Scott Mallinson | Web Designer
Tomorrow I will be heading down with Kean Richmond to the Future of Web Design conference that is being held on Thursday. I am looking forward to it as it will only be my second Carsonified event I will have attended, and first Web Design conference (I attended Future of Web Apps back in October last year).
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As I mentioned earlier last week, I attended the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Expo last Thursday and Friday. It was my first ‘Future of’ web event and leading upon to attending the event I was filled with nervous apprehension as I wasn’t sure what to expect.
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This evening I will be heading down to London with Kean Richmond (@keanrichmond) for the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Expo which I will be attending on Thursday and Friday. By the sounds of it, it is going to be an awesome event.
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Twitter is a great web application. It’s simply a communication tool, but due to it’s flexibility it can be used in so many different ways; from keeping in touch with friends, tracking industry peers or for use as a marketing tool.
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Over the past four days I have been monitoring the development of Matt, Multi Account Twitter Tweeter application which has been built by the guys and girls over at Carsonified. Now whilst I could talk about the actual development of the application, it has already been done here and I would rather concentrate on the marketing of the application and the company culture from where the idea originated.
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A new feature that has been rolled out to all Flickr accounts is the ability to edit photos online. Through a service provided by picnik you are able to edit any of your photos using picnik’s Flash interface.
The interface allows you to perform quite advanced photo editing techniques on your photos such as, altering the exposure and contrast, sharpening your photos, changing colour temperature and saturation and curing red-eye. Basic photo editing features such as crop, resize and rotate are also available.
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I have long been a user of the del.icio.us Firefox plugin. Though I probably don’t use it as much as I’d like to I still find it handy for quickly bookmarking webpages that I’d perhaps like to revisit later or at home.
The development of the Firefox plugin has been steady with an update/bug fix of some form every month, the recent August 22nd update was the longest period between updates. I have encountered very few problems using the plugin and it makes adding bookmarks to your del.icio.us account so much easier than using the old browser buttons.
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There was an interesting news article on BBC Breakfast News and their website today. It opened the debate as to whether or not employers should allow their staff to access social networking sites such as Facebook whilst at work. I understand the topic was raised following Kent County Council banning all 32,000 of its staff from using the social networking site whilst at work.
Kent County Council said that they had introduced the ban in order to reduce the amount of time-wasting by staff, which in turn costs money. I agree that time-wasting is detrimental to productivity, but I can see that introducing a carpet ban will disgruntle the majority of staff who use Facebook and potentially cause a larger loss in productivity across the business because their job satisfaction has dropped.
I think that the key is moderation. Like with eating fatty foods; everything is good in moderation. If there are certain members of staff who are spending hours at a time communicating with people over social networking sites that is not of benefit to the business, then perhaps disciplinary action is needed. Whereas employees checking their Facebook accounts whilst on their lunch-break is not affecting the productivity of the business, and both employee and employer are happy.
For me, banning social networking sites would have a negative impact on my productivity as a web designer/developer. In order for me to keep abreast of current trends and developments within my professional career I need exposure to social networking sites and their audiences. I need to be able to see what is being done in terms of interacting with users, how to address users and look at design elements of successful products.
Without this exposure it would be hard to know the target audience and the conventions of the internet that they may be familiar with. It would be harder to gauge what ‘works’ and what doesn’t work.
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After Jonny mentioned Virb being the next Myspace in response to one of my earlier articles I decided to take a more in-depth look at the social networking site.
At first my experience with Virb was short-lived. I signed up to Facebook around roughly the same time and I was frustrated by the fact I couldn’t accumulate the same number of friends on Virb due to the lack of people I know who have accounts on the social networking site. However I have stuck at it and have gained a number of friends through similar interests and music.
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Up until today I didn’t have a Facebook account. I didn’t really have a reason for not having a Facebook account other than that my experiences of MySpace weren’t favourable. After being bombarded with comment spam, bad profile customisations and awkward navigation I cancelled my MySpace account, one less friend for Tom but I don’t think he noticed.
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I love invites. I’ve become a bit of an invite junkie. Although I rarely receive invites until the majority already have them I like being able to access and explore ‘things’ before the general internet population can.
Today I received my invite for Pownce. This is one invite that I’ve been eagerly awaiting. The reason why I’m so intrigued and interested by this ‘web app’ is because not only has it been conceived by internet brainchild Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, but it is one of the new breed of web app’s that bridge the gap between the desktop and the internet.
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Terrell Russell, one of the founders of claimID, have been in touch with the guys at Last.fm requesting they add MicroID meta information to the sections of the user’s profile pages. This will allow claimID to verify any claims to Last.fm pages that have been made. In response, Russ, a member of the Last.fm staff, has stated that the MicroID meta insertion will be live in a month.
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As my participation in social bookmarking and social applications grows there are more and more feeds available that document my life and who I am (claimID, last.fm, flickr and del.icio.us so far). In order to make it easier for the ‘digital stalkers’ out there, I will be adding these feeds to my website when I’ve finished implementing the redesign.
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I have succumb to the temptation that is Flickr. After spending a weekend in the glorious sunshine at Croft Circuit watching the BTCC I needed a way of easily publishing my photos and incorporating them into my blog.
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