Centopeia on iPhone

Following a tip from Mark, this blog is now fully iPhone compatible! All it took was to install a very nifty Wordpress plugin - iWPhone. So if you’re the lucky owner of an iPhone just tried it out, you should see something along this:

  

There’s also another Wordpress plugin for the administration area of your blog - iPhone / Mobile Admin (this one not only for iPhones, but for most of the mobiles actually):

Add comment February 20th, 2008

Online Communities Clinic Workshop Materials

As promised, here are the materials from the workshop I gave out yesterday at LIFT 08 about Online Communities Design Patterns. The presentation as I’ve said before is still a work in progress since I’ve started it for Web2Expo Berlin last November, so they share quite a lot in common.

If you’re interested, you can get the FULL VERSION of the presentation in PDF or you can simply watch the Design Patterns part on SlideShare (sorry, but the 30Mb limit on SlideShare wouldn’t let me post it in it’s full extent):

I’ve also prepared a Patterns Matrix that basically categorizes the patterns in four different classes that you can use to test or plan your own community according to the patterns use or misuse:

1. Community Support Patterns: Registration, Login, Welcome Area , User Profile, Users Lists, Buddy’s List, Exit / Suspend;
2. Group Support Patterns: Invitations, Shared Artifacts, Reputation, Voting;
3. Communication Support Patterns: Messaging, Comments, Chat, Forums;
4. Awareness Support Patterns: Neighbors, Activity Logs, Interactive User Info, TimeLine, Periodic Reports, Aliveness Indicator.

Mark Kuznicki took some pretty extensive notes from the workshop, so you might as well gave them a loon if you’re interested.

One special work to the crowd that actually stood up for the 3 hours the workshop took: Thanks

9 comments February 7th, 2008

Bad Usability Calendar 2008

Add comment February 5th, 2008

Online Communities Clinic Workshop

LIFT08 is happening this coming week in Geneva, it’s concept is very similar to the one we tried to accomplish in SHiFT (which we hope to deliver yet again this year - three full days of workshops, talks, social activities and discussions to get a look at the most important technological trends and meet the people behind them.

After almost didn’t make it this year (time constraints and in the end Patrícia not being able to come along), in the end I’ll be in Geneva to take part of this amazing event and I’ve even proposed an an experimental workshop on Online Community Design Patterns.

This workshop is the evolution from my “Conversational Design presentation“, that I presented last november at the Web2Expo in Berlin . Back in November I tried to squeeze a lot of information in a 50 minute presentation and although the feedback was more than positive, the fact was that I had to leave quite a lot out. The initial presentation aimed to be more practical than theoretical, so in a sense the move to a workshop makes more sense, workshops enable participation and sharing, so in the end we’ll manage to hear, learn and test a lot more than my ideas on this subject.

I envisioned the workshop program into a two part program, a presentation introducing:

• Social Web and Online Communities
• Conversational Patterns: Conversation Maxims on online environments
• Online Communities Patterns: Community Support Patterns and Group Support Patterns

and some group work involving all the participants (analyzing existing online communities of choice according to the materials presented before).

In the end the groups will share their findings with the remaining groups and I hope we managed to learn and share a bit more about what makes an online community thrive or die.

As side note about the workshop materials, I’ll publish them here after the workshop takes place. (yes.. as usual I’m still working on them)

Add comment February 3rd, 2008

10+10 Google Golden Rules

Just read on Bruno’s blog TEN golden rules/principles that I couldn’t really agree more! From his visit to Google Zürich’s headquarters he managed to collect “TEN principles of Google Engineering/Software Development”:

1. Single-source code repository for all Google code (G has a rather big repository, and all engineers have access to the source code)
2. Developers can checkin fixes for any Google product (an “open-source” approach)
3. You can build any Google product in three steps (get, configure, make)
4. Uniform coding standards (how should code “look”) across the company
5. Mandatory code reviews before checkin (if a developer fixes a bug in Gmail, the fix needs to be approved by the Gmail team)
6. Pervasive unit testing (a “unit” is the smallest testable part of a program; unit testing validates that it works properly)
7. Test run continuously, emails get sent (automatically) to developers if any failure is spotted
8. Powerful tools that are shared companywide
9. Rapid project-cycles, developers change projects often, and can devote 20% of their time to pursuing whatever idea/project they want (if it gets somewhere, Google will then throw some more engineers at it and turn it into a product or a feature)
10. Peer-driven review process, flat management hierarchy

and as if this ten weren’t already some amazing good advice for anyone involved in development these days, Bruno also mentioned some other “TEN (amazingly simple) things Google has found to be true“:

1. Focus on the USER and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

Amazing, yet so powerful tips if you managed to put them to pratice wisely and effectively, no?

1 comment September 25th, 2007