I never cease to be amazed at Jakob Nielsen’s conformist philosophy. Take these two passages from his newest Alertbox:

“It is much harder to say what good things to do since I have never seen a website that was truly stellar with respect to usability. “

and

(in a list of things that will “will increase the usability of virtually all sites)

“10. Do the same as everybody else: if most big websites do something in a certain way, then follow along since users will expect things to work the same on your site. Remember Jakob’s Law of the Web User Experience: users spend most of their time on other sites, so that’s where they form their expectations for how the Web works.

I take this to mean, “Even though no one is producing usable sites, imitate them anyway so users will know they have to go through the same suck ass experience as everywhere else on the web. For God’s sake don’t innovate! A little learning on the user’s part isn’t worth creating something better.”

ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I’ve heard of Nathan before, he did this “Unified Field Theory of Design” that, despite its grandiose name, has some great ideas in it.

The Throwing Sponge technique below helped me find Nathan, who will actually be at the same Living Surfaces conferences as myself this month!

Yehaaa…a beautiful new way to find cool new stuff on the web. Take a work that’s rare and specific to your domain of interest – for me today it was “taxonomy” (a scheme for categorizing stuff) and offer it to the Search Engine Gods. Neat results. Like taking a sponge soaked in your favorite color and throwing it against the wall.

An aside: Upon rereading this I said to myself, “That’s the normal way everyone looks for information, silly.” I guess I found this neat because 1) I know the futility of most brute searches and usually opt for a directory, and 2) because I picked a term I normally would never use in a search term – the rarity of it is the key.

Another ridiculously one-sided and shallow story about Google. I’ve ranted about their dangerous equating of importance with popularity, and will continue to harass these authors until they think about the implications of this stuff.

On a related note, “Whose Web Is It, Anyway?” points out that Yahoo!’s editors are getting too picky for the mortal webweaver, though they partner with Inktomi for the heavy duty keyword searching (I haven’t looked into the latter’s filtering philosophy yet). Nevertheless, I’ve replaced my shortcut to the once beloved and familiar Yahoo! with one to the Open Directory Project. They’re open and collaborative and warm and fuzzy and everything that the early web was before Yahoo! made commercialism possible.

An aside: I’m benefitting professionally from this commercialism on a professional level, but I equate Yahoo’s policies with censorship. A directory should be like the phone book; organized and open to all.

Dave Seigal, author of the questionable Creating Killer Web Sites book, is now thinking big concept: “Futurize Your Enterprise”. That little rhyming title sets the hokey tone for the whole presentation, which seems to use the same template as the Ginsu knives commercials. And why should we trust this guy who could be perceived as an HTML/design guy as a organization development consultant? Blech.

Meg’s site led me to Dinah’s, who wrote this truism:

“There is something really satisfying about clearing out the piles of stuff in your email box to give you a sensation of lightening your load. Illusory perhaps, but it is as if each of those undeleted messages is a string going to your head and it feels so delightful to cut some of them.”

PB’s site led me to meg’s site. Another pleasantly witty character. I usually despise hyperlinks that aren’t underlined, but by using day-glo yellow on a black background they stand out enough to be perceived as links (and that’s the difference I guess, that the highlighting mechanism has to say more that simply highlighting, it has to give the impression of functionality).

And she manage’s to use black backgrounds without looking pretentious, very nice.

This site is updated using Blogger, a cool system (content management application or CMA in the lingo) based on Pyra that lets you post HTML updates onto a web page to create these wonderful interstitial thought publishings referred to as weblogs.

Anyway, I went back to Blogger’s discussion forum to figure out how I could correct an HTML error of mine that screwed up the edit feature of that post, which effectively screwed up the entire page. Luckily this guy pb is on top of the show stopping stuff and created a neat little fix for careless folks like myself.

Poking around his own ‘blog had me thinking “This guy’s pretty cool!” He reads Peterme, Memepool, likes the music of David Byrne, and is a programmer too. It’s the people with two genuinely developed sides of the brain that impress me.

Apparently the Blogger people are still working on the archiving feature, so this page will grow and grow until they role that out.

I wonder if anyone has done a usability study of webrings. They seem a contradiction in terms – web implies hyper-navigation (originating with hypertext) and ring implies linear navigation – you go around from one site to the next in order. Thanks, but I’ll see you at a nicely categorized site like Yahoo!.

More on the Strida. Everyone keeps commenting on the bar that rises up from between your legs that curves into the handlebars. The fear is that, in an accident, your crotch would be pressed into the bar. While I see the possibility I don’t think most accidents force the body into such a simplistic straight-forward motion, but maybe I’m rationalizing.

Another note on sizing and the Strida : on the tall end it’s not a question of whether the bike is adjusted well or not, it’s a question of whether your knees will hit the handlebars or not.

Day three with the Strida …

I figure out that the Strida bag is assymetical and the bike will only fit in one way. The other way it’s like trying to get a futon cover around a futon mattress, only impossible.

Carrying this thing on the subway is weird. In the case it’s a drag on a crowded train, too much of a hassle. On a non-crowded train without the case I get even more wild-eyed looks and smiles and questions. This is good or bad depending on your need for attention/self-conscious ratio.

I forgot how much I enjoy riding through New York City on a bike. It might sound weird to others, but it’s a thrill. Part of it is definitely the risk involved; bike messengers are the closest thing we have here to the tough, romantic image of a cowboy.

If you read my report on the Strida and end up buying one please let me know! I’m providing this report as a good Internet citizen but would appreciate compensation in the form of their referral program.