I'm redesigning Fury again.

I know that must sound strange, since Fury's design hasn't changed significantly in nearly 5 years, but would you believe I've redesigned it at least four times since then? I have, only I've never actually built it out and pushed it live, since I was never really happy with it.

Now I have a new litmus test: If it's better than the current version I should put it out there. By that standard I'm almost certain to have a redesign up in the next week or so.

Just as a reality check, it would be helpful if you briefly commented on what part(s) of the UI or overall site that you find most valuable personally. I'd love to hear it, along with any random ideas for improvements. I already have the design in my head and halfway done, but it's not too late to make an impact.

Comments? (19)

I work at one of the most accessible repositories of information on the planet, but now and again I come up with a simple information need that current search engines can't satisfy. It's not that the question is difficult, it's just too underspecified for search engines that presume you know at least a little bit about what you're looking for. What do I do when I have a question like that? I post on my blog, confident that you guys will answer my question within a matter of hours.

As it happens, today I have two questions I'm hoping you can help with:

First, what are those little fuzzy toy animals called, the ones with the big feet with stickers on the bottom, that sometimes have little flags coming out of their nethers that say inspirational things? You know, the things that magazine companies recruit child labor in the form of elementary school students to sell subscriptions in exchange for points which can be exchanged for, among other things, these little things I want to call Weeble Wobbles, but which aren't?

Second: There's a song playing on the radio a lot now, only I don't listen to the radio. The chorus is a woman's voice singing "I'm sorry, so sorry, I'm sorry something something". I only know the title has nothing to do with the words "I'm sorry".

Have at it!

Comments? (21)

No, for once, I'm not asking my friends to help me move, much to their releif! The house closes THIS FRIDAY and then the fun begins, but before that fun starts, there's plenty of planning that needs to be done. Since outfitting a home for long-term residency and ownership is so very different than the transience of the rental lifestyle, Rachel and I have been very busy, refrigerator and washer/dryer shopping, planning for movers and carpet cleaners, speccing out a new water heater and other stuff.

On the telecommunications front, I'm considering going out on the bleeding edge of technology and I'd love to hear any relevant experiences you've had. Instead of DSL or cable, I'm investigating hooking up with a wireless provider, most likely Etheric Networks, for a connection less fettered and faster than either cable or DSL. On top of that, I'm considering using voice over IP (VoIP) instead of a regular landline for telephone service. For that I'm leaning toward Vonage, or possibly AT&T's offering.

This would mean I wouldn't have a telephone line coming into my house at all, which is taking a lot of faith on relatively new technology. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience, anecdotal or otherwise, about using either of these companies, or the technologies in general. One downside of this plan is that if the power or net goes out, so does our phone. This can be a significant issue if we decide to hook in with a security company that requires a landline to hook to the system.

Basically, I'm really tired of the telephone company, and excited to find the next big thing, especially if it means cheaper (or free) in-state calling, because calling down to Los Angeles is already far too expensive.

Got any advice? Thanks!

Comments? (19)

Rachel's cat Nym needs a home. Can you help?

Nym really is the sweetest cat. She's always one for belly-skritches and will be the first one to find your hand and rub her head into it. She's so good natured and adorable -- but also needy, and therein lies the problem: When she's left alone too much she'll make her stress known by peeing on a bed.

Now we're at a crossroads. She's a wonderful cat and a wonderful being who never shows a temper, but now we desperately need to find a place for her. A trip to the shelter would almost certainly lead to her being put to sleep for reasons she couldn't begin to understand, and neither Ammy and Rick, nor Rachel and I have a place where Nym could live as an outside kitty.

What Nym needs is a place with someone who's home most of the time and can give the love that Nym would return tenfold, or a place with someone who could keep her as an outdoor kitty, feed her and give her some love.

Nym truly is an adorable cat, and we're both stricken by having to decide her fate.

Please: Can you help, or do you know someone who can? If so, please email us at Nym at phoenixfeather dot net. We have to find a solution quickly, so if there's any possibility you know someone who can help, please let us know as soon as possible.

Nym with Hummingbird

Comments? (22)

Did anyone out there see the series premiere episode of Stargate: Atlantis? Cause I didn't. Tivo messed up changing the channels so I got 120 minutes of MSNBC instead.

Anyone have a tape? A DVD? A bittorrent or a local PVR where Rachel and I could watch the ep? We were looking forward to it all week.

Ugh. Thanks! If you do, please drop me a line at hi at fury.com.

Take care!

Comments? (9)

I forgot. Was it Cory Doctorow who's doing high-level consulting for the campaign, or someone else? If you know, please comment or email, thanks!

Comments? (9)

After getting such positive feedback last year, and a reminder email today from a reader (as well as from my mom, one of the singers) I'm happy to remind folks that the Verdugo Hills Showtime Chorus will be delivering live telephone singing holiday cards this holiday season.

The deal is that for just $5-9 (local, long distance, or international), you can have a group of professional-quality chorus singers call whomever you wish and sing them holiday wishes. These are live (and very nice) people, who enjoy giving holiday wishes as much as your friends and family will enjoy getting them.

All of the holidaygrams will be sung on Saturday, December 13th, and they're happy to sing on the answering machine if your recipient isn't home. Actually, some recipients prefer that so they can listen again and again.

Happy Holidays!

Comments? (6)

As a graphic designer, I loved having a utility that would give me a magnifying glass and tell me the exact color of a given pixel, in RGB or hex. It was oh so very useful, but now I want more.

What I dream of, as do so many people who have to make pixel-perfect HTML, whether they know it or not, is a PixelSpy that tells me not just the color, but the rationale behind a pixel. I want to point at a pixel on a web page and tell me, layer by layer, what objects are there, with easy shortcuts to the cascaded style info for that object, with the ability to click on any one of those properties, like font size, color, or what have you, and show me the tree of cascading factors that made it end up at that value.

I want to be able to click on a 1-pixel border that shouldn't be there and instantly know what piece of code makes the browser think it should be there.

It would save hours. Like now.

Comments? (9)

This is from a friend. Please pass this along to anyone you know in or around Pittsburgh who might want to take in a cat or kitten. Cats and kittens are great. You want a cat. You know you do. Here's your chance to save a kitty:

Subject: Immediate situation--felines that need homes asap

My neighbors up in Pine Township have been hospitalized and may not be able to care for the many cats that they have adopted and that have been dropped off at their house. They are both around 90 years old and very generous and compassionate people. Chas and I are fostering 2 kittens now. There are as many as a dozen and they range in age from kittens to adult cats.

The cats will be taken to a farm up north and let loose unless I am able to find homes for them. The family does not want to do this but has no other choice because they cannot accommodate them.

Please, please, please, consider adopting a kitten or young adult cat! If you are not able, then ask your friends and family if they know anyone who would like to adopt a cat/kitten.

They are beautiful creatures, and a bit shy at first. But now, just a half day later they are playing and are more comfortable with my presence.

The information on the felines is as best as I can give. They scatter away in the house and hide, so it is hard to tell if I have seen them all. I have seen what I think are two age levels on the kittens. One about 5-6 weeks, and one about 12 weeks. The kittens vary from almost all white with black tipped tails/faces/paws (like they came down a chimney! *smile*) to multi colors of white, black, grey, and some brown. I have not seen much orange, some may have a bit of orange but not alot. There are some adults also. There is a very affectionate black cat who may be 10 years old. There are a couple of multi color, or spotted adults, probably around 3 years maybe. I was told there was a black and white cat, but I have not seen it.

There are a number of them outside, but they are hard to see, most are young adults to adults from what I can gather.

Please be advised that these cats probably have never been to the vet. For the kittens it is not so much of an issue. The two kittens that we have adopted are great! A bit skiddish at first, as expected, but the older of the two is very lovable now. The young one is still getting used to us. They are both mostly white with black or grey 'tips'.

Let me know if you need any other information.

I really appreciate your interest and efforts...

If there's any chance you're interested, or know someone who is, drop me an email at hello@fury.com, and I'll put you in touch with the proper person. Feel free to pass this post along to anyone else who might be able to help.

Thanks!

Comments? (9)

So hey, I've long found it amusing that so many webloggers with such tight design skills do their redesigns in private, suddenly unveiling them to the world with a big "here it is!"

Trouble is, this is the antithesis of the traditional interaction design process. Showing the design around to a few of your friends shouldn't be a substitute for an actual usability experiment, for a lot of reasons, most notably an inherent bias towards the designer, a familiarity with the existing site (this is useful, but naive users should also be tested), and most importantly, the fact that a person's subjective opinion is not the same thing as the usability of a site.

So I'm going to (more or less) conduct the Fury 4.0 redesign by the numbers. I'm going to do some low-fi prototype testing, some task analysis, a smattering of cognitive walkthroughs for the identified common tasks, and some rolling usability testing as the redesign comes along.

I've already started with a lot of logfile analysis of Fury 3.2. I've identified the five categories of visitors, and their use patterns:

1. The regular subscriber - You read this site at least once every two weeks, and get here either via a bookmark, by hand-typing the URL, from your RSS aggregator (desktop app, or web-based aggregator), or by a link on your own personal links page (I'm so tempted to link to some of these as examples, but they might be private, so I won't).
   
   You read comments. Most of you use the timeline bar at the top of the screen. You might lurk, or you might post. Most of you check in at least 3 times a week. Some check several times a day.
   
   You almost never visit anywhere other than the front page, unless I linked to it in a new article.
    
2. The general referred user - You saw a link on the sidebar of another site and decided to check it out. You might look around a bit. There's a 30% chance that you'll click on one of the topics in the 'Read by Topic'. If you do, there's an 80% chance that you'll follow the 'sex' topic. There's a 90% chance that you'll be disappointed by it.
    
3. The specific referred user - A blog or news site you read linked to a specific article on fury, and you followed the link to check it out. When you do, you might visit the front page, and it's just as likely that you'll click on the 'Bio' link to find out more about where you are. You're more likely to become a regular reader than any other group.
    
4. The google searcher - You dive in and dive out. You'll almost never go anyplace other than the page you land on (unless it's to the aforementioned 'sex' link). On rare occasion you'll actually leave a comment, but if you do, there's (almost exactly, strangely enough) a 50% chance that you're either a crackpot, conspiracy theorist, extremely vulgar, immature, or some combination. Trouble for you is that, though you don't know it, almost nobody will ever know you left that comment, unless they constantly scour the archives for recent comments.
    
5. Kevin Fox - I use Fury differently than everyone else. When it doesn't suit my needs, I've built hacks in the back end so that I can do what I want. When someone leaves a comment on the site, it automatically emails the comment to me, so I never have to check back to find new content, and can respond to comments right away.
   
   I have hidden pages where I can get up-to-the-second lists of who came to what page of the site, and where they came from. I can spot new referring links easily, and see how popular that link is.
   
   I use the timeline bar as a guilt-o-meter, always wanting to see at least some dark blue on the page, lest I feel the page is growing stale.
   

I've spent the last several months with these use patterns in my head, and they have driven a few changes over the years (the timeline, color-coding, permalinks, comments, etc.) but now I've got enough new ideas that I'm doing a complete rewrite. I closely considered making it 100% CSS, but I found that while the concept of CSS is extremely elegant, in practice the compatibility differences amongst my target browsers (even between IE 5.5 and IE 6.0, browsers of the most common Fury visitors) mean that I'd have to code many kludges just to make it work right, and it would make me more reluctant to institute changes, knowing a small change could wreck the site.

Instead I'm using tables for layout, and CSS for styles, as I mostly do now.

Okay, this post is getting much longer than I intended. Back to the interaction design model, I want your input. I'd like the regular users to be the eyes over my shoulder, I want you guys to play the role of the stakeholder. I'm designing a tool both for you and the other four groups, and while I'll take your comments for what they are, and not gospel, I realize you guys have a lot of good ideas and frustrations, and as long as this post's comments inform the design, and don't drive it, I think it'll make for a better redesign all around.

So, knowing that many of the labels in the following wireframe will need description I won't delve in to until later this week, I'd like to share the preliminary Fury 4.0 home page wireframe.

Questions? Comments? Go for it.

Comments? (38)

While I was in SF a couple weeks ago, I heard a NIN cover on the radio. I think the song was 'closer' or 'hurt' (I forget) but it was done in a completely different style, by a completely different artist you'd never expect to sing NIN. (I want to say John Denver, but of course it's not, his being dead and all.) Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? I kept expecting it to be a joke and stop after a few bars, but they wang the whole song. Very funny...

Comments? (21)

Hey! the deadline for voting for the 2003 AntiBloggies has been extended until tomorrow! I'm up for "Most Unfinished Projects" and if you scroll down a few posts you'll see why.

Anyhow, you can vote once per hour so even if you already showed your love and support, go back and do it again! :-) Ya know, if you want to, and all...

Comments? (3)

The AntiBloggies, answer to the Bloggies, has published it's list of categories, letting you vote for the most deserving sites.

If ever there was an award Fury was cut out for it's Most Unfinished Projects. To refresh the mind of the gentle reader:

1. Randompixel (aka Cameo)
2. AOLiza
3. Metacookie
4. QWER
5. Blogger Purity Survey (2001 Edition!)
6. Fury 4.0
7. AIMtunes
8. Fury - Mobile Edition
9. Public version of FuryNodes
10. Fury MicroBlog
11. Underblog
12. LogMusic
13. Tao Dice
14. The Mara Story
15. The Butterfly Orgasm Story
16. Trip log for The Kevin and Ammy Cross-Country Show
17. So very, very many galleries sitting in iPhoto
18. Things I've forgotten but will doubtlessly be reminded of by you
19. More stuff I can't even talk about yet...

So go vote! You can vote once every 60 minutes, so vote early, vote often!!!

Comments? (25)

My friend Frances was in a skit on yesterday's Saturday Night Live, only I didn't know, and she doesn't have a tape of it. Did anyone happen to tape/tivo it?

Comments? (5)

Here's a weird request. I've nearly exhausted my campus connections on this one, so I'm turning to you, oh diligent reader: I have a data cartridge with some stuff I wrote quite a while ago. Ten years ago, in fact. Now I can't find a drive that will read it.

Ten years ago I'd just started my intenship at MacWEEK magazine, and during the more boring parts I wrote, and saved it onto what I thought would be the most long-lived media of the time: A 650mb 5.25" Magneto-Optical cartridge.

It was state of the art, and was supposed to last upwards of 100 years without losing data. The problem of course is that the media is far more permanent than the drives that wrote to it.

Now, barely 10% of the way through the media's life, I can't find a drive that can read it. I just want to pull a file or two off that are personally important to me, and I can't find a way to do it.

The drive that wrote it was either a Pinnacle Micro or an Alphatronix 5.25" MO drive. Does anyone have one, or know anyone who might? If anyone can help me with this, I'll definitely make it worth your while.

Thanks in advance...

Comments? (25)

(Executive summary: Internationally renowned women's chorus (and my mom) sings holiday greetings to the persons of your choosing, anywhere in the world, for $7-10)

I probably don't post about my family as much as I ought to, and I keep meaning to write about how proud I am of my sister for becoming a foster parent this year, or the rest of my family for their wide-reaching accomplishments, but today I'm writing to tell you how proud I am of my mom, and to let you know about a really cool gift you can get for your loved ones. Yes, this is a plug, but it's a really worthwhile one. If you think so too, I hope that you'll tell your family and friends, and/or post it on your own weblog. These nice folks deserve all the exposure they can get.

My mom's a member of the Verdugo Hills Showtime Chorus, a member chorus of Sweet Adelines International. Along with about a hundred other accomplished vocalists in her chorus, she regularly performs in large competitions. I had the privilidge of hearing them perform at the Buckeye Invitational competition in Columbus, Ohio last August, where they swept all the award categories. They're really good.

Okay Kevin, cut to the chase:

For the past several years, every holiday season, the girls have done singing holiday cards. You give them the name and phone number of the person you want to serenade, and the best time to call, and on December 14th they'll call that person up, anywhere in the world, home, cellphone, whatever, and they'll sing your choice of one of ten holiday songs (repertoire includes Silent Night, Jingle Bell Rock, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, the Hanukkah song, and others listed on the order page). No recordings, no canned anything. The real deal.

The lowdown: Twenty-five singers performing live in four-part harmony (barbershop style): tenor, lead, baritone and base, singing specifically to your recipient. People really love it. It has a very personal touch, and won't be a throwaway gift that'll gather dust in the closet, but a memory that they'll keep with them.

So how much does it cost? Just $7. Less than you'd spend on a doohicky they'd never use. If your recipient is outside of Southern California, it's just $8 (long distance charges included in the price). International is only $10.

Renting a philharmonic orchestra costs $70,000 a day, so having a chorus of highly talented singers spreading holiday cheer for one ten-thousandth of that is quite a deal!

I recommend ordering early. The order deadline is December 11th, as long as they don't fill up before then. If they get enough interest, they may add have a second day, but there's no guarantee.

So that's my plug. They're really great folks, and their specialty is spreading holiday cheer, and they even accept PayPal. I'll be giving singing holiday cards to a slew of my friends this year. Also, they have no advertising budget, so this is all spread word of mouth. If you agree that this is a cool gift, please pass this permalink along to family and friends (weblogs, etc), as my testimonial gives a lot more detail about the service than their order page provides.

Happy Holidays!

Comments? (25)

Hey y'all! Continuing in the three-year-old thread of writing bots for AOL Instant Messenger, I've written an applescript interface between AIM and iTunes.

While offices can use it to let anyone at any desk control the office iTunes jukebox, and stores can use it to control their music from computers in the front of the store, I wrote it so I could control my stereo from my couch, using my hiptop's AIM client.

Anyhow, it's getting pretty polished and I'd like to know if any folks out there use AIM and use iTunes, and would be interested in doing a little usability testing and QA on it before I release the first full version next week.

Interested, or know someone who is? Drop me a line!

Comments? (80)

Heya, time for a browser check: Can you see the @ below? It's a .png file that should support an alpha channel, making for the nifty drop-shadow on to the post's beige background.

I'd like to know, so I can better judge whether I can start using png files when needed.

Can you see the picture above? Post a comment either way, and be sure to say what browser and OS you use!

Comments? (80)

Say, is anyone here themselves, or know of anyone else, driving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles on Thursday, Friday or Saturday? My sister's in town and she's looking for a ride down.

Alternatively, if you or someone you know) is driving down to the Santa Barbara Faire this weekend, that would be a huge help too, as she can probably catch a ride from there down to LA.

If you can help, just follow the dandy 'email' link at the top of the page and let me know.

Thanks bunches!

Comments? (2)

...but I could use your help.

I'm participating in Ernie's latest webgame: Blind Date Blog. Out of 22 singles, it's now down to two couples, Me and a woman named Lauren, and two others. The audience gets to vote on which couple wins and gets to meet each other in person, and voting is open from today 'till Friday-noon.

So, if you'd like to see a train-wreck in action, take a look at the site, and sign up for the Yahoo group so you can vote in the final poll. I promise to blog the date just as thoroughly as Ernie does.

Comments? (53)

Hey everyone! I'm looking for a copy of The Guide to Living in Pittsburgh (8th edition). Barnes and Noble Online is out of stock, and they seem to be sold only in regional bookstores.

This book, written by grad students at CMU's CS department, is the authority for new students, and I'd love to get a copy before my trip out there in a few weeks.

I know there are a few Pittsburghians reading Fury. Is there any chance one of you could find and send me a copy of this book? Lavish thanks, and naturally Paypal'ed payment, would be forthcoming, and I'd have my first Pittsburgh friend!

Anyone?

Comments? (44)

So the only constants about the advice people have been giving me are to have plenty of chicken soup (don't worry about the labor involved; the coffee house just downstairs makes it. It just means putting on sweats and an elevator ride) and some sort of pain reliever.

Tylenol, Advil, Asprin, can anyone find the difinitive answer? I tried Tylenol, but it didn't do much for me so I switched to Advil which seemed to do a little better. I'm not supposed to take medications that thin the blood, because of another problem I'll probably write about eventually, so asprin's out.

So have at it. Give me the best of your folk remedies, and cite sources if you've got 'em. I'm all ears. I've got a strong incentive to listen.

Comments? (18)

Hah. I got this on one of my mailing lists (Fezziwigs). Anyone in a position to help out?

I have recently discovered the making of Victorian braided hair jewelry. What I don't have is an inexpensive source for hair long enough to braid. I need pieces at least 6-8 inches long in order to have long enough stuff to do interesting things with. Human-hair wigs available at thrift stores aren't usually that long (I've been looking). And fake hair (available cheap, anywhere) doesn't have the texture to stay in place right (picture tying knots in mono-filament Nylon).

(here's the embarrassing part:) If any of you happened to be getting a serious haircut, and if you happened to have several-inch pieces of hair left over that you weren't using anymore, I would be greatly appreciative (I would even offer to do a trade for it). Any colour or degree of curly-ness is fine with me.

Anyone with hair to spare? I know a few of my friends recently lopped off their tresses and donated them to charity.

Comments? (43)

So I'm enjoying the Yahoo hits, but there are a whole bunch of people coming straight to AOLiza without referres. I'd suspect Harper's, but they just listed fury.com as the url, so these folks must be coming from somewhere else.

Did you see AOLiza mentioned in a newspaper or something? Give me a clue!

Comments? (2)

I wanted to give a big thanks to the three people who responded to my plea a couple weeks ago for a tape of the West Wing season premiere, especially one anonymous reader from New York who mailed his copy out to me! Thank you!

Now don't I feel like an ass. My TiVo didn't record it this week either, because it wasn't listed either in TiVo's memory or in the TV Guide. Very, very frustrating.

So: As a thank you to Mr NY who sent me his tape, I'm sending back two Cameo cameras along with his tape. I'd like to do the same for anyone who happened to record last night's ep and is willing to let me borrow it. I'll pay postage. Anyone in the bay area record West Wing last night? Anyone anywhere? Taunt me.

I feel like such a schmoe... Hey, at least it gets Cameo cameras out there!

Comments? (48)

Did anyone out there record the season premiere of the West Wing last night? Karen and I each tried to, but her tape ran out at 40 minutes and I only recorded the first hour. I didn't know it was a two hour episode.

If anyone has a copy, I'd love to borrow it. If you're someone I don't know, here's a great time to introduce youreslf!

Comments? (15)

Who says weblogs don't pay? I set up a donation request link on AOLiza and now I won't have to pay for grad school! (that is, if another quarter-million people follow suit)

Still, it's tons better than serving up 250 banner ads for the same net effect. Don't you agree?

Comments? (14)

Why is it impossible for anyone to package powdered miso soup for sale in the U.S.?

I can't believe that every Japanese restaurant I've ever visited makes their own miso from scratch, yet the worst miso soup I've ever had in a restaurant is better than the best I've ever bought in a mix.

What's the secret? Is retailly-packaged miso soup just a ploy to get more people to go to higher-profit-margin restaurants? Do they save the good stuff for Japan? Is it some obscure form of self-flagellation?

If anyone knows the secret, or if you know of a supermarket miso that breaks the rule (or a restaurant that breaks it, the other way), let me know, and I'll share what I learn.

Thanks!

Comments? (20)