everwas

a blog by Ian Kennedy

Year: 2009

  • Delivr your links to the mobile web in style

    A common problem with the mobile web is that pages are not optimized for the mobile browser. Browsers are getting better but sidebar widgets and other social networking cruft often get in the way of viewing sites efficiently on a small screen over a wireless connection.

    Enter Delivr.

    Combining both a URL shortening service and a service that optimizes pages for the mobile browser, Delivr makes it dead easy to bring pages over to the mobile web.

    On the home page, a drop down gives you access to a number of options depending on the type of page you wish to share with your mobile friends. Choosing an option drives what data Delivr captures to create a mobile-optimized page.

    Sharing a flickr photo? The dropdown asks for a flickr username and Delivr will give you a gallery of the latest photos. Select the photo you want, add a title and message and off it goes the link as a text message (currently supports US numbers only) along with the shortened url.

    Other content-specific options include a YouTube video, a map of an address on Google Maps (a great way for a business to shorten those long GMap urls), and the “text” option which gives you a whole slew of formatting options to create a mobile-optimized page. I hear from Deliver that more are options are on the way.

    Besides texting a link, you also have options to send the link to a variety of social networking sites and (this I really like) they’ve even added a “print flyer” option to create a full page PDF with four postcard-sized cards complete with a QR Code that links directly to the page you’re sharing. Send this PDF off to the printer and you’ve now got a nice postcard to hand out to customers or prospects at the next conference.

    Delivr strives to makes things as easy as possible. If you think logging into a site is too much of a pain, they have a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser bar. If even that is too much of a hassle, you don’t even need to have an account to check out their latest trick. Just add “delivr.com” in front of any url to transform it into a mobile ready page.

    delivr.com/https://everwas.com = delivr.com/106ru*

    That’s all it takes to throw a URL over the transom an create a mobile-friendly version of that page that can be shared with all your cellie-toting friends. As with other URL shortening services such at bit.ly, delivr also provides analytics around each link you share, tracking where traffic is coming from (web, the unique print URL, or QR Code). Marketers are already playing around with the service to analyize where they can be most effective in getting the word out with Green Day currently running a promotion for their upcoming release on May 15th.

    Every aspect of this service has been thought out carefully, the simplicity of the site is deceiving. Delivr has created a simple platform that can be extended any number of ways; into the virtual space through their series of mobile-optimized landing pages and into the physical space via the QR Coded PDF postcards. If you think that URLs are the currency of the web – Delivr is in a great position to be the central bank for URLs on the mobile web.

  • Yes, but can your phone do this?

    Promoting new features of the Nokia E71 with Taiwanese magician Liu Qian performing a little street art. I can’t wait for the SMS-a-pigeon feature when it comes out.

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  • Barack Obama’s Facebook Page

    Barack Obama's Wall

    This is really well done. In honor of Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, Slate has mocked up a parody of his Facebook page.

    Remember, What will Facebook look like in 40 years?

  • Profile Photo Snark

    photosnark

    We can be so cruel sometimes but that doesn’t make this any less funny. Reflections of Reflections is a series of critiques of MySpace/Facebook profile pictures. More in this genre in 20 Male Poses of Facebook.

  • Best Code Comment Ever

    Comments left by developers in the dead of the night are inside jokes left for others. Little winks of comic relief left for others that will be parsing through the sub-routines trying to wrangle software to get things working. Usually code comments are short but this one left by a frustrated programmer of a Photoshop viewer is epic.

    At this point, I’d like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format. PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.

    If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide that *these* particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignment should *not* be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned, or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included. Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD, of course, uses all three, and more.

    Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.

    Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire. Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch them on a spaceship directly into the sun.

    PSD is not my favourite file format.

    via Fark

    UPDATE: If you want more code comments, check out Stack Overflow which has a collection of them.

  • Stanley Cup’s Colorful History

    Stanley Cup’s Colorful History

    UPDATE: After their epic win last night, here’s how the Cup spent last night in Vegas with the Washington Capitals.

    After last night’s loss to Anaheim, the San Jose Sharks are out of the running.  Might as well post some highlights from the checkered past of the world’s most famous trophy.

    • In 1905, the Ottawa Silver Seven tried to drop-kick it over the Rideau Canal on the Ottawa River. (They failed.)
    • In 1906, it went missing after a photography session. It turned out the photographer’s mother had adopted it as a planter for geraniums.
    • In 1924, the Montreal Canadiens left it by the side of the road while changing a tire.
    • In 1940, managers burned the mortgage of Madison Square Garden in the cup, which the Rangers won that year. (This occasioned a “curse” that kept the Rangers from the cup for 54 years.)
    • In 1980, New York Islander Clark Gillies fed his dog from it.
    • In 1991, Pittsburgh Penguin Mario Lemieux tried to float it in his swimming pool. It sank. (Colorado Avalanche goalkeeper Patrick Roy later did the same thing.)
    • In 1994, Ranger Ed Olczyk filled it with oats to feed Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin.
    • In 1996, Avalanche defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre had his daughter baptized in it.

    via Futility Closet.

  • Mobile Social Networking “up for grabs” in the United States

    Jason Calcanis has a great post on 10 things the new MySpace CEO should do. All of them are good (buy a search engine, add casual games, virtual currency) but I particularly liked his comment about the wide open space for a successful mobile social network here in the US. Japan is leading the way, the US is just not there yet.

    Let’s face the facts: Facebook is a much better platform on the Web. MySpace has a lot of work to do just to match Facebook’s offering. However, Facebook and MySpace both suck on mobile phones. Translation? Mobile SNS (social networking services) is up for grabs in the United States.

    On my recent trip to Japan, it became very clear to me that the majority of social network activity was occurring on mobile phones–not desktop PCs. No one has built the ultimate iPhone and BlackBerry social networking tools, although some folks are starting to get there. Geolocation tools, combined with the social graph, are the Holy Grail of social networking.

    The full post is here.

  • Traffic Sources and Attention

    There’s been good debate around how the source of traffic to sites is changing, shifting from the search engines to social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I confirmed that I too am seeing a greater percentage of traffic come in via links shared on social sites and shared a colleague’s theory about what this would mean for Google’s advertising revenues. Fred Wilson also posted about this topic here and here.

    What about attention? How does the average visitor from a social site compare to someone from a search engine? Niall Kennedy tweeted the following stats from his referral logs:

    • Twitter: 7 seconds
    • Digg: 20 seconds
    • StumbleUpon: 40 seconds
    • Facebook: 52 seconds
    • Delicious: 82 seconds

    timespent

    Here are my stats for the past year:

    • StumbleUpon: 40 seconds
    • Digg: 42 seconds
    • FriendFeed: 53 seconds
    • Facebook: 60 seconds
    • Twitter: 86 seconds*
    • Delicious: 110 seconds
    • Techmeme: 114
    • MyBlogLog: 176 seconds

    Compared to the attention span of those coming from the major search engines we get:

    • Live.com (MSFT): 21 seconds
    • Yahoo: 35 seconds
    • Google : 40 seconds
    • Ask: 46 seconds

    It would be interesting to see figures from other sites, especially online shopping sites which are the ones most interested in getting (and therefore likely to pay for) traffic. While it’s clear that visitors from social sites are more engaged with my blog because they tend to hang around a bit longer, that may not be the case with a shopping site where there is less intent to purchase than if they come from a search engine but Mark Essel thinks otherwise.

    Increasingly, the flow of web links is being made between individuals via social media sites.  Your good fishing buddy who knows the Bay area, shares a link to his favorite supply store.  As focused communities become populated across geographic barriers, local quality referrals become more likely.  But what if you want to know what store fishermen prefer in San Francisco?  You could simply use twitter search for fishing san francisco.  In real time you could send a message to several individuals who are interested in fishing in that region.

    Shared links are compelling but they need to be matched with impulse buying or discoverable when you’re looking for it. I’m thinking of O’Reilly’s flash discount shared via twitter (44% off to celebrate the 44th president) which was effective in bumping registration at the recent Web 2.0 Expo. The other way to generate business via shared links is to make them searchable so you can find what you need when you want it – but then we’re right back at sending traffic via search again.  Yes, you can search twitter but you can find this stuff on Google too.

    The jury’s still out as I think this will be a slow shift of behavior that will take a long time to impact existing business models. The real prize is back to social search which would combine the best of the recommendation trusts of social networks with the ability to find what you need when you’re looking for it.

    Facebook recommendations married to Google ‘s structure and ranking? That’s the subject of another post.

    —o—

    * I dug into the Twitter figures because they’re so out of whack with what Niall is seeing and it looks like there are a few visitors that hung out for a long time that are pushing that average higher than it should be.

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  • No Smiling!

    nosmiles

    The Finnish Immigration pages has a series of guidelines for their passport and visa photos. I found this one regarding Expressions amusing.