Philipp Heintze

Etwas verspätet, aber nun doch: Earth.org ist seit 22.4.2008, dem offiziellen Tag der Erde online. Da ich in der Planung der neuen Reise-Wiki-Gutestun-Plattform beteiligt war und das Projekt schon seit geraumer Zeit kenne (es gab mal eine Zeit, da sollte das ganze Hitiki heissen… voll der Insider, krass) nehme ich mir vor an selber Stelle sehr bald mehr über Earth.org zu berichten… Für den Moment nur so viel:

es ist ein Special Interest Wiki zum Thema Reisen, als solches sicher nichts Neues

in Zukunft soll es zu einem echten Reiseportal wachsen, mehr als nur ein Wiki bieten (die Pläne sind in der Schublade)

der Domainname ist natürlich der Hammer

das Design gefällt mir vom Ansatz her sehr gut, aber es hapert noch an der Usability

der Ansatz “Open Travel Guide” und “kein Kommerz” tun dem sonst gnadenlos schlechten Internet-Reiseinfo-”Markt” megagut und ich freue mich drauf zu erleben, wie entsprechende “Zielgruppen” drauf reagieren bzw wer so anfängt die Plattform in welcher Art zu nutzen…

Posted by Sue Factor, Writer, User Experience Group

Late in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing—set out to articulate the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide. What are the fundamentals that all Google designers and researchers accept? Which approaches to design are particularly "Googley"? How can we encourage teams throughout Google to dream big and make smart design decisions?

A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley Design Principles:

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people's trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These UX principles flow naturally from the Ten things Google has found to be true and the UX group's stated mission: to design products that satisfy and delight our users. We described the principles as "Our Aspirations" for two reasons:

• We have a lot of work to do when it comes to implementation.
• Every real-world product will have to strike a balance between all ten principles.

Still, we don't want to waffle too much. These principles represent the User Experience group's declaration of beliefs. With "Satisfy and Delight" stitched on our leotards, we're determined to get up on the tightrope and start juggling principles. Please applaud or boo, as appropriate, so that we can make the next act even better.

As many of you know, I use the WordPress publishing platform to power my website. The beauty of WordPress is the fantastic number plugins available to add a little extra to your blog. I’m often asked which ones I use, and how I achieve certain effects, so here are the 13 WordPress plugins currently installed on davidairey.com.

Best WordPress plugins

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

All in One SEO Pack

Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By uberdose.

cforms II

cforms II offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see the VERSION HISTORY for what’s new and current bugfixes. By Oliver Seidel.

Commentluv

Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Currently parses with wordpress, blogspot, typepad and blogs that have a feed link in the head section of their page. By Andy Bailey.

FeedSmith

Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents. By Steve Smith.

Google Sitemaps

This generator will create a sitemaps.org compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Configuration Page by Arne Brachhold.

Highlight Author Comments

Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author. By Rob Marsh, SJ.

Homepage Excerpts

Homepage Excerpts By Daily Blog Tips.

Subscribe To Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.

wp-cache

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada.

WP-SlimStat

Track your blog stats. Based on Stephen Wettone’s SlimStat, Jeff Minards’s plugin, Markus Kammerer’s wp-shortstat rewrite. It can be used upon an existing wp-shortstat database: includes an import tool to upgrade your database. Note: disable wp-shortstat plugin, if enabled. By Mr. Coolmann.

WP 2.3 Related Posts

Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress 2.3 By Denis, PaoPao.

WP AJAX Edit Comments

Allows you and your users to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments. By Ronald Huereca.

What are your favourite WordPress plugins?

Why not add a similar page to your own blog? I’d love to pick up some plugin tips, and you’ll add a nice resource for your readers to learn from.

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Ein Konzert ist noch dazu gekommen. Am Freitag den 02.05. spiele ich mit meiner Band in dem beschaulichen Örtchen Enger bei Bielefeld. In Gunnars studio in Enger haben wir ja auch die CD aufgenommen, ...

A high-profile journalist just asked me "what does this have to do with user guided search?" when I told them about the search for a new host for Mahalo Daily.

This is an excellent question.

Many people have speculated that I'm just wasting venture capital money on Mahalo Daily, or that I'm secretly transitioning to film (a rumor that has been played up since I've appeared in three indie films--two that are coming out in the next year).

Nope, I have a theory: Corporate vlogs are the future of PR.

This is, of course, the same theory that many of us had in 2004 with regard to blogging. Back then it seemed insane that someone like Mark Cuban would blog about running the Dallas Mavericks--now it seems rather obvious.

The chart above shows the number of views to Mahalo Daily videos. Since inception we've had over 4M views to our videos, and last month we broke the 1M mark. Mahalo Daily videos are intended to:

1. Entertain people
   
2. Inform people
   
3. Represent and build the Mahalo brand
4. Be a creative outlet for the Mahalo team

The order above is very important.

We conceived of a general interest show which first and foremost is *entertaining* to the viewers. If it is not entertaining you have no audience. After you make it entertaining it's virtuous for the user to get something out of the show. It could be information on how to become a pilot, speak french, or flirt. Of course, it might not be informative at all and just be fun, like I'm Gonna Get you Spamma.

The Mahalo team has a blast writing, directing, and acting in these videos--it's a ton of fun. I love it every time they write me a part.

Four million views means millions of folks (let's say two million) have come in contact with the Mahalo brand. If you were to pay for four million 15 second spots on the web the cost would be $25 for each 1,000 views--or $100,000. That's about what we've spent on the show over the first six months. Additionally, the shows have archival value and will get another 2-4m views over their life I'm sure.

In other words, the Mahalo Daily will pay for itself fairly easily after one year. A $250,000 investment in the Mahalo Daily a year will bring in--if the growth continues--somewhere between 15-30M viewers a year.

Now, the other piece to this is that we're ALREADY getting significant advertising interest in the Mahalo Daily. So, next year we might actually have the show be profitable!

That's what I call monitzed marketing: marking that makes you money.

In another three years every company will have not only a corporate blog but a corporate vlog. The New York Times, JetBlue, American Express, and Apple will communicate with their leading customers with regular videos.

Oh wait, Steve Jobs does this already with his keynotes. ;-)

You can subscribe to Mahalo Daily on iTunes and YouTube

++++++++++++

On Monday we will start airing the search for a new host for Mahalo Daily.... we're going to narrow down 12 possible hosts to one. It's going to be epic as you will see in this video!

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„MTV, oh, makes me want to smoke crack, fly out the window, and never come back …“ TJIAN, ne, tja: wer ließ sich vor kurzem im Nürnberger Fünfeckturm beim Blick aus den Fenstern nicht VANDES, äh, von diesem zitierten BECK-Klassiker einholen, hätte er nur an den Song gedacht. Keine Ahnung wer, darum geht’s im [...]

„MTV, oh, makes me want to smoke crack, fly out the window, and never come back …“ TJIAN, ne, tja: wer ließ sich vor kurzem im Nürnberger Fünfeckturm beim Blick aus den Fenstern nicht VANDES, äh, von diesem zitierten BECK-Klassiker einholen, hätte er nur an den Song gedacht. Keine Ahnung wer, darum geht’s im [...]

Webworker arbeiten lange

The last time i blogged, which is ages ago, i was back in Sumner for Physiotherapy. At that time i stayed in the flat of Tim’s who studied together with Tom with whom i travelled back in December. As i liked Sumner and the flat a lot, Tim asked me if i wanted to have his room because he was moving to Dunedin for some time. So i moved in the flat already back in January and used the January and February for more travelling. At first I drove out of christchurch for a week of lone travelling together with my newly aquired surf board. Basically i stayed the whole week at Gore Bay for surfing and a bit at Sumner Lake National Parks for tramping. Here are a few shots from Gore Bay:

After i came home to relax for further travels, i joined with Marion (with whom i already travelled in the Northlands) and her friend Astrid and drove up to Lake Pukake and Tekapo. Was beautiful up there!

See for yourself:

Later we joined with friends of Astrid (Karsten, Vero and Bianca) in Queenstown and took off to get to Te Anau. As it was guided everything was a little too planned and organised for my taste but it was still quite nice to have a look at the doubtful sounds. Unfortunately this terrain is owned by big swarms of sandflies and some of them ignore even the thickest layer of bushman which is the new zealand equivalent to Autan.

After that kayaking me and Karsten went to Mavora Lakes which is 50 k’s east of Te Anau and Astrid and Marion went further south to Stewart Island. Mavora Lakes was a nice and easy hike and we enjoyed the scenery very much. I just love Tussock and there was heaps of it.

After a few more days more travelling i headed back to Christchurch as i had a job interview at a company over here (http://www.toc.org.nz - http://www.adscale.de).
Well and the good news is: i got the job (as a web-programmer) and i kickstarted right into the job a few days later. The team is nice and it’s a great working environment. All in all it means that i have decided to stay over here some time.. So i guess that is the end of travelling for now and i will be working a lot so i guess i won’t be blogging a lot in the future.. not that i did in the past

It’s my own damn fault. I should have never listened to Mike. This morning I installed Twhirl on my desktop in a failed attempt to keep up better with Twitter and Friendfeed. I was hoping it would help me manage the never-ending flow of information from those two services—which, I admit, I’ve been increasingly ignoring. Instead, it took over my desktop and I couldn’t make it stop (see image above).

Twhirl solves one problem (the need to constantly visit the Twitter and Friendfeed Websites), only to create another one (information overload that clutters your desktop). I’m sure there is some setting I could change to fix the issue, but this highlights a bigger problem with the Web today. There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise. Even Robert Scoble, the biggest Twitter whore on the planet who follows 21,000 people and receives one Tweet per second, can’t deal with it anymore.

And it is not just Twitter. Lifestream aggregators like Friendfeed are supposed to make things simpler by consolidating the activities of everyone you know across the Web into one single view. But every day a new lifestream aggregator pops up to the point that it’s gotten to be ridiculous. Now, desktop utilities like Twhirl and Alerty Thing are taking these services out of the browser so that they are always on your desktop.

But if you think it is hard enough to keep up with e-mails and instant messages, keeping up with the Web (even your little slice of it) is much worse. Putting Twhirl on your desktop and hearing the constant “ding” of new messages coming in will make you realize that this is IM on steroids. (You will quickly turned off the sound).

Bringing all of this Web messaging and activity together in one place doesn’t really help. It reminds me of a comment ThisNext CEO Gordon Gould made to me earlier this week when he predicted that Web 3.0 will be about reducing the noise. (Some say it will be about the semantic Web, but those two ideas are not mutually exclusive). I hope Gould is right, because what we really need are better filters.

I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know. People like Mike and Robert can do that, but they are weird, and even they have their limits.

So where is the startup that is going to be my information filter? I am aware of a few companies working on this problem, but I have yet to see one that has solved it in a compelling way. Can someone please do this for me? Please? I need help. We all do.

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