Software As She’s Developed

I’m listening to Steve Yegge’s talk on branding from last years OSCON. He talks about how languages are branded, e.g. “Java” is enterprise. One of his main points is that brands are “const identifiers”, i.e. it takes an entire generation to change brand perception, so it’s often more effective to simply re-brand. e.g. GTE had a […]

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Wolf Logan’s talking about paleosocial patterns (TOOLS Web 2.0 Patterns workshop). Very cool. Marking - making permanent, public, marks. Dog marking its territory, “I was here” graffiti. e.g. blog comments, forums, guestbooks. Being obnoxious gets the comment noticed more. Pointing - indicating resources to others, can be with opinions. Reputation will dictate how much people care. e.g. Reviewing/rating sites, Digg. Competing - comparing […]

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We’ve done a little group exercise at the TOOLS web 2.0 patterns workshop. Designing a video website, with heavy emphasis on mashing up, e.g. show videos from youtube, grab recommendations from netflix, grab friend lists from Facebook, etc. Here’s the full feature list (click for full image): And the design: We eventually identified features, at back end and […]

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It’s belatedly dawned on me how OpenSocial makes a great server-less Ajax platform. When you create an OpenSocial gadget, you’re building a lil Ajax app that performs much coolness that would normally require a server, but doesn’t. Effectively, you’re delegating the duties of the gadget’s host environment. All you have to do is write a […]

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I just realised there’s no good executive summary for OpenSocial. Every resource fluffs about the “social” aspect and forgets about the UI aspect. The UI aspect, essentially a gadget specification, is just as important as the social aspect, notwithstanding its absence from the “OpenSocial” brand name. I’m not a fan of the name “OpenSocial” […]

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Ajax, AjaxPatterns, Gadgets, OpenSocial, Shindig, Web, Web 2.0, Widgets Background Widgets are small “mini websites”, typically self-contained blocks of content, on a larger web page (with Ajax Design Patterns, I referred to them by the nom du jour Portlets). They are used in a couple of ways: Embedded in a normal web page. For example, my […]

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Ajax, AjaxPatterns, Gadgets, Google, Web, Web 2.0, Widgets Background A while back, I walked through a Google Gadget I made called Digg Roundup, which simply shows Digg headlines and can be customised on topic and popularity. In my quest for an uber-simple tutorial, one thing I skipped on was content type, the subject of the present muttering. […]

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Ajax, AjaxPatterns, Favicon, HTML, Javascript, Web, Web 2.0 I updated the favicon library a while ago, for a couple of projects I haven't released for various reasons. Anyway, Phil asked me about it, so I thought it's a good time to package it up and release it properly. And in the process wrote up Taking Browser [...]

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I've just updated my favicon library, which I first wrote about here. I'll explain more about the update in a separate post. For now, I want to talk about browser tabs. Browser tabs were introduced by Opera. Then Firefox adopted them a few years later, as did Safari. Then Microsoft stepped into the '90s with their [...]

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I recently learned about a team which had adopted a proprietary Windows application to do agile (Agile [TM]) project management. Eeek! Wrong at so many levels, but I'm going to focus on the web vs desktop angle. In an ideal world, there would be multiple UI platforms available for any application. e.g. do your project management [...]

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