So I leave in a couple hours for New York to attend Bar Camp NYC with Mlle Rogue (the event has been fabulously organized by Amit Gupta et al). If anyone’s around, wants to get a drink later or even, hey, sometime this weekend, drop me a comment and lemme know how to get in touch. I’ve really only got a piece of tonight and tomorrow evening and then we leave on Sunday, but hell, it’s NYC. Who has time for sleep?
And yes, there will be a backchannel!
I had a very useful and informative call last night with some folks from the Portland Usability group, organized by Frank Spillers of Demystifying Usability (a recording of the event is available for the next month). They had a lot of really useful feedback as they walked through the Developer Preview of Flock, explaining their expectations of certain interface elements and expressing confusion when they couldn’t figure out what terminology like “Star this page” meant or what a “Shelf” might be used for. Feature discoverability was another big problem; for example, they really thought that the history search was an awesome feature… but only once they found it!
On the one hand, a lot of the work that I’ve been doing since we launched our Preview Release was validated. Much of the confusion they experienced has been addressed and hopefully resolved, though I look forward to doing more of these events both prior to and after each major release.
And since I was also able to give a high-level overview of where we’re going with Flock and what our vision of the web looks like (more sharing of timely “me-created” content than static-library-lookup-information old skoolness), they were able to point out aspects of Flock that didn’t seem to fit that vision — many areas, again, that we’ve been actively working on.
One thing that I didn’t expect — and this is more due to my own developeresque myopia than anything else — was that sharing to the group implied email! Yeah yeah, I know, what? Of the six people involved (albeit a small sample but nevertheless of fairly technology-familiar folks) only one knew of Del.icio.us… and that was Frank, the organizer. I purposefully chose not to explain what delicious was before we got started, instead interested to see how the group might discover or at some point desire “bookmark sharing”. Well, that never happened. At least in Flock (chalk one up for the Firefox del.icio.us extension).
Everytime they thought of sharing, they instantly turned to email (only Frank had previously blogged as well). So we’d get flows like this: Create a collection… Ok, want to share? “Oh, right click and email it!” Create a snippet in the shelf… Ok, want to share? “Oh, right click and email it!” And so on.
This was fascinating feedback. Apparently we have much to do to evangelize blogging, favorites sharing and similar socially-centric web services (Flickr had no traction with the group either) if we’re going to bring the benefits of Flock to folks who haven’t yet discovered that there’s a rich social social social world awaiting them!
…and yes, this really gave me even more enthusiasm for the direction that Flock is heading. We’re just a couple years ahead of the curve for the quote-unquote longtail, which honestly is a very very good place to be right now.
No, I’m kidding.
But get this. Boris of Fleck Dot Com (a hot new Interweb stratup (yes, stratup)) BBQ’s too!
Look familiar?
Yeah, I think an acquisition is imminent.
And you can bet that there’ll be some real tasty meat products cooked at teh launch party.
Photo c/o Courtney P.
Ok ok, so I’m all pent up and in a rage to blog the 8 million things on my mind since my PowerBook(s) died, I got deluged in email and my responsibilities started to shift at Flockz0r.
But I’m also getting busier and busier while things are in flux. And I’ma becomin’ more and more prone to ADD. Yup, It’s gettin’, it’s gettin’, it’s gettin’ kinda hectic…
Fooooooookkkk .. uh!
So I’ve gotta learn to roll wit’ da punches and blog faster. Less of these lingery, gingerly 12 thousand line rants that you’ve grown used to. No, screw that, I’ve gotta just write, off the cuff, over the shoulder, out the ass. And just let it ride.
So expect more brevity from here and on out. Not always, but at least some of the time. Less verbosity, more point.
I can do this, really, really I can. It’s hard, I’ve got marbles in my jowels that I just gotta swollen. Hell man, with so much to say, how can I afford to mumble and stutter so much?
SO! So be it, I’ve got to become a Tantek and just do, do .. done!
Well, I have to say, PMatty is turning out to be quite the quintessential capricorn. On the day that he turns twenny-two, he lands a CEO for Automattic, his new WordPress startup.
…Yeah, and not just any CEO… Toni Schneider of Yahoo, OddPost(read: Yahoo Mail), Konfabulator (read: Yahoo Widgets), et cetera and so on.
And speaking of Yahoo, I take it back. Google doesn’t own my life. Turns out (quite to my surprise mind you) it’s a Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo! . . . Yahoo! … world after all. Weird.
Firefox set a good model for the rest of the open source world when it infused simple, clean design into a very useful tool. Seems to me that this trend is tantamount to what is coming up next in the world of technology and online living. Of course, you can’t really have one or the other, but the core differentiator that will set one app above the rest or result in widespread adoption will be rooted in user experience, not in the number of features or power.
So, I hate making predictions, but I think I can make a few observations about how design might well change the software/webapp landscape in the not-too-distant future:
But these are just my humble observations, and given that I’m no analyst, are subject to change, revision, contradiction and further extrapolation.
This is getting to be a regular thing!
So check this out. Scott Kveton of the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University is streaming in from Oregon to spread open source cheer and good will! Come join us Monday, January 9th, 8pm at Thirsty Bear Brewing Co. in San Francisco for a beer or three with one of the guys who makes sure that you can download or hack Firefox, Gnome, and a slew of other open source staples whenever and wherever you want!
And yes, who’s also one of my heros. Awww….
So, to kick off the New Year, I’ve accomplished two things only a blogwankbuzz type hound could be proud of:
No, you might not think it much, but considering where I was just a year ago (read: sans blog until February ’05!), these are some pretty incoyable milestones.
So how about this? Yeah, at one time I kind of saw myself living the proverbial “American Dream“. Yeah yeah, hard work + courage + determination – sleep + caffeine = prosperity. Or some bollocks like that.
But I’m not so sure that that’s what this is anymore. It’s not just American, that fer shur. And it’s not just another Two Dot Oh thing, where we’re meagerly incrementing the former version with a few shiny features. Nope, this is entirely different.
How so, you ask?
Well, borrowing from my buddy Thomas Friedman, we have indeed entered the era of the superempowered individual. Am I an SEI? No. But I am empowered. Do I want to become one? Yes.
So I will.
Judging by quantitative achievements this past year, It’s only a matter of time.
Chris Pederick‘s excellent Firefox/Flock compatible Web Developer Extension 1.0 is out. Don’t code without it!
Jeremy Chone of Bits and Buzz, has written a good recap of recent Flock news and added a nicely articulated point about the longer term goals of Flock. Give it a read.
Factory Joe 