Interesting. Wordpress on the iPhone.

I’ve been a bit bad recently in terms of Blogging. So I thought I’d give the Wordpress app on the iPhone.

My inital reaction was “No way! No one will ever blog on the iPhone”. Well here I am doing it!

Testiment to the iPhone and a go job fir Wordpress. The iPhone has really become a massive game changer in so many ways!

Hopefully, you’ll be hearing from me more!

Hey! Wait a mintue! Where’s the publish button…?

I’ve refactored the rating widget to work better and ironed out a few horrid bugs. The main change is that I’ve ripped out the YUI implementation by adding a few addListener / removeListener functions. Here is the change log for 0.1.3:

*** VERSION 0.1.3 ***
- Stripped out YUI - Replaced with custom add and remove listener functions
- Removed timeout implementation… it was rubbish anyway!
- General refactoring
- Swapped Blue and Gold stars. Gold stars now mouse out, blue stars mouse in!
- Use CSS classes to implement style of stars - for easy style change
- Implement $ selector to replace getElementById
- Using span elements rather than img elements

Download the javascript rating widget here!

For all of you wanting a list of countries without the &ltoption&gt tags around each country, then here it is! Current count: 241. Let me know if you want me to add more.

A few bottles of beer can bring up the most random conversations. On the way home from the Adobe Air panel we had at ExCel for Future of Web Apps, sitting on the train, Simon and I started to converse about Friends Reunited. We start to rattle out if it could have been reach the potential of Facebook? Ultimately, there are few things that obviously consider:

The Market: Was the market there? Well… yeah! I’m mean, who didn’t have an account! The need to search and connect to people you know was obviously rife. Looking back to the late 90’s, I remember a service called eCircles, very similar ideas to Facebook, but it fell flat, mostly likely, because the market wasn’t there. I believe the market / conditions were there for Friends Reunited to be the dominant force.

The Experience: A little flaky, but it was probably on the right track. Maybe if stripped a lot of the bloated features (read ‘crap’) out then it probably and made the experience better then maybe they would have had a greater user retention. I mean, Facebook you log in every 5 mins, Friends Reunited, I rarely logged in every 6 months! This was my point, in essence, Friends Reunited had the right idea; MySpace ultimately was all about ‘you’, appealing to your ego. Facebook was all about your ‘Friends’ and appealed to our psychologically ‘nosey side’ (for want of a better phrase); Exactly what Friends Reunited was aimed out too!

The Business Model: Yes, definitely the main barrier for why it didn’t get the larger market pick up. You had to pay. And once you paid, (which I did once!) all you got was contact details. And because people didn’t log in for months… maybe years… they were probably outdated or / and wrong!

The business model was fundamentally flawed. Well maybe thats a bit harsh! They were (are?) a well respected internet brand. But paying to get in touch with old Friends? I mean, I don’t like them that much!

Just imagine, with a few tweaks and a different business model, we could have have a Facebook back in 2000! But for Friends Reunited, making it free to use is most likely too little, too late.

Other resources:

• Techcrunch
• What makes Facebook not Friends Reunited special

Today we have entered the Seedcamp competition with our PaaS BaseKit. We weren’t going to release the demos for BaseKit but after seeing our pitch on UK Techcrunch website, we have become seriously excited and want to finally reveal BaseKit to the world!

BaseKit is a unique Platform as a Service proposition that allows users to create ANY CONCEIVABLE web experience; be it a web site, blog, or custom functionality such as a CRM system or the next Facebook! This makes BaseKit a true Platform as a Service.

So here it is!

Check out the demos; BaseKit API Demo. These are taster demos and we hope you like These demos demonstrate the tip of the iceburg of the power behind the platform.

Also, Seedcamp has offered us a great opportunity to be sum bit video pitches to win a invite to speak about Internet innovations. We have entered our Pitch for BaseKit along with 18 other young founders. Check it out!

Remember VOTE BASEKIT!

SPAM. Hate it or Love it (who are you?), it’s here to stay! Who ever you are, where ever you are, we all have to deal with e-mail SPAM. “Junk mail now accounts for nearly 70% of e-mails worldwide” according to the BBC website, but what happens when your Facebook account is targeted?

And what happens when it’s not some unmasked villain in the USA (28.4%* apparently! Why are was I led to believe it was China and Russia then?) but one of your friends??

Let me paint a picture…

There I am, minding my own business, cruising through a few photos on Facebook when suddenly, I receive a standard Facebook email message! Now, I love messages in Facebook; they have a different feeling to receiving wall post or having a sheep thrown at you (the hordes of zombie attacks have thankfully been culled - Spambooking 1.0). No… messages are different. They’re personal. They are directed to you personally, for your eyes only, usually from a friend or a group of friends.

But this one was different…

It was from Friend X. Someone that I have seen recently and had a good time with on holiday. Great! It’s content was most likely the batter continued. Perusing the title, I could see that it wasn’t banter, but a recommendation of a website. Okay…

“Hey buddy, try this website out… you’ll love it… (link to site)”

The link was to a Poker website…My face dropped.

I realised that I have just been ‘Spambooked’… by a friend! Not by some faceless evil spammer… but by a close friend on mine!! He was trying to monetise our relationship… Horror turned into been deeply troubled, and at the same time, saddened by such an event.

I had noticed is the link had included a referral code… so that if I signed up to the Poker site, the refer (presuming this was my friend) would receive money!

SPAM is an evil thing, which sours many forms of communication, but I have come to expect it in its many guises. E-mail, Spamdexing, Youtube, SMS text, forums, Wordpress blogs, Facebook (How many Superwall posts do I get! And the intrusive ‘invite a friend’ stage of most Facebook appliactions) etc etc but thats not what shocked me. I don’t expect my SPAM to be sent by my Friends!

I hoping the next drastic change is SPAM was that it would decrease in its volumes and not the origins of where it comes from. In short, I am concerned the next wave SPAM maybe coming from your close friends.

Heed my warning when I say… be careful to who you tell your personal problems… Because they could be sending you discount Viagra offers or even worse, ‘enlargement’ information via your Facebook account!

* July 2008

I’ve have created a stand alone rating widget, which currently uses YUI to support. Version 0.1.1 can be downloaded here. Standard Web 1.0 Widget that you can incorporate into your forms with no problem at all.

Example of the rating widget can be found here.

I’m looking to phase out the YUI element of the widget and get it working with either a custom or light-er-weight javascript library. Also build documentation for ease of use.

Any comments would be much appropriated.

The golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. It is the very definition of Yin-Yang or the word Harmony.

As Einstein put it:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Einstein is sometimes quoted wrongly with the above, as some people have interrupted it as “keep thing as simple as possible” or what some people call Occam’s Razor. But I disagree. When he says about “but not simpler”, he was actually referring to the Golden Mean.

As Aristotle said about the Spartan way of life; How they trained Men, not women and how they trained for War but not for peace. Aristotle knew that this is not a good way to live. If there were no enemies to fight, what would happen? Such disharmony creates greater difficulties in the future.

What does this mean in design and development?

Ancient Greek structural design is based on symmetry and proportion. Modern research also suggests that people whose facial features are symmetric and proportioned according the golden ratio are looked upon as more attractive than those whose faces are not.

The Golden Number

The Golden Number has been much publicised in the fantastic book, “The Da Vinci Code”. Phi, (1.61803… etc) appears throughout life and the universe. A few believe that Phi is the most efficient outcome, the result of natural forces. Others believe it is a universal constant of design, and the signature of God’s handwork.

Phi is used in Art; masterpieces such as Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, The Parthenon, the famous Greek temple built for the goddess Athena, Biology; proportions of the human body and faces and Mathematics; Phi is found within Geometry.

What does this mean in life?

There is a word that is used constantly now days which (apparently) if we can achieve, we will live a happier, longer, more fulfilling life; Balance. Balance is the middle of the average or the Golden Mean. A healthy balanced diet, a balanced working life, being within the average weight for your height. Pleasure / Pain? Obtaining the Golden Mean allows us to enjoy all life’s pleasures without becoming to obsessed with, for example, Chocolate or Rabbit food. Enjoy both!

Summary

Life is a balance and if we stay within the realms of this, we will enjoy the most of what the experience of living can bring us. Look towards the Golden Mean (and its applied use) for inspiration when developing an “experience”, be it life, a piece of work or design, or a movie. Explore all the different shades but obtaining the “Mean” provide us / the viewer / the user with the balance that we / they require.

As a side note, when dealing with functional outcomes, we should look at Occum’s razor. Which being us back to another quote:

“When you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better.”

For more information about Occum’s Razor, view this post on the Gamma Tan Blog.

Lex Parsimoniae is Latin for “Law of Parsimony”, which pulled out into its simplest form is the The Law of what can be spared, should.

This is a theory that I have been studying for the past year and through observation believe that this can be applied to all situations that require a more efficient, functional solution. This paradigm has many names, but is best know as Occam’s Razor. His razor suggests that when resources are limited or when speed of function is essential, design / complexity trade-offs should be based on what does the least harm to the probability of success, however that is defined.

Form is Function

There is a school of thought that beauty in design results in good function, but I prefer to subscribe the fact that just concentration on the functionality will by its very nature, create its own aura of design. Sometimes, the focus on functional efficiency inspires a feeling that goes beyond aesthetics and ultimately give us the sense that its form is of a higher echelon.

Barrier To Entry

The brain is an amazing piece of kit. One of its most amazing functions is its ability to optimise when processing data. Each brain has been trained over many years (or maybe it inherently has the ability) to simplify individual objects into groups. Instead of seeing each individual blade of grass, the mind sees a field. Millions of pieces of data grouped into one object because it knows, to comprehend millions of pieces of grass would take and enormous amount of effect. Effect that could be focused elsewhere. So it generalises to make life easier. This sort of information overload can happen in design as well; Too much will distract from your likely objective.

Remember that 7 Second Rule? If your web app or website has 7 seconds to impress then wouldn’t you prefer showing off your functional muscles? How useful your app is? and not long it takes to load the really cool (bandwidth crunching) design? Remember how it easy it is to make your mind up about someone when you them for the first time. Same rules apply.

Just Do It!

What are yoru objectives and goals? Hopefully, when developing a web app or website, to make your (or your users) life easier! And let’s remember, this ‘thing’ we call the Internet is broken. So don’t break any further with dodgy CSS and bloated javascript. Functional Turn Around is the most impressive aspect for me these days. Spend time developing how the app works, refine it, refine it again, then again. Then when it works, design around the edges.

If you like latin phrase then try this one:

“entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem“, or “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”

or just remember, K.I.S.S - Keep it Simple, Stupid!

It’s about time Progressive Internet had its own blog. Born out necessity rather than ego, the PI Blog will mainly be used to describe what is happening in the technical labs. With the ever nearing Alpha version of BaseKit (code name) we will need to make sure that it is launched with the right hype. Check it out to see the latest news on our combined developments!