silverlake to soho » review

5 Things Facebook Missed in its Redesign

joey — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:48:01 +0000

Before delving into specific missed opportunities, we’d like to throw it out there that we love the redesign. The overall look and feel of the platform is dramatically improved, but there are five key design elements that Facebook could work on that would greatly simplify the internet juggernaut.

General Navigation

Repeated Functionality
- Guess how many places you can click on from the home page to view your profile? At least two, and why? We’re not sure but regardless, it clutters up the elegant redesign.
- Why have two buttons labeled “home” and “profile” on the right, when the big “facebook” logo takes you to the home page? Perhaps the design team wanted to make the navigation more explicit. We’re certain there are some really smart people at Facebook who can figure out a much easier and cleaner way to direct users to these pages..
- On many of the internal facebook applications, there are two search bars, which seems a bit redundant … more on Facebook search later.
Notification icons & design
- We’re personally a big fan of icon buttons instead of text, so kudos to facebook for implementing this on the top navigation. However, is it just us, or are the buttons unclear?
- Icons are REALLY hard to see (we know they are meant to be notification buttons that highlight when an interaction has occurred, but for new users this can be confusing).
- They also switched the icons for notifications and messages (notifications used to be a chat window icon and now they are globe?) Why not standardize the iconography across all platforms? For example, Facebook could’ve used the inbox icon in the iPhone Application for messages.
Existing functionality removed
- Remember how sweet it was to be able to view your recently added friends right from the top bar drop down? We obviously don’t have the usage statistics on facebook functionality, so maybe they removed items that weren’t frequently used. That doesn’t change the fact that we still miss this feature dearly!
- On the events application, users can no longer just view pending requests!

Lackluster Search Capabilities

Advanced Search / Profile Search
- Do you guys remember back in… 2004 …. when you could search for people based on their interest… or even more basic stuff like gender… contact information… Maybe we’re missing something, but one of the biggest draws to facebook is the fact that everyone is on it.
- Why not make it easier to find someone you know (especially if you’re friends with them)? If you get a call from an unknown number but you know it’s your friend, guess what, you can no longer search phone numbers.
Searching for Media (Photos, Video, Links, Notes)
- This is the KILLER right here. Remember that really chill picture from last summer that you titled “summer with friends”? Well guess what, you can’t search for it anymore.
- Maybe we’re missing something, but facebook is sitting on the data that you care about the most, and the majority of it is unavailable for search

Friend Organization

Browsing friends
- “Ohh what’s the name of my friend that went to Cornell and graduated in 2003?” The only way to find out who you are looking for is by navigating to YOUR OWN PROFILE and clicking on “View Friends.” You can no longer browse for people using the two other places your friends are displayed.
Friend lists
- We get it, you’re trying to push friend ‘lists’ for privacy and chat options. Why not make it easier to just drag and drop friends into groups. This would make them 10x more useful + easier to manage.

Groups & Fan Pages

Converting Groups to Fans
- Ok we admit, this is more of a pet-peeve but before there were facebook pages, there were groups. Just take “Snapple” for example. There are multiple groups that were created before you could create a branded page.
- Why not salvage that community you built on your facebook group and with one click, change the group into a page?

Branding & Direction (facebook lite?)

Facebook lite
- Disclosure: We LOVE facebook Lite. It’s SUPER FAST, no applications, just what you need and right there. You can see the design has made some headway into the facebook’s new look but the larger questions remains, what does facebook light do for the average user right now?
Posts / Updates?
- Maybe it’s just us, but have you noticed sometimes if you post an update on the homepage, it doesn’t update your profile status, and vis versa?
- It’s possible that we may be doing this incorrectly, but the way facebook manages your profile status seems wonky
- Also the experience isn’t very consistent, sometimes it’s a status update, in other places it’s a post. Pick one!
- We get that posting and status updates are different, but maybe it’s time to combine them (a la twitter). Perhaps the most recent thing you post should be your status? Just a thought.
Purpose & privacy
- The more facebook changes, the harder it is to define facebook’s objective.
- If “privacy is dead,” then why is it so hard to search for profiles? Why is it so hard to search for PUBLIC photos or videos you upload?
- To us, there are a lot of inconsistent implementations of applications across the board.

Well, that’s just our opinion, what do you guys think? Leave us feedback in the comment section, thanks!

Search on … Bing. Google’s lack of a decision engine

joey — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:26:58 +0000

I love this ad – it’s smart, catchy, fast, great music, and all signs of a winner. The commercial itself is brilliant, it shows off exactly how we progress through traditional search engines.

Now after watching that ad, watch any of the Microsoft ads for Bing.

Obviously the commercials for Bing are exaggerations of a multiple search query experience. But Bing does a really good job of aggregating data on a single search to help you find relevant information. For example, compare one search of “Paris” in Bing vs Google.

Google search results for “Paris”

Paris on google maps
Wikipedia
Links to travel
Links to google news about “Paris”
Related searches

Bing search results for “Paris”

Aggregate information view of Paris including: official site, weather, attractions, neighborhoods (this is all before it even shows you the search results – which are almost identical to Google’s
Wikipedia (and then all the same links as google) and every search result comes with an aggregated information view of what’s on the actual page.
After the search results, it gives you sectioned results
Weather
Maps
Hotels
Attractions
Flights
Paris Nightlife
Learn More about Paris
Related searches

Final Thoughts

Obviously, this is only one example, but it’s relevant because of the content in Google’s advertisement about search. Personally, I still use google because of the asthetic. I tried to look for the option to turn off the background images on Bing (I think the gradients and image backgrounds look very 2004) and I couldn’t find them.

Based on results alone, Bing does a better job than Google if you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for. However, Google really shines if you know exactly what yo want out of your query but you cannot remember the URL of the page.

What do you think? Bing or Google? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Important take-a-ways from “LA X”

joey — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:08:32 +0000

We could sit here and bore you with a long-winded recap of what happened in the Season 6 premiere entitled LA X, but fortunately, a ton of people (via @vossek from darkufo) and lostpedia have already done that!

Instead, we’re going to discuss some main points and themes from the two episodes that we think you should pay attention to.

You may want to keep this in the back of your mind going into the rest of the season (listed in order from least to most important).

1) Richard Albert is from “The Black Rock”

Do you remember the finale from season 1 finale Exodus, Part 1, when our beloved Losties were searching for dynamite to break open the hatch door? Well, our main man Locke made an astute comment about the original contents of the ship:

Inside the ship, skeletons were found shackled together, likely remains of slaves. Old mining equipment was also found, including the dynamite. At least two cases of highly-volatile sticks were present inside the ship’s hold. According to Locke, the ship “must have been en-route to a mining colony; probably set off from the eastern coast of Africa—Mozambique.” – Lostpedia

Why is this important?

Fake Locke / Black Smoke / Man in Black / Man in Locke/ Whatever you want to call him makes a comment addressed to Richard after coming out of the four-toed statue:

Richard confronts The Man in Black, who responds to Richard that it is good to see “you without your chains.” Richard is stunned and replies “You?!” indicating he has some familiarity with The Man in Black. The Man in Black responds “Me,” and knocks Richard out, hoisting him onto his shoulder. – source

The fact that Richard was on the ship in the grand scheme of the show probably isn’t that important, but at least it answers some basic questions viewers have been dying to know:

Where the hell did he come from?
Why does Richard appear ageless?
- By “ageless” we are referring to the fact that he has appeared in multiple time periods (1950’s, 1970’s, and 2000’s) without signs of aging
- This is probably a similar situation to what just happened to Sayid in the temple, as Richard said in the Season 5 Finale The Incident, “Jacob made me this way”.

2) The numbers are our main characters – hypothesis

This revelation is more of a stretch than the Richard Albert’s reveal, but we think the producers on the show have been hinting at this ever since the first time the numbers appeared in Season 1 Episode 18 aptly named Numbers.

We’ll let you do the leg work on researching what the apparent significance of the numbers are, but you can check out The Valenzetti Equation for starters.

Personally, we don’t think they are that important but it may have to deal with what we ultimately think the end game of the show is about: why these specific people were chosen to be on the island.

We think previous episodes have hinted at the same over-arching message of “free will” vs “destiny” and “they have a choice” etc.

It may also be worth looking at previous Daniel Faraday episodes, especially The Variable. Whatever big decision is made at the end of the series, these specific people (Our Losties) were chosen because they have the ability to make the “right choice.”

3) There’s some correlation between the “flash backs” last year’s “flash forwards” and this years “flash sideways”

For starters, this is probably the biggest source of confusion for people just jumping back into Lost, so we are going to quickly break it down for you.

Flash Backs (Season’s 1-3)
- This is what made the show famous back when Lost first aired in 2004. These are the character memories that happen in the middle of the episode, that show events from previous points in a characters lifetime
Flash Forwards (End of Season 3, Season 4)
- At the end of Season 3, we were shown that 6 of our Losties (The Oceanic Six) made it off the island, these flashes are perceived to be in the future.
- By “in the future” we are referring to the time period after some of our Losties left the island.
Time Traveling (Season 5)
- As a result of Ben moving the island to hide it’s location from Charles Widmore when six of our Losties left the island, the island (or our Losties) began to travel in time.
- There was a period of time where the island would “skip” between various time periods which eventually stopped when John Locke turned the frozen donkey wheel again and the island stopped in 1977.
Flash Sideways (Season 6, Alternate Timeline)
- This season we are watching the Losties back in present time after Jack detonated an atom bomb at a magnetic hot spot in the island that sent them back to correct time period and we are also watching an “Alternate” timeline.

I think it’s safe to say, we all know the producers of the show are waiting to have their “Sixth Sense” moment, the big revelation that’s going to make us go “ohhhhh they did know what they were doing from season 1″. On this week’s official lost podcast Carlton Cuse said,

Those two timelines are related and the way in which they are related are one of the big mysteries” – Carlton Cuse, The Official Lost Podcast

Carlton is probably dramatically downplaying the significance of the relationships between the different “flashes” that we’ve seen. I can think of a couple reasons why he might be doing this:

The “flash sideways” are actually part of the same story line as the “flash backs” we’ve been seeing all along.
- So in reality, we actually don’t know much about the background of our characters and what happens to them off the island…
- Therefore the producers are setting up a scenario where they can explain the real background of the main characters of the show and what makes our main characters so special – why are they specifically on the island.
The “flash sideways” are actually glimpses from the end of the show.
- If you think about it, they’ve done this before. Season 5 opened with a scene with Daniel Faraday from almost the end of the season, we could be seeing the actual results of the big decision / conflict that this season is building up to.
All of the “flashes” are possible outcomes of whatever decision the characters are going to make – (probably not true)

Either way, the biggest thing to watch out for going forward in Season 6, are clues pertaining to who’s on the “dark” side and who is on the “light” side a reference that John Locke made in the season opener, way back in 2004.

We’ll follow up with more recaps after next week’s episode, let us know what you think in the comment section.

silverlake to soho » review

5 Things Facebook Missed in its Redesign

General Navigation

Lackluster Search Capabilities

Friend Organization

Groups & Fan Pages

Branding & Direction (facebook lite?)

Related Posts:

Search on … Bing. Google’s lack of a decision engine

Google search results for “Paris”

Bing search results for “Paris”

Final Thoughts

Related Posts:

Important take-a-ways from “LA X”

1) Richard Albert is from “The Black Rock”

2) The numbers are our main characters – hypothesis

3) There’s some correlation between the “flash backs” last year’s “flash forwards” and this years “flash sideways”

Related Posts: