web

Rough start for Truemors site

Truemors, a new social information site from former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, went live this week, but has suffered some early growing pains.

The site is sort of a combination of Twitter and Digg; users can phone, text or e-mail in rumors, and they're posted to central page. Then other users can vote them up or down.

While the launch of Truemors was widely anticipated, opening day didn't go entirely well. Spam posts quickly appeared on the main site, and bloggers wondered whether its lack of focus would hinder its ability to find a community.

Blog community response: … Read more

Nielsen: Web 2.0 slacking off on design principles

Danish usability consultant Jakob Nielsen earned his unofficial title of "Web usability guru" as an early promoter of standardized Web design. You can thank him, in part, for blue links. He prompted a lasting, vocal debate by distinguishing between print and online approaches to eye appeal, readability and writing style. (For example, see "History of print standards.")

Unafraid of controversy, he continues to tout astonishing concepts such as "Why you only need to test with five users" and is known for his strong--some would say "extreme"--opinions on minimalism and uniformity.

BBC News on Monday published an article detailing Nielsen's new call … Read more

Falwell Web foe tempers critiques with sympathy

In his lifetime, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell had no shortage of critics, both in the offline and online worlds--and over the years, some in the latter category found themselves caught in his legal crosshairs over domain names resembling his own.

One of the higher-profile Web spats involved Christopher Lamparello, a thirtysomething gay man in New York. Since 1999, Lamparello has owned the Fallwell.com Web site, which housed articles aimed at contradicting the televangelist's antigay views. A few years ago, Falwell sued him, claiming the domain name's spelling was too close to that of his official Web … Read more

WordPress wizard talks to CNET's Webware

Matt Mullenweg is officially the CEO of Automattic. Please note the double "t"--as in "Matt." But he's really the guy who brought WordPress to the world and oxygen to the blogosphere.

You can see the first half of this Webware interview here. Matt explains why WordPress is open source but his antispam kismet isn't. He discloses the catalytic role his mother played in his software development. And he talks about blogging in places where the government is out to get you. The second part of the interview will be available online soon.

Web 2.0 gets schooled

This afternoon, I went over to NYC's Cooper Union to sit in on the final project presentations for the Web 2.0 Paradigms class, a hands-on course in the school's electrical engineering department taught by adjunct professor Sanford Dickert. In this course, the students--who were required to have software development experience--created their own Web applications from start to (very beta) launch, with a focus on the end user experience and what kinds of consumers would use such a service.

Here's Webware's recap of the four products that were demonstrated--a fifth team had been working on developing … Read more

News roundup: StumbleUpon, Last.fm, Xbox 360 chat

StumbleUpon/eBay talks heat up. The Wall Street Journal is reporting (registration required) that a deal between eBay and StumbleUpon to acquire the social networking and content recommendation service is getting closer. No agreement has been made on price, but the rumored amount brings it somewhere near $75 million dollars. If acquired, StumbleUpon's content preference algorithms could be employed on eBay's auction listings to give eBay users a new way to get recommendations on things they might want to buy. ( CNET News.com Blog)

Last.fm launching video service. As reported by the Register in March, Last.fm … Read more

eBay reportedly in 'advanced talks' for StumbleUpon

Internet auction site eBay is in "advanced talks" to acquire Web-ratings site StumbleUpon, according to a report Tuesday night in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The deal could be worth $75 million according to the newspaper, which cited unnamed sources.

The sources told the newspaper that the deal for StumbleUpon was not final and could fall apart.

The report comes a couple of weeks after technology blog Techcrunch reported that the sites were in buyout talks, as well as naming Google and AOL as other suitors. GigaOm, another blog, reported an asking price in the neighborhood of $… Read more

Google Analytics gets a face-lift

Google Analytics relaunched today, adding several new visualization tools and ways to share data with others. The tool gives Web site owners a free and relatively easy system to keep track of how people are accessing content on their site, including ways to track which content is getting the most views, how much time each user is spending on the site, and the number of visits by time of day. There's also a handy map overlay which will show you where your users are, right down to the city they live in.

One of the updated features is the Analytics dashboard, which is now completely customizable and has simplified data. Users can relocate, add, and remove the various data widgets, in a similar fashion to that of iGoogle. Also new is the option to e-mail or export reports as PDFs, which can now be scheduled to be sent out automatically every day, week, month or quarter using a built-in calendar. Previously you were only able to export it as a non-human-friendly XML file.

The service is mainly an extension of Google's AdWords program, which lets site owners purchase words that link to various parts of their site via contextual ads that show up on Google or partnered search engine results. But even if you're not interested in making money it's a free Analytics solution that requires no software, just a line of code on any page you want to keep track of. If you're a WordPress user, there's even a plug-in to automatically add it to your site. Blogger users are also able to add it by tweaking their blog template.

There's more information about the update on the Google Analytics Blog post. For more screenshots of the new dashboard, keep reading. … Read more

A special Google Reader for your Wii

Nintendo Wii owners who have been enjoying their updated Web browser can now enjoy a special version of Google Reader designed exclusively for their Wii remotes and TV screens. Google has made the text a little bigger and changed the interface from a two-pane look to a simple feeds list.

One big change regular Google Reader users are bound to notice is the updated control scheme. To jump between feeds just hit the "1" button, which pulls up a slick looking pop-up with a listing of all your feeds. It's almost an easier system than the one … Read more