SOME RANDOM DUDE

Yes, I Am Making Progress

It has been around a week since I wrote that this blog was going through a redesign. Unfortunately, until then, I was most likely be writing about the its progress. Still, I thought it may be interesting for some to read snippets of where it is in the process.

At this moment, wireframes are around 80% complete - which sounds good - however, because of the 80/20 rule, that means that I am still a long way off. I have tried to scatter my work around so as to diminish the potential for tunnel-vision on some aspects of the design, so I took some time to begin on some necessary icons. Up to this point, the vast majority of traffic to this site funnels through two icon sets I made a while back. Ironically, those sets took all but 2-3 hours to make whereas this set is taking much longer.

Here’s a preview of some icons:

Read the rest of this entry »bitcons, blog, icons, launch, personal project, redesign, sansons, small pieces, snippets, traffic tunnel vision

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Thoughts On a Better Some Random Dude?

As I mentioned not too long ago, this site is in the process of being redesigned. I really did not go into any details about what to expect from the new site, so I wanted to drop a few ideas of what I am working on.

Here are a few things to you will be seeing from the new blog:

• There will be tiered content - large scale, medium scale, small scale and (possibly) micro scale.
• Each tier will be viewable separately or together.
• Publishing will be decentralized with content siphoned into this blog.
• Posts will be much more frequent because of the tiered, decentralized nature (and yes, I have been testing this to make sure it is the case).
• Daily blog statistics/metadata will (hopefully) play a larger roll in the general experience.
• Comment Love will play a larger roll and be more integrated into the blog.

I could get into the design and other details, but frankly that is not too important in the big scheme of things. The content is what really separates the mediocre blogs from the good ones. The way I see it, if I can make creating content excruciatingly easy, there is a much better chance that I will do it more often. Since I already do in fact “publish” a lot of content outside of this blog, I might as well take advantage of that.

But enough from me, the reason why I posted this is because I want to hear about any ideas you think would be great to see in the new SRD. Ultimately, I will only be able to do so much, but I am certainly still in the “open to new ideas” stage. I have been looking at other blogs to see how this site could improve, but at the end of the day I am only one person with limited knowledge. Please lend me your experience and thoughts. I have no doubt it will make the new blog better in the end.blogs, decentralized nature, love, micro scale, opinions, redesign, srd thoughts

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Comment Love for July 2008

Well, as expected, the posts are not frequent while I work on the redesign of this blog. Surprisingly, last month still had 30 comments - totaling $15.00 of Comment Love. All $15.00 was donated to KQED.

I will be dropping the amount of working hours per week in the next week or two which will help speed up the redesign process. The design is already at the point where I could implement a beta if I was not as concerned about getting all the details right. I hope to write a little about the process in the coming weeks. Thanks to all who have commented even with my lack of updates.comment love, comments, donations, july 2008, kqed public radio

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This Blog’s Days Are Numbered

This post will have been the 8th blog entry in two months. To put that into perspective, in the month of March 2007 this blog had 34 posts alone. Frankly, this is not surprising - updates have slowly trickled downward for the past 3 or 4 months now. There are a few reasons for this - which I can get into in a later post. However, it has been clear that the current model of how I have blogging up to this point on Some Random Dude is not sustainable, nor is it smart. The effort/reward ratio is just not high enough - and while I was willing and able to a year ago, I am no longer.

The thing that has gotten to me the most is the amount of manual labor it takes to publish frequently. I would post 3 or 4 times a week and the traffic would frankly not reflect what I think it should have. Make no mistake, I am not in the camp that believes traffic is the sole measure of success and value - however, it is important. About one year ago, I started setting goals for what I would like to achieve with this blog - goals that I concluded would only be possible with a relatively high frequency of postings. That notion then put me into the pattern of regular weekly posts which became more of a chore than it should have been. I do not think that there’s no coincidence between the fact that some of my most popular posts were written before I started posting weekly content. In retrospect, I sold-out quality for quantity and I am kicking myself now for that.
Read the rest of this entry »blog, blogging, cms, goals, redesign, some random dude traffic

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To Advocate For or Abandon the 10%

Back in 2002 or 2003, when Internet Explorer reigned at the undisputed leader in browser market share, I was very outspoken over the need to support all browsers - even those with only 5% share or less. I argued about the need to provide a consistent experience for all users, regardless of what browser or version they decide (or as forced) to use. This ideology was all the easier to adopt considering how had market share at the time - I feel as though my strong feelings were just as much about not idly allowing the “evil” corporate browser to swallow even more share by helping make it the de-facto browser on the internet. Fast forward 5+ years and oh, how the tables are turning. A new generation is jumping online and they’re not just blindly clicking the blue ‘e’ on their desktop. Firefox 3 shattered the record for most downloads and, according to some metrics, is passing up 20% global market share and well above 40% in some European countries. The underdog is now the up-and-comer.
Read the rest of this entry »browsers, consistent experience, conundrum, downloads, european countries, global market share, internet explorer, metrics, netscape, new generation, philosophical difference, production time, traffic, underdog, undisputed leader, web exprience web projects

Posted in Opinion | 5 Comments »
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