Shamelessly scamming for links since 1995.
December 2007
As banks and credit unions seek alternative income sources, their focus shifts significantly to business services. Fee income sources from consumer banking appear to be limited to courtesy pay privilege or overdraft privilege fees, ATM charges and NSF charges (others may deserve mention but let's simplify for now).
Am I the only one creeped out by how easy it is to invite acquaintances en masse to new social networks such as Spock and Plaxo Pulse?
Both these nets use the program interfaces of existing services such as Facebook and LinkedIn to let a new user log into those sites and pull their entire "friend" rosters into new accounts.
Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox article, Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous, reminds us that fancy trick plays in site development don't always bring the same great benefits as good old blocking and tackling.
Nielsen calls out Ajax, rich interfaces, mashups, so-called "user generated content" and online communities -- noting they can be valuable in proper context, but can also distract Web teams from more important user experience objectives. One example:
This is a milestone day. As of 1:30 a.m. Eastern time this morning, Scripps Newspapers Interactive Group and our many local sites completed the main phase of their 18-month content management system rollout.
All of these newspaper sites and affiliated niche products now run in Scripps' version of Ellington, the content system built atop the Django framework and Python programming language. In no particular order:
As I suddenly start receiving many invitations to connect on Yet Another Social Network -- in the most recent case, Plaxo Pulse -- I note the ever-astute Scott Karp contemplates the current crisis suffered by the darling of these nets, Facebook.
The new design of this Web site means a lot more than just a visual dust-off. Small Initiatives, the company, no longer represents just me, my blog and my occasional Internet design consulting.
