kennyroo

Such a beautiful product. Really shows how a web product can be practical and artistic. Very well done.

In my consulting work I see a lot of usage data from sites of all sizes, and there is a correlation between dial-up users and IE6 users.

I assume that dial-up users don't download Microsoft updates because of the download time and the frequency of updates. At this point, it's probably fair to say that IE6 users will only upgrade if they get broadband or replace their computer with one that has a better browser pre-installed. Since money is clearly a factor in both cases, I'm not holding my breath.

Color TV arrived around 1960, and it took 13 years to pass the 50% bar. (Source: http://is.gd/taGM) Clearly, there are some consumers who will only upgrade when something breaks -- probably because they just can't afford to do otherwise.

I actually feel for people who are still using IE6. For whatever reason, it's either impossible or impractical for these people to upgrade.

If you want to design a site that doesn't work with IE6 and you can afford to cut off 10%+ of the general population, just do it and explain (nicely) that the site requires a newer browser. They probably won't upgrade, but you've done your part. No need to resort to trickery.

Only AT&T would do something this stupid.

Someone needs to remind AT&T that the iPhone is a computer with phone service, not a phone with Internet service.

I'm launching a site next week for Internet-related job listings in the SF Bay Area for just this reason. The bigger sites annoyed me both as an employer and as a job seeker for the reasons you mention. I reached out directly to friends and HR folks at local companies and have a pretty good number of listings to start. Hopefully this will be a bit more targeted. I'll post to Ask HN for feedback, post-launch.

Facebook/Google comparisons always strike me as way off base. It's like comparing a Central Park (busy, no money) with Disneyland (busy, big money).

Bring back GOPHER!

I underestimated Facebook for too long. Then two weeks ago I was in the US Airways lounge between flights in the Charlotte, NC airport (which has amazingly fast free WiFi, BTW) and noticed that HALF of the people who were using the Internet were on Facebook. Granted, an airport lounge is going to pull a certain sub-set of society, but still... Facebook is every bit the social phenomenon that eBay and Yahoo were in the past. I don't know how you put a dollar value on it, but that kind of reach has real value.

Using the term "Beta" to describe a 5-year-old product more or less deprecates the meaning of the word, doesn't it?

I agree that the color choices aren't great, but the simplicity of the design is quite nice. (So many of them end up being Flashy nightmares.) I'd like to see more info graphics like this one, which communicate trends in a clear new way.

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.)

Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It would be interesting combine the grid with a Hacker News/Digg-like point system that reordered the stories by popularity.

The fact that you lose access to the Skimmer interface after clicking on a story seems weird, but that's fixable.

Still, I like that they're trying new ideas. And I love having a small photo with each headline.

The blogger is a former CNN reporter.

It was totally random. I was an English major / mass communication minor planning to be a reporter until I started playing around with HTML while editing my college newspaper (way back in 1995). I snagged a grunt job at Cooking Light magazine putting their content online, and just went from there. I don't know of anyone who set out to become a product manager, but it's a great career for certain people. Having an engineering, UI design, or even customer service background helps a lot. For consumer-facing web sites, just being a very heavy web user is an absolute requirement. Some MBA's are good in the role, but too often they see the role as a stepping stone to other opportunities. Hope this helps.

Having worked at eBay Motors in the past, I can tell you that what these guys have accomplished is far from easy. The catalog work necessary to present results in this format is far from easy. Good work and great start. Congrats, guys.

I think the long-term trick for a company like this one is driving organic traffic. They'll need to create a good bit of quality content to start ranking in Google search results. Without it, they'll be forced to buy traffic.

Totally agree. I'm a product manager, but I taught myself RoR and MySQL last year mostly because I wanted to better understand how databases work with web apps. In the process I also learned how to use CSS, SVN, nginx, and search engine optimization techniques.

I don't ever expect to use these skills in a major web app (I'm nowhere near good enough to do it for real), but they've helped me immeasurably in communicating effectively with engineers. Wish I had done it years earlier.

It's interesting that this is only happening now, after Japan has suffered through a decade-long recession. Did an entire generation grow up with different values, or did the down economy change consumer behavior over a long period of time to reach this point? Or both?

Mapping this to the US, the transition from spending to saving and from bling to value orientation seems to be happening very quickly. Wonder if it will last.

Absolutely.

Correct. It's a widely-used term in the tech area, and beyond.

Completely agree. If you find yourself on a PIP, start looking for a new job elsewhere ASAP. Speaking as a manager who has seen this play out several times at different companies, a performance improvement plan should always be seen as invitation to leave. It always surprises me how few people get that. The company is essentially saying, "We're just not that into you."

If the company is large enough, they'll almost always be willing to pay you something (4-6 weeks salary is fairly standard) to go away quietly. Your best bet is to negotiate some kind of exit package while simultaneously looking for new employment. If you're good at it you can dovetail them so that your employment record is seamless. Your employer may even be willing to give you time off to interview. (Remember, they want you to leave.)

The chances of making a comeback after being put on a PIP are slim. It's a HR formality that's essentially a prelude to termination, to protect the company from potential litigation. I don't have hard numbers, but I'd estimate that 75%+ of employees placed on a PIP will either leave or be terminated within 3 months.

Lastly, a PIP doesn't mean you're a bad person. In fact, it may not even be a reflection of your performance. Sometimes personality and budget issues play a large role. American companies don't have many options when cutting staff, and they often default to this one when they don't want "layoff" headlines. I'm not defending it (it's a sucky practice), but see it for what it is, try not to take it personally, and get the hell out before things get really bad.

AWESOME-O ! Nice, concise cheat sheet. Wish I'd had this 12 months ago. Thanks for sharing.

Light gray text is a DTD (designer-transmitted disease) that's rapidly infecting sites across the Internet.

(When it's really light, I use Firebug to modify the CSS.)

Anybody know how large the overall market research industry is at the moment? Is this a big deal, or a drop in the bucket?

The title of this post (not the related article) is misleading. While I wish Outlook would go down in flames, it's alive and well in just about every corporation in America. Gmail hasn't destroyed it. I'm not even sure that Gmail is all that great of a product, storage limits aside. It could be a heck of a lot better with some UI love.

Thx. That made me laugh. :) He clearly needs to tone down the bravado a bit in the voiceover, but I admit that it does look slick.

Oodle tried it, and CL stopped them.

That seems like a really fun idea for a book. After reading a great deal about BP, it seems to fit your idea perfectly. Good luck with the book!

I used elance.com to find a map designer for Planaroo.com. Prices were all over the map (excuse the pun), but I chose one of the more experienced and more expensive designers and was very happy with the results. I have no connection to elance.

At least she has e-mail. John McCain's messages are delivered by horse.

In a big company, some problems can't be solved from the bottom up. Maybe you should find a better place to work.

There's an opportunity here for someone to create a system that dynamically optimizes ad revenue for content providers by weighing potential revenue from various ad networks based on content, context, and user profiles.

TV networks like ABC don't accept ads from just one agency media buyer. Why should web sites commit to a single Internet ad network?

I don't buy Cringely's logic. He rarely makes sense to me, and this column is no different.

Microsoft is working very hard to get into the Internet advertising business. They need a big, technology-centered growth business like advertising to power future growth because they're certainly not going to get it from Vista or Office.

If you assume that Microsoft won't block ads from its own ad network, the idea that Microsoft would block Google ads is unthinkable. Such obviously anti-competitive behavior would bring down the Wrath of Kahn from every government agency in Washington and Brussels.

It simply isn't going to happen.

IMHO, Google launched Chrome because Google has unlimited resources, a desire to play on the desktop, fuzzy notions about a web OS, and because Googlers just don't know what to do with themselves these days. Advertising is so profitable but, alas, so boring.

There's no reason why Chrome won't be successful, but there's also no clear business case for the product at present. Then again, there's no business case for Lively or YouTube either...