NLC-Molly/web development

Traditionally, open source projects embrace the work of developers but shun the input of designers. Adaptive Path and Mozilla are taking steps towards exploring the intersection of UX and agile development and encouraging greater participation in the open source development process by design professionals.

Oh, the joys of an open concept office. Watch as two programmers from non-linear creations face off.

This article is clearer. Sounds very ambitious. They've got a crazy "social platform" that I suspect would have very deep data on people's social relationships. They are opening this all up... so you can us it all in your own mashups. You can also write code specifically for Yahoo's applications - plugging your applications right into things like Yahoo! mail, yahoo! Front Page, Search, My yahoo! etc. Wow.

SEO & CMS get jiggy with the Design Code Rap... LOL. Not sure I can pull of the use off the use of the word "jiggy" but the video is pretty funny.

A few CSS tricks that I haven't seen before... like the "triadic" background below; Layering PNG files to give the page a 3 dimensional feel.

franL is one smart cookie. She knows a lot about what it takes to create and promote sites online. Within her blog, you'll find development and marketing related stumbles - but her real gift lies in the "social" side of social marketing.... Having gotten to know her a bit via SU, I've found that she's always at the ready with great insights and useful advice.

Usually I'm a big fan of the thoughts that come out of e-business consultancy, FutureNow. But in this case, I think they are recommending the wrong approach. Below, you'll find their take on Maslow's Hiearchy of Needs, tweaked to describe how one might prioritize website improvements.



The prioritization of web activities needs to be approached more holistically than they are letting on. Sure, getting functionality working is very important - but I've come across far too many situations where clients have gotten completely carried away with features only to come to the sober realization that they had not properly interpreted their visitors needs. Persuasion, Usability and Functionality should be viewed in tandem... and weighted according to their potential impact on meeting the goals of the business. If done right from the beginning, the overall development and deployment time isn't longer than doing things sequentially as Eisenberg suggests. (In fact, I might argue, that it will reduce the amount of time you'll have to rework stuff.) Accessibility and "Intuitiveness" should be built automatically into any development process... Developers should be provided with a set of guidelines before they start coding; Copywriters should understand how to write effective copy for the web before they type a word. Again, a little up-front planning before you embark on a project will result in a shorter time-to-launch and something that may actually generate some revenue.

If you find yourself with a number of potential projects on your hands and you are having difficulty prioritizing, I recommend that you take a brief look at the NLC Performance Framework Methodology before spending any money on website improvements.

Google took a few steps forward in the area of internationalization this week. They are now integrating their machine translation technology into GMail and Google Talk (their IM client.)

I thought their IM approach was particularly interesting. Now you simply send a message to the Google translation bot and it will send it back to you in your chosen language.

I haven't tried this yet. Can anyone comment on the quality of the translation?