If for some reason you are actually reading this blog and haven’t heard of Twitter, then I don’t know what to tell you besides, go and read the Wikipedia Entry. For the rest of us, you know what Twitter is, and you may or may not know this new form of communication is a subset of blogging called microblogging (this is news to me as of a few weeks ago).
I started a Twitter account a few weeks ago as well, after looking down my nose at it for quite a while. Will I continue to use it? I’m still on the fence about it.
One reason I like Twitter is a lot of the people I follow actually tweet about interesting sites they’ve come across, something cool they are working on, or news that’s usually relevant. That in and of itself makes me want to continue using it, and seek out interesting people to follow. But sometimes good information is intermixed with mundane things I really couldn’t care less about…like:
- On my way to work! (every day)
- Going to bed (every night)
- Getting ready to [INSERT SOMETHING I DON’T CARE ABOUT]
- Oops I meant to say [INSERT CORRECTION FROM PREVIOUS TWEET]
- or, most frequently: [INSERT TECHNOLOGY HERE] is [broke-ass/slow/dumb]!
Unless you had to battle ninjas on your way to work, I don’t really care. And yeah, sucks your Internet is slow and you can’t get to that site. But that’s the nature of microblogging. While some people might enjoy that level of detail, others (including myself) don’t find it particularly interesting.
The value of microblogging to me is not necessarily in knowing your friend’s initimate thoughts right that moment, but to broadcast ideas (read: marketing) to a large audience. A popular figure (or their marketing firm) can open a Twitter account and communicate almost instantaneously with their target audience. Bloggers can tweet about their new post and it reaches readers even before it hits their RSS apps. Google picks up Twitter links almost instantaneously (I’ve seen spiders visit a place on my site I’ve only posted on Twitter…in less than an hour after I posted it).
The future of microblogging? It will go the way most fads on the Internet go: early adoption by geeks, traditional marketers exploit it, SEOs exploit it, and eventually people will migrate to the next new thing that isn’t so mainstream. Rinse and repeat.
I finished a quick app for the iPhone that allows you to do a whois lookup on a domain to see if it’s available or not. I’m always out and about and think of a domain name, and want to know if it’s taken.
Why don’t you just use whois.net or something, you ask? Well first of all that site is packed full of bloat and junk that makes it a pain to look something up. Secondly, I have a sneaking suspicion that sites like whois.net harvest requests and register those domains if no one else does. And no, my app does not record lookups!
I built the app using a small PHP script and IUI. Check out the app at http://whois.onmyiphone.net
I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to HTML forms. I love creating them and coming up with ways to organize them that make it easy to use. But I consistently come across a lot of forms during checkout processes, or signing up for a service, that do things that don’t make much sense to me, and annoy the hell out of me.
One common thing I see is bad usability in dropdown lists of countries. Today I bought tickets to the Rilo Kiley show at the Crystal Ballroom from TicketsWest.com. I didn’t have an account so I had to create one. I filled out my shipping information and when I got to the country selection, I was presented with this:
Why do I have to scroll all the way down to select United States when there’s a 99% chance I’m probably FROM the US and ordering tickets? It’s really frustrating to have to hunt for my country in a huge list.
Solution: Group most likely countries at the top
Chances are someone from the US or Canada are ordering tickets to a concert in the US, not someone from Armenia or Algeria. So put the most common countries at the top of the list, then separate them with a visual indicator. Get rid of ‘Select One’, since it’s a really good bet your customer is in the US (or the country your site is most popular in). Also, be sure to leave the countries in the list as well, in case someone is used to having to scroll and find their country.
Little tweaks like this to forms will not only make your users happy, but it leaves less room for abandoned purchases. The easier you make it for your users to buy, the more likely they will follow through. Every little bit helps.
What do you think? What are other usability issues you see when you fill out forms?
Finally HTML is going to get an update to version 5. With the update comes a big set of new tags that are more relevant to today’s Internet content. Some highlights:
- Section, Header, Footer, Nav, Article tags that replace all those divs we typically use for the same purpose
- The Aside tag, which is similar to a blockquote tag, but used for pullquotes, notes or sidebars of information
- Progress tag, with value and max attributes that can be used as a progress bar for processes in your page
- Video and Audio tags, to replace those messy object and embed tags
I’m excited to see how browsers implement the new spec, and how Javascript will be used to interact with the new elements (especially the progress bar).
Before the iPhone came out there was the announcement: the official SDK to make applications on the iPhone was HTML and Javascript, displayed in a web browser. I read a lot of comments complaining about that, programmers that wanted real hooks into the iPhone system. For instance, you can’t access the phone’s address book, voice mail, or photos with a web browser.
But I think Apple made a smart move. Making a web browser the official software platform allowed many more applications to be developed in a really short amount of time, since a lot more people can make web apps than can create native applications for OS X. And since a web browser is already the defacto communications conductor on the Internet, integrating the phone with information on the Internet is already done.
Why do I love developing for the iPhone?
- I get a fixed screen size. It’s almost like designing for print again. I get 320×480 to work with on my web app, and I can bet that won’t change for quite a long time. No more designing to work within a range of resolutions, I know my app will fit in the screen as I intended. It also forces me to be creative with the space I have, which is a refreshing coming from developing for desktop browsers.
- I only have to code for one browser. Actually, the best part is I don’t have to code for Internet Explorer. I know my site will render exactly as I wanted it to when I originally made it. The CSS will render predictably, and the Javascript will work like I planned. Also, Safari on the iPhone is a full-fledged browser that can do just about everything a desktop browser can do, not some crippled smartphone browser.
- It makes me think differently about user interfaces. The only time I’ve developed for a touch screen was for a small kiosk project that lived in a museum. Most people don’t have the opportunity to develop a site that will be used with your fingers. It changes your perspective on designing web applications when you don’t have the typical mouse and keyboard setup. It gave me ideas and inspiration to take with me back to the desktop world.
- It opens up a whole new range of applications. Ideas that were pretty good on the desktop are now more useful than ever. Location-based searching and apps like to-do lists and mileage logs make a lot more sense when the user can have it with them all the time, and not tied down to a desktop.
I have a feeling Apple will eventually open up the iPhone to allow developers to create native applications, but the web browser based SDK will probably stay the most popular. If I could develop iPhone web apps exclusively, I would. It would be so much more fun.