Simplicity Rules

Adam DuVander on keeping it simple

Webmonkey mothballed again

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What an awful term, mothballed. By definition, it means that something is just being put away for a short while. But in reality, it usually means something is dead.

Well, I received a similar email that Valleywag references. It looks like last week’s sale of Wired News was the final straw.

Jeff Veen wrote a nice look back at HotWired, which has met a pretty slow death under Lycos’ watch. And, Jeff also wrote a goodbye to Webmonkey two years ago, the first time it died.

Webmonkey was a fun site to learn from and a great place to write for. I’ll miss it from both perspectives.

Determining spambots… or user sexuality

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There’s a funny Captcha Mashup coming out of MashCamp (via Monkey Bites). CAPTCHA are those annoying, warped images of words that sites like Ticketmaster make you replicate to prove you’re a human. Well, this one has you choose the three “hot” people out of nine.

I was completely convinced that it worked great, as I correctly picked the three (with a greater than 99% chance of being wrong by simply guessing) hot ones each time. Then I switched to guys. I’m one of those people that thinks he can tell if another man is hot. It turns out that I was wrong. For the life of me, I can’t get it right.

Try it out for yourself.

Fix the Web’s Cesspool

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Greg Linden tells it like it is:

Today, the greatest pool of user-generated content ever created, the World Wide Web, is full of crap and spam. Search engines or other applications that seeks to get value from the Web needs to be built with filtering in mind. The Web is a cesspool, but sufficiently powerful tools can pluck gems from the sea of goo.

Linden’s solution is personalization, which he thinks will solve the problem of information overload. His company, Findory, does this by tracking clicks and helping determine what you’re actually interested in. His background is pretty good, having worked at Amazon in the early years.

Bonus Linden link: Combating Web spam with personalization. Imagine how different the Web would be if everybody had different search results.

I’m not a consultant and I have no job

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She sneered at me over her pint of beer. My friend had just introduced us, fellow web programmers. “Competition,” she said. Not really. I’m not looking for clients, so hers are safe. She can’t get my clients, so I’m safe. Why can’t we just chat about cool Web stuff*?

I’m not a consultant, on the prowl for clients. I realize that I look a lot like one. I have my own office, I keep my own schedule, and I look like I eat a lot of red meat. But consulting doesn’t scale and if I’m going to wear myself out, I’d rather do it doing something I enjoy.

I have no job, and I really don’t want one. My time is spent primarily working with BestPlaces. I help oversee the popular outward-facing features (like Find Your Best Place), as well as some cool stuff for big-name partners like Yahoo!, eBay, and the Wall Street Journal.

The fun continues with writing code to organize Who2’s famous biographies (a big site itself, licensing to Ask Jeeves among others), listing all of Portland’s free wireless internet hotspots, helping your everyday Web surfer fight spam, and other little projects that come along.

I may look like a consultant, but I’m not. And this may look like a job, but it doesn’t feel like one.

* That’s actually what I really dig about Portland Web Innovators. It’s a group of local people using the Web in all sorts of ways. And it’s fairly technology agnostic. And we haven’t yet had a catfight over clients. Maybe that’s a sign of good economic signs…

Three reasons simplicity works for me

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  1. I can wrap my brain around it. If something is simple, that helps me see what I need to do first/next.
  2. I can get from idea to execution quickly.
  3. I can always make things more complicated. Removing complexity is a little harder, like asking the stylist to cut your hair a little longer.

I could write more, but why? 😉