| Newsgroups |
gmane.comp.web.chi-web |
| Message-ID |
<[email protected]> |
Hal:
Couple of comments:
Web 2.0 versus Win/Mac applications. I think the biggest difference is the
requirement for a network. These applications are never just about me and
my computer, they always assume and require that the PC be connected to a
network, and that others will be using the same applications. So the word
processor becomes a collaborative tool. We have presence awareness to
allow for virtual teaming. And so on. You might be interested in the
debate between Tom Davenport and Andrew McAfee from the Enterprise 2.0
conference that covered this same concept. In general, I agree with you.
This is all nothing new under the sun, and really only represents another
step along the path of the vision articulated at MIT labs in the 60's.
Why do we care that a particular link becomes more popular because it was
featured on a "most popular" list? It is not like the unpopular links
feelings get hurt. This only matters if the ONLY way, or the most likely
way to get to a site, resource, what have you is via the "most popular"
list. And it only matters if the most popular is not time limited. We are
considering a most popular feature on our intranet portal and to try and
mitigate the "always the same list" we are using a time of last month. So
if a site is on the list, but less than useful, it should drop off in two
months.
Tags are not a replacement for a taxonomy, they are an adjunct to the
taxonomy and are focused on my need to find my stuff, or stuff I found
before. Any use that you get from my tags is secondary. We tend to forget
that because there are some interesting things that happen once 50 or so
people tag a site. The tags start to be useful indications of what the
site, photo, etcetera is about.
Ed
Hal Shubin <[email protected]>
Sent by: "ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion)"
<[email protected]>
06/26/2007 02:20 PM
Please respond to
Hal Shubin <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
cc
Subject
Thoughts about Web 2.0
I was at the Boston area UPA mini-conference recently (which featured
many Web 2.0 talks), and I have a client who wants to make a current
project as Web 2.0 as possible. So I've been thinking about the topic a
lot.
Some random thoughts for discussion if anyone's up for it. (This
feels like one of those rambling rants that newspaper columnists
write when they run out of real topics. Now I see why they do it.)
1. Web 2.0 design
A couple of people defined Web 2.0 at the UPA conference (for now,
you could read Tim O'Reilly's description at
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
)
or talked about how it's changing Web design. My thought was that,
for all of us greybeards who've been around since before the Web,
it's as if we can ignore the last 10 years of limited capabilities.
Web 2.0 lets us provide better user experiences, but it's like going
back to what we were doing on Windows/Mac platforms. The user doesn't
know/care what the technology is, and Web 2.0 gives us more of the
flexibility that we had pre-Web.
As O'Reilly wrote, "We're entering an unprecedented period of user
interface innovation, as web developers are finally able to build web
applications as rich as local PC-based applications." I'm not sure
I'd call it "user interface innovation" exactly. It's innovative if
you compare it to last year's Web applications more so than if you
compare it to last decade's Windows apps.
I'm not saying that Web 2.0 is a bad thing; as a Web designer, I'm
glad to have the flexibility back. It's just not a completely *new* thing.
2. Most popular.
What do you think about having "Most popular <whatever>" categories?
It's a nice way to see what the crowd likes. But, it's makes the
popular things be more popular (hmmm, like junior high school
somehow). Maybe it'd be better to draw from a large or rotating pool
of popular things so that more kids (er, links) get to be popular.
3. Tags.
Can tags (user-generated taxonomies) replace a pre-defined taxonomy?
Maybe my problem isn't with the idea of tags, but just that we need
some new ways to use them. My example: When I'm writing personas for
clients, I look for photos at flickr.com. I can use tags to do some
searching, but it's a very simple search. What I really want to do is
search for "woman professional computer" to find a well-dressed woman
sitting at a computer in a office. But tags don't do that.
Tags are simple search -- the system is suggesting a series of
simple, one-term pre-defined searches. I want an advanced search with
tags. It could be a pre-defined search, but I haven't seen any
multiple-term clouds yet.
-- hs
-- -- -- -- --
Hal Shubin
617 489 6595
www.user.com
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tip of the Day: Postings must be in plain text
CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[email protected]
MODERATORS: mailto:[email protected]
SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ: www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
--------------------------------------------------------------
Any U.S. tax advice contained in the body of this e-mail was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by the recipient for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed under the Internal Revenue Code or applicable state or local tax law provisions.
________________________________________________________________________
The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer.
Notice required by law: This e-mail may constitute an advertisement or solicitation under U.S. law, if its primary purpose is to advertise or promote a commercial product or service. You may choose not to receive advertising and promotional messages from Ernst & Young LLP (except for Ernst & Young Online and the ey.com website, which track e-mail preferences through a separate process) at this e-mail address by forwarding this message to [email protected]. If you do so, the sender of this message will be notified promptly. Our principal postal address is 5 Times Square, New York, NY 10036. Thank you. Ernst & Young LLP
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tip of the Day: Quote only what you need from earlier postings
CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[email protected]
MODERATORS: mailto:[email protected]
SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ: www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
--------------------------------------------------------------