The fall begins

Today Google announced the closure of some of there products. Most are of limited importance to me however I am a little impacted by one, Google Mashups Editor.

A early prototype for a personal website in Google Mashups Editor.

When Mashups Editor first came out I instantly applied to be a user and was quite impressed and interested by the things it allowed me to do. Sadly at the time my knowledge and understanding of web languages was minimal so I did not make as great tools as I could have, however, I did make a number of test sites and apps including a few which were early prototypes for a javascript website and portfolio I wanted to make. I never finished this project as my comprehension of the appropriate technologies was not good enough and I did not realise which these were until much later. However, now, I feel I could make some interesting sites with this product I have just been busy doing other things and not had a specific need yet to return to this tool. I am sad they are discontinuing it because I think it was a lot of fun and really easy to use on some levels and opened a door for me in creating webapps that I have not seen done by many other sites.

I know Google App Engine is more powerful but I have not yet had a chance to interact with it and I have yet to start to engage in the learning process. I may never have time to deal with this system. I hope something like Mashups Editor comes again.

Honest costs, Closed Market Economics

If we were going to pay for things more reasonably I think we might break them into three groups:

1. Environmental Costs
2. Human Outlay
3. Design Value

I think these are relevant because as far as I can tell so far they represent most of the points of need in a economic chain. The combined cost would look like this:

Amount Paid = Environmental Cost + Human Outlay + Design Value

B2B and other relationship models would also assume this cost system.

Environmental Costs

These are the costs that have been determined by the absolute impact of a thing and all its contributing processes to the environment. A specific value would be associated with these things based on how cheaply they could be cleaned up and then, the money in this aspect of the cost would be used directly for only that. Essentially this cost pays for the removal of the environmental impact of a product. If that is impossible the cost is infinite. (Bad system design. Perhaps that end state could be more elegant later)

Human Outlay

This cost is that of the impression this product makes on the humans in its creation and handling.

Design Value

The perceived value of the design work done in a production cycle. In some respects this is the only subjective part of a pricing I think, though that could just be because I am a designer. 

I know that this approach is not very new but I think an point of innovation could be achieved by standardising various things within the system. For instance, each of the cost analysis systems would have standardised and independently evaluated indexes, also the cost of things would be clearly marked on everything purchasable so it would be very clear to people why things cost what they do. 

One problem that I am not visiting with this model is the fact that economies seem to have a hard time remodelling fast. I do not yet know how to achieve a model like this, or if it would cause major problems because everything would be too expensive

Google Sites not Google's Sights

My new homepage on Google Sites

As I may have mentioned before I am in a gradual shift from Google Pages to Google Sites . So far I have been happy in most respects however there are a few core aspects of Google Sites that really annoys me.

1. No RSS Feeds - Though a user can sign up for email update of changes or posts under a specific title or whatever there are no RSS feeds accessible. I want everything to have feeds and I want to be able to make this site into a blog of sorts.
2. Crap (Fake) Commenting - The commenting is currently either limited to only collaborators or the whole site has to be editable by anyone to allow normal people to leave comments. This is lame, and another thing making it hard to do blog like things.
3. No Scripts, Limited to Gadgets - Because Sites is a hosted solution they rather you not editing the main template's HTML or CSS. However, they have also made it so scripts can not be pasted into HTML content boxes. This means users can only use interactive things that come from the google gadgets library (which is okay but way too small).

One of the reasons these things annoy me is because I really want to test out some of the new Google tools but they have not even made them compatible with the background system. Friend Connect for example, it is far to tough for me to implement such a technology within Google Sites. Hence, I think it would be really interesting if Google made Google Sites into a sandbox of sorts where all the new web technologies could be available to be tested etc. Perhaps this could be something like Blogger in Draft . 

The things I love most

A awesome advanced mechanical pencil I got from Jetpens 

I love stuff, especially products, especially good ones - and, I love telling people what to buy. So I want to make a list of things that I think are good that I think people should buy. However, my opinions are limited by what I own, what I have seen, and what I have heard about online or wherever. So, I want to make this a open project to find the best products of each of a number of categories. The categories may include such things as different kinds of cameras, pencils, watches, jeans, flip flops, and everything else that money can buy. Also, when I say "find the best products" I really mean find the products that suit an unknown list of requirements that I agree with - for now lets just say things that make people happy.

I am not sure what platform to use for this project yet. Perhaps a google spreadsheet thought that might be a bit bland, perhaps a google sites pages. Suggestions? Also any products you love... tell me about them.

Lastly, I need to think of a name for this. One of the driving forces is that I think people have a lot of things they don't need. A lot of bad pens and pencils for instance, so I was considering a name which suggests singular solutions. Something like "Just get this one.com", this obviously is not good so please think of a good one and tell me about it.

LinkedIn Answers and Questions

Answering LinkedIn questions has been quite helpful for me in the past year or so and I have managed to find a few good business contacts as a result however I tend not to ask questions so often. One particular connection that I gained as a result of answering one of her questions is Karen Fu who seems to ask an inordinate number and answer just as many. Recently as I have been working on a wide variety of projects I have come to realise that I could do the same sort of thing as a form of expert research. I feel a bit stupid not trying this earlier but in any case it seems like a great method for the time being.

So I am going to try to ask questions as soon as I find one I am interested in. This way building a wide and active set of data and opinions.

Any suggestions?

Update: It looks like I am limited to 10 per month. My goal is now of course to use all 10 every month.

Better Banking (2.0)

Ammunition's work for Wells Fargo ATMs

I have talked about banking before, and talked about bank related online interfaces, and I think in both cases I have expressed a number of negative emotions. Either way, I was looking over an interesting little design company's website and I came across this image thinking it was their work for a bank website. I realised it was actually for an ATM and became saddened because for a brief moment I thought someone might have actually had some good ideas about web banking. As a reaction I thought perhaps this was a seed for a development process.

So far I like the ideals of simplicity and clarity and I think that online things are perceived as fast and that it is an important aspect of the whole issue of modern banking. More than this however I think data is one of the most relevant things when sitting at a computer so I think providing a lot of really useful data visualisations would be great. Lastly, money needs to have tight security however there are some imaginable instances when some of the more social aspects of the web could come to play. Not sure how yet. We will see.

More to come I hope. Comments and suggestions are encouraged.

Other places and things that begin with KAIST

Recently I have been working on another, new website. I may have mentioned it before but it is starting to actually have pages and content and stuff. I can not get a RSS feed out of it very simply yet so I am not bothering but I hope to at some point. In any case, my new home page is now located at google sites. For now the URL is not really that nice but at some point I am hoping to get a good one.

KAIST Emblem

In other news. I have been accepted to KAIST and have been given the appropriate scholarships to go there. I will be pursuing a Masters in Design Management and Strategy and hopefully learning a lot of Korean at the same time.

In other unrelated news, Soumitri is working on a project that I think is kinda cool and has been pushing me to think more about the before mentioned Google Design School. Also, given the new website etc. I have been commenting on my project more here, than on this blog.

Comments comments comments. Any medium available.

11-11 11:11:11

From Da Zai

Me in Da Zai, we were in a mountainous hotel in room 11

11 is my favourite number which makes November 11th my favourite day. I know this conflicts with most of the world's thoughts on this day so I try not to bother people with my strange habits.

Pepero Box

Also, I should add, 11-11 is Pepero Day in Korea and Singles Day in China which are both related to love and things, a bit like valentines day.

Writing to be translated

With Google Reader's recent new feature, being able to translate all one's feeds into a language of their preference, using Google Translation Tools, it seems the language of the web is becoming less and less noticeable. However, reading the output of translated sites can often remind us of the value of knowing more than one language. The value I perceive is of course having expression for things which are not included in ones base language. French, the language of love has many shortcomings when describing technical situations,  German, great for precise and complex descriptions but with a very different kind of romance, and for my self with asian languages, a word like rènào or 热闹 which has no direct English translation yet describes one of the key things I love about China.

When it comes down to it, Google translator sucks quite a lot, however languages do not make this task easy.

Where do we go from here?

I think there are 2 directions of interest.

1. Write content with the intention of it being translated - For the time being we do not really know what this means I think most of us do not really know how Google Translator works, perhaps however Google could provide some guidelines on how to make things more translatable by their service. I think this could also include a feature which evaluates a given translation task and suggests words that are uncertain or sentience structures that may cause some problems.
   
2. Create a systems of exceptions - If a writer tacks advantage of the specific strengths of a language it will become harder to translate, however those strengths are really important and can offer significant changes in meaning. To deal with this situation I think known exceptions could be added to a system like the Google Translation Tools. These exceptions would extend the ability of the translation system to firs state that there is some difference in meaning and secondly suggest words that may approximate the idea in the target language. The scheme of having user editable results (which google now has) is great but going on to use that data to create richer output would be really fabulous. 

What do you think about this?

Things that start tomorrow

I have not been blogging much recently because I have been travelling and working and not doing this. In any case, I think I might start doing some more because it can be fun etc.

I need to make more of the things that are supposed to start tomorrow start today. But I guess it is getting late, so it will end up being tomorrow again.

Why are most Australian movies bad?

Does anyone else agree that most Australian made movies end up being relatively bad? It is almost like a trademark of the local industry and yet they keep trying and there is quite a lot of related activity with all the movie shows and film festivals.

Tonight I plan to watch a movie with friends that is said to be a good Australian movie, even here in the states, Australia's movies have a reputation that far proceeds them as most people have not seen too many.

Who knows... Any insight would be nice.