Librarian of Fortune

Letting users think more

Random thought... the ability to meaningfully interact with an information source is becoming a must-have for users. It's not just offering tons of features and lots of power that will keep an IP profitable; it's understanding that you don't know how your users are going to use your service. Let go. Be Zen. Relax. You'll actually gain all kinds of insights by imagining yourself as an anthropologist. Put your clients subjects in an information-rich environment and watch how they creatively use the tools they have.

I was playing around with Google Maps' directions feature and finally realized that I could drag any portion of the route to another spot by just dragging the route. I discovered it because Google Maps always routes me through the nearest town, even though I know it's faster to go another way. In a moment of frustration -- mostly, just acting out what I wished that Google could do -- I moved my mouse over the route and suddenly realized, OMG, it's moving the route!

Now I can use it as a way to plan out a series of errands on a map, by simply dragging the route to each location I need to stop at. I'm sure that most of you do this naturally in your head. I am, um, directionally challenged. I could get lost walking from here to the corner. Having a map with the entire route thought through, mapped out and printed off makes my errand-running a lot smoother.

The iPhone is another great example of giving users lots of opportunities to think for themselves in how they navigate through and use the various applications. Want to turn the display 90 degrees? OK! Expand this area? Sure. The philosophy is to let users interact as much as possible with the resource or tool.

So, I guess I'm thinking about how there is added value in an information provider  offering less structure and allowing more input (i.e., work) by the user. We usually expect to see more templates, more fields to search, and so on, but all of these require users to act and think in a certain way. What if they want to query in a different way? What if they want to show which terms to emphasize by visually highlighting them (see SearchCloud.net)?

I'm not sure if a user panel would ever volunteer "hey, let us do all the noodling around ourselves; we don't really want those navigational tools"; this is one of those features that has immediately obvious value but isn't something users articulate as a need.

Seize the Interstitials!

Thanks to insight from my personal Colorado Brain Trust, Marcy Phelps and Kim Dority, I now have a great way to visually remind myself of what I can do if I have a spare 15 or 30 minutes.

Like many of you, Marcy, Kim and I have laptops, docked with a large screen and ergonomic keyboard. Here's what you can do to have your visual reminder. Using Windows' Control Panel, select Display /  Settings /  Display:  [select whichever one lets you check Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor] / check that Extend my Windows.  Now click the [Identify] button. It's assumed that your primary monitor  [1[ is to the left of your secondary monitor [2]. If that's not the case, you can drag the numbers around on the screen to move 1 to the right of 2. Finally, click the OK button until you're done. If you do this correctly, you should have your regular display on your primary screen, and your desktop on your secondary screen.

Now, here's the cool thing, at least for those of us who have to see something to remember it. You can move one window onto your secondary display and have it sitting quietly in the corner, reminding you of something you can work on when you have a little spare time -- the 15 minutes before a conference call, the half an hour before you go to a meeting, the interminable amount of time you are on hold waiting to talk with a customer "service" agent...

To set this up yourself:
Open the window you want to keep open in the Restore Down setting (between Maximize and Minimize), then drag it to the edge of your primary screen and it will appear to slide off your primary and onto your secondary screen.  If, like me, you have a separate keyboard and monitor, you can simply use your laptop keyboard to work with the screen displayed on the laptop, and then move over to your desktop screen and keyboard and continue with your other work.

For some reason, I find that it's easier to resist multi-tasking if I keep my "other" project on a separate monitor and keyboard. I can work on it soon... I know it's there, but I don't have to actually work on it immediately.]

Word Clouds

Wordle.net provides a cool way to analyze the frequency at which words occurred in a text. See this page for word clouds of all the major speeches from the Democratic and Republican national conventions. I love this application of something that's been around since people could count. Now I can immediately see the main focus of a speech, once you get past the hyperbole and mean jabs.

Here's the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (word cloud shown).

Font Conference

As a writer.... OK, let's be honest. As a geek, I love fooling around with fonts. Which one truly reflects the content of what I say? What personality am I striving for?

CollegeHumor.com -- known for its lowbrow humor -- recently screened an amusing take at what would happen if typographic fonts had personalities. I'll never switch fonts again without carefully considering what image I'm projecting.

The virtual melds with the real

OMG. this article describes how Disney and Google have rolled out a virtual version of Walt Disney World, in Google Earth. When I think about this too much, my brain bleeds out my ears. Here we have a virtual representation of Earth, and in it we can go on virtual tours of real buildings in the real world.

I'm imagining the day when I could have my business tagged to my little corner of Google Earth (40°07'43.52"N and 105°12'59.66"W to be specific); people can actually "travel" to my home office, where I can give a tour of my business, sell my books, give workshops and consult with clients.

Steal This Wi-Fi

Here is a great column from Wired magazine about why  Bruce Schneier doesn't secure his home wifi network.   I don't secure mine, either... mostly because of karma. I appreciate using free wifi when I'm on the road, and I figure that I should return the favor. Of course, I live out in the boondocks, so my hunch is that only 3 or 4 neighbors are close enough to take advantage of my generosity. But if their ISP croaks one day, they've at least got a backup. And yes, all of them have secured wifi networks.

people@Google

Google has rolled out a series of video interviews with and presentations by various authors, filmmakers, policy wonks and others; they finally got noticed by the media when they interviewed John McCain on May 4th. He was one of the Authors@Google series, but I suspect that Google will soon add a Politicians@Google series, since they also interviewed author Hillary Clinton.

Google has the videocasts available on YouTube (where else?). You can find them all here, or search for user name: AtGoogleTalks.

LinkedIn - the new business card?

Marcy Phelps, Kim Dority and I had a great conversation the other week about, among other things, how to use LinkedIn. Kim pointed out that one of its most useful applications is as a way to surface the various aspects of your life... or at least the aspects you want to make public. Seeing who people are linked to can be an indication of what they're interested in. What I particularly like is that it's a way of listing my prior professional experience without it feeling like a resume. And, of course, I can find interesting connections to people I might enjoy knowing. FWIW, my profile is at www.linkedin.com/in/maryellenbates

Can you pick up, please?

I know how wonderful voice mail is... I'm old enough to remember the days before answering machines. If you weren't home, well, the caller had to try back later. But it's gotten to the point where it's impossible to get a live human being on the phone.

I just listed a free desk on CraigsList. Got lots of responses. I called 10 people before I found someone who would answer the phone, so he got the desk.

I remember hearing that a business can set itself apart from its competitors by just answering the phone and responding to callers immediately. Now I see why.

A positive cell phone experience (!)

I complained earlier about my experience with T-Mobile. The final resolution, after a rather brusque blow-off by their customer "service" department and a letter to the PR department and the SVP of Sales and Marketing, is that they'll let me out of my contract a no charge.

Now, natch, I'm switching to Verizon after an amazing conversation I had with their sales department. The sales rep not only knew what I wanted with a tri-band phone and EVDO broadband access, but also suggested a less expensive solution that she uses herself.

I love it when I actually get people on the phone who are knowledgeable, helpful and friendly.