I want YOU! And I got some links too …

Hey there folks,

it’s been a while. I have been working pretty hard lately so there wasn’t that much time for writing. But I am currently on to building new things and I could certainly require some help with it. Are you a developer? Are you a designer? Are you a genius? If you can answer at least one by yes, please, go to: http://www.hipscreen.com and find the brief details. Let me hear about your skills and we might get into some business soon…

Moreover, I’ve been working with a new client from L.A. lately: FerrazziGreenlight Inc. If you haven’t heard of their CEO, Keith Ferrazzi before, then you’ve most certainly spent the last decade indoors (and miles away from Amazon). Make sure you grab the latest copy of the most incredible book I’ve had in my hands so far: Never Eat Alone. You can find detailed infos (and sample chapters, yes good stuff!) at: http://www.keithferrazzi.com/
The book is about building relationships (in a business sense) and how such can ultimately lead to your personal success. The website says it like this:

Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success?

The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him.

The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington’s corridors of power to Hollywood’s A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 and one of Davos’ Global Leader for Tomorrow.

It’s an awesome read, you should check it out. I find it particularly interesting as I do now understand why some people get their latest Web 2.0 product into quality news coverage in the FT, BusinessWeek or maybe on TV – and others lurk around low rated blogs, trying to pitch it to a group of 20 people. That’s not gonna work. Networking is THE magic.

Lastly, I’ve some more good news: There is an online tool that you can check out (it’s free! totally free!) called “Life Coach”. Well, that’s a promising name, right. But it helps you quite nicely to identify your personal, most destructive behaviors and gives pretty good hints on how you can tackle that behavior. Are you good friends with procrastination? Do you “really” listen to what other people say about you?

Check out the free step-by-step tool at: http://www.keithferrazzi.com/lifecoachtool

Summing up: I like the trend of all that. We (read: IT geeks, bloggers, developers, …) should take on more opportunities to talk to successful managers and leaders out there to show them a what the world behind the screens (i.e. the internet world) looks like and how they can utilize the power (and magic) of it. Not talking mass commerce here, but I’d spent a little fortune to IM with Jack Welch or John Sculley. But most likely they don’t really know much of this side of the force, yet. That needs to be changed. There’s soooo much besides Google. And we could need some VC money, right?

Let me hear your thoughts, comments always welcome here!

Roman

News news news

First of all, I finally got two great interviews for you.

I had the opportunity to ask Alex Tew a question about his MillionDollarHomepage and he answered at the Financial Times website (http://www.ft.com/tew)

Here’s what he had to say:

Roman Mittermayr: “How much money did you spend initially to get this thing started? It does take a bit of financial injection to keep the popularity up until it reaches a solid, worldwide coverage – so I guess you had a PR agent working for you?”

Alex Tew: My initial outlay was around 50 euros I think; it really didn’t cost much to register the domain name and set up some basic hosting. I then re-invested the first $1,000 I made from selling pixels to my friends and family into sending out a press release in order to create more attention. In October I was approached by a talented publicist in the US, Imal Wagner, who suggested I write a book about my experience. I declined the book idea (mainly because I was too busy) but I hired her to help manage all the media attention and she also helped me create fresh interest in the states, which was in fact the last major country to cover my story. I actually went on a media tour in November to do a round of interviews there, and this directly led to more orders and the whole thing continued to grow. The underlying process was simple: the more attention I created, the more pixels I sold, and the more pixels I sold, the more interest my site received. It was a true snowball effect. I probably spent around $40-50,000 US on promoting and maintaining the site.

So as you see, Alex really did some good PR decision. It’s not only word of mouth magic, he actually did something to get that started and kept it going through all the life cycle of his project.

PageFlakes

Ole Brandenburg, a co-founder of PageFlakes.com was kind enough to answer me a couple of questions on their latest hit: “PageFlakes”. Some might have heard of it before, if not, “how was the vacation to Mars?” – It’s a pretty solid, online desktop system. Nonono, not another simple aggregator, not a simple feed reader or a task manager. It’s got everything you need, really. I love to see how such a “mushroom” like company got the project set up in virtually no time and started challenging Microsoft and all the other service providers – and definitely – outrule them! Pretty cool. Remember, it only takes you some 15 to 30 seconds until you’re setup to rock. Simply sign up for an account (it’s free – as in beer) and check it out.

Here’s a short intro to the interview:

Roman:
What exactly is Pageflakes?

Ole:
Pageflakes is a personalized start page (Ajax Desktop as some like to call it) that allows you to setup your (customized) content and news. We have already created 30 modules (Address Book, Todo List, Weather Flake, TV Guide, Map, etc.). You can read news feeds and setup the whole page to your liking. Its easy drag & drop functionality allow users of all kind to setup their own page. Signup is free.

Roman:
How did you come up with the whole idea?

Ole:
Content and news are scattered across the web. Information is available but it’s a pain to have it to look up 10 different sites and login 10 times to get all the news and information plus functionlity that you … [more]

[Check out Pageflakes] [You can read the full interview here]

Many many thanks to Ole for answering all these questions. I am going to interview some more high profilers soon, so make sure you check back regularly. You can also join our Naked Business board, which is free of course and located at:

http://ebusiness.vipedio.com/

That’s where I am posting the interviews and other entrepreneurial / web design related articles.

Many many thanks to Ole for answering all these questions. I am going to interview some more high profilers soon, so make sure you check back regularly. You can also join our Naked Business board, which is free of course and located at:- that’s where I am posting the interviews and other entrepreneurial / web design related articles.I also got offered a job at Skype the other day, woooho, what a great opportunity. I am not sure though, if I can get things in place to face that challenge. We’ll see, I am going to keep you posted.

Let’s close it up, but not without the mandatory quote:

“The reason they call it ‘golf’ is that all the other 4 letter words were used up”
Leslie Nielsen

Zinses

(Yet another) lovely example of 2.0Culture,

… went online just yesterday at http://www.zinses.com/ and couldn’t be any simpler. Even though most people tend to fire up their old ‘n dusty calculators, doing some proper interest calculations – it’s much more convenient to have a website do the thing. There are quite a lot of bank websites offering all kinds of fancy things, but they’ve never heard of 2.0Culture – while this service definitely has. Even though it doesn’t use Ajax (can you believe it *g* ?) and has no API (…yet, under development from what I’ve heard) – it still looks way 2.0. You, my trusted reader, already know why. He’s got the simplicity, the fonts, and the overall design just right. This gadget is no big business but it definitely puts light on the way to a whole new set of small yet highly useful utilities. I already foresee it implemented as a small widget on just about every business blog.

If you want to contact the author, simply go to our brand new entrepreneur board located at:

http://ebusiness.vipedio.com/

Oh, and many thanks to all who’ve joined my network through network@mittermayr.com
It’s still open for a couple of days, so please take the time and send me a quick e-mail about it (read post below).

Also, I urge you to send me your 2.0Culture projects in order to review them here !

Right, I thought I might end my post with a Leslie Nielsen quote:

Frank Drebin:
The truth hurts doesn’t it, Hapsburg? Oh, sure maybe not as much as jumping on a bike with the seat missing, but it hurts!

WhatIsThatFile.com – A first review

Sorry for being late again with my follow up post to my recent article. I was quite busy lately with developing and growing WhatIsThatFile.com – as mentioned in the previous post. Believe it or not, it hit Diggs front page again – it was 2-3 days in del.icio.us popular section and for that – I had about 25.000 visits in the last days. It calmed down of course, I have a regular amount of about 1.500 uniques a day right now. It’s still great, considering that I am totally away from Digg and other snowballers. But once again, I learned a great deal about online marketing – or how to get to turbo-boost your project. Still, it’s a clear fact that those “boost-injections” are not of a long lasting nature at all – but applied at a regular interval – they will increase your user base massively. It’s quite interesting to see the stats, showing those peaks at days when the story hit the front pages – and the nicely shaped (“terribly shaped – in a business man’s point of view) reduction of unique visitors shortly after. But, after a few of those peeks, you will clearly notice the actual level of “standard” visitors is leveling off at a noticeable higher number than before the peek. Now, please excuse my terrible MsPaint work:

 

I think you get the idea. I have seen a more beautiful illustration recently somewhere on a blog, can’t remember though. Let me know if it was your blog.

So, as I am always eager to provide you with a personal benefit with reading this blog, here’s what I am able to offer for this week:

Try to learn the mechanism behind those aggregated Web 2.0 services. Only those can help you to turbo boost your projects – but take into consideration what I experienced recently and wanted to share with you:

1. People at Digg get upset easily. Promoting your own projects will most likely earn you a vast amount of unqualified flame comments. I had that with WhatIsThatFile.com. Someone started to flame about it and people simply joined in until they had enough “This is spam” clicks to get it removed. I know, this might sound as I had really “spammed” Digg – but I actually received -once again- an amazing count of Diggs (so a loooot people liked it) and even more: Look it up at del.icio.us – Right now: 508 people bookmarked it. That’s massive (for a projects that’s been online for about 4 days now). So try to have some people pick up your project and submit it to Digg – so you actually don’t spam the site. Listen closely, I mean: People need to like your site so much that they decide to write a post about at Digg. Ok, I think you got it.
2. How do you get people to Digg you? Look at: WhatIsThatFile.com – I provided two buttons which have turned out to be quite successful lately. One allows visitors to add the site to their del.icio.us booksmarks by simply clicking on the button – while the other button allows to post a story to Digg. You can’t make it any easier for your visitors to help you. Let them know that this counts more than any donation and they will help you.
3. The flow of hypes (crucial must-know fact):
   Usually, your story gets either digged or submitted to some other very popular directory. This should at least direct around 10.000 visitors a day (!) to your site (if it’s worth viewing it,  no AdSense niche stuff here, I am afraid). After that, if you are lucky (and did well with your idea), people start to bookmark your site at del.icio.us. Especially if you have emphasized the importance of bookmarking your site there. So, the second boost of magic is happening sometime around the days you get removed from the major news directory – if things worked out - people have bookmarked you like crazy – and tada! (fanfare here) – you are in del.icio.us popular. That’s impossible you say? It’s not – I did it twice – and I am no guru on that. The magic: I only tried it twice – so there’s definitely a mechanism behind it. It won’t work for quick “let’s make hell of a money with AdSense niche sites” ideas. You are banned from Digg faster than you said hello there. That’s the crucial difference with Web 2.0 – people are able to control and decide about your success – it’s solely about your quality – and not financial background. That’s at least a great thing. But keep in mind that this particular traffic won’t be worth a cent at all if people don’t decide to return soon. And even though there are ways to direct people’s minds to a small extend, you can’t make them love a stupid webpage. Simple as this. So first, get some quality feedback from chats, forums, friends, whatever. Let ideas flow in and decide yourself what’s best to add real value to your website. This is most crucial for everything.
4. Take my recent success as an example of what’s possible with very small financial and personal investment. Literally, I only paid those $8 for the domain name and about 25.000 different(!) people have at least seen my name and project for a short moment. That’s fully worth the investment. Even though I have provided all the content on my site for free (with very little advertisement) – I fully had my return on investment – and in other words: break-even within 4 days. Wohoo.
   If you are keen to know why I benefit to a great amount while providing a totally free web service – have a look at my business blog at: http://blog.mittermayr.com – where I will post a follow up article soon, especially on how to benefit from giving away things for free. Sounds crispy? Check it out. Soon at Naked Business.

I have so much to share with you about all those things that I’ve learned in the last days – I am really happy to have a blog now and being able to share this experiences.

If you are an experienced web-designer, internet entrepreneur with recent success stories to share – let me know about and I will get in contact with you to share experiences – and to post your project here on this blog (if I like it).

That’s exactly what Ole from the Pageflakes crew did. You don’t know Pageflakes ? Shame on you my friend, brush up your recent Web 2.0 bookmarks: http://www.pageflakes.com – This one rocks. You may have heard of Microsoft’s approach, trying to gain market share in the -currently quite hot- Ajax Desktops field by rolling out Microsoft LIVE (www.live.com). Well right, they got a cool name – but frankly, I even like the term Pageflakes better. And furthermore: Pageflakes just rocks in comparison to Microsoft’s poor implementation (guys, is this an alpha alpha ?) - Right, some of you geeks out there might just roll their eyes saying “oh god, not another Ajax desktop” - trust me, if you ever decide – ok I’ll give them another try (after Google didn’t impress you) – then, go for Pageflakes. You won’t be disappointed. You can even win an XBox360 there if you hand in a great frontpage - or so. See yourself. 

Are you curious on what’s going on at WhatIsThatFile.com ? – I did another highly important thing: I created (another!) blog – only for the site. It’s thought to keep users posted about what’s going on at the site and to thank them for all their efforts. It’s a great way to receive qualified feedback - which is ALWAYS worth gold.

There you go: http://blog.whatisthatfile.com

Just to remind you: This could have been your project. About week ago (or two?) I explained the details here at my blog and offered everyone the chance to go for it. I simply followed my own instructions and tada – that’s the golden result. So, stay tuned for more ideas.

Right, my next podcast might arrive a bit delayed this week as I am quite busy travelling around IT fairs. I got to get myself updated on hard-facts. Wooho. Go for it.

Let me know what you think, about this article and in general – the comments section is open for all your ideas.

Yours, Roman 

Episode 1 – Tiptoeing into Podcastwater

Right, I finally found time to record a very short podcast. In fact, it’s nothing I am totally proud of yet. I lack of expressing myself properly and mostly you will notice that there is not really much content inside the podcast. Anyway, you may listen to it to give some good quality feedback. My next one is going to be MUCH better as I am currently arranging a couple of interviews with other entrepreneurs to talk about their success, plans and hints on how to pop out those great websites and services. If you want to be “on the show” in my podcast, let me know and I will contact you for details. Quite easy!

Here it is: Episode 1 MP3 (~3mb)

I will add the appropriate RSS handling and stuff later then. I am just too busy right now.

The other two things I would like to point your attention two, are two babies I just released to the internet for some first real-(virtual)-life-testing. No, not literally “babies”, software developers would call them BETAs. I wonder what they call their babies then (v2.0?). Anyway you may like them, but what’s more important: FEEDBACK. Let me know what you think that I am missing there. I put them up in order to analyze the actual triggers why something rocks or socks (=sucks). And the more feedback you can give, the more WE can learn from it. I will keep you posted about it.
Here they are:

This is a simple, yet powerful typical 2.0Culture project (far from perfect!):
http://www.whatisthatfile.com/

And this one was made to create a community platform for FREE (as in beer) video tutorials:
http://www.vipedio.com/

If you are keen to know how I am planning to benefit from those two -non commercial- projects, you need to check out my other blog (Naked Business) at: http://blog.mittermayr.com/ – I will explain this in detail there soon.

I got some more things coming up, stay tuned and GET INVOLVED. I am happy to have a lot of good ideas around. So let’s create a blasting ideaplant here. Oh hell, I am freaking out. Anyone contacted the New York Times yet about my “2.0Culture” term plans ?

Keep it up guys (and ladies),
Yours, Roman

The 2.0Benefit

How you can benefit from the 2.0Culture

  

check out the HTML version (for easier reading) at:
http://www.vipedio.com/roman/blog/20benefit_full.html

 

As a follow up to yesterdays, quite well recognized article (towards a 1000 diggs at digg.com so far), I would like focus on the benefits for each of us that may or may not come with the aforementioned 2.0Culture. This is going to be split into a users and a designers point of view. So there’s a benefit in it for every type of reader. Great.

Designer’s benefit

It’s not always about money when we talk about gaining a benefit out of something. But wait, sure, money DOES play a role as well. So I’ll focus on both sides of the bill. First of all, as I have received a lot of feedback on my last article, I am happy to see that most people were able to figure out the actual reason for writing it. It was meant to show you how you can benefit from the ongoing 2.0Culture hype, without actually doing any Web 2.0 or Ajax at all. I very welcome the upcoming trend to focus on simpler design and clean layouts, but I also welcome the mass hype that comes wrapped up with the words Web 2.0 and Ajax. It’s no secret invention that was discovered over night somewhere in SanFran, not at all. It’s been around for ages now, but some dudes were clever (stupid) enough to keep calling everything Web 2.0 and praising Ajax to be the next geek’s Jesus Christ. Even though you can clearly define Web 2.0 and Ajax, you can still rock Digg easily by putting those words into your topic. Believe it or not, I’ve done a proof of concept, just yesterday. It worked.

So, to get to the point: How can you, as a web designer, software developer or service provider benefit from this hype? It’s never been easier than today. No venture capitalists, no Google spin-off, nothing like that is required. It only needs a twist of 2.0Culture mixed up with your useable content. Ok, to get this lined up, let’s invent a proof of concept. Anyone reading this is free to turn this project into a real one. Keep me posted on that.

Our project
Let’s say we want to provide a service to our visitors. Hmm, right, I got an idea: We will provide a neat “What is this file for?” database. So, basically a website including a big search box where you can enter a filename, just like “arp.exe” and then click a “What is it?” which is going to bring up a small list of results. These results include some 1-liners of information about the file itself, i.e. “This file is used by Microsoft Windows for ARP requests. It’s included with the default installation. Not harmful.”. This might be colored as well, so a RED background means this file is highly dangerous, a GREEN one means it is safe. Multiple results might be found for one file, so file sizes might be interesting as well. Still, not much of information to store. A simple table might do just well for that. Also, you need to think of a way to allow users adding their information about various files. So this is not a big thing as well. Remember: KEEP IT SMALL AND SIMPLE. And make it look 2.0Culture. Big fonts, big buttons, you got the idea. Read the 2.0Culture Design guide for further information.
Let’s call it “WhatIsThisFile.com” (still available!). That’s a rememberable name, as “Filr.com” was already given away Anyway. So we got a name, we got a project outline. Let’s do a time estimate:

• Design: 30-60 minutes
• Domain registration and webspace setup: 60 minutes max
• Programming: 2-5 hours
• Putting everything together: 2 hours

Overall est. max time: 11 hours max = 1 Sunday. Great. Just a perfect project to do our first step into 2.0Culture waters. Alright, some of you might be motivated enough to set this thing up now. Let’s assume we got everything already finished and setup at “WhatIsThisFile.com”. Right, now we need to add a very, VERY important thing to make this a number one hit. We need to add those two things:

• An API
• Ajax powered query routines

Concerning the API: This sounds much more complex than it actually is. You do not even need to provide SOAP and such things, it is totally fine to have a .php (or aspx) file, available to do some queries from outside with it. The returned data should be XML or simple CSV text. Call me an idiot, but I do prefer CSV for this case. It’s easier to implement. (This is going to spam my comments section again, oh god). Anyway, let’s just cope with that for now. So, we got a file called “api.php” located at “WhatIsThisFile.com/api.php”. Anyone can now use your service by simply executing your script from their web servers like this: “http://WhatIsThisFile.com/api.php?q=arg.exe”. Right, piece of cake. Ok, the Ajax part is up to you. It is in fact a bit too boring, writing a complete 1.2.3 tutorial for this. I guess you are clever enough to get this sorted out yourself. Do some Google for Ajax, this should get you started within some 30 minutes.

Perfect, so we got this thing set up. It is waiting for it’s users.

Ok, to be perfectly honest, you would have to spend another day or two on adding the most popular filenames yourself. It’s the boring part of the work, but hey, it is your actual content. So don’t try to run away from that task. Grab a pack of beer (or coffee) and a handful of friends and get it done in a day. Still, a piece of cake. Some of you should focus on trojans, virus and adware related filenames, while others should pretty much summarize most of Windows’ -Visible in Task Manager- files. That’s what most people will try to look up in your database. If “svchost.exe” is a virus or a standard, not harmful Windows file.

Ok, so now comes the magic. Literally every web designer is able to make it this far. There are no tough pitfalls in that project, so I think it’s an easy one to set up. But how do you get that huge amount of visitors on your website? I had 0 readers at my blog two days ago. Today, I have 14.000+ still counting at a rate of 1 to 10 per minute. Despite my design guide, I haven’t even got a great looking blog. But I have hooked this design guide that I wrote onto the number one hyped words: Web 2.0 and Ajax. People seem to go crazy with that. I mean, check out digg.com, TechCrunch, del.icio.us/popular. You’ll find these terms just about everywhere! That’s your chance. Right, great services and products will get popular easily and quick, you say. Bad ones don’t (without investing millions). That’s very true. But having your project hooked onto a hype makes it hell easier for people to like it. And what’s much more important to remember is: More users bring in more comments on your project. More ideas and suggestions. So that you can benefit from that and collaborate with your user base in order to take your project a step further, altogether. Oh great, isn’t that what we all want? A Wikipedia heart in every one of us. I love it.

Ok, so how do we get famous without living around the Bay area? Hmm, frankly, this is not too tough as well. First of all, summarize your idea into a small set of lines, make it sound like a great invention, but remember to keep EVERY SORT OF SALES PITCH OUT of it. I do not like sales pitch, so you don’t. Well ok, I made this article topic sound like you can earn a million dollars by simply reading it. Sorry for that

Ok, we have our summary, we have our project ready, we need to fire up the promotion engine now. First place to go: digg.com. Get your article posted there. Get your friends to check it out and digg you if they like it. Spread the word in newsgroups (DO NOT SPAM) and if you have blog, get the news published. Ask for ideas and suggestions. Let people share their ideas with you. Visit slashdot.org and submit your article. This usually don’t works but give it a try anyway. Depends on your project and idea if people pick it up there. Check out some of the number one blogs in the IT sector and contact the authors personally by e-mail. Do not spam their comments section, this is not nice and not welcome. Let them know about your idea and that you would be happy to have it covered in their blog. Suggest to provide a backlink from your site as well. This might also work for 2 out of 10 blogs (depending on your idea again).

Now, that we have done our basic promotional actions, we need to wait. Well, not really. Waiting is stopping. Stopping is not what we want right now as we are just about to get it going. What’s more to do? Have your friends (those that helped you doing the boring work) help you with the promotion, not to say – the marketing – of your project. Spider around all blogs, forums and boards. And always remember to post it where it’s relevant. If you spam around, people will notice it. This is like signing hell’s guestbook. Once branded, always branded.

Good, allow some time to get the word going. Just do always emphase the words “Web 2.0” and “Ajax” with every published article. And, check out my blog at http://blog.mittermayr.com – where I published some information on press releases (you can do this for free!). See here: http://mittermayr.blogspot.com/2006/02/magic-press.html

That’s going to rock your page. Trust me. And if you have forgotten to include some decent web statistic analysis program, god, you won’t stay online longer than a couple of days. Analysis is gold. Check where your users are coming from (keyword: Referrals) and how long they reside on your page. Try to find any problems that users might encounter with your website. Have a “How are we doing”-sort of section. Best for this is a blog, of course. Keep your users updated on what you are planning in the near future and let them comment on it. That’s all you ever need. A loyal user base is what platin is to gold.

And if you really worry about the costs of your project, a small line of Adsense links at the very bottom of your page will do the rest. Do consider a “Donate” section as well. If people like your project, this is going to generate a greater income than Adsense will. More on Adsense and why it might not work perfectly at an IT related website in my other blog (blog.mittermayr.com) soon.

Just always remember the basic, yet most important rules:

• Do not spam
• Do not try to screw things like digg.com or Blogs
• Do not fake
• Users decide about your success
• Design is crucial (see previous article)
• Say Web2.0 and Ajax
• Keep up the free spirit and avoid any connection to money making

Phew, whole lot of information in here. But it is going to work. Every one of you is free to grab the domain name and get that thing started. I might do it as well – just in case nobody cares to do so. Let me know how it is going with it then. I promise to cover it at this blog. A friend of mine is now also working at a typical 2.0Culture project. As soon as he is done, I will post a follow-up, comparing the project with the guides and it’s success.

Users’ benefit

Ok right, how do you as a user benefit from this hype? Just try to get a brief look at digg.com or TechCrunch.com to see the latest projects popping out of the mushroom heaven. You will notice quite a lot of extremely useful utilities. And I call them “utilities” for a particular reason. In our perfect world, we have our virtual office consisting of various tools put together individually suited to your needs. Imagine your are a project manager in the IT industry. You will likely need a todo list, a calendar and web e-mail. All these things are already out there, waiting for you. Make sure to check out Google for terms like “widgets”, “gadgets” combined with Web 2.0 and Ajax. This definitely gets you busy for a whole afternoon. And it might take another year or two for everything to get into perfection. But most likely these things are going to be subscription services, offering a fully online administrated virtual office. I know (to prevent some comments right away), things like this already exist out there. But they are still not at their perfection.

So everything you do to get into all those gadgets, widgets, ajax, Web 2.0, bla bla, scene – will allow you to act, think and use these technologies ahead of time.

So as I said before: Grab it while it’s hot. Only at Naked IT.

Roman Mittermayr

For IT matters: http://mittermayr.wordpress.com
For Business matters: http://blog.mittermayr.com

feel free to flame and send suggestions to:
software@mittermayr.com

To Arial or not to Arial

Just a quick follow up:
I must admit, I was quite a bit unprecise saying Arial is the only font for this 2.0Culture design. I was quite wrong with it, to be honest. I appreciate all the comments on that and I fully agree with them. But I think we can say, you should prefer using non-Serif fonts over Times-New-Roman styles. Flames welcome again, but I am (sorry) still a Windows person and therefore had Arial in mind at first. But you are obviously right. Helvetica and suchlike do their job just as well or even better.

More on how YOU can benefit from the 2.0Culture later on this day, here, at Naked IT. Be sure to subscribe to the feed as updates might be irregular.

Thanks for all the comments. I had about 10.000 people dropping by over the night, it’s amazing. From 0 to 10.000 in 8 hours. Not bad for a start.

So be prepared for more. Scroll down for the 2.0Culture design guide that you are now obviously looking for.

2.0 Culture

Web 2.0 Design

… in a nutshell   

please use the MUCH EASIER TO READ HTML version (proof of concept itself) at:
http://www.vipedio.com/roman/blog/20culture_full.html

 

Preface:
Please, whenever I am refering to Web2.0/Ajax – I am NOT talking about the technology itself. Apparently I wasn’t able to find a proper term for that very popular design scheme appearing quite often lately in TechCrunch entries or similar reviews. It’s due to the fact that most of these “web applications” are using Ajax technology and benefit from the interconnection of web services (Web 2.0) – so that’s why I tend to call them “Web2.0/Ajax”. I think I’ll name it ”2.0Culture” for now. Right. So let’s stick to that.

In order to get attention to your brand-new 2.0Culture backed website, you need to bring up some decent “up-to-date” design with it. No, I am not talking about CSS instead of tables or suchlike. I am talking about simplicity combined with big fonts, shiny shaders and very, very strange brand names. Despite the fact that you need to do your homework learning about tags, clouds and plenty more of these catchy words – you can still be a great “new wave” designer – without being a pro 2.0Culture technology geek.

Right, let’s get it started while it’s hot.

First of all, check out these sites for a basic overview. Try to identify the major similarities between the various concepts. All of them seem to origin from the very same developer. Even though there’s no guideline (except this one here, wooho!) on that kind of design – it seems that the Bay Area is handing around some secret guide for that particular design scheme. Look here:

https://gtalkr.com/
http://www.flock.com/
http://instantdomainsearch.com/
http://www.silverorange.com/
http://www.read.io/
http://www.noodly.com/
http://instantdomainsearch.com/

As you might notice, these designs are pretty similar. But wait, the 2.0Culture has much more to show than that. This is just a small excerpt and we are going to put a particular focus on that kind of design for this article. There are millions of other sites, looking totally different while still being recognized as a “hmm, this looks like 2.0Culture” design. If you want to learn about the technology behind it, use our SanFran friend, Google.

Major MUST-DO’s:

• Rounded Shapes
• Shades
• Sans Serif
• Pastell v2.0
• Footers
• Buttons
• Font-Size: Oversized
• Descriptive HTML (XML style)

Major DO NOT’s:

• Java Applets (Script is fine though)
• Animated GIFs (the blinky ones)
• 100% Flash Websites
• Visible tables

Right, let’s get our feet wet and start right off with:

Rounded Shapes

Ok, this sort of break-boring-html-rules trend seems to have got quite a must-have nowadays. Frankly, I also prefer rounded shapes over tight rectangles. Same with women, I guess. Nevertheless, some 2.0Culture providers do still stick to the rectangle design schemes. No problem at all, have a look at writeboard.com – their editor is a rectangled interface. Nice as well. To try a “psychological” approach to this difference, I might point out these facts:

• Rounded shapes look more inventive, younger, flexible and experimental
• Rectangles do impress with professionality, big-business, trustworthy

So, this is my personal interpretation. Flames welcome. But take your time and think about it yourself. Check out some different designs and make your decision on what’s happening “inside yourself” while looking at them. I guess a decent interconnection between professionality and a fresh young breeze of inventive Bay Area mushrooms might be our perfect fit for this project. How do we achieve that? Simple: Combine. We got 2 solutions:

• Use a rectangled website container and rounded shapes for interface boxes like content divs and navigation.

• Use a rounded-shape website container and keep the content divs and navigation very straight.

It’s up to you what you prefer for your project. I do indeed like both. Though I got to say that using the second approach might be a bit easier to implement for the average web designer. You can do a simple Photoshop design for that purpose. Might take you some 15 minutes to get it done. To be honest, I think the trend is going towards a non-bordered website including lots of rounded shapes (which is the first approach then). So get ready to step up a gear and dig some more CSS guides.

I have put together a list of websites that go into detail on how to implement a rounded-shape design:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/mountaintop/
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/css-round-corners-boxes.shtml
http://web-20-workgroup1-swicki.eurekster.com/rounded+corners/

So get some coffee or tea and open up the virtual books. This might take you some 30 minutes to an hour if you are new on that. But it’s worth the effort. Think of browser compatibility, it’s a tough one.

Shades

Don’t overdo with shades, but think of using them. It’s not obvious for a web designer to think of them, but users feel the difference having them around on a website. It’s not about trying to make a 3D look, but more about pushing the plain, flat designed boxes into a new dimension of visual recognizeability (is this a word?). Mostly used as a nice background for a top heading or around content boxes. Examples do the talking here:

• https://gtalkr.com/ (heavy use)
• http://www.writeboard.com

Sans Serif (Arial, Helvetica, …)

I had to update this part of the guide due to heavy complaints about only refering to the Arial font, while Helvetica and other sans-serif fonts just do perfect as well (or better!). It’s that particular font style that’s been around for ages now. I remember a time when it was absolutely out and “nerdy” to use Arial for anything you wrote. Simply because geeks tried to seperate themselves from the every day Word Processor user, who were choosing Arial as most easily readable, besides Times New Roman. And now, wohoo, major come back. Literally Arial (and Helvetica, and similar…) has become a rule for simple, yet great looking web design. Font-Size 8 to 10 was a cool thing to do recently. Now we talking about sizes 14 and up. Not kidding. If someone asked me to design a webpage for impaired visitors I would most likely set up a 2.0Culture website. Even though it was not very popular to stick to “easy navigation and readable content” in recent days, things have changed big time by today. No more Font-Size 8 100% Flash – Please wait while pre-loading 1% – websites. I welcome that. Webdesign tends to become easy with that approach. Assuming CSS3 is really going to make things easier, of course. Remember to mark all your content with relevant terms like “headings”, “lists”, “links”, “paragraphs”. More on that further down then. Just a quick summary of this Arial rule:

• Use a base font size for your website. And make all other fonts relative to that one (e.g. font-size: 115%). This allows users to get foxy with their mouse wheel to rotate through font-sizes – while your website still looks cool.

• Do ALWAYS define your font-relevant settings inside a CSS file.

• As usual: ONE FONT PER WEBPAGE is totally fine, trust me.

• Never use more than 3 different font-sizes.

Pastell v2.0

This has been known for quite a long time now. The only addition to that is a combination of pastell colors with 100% Green, Blue or Red. Keep your website backgrounds and interface elements in Gray, White or some very light pastell colors. And now, you might be able to use a 100% Green header bar. Or (please, notice the OR, not AND) use a red navigation with white links. Go ahead and Make your download links sky-blue. It’s going to rule. But again, look around and get some first impression on how this looks at professional 2.0Culturals. This should get your started pretty quick. Just don’t overdo, that’s why you should really mind the “OR”. I think you’ll find your way through.
Check out freaky Skype on that: http://www.skype.com

Footers

It has become a must have. Footers. Most users don’t even notice them. You might have never clicked on one as well. But still, they need to be there to make a site look professional. Without them, everyone assumes you run a personal website. Believe or not, try and see yourself. Oh yes, and please, don’t ever think of making your footer stick to the bottom of the screen, behaving totally unimpressed of scrolling. That’s a no no. That’s too much geek, I’m afraid. There are two major sorts of footers, you need to decide yourself, which one is more suitable for your particular design. I have prepared two links with those two major implementations for you:

• http://www.friendster.com/
• http://del.icio.us/

The difference:
Friendster: A centered approach, containing well aligned elements.
Del.icio.us: Gray horizontal line, left(or right)-aligned links underneath.

Buttons

Within the major trend of moving from a home-computer application interface to a hosted worldwide web based application design, also lies the origin of recent sightings of button-like navigational elements. No, I am not talking about those -go to hell- Java applet buttons. Brrr, freezing. I am talking about “image buttons”. Either rounded or stricly rectangle shaped. And mostly quite large ones as well. The number one usage of these buttons is the must-have: DOWNLOAD button. When used in site navigation, the buttons appear to be a bit smaller. And don’t forget to use Arial for captioning, I told you.
Proof-of-concept:

• http://toolbar.google.com/
• http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
• http://www.yousendit.com/
• http://clipmarks.com/

Font-Size: Oversized

Mhm. Right. Huge fonts. A no no no back in the days of Frontpage heros and free webspace fans a la “Look ma, I got a website!”. But times do change. Johnny Cash is dead and big fonts are back. I wish it was the other way round, but let’s get ourselves updated to 2.0 and accept oversized fonts. No big deal with that, simply remember to set up all your font settings inside your CSS file and define a base font and size, while using relative sizes after that. That’s common procedure. If you are totally uncomfortable with that, I might point you to a 2.0Culture compatible work-around:

• Use large headings, make them stand out
• Use medium sub-headings as a fade from large headings to normal content.
• Use normal sized content.
• Avoid long blocks of text then, this is crucial.
• Try to seperate your content into medium boxes

See here: http://clipmarks.com/ or http://www.banshee-project.org/Main_Page

And for everyone comfortable with fancy oversized design:

• http://extend.flock.com/details/flashgot
• http://www.flickr.com/
• http://www.noodly.com/

Descriptive HTML (XML style)

Last but never least – boring rules. Stop! Not this time. This is a must must must. Leave them out and allow your website to drown in browser-compatibility wars. I hate the term, but it’s a best-fit here: KISS. Yes, keep it small and simple. If you try to get one of those very, VERY old webdesign books, teaching you on how to implement “a href” and paragraphs, lists, headings – take it serious. I remember when I read through those articles back then, thinking that this might be ok for “University professor webdesign” but not for cool – i am a geek – design issues. How wrong I was. Retro style is hot again. Not because it looks cool, but much more because it’s perfectly descriptive. Ok, in order to understand this, you might need to have done some first steps in XML to get an idea. As Jeff Bezos put it recently: Web 2.0 is making the web more readable for computers. That’s the actual reason behind. Consideration of APIs for your website HAVE TO be connected to that descriptive approach. Just imagine you were using a Web 2.0 API while having to adjust your overall design to that particular content. Uhw, ugly. Simple Web 2.0 content is made out of lists, paragraphs, HEADINGS (very important) and non-javascript links. Very simple, isn’t it. Another benefit of using this approach is a better integration into search engines. Check out SEO forums and you’ll find truth. Google loves basic websites. You are a Google hero if your website starts with simple H1-like headings. Try yourself. Don’t overdo with tables or similar. Keep it simple if you want to have 2.0Culture.

View sources of:

• http://www.noodly.com/
• http://del.icio.us/help/ (very illustrative)

Great so far. I will not go into any details concerning the DONTs here. You might be able to figure it out yourself. Feel free to ask any questions you might have by e-mail: software@mittermayr.com

Roman

blog.mittermayr.com (link-credits: tc0.net)
software@mittermayr.com