are quite different than running to a WordPress free theme site and downloading a cool design. We’ll have to wait and see how this ‘marketplace’ handles cranky clients and designers, they will be accountable whether they want to be or not; considering they are getting 50% of the client’s cash.
Normalized data tables of the A List Apart Web Designer Survey are now available. Go forth and geek out data wizards.
So I’m finding out more and more people have some connection to music and oddly enough, drum corps, in the tech circles I’m a part of. I never marched, I opted to attend Interlochen rather than march my senior year of high school. However, I have friends who marched Colts, Scouts, Spirit, Magic, Cadets, Phantom, and lots of smaller corps as well. How about you? Any of my loyal readers do the drum corps thing? If so what, when and where?
There’s a connection to all of this (music & tech), but I’ll let you infer what it is, I’m cloudy from a late night with the princess.
(Currently listening to Star 1991 - what a show.)
Thanks to everyone who made it to my session at BlogOrlando. In case you missed the links are located at: http://ma.gnolia.com/people/jharr/tags/blogorlando - this list will continue to grow so keep an eye on it.
Also, as a little bonus, I have a set of icons for everyone who made it out to the event, or if you’re reading this post. They are free and provided with no restrictions. If you design something cool with them just leave a comment so I can check it out. these will eventaully make it to the downloads section, but for now, grab them here.
These are small, micro-icons that work well as blog category indicators or to simply pep-up your blog sidebar. I have included 4 colors (grey, green, navy and orange) totalling 120 icons. Enjoy.
Have you ever wanted to stand over the shoulders of developers doing their work, watch the ins-and-outs of how the create a working product? You may very well get that chance (virtually) if you follow along the clear function team’s new project. The Memphis design & development shop is going to build a free business cashflow web application over the course of the next month. During that tim they plan to document the entire process via the one month app website. The first couple of posts are up, the basic intro and some discussion of the initial taskflows. With aspiration of Basecamp integration and rigid and aggressive deadline it will be exciting to see what they come up with. My gut says regardless of the product they create the exercise and documentation of the event will be a boon for these guys. Personally I’d like to see that energy go into completing and releasing reflect.
