Willy Dobbe - design

Mail this to a friend, stupid functionality!

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:32:38 +0200

Every now and then, I get customers for my employer Dutch Open Projects that have the weirdest functional requirements. Do not get me wrong, the customer is always right but it helps some time if we can discuss and ask why they want certain functionality.

Take for example the "mail this to a friend" function that is still popular in many designs. First of all, it is stupid functionality. If I want to notify a friend about a page, I bookmark it to delicious. If I really want to make sure (s)he sees it, I use instant messaging and as a last resort, mail.

But I'll never use the mailservice of the website, I have to give my and his email address and I do not think that giving aways another persons email address is a good thing to do, and will never give away my address if there is no need to. Then there is spam.

All User Generated Content suffers from:

IP right problems
Trolls
and spam

Anything that can be used by spammers, WILL be used by spammers, including the "mail this to a friend" functionality.

To proof my point, see this mail I got. There is room for some remarks hence that is were the spam goes. And now, the "good" name of GE is associated with the spam and they did in fact send it to me. Stupid functionality (no-one uses it), stupid functionality (everyone can abuse it).

Mail-this-to-a-friend must die!

ID&T zijn sukkels (trademarks, logo's and everything)

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:55:20 +0200

Lezers van mac-zone weten het wellicht al; ID&T (een herrie club voor geestelijk minder bedeelden die niet kunnen dansen en geen gehoor meer hebben) durft
een dreigbrief te schrijven naar mac-zone. Omdat het logo van mac-zone erg zou lijken op het logo van ID&T. Lees de details op de maczone site.

Het logo dat u gebruikt komt qua vorm en kleurstelling sterk overeen met het logo van Q-dance, hetgeen als beeld- en/of woordmerk door ID&T is geregistreerd. Dit houdt in dat ID&T exclusief gerechtigd is gebruik te maken van het logo en zich mag verzetten tegen het gebruik van eenzelfde of sterk daarop gelijkend logo. Met gebruik van het logo kunt u immers bij het publiek de indruk wekken dat uw bedrijf en de door uw gepubliceerde website in verband staan met ID&T. Hiermee trekt u ongerechtvaardigd voordeel van en doet u afbreuk aan de reputatie van ID&T.

Proest zegt u? Dubbel proest!

Gelukkig zitten er wat jongens (m/v) bij mac-zone die wel iets begrijpen over hoe kansloos, zinloos en dom deze aktie van een overgeiligere "ik moet mijn target halen" meester-in-de-rechten-twatje is. Die wijken dus niet, weten dat het "power button" logo een defacto standaard is geworden voor het aan of uit zetten van een elektronisch device en ook dus op alle Mac's aanwezig.

Dat ID&T's marketing afdeling zo lui was om niet een onderscheidend logo te maken, maar een rip of te selecteren van een bestaand logo, dat kan men achteraf niet aan mac-zone verwijten.

ID&T geeft hiermee niet alleen weer geen verstand te hebben van beeldrecht, copyright en aanverwante intellectueel eigendomsrecht, maar vergist zich ook behoorlijk in hoe zoiets "viral" tegen je kan keren online! De tijden dat de platenboer de baas was zijn voorbij stampgasten, dreidbrieven sturen heeft alleen zin als je ze gaat waar maken en alleen als je gelijk hebt. Doen alsof je mikt op de knie-en met een waterpistooltje en de trekker niet overhaalt terwijl je ook nog eens de bad guy bent, wreekt zich tegen je. Ennu, ik heb nog wat kandidaten voor je!

update: ID&T ziet in dat ze zich vergist hebben; "shit zeg, nooit een website aanvallen, die gasten hebben bezoek! Waarom heeft onze site dat niet?"/. Wel jammer, de disclaimer op de mac-zon site meldt nu dat ze niet gelieerd zijn aan de stampgasten, ik denk eerder dat ID&T had moeten zeggen dat ze geen creatieve designert hadden en dus maar het aan/uit knopje gekanteld hadden. Ik zou ook helemaal niet met die stampgasten gelieerd willen zijn.

ID&T, power off...

Drupal as a Home Service Bus (beyond Home Automation)

Fri, 30 May 2008 13:57:14 +0200

If... If I would start my own company... But I won't. I do not have the skills, money, balls and most of all, I am rather happy with my current employer Dutch Open Projects. But if I would start my own company, the services would not be based upon Location Based Services, a carbon copy of free available software or "Social Networking two dot ooo". It would be based upon my hobby in combination with my "vision"

Part of my (IT) related hobby's include Drupal (the best Content Management System), MythTv (the best way to watch less junk TV) and everything Mac related (the best way to communicate with a CPU).

Combining these elements will give you nice opportunities. For example your iPhone could be your remote control for your telly:

(Youtube)

But you could also use your iPhone as a device to watch television on; recorded streaming television based upon your preferences towards your telehone!

(Youtube)

And these are just two simple examples; it could be expanded to controlling and integrating the Squeezebox (cheesy: WiFi to your HiFi) I own and towards all the other electric equipment in my house with X.10 (cheesy: control your house from your mouse) like Mr House does. But you will directly see two problems; all these devices and software packages act like they are the master:

they do not talk to each other
they do not provide a nice consistent user interface

In fact, most of the user interfaces these devices provide are really really bad, if you think Drupal pre4 sucked usability wise, try a MythTV distro from one year a go or even the current version of MrHouse! Now the time might not be right for my "business plan". I know that in the USA the concept of Tivo is rather normal for early adapters but here in the EU harddisk based PVR's are just catching on. It will take some time before the public sees and needs that these devices should be integrated .And by that time I am sure that our friends from RedMond have a very nice "solution" for you; "Vista Home Automation # 1984".

By not combining, not integrating, they do not give the user the option to co-related information about their house. For example, if my central system that my family would not be in the house since there are no blue-tooth telephones detected at 2:00h in the morning while the camera sensors motion, I would like to be paged, see the camera images from my iPhone and when I will not react within a certain amount of time, the system should dial out to the police. Okay, bad example, I do not want that since most likely I forgot my phone or the battery is dead and I am in the kitchen to make some milk for my son to get him to sleep. But you get the idea; a centralised place where information is gathered from multiple sources, co-related and with work-flow, action upon this information.

And by not combining, not integrating, they do not provide the user with a good user interface that is consistent and adapts (context aware) towards the client (text messaging, instant messaging, telephone, full browser etc). A key factor forsuccess beyond the usual geeks.

I would like to be able to solve these two problems, make a central place that talks to all devices and can be "smart" and provide the user with the best UI (s)he can get. Now before you state that there is such a product, I am aware of pluto. Pluto combines music (squeezeboxes), television (MythTV), voice (asterisk) and much more into a central box. See for more information their (nasal!) presentation. But they do not combine it in what I would call a "central smart box". That and the fact that they can use some competition :-)

A central smart box would be able to adapt fast, if there would be an API for a grocery shop, it will be in the software in the box within days, weeks. It would know my spending habits and my income and would swap money to places where it would get the most interest, it would read my RSS feeds and based upon time and location "read" them to me, it would know my agenda and the availability of my friends and it would do so much more that I can think of right now.

And by now, you should see why I would like to add my other hobby; Drupal. I think that a central system that acts upon actions and can do more then that could be a Content management Framework like Drupal. I know that PHP by nature would not be very good for acting as a real time broker between information, but I still would go for a Drupal solution instead of J2EE. Drupal is easier, it adapts way faster, can integrate, has a geeky loving community that probably has some of the devices I mentioned, can look beautiful, has a very small footprint and can be context aware.

I would like coin the phrase Home Service Bus, after the Enterprise Service Bus. More the Home Automation that enables a user to control electronic elements, it would be able to make decisions on its own, based upon input from my actions and the status of electronics devices. It would be a broker of information; it would be a Home Service Bus! Now let's just wait until the Gartner People catch up on this phrase in half a decade :-)

So, if I would start my own company it would be based on building this. But since I will not, you a free to make it. And -lazy as I am- I will buy it from you!

Farbtastic rocks!

Wed, 21 May 2008 05:19:54 +0200

(source: flickr)

Sometimes with all the great stuff going on with Views, CCK, Panels and all the other great new modules- we forget what great tools Drupal already has and are underused. For example Farbtastic.

Anyone who comes up with a great implementation in a module using Farbtastic in a creative way, will get a beer -or other beverage- from me on August 27th.

uid 10 (base decimal) is missing. And is missed.

Nice diagram / swarm

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:51:11 +0100

Not Drupal related perse, but cool to see: TouchGraph's Drupal "cloud". A bit like Digg's Swarm but non realtime and in Java. I am a sucker for these kind of maps and would love to see them /in/ Drupal.

iPhone meets Drupal

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:16:48 +0100

You can not buy an iPhone in the Netherlands yet via the normal channels so you have to go abroad, jailbreak it and unlock it. So I dont have one (yet) but I have some friends who have one. The other day I was eating / drinking with one friend who had an iPhone with him and it sure was fun to see the reactions of people around you . The other reason I do not own an iPhone is that I already have two iPod's and a HSDPA / 3G+ enabled PDA and 3G mobile phone. And with the 90% cover of UMTS reach in the Netherlands, there is no Edge, so I'll rather wait for a 3G enabled iPhone.

But when I get an iPhone, I will surely iGarland it. And if you are in to Drupal, download it. Blue is the new black after all!

Adobe's Flex site using Drupal

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:49:25 +0200

Today at the second day of the DrupalCon Adobe launched a new site as a showcase for their Flex technology. They use their own technology for the frontend (flash, flex etc) but the backend is powered by... Drupal! See for yourself, at the showcase site of Flex.

Ubuntustudio.org also running Drupal

Fri, 11 May 2007 11:59:52 +0200

After Ubuntu.com switched to Drupal (Dries' posting), the "UbuntuStudio" site that went live today, is also using Drupal. UbuntuStudio (I havent installed it yet) is from what I understand a poormans Final Cut Pro.

The site looks nice although a bit too wetfloorish 2.0 for me. But you cant spot directly that it is in fact a Drupal site. Currently the site is slowish and even times out every now and then, but with a realtime video/audio editing software shipping, it was bound to get dugg.

From the site:

Let Your Creativity Fly...
Ubuntu Studio. A multimedia creation flavor of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.
We provide a suite of the best open-source applications available for multimedia creation. Completely free to use, modify and redistribute. Your only limitation is your imagination.

Kathy and "too passionate" lusers

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:33:37 +0200

This is a very sad day. Kathy of the famous Creating passionate users influenced a lot of people, both inside the Java community as well as outside that scope. I know she influenced Dries and hence Drupal as well as many other people and communities. She does a great job an explaining how to "set up" (read: facilitate) communities of passionate users and is the leader in this field.

Now however she is afraid and sad.

I have cancelled all speaking engagements.
I am afraid to leave my yard.
I will never feel the same. I will never be the same.

And the fact that anyone on the internet is afraid should make us all sad. Independent of race or gender, people are stalked on the net since the bad guy (m/f) think nobody knows what a dog you are on the internet.

I hope Kathy gets well soon and people who damage her wellbeing will get what they deserve. A sad day.

Ghosts in Death Valley

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:16:39 +0100

I'm a simple person and hence I like simple art, especially when it comes to statues. They dont all have to be be (neo!) classical, I like modern art as well. However, I really do like these Ghost, statues in Death Valley, California, USA. There are lots of Ghost towns in the Calfornia, some more scary then others so they are in the right scenery.

Speaking of scary statues, I think this Hillary Clinton one is rather spooky, way too masculine. But not unlike the orginal. If only a pigeon would fly above the Hillary statue, just for a brief moment. It, it would make my day.

Drupal Cobra

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:24:12 +0100

If Dries and Gunnar would cross post this blog posting, it would start the first Cobra-Drupal movement.

Well, apart from the fact that Dries doenst life in Brussels, Gunnar not in Copenhagen and I dont life in Amsterdam.

Update: Judging from the comments I get, I think a lot of people dont know which CoBrA I meant!

A softer world

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:29:06 +0200

A Softer World is a web comic on the weird and wonderful side of the Internet. Usually 3 cut-outs of the same photograph turned into an idea at a slight angle to normality. I love stuff which takes an idea and twists it in an unexpected way.

Some other mind altering webcomics

The Perry Bible Fellowship looks at first glance a friendly and religious cartoon..click again.
xkcd is a math and love comic..

Postcard Secret Art

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 06:42:32 +0200

I love these PostSecret postcards with secrets. Some of them are truly wunderbar. Weird, arty, good text and nice layout. I do love them "See a Secret...Share a Secret

Why Yahoo chooses drupal " Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study"

Tue, 03 May 2005 15:58:58 +0200

On Boxes and Arrows is a cool writing on how and what Yahoo! is doing with blogging engines and why they choose drupal as their platform

Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study

Yahoo's multiple business units, each containing decentralized user experience teams, have a natural tendency to design different solutions to similar problems. Left unchecked, these differences would weaken the Yahoo! brand and produce a less usable network of products. Designers and managers have discussed standards as a way to solve this problem but this standards content (often contained only in the memories of designers) has never existed in a commonly accessible format.

This is great news for our community, the big boys are seeing drupal. I know that Google asked dries to implement an adsense module in the core and they were willing to donate some real money for it.

Do read the article since it is well written and covers the complete field, from architecture to usability!

The hairdryer you always wanted

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 06:37:30 +0100

The hairdryer you always wanted. Point 'n click. And hope you picked the right one. It doesnt make a great double for scaring off robbers. I mean, an electric gun?