Cranking it out

I've decided that once I get an idea for a blog post, I should just type it up and push it out like I'm aggressive mom-to-be past the due date and I just want it all to be over (angry comments soon?).

Rule: If you are writing something - anything - online and you want it to be useful, one of the most basic things you can do is include the date. Yes, there was an article without a date and it annoyed me so much that I had to write a rule about it. There was also the time when I got excited about a band coming into my town... two years ago. Well that would be awesome if I had a frickin' TARDIS, but I DON'T! (ooh, watch my page hits increase now)

See here's the deal: you are on the internet. Ideas are flying around all the time. There are all sorts of cross-references. New technology/software comes out. Things are moving so fast, that yes, something you posted two months ago could become mildly irrelevant (or really irrelevant). I'm sorry if that scares you; that's what it means to be on the internet. But guess what! What's helpful to your readership (and folks using search engines) is a DATE! If I look up the top 10 iPhone photo applications, I want to know they're the top 10 RIGHT NOW. Not the top 10 applications that are now seen as feature-poor, sad pandas.

You think you can hide the irrelevance by hiding the date? Nope. What if somebody wants to give a "history of iPhone photo applications?" Your easily-searched site without a date could easily have been a good reference point, but nope, no date, so you've eliminated THAT use for your page too.

Please. Please, just include a date with your postings, folks. It doesn't hurt anything, and adds so much value to the reader. Even if they can't appreciate it consciously/immediately, they will once they look for it.

Also in other news, I've had a bout of inspired, productivity/self-improvement fever. In this regard, Ze Frank is still relevant even from 2006 (and just pretty damn amusing):



Psst... this is another example where including the date is good. If you're still relevant years later, it can only be impressive to see the date.

How do you survive as a text-based blog?

A little
poem
is all
you have
left
of your attention
span.


Rule: (at least it seems like a rule) Blog posts without photos rarely get read.

Sometimes I stare at the ceiling trying to figure out if my blog posts are interesting/useful enough to carry a reader's attention to the very end. Anyone have any thoughts on how to keep attention as a text/writing-based blog? Saw someone's blog had categorized posts by the time it takes to read them. Kind of neat.

Photo by me.

I have been wandering around amazed

That is what I have been doing this whole time instead of blogging. There's a ton to be amazed at out there.

Here are some of them:
- Everything being really dark during a rain shower except the neon green new leaves
- How long people are willing to wait in line for free cone day at Ben and Jerry's
- How quickly the weather can turn
- This amazing strainer/steamer thing. What an example of great design.

More wandering to come, but I promise more posts too. I need to feed my instagram to this blog. I'm too lazy to Google it. Someone wanna tell me an easy way to do it?

Rule: If you're going to walk slowly, walk slowly in order to observe the world around you. Otherwise, get outta my way!

Outta my way, peas! Photo credit: Dreamfarm website

Paper is not dead

Rule: Post-its will never be obsolete (until digital equivalent is made; really thin, tiny tablets that recognize handwriting... and can stick places?) because writing with one hand is simple. Typing with one hand takes forever. This makes post-its and notepads the number one note-taking thing of choice when people are on the phone (I say this with 0 amount of data and a sample size of me) or just holding something else (hey now) with the other hand.

I realize that this can be solved with headsets, but honestly, not that many people have adopted them, and they are still classified as accessories for a phone. Plus then there's the dichotomy of what if we made all phones headsets vs what if we made all phones tiny tablet computers, etc.

Has anybody come up with a digital equivalent for physical post-it notes that you can quickly jot notes down on while you've got a phone in one hand?

As long as people are trying to note-take with one out of two hands, people will need post-its.

Similies, metaphors, and analogies.

I'm sorry about the similes, etc. I start writing them when I am angry, usually. This time, I'm angry about this:


http://www.food2.com

Can somebody please tell me what is going on here?

A whooshing Flash interface, loud colors, strange text blocks, blog format, and content that sounds like a sarcastic, inarticulate, bore of a tween trying to impress some college students. It looks like Food Network (its parent/family company, which is also a hot mess of web design) got too drunk with MTV at a party, and had this... this... thing.

Or maybe it's more like Food Network noticed her sagging breasts and crow's feet and decided she could squeeze into her daughter's clubbing clothes. People are averting their eyes and whispering behind her back.

Or maybe it's Food Network completely missing the mark in making its web content - which is openly recycled and credits its own kitchens instead of trying to hide it behind a blog-face - more accessible and hip to America's youth. The sans-serif type, the clashing colors, the raw layout...

Oh Food Network, did you eat Look At This Fucking Hipster with your dinner of internet marketing keywords and then throw it up onto the internet?

I'm sorry, I think you meant to do this:
http://www.nycgo.com/

See how the crazy colors are limited to just two? See how it's confined to only the most important information? The drop down menus go horizontally to preserve visibility of content. The text is easy to read. The text is enjoyable to read because they have contributing writers, not regurgitating monkeys. The spacing of the paragraphs is easy to scroll through. Images do not interrupt important flow of information (as in recipe instructions). If you're going to have images/illustrations, please integrate them at the side of the text; it's more clear that way anyway. Images for punctuation are okay, but you haven't done that.

You don't even have very much web-exclusive content.

There are about 10 sentences per blog post and the rest of it is clunky photos and solicitations for comments. Who's going to comment on your post when you haven't even said anything!? The recipes are straight recycling, and they haven't been edited for more accessibility (e.g., more detailed instruction, diagrams, definitions).

So let's recap. Food2 website: It's ugly. It's annoying to navigate/look at. There's not much original content. The content is bad. The content is not really any more fun or hip than original Food Network content. The content is not at all geared toward beginners. I'm sorry, Food2. Your attempts at being hip and accessible have failed with me. You are not hip, you are a giant eyesore. You are not accessible, because I do not desire to access whatever bad content you have hidden in those stripey, neon lines. I guess I could watch one of the videos, but... that's what your tv channel is for.

Rule: Please, people. When you re-brand to appeal to a younger or newer audience, do your research into the demographic. Then spend a lot of money on good design. The web is your new medium. Please do not poop on it.

- Make it visually-stimulating, not messy.
- It can be raw, but not unpolished.
- Keep the content original, not lingo-heavy.
- Be witty and endearing, not goofy and disconcerting.

It's hard, but it looks like you have wads of cash to spend. Feel free to toss some of that my way.

Short and sweet

rule: your automated phone system should never just hang up on a customer. they should always have the option to go back to the main menu, talk to a real person, or hang up themselves.

Countless times, ineffectual automated phone systems have tried to tell me information that I didn't need, then hang up on me. I have always called them back and pressed lots of buttons until I talked to a real person. I do not need to know all your hours and return policy and what your cat ate for lunch for the past five days BEFORE I press any buttons.

1-800-BE-USER-FRIENDLY

Dear all you *clever* companies out there,

You have found just the cutest little phone number for yourself and the letters spell out exactly your company's mission statement, or your best weekly deal, or your dog's last name. You were so happy it was available! You've listed it on all your collateral and web material. Thing is, you've forgotten to also list what numbers those letters correspond to, and I now hate you because I can't remember whether jkl is 5 or 6 because I'm on a Blackberry. Oops and I forgot 1 is not abc but rather no letters so I've accidentally dialed a moving company. Also, when I'm on a phone that does list the letters, I'd rather not play word hunt while dialing. Please list your cutesy mnemonic phone number WITH your numeric phone number. Thank you, and I apologize for the stabbings, but they were necessary.

Love,

User.

Rule: Make it ludicrously easy for people to dial your phone number and reach a representative.

Dear website: why do you suck?

Some websites have an excuse. Websites I design and create, for example, have no choice but to suck kinda hardcore, because I know nothing about back-end website design (tee hee, back-end). Similarly, I don't really expect anything created on geocities or associated in a "web ring" (remember those? old school.) to be all that good. No offense. There might be some out there that are good, but I don't expect them to be.

However, if you're a large company that everyone knows, I expect that you have at least enough cash to create a functional website. Nay, a *usable* website. EGADS WHAT A CONCEPT. Let me start by saying that I may be a bit too retarded to use websites and maybe I'm just completely blind to the ease of their use. However, I'd consider myself to be at least mildly technologically-literate, so let's pretend that most people might make the same mistakes I did if I'm just missing something. Or we can pretend everybody should be able to use websites even if they have a hangover. Just sayin'.

To the point: let's say you're a company that sells insurance. Your goal: to get everybody to insure their everything with you. You want them to have different policies for their home, boat, car, motorcycle, anatomical monstrosity, compost heap all with you. That's great! Let's say I've signed up. Let's say also that I want to use the internet to keep track of them all and make changes. That's great for you too; you have a record that doesn't require a lot of gross filing and paper cuts etc. as well as the ability to back it up real easy-like. GUESS WHAT NOW I HATE YOU. Why? Because you've forced me to create a new login/pass combination for EACH policy. (And your site also has cookie/login/logout problems, I might add)

...WHAT?

Yeah not only am I not creative to come up with that many distinct login/pass combinations, but I'm not nearly awesome enough to remember them all (Which letters did I capitalize in aZNinvAzN2002n00bsluLZ567?). Why on earth would you do that to your customers? Do you want to drive them away? But that's not enough; no, most certainly not. That's an easy problem to solve. Here are some suggestions: Forgot your password? Send it to me. Too much of a security risk? Send me a randomly-generated temporary password that expires in 4 hours with a captcha required before submission. Still too much of a security risk? Force me to go through an awful voice-activated/touch-tone system only to have it assess after 10 minutes that I need to talk to an operator to reset my password. Oh... you... want me to reset my password by mail?

...Yeah f*** you.

No joke. This website - as its first suggestion after my unsuccessful attempt to answer security questions (another story altogether) - suggested only I reset this password by mail. No other suggestions. That's a problem. You're basically suggesting to me that not only does your website suck, but that you don't trust your phone system to solve my problem and so you want me to WRITE IN to reset my password. Now I understand somewhat, because it seems given this tribulation that the folks who work at your company are ILLITERATE, but see the reason why I was using the internet as opposed to, say, smoke signals, was not because it had just rained and there was no dry tinder. Interestingly enough, i just wanted things to move a bit faster than that.

Now maybe I'm entirely in the wrong here. Maybe there is a way to have one online account at your website for all these policies. And maybe I could've figured out my obscure reminder as to what my other passwords are. But I don't see a way to do it on the site. Seriously, the link should be able to slap me in the face somewhere in my account management section or whatever it is. As should the "login/logout" section. Not only is the login/logout placed in different places depending on what page you're looking at, sometimes I really can't find it. But hey, maybe I'm retarded, and I'll just have to write you a letter and then you can laugh at me and call me an idiot, but somehow I get the feeling that

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

isn't quite so effective through the mail, especially after it takes two weeks to arrive and I've already replaced you.

Rule: Have people test your site for usability.