Ian On The Red Dot

The Temasek Review was the first internet news site to report on the news, well before any of the newspapers owned by SPH and Mediacorp (read our article here)

The matter would have been kept under wraps if not for the wild speculations and rumors circulating in cyberspace after we published the news which finally forced Straits Times and Channel News Asia to report on it two days later.

The writers for Singaporean online sites that purport to be alternative source of news, opinions and analysis should really try to tone down the beating of the chest every time they think they have trumped the mainstream media owned by SPH and MediaCorp.

They really should stop defining themselves in terms of the other.

They really also should stop thinking of themselves as ‘alternative’. They should just focus on being a credible source of news, opinions and analysis.

Maybe then, they can start being the mainstream.

I love WordPress but its popularity and simplicity is a problem (to some people).

Why?

Let’s just say I love WordPress as a blogging tool. It is easy to use, easy to extend with plugins and is the venerable Swiss Army Knife of blogging tools.

The problem starts when people start using it as a CMS. The truth is, WordPress needs to do more contortions than a Cirque du Soleil performer for it to be an effective CMS.

To be fair, WordPress has never pretended to be a CMS. From its site:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

The problem actually has much deeper roots than developers trying to fit WordPress into a hole that it was not made for. The problem begins because when it comes to the web, people conflate the following activities:

1. Content Generation
2. Content Publishing
3. Content Management

Let’s think about this with an example.

Say I work for a site that publishes posts on interesting stuff that happen in Singapore.

Say I want to write a post about birds in Singapore. I will go out and take photos. Do some research. Write up a post. Find some related sites. Link to those sites in my post. Associate relevant photos with the post.

I’m generating my content.

Now, in WordPress, when I am generating this content, as the writer, I am generally responsible for arranging where the photos appear in the post. If there is a colleague who finally decides where the photos are placed relative to the text, the same interface used to write the text is used (i.e. either the Visual or HTML editor).

In fact, the person publishing the post (the final action before the content can be seen by readers) should be responsible for where the photos are. To have a coherent site design, the layout of every post needs to be taken into account. The current post editors (i.e. Visual and HTML) for WordPress allows the designer to control the look of a post, however it needs the designer to know the existing code (i.e. CSS) for the site. Also, WordPress allows the writer to control the look of a post with no consideration for the look of the site.

Content Management occurs when an information architect decides on how to categorize and tag the published post making it easily available to readers and search engines.

With regards to Content Generation, I believe the current Visual and HTML editors used by WordPress (and other similar tools) is stuck in the Microsoft Office era. The tools are not fitting the way we actually work when producing content for the web.

For the last few months, I’ve been working on creating a job board for programmers and designers.

The design for the site was heavily influenced by 37signals’ job board. Right before launching, something about our site’s look still didn’t feel right. For want of a better phrase, I felt the site ‘wasn’t us’, where ‘us’ referred to Gwen and me.

One of the changes was to add the photo of the Lego figures taken by Ansik with a quote by Steve Jobs to the site’s design.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

The quote resonated with us, especially me, because there are just so many great companies trying, or rather doing, great things that it doesn’t make sense to be stuck in a job you’re not satisfied with or a mundane job where you’re just a cog in the wheel.

So, if you know that you can make a difference, do check out the available jobs over at Triple Point’s Job Board.

2 other considerations were made when designing the front page of the site. The first was not to group the job listings by category. The other was not to include the ’standard’ categories found in other Singapore job sites. This was done to prevent a ‘ghost-town’ effect where there are too many categories with little or not job listings for them.

The job board is still a work in progress. If you have any comments on how to make it better or what is lacking in the current job boards, do share it.

The influence and the result:

One thing I don’t get about the current marketing of the JooJoo is how little attention is paid to the concerns of the market.

Take the above screen-shot of the home page. It uses an image of the JooJoo where the screen has a greenish tint.

If you have been following the news, you would have noticed that one of the concerns from people following the product is that the screen seemed to have a greenish tint in the videos demoing the product. The CEO was dismissive when asked about this, attributing the tint to the camera. Fair enough. During a live demo, lighting and filming conditions may not be sufficiently controlled and certain distortions may affect how the product looks.

But when the product displays the same greenish tint in a photo on the company’s site, then I do believe the question about the quality of the display is a valid one. Under what conditions will the greenish tint appear? If the answer is under abnormally rare conditions, then surely the photographer of the product could have simulated a best case condition to capture the screen content displayed in all its full non-greenish tint glory.

Principles of Living Stories:

1. Unified Coverage
2. Story Summary
3. Story Developments
4. Various levels of detail
5. Prioritization of story developments
6. Remembering what the user has read

Apparently, the CrunchPad is over.

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch has written about it and the initial overreaction by the denizens of the Internet has made Singapore looked a little bad just because Fusion Garage is from Singapore.

Damn fucking shit.

Here’s a lesson. Next time Singapore wants to claim any little kid as our own, even though it may be an illegitimate child spawned after a drunken orgy, just because the little kid looks like he has promised potential, let’s wait until the child survives to adulthood with no signs of any character or physical defects.

Now, everyone thinks that’s how the father does business. Fucking people over.

Which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Cos you see, Singapore companies have historically been the ones getting fucked.

Think Suzhou Industrial Park. Think of some of the recent investments by Singapore’s investment arms.

In any case, it would be wise to wait for Fusion Garage’s response before jumping on any bandwagon with your pitchforks.

Never known to be wise though.

Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.

If this line was indeed said, and not taken superbly out of content, then, this is should be an instant classic quote.

Brings to mind one of the themes that was touched on at the Infocomm Industry Forum 2009.

It isn’t just about the tech. It is about the marketing, selling and collection of payments and to minimize the impact of TechCrunch and the CrunchPad name, well, that just seems like classic Singapore – all focused on the hard.

Which explains why the shareholders might have gotten a boner and decided to poke Michael Arrington in the ass.

Or so it seems (classic cop-out, comment on an issue with little facts, join in the cacophony of suspect opinions, and end with a line that protects the backside).

Almost like a pimp warning parents about the dangers of teenage sex, well, because young boys shouldn’t be having sex with teenage girls but with the pimp’s whores, New Paper, Singapore’s paragon of journalistic endeavors devoted about 3 pages on Clicknetwork.tv’s scandalicious babes last weekend for their Sunday edition (at least I think it was Sunday).

The articles online:

Even the way they talk seems slutty: Mum of 3
Can’t figure out ‘For-bees’ (Forbes) magazine
Too smut for their own good?
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea

I have only heartfelt gratitude to TNP for sharing the assets of these ladies, brightening up my gloomy Sunday morning.

The thing that really interests me is that beyond all the faux moral & intellectual outrage about the quality and content of these shows, if you study Clicknetwork.tv as an online video network, you’ll see the company is doing a pretty good job with their site. Let’s compare their site with another favorite of mine – Razor.tv.

Warning: Long post.

Down the rabbit hole

Razor.tv’s main page:

The first two things you notice:

1. Latest Video or at least to me, hey, random video. Might not be relevant to me at all, but who cares!
2. Most recent videos. Again. Just pulled from the top of the pile with no relevance to me at all.

Lower down the page, you see the latest episodes from their different channels.

Here you notice how Razor.tv is stuck in a certain stone age. Or least in the age where video killed the radio star. Channels. Channels. Channels. Instead of focusing on shows. Sure, you see a horizontal line of banners promoting some of the series like ‘The Elite Challenge’ but it is clear they are still very channel-centric.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at the ‘Current Affairs’ channel:

Did you know that there are many segments for this channel? One of them is ‘Ground Zero’ which isn’t highlighted in the sidebar of the above page.

Trying to navigate around the main current affairs page to find a segment you like is almost like trying to find the mythical g-spot.

Clicknetwork.tv’s main page:

I confess. I’m bias. The whole site just looks nicer. What I also really like is how the site doesn’t just bombard me with a random video that just so happens to be the most recent one. Sure, they do emphasize the most recent videos, but at the same eye level, I can easily navigate to find the most viewed this month, the most viewed of all time (at least since the inception of the network) and the most discussed.

Above the fold

To see the most commented and most popular videos on Razor.tv, you would have to scroll down a little bit more on an average screen. Does this matter a lot? Maybe not for everyone, but it sure helps the experience to be able to see all these navigation tools for videos based on stats at the same horizontal level.

Back to channels

Clicknetwork.tv emphasis is on their shows. Sure, they do group the shows into categories (i.e. channels) but it is always about the show. On the main page, descriptions for the shows are given.

Look at Razor.tv, do you get the sense from the main page that they have any sort of regular shows? Do you get the sense which link you click will lead you to a regular show? How about what each series is about? Any descriptions?

Before talking about two series on Razor.tv, let’s compliment Clicknetwork.tv for giving the web surfer decent descriptions of each of their series on the main page.

From the main page, I know that,

Bored in Bikinis is about:

What happens when 2 bikini babes get bored? A lot of random frivolous nonsense. Featuring Sonia and Xue Sha from ‘S Factor’.

Numbnuts is about:

Hutch and Mike face-off in crazy challenges where the loser suffers a shitty penalty.

I already feel safe clicking the links. I know I won’t be entering a dark room where I’ll be clobbered on the back, stuffed into a sack and brought to a shallow grave.

How about Razor.tv? Let’s look at two series ‘The Elite Challenge’ & ‘A Starry Night’. I know that ‘A Starry Night’ is Singapore’s first subway drama. Ok. First. In. Something. Got to be good right. But what the fuck is the show about. People trapped in a subway? People who like to eat sandwiches at night?

How about ‘The Elite Challenge’? Something to do with our Civil Defense Force. But what about?

Now, let’s look at the respective pages for these two series:

The Elite Challenge:

I still don’t know what the show is about. And of all places, this is the place to emphasize the latest video, by, you know, putting a video player at the prime location. What do you get instead? Choices. Choose which video you want to watch. WTF. Seriously. I’m already here. What do you think I want to watch? Make a guess. Maybe the latest episode.

A Starry Night:

Now you tell me what this whole show is about. Instead, of you know, showing the latest episode. Think about it. How am I supposed to know I want to come to this channel if I only get information about this channel on this channel? Genius.

‘Chick versus Dick’ on Clicknetwork.tv:

We already told you what this show is all about, on the main page, so since you’re here. Let’s get down to business. Shall we? Ta-Dah! The latest episode. And the individual page for each of their shows – Classy. With the effort invested, you would have thought these shows were on prime-time TV.

Breaking Up of Episodes:

Look, quality content is quality content. If I love it, I’ll watch it. Till the end. To possibly try to inflate views and clinks, Razor.tv has broken up individual episodes in clip.1, clip.2, clip.3 … What the hell? Do they think they are releasing software? Episode 1 is Episode 1. Let me watch the whole episode on 1 page.

Clicknetwork.tv respects the viewer. Sure, who doesn’t want more clicks. More views. But there is the right way to do it, and then there is the Razor.tv way of doing it.

And you made it to the end, so, boobies for you!

Disclosure: I know someone who knows someone that works for Clicknetwork.tv. That someone I know has bought me a bottle of beer. This post was not written under the influence of that bottle of beer.

This shouldn’t be the image of Hack Day:

Our industry is still young. If we want an all-encompassing technology scene, we need to actively work to cultivate an inclusive environment. This means a zero tolerance approach to this kind of entertainment. Booth babes, tequila girls, and scantily clad gyrating women simply set the wrong tone, here or abroad. Heck, this isn’t just about offending women—many guy geeks I know would be mortified by this kind of thing.

I call bullshit.

Many geeks would love to see booth babes, tequila girls and scantily clad gyrating women, BUT maybe not at a technology event because it would be politically incorrect NOT because they don’t get attracted by such stuff.

And for people who are slamming Yahoo, there are a host of tech companies (mostly dealing in hardware stuff) and gaming companies who are more deserving targets of your wrath.

The only question I really have is why Singapore’s tech events don’t have such hot babes dancing.

Further discussion here.

Some further more serious thoughts:

The fact that these girls were present at the event does not make the technology environment more exclusive to women. It is because the environment is already exclusive to women that such dance items are even considered.

Generally, such events are already seen as quasi-male-bonding sessions.

Getting more women into the industry is the solution to such misplaced occurrences at tech events. Removal of such occurrences is not the solution to getting more women into the industry.

What then is the solution? That’s a much longer post for a later time.

Another thing -

Nerd/Geek culture is becoming mainstream not because of the laudable principles and drivers behind being a nerd/geek – the thirst for knowledge, the love of experimentation, the never-ending quest to pursue truth, the joy that comes from being passionate about a subject – but because we see now how being a nerd/geek can bring money, status and, yes, sex.

These are the 3 Gs that matter to humanity – Gold, Glory & Girls.

Some other photos of the event:

Not in any particular order, the things I do after an event.

1. Look for (snarky) comments about the event on Twitter.
2. Look for blog posts about the event.
3. Look for photos of the event.
4. Look-up the profiles of the people who spoke during the event (or took center-stage).
5. Look for videos of the event.

6. Have a beer.
7. Clean myself of filthy filthy buzzwords.

GymFu:

At GymFu, we’ve made a series of unique motion-detecting iPhone apps which will help you make progress wherever and whenever you want.

The apps:

* PushupFu – our flagship application, attach it to your upper arm and train on the way to achieving 100 consecutive pushups

* CrunchFu – hold it to your chest and gain feedback and support as you train towards a 200 crunch goal

* SquatFu – put it in your pocket then see how many squats you can do. Improve your fitness and work towards 200 reps

* PullupFu – our newest app extends our collection to include our most hardcore of muscle workouts yet. Show off to your friends by achieving 50 pullups in a row

What I love about this app is that it highlights a way of thinking that programmers should shift to. When designing a way for users to enter data into an app, is the ubiquitous form the only way to get data in? What data is the app actually trying to record? Is there a way to capture this data with the new capabilities found in phones?

Removing the extra step of users having to manually record data will probably greatly increase an application’s usage because of the removal of friction.