Archive for Januar, 2008

Twitter Census vs. TwittPoll

Samstag, Januar 12th, 2008

Two new and shiny poll tools for the twitter network appeared in the last weeks. One is my twitter census and the other one is… the other one, no it’s twittpoll.com, of course ;)

If you made up your mind on which tool you like better, please participate in the shootout-poll (i.e. “@hellp twittercensus #pollshootout“).

Here’s my don’t-be-to-biased side-by-side comparison of both [Constantly updated.]:

Is primarily for…

TC: quick, real-time personal polls among my friends/followers.

TP: comprehensive polls among all twitter folks.

Addresses to…

TC: your followers. Expect about 0-20 replies in 10 minutes.

TP: all twitterati. Expect about 50-1000 replies in 24 hours.

Let’s you create polls instantly…

TC: yes.

TP: no.

The author of the poll gets instant feedback, through all interfaces Twitter offers…

TC: yes.

TP: no.

Has a slightly complicated syntax to learn…

TC: yes.

TP: no.

Accepts polls with more than two choices…

TC: yes.

TP: no.

Uses Twitter as…

TC: interface for all its functions.

TP: promotion tool only.

Is technically…

TC: somewhat challenging and (unfortunately) error-prone.

TP: simple, 2-choice-only, but less interactive.

Has a name…

TC: that would fit perfectly to twittpoll.

TP: that would fit perfectly to twitter census.

So maybe both projects should exchange names and live peacefully side by side :)

Tips for a more appealing spreadopenid.org

Dienstag, Januar 8th, 2008

I really don’t want to be a killjoy, but the current state of spreadopenid.org is not appealing at all. I appreciate its effort and I know this is work in progress. So I won’t complain about the difficult stuff like making the provider matrix more usable. I’m sure you guys are working hard on this.

Instead I chose some points that may not be too obvious to you developers ;) Here are my suggestions:

1. Make it Readable!

Shortly after launch I sent a message to the authors via Twitter, so maybe it’s gone lost. For the record, here is it again:

The font-size in the main column is much to small for the column’s width. Enlarge it and/or make the column narrower!

Additionally adjust paragraph indents, margins, paddings, image alignments, link colors etc.

2. Get a Design and Do Graphics!

I’ll be so blunt and allege that for most people an “appealing website” means graphics. So, please, do graphics! Use images, charts and other visualizations wherever it supports you to make your point clear.

Good recent examples from “our” area of interest:

[Update: Added the first two to the list. Thanks to RWW.]

Note that most of these sites are developer targeted, i.e. for an audience that’s usually fine with long text-only specs. Yet, they offer me a quick overview what their respective objective is. Normal, non-techy users, will request that even more.

3. Drop the Planet OpenID sidebar!

Most non-geeks aren’t familiar with the Planet aggregator and will assume that this is editorial content. But it’s not and most articles appearing there will not be useful for them.

Hope this helps someone.