On the Record: Craig Newmark

August 15, 2004

The SF Chronicle is running an interesting one-on-one interview with Craig Newmark, which ranges from topics including how CraigsList got started, to the recent eBay purchase of a 25% stake.

eBay Takes a Bite

August 13, 2004

Yep, EBay takes stake in Craigslist.

New Features...del.icio.us enabled

August 09, 2004

Starting this week, there are a host of new features and services coming. Starting off with enabling my bookmarks for you all to use. Thanks to the del.icio.us server service.

Top 10 Things That Tell You You've Been Working In The Web Field for Too Long

August 05, 2004

It occurred to me awhile ago that I have been working on the Web, well, since there was a Web to work on. That roughly translates to 1994-ish. As I came to that stunning realization I began to think about all the things I did that now really date me.

So, with that realization, here is a top 10 list of things that (if you remember doing them as part of your job) tells you if you have been working in Interactive Media for too long.

1. You remember learning Macromedia Director and developing CD-ROMs
2. Your first project on the web involved bending Mosaic 1.0 to your will so you could make it look like a web page.
3. You got involved working on the web With no prior experience, but got the job anyway because you showed interest in learning.
4. You had the title of "WebGuru, Web God, or The Web Guy"
5. You can honestly remember being in Design sessions where usability was not even talked about. The only thing we wanted to do is "Be on the Web and make it look cool"
6. You can remember having food delivered to your desk by WebVan at all hours of the day.
7. You can name all the hidden Easter Eggs in Netscape 2.0 (and be able to tell people how to get to them even now!)
8. You learned how to program in RainMan for developing pages in AOL.
9. You can remember coding and developing sites with nothing but a plain text editor (note pad) and PhotoShop 2.0
10. Your first experience with the Web in 1994 was working on The Well.

Ch...Ch...Changes

May 13, 2004

As I mentioned in my recent post, I am no longer enamored with the web and thus am no longer blogging about it from a User Experience perspective.

Since there are a number of really good UXP sites out there and my change of focus, my blogs about User Experience are really not all that relevant. So, I have made some very subtle changes to the site. Namely, I have killed the User Experience category here as well as moved all my professional portfolio and resume information to another URL.

I have also started posting my personal photos here (don't even think about stealing them...they are copyrighted and I will hunt you down and kill you if you use without permission).

These changes are just the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned.

Why I don't blog about the Web Much

April 20, 2004

I get this question a lot, "Why don't you blog more about the web and user experience? Aren't you resp. for the User Experience at the company you work for? Surely, you have insights."

Once and for all I will answer this question with a definitive answer.

When I got involved in the Web back in 1995 it was the brave new world with limitless possibilities. There was a level excitement and exploration that was not only floating around, but encouraged at all levels. I caught the bug and nurtured that interest into something that I now make a good living off of, but the excitement is gone.

Yes, I have done a lot of things on the web both professionally and personally. I do develop things that have an impact on my firm's Global User Experience. I have the job that I wanted when I set out on this weird path 9 years ago.

However, the web is not the brave new world that it once was. Before the Web, the "Cool Thing" was 3-D, before that it was CD-ROMs, etc... For one reason or another those mediums matured and the adventure dried up.

I liken the situation on the Web to the dawn of the PC age...it was hot, exciting, and a lot had yet to be done, but in the end the industry matured. Similarly, the same thing has happened with the web. User Experience, Usability, and Information Design are all very important, but the challenges (at least on a personal level) are not huge anymore.

The reality of things is that most of the problems have been solved in one way or another. Think about it. Suppose you are having a problem with displaying a search results screen with disparate pieces of information. Chances are someone has solved a similar problem in the past. That is the reality we live in on the web. At the same time it also removes the "challenge" in solving a difficult problem (which I really enjoy) from my job.

On another level, I simply have been doing something that I love for far too long. You can only eat, sleep, breathe the Web Cool Aid on a constant basis for so long. I liken it to being in the midst of Steve Job's "Reality Distortion Field," but for the web. When you are in it for a short period of time you can believe that you will change the world in a small way, but after awhile that reality really is screwy. 9 years of being involved on the web is a long time. Sooner or later you get tired of it and start to look for the next big thing.

So, nowadays I work the web from 7 AM to 5 PM. Think about UXP, write and design stuff for the web, and then go home. My other interests then take over and thus a higher level of focus in my posts.

I have a strong background in Outdoor activities, Photography, International Relations. I am starting to reconnect with those things as I start to recharge my batteries and look for my "next big thing." Thoughts of helping developmentally challenged children have come to mind recently as a possible move.

Where I will ultimately land I really don't know. However, I am a User Experience Architect for the time being, but my blogs no longer reflect that. I just drank too much of the Web Cool Aid for too long

I couldn't take it anymore

March 12, 2004

Yeah, I have been besieged by Blog spam. Being the very busy person that I am, I delayed upgrading MovableType for quite some time. Why? Well, I hacked the hell out of the application to make it do my bidding. Customized search pages, built in spell checking, plugins up the yin-yang. All that took time.

Well, today, after 38 (yes, 38) spam comments in a single day, I said screw it. I went ahead and upgraded to the latest version of MT. I am in the midst of installing MTBlacklist to end this insanity.

After it is all said and done, I will have at least 2 days worth of work ahead to restore all the customizations I had. Oh, joy. Note to SPAMMERS, expect a horse's head in your bed in the morning.

Current Mood: Annoyed.

I fought Gallery and I won

March 08, 2004

I recently described my battle with Gallery and how much I hate the customization hell that is involved to make it mine. While I complained about its shortcomings for application on most of my sites, I did not share the fact that I won one of my battles with it.

Although I had to do in in tables and lots of PHP customization, I managed to totally customize the interface of Gallery on one of my sites that STILL uses tables. I have PHP include files, left and right navigation includes, modified style sheets and even a customized theme in this install. Many hours of Googling and hacking later, I have an interface that I own and that is seamless with the site.

Now if I could only make it do what I want in a photo blog. One of my cohorts at work has included photos from his gallery into MT, but it does not go far enough. I want an SQL powered photo blog that ties into my iPhoto/Gallery Library. I am still searching for the solution, but I can say I know how I want it to behave...I want it to have the same capabilities of PhotoStack, but with an SQL backend.

No more image slicing and JavaScript

A cool way to put those sliced images and javascript image arrays into an old pine box, courtesy of Tomalak's Realm and ALA:

And now, with a bit of math and a lot of CSS, we're going to take the basic concept and apply it to the world of web design. Specifically, we're going to replace old-school image slicing and dicing (and the necessary JavaScript) with a CSS solution

Hmmm...this will come in handy on my new site. Read the full article on ALA.

5 Big Reasons to Hate Gallery

March 07, 2004

I am a big photography person...I mean really big. Have thousands of black & white, color, and transparency shots going back at least 20 years. I also was an early adopter of digital photography. So, over the last few weeks I have been going through my collection of images, scanning them, and inserting them into iPhoto for local image storage. That, as I am sure anyone can imagine, is a lengthly process in of itself.

Then enter Gallery into the picture. It is a cool php application that lets you serve up your photos from your website and enable online ordering of your prints. That in of itself is a cool idea. It even comes in handy for sharing all those family photos with my relatives around the world, but...it has major shortcomings. I found this out through my slogging through the forums and Google trying to find ways to make it do my bidding.

Here are the top 5 things I hate about Gallery:

1. It relies on tables to represent page layout. Not a good thing if your entire site relies on CSS and absolute positioning like most of todays sites do. This makes integration with my sites a major pain in the ass.

2. The photo album is stored in a phpdb and not MySQL. This makes tying it into a central user account that also manages a BBS or a central image repository for both the web and internal applications damn near impossible.

3. Hacking the applications and CSS files used to make skins are not intuitive.

4. Getting all the jpeg rendering and management libraries configured can be a major pain (read I am compiling them AGAIN as I write this).

5. It does not fully integrate in MovableType to the point that its image management could be integrated into a total photo blog. (Also a big negative for me.)

Although the SQL thing is supposed to be somewhat addressed in the next version, I am banging my head against a wall. I used to be totally against database type installs on sites, and now I am all for them. Everything I am doing now looks to make each account instance talk to another, thus making a central single sign-on for all applications. So, my experience has not been that great.

As for when, if, or how I will make my personal copy of gallery sport that artfernandez.com mast head, god knows. I don't do tables anymore...and to do them for gallery would just create another level of inconsistency and inflexibility in my site that I do not want.

Considering a New Blogging Tool

March 02, 2004

So, I love movable type. It has all the cool plug-ins and scripts to make it do your bidding. It is also something that you can install and control without paying a cent. This is a very appealing feature. At the same time it has some serious shortcomings

Some of those shortcomings including the inability to control who views certain blogs, the lack of password protection, etc. The only reason why I would want such functionality is for a new site that I am working on for a bunch of college alumni. They have a strong desire to be able to have absolute control over what posts are public/private and the ability to password protect.

Why would anyone ever want to do this? Simple. They want to blog about some sensitive and confidential subjects without worrying about prying eyes. On occasion, they also want to be able to put out public posts. All this using one master template. A tall order even with MovableType.

I ran across the latest incarnation of TypePad and it seems to meet the bill. The downside, it is a hosted service and they charge. Bad on both counts.

I am still considering it for those guys, but I am still a MT lover and will keep on using them for my sites. Besides, my content on this site is not worth protecting anyway. It's not like I have trade secrets or the secret formula to Coca Cola...I have a snoozer blog and I know it. Although, I have thought about doing a subscription only blog covering "As the Half Turns," but that is mostly for my own amusement when I am having a crappy day.

How does your mood rank?

February 25, 2004

Thanks to Jason for this one. So are you having a really crappy day? A great day? Well, now you can compare your mood against the world. Check out the The World Mood Chart

32 Years of Travel

February 23, 2004

Yeah, I've been a few places. Mostly before the time I was 10. Need to get over to Eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia. Hmmm...we have offices in those countries.


create your own

Webmonkey Passes Into History

Thanks to Jeff for his blog about the passing of an legend from the wild west days of the web. That's right...Webmonkey has been shut down. The purveyors of cool, the geeks of web hacks, the secret army of the old Wired Ventures is now gone.

Sigh. Time marches on. You get old. Sites die. However, I remember these guys back in the day when I was coding on a daily basis. It is so sad.