Daniel Hardy

A while back I came up with an idea to create a site for memorials.  A lot of people create pages or even myspace profiles when they loose a loved one.  It is a great way for friends and family to share their memories and post pictures.  I remember sitting around with several friends and explaining the idea to everyone.  At the time everyone thought I was crazy to consider monetizing tragedy.

It appears that I am not the only one who thought of this and in fact, someone acted upon it.  Take a look at OurMemoryOf.com.  This is a great idea and I believe it can bring some joy to people in their darkest hours as well as be profitable.  Beyond that they have a great design.

They did take a little different approach than I would have.  They are going to charge for their services where as I would have tried to go a different route for funding the service.  Either way I think it is a great idea and look forward to seeing how well it works.

Just goes to show that when you get a great idea you need to act on it fast

Everyday it seems like I hear about another company pushing a new Open Source agenda. Today Download Squad had a great article about Reddit going opensource.

This is an amazing step for a web site.  To my knowledge no other popular site has opened their codebase on this level.  Sure there are lots that have open API’s but this is a very very different thing than letting someone access your data through a cloaked application layer.

Instantly closed source proponents have deemed this an ill fated move on the basis that anyone can now read the rating algorithm and there by diminish the sites value by “gaming” the system.  I disagree whole heartedly with this idea.  Sure people will try to deconstruct the algorithm and utilize it for their nefarious agendas but the community will respond quickly by writing a better algorithm.

A great example of this principal can be seen with Linux.  Every piece of code in the operating system is available to anyone who wants it yet it continues to be the most secure operating system out there.  Perhaps Firefox is a better example as it hits close to home and has a large user base(according to the W3schools.com it has almost 40% market share ).  Again anyone can review the code and find exploits.  This happens all the time but because there are 100’s of eyes reviewing the code these exploits are fixed almost immediately by the community.

Overall I think this is a great move on Reddit’s part.  I also believe we will continue to see a large increase in the number of organizations deciding that Open Source is a viable business model.

Just stumbled across this site.  It is great way to view all the happenings of the Ubuntu world.

Check it out at www.ubuntustats.com

Do you own a domain? Wish you could use Gmail for your email but retain that great address…. Well you can! If you act now you too could become a member of Google’s Hosted Service plan for the astonishing price of FREE!

Apparently sometime back Google quietly started offering a hosted service for people who wish to use their services but do so under their own domain name. This entry level plan which includes several great applications is free.

For this amazing price you get chat services, email, calendar, docs and more. The great part is that it is all based off your domain! No more yourname@gmail.com. Instead it will be you@yourdomain.com.

To get started visit Google Apps For Your Domain select the business one and sign up for a free “Standard Account”.  Be warned it does take a bit of work to get it all up an running.  You will be required to change your domains MX records and create a couple of CNAMEs for ease of access.  The great part is that Google will figure out what regestrar your domain is with and give you detailed instructions for just them.

Overall it can all be setup in a couple of min.

Today I was educating myself on a new format for creating slide shows called “S5“.  It is an open format that can create slide shows using XHTML/CSS and Javascript.  These shows can intern be run in any modern browser making them truly platform independent.  For the most part the standard is extremely well thought out and holds a great deal of promise.

In my research I found a great tool that will convert a RSS feed into a S5 presentation.   Give it a shot and see how flexible this format really is.

In writing my last article about the various search engines I came across a fun site called Ubuntu Popularity Content.    This site shows the number of downloads and installs for every package in the Ubuntu repository.  It is certainly an interesting look at what people are using and if you are an Ubuntu users I suggest you take a look, maybe you will find a great new package.

I just discovered a great way to watch the election results come in while hearing what other techies are thinking.  If you are reading this after Super Tuesday I suggest you book mark the link and take a look at it in November.

See what I am talking about over at Google Maps

I recently found a site that looks an awful lot like mine. It uses a similar background and layout. To check it out cruise it over to www.sullr.com/us/. At first I was concerned I might some how be infringing on their copy write but after doing some research I have determined that this is unlikely as their site wasn’t even registered until after I debuted my first iteration of this design. It is important to note that in the first iteration I used a vibrant green closer to the one being used by by Sullr. My original design can be viewed at old blog. Needless to say I have started working on a new design and hope to have it up soon. Until then enjoy a great looking reverse lookup engine

Digg.com has recently unveiled its new look and it sure is a “humdinger.” There are some good points like inline images and a more prominent bury button but overall I believe it is a step backwards in both graphic and interaction design.

On the graphics side the biggest mistake in my opinion is the failure to define a base font size. This means that the size is dictated by the default browser configuration, something that most people never change. For Windows Firefox users the default size is 16pt which is typically a little large for Web text. This gives the entire site a cartoon look. I understand that this might have been done for accessibility reason but there are other alternatives that would have allowed for a better controlled experience.

From the interaction standpoint many of the common feature such as digging, commenting, and burying have remained mostly unchanged. Personally I think the big failure here is the integration of video into the front page. This forced a redesign of the navigation which until now was excellent. In fact I have pitched similar designs and people recognized the similarities and even referred to it as “Digg style navigation.” While the new design maintains many of the elements of the previous it has added a drop-down menu system accessed through multifunction buttons. This can be confusing to casual consumers. With each click you may end up with different results.

Overall I think the previous design is better than this current iteration. Sure there are some interesting additions but I think they are really just feature fluff. I look forward to seeing how the public sees the new changes.

[Update] I just found this post. It looks like there might be other problems with the new Digg.com redesign.

Digg.com has recently unveiled its new look and it sure is a “humdinger.” There are some good points like inline images and a more prominent bury button but overall I believe it is a step backwards in both graphic and interaction design.

On the graphics side the biggest mistake in my opinion is the failure to define a base font size. This means that the size is dictated by the default browser configuration, something that most people never change. For Windows Firefox users the default size is 16pt which is typically a little large for Web text. This gives the entire site a cartoon look. I understand that this might have been done for accessibility reason but there are other alternatives that would have allowed for a better controlled experience.

From the interaction standpoint many of the common feature such as digging, commenting, and burying have remained mostly unchanged. Personally I think the big failure here is the integration of video into the front page. This forced a redesign of the navigation which until now was excellent. In fact I have pitched similar designs and people recognized the similarities and even referred to it as “Digg style navigation.” While the new design maintains many of the elements of the previous it has added a drop-down menu system accessed through multifunction buttons. This can be confusing to casual consumers. With each click you may end up with different results.

Overall I think the previous design is better than this current iteration. Sure there are some interesting additions but I think they are really just feature fluff. I look forward to seeing how the public sees the new changes.

[Update] I just found this post. It looks like there might be other problems with the new Digg.com redesign.