Pat Dryburgh

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Yummygum Office From the logo to the office… this is my dream. (via MinimalMac.)

Yummygum Office

From the logo to the office… this is my dream.

(via MinimalMac.)

Canada's booksellers v. Amazon.com →

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Canadian Booksellers Association president Stephen Cribar:

To allow Amazon to enter the Canadian marketplace will detrimentally affect independent businesses and would raise serious concerns over the protection of our cultural industries.

I’m sorry, but what about what’s best for Canadian consumers? Maybe that’s why you’re in this predicament to begin with?

I can’t stand companies and industries that are constantly in self-defense mode. Give us an experience that equals Amazon’s (or, at least comes close given our country’s size) and then we can talk about keeping Amazon out. Until then, I say let them build.

Frustration

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I wrote a piece earlier this week, arguing that ease of use was more important to me than things like data portability. I said:

A lot of geeks like me may harp on me about things like “data portability” and having control over the software they use, and they have valid arguments. I have read people argue that the mild frustration one faces setting up and dealing with software such as WordPress is worth the effort, because then the user has “more control.”

I’m currently facing frustration right now, exactly the type of frustration that Dean Harris wrote about in his rebuttal to my post. However, my issue isn’t moving from platform to platform; my issue is moving from WordPress.com to a WordPress.org self-install.

For whatever reason, no matter how hard I try I am unable to get the new installation to import the .xml file I exported from the WordPress.com blog, it will not work. It seems very peculiar to me that the “open system” is having such a hard time moving data between itself.

I don’t write this to say that Tumblr is better at data portability. I’m simply saying that what we may think is this great, “open” system is just as frustration when it comes to controlling my own content as Tumblr’s closed system.

Update: After eight or nine tries, I finally seem to have figured this out. Not sure what the issue was, but I’ve been able to get the data ported over.

NRRW →

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I just added my talk to the Podcamp London 2010 sessions list. I haven’t worked out the whole talk, but have a fairly good idea of where I want it to go. Here’s the description I included on the site:

The attention span of internet users is short. In fact, you’ve probably already checked your tweets, been rick-rolled, and posted a blog entry since the time you started reading this paragraph. If you’ve got a message you want to communicate, you need to do it quickly, efficiently, and effectively. My talk will focus on how to narrow down your message to its core — perhaps even less than 140 characters.

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mikesalvatore asked: Did you experience "bliss" when you started blogging?

I wouldn’t say I experienced “bliss,” but the platform I used when I first started, Xanga, was incredibly simple and powerful. Both you and I and our classmates were all easily connected through our school group, and publishing to the site was so simple. Xanga had its headaches — including terrible advertising that it forced on its users — but had it not been for the Xanga platform I wouldn’t have gotten into blogging.

New Work Added to Portfolio →

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I’ve added some Fusion ads to the portfolio today.

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Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic) I don’t know that this graphic could be any more biased, unless it was WordPress.org or a WordPress-focused blog (like wpbeginner.com) holding the survey itself. Problogger is exactly what its name suggests: a website focused on those who want to be professional bloggers1. I have no stats to back up the following claim, but my intuition tells me that no more than 5% of the world’s bloggers could even remotely consider themselves professional (though, I am sure many more wish they were). I am not wanting to harp on WordPress, or its community. It is a solid platform that I still work with all the time. However, for a large majority of people who ask me what they should use if they want to start blogging, I immediately jump to two services: Tumblr and Facebook. I suggest these because each come with such a low barrier for entry. Tumblr could not be easier: sign up, start posting. Its user interface is so intuitive that even those who aren’t net-savvy can find their way pretty easily2. I suggest Facebook as well, because like Tumblr, the barrier to getting started is incredibly low. Most people I know have a Facebook account, so that step is already complete. The notes application is simple, intuitive, and comes with a built-in audience. If the person using the Facebook notes app decides to move on from Facebook to bigger and better things, they can then set up their new blogging software to feed into the Facebook notes application, so their friends and family never miss a beat. A lot of geeks like me may harp on me about things like “data portability” and having control over the software they use, and they have valid arguments. I have read people argue that the mild frustration one faces setting up and dealing with software such as WordPress is worth the effort, because then the user has “more control.” I’m sorry, but I try my hardest to not force frustration upon people I care about, or those who use the things I create. I want the user to experience bliss when trying something new such as blogging. Why should we, as the tech community, be ok with the state of frustration caused by our products? If Tumblr came out with a solid iPad app, I would suggest to every single person who asks me what they should do to start blogging to buy and iPad, download the Tumblr app, and go. How could you go wrong with two of the most beginner-friendly products on the market today? Oh, right — they aren’t “open.” Well, I’m sorry, but “open” is not synonymous with “awesome.” Whatever that is. ↑ And, as Loren Brichter, developer of Tweetie for iPhone and Mac has taught, a good UI is also discoverable. I have learned so much more about the Tumblr dashboard UI from the time I started using it, and find pleasure in its hidden treasure trove of features. ↑

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic)

I don’t know that this graphic could be any more biased, unless it was WordPress.org or a WordPress-focused blog (like wpbeginner.com) holding the survey itself.

Problogger is exactly what its name suggests: a website focused on those who want to be professional bloggers1. I have no stats to back up the following claim, but my intuition tells me that no more than 5% of the world’s bloggers could even remotely consider themselves professional (though, I am sure many more wish they were).

I am not wanting to harp on WordPress, or its community. It is a solid platform that I still work with all the time. However, for a large majority of people who ask me what they should use if they want to start blogging, I immediately jump to two services: Tumblr and Facebook.

I suggest these because each come with such a low barrier for entry. Tumblr could not be easier: sign up, start posting. Its user interface is so intuitive that even those who aren’t net-savvy can find their way pretty easily2.

I suggest Facebook as well, because like Tumblr, the barrier to getting started is incredibly low. Most people I know have a Facebook account, so that step is already complete. The notes application is simple, intuitive, and comes with a built-in audience. If the person using the Facebook notes app decides to move on from Facebook to bigger and better things, they can then set up their new blogging software to feed into the Facebook notes application, so their friends and family never miss a beat.

A lot of geeks like me may harp on me about things like “data portability” and having control over the software they use, and they have valid arguments. I have read people argue that the mild frustration one faces setting up and dealing with software such as WordPress is worth the effort, because then the user has “more control.”

I’m sorry, but I try my hardest to not force frustration upon people I care about, or those who use the things I create. I want the user to experience bliss when trying something new such as blogging. Why should we, as the tech community, be ok with the state of frustration caused by our products?

If Tumblr came out with a solid iPad app, I would suggest to every single person who asks me what they should do to start blogging to buy and iPad, download the Tumblr app, and go. How could you go wrong with two of the most beginner-friendly products on the market today?

Oh, right — they aren’t “open.” Well, I’m sorry, but “open” is not synonymous with “awesome.”

  1. Whatever that is. ↑
  2. And, as Loren Brichter, developer of Tweetie for iPhone and Mac has taught, a good UI is also discoverable. I have learned so much more about the Tumblr dashboard UI from the time I started using it, and find pleasure in its hidden treasure trove of features. ↑

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Back when I was using WordPress as my blog’s content software, I used Thematic and child themes to theme my site. I released two of the child themes I created for public use.

When I moved to Tumblr, the pages to those themes were lost, and while I would constantly have people visit the site searching for those themes, they would be met with a 404 page not found.

With Tumblr’s new Pages feature, I have been able to recreate the pages for the Junction and BLAMatic themes. They are once again available for download, however I will not be able to provide technical support for these themes. Of course, as they are open source, you are free to make any changes you like and release them on your own. If you do, please let me know at hello [at] patdryburgh.com and I’ll let my readers know!

Ask

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I’ve been avoiding this for some time now, but after some careful consideration have decided to open up the site to questions. I don’t give readers much of a voice on this blog, and feel this might help open up the conversation a bit beyond Twitter and email.

I make no promises that every question will be answered, however questions that cover a topic that interests me or that makes me seriously think will most likely appear here on the blog. My goal is to open conversation, not flood my blog with “will you go out with me?” requests. The answer is obviously “yes.”

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Where are the galleries for the best web content? Where are the lists of websites with thought-out, semantic code? Where are the sites that show off excellent information architecture? Perhaps most importantly, where are the galleries of websites that are actually driving business for companies, rather than simply acting as an online brochure? Sites that are successfully doing what they were meant to do.

I’m tired of seeing lots of pretty web sites.