The Flashbag is a USB drive that, as it is filling with data, will expand. This allows for someone to see visually and in the real world how much space is being used.  Personally, this seems to be the next arena for HCI with components.  I can’t wait to see more items like this.

The New York Times has an article today about newspaper websites being more tuned for search engines:

News organizations, by contrast, have moved cautiously. Mostly, they are making titles and headlines easier for search engines to find and fathom. About a year ago, The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. “Real Estate” became “Homes,” “Scene” turned into “Lifestyle,” and dining information found in newsprint under “Taste,” is online under “Taste/Food.”

Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more quotidian, factual headline appears with the article itself. The popular BBC News Web site does this routinely on longer articles.

A need for news sites to change headlines and categories simply to improve Google ranking bothers me on some level. By using different labelling systems in print and online, the news service is showing a disregard for print subscribers that wish to take advantage of the web site as well. Beyond that, it is a need that quite often is simply not actually a need. If a news site has a category labeled “Real Estate,” Google should be able to equate that with “Homes.”

Google already already spends a good deal of time with any number of true news sites (meaning journalist or mainstream) with Google News. One would hope that, if your news site is being indexed within Google News, your labels are being equated with nonidentical, but synonymous labels. Google’s own stated goal is to index all information. If they are missing this piece, they need to do some programming.

All ranting aside, simply having a by-line to the category label that focuses down (a minor design decision) allows for the news service to serve each type of user in a consistent fashion without sacrificing pagerank. Perhaps that solution should have been considered before making an experience inconsistent.

(Via Tom Raferty’s I.T. Views)

Scoble talks about plentyoffish.com.

What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it “anti-marketing design.”

Huh?

He says that sites that have ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and generally be more fun to participate in, than sites with beautiful designs.

I wonder if it really is the poorly designed sites, or the sites that are designed to be quick and simple.  As far as I would understand it, simple and quick would generally win.  People don’t want to go to a site often that takes minutes to load (an irony this guy with a splash image on his front page does accept), but do the want to go to one that has clashing colors, poor text choices, and other design mistakes.

Web design should follow a number of different paths: visually appealing, quick loading, and easy to use.  Each of these is important.  A look at plentyoffish shows that the site is not truly ugly; it looks amateurish but acceptable.   Another important detail is the fact that it is a free dating site.  Those generally have good traffic despite quirks.  I would love his eyeballs and revenue on some of my work, but I’m fairly sure it is not due to any amazingly good poor design decisions.

It’s due to having a service people want at the right price.

I’m going to do you product designers a favour.  I’m going to spell out for you right now what I want in a mobile device.  But first, why you should care.

• I’m 25 and have graduated college.
• While I may not have a huge amount of disposable income, I do have a tendancy to make impulse purchases on what I view as cool toys.  This is evidenced by my unemployed purchase of a 15″ PowerBook G4 and 20″ Cinema display and four iPods.
• I am technically competent and have, on occasion, been ahead of the crowd.

That said, I think I am the general early adopter that companies want to woo.  So, for Origami or Nokia’s next mini tablet, this is what will make the difference in if I purchase and talk about your toy:

• Good Storage: If I’m going to spend iPod money on something bigger than an iPod, it better have a hard drive in it.  I don’t need much, 30 or 40 GB is fine, but no less than 20GB.  I may not need it, but I won’t buy if it isn’t there.
• Good Size: This is the hard one I think.  The screen can’t be smaller than 4 inches or bigger than 8 inches.  It also needs a good strong resolution.  This is post-HD people.  Please stop giving me mobile devices that I might watch video on or surf the web on with resolutions less than 800×600.  And that’s a minimum.
• Good Features:  It has to have WiFi, and bluetooth would be nice.  It should play video (and not just WMV or MOV).  It should be able to get my photos from my camera (so USB).
• Good Price:  It has to be at the cost of a toy.  $1000 is too much, hell so is really $500.  I would like half that, but I would settle for $400, if everything else is good.

Along with things this beast should have, there are a few things it should definitely not have.

• Phone Support:  God, if I see cell service bundled in with yet another product, I will flip out.  I mean it.  I don’t need the extra cost and concern with bundling all of that circuitry and cost into something that I will never use.  I mean it.  Really.
• Need For AntiVirus:  Microsoft, if you are making this dream machine, please for the love of all that is good either disable the features that are attacked or come up with some way to not need additional software.  The AV programs just take too much of a hit on a system, and I don’t want to pay for more system than I need just to make sure it is usable.  I don’t think I’m alone here.

There you go.  Now, make me something to be proud of.  Please.  And, if you base it off of my specs, please give me a free copy so that I can eat.  Thanks.

I just have to point to this entry on buriningbird, the paragraphs about PHP are just great:

till, the Java developers and the Perl developers and C++ developers and so on, looked down their nose at this cute little scripting language and ignored it. Ignored it until they looked around one day and noticed something…

PHP was ubiquitous.

It was and still is.  Here is a language that just all of sudden was it.  It was the thing.  I can’t even remember the first app I wrote in it, but I do feel fairly comfortable in saying that it probably sucked.  Suckage aside, I am sure that it worked.  The second one did as well.  And down the line it went, till this day.  Every problem that appears in my web programming world can be fixed with a dabbing of PHP.  Why is this?

Simplicity.  Here is a language that doesn’t worry about cleaning up, who can have the shortest line of code, or what specific flavour is being run on a server.  It interfaces with your database server and places the information on your website.  It does some other stuff too, but that is almost secondary.  PHP doesn’t get in the way, and that is wonderful.

Why is it that when I need to write a quick message, my writing application gets in the way?  I click on Word (for Mac), and the Project Gallery comes up asking me if I want to do any number of tasks.  These tasks on the first screen ask me if I want to create an Excel Document, a Word Document, etc.  Don’t I already know?  Didn’t I click on Word?  Why ask for confirmation?

Now, Scoble will tell you that the Project Gallery will provide you with more features.  And he’s right, it will.  I have no problem with it as it stands; I take issue with it being turned on by default.  Most people just want to jot something down, not create a daily planner or any number of other templates available.  Keep them available, just don’t show me them the first time I turn on the program.

This is good advice for Microsoft, but it is even better advise on the web.  People come to a site and make a decision as to whether or not it is worth their time in a manner of microseconds.  What does your homepage show?  Go ahead look at it.  Do you have a Flash intro?  Is it really required?  Is it the message you want to advertise to people?  Does it make getting the information easier, more difficult, or just wastes time?

I’m not a huge fan of the Flash intro if you couldn’t notice.  In many ways, it acts as the Project Gallery does – it gets in my way.  I’m visiting a website for information, be it a description of some product or service, a review, or even a price.  I’m not visiting to see how good a Flash animator that your company hired is.  Generally, if I see Flash, I look for a skip intro link.  Failing that, I find some other site.  If you absolutely must have Flash movies, put them off to the side, so that those who want them can still get to them.  Leave those of us whojust want to know about your stuff alone.