OK, so you may have heard a bit about blogs. They’re all the rage; basically, they’re an online writing format that allows for a progressively growing interactive writing project.
In other words, what I’ve been doing for years, only now it has a name.
So I switched over this weekend to a piece of software called Movable Type. It’s really, really powerful. As such, it took me eleven hours to get the damn thing working.
And what do I have to show for my labor? Well, the site looks basically the same, which is in fact what I’m most proud of. It’s not easy to convert the entire underpinnings of a Web site from one system to another and have the end user experience be virtually the same. Think Windows 98 to 2000 to XP—what a mess of new things to deal with at each upgrade step. With this column, you still have the same familiar GUI and architecture.
But enough tech talk; what’s ACTUALLY new? For one, the stuff over there on the right (and yes, it’s a little further right because the page is now dynamically resizable) includes the latest interesting URLs I’ve found, interesting quotes I’ve heard or seen, and a search box.
You can now comment on each individual column, and there’s an RSS feed (?ber geeks know what RSS is, other folks can simply ignore it).
Additionally, I can now update this column at a moment’s notice from any Web browser, which means you may hear a little more from me.
So, meet the new column, same as the old column, but don’t be fooled again, this looks the same but it’s a great leap forward, and I’ll let my next few posts be the proof of that.
By the way, your old bookmarks will all still work. Bye for now!
“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. ... She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”
After over a decade of user testing, it is clear that the way we search the web is similar to the way we would search our home for valuables as it was burning to the ground. Frantically.
“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value ... The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)