Author Archives: David

Netcraft: Will Firefox repeat Netscape's mistakes?

Posted on by David

Netcraft: Will Firefox repeat Netscape’s mistakes?:

Against this background, the news that Mozilla will be working with Adobe, Apple, Macromedia and Sun to develop an open, scriptable plugin model is worrying. The logic behind this move seems to be that in order to capitalise on users’ increasing willingness to consider alternatives to Internet Explorer, Firefox needs to match it in all areas, including plugins. What is particularly ironic about this move is that it represents an eerily exact rerun of an earlier – failed – strategy.

This post argues that Firefox may be going down a somewhat proprietary path with this plugin approach and possibly creating security risks along the lines of ActiveX. I am not too worried about that for one reason: firefox remains open source. If the developers take it in a bad direction I’m confident that another group will pick up the source and go somewhere else with it. While competing forks of firefox is not ideal it is better than having no choice at all.

In the careful what you ask for department…

Posted on by David

RSS Traffic Burdens Publisher’s Servers:

InfoWorld, which is hosted by Verio, is committed to RSS. But Dickerson says he’s spoken with other large media sites that have delayed implementing RSS feeds, citing potential overhead on IT infrastructure. Some major publishers of RSS feeds are high-traffic sites that already use content distribution and caching to manage server load, such as Yahoo.

While a relatively small number of sites are currently seeing RSS traffic on the scale of InfoWorld, that’s likely to change as the technology becomes more popular. “If RSS is going to go from fairly big to absolutely huge, we’re all going to need to do a little more work on the plumbing,” Dickerson writes.

I wonder if any of the RSS client authors/producers have thought about randomizing thier collection times a bit to spread out the load?

Update:Bloglines‘ CEO has a few thoughts on how to improve the load issue.

Skinner Box Web Design

Posted on by David

Jeffrey Veen on Damage in Web Design:

Bad design is based on the arrogant and extremely difficult attempts to modify user behavior. Good design derives innovation from existing user behavior. Guess which one succeeds more often?

Veen points out in the article that trying to modify user behavior will result in the user leaving your site for an alternative or routing around the perceived damage. There is no lid on the bad web design skinner box.

Integrated Taxonomic Information System

Posted on by David

Have you ever wanted an xml document that contained the entire set of species for a paticular kingdom? The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is the site for you.

The goal is to create an easily accessible database with reliable information on species names and their hierarchical classification. The database will be reviewed periodically to ensure high quality with valid classifications, revisions, and additions of newly described species. The ITIS includes documented taxonomic information of flora and fauna from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats.

Excellent use of the web to deliver data to the research community. What they don’t have yet (as far as I could tell) is an RSS feed listing new species as they are discovered. That would be extra nifty.

Software That Lasts 200 Years

Posted on by David

Interesting article by Dan Bricklin: Software That Lasts 200 Years.

I will call this software that forms a basis on which society and individuals build and run their lives “Societal Infrastructure Software”. This is the software that keeps our societal records, controls and monitors our physical infrastructure (from traffic lights to generating plants), and directly provides necessary non-physical aspects of society such as connectivity.

We need to start thinking about software in a way more like how we think about building bridges, dams, and sewers. What we build must last for generations without total rebuilding. This requires new thinking and new ways of organizing development. This is especially important for governments of all sizes as well as for established, ongoing businesses and institutions.

In a nutshell, the article recommends some form of private-public parternship to develop infrastructural software in an open source manner with an eye toward long term utility rather than short-term profit.

I think the Open Source Applications Foundation might be a step in this direction.

Can We Do Away with Pop-ups Now?

Posted on by David

Vast majority of pop-up click-throughs are a mistake:

Rob Stevens, head of business behaviour at Bunnyfoot, said: “Achieving an over-inflated click-through rate might help brands to justify their spend, but they are only deceiving themselves. The brand, which we used in our research study, is not only wasting up to 90% of its budget by paying for unintentional click-throughs, it is also frustrating and deceiving users.”

When the august firm of Bunnyfoot Universality says it’s so, it must be. 🙂 Perhaps a few more studies will be done to confirm this and drive a wooden stake through the heart of pop-up advertising.