November 17, 2005

Newsvine: Next Steps

It’s been about a week since we took the first layer of secrecy off of Newsvine, and everybody over here couldn’t be happier at the reaction so far. Without a single dollar spent on PR, marketing, or really any organized effort to get the word out, Newsvine found itself on the front page of CBS News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, GigaOm, TechCrunch, Russell Beattie, and hundreds of other places. Like David Hasselhoff, we’re even apparently big in Germany.

Is it wrong that I’m not stressed out about all of this? I mean, CEOs of startups are supposed to be working 20 hour days, neglecting their families, and generally being pains in the ass, right? I guess so, but this is fun.

Let me repeat that: This. Is. Fun.

People are excited, and we’re excited about that.

Reaction

I’ve read probably a few hundred articles, posts, and comments about Newsvine since our announcement and while most have been positive, a couple of things I’ve read several times which seemed to lean towards skepticism a bit are comments like this:

“News with comments? That’s been done.”

“Sounds like Digg, Delicious, and Google News put together.”

To the first comment, I’d say this: When the cheeseburger was invented, there were plenty of people saying the hamburger had already “been done”. I bet cheeseburgers outsell hamburgers now.

To the second comment, I’d say this: Oh my god, if that’s what we have, then I’d say we’re in pretty good shape. I love Digg. I love Delicious. And I love Google News. All they are lacking is each other.

Competition

Is there competition in the populist news space? Sure there is. There’s probably competition we don’t even know about. But judging from all the calls and e-mails we’ve gotten from VCs over the last week, it’s not competition for funding or attention… the funding is already there. It’s competition to see who can create the most compelling community of breaking information. And that’s what makes it fun.

Of the small handful of companies looking to make this happen over the next few months and years, I know we’re not the oldest or the biggest. But when I see code like this on three separate companies’ web sites who purport to be in the same space as Newsvine, my inner geek can’t help but smile:

<font face="Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular">

and

<!-- BEGIN UBER TABLE -->

and

"Please disable your popup blocker for our URL."

So in the off chance I somehow don’t have Arial installed, you’re going alternate all the way down to Swiss? Who has Swiss? And you’re going to use a font tag at all?

Anyway, enough geekspeak.

The fact is that every company entering this space will go in with their own strength. Digg has a great tech community and an impressively upstanding way of running the site. Open Source Media is strong in politics. Inform has 50-some people dedicated to finding and grouping related information. We have our roots in high-traffic news media, blogging, engineering, and design. That influence is hopefully apparent and beneficial in the Newsvine experience. I believe that in the end, several companies will be successful in creating positive news reading and news writing environments. Each will just have its own spin.

Note: The companies above are not necessarily competitors of ours. I am only mentioning them here because others have.

Beta Details

We’re well into the several thousands on the list so far, but I must admit that we plan on only letting a few hundred in for the first couple/few weeks. The reason for this (I swear) is not some sort of manufactured scarcity campaign, but rather the opportunity to take care of some obvious quick fixes and improvements that will only become apparent as people begin using the site.

The single hardest thing about building an ecosystem for participation is trying to predict user experience in the absence of it.

So if you signed up for the beta, the whole team thanks you, and you will definitely get in before everyone else does. But if it’s not in the first wave, just sit tight and your first experience on the site will be better because of it.

November 9, 2005

Unstealth! Get Ready For Newsvine…

This morning, news broke that our new company, Newsvine, is about to hatch. Remember that name.

Newsvine.

You’ll be hearing it a lot over the next year.

First things first. I apologize to all Mike Industries readers for keeping this a secret, but I’m a firm believer in the theory that you should never talk about anything until you have something to show. In the next week or so, we’ll be opening up the gates with a private beta, and shortly after that, Newsvine.com will launch free to the world.

So what is it, and why did four perfectly happy Disney/ESPN employees leave their jobs to build it?

Just like your favorite news site, only smarter

Newsvine is a large-scale news media site which gives you almost all the same stories you read on sites like MSNBC and CNN but presents them in a much more attractive package. Attractive not just in looks but in function as well. At Newsvine, we feel strongly that an article’s life only begins the second it is published. It is only when readers interact with it that it achieves its full impact.

You just read an Associated Press story about the fiery riots in France on a major news site. Why shouldn’t you be able to comment on it like you would on a blog entry? At Newsvine you can. Why shouldn’t you be able to chat about it with whoever else happens to be reading the story at the same time? At Newsvine you can… right within the story itself.

We believe in turning news into conversation, and every page on Newsvine.com is designed to do precisely that.

So even though at launch, Newsvine will have almost all the same stories the biggest news sites have, how can we possibly replace the great exclusive reporting that outfits like ESPN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post produce?

We can’t. And we don’t want to.

Seeding The Vine

Companies like ESPN are terrific at providing the sort of in-depth coverage of sporting events that no one else in the world can. They are experts and spectacular at what they do. For that reason, we want to point you to ESPN.com (and any other site for that matter) whenever there is a great article to be read over there.

We do this via a process we call “Seeding Newsvine”.

Simply save our “Seed Newsvine” button (a bookmarklet) to your browser and click it whenever you read a great story anywhere on the web. Tag it with words to describe it (e.g. “alex-rodriguez, baseball, world-series”) and a link to the original story, along with your comment, will automatically appear at the following pages:

newsvine.com/alex-rodriguez
newsvine.com/baseball
newsvine.com/world-series

… which brings me to one of my favorite features of Newsvine: our URL structure. Anytime you want news on any subject, say “supreme-court”, simply go to newsvine.com/supreme-court and every story we have that is tagged as such will be there.

Oh and we also have local news available at urls like “seattle.newsvine.com” and “newyork.newsvine.com”.

How does it all stay organized?

Newsvine is five people, and we are all quite busy adding features to the site. There is no editor behind a desk deciding what stories are most important. You decide that. Whenever you see a story on Newsvine you think is important, simply click the “Vote” button next to the headline and you’ve just increased the importance score of that story. We feel that thousands of people are better at deciding what’s important than one, and that’s a major founding premise of Newsvine.

Oh, there’s just one more thing…

Since Newsvine is essentially produced by its readers, it is only fitting that its readers may also become writers. Anyone can sign up for a free Newsvine account and begin writing their column within minutes. Anytime you write an article or Seed Newsvine with a link to another article, it will appear in your column (at “yourname.newsvine.com”) and elsewhere around the site, depending on how it’s tagged.

Getting your own column on Newsvine isn’t only free but you’ll also keep advertising earnings associated with traffic to your pages. While other companies charge you for your own space to write or keep all the ad revenue themselves, we’re happy to help you make money whenever you add value to Newsvine.

Newsvine is a news company, not a Web 2.0 company

Our site doesn’t rely on Ajax, RSS, Wikis, or any of the other technologies you may be hearing about way too often these days. If you’d like to use some of the fancier aspects of our site like tagging or feeds, go ahead, but even with no knowledge beyond standard pointing and clicking, Newsvine is a best of breed news site. In other words, even your pappy can use it.

If you’d like to be in on the private beta or be notified when Newsvine launches, head on over and give us your deets!

Newsvine is funded by Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners with original ESPN.com CEO Mike Slade and Aquantive founder Nick Hanauer on the company’s Board of Directors.

UPDATE: To everyone who has asked, yes, Newsvine.com was the secret domain from this article I wrote several months ago. The story can now be told. :) Also, traffic seems to really be blowing up today. Here are just a few mentions of Newsvine from around the web:

November 8, 2005

Almost.

November 7, 2005

November Randoms

Some random thoughts and diversions from this month:

  • If webmail ever got around to looking this good, I would use it a lot more often.
  • I have been getting way way way inundated with requests for design and coding work in the Seattle area lately. If you’re good, and you live around here, you should drop me a line. No need for a cover letter or anything… just drop me a link to your portfolio and I’ll keep you in mind when the next request comes up.
  • Crest Lemon Ice Toothpaste: Come to where the flavor is.  I know Vanilla Mint was the early star for Crest, but this Lemon Icey dealio is the new leader in the clubhouse.
  • I don’t know what possessed me to buy “Calcium Enriched” milk at the store the other day, but let me pass some valuable information on to you: it’s awful.  Don’t buy it.
  • Four people got fired from The Apprentice this week, and two people got fired from The Marthapprentice. I know ratings are down on these two great shows, but does anyone know the back story behind the mass firings? I mean, that’s four fewer shows NBC can air now. To add to the confusion, this was all filmed before ratings numbers were even known. What’s going on here?
  • I’m convinced that any cold-fighting effects of Airborne are psychosomatic. But since it tastes decent, I will continue to drink it.
  • Dan Cederholm is right. Laced shoes are almost always overkill. I’ve been slip-on only for several months now and I may never go back. I suggest Eccos and Borns.
  • Terrell Owens is a jackass and I pity the team that will inevitably decide to take him in next year. I don’t care how good you are… you don’t diss your teammates publicly and you don’t put yourself above your team. If you have him on your fantasy team right now, you should drop him on principle. And if you have Jamal Lewis on your team, by the way, you should drop him on incompetence.
  • The motor on one of the windows of my Saab broke a few months ago and the dealership ordered a new part for me. Still no part, and now I just found out that there are apparently none of these parts available anywhere in the world. One woman has been waiting since May. What the hell? This is a 2001 car. Has anyone ever waited this long for a part?
  • James Archer’s new Fruitcast site wins my Gradient-Of-The-Year award. Yum. The site was designed by Joseph Wain.
  • Paul Mayne’s new “e-mail blender” is cool… the perfect diversion to plant subliminal thoughts of Mrs. Fields cookies in your head.
November 4, 2005

When Pseudomation Attacks!

Ok, I like Jason Fried just as much as the next guy, but this page on Meetup.com is a little ridiculous, no?

“Meet with local fans of Jason Fried to discuss signals, noise, better things, EK, ML, SU, JF, and 37signals’ New Album!“

Whoa! What’s going on here!? Can we look forward to a compilation of Jason’s best dive-bar karaoke in the coming weeks or did Meetup.com make that all up?

What’s happening here is something I like to call “pseudomation”. A web site, in an effort to expand their offerings and encourage participation, scours the internet, scrapes data from popular web sites, and attempts to use that data to personalize their own pages. It can be done automatically, by an intern, or automatically with a human “check” performed afterwards to make sure it makes sense.

What’s weird about this one though is that I can’t really tell which method they used. It seems pretty automatic, with the initials “EK”, “ML”, “SU”, and “JF” just plastered on there fairly nonsensically, but the main “theme” of the page appears to be Jason. Furthermore, the url is “37.meetup.com” and not “jasonfried.meetup.com” which is just even weirder to me.

Anyway, just a random Friday morning finding. Anybody know of any other examples of pseudomation gone bad?

UPDATE: Based on “nomation’s” comment below, this is actually *not* pseudomation but rather a legitimate Meetup.com group! No wonder it was so confusing.
October 27, 2005

sIFR 3: A Request for Requests

The excellent new sIFR-licious UW Admissions Site, designed and developed by Mercury Cloud.Now that Flash 7 penetration is well into the 90% range, it’s time to start thinking about version 3 of sIFR. One of the big selling points of sIFR 2 was that it was backwards-compatible with Flash 6, but given the most current Flash adoption numbers, that doesn’t seem necessary anymore.

SO… what The Dutch Wolf and I would like to do is provide a new version of sIFR which offers baseline compatibility with Flash 7 and progressive-enhancement for Flash 8.

We’ve already come up with a few things we’d like to add but are requesting feature requests from designers and developers in order to make sure this new version is as complete as possible. Here’s initial punchlist:

  • Ability to display crisper text (especially at small sizes) for people with Flash 8. The Flash 8 Player uses a new anti-aliasing algorithm that now renders Flash text as beautifully as Photoshop does.
  • More complete text formatting options using Flash’s CSS support. This includes the ability to color individual spans within a single sIFR file.
  • Ability to use (and abuse) Flash 8’s live effects like soft drop shadows behind text.
  • On-the-fly resizability of sIFR elements when windows are resized.
  • Actionscript 2 syntax.

A major requirement of this release is that it should only take you a minute or two to upgrade any existing sIFR installations, so rest assured that when the new version comes out, it’ll be a snap to install.

Since we’re already talking about sIFR, I wanted to quickly call out some excellent uses of it I’ve seen over the past few months:

  • Will Prater and friends over at Mercury Cloud have redesigned the admissions site for my alma-mater, The University of Washington, and it is spectacular. Some of the best use of sIFR I’ve ever seen and just a fabulous site to boot.
  • Chevrolet.com now uses sIFR on almost every page on the site thanks to Jim Amos and Campbell-Ewald.
  • Khoi Vinh has redesigned The Onion and Paragraph making subtle and disciplined use of sIFR.
  • Thanks to Eric Webster and Digitas, the Pontiac.com site uses sIFR for their mastheads. Pontiac.com is a good example of a Flash-heavy site making smart use of the technology.
  • I can’t remember who sent me this site (please let me know so I can give you credit) but Propel Fitness Water now makes nice use of sIFR and they even somehow managed to give their sIFR text nice wide kerning. I’d like to know if that required manual editing of font files. Looks very nice.

sIFR also was featured in Print Magazine this month thanks to the excellent Patric King.

So enough of the sIFR lovefest… let’s hear some feature requests!

UPDATE: I almost forgot… well actually I *did* forget… the entire AT&T.com site now also uses sIFR, thanks to the great work of Joe D’Andrea.
October 13, 2005

Bloglines Gets Key Commands, Hijacks Browsers

UPDATE: Ben Lowery of Bloglines has not only responded promptly in the comments below, but now both problems are fixed. The “unread” display is now also exactly as I suggested. Kudos to Ben and Bloglines! Much better!

I’m a huge Bloglines fan and have used it as my only newsreader for almost two years now. It’s a smart product created by an even smarter person, Mark Fletcher. Almost every single feature Bloglines has added since launch has been implemented with the utmost of care and has improved my experience on the site incrementally. Yesterday, however, the site added two features which are in need of fixing. In their announcement about the feature additions, Bloglines asked users to express their thoughts about the changes publicly, so that’s what I’m doing.

Problem #1: Keyboard Shortcut Hijacking

I didn’t even know this was possible, but somehow, the addition of keyboard shortcuts to Bloglines has completely disabled system-level shortcuts in my browser. Bloglines, probably in reaction to Google’s new shortcut-heavy newsreader, has added all sorts of key commands to help users navigate through their feeds. Unfortunately, now I can’t hit Command-W to close my browser window. Nor can I hit Command-Q to quit or Command-T to open a new tab. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but it’s definitely Bloglines because if I’m not on a Bloglines page, the key-commands begin working again.

My first reaction was that although this is obviously caused by Bloglines, it’s a bug in Safari that it’s even possible for a site to cause such a crippling. But then I switched over to Firefox and the same thing happened! What the hell! Any key-command gurus know what’s going on here? And is this happening on PCs too? It’s very very weird. I’ve never seen a web page that can cripple a browser like this.

Problem #2: Unread vs. Keep New

As part of the feature upgrade, Bloglines added something I’ve been wishing for a long time they had: the ability to differentiate between items that are truly unread vs. items I’ve specifically indicated to keep as unread. The difference here being that the latter are news items I’ve specifically noted as important, but I just haven’t had the time to go through them yet.

So the good news is that this feature has been added. Yay. The bad news is that the interface for it is not intuitive and it’s already annoying me. To the right is a diagram of the current implementation. Notice that some entries have one number and others have two separated by a colon.

Take the Kottke example. “0:9” means that there are 0 items I haven’t read and 9 items that I’ve specifically indicated deserve further review when I find a moment. Other entries, like Meyerweb, have only one number. The “2” means simply that there are two unread items. These numbers change wildly from month to month from me. Sometimes a site like Kottke will have zero “keep new” items and Meyerweb will have four… it just depends on where I’m at in my neurotic newsreading cycle.

The problem with this interface is a subtle one: First of all, colons imply either “time” or a “ratio”… neither of which apply in any helpful way to this situation. Second of all, there’s no intuitive clue as to whether the first number means “unread” and the second number means “keep new” or vice versa. Bloglines is forcing users to develop this association over time and it’s just not very helpful to do that.

To the right is what I propose. Notice the lack of colons. Notice also that the “unread” number is the only number in bold… thus more closely mirroring what Bloglines users are already used to: bold equals unread. The “keep new” number is set in light gray and unbolded to help you establish a quick connection that it represents a totally different thing. Furthermore, it mirrors the mail application analogy that what you haven’t read is bold and everything else isn’t.

So anyway, that’s my two cents about the Bloglines update. Please address these two issues and I’ll continue to sing your praises as the best way to consume RSS on the web.

October 9, 2005

The Safeway Club

Woody Allen (and I think Groucho Marx) once said “I would never join a club that would have me as a member.”

There is a special club, however, that I have refused entrance to dozens of times for entirely different reasons: The Safeway Club.

You see, I’m a huge supermarket snob. So much so that I have an entire post saved up which explains the difference between a good and a bad supermarket.

That said, I found myself at my local Safeway the other day. It’s a supermarket I hate for many reasons, not the least of which is their use of the “Safeway Club Card”. I’ve probably been to Safeway about 40 times in the last 10 years and every single time at the cash register they’ve asked me if I wanted to sign up for a Safeway Club Card. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Cute Checker Chick (CCC): Your total is $45.38. Do you have a Safeway Club Card?

Me: No.

CCC: Would you like to sign up for one?

Me: No thanks. I don’t come here often.

CCC: Ok. Thanks for shopping at Safeway.

40 different visits. Always the same result.

But this time, things went differently. I happened to be buying mostly alcohol (shut up… don’t judge) and the cute checker chick noticed that having a Club Card would take about 30% off my bill.

CCC: Your total is $33.29. Do you have a Safeway Club Card?

Me: No.

CCC: Now you do (throws card in my bag). Your total is $21.94.

Me: Ummm, ok. Thanks.

I tried to explain to the checker the significance of what she had just done but the accomplishment was mostly lost on her. One subtle difference in the delivery of the pitch and I am now a card-carrying Safeway Club member. Doesn’t mean I will start going there any more often, but hey, the card’s in my wallet now so I guess they figure that’s the first step in the assimilation.

All grocery stores with loyalty card programs should sign people up in this way. I can’t refuse a card if I’m not even asked to sign up for one.

October 9, 2005

iPod Giveaway #6: We Have A Winner

Last month’s iPod-A-Month Creativity Competition drew almost 500 entries but was a bit too easy. This month’s was significantly more difficult and unfortunately drew much fewer submissions. The good news, however, is that we not only have a winner in Jeremie Blais of Ottawa, Canada but $2304 was raised for the American Red Cross.

Jeremie’s entry showed effort, creativity, and taste, and as this month’s winner, he will receive an iPod Nano from me and a pair of $150 Etymolic earbuds from iLounge. Congrats Jeremie.

As always, the submission pool for competition ideas remains open until the end of the year.

September 30, 2005

The New Digs

As I was running after work the other day, I happened to jog by a young couple just as they were getting engaged. I mean, I was about 5 feet away right when the girl said yes. It was pretty cool and made me realize how lucky I am to have found an office in such a great area, and near such a beautiful running route.

A few months ago, when my co-founders and I started this new company, we looked long and hard before finding this space. Several other office buildings would have worked just fine, but this one was perfect. Like Goldilocks perfect. It’s not too small, not too big, and seems to fit just right with what we’re doing. It’s right on the water, near plenty of great restaurants, and is only a six-minute walk from my condo uptown.

Since moving in here several weeks ago, the team has accomplished an inordinate amount of work in a very small amount of time. So much so that we think a launch before the end of the year is highly probable.

But it’s not all work and no play around here. On a sunny day a couple of weeks ago, the crew went out parasailing in front of the office, and we have photos to prove it! Below are some shots of the new digs:

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