forget .mobi

Go for the m. approch – m.facebook.com, m.netvibes.com. Sweet, simple, and doesn’t break bad Orange browsers or Opera mini browsers – and you can look at them online properly.

why don’t LBi do mobile?

This might be a question I’ll be asked at the conferences in a couple of weeks time.

Is it because we have a focus on browser based internet? Perhaps it’s because our clients haven’t asked for it. Maybe both. I feel we should have at least a view – an even some strategies for selling it to our clients.

So, I’m thinking of gathering together interested peeps to form some kind of working group to research this stuff and produce some UE / Design principles / IP aound the subject – hollar if you’re interested. Or if you’re not.

Can 1 page end the agony of functional specifications?

Been thinking about EA deliverables lately and therefore trying to understand functional specs as part of that. I’ve never done one myself but it sounds like a field of pain that can stretch over long periods. Then I came across the idea of Jason Frieds 37 signal approach of creating a one pager for a functional spec. He says “Functional specifications? Don’t do it….We write a one page story about what the app should do. If it takes more than a page to explain it, then it’s too complex. If it’s simple and it takes more than a page to write it then we’re not writing clearly enough. This process should take no longer than a few days.” Can the solution be that ’simple’? I doubt it as 37 signals is not the average company. But I’d like to try this out…

PayPal has a new look! So what?

I just received an email from PayPal telling me that “We’ve made PayPal easier to use – just our way of saying thanks for choosing us.”

Thanks for that.

Couldn’t you put more effort into your shockingly bad password retrieval process. It sucks and I always have to use it when I’m in the throws of a closing eBay auction.

LastFM’s audio fingerprinting

LastFM are attempting to create a database of clean metadata about music – and provide a free API that lets you pull down definitive information about audio tracks…the classic problem with audio metadata is that people add their own metadata to content that isn’t that accurate – think spelling mistakes, think capitalisation – and this makes it hard to uniquely ID content (makes it hard for humans anyways).

So, the good people at LastFM have created a piece of software that scans your music collection, and farms all the information about it  over to an uber database – get the software here.

office wars

check this out. Only don’t let my boss get one cos i sit with my back to him!

This sight has some crazy stuff for sale, some good, and some, just, well, wierd!

Be happy. Enjoy what you do. Get stuff done.

25 tips for being happier and more productive. Didn’t Thom Yorke have something to say about that? Anyways, here’s some tips about making life better – always good to readjust from time to time…

How to engaging staff when building a site for them?

We are trying to engage the staff of a new site we are building. To do this we are giving them access to a community site we have set up. There will potentially be hundreds of employees so instead of just letting them loose to comment in the community we want to give them something that they can provide feedback on.

We are in quite a unique position having all these eager people waiting to get involved. We have a few ideas of what we might do to engage them but I wanted to ask if anyone else has any ideas of what they would do if they we in this position. I would love to hear all your ideas.

mailplane…Mac + Gmail.

You love them both..right? but lets face it Googlemail can be pretty frustrating at times, its not got the best interface out there and it could do with some enhancements..no?

well, if you agree and have a mac you might want to go over to Mailplane and check out there new little app. It’s invite only so sign up and wait time(again) but it certainly looks interesting. Its got loads of cool features and as it plugin in with the desktop environment makes the whole experience a little more useful and friendly!

now i just have to wait for the damn invite:)

Help plant trees!

Here’s the link the way it works is that the more messages are left the more leaves there are.
The more leaves the bigger the tree gets. The bigger it gets the more trees NEC will plant

https://www.ecotonoha.com/index_en.html

Click enter, it takes a while to load. And watching all the messages can take a while but I think it’s worth it (plus you can skip to the trees current state- click skip) then you can leave your own message.

Ray ^____^