Ajax Girl

Does Cover Flow work for browsing the Web? Increasingly, I’ve been seeing Flash-based Websites adopt the visual metaphor of Apple’s iTunes Cover Flow as a navigational tool to quickly flip through Web pages (instead of album covers). You can see that in new search engines like SearchMe, and in a news filter that just launched this weekend called Flowww. (Apparently, we are now entering the era of triple-letter misspellings for Websites because all the double-letter misspellings are taken). Floww lets you flip through about 24 current pages culled from the top 100 tech blogs and news aggregation sites like Digg and Techmeme.

Right now, you will find some of the same stories that you will find on Techmeme and elsewhere, including posts from TechCrunch, GigaOm, O’Reilly Radar, Silicon Alley Insider, Datawocky, TorrentFreak, The New York Times, and Yahoo News. It’s 98 percent tech news, but the site throws in some pop culture stuff and a couple cool photos from Flickr. Eventually, you’ll be able to add your own feeds, or use it to read one particluar source (here’s what it would look like for TechCrunch).

The idea is that many people are having a hard time keeping up with all the news coming at them from their RSS readers, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and everywhere else. So Flowww tries to reduce the noise and present just the most important stuff. It looks at the top tech blogs and the big stories on the news aggregation sites and puts it through a data mining and predictive analysis engine powered by SPSS Clementine. It also takes into account social votes on sites like Digg, Tweets, highly bookmarked stories, and evaluates anything tagged “flowww” on del.icio.us, Flickr, or any other service it monitors. There will also be a way to e-mail in stories for evaluation

Floww was created by David Zotter, a developer in Connecticut. He won’t really explain what his organizing principle is other than to say it is a “mix between crowd sourcing and predictive analytics” and that “there is large amount of text processing happening to trim down the top news.” He also claims “it should be impossible for a dominant minority from a single source to game the overall rankings,” but refuses to give any details on exactly how it is supposed to do that. (It seems that simply getting lots of people to tag photos and stories with the word “flowww” would be one way to try to game the system).

Ultimately, people will have to decide for themselves if the news presented in Flowww does a better job than other filters. For me, at least, it doesn’t. There are certainly posts and articles there that I would want to read, but many of them are the same ones I can find on TechMeme, Digg, or simply looking at my RSS reader. And there are some I could care less about, like an EW story about American Idol David Cook. I’m not sure why I should trust Flowww to make my reading selections for me, and Zotter doesn’t care to try to explain his approach.

The other issue I have is that, while the site is pretty, the Cover Flow metaphor just doesn’t work for me as a navigational tool. It is too slow and it forces you to look at the pre-selected sites in the order that the algorithm (or Zotter) picks them. If you want to read the middle story, you have to flip through all the previous ones to get to it. I’d rather pick my own stories from a list of headlines, thank you very much.

What do readers think? Would you use it?

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/298107481/

Among the minor tweaks we introduced with the new Basecamp project switcher are some larger link targets at the top of the screen. Since then I’ve been paying extra attention to link target size. Here are a couple examples of generous link targets for inspiration.

Threadless has featured large link targets on its main navigation for a long time. Here’s what the nav looks like:

As a user, when you glance at this nav, you might imagine the specific pixel areas that you need to target like this:

But when you move your mouse toward the nav, you’ll be pleased to discover the actual link targets are much larger:

The end result is a feeling of comfort. It’s just really easy to click the links. It feels like the links are working with you instead of against you.

Flor does the same thing with their links. Here’s the navigation:

Here are the targets you might aim for:

And here are the actual targets:

You might have noticed both of these sites use images for their navigation links. The same effect is easy to achieve with HTML links. Just use padding where you might have had whitespace.

Normally you might have white space between your links like this:

<div class="nav">
  <a href="">First link</a> <a href="">Second link</a>
</div>

Instead, use clickable padding on the anchors to create space between them:

<style>
  div.nav a { padding: 5px; }
</style>

<div class="nav">
  <a href="">First link</a><a href="">Second link</a>
</div>

Note how the anchors touch each other with no white space in the second example.

We do this in quite a few places in our apps and think it’s one of those small things that makes a big difference.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1048-padded-link-targets-for-better-mousing

Editor’s Note: At a time when anyone can broadcast their opinions about your startup to the world, public relations requires a new level of engagement on the part of companies and entrepreneurs. But what are the new rules of PR? Guest author Brian Solis, who earlier this month wrote a post for us on the evolution of the press release, explains how public relations has changed and offers up 12 secrets of PR for startups. Warning: This a lengthy post. Its intent is to help companies navigate through the rough seas of traditional PR as its struggles, forcibly, to evolve and adapt to the new rules set forth by the Web (regardless of version number) .

Solis is the Principal of FutureWorks, a PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley and also blogs at PR 2.0. Along with Geoff Livingston, Solis recently co-authored Now is Gone, a book that helps businesses learn how to leverage new and social media.

I’ve been overwhelmed with requests from executives and PR professionals to explain how this new media (r)evolution applies to them specifically and how they can make PR more effective and personal during these interesting times. I recently discussed it here and have been doing so for a long, long time. But since conversations and attention is discontinuous and distributed, I asked if I could bring this discussion to a more prominent online epicenter to help reach a wider array of those looking for answers.

The Long Road Back to Public Relations

Public Relations is experiencing a long overdue renaissance and its forcing PR stereotypes out from behind the curtain where they operated comfortably for far too many decades. It didn’t begin this transformation because of Web 2.0 or the latest Social Media wave, but instead in the 90’s when the Web gained mass adoption. Yes, it’s taken that long and it will continue to evolve over the next decade as communications professionals struggle with putting the public back in public relations.

Regardless of what we think we know about PR and the New Media or Social Media revolution, the truth is that we actually may know less about everything than we care to believe. These are times where we can lead and learn in order to improve an industry long plagued by misconceptions and the lack of PR for itself.

PR is now more than ever, something more capable and influential than simply writing and sending press releases to contacts generated by media databases. The media landscape has been completely blown open to not only include traditional media, but also bloggers and most importantly the very people we want to reach, our customers.

PR 1.0

About 100 years ago, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays created and defined the art and science of modern-day PR. Believe it or not, their philosophies and contributions can still be used to further evolve PR today – especially when it comes to Social Sciences.

Over the years, the PR 1.0 publicity machine lost its way and its spark. We got caught up in hype, spin, buzzwords, and spam, and forgot that PR was supposed to be about Public Relations. But, its still how many companies continue to approach PR today.

Enter Social Media and the democratization of the Web and content. Now media and content producers are pushing back, demanding a more targeted and relevant form of outreach. For those who confuse Social Media with online marketing, Social Media is anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations between people – it is not the practice of social marketing. I say people, because it humanizes the process of communications when you think about conversations instead of companies marketing at audiences.

PR 2.0 = Conversational PR

The Web changed everything and this ongoing reinvention of PR has been dubbed PR 2.0 or New PR.

PR 2.0, as I defined it many years ago, is the realization that the Web changed everything, inserting people equally into the process of traditional influence. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity to not only reach our audiences through media gatekeepers, but also use the online channels where they publish and share information to communicate more directly and genuinely.

At the very least, PR 2.0 is going back to the roots of PR to bring back relating to the public back into the process.

Now it’s about listening and, in turn, engaging influencers and stakeholders on their level. It forces PR to stop broadcasting and start connecting.

It is a chance to not only work with traditional journalists, but also engage directly with a new set of accidental influencers, and, it is also our ability to talk with customers directly.

No BS. No hype. It’s an understanding of markets, the needs of people, and how to reach them at the street level—without insulting everyone along the way. Conversational PR is becoming a hybrid of communications, customer service, evangelism, and Web marketing.

The evolution from PR 1.0 to PR 2.0 will result in more informed, effective, and meaningful Public Relations, without a version number. It’ll just be good PR.

So what does this mean for you?

It means you have to start thinking about things more intelligently, differently, and personally.

The Secrets

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur with a recently funded company in need of users, or perhaps you’re bootstrapped and actively seeking financing and you need a little something that will land you a more attractive term sheet.

Every VC, as well as every successful entrepreneur, will tell you that great PR can make you, whereas bad or mediocre PR can stifle your growth and possibly damage existing and prospective relationships. And, they all have ideas on how you should proceed.

But right now, the main thing that stands between you and success is getting those customers – and good press (traditional and new media) builds the bridge between you and them.

In order to get to the next level, you need to know the secrets of effective PR, especially in today’s competitive Web 2.0 world.

These are critical times for your business and you can’t simply entrust the future of your brand to anyone who knows how to write a press release, place it on the wire, and send it via email.

Secret #1
Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town

Bloggers and reporters are some of the busiest people you could possibly hope to meet. They’re actively looking for the most interesting, relevant, and linkable stories out there, preferably before anyone else can run with it. But truthfully, they spend most of their time hacking through the weeds of generic or over-the-top inbound emails, press releases, Facebook messages, Skypes, SMSes, Tweets, and IMs. It’s almost a small miracle that anyone can ever get their story told.

At the end of the day, you’re not the only company with a great story. Just because your story is new doesn’t make it newsworthy.

Bloggers and journalists are interested in good stories and the more time you spend developing that story up front, for each person you’re trying to reach, the more you can help them help you.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/297811787/

Is Microsoft’s vision to compete in search and reinvent itself as an advertising company nothing more than an attempt to get back into its familiar position as Top Gun? Should Microsoft, Google and everyone else just give up on search and outsource to Google? That’s what Tim O’Reilly argues in a blog post today, and I don’t think he could be more wrong.

O’Reilly says Microsoft lost its way after accomplishing its long time goal of seeing “a computer on every desk and in every home.” They’re drifting now, he says, and “their only goal seems to be to stay on top of the heap.” Trying to “eat Google’s lunch” in the search wars is a symptom of this problem he argues. Google already claimed the mission to “Organize all the world’s information,” and he says they’ve already won at search, “or close enough to make no difference.” Microsoft, therefore, should move on to something new that it can win at.

So his advice to Microsoft: outsource search to Google, and go tackle a different problem - building out the Internet Operating System.

I’m not going to argue with Tim about whether it’s a good idea or not for Microsoft to put more resources into the web services infrastructure and software world. I think that’s a fine idea. But what I don’t understand is why he thinks Microsoft must abandon their efforts in search to do so. And I also think that what he suggests - an absolute monopoly in search - would be a disaster for the Internet.

Innovation In Search Has Just Begun

I simply cannot believe that just a little over a decade into the commercial Internet, Tim O’Reilly is willing to say that the search war is over. Did he not read his good friend John Battelle’s book, The Search? He’s not the only expert out there who thinks the war is over - Danny Sullivan argued as much on the Gillmor Gang last week. But I simply cannot believe that this is all we can expect in terms of search innovation.

There are so many areas on search that remain to be conquered. Semantic search. Real language/AI search. The deep web. Media search. Today search basically returns web documents. What I want is for search to complete tasks for me. We’re no where near that today.

We are just getting started in search. To think that search has reached its pinnacle today is like saying aircraft were perfected before World War I. And if just one company were to carry on in aircraft innovation at that point, I doubt we’d have jetliners whisking us around the world today.

Innovation does not occur at a rapid pace without competition. If Google or any company were to control search exclusively, we could expect to see little happen in search technology or business models over even the medium and long term.

Sure, the odd startup or two would still come along and try to shake things up. But search is infrastructure intensive - the cost and difficulty of indexing the web and building a business in an established market requires resources that most new startups can’t realistically access. And if the market consolidates further, competing will become that much harder. There’s a reason monopolies get broken up by governments - market forces can’t generally undo them.

Search Monopoly And A Healthy Internet Are Mutually Exclusive

Search is important because it is the starting point for most commercial intentions on the Internet. As I wrote earlier this week, 68% of online purchases begin at a search engine or shopping comparison site. That drives revenue, and a lot of it. About 40%, or $16 billion, of the $40 billion collected in online advertising comes from search. And 80% of that $16 billion comes from commerce related searches.

The online advertising space is still growing rapidly; there are estimates that it will grow to $80 billion by 2010. If Google continues its dominance of search, they may surpass Microsoft in revenues, and certainly in profitability, in the next few years. The fact that Microsoft won’t be able to count on fat desktop software profits forever only makes the problem worse.

Search and Advertising are effectively mirrors of each other. To say that it’s ok for there to be one player in search is saying that it’s ok if there is a monopoly in advertising.

We’ve already seen what happens if there is a dominant player in search - little effort is put into innovation, and the not enough revenue flows to companies that add value to the system. The risk of the entire ecosystem is put at risk.

For example, the CPC (cost per click) model is flawed, but in Google’s favor because it puts fraud risk inefficiently on the advertisers, who have no way of controlling it at the search engine level. CPA (cost per action) models work much better, but Google has done little more than test them. The current system is great for Google and bad for advertisers. But advertisers have nowhere else to go since Google has 60+% of the search market (and perhaps as much as 90% of search revenue), so they have to live with it. Microsoft’s recent Live Search Cashback initiative shows that competition can and will create more efficient systems.

On the publisher side things are even worse. Google doesn’t share enough revenue with content sites that show their ads. The only thing keeping them even close to honest is the fact that Yahoo and Microsoft will occasionally compete for those partners. Take that away, and Google will go back to keeping the majority of advertising revenue generated at those sites (their only competition will be other types of advertising, which generate far less revenue). That is a terrible outcome when you look at it from the perspective of the health of the Internet.

Microsoft can’t ignore the online advertising market, it’s just too big and important. And we need to be behind them in this effort, because if Microsoft and Yahoo lose interest, we’ll be stuck with a monopoly, and the Internet will suffer. Competition drive innovation. Competition drives prices down. To wish this away is irresponsible.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/297617671/