Category Archives: Internet

Social Networking Done Right?

Since joining Facebook, I have been amazed at how well it facilitates social networking.

I’m not sure why I’m so impressed with Facebook, it is a social networking tool after all. I suppose it has to do with my constant comparison against the other monster social networking sites on the internet such as MySpace.

In the case of MySpace, I signed up to that to claim my account – I had no real intention of using it as a long term service. Even after claiming my account, I didn’t see a lot of activity on it and its cluttered and often disorganised interface annoyed me.

I signed up to Facebook for similar reasons, to claim my account but primarily to check out what all the fuss was about. Soon after signing up, I was astonished at how many people I knew in another life are popping back up – it is fantastic!

I’m not a big social networking user but if what Facebook are doing is doing social networking right; then I am beginning to appreciate just how tremendous it can be.

Google Webmasters Facelift

The development team behind Google Webmasters have been at it again, releasing a new interface and additional features to the much loved utility.

Some points of interest about this particular update:

  • The landing page for Google Webmasters has been updated with a nicer layout and some groovy little icon action; all of the familiar links and utilities are still present on the page.
  • The user interface within the Webmasters Console has been refreshed, with stacked left navigation similar to what Google Analytics provides. At this stage, the overall bling throughout Google Webmasters doesn’t compare to Google Analytics; however it is great to see that they are making improvements to the interface regardless.
  • Subscriber statistics have been added in, so it is now possible to see how many people subscribe to the various XML feeds that your site provides. While it is quite useful to see a raw number, it would be nice to see more information about that data such as how it is trending over time, how often people are checking it and so forth. I had expected that Google would have already started exposing services provided by the recently acquired Feedburner, which would provide that level of granularity and more – maybe this is the start of that movement?

I don’t recall if the user interface had this before or not, however each section in the stacked navigation now features an overview page. Frustratingly, the overview page doesn’t actually ‘overview’ anything but provide a link into each section within it (which are already in the menu itself); so in effect you get a link and a tiny blurb per sub-section.

Nothing earth shattering in this particular release, however the constant improvement of the Google utilities is on of the things that makes them so good. I can’t wait for the next update, where I’m sure we’ll see a vastly improved user interface with better data visibility across the board.

Helpful Domain Utilities

It used to be quite cumbersome and slow to perform domain research, then the domain registers became a whole lot smarter by providing you with a list of alternative ‘suggested’ domains. While the suggestions that the domain registers were suggesting were at times useful, more often than not they were utterly useless and weren’t worth the money to purchase.

Some time ago I stumbled across Domains Bot, which is an AJAX enabled domain search utility. You enter the name of the domain that you’d like to use and it comes back with an AJAX dropdown list with information on whether the domain is available or if it is for sale on one of the big domain clearing houses.

Yesterday, I followed a link into Bust A Name, which is a similar service with a twist. This time around you enter in a bunch of key words or phrases that you’d like in the domain and it goes away and tries to find all of the domains within your suggested list that are available; drastically cutting down research time.

Next time you’re looking to buy a domain, give one of these utilities a go; I’ve found them very useful.

Windows Live ID Web Authentication

Today, Microsoft released the Windows Live ID Web Authentication service to the world for public consumption.

The Windows Live ID service is an evolution of the familiar Microsoft Passport system. Over the last few years, Microsoft have been extending the Microsoft Passport system to cater for the constant change and evolution of authentication requirements on the internet.

With the first public release of the Live ID web authentication service, Microsoft have updated all of their documentation and are also providing an SDK for the Live ID services. For the convenience of the developers around the world and to increase the adoption rate, Microsoft have graciously provided implementations for the Live ID web authentication product in .NET, Java, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby.

Everything I’ve read so far on it makes me think that the new web authentication service from Microsoft might gain some traction; however I think there is a sore point that makes the service less desirable. From a user experience point of view, users expect that when they login to a web site that they are not redirected away from it. The Windows Live ID web authentication service requires that you place an iframe on your site which the actual authentication takes place in; less than perfect. I personally think that it would have been a much nicer product release if they allowed users to authenticate against it using pure web service or remote calls; no iframe and dodgy browser redirection. Unfortunately, I however sympathise with the pressures that Microsoft are under to guarantee that their users privacy is protected and allowing pure web service authentication does compromise that point some what.

If you’re interested: