Aaron Johnson

Links: 3-8-2010

ajohnson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:47:28 +0000

IE7 : This page contains both secure and nonsecure items - Rob Chartier ~ Contemplation…
Oh IE how I love thee.
(categories: ie7 security https ssl html ifame )
chartbeat - real-time website analytics and uptime monitoring
These guys get bought in < 3 months IMHO.
(categories: analytics statistics monitoring tracking realtime stats metrics )

Links: 3-7-2010

ajohnson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:47:29 +0000

The Power of the Audience - Anil Dash
Great essay. Quote: "…And the best use for realtime communications on the web is not to simply bring in the most recent information on a topic, but rather to make clear that others are experiencing or interacting with the same content at the same time."
(categories: realtime communication writing ux design )
user research friday (tecznotes)
Awesome article on product design, innovation, community management, crisis management and user research…. and a quote: "…There’s an alternative to the Buzz model of foisting novelty on people, and I think that Flickr is a classic example of a better way to operate on the web. Flickr is famous inside of Yahoo and out for having a basically cavalier attitude to commonly-accepted wisdom about testing, assurance, predicability, and all-around maturity. What that means is that sometimes, Flickr screws up. This is the Flickr coloring contest, hastily assembled during a multiple hour, unexpected engineering emergency from 2006. Flickr had and has a world-class community management approach that can respond to crisis with humor. The coloring contest kept anxious community members busy while terrifying technological feats were performed to unclog the tubes."
(categories: stamen innovation userfocus research flickr product-design prototyping crisis community-management design ux )
HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback
Nice rundown on HTML5 and video and a quote: "…Playback is only one component of the total video experience. You will need to develop analytics and advertising capabilities to match or exceed your current Flash experience. Advertisers don’t publish interactive advertisements in
Paul Buchheit: If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good.
Quote: Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product — the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can’t make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That’s it — no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg — nothing but the essentials, well executed.
(categories: product-design productmanagement innovation design usability startup )
PubSubHubBub — Matt Mullenweg
Quote: … WP.com’s goal of all its useful code being available to everyone
(categories: plugins innovation iteration wordpress pubsubhubbub )
Thunderbird in 2010 @ david ascher
Quote: If we have an idea for a change to an existing Thunderbird feature, we’d like to roll it out first as an add-on, so that we can get feedback on early versions of the idea without having to incur all of the up-front costs of landing that change into the “trunk” builds. This should allow us to validate (or reject) ideas much faster. A great example of how this can work is the Personas feature, which matured as an add-on, and is now a standard (and awesome) feature of Firefox 3.6.
(categories: innovation mozilla software plugins iteration )

Links: 3-2-2010

ajohnson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:47:25 +0000

Highest Paid Opinion Wins « Scott Berkun
Great new acronym: "HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site."
(categories: humor collab )
Jason Fried: Why you can’t work at work - serious about camo
Started off good and then went to "Managers are the biggest problem…" Good to know.
(categories: work collaboration workplace focus )

Links: 3-1-2010

ajohnson — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:47:26 +0000

User Groups - Atlassian User Group - Atlassian Documentation - Confluence

(categories: usergroup atlassian )
Über Conf - Java Conference - June 14 - 17, 2010 - Denver, CO
The Ü will offer over 100 technically focused sessions including hands on workshops centered around Architecture, Cloud, Security, Enterprise Java, Languages on the JVM, Build/Test, Mobility and Agility. The goal of Über Conf is a simple one: totally blow the minds of our attendees.
(categories: conference uberconf )
Twitter Support : How To Find People and Be Found
The next step in privacy = discoverability, which enables things like webfinger.
(categories: twitter email privacy webfinger discovery )

Links: 2-25-2010

ajohnson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:47:29 +0000

Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider for Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007, and Outlook 2003
All the tech details on creating an Outlook Social Connector provider.
(categories: outlook email socialsoftware )
Our Look at the LinkedIn Social Connector for Outlook - the How-To Geek
Screenshots of the Social Connector / Linkedin impl.
(categories: 2010 outlook socialsoftware email )

Links: 2-21-2010

ajohnson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:47:26 +0000

In the World of Facebook - The New York Review of Books
Great article on facebook past, present and future.
(categories: facebook culture socialsoftware ambientawareness )

Links: 2-20-2010

ajohnson — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:47:26 +0000

Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API - Twilio Cloud Communications - Discover Our Web Services API for Making & Receiving Phone Calls & Text Messages, Cloud Telephony
We’re ridiculously excited about Twilio SMS. Previously, building SMS apps was hard… it could take months of negotiations, approvals, and hundreds or thousands of dollars up-front and every month to get started. With Twilio SMS, it’s as easy as buying a Twilio phone number from the Twilio account portal or Phone Numbers REST API for $1 / month, and immediately start receiving and sending text messages using Twilio’s SMS REST API for just 3 cents per message. No waiting period, no contracts, no hefty up-front costs… just $1 and your imagination.
(categories: sms api mobile phone twilio )
Unifying the Conversations (Salmon Protocol)
As updates and content flow in real time around the Web, conversations around the content are becoming increasingly fragmented into individual silos. Salmon aims to define a standard protocol for comments and annotations to swim upstream to original update sources — and spawn more commentary in a virtuous cycle. It’s open, decentralized, abuse resistant, and user centric.
(categories: protocol social socialsoftware stream comments communication unifiedcommunication )
PeteSearch: How to find user information from an email address
Pretty crazy what you can learn about someone using only their email address.
(categories: email privacy identity datamining webfinger )
Dissecting YSlow
The YSlow rules with their corresponding weights.
(categories: performance optimization http )

Links: 2-19-2010

ajohnson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:47:27 +0000

Clive Thompson in Praise of Online Obscurity | Magazine
Maybe we should be designing tools that reward obscurity — that encourage us to remain in the shadows. Or what if they warned us when our social circles became unsustainably large? Sure, we’d be connected with fewer people, but we’d be communicating with them, and not just talking at them.
(categories: socialsoftware twitter socialdesign ux )
Bloug: Site search best practices
Good tips on creating a great search page.
(categories: search ux patterns usability ui )
KrazyDad » Blog Archive » Mayor of the North Pole
Quote: "More generally, I think the combination of a poorly moderated and insecure folksonomy with incentives (e.g. badges, mayorships, free meals, etc.) is a fragile one. The greater the incentives, the greater the motivation for cheating. "
(categories: social hacking status motivation socialsoftware )

Links: 2-18-2010

ajohnson — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:47:30 +0000

The social behavior incentive (how your app can be as addictive as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare)
1. Serve your users’ narcissism.
2. Measure behavior and report it.
3. Add status for behaviors.
4. Make multiple status reports.
5. Make undesired behavior seem lame.
6. Make it easy to share success with others.
7. Make an API for studying behavior.
8. Make it easy to join in other users.
9. Give people more “hooks” to addict their friends.
(categories: socialmedia psychology socialnetworking status socialsoftware )
paperplanes. A Collection Of Redis Use Cases
(categories: programming nosql redis database reference architecture )
WP.com Downtime Summary — Blog — WordPress.com
WP.com down for 110 minutes: great concise honest explanation of what happened.
(categories: wordpress blogs authentic crisis )
How to use Salesforce.com Confluence Plugin - CustomWare Plugins for Atlassian
Interesting little Confluence plugin that gives you the ability to embed SF.com data into Confluence.
(categories: scrm socialsoftware )

Links: 2-15-2010

ajohnson — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:47:34 +0000

Algorithmic recruitment with GitHub :: Hackdiary
Great example of how social software adds real value to your everyday life.
(categories: social graph socialsoftware algorithm network graphing socialnetworks )
Plupload - A tool for uploading files using Flash, Silverlight, Google Gears, HTML5 or Browserplus
Plupload v1.0 — Allows you to upload files using HTML5 Gears, Silverlight, Flash, BrowserPlus or normal forms, providing some unique features such as upload progress, image resizing and chunked uploads.
(categories: jquery javascript flash ajax tools silverlight html5 upload )