The Progress Bar

In preparation for delivering the information architecture for a client’s new dating site, I’ve visited many different types of community-driven websites. One thing I’ve noticed is how many dating sites have changed their design over the last 18 months, after leaving the same design up for several years.

I often equate dating site members with the goldfish bowl concept. It’s said that a goldfish has a memory of only a few seconds, each lap around the bowl brings them back to the same place, which appears entirely different to the fish.

Dating sites, with members that stick around for only three months on average, can take advantage of the goldfish concept, trying new designed, features and functionality without worrying too much about alienating members. Granted, Match.com’s new black background is heinous by most accounts, but look a little deeper and you’ll see the profile and search pages finally getting down to fighting weight after years of seemingly random input from different design teams.

EBay used to receive thousands of emails every time they changed a font size.
This story about changing the eBay home page in the New York Times was especially interesting:

In 1998, eBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, changed the background color of the site’s home page from gray to white. Rather than simply switching colors overnight, though, Ms. Whitman directed eBay’s engineers to bleach the gray over the course of 30 days. At the end of the month, the company asked users if they noticed anything different. No one did.

Many times websites will schedule large annual or bi-annual website redesigns. This goes against a primary ethos of the Internet, which is more akin to point releases of software, at least in my mind. Fixes and changes can be developed, tested and deployed quickly if the underlying infrastructure is set up with quickturnarounds in mind. Sadly, for most dating sites, this is not the case.

One of the things I liked most about Consumating during it’s early days was that founder Ben Brown would hear about a bug or a feature request, and if it made sense, he would sit down with a beer and crank out the fix or feature. Not many sites have the liberty of such a development process, but it’s something that bigger sites should strive for. Even if they come up short, the phrase “maybe next quarter” should be a thing of the past given recent advances in web development.

Just look at what companies are doing on the FaceBook Platform. Soon we will witness a new cadre of Internet companies, increasingly nimble and able to respond to the marketplace in weeks instead of days, days instead of weeks, and in some cases, immediately.

I love the idea of frequent gradual change. Of course, there are always people that live by major releases, but as the Internet evolves, most websites and web services will graduate to a more fluid existence. Even eBay.

I’m looking to speak with the founders of stealthy Internet startups around Boston. The type of company that’s looking forward to presenting at WebInnovators in a few months. This is not for personal gain, but an opportunity to give you some exposure at an upcoming event. Contact me if you would like to learn more.

56,000 Iraqi college graduates face a grim reality. They have lost more than 200 professors and most can’t wait to get out of Iraq, which they consider a death sentance.

They started college just before or after the American invasion with dreams of new friends and parties, brilliant teachers and advanced degrees that would lead to stellar jobs, marriage and children. Success seemed well within their grasp. Four years later, Iraq’s college graduates are ending their studies shattered and eager to leave the country.

Why don’t we invite some to Boston? Surely we can certainly absorb a few hundred and put them to work around New England our healthcare, biotech and technology industries.

How I spent my morning trying to get my Powerbook to print wirelessly through an Airport Express.

Two hours of reading documentation that didn’t help.

Opening up Airport Express in Airport Admin Utility.

Turn off iTunes support.

Works.

Previously, I spent hours getting the actual connection to work, after it somehow broke after working for a year.

Turns out I had to wait more than a minute for the Airport Express to get assigned an IP address from my router. Once I went to get a drink, came back a few minutes later, and it worked.

My building was sold this week. Time for this longtime renter to find a new place and prepare for the joys of owning a home, or a condo most likely.

Looking through the Boston Globe real estate section online, I came across the following error when attempting to save my search to my RSS reader.

Failed to convert Beacon Hill to an integer. Another reason to love the dilapidated, ugly and unreadable Boston.com.

GreenBorder builds software that creates a kind of sandbox for your web browsing, so that any viruses, spyware and trojans you pick up during your session are deleted as soon as the browser is closed. Via Mashable.