Design a new web site or a new application

 

I was looking for best practices to create a web site or in my specific case a facebook apps design.

This is for our MyNewResolutions Facebook applications. See this blog post for more information about it.

It seems that the most common way is to use Photoshop and then to create the XHTML/CSS from there. This is most common for graphic designer.

For HTML hackers, it is easier to start directly the mockup in XHTML/CSS.

If you are neither a photoshop guru (or an artist) nor a HTML hackers, you need to use a Fireframe software with a wysiwyg interface. The most common one seems to be from Adobe. Then, you still need to transform the resulting design to proper XHTML/CSS.

I was looking for a super simple and super quick Fireframe application. Facebook apps is usually not high in graphism anyway. Powerpoint is one solution but it seems to me cumbersome for web design.

And I found Balsamiq. I think this is the perfect match to quickly design a Facebook app. It is also possible to create automatically the XHMTL/CSS from the mockup with Napkee or BmmlExporter. I did not try those applications though.

Outsourcing an application in India

 

For our MyNewResolutions Facebook applications (See this blog post for more information about it) we were trying to understand the possibility of outsourcing the coding.

In my quest for Indian programmers, here is a quick study of the best outsourcing web sites.

Outsourcing website with Alexa ranking:

elance.com - 433

oDesk - 639

GetAFreelancer.com - 1200

rentacoder.com - 1800

guru.com - 1900

http://scriptlance.com - 3000
http://www.mturk.com - 7700

TopCoder - 35000

www.globalworkforce.com - enormous in US

And some review from various web sites:

www.elance.com – Generally a bit more expensive than other web sites, but still much cheaper than hiring someone locally in the USA. Providers on Elance are often of a higher quality than other web sites.

www.guru.com – Another possibility with freelancers in many different fields such as engineering, sales, legal – this site doesn’t focus only on programming.

www.odesk.com – Odesk is a bit different from other freelance websites in that it is more geared towards hiring people on an hourly basis and hiring teams of people. This is more effective for long term projects.

www.rentacoder.com – Very good for programming projects done at a fixed price. It works by escrowing the money for the project to give the provider some security, but you don’t need to release it until the project is completed.

www.globalworkforce.com – A provider of full time employees from multiple different countries (the Philippines, India etc).

 

Summary

I used elance and odesk to get quotes but finally as we were in a rush we had to build the application ourselves.

I got 4 propositions for the full facebook application: $250, $500, $500, $460

This was for a simpler version of MyNewResolutions. In our opinion to do the full MyNewResolutions Facebook application, it would require at least 5-10 times this.

15 propositions with hourly rates. From $6 to $20 per hour. Those prices are dependant of the number of referral (with $6, the engineer has no referral). The average is around $9-$12.

The birth of a new Facebook application

 

After many months (year?) of discussions about creating a web2.0 application, we have finally done it.

Here is the baby: Mynewresolutions on Facebook

to be fair, I had a couple of friends super motivated by this idea and I thought it was a good time to jump on the wagon. Here are some tidbits from one month of work.

The idea

The idea behind Mynewresolutions is very simple: it is the end of the year, people need an application to log their new year resolutions.

If this is successful, there are lots of possibilities to keep people interested by actually keeping track of those resolutions.

Design and framework

It is just so easy to jump into the code without thinking too much about the usability or the design. Especially as we were under crunch time and we thought the application would be small.

Big mistake… we wasted a lot of time on changing the design. It is almost as doing the application 2 or 3 times.

See my specific post about some other thought gathered on the net:
http://zhorba.blogspot.com/2009/12/design-new-web-site-or-new-application.html

Coding a facebook application

No beginner guide here. There are so many already on the web. We were almost beginner developers one month ago. The last time we coded was 10 years ago during our study. And it was a long time before social networking. This application is the fruit of 200-250 hours of work with all the learning.

We were under crunch time (the end of the year is only… once per year) so outsourcing was not an option. We did explore the idea though:
http://zhorba.blogspot.com/2009/12/outsourcing-application-in-india.html

The good news is it is so much faster than before to build a good application. Ajax is now quite easy thanks to Jquery. And the APIs and examples are everywhere on the net.

The bad news is about the Facebook API. Very sparse and bad documentation. The API itself is changing all the time and very buggy. This means applications have to be updated regularly and books are almost immediately outdated.

Monetizing

This is also a bad news. It is now very difficult to make any money from a facebook apps.

The success of an application is now related to its “stickiness” or ratio between daily users and monthly users. 

This is thus no surprise that most successful applications are games.

This probably explain the relative mediocrity of non-games applications on facebook. No revenue means no investment in those applications.

Trends for monetization:

1) Advertisement is not working. tons of data on this subject on the net.
2) Affiliation – Seems not that successful neither – No link about revenue from this model.

3) Virtual currency/virtual goods

4) Resell Emails address

5) Resell the application based on the number of active users. Even with no revenue those apps can be used in a marketing campaign to increase the users of another social media.

Almost 4 percent of applications have over 10,000 monthly active users which isn’t bad (June 2009)

Using a Wii as a media center (Updated)

This is a major update from this post: Wii as a media center

Ok, I bought a Wii a couple of months ago. My main goal was to get rid off Comcast cable (too expensive). I thought that instead of buying an expensive laptop to stream hulu, It would be better to buy a gaming console. I have 2 daughters (1 and 3 years old so I thought the Wii was the best fit as a gaming console for the next 2-3 years).

Looking at the Console competition landscape: Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wii seems not, at first glance, the best console as a media center:
- Can't just plug it to a Windows media center
- No upnp capability
- No Hard drive so limited streaming capacity (In fact it is possible through the homebrew hacking scene.)

But the cheap price, the integrated wifi and the fact that it is the best console for young children made my decision.

Anyway, here is my need:
1) Stream my music from my windows PC
2) Possibility to use Hulu
3) Movie streaming from my PC

There was some major updates since my last post on this subject:
- The Playon version for the Wii is now in Beta. here is my review.
- After hacking my Wii, I tested MplayerCE
- Flash upgrade on the Wii browser (hello Youtube)

I am blown away by the quality of the video that you can stream through Wifi now! Playon and MplayerCE are just awesome softwares. I tried tons of other solution: Orb, Tversity, Weezo and all of them had terrible streaming video quality.

It is great! I can watch all my last Hulu show on my TV through the Wii now. Bye bye Comcast, hello Hulu.

Basically, I am using Mplayer for Music and Divx Streaming and Playon for Hulu streaming. (Those two solutions let a Wii connect a remote PC with media content).

Of course, I am still missing some old DVR features. I would need to add a tv tuner to my PC to fix this but it would become an overly complex project.

[Update August 2010] - I tried this month the Netflix online service with my Wii. It is awesome. Hard to believe the streaming is coming throught the Wii.

Here how it is working: When you subscribe to Netflix online package, you can ask to get the streaming through a Wii. In this case, you will receive a free DVD with a software to Stream Netflix (yes, even with a one month trial). The interface is great, the movie quality perfect. You can stop the movie/rewind/move forward/Resume a movie couple days later. No bugs, hassle free. Compare to Playon this is night and day. Of course, Playon is giving Hulu...

The only drawback of the Netflix online streaming solution is the choice of movie. It is really poor. Perhaps good enough during a couple of month and then I guess you will have seen all the interesting movies.

Best Apps for Ipod Touch

I just bought an Iphone 3GS… I know this article is about Ipod Touch. I basically wanted to say farewell to my old companion with this post.

So here it is…

Offmaps – Amazing application for Ipod touch! The power of google map without paying those expensive data plan. A must have for any Ipod touch user.

Keytasks – The application is not free and already End of Life. What a nice advice, thanks Zorba! But the sad truth is there is no replacement yet to sync all the outlook task to the Iphone/Ipod. I am testing toodledoo right now…

Skype – You can transform your Ipod touch in a phone. Plug in the ipod a headset with a mic and it is indeed a skype phone. You can perhaps even try to use the bluetooth chips in it since the last software upgrade. And if your friends are still teasing you with their “real” iphone, you can still use some fake caller. I was using “FAC”.

EverNote - I have done a quick review of Evernote last month. I still think this application sucks on the Ipod touch as the offline mode is really annoying. But it is the only app that can sync text and pictures quickly. I am using it mostly to copy/paste block of google map image before driving somewhere.

iPass – To get access to a wifi network more often

RSSplayer – Not perfect, but still the best around. I am listening to tons of podcast but I don’t sync my ipod regularly. with this small app, I can download the podcast when in a Wifi spot and listen it in my car. Cool.

The perfect Windows Desktop

[Update March 2011 - See my new windows desktop]

I think I found the Desktop experience Nirvana.

My requirement for the perfect desktop:
- Minimal CPU and memory utilization. My PC needs to be lightning fast.
- Simple and clean environment (no distraction)
- Possibility to let message or Post-it in the background

I was able to do this with those 2 amazingly tiny and free application:
1) BGinfo – Possibility to add text on your backround image. 0 CPU utilization when it is done. Completely transparent. Just amazing.

2) DesktopOK – Why this is not by default on Windows is just beyond me. Everytime I change my screen resolution, my icons are moved everywhere in my screens. With this tiny (30kB!) application, I can save and restore all my icons on my desktop. Just cool.

Here is a screen capture.

How to deal with online communities?

I have to admit, I am still not using a lot Facebook and Twitter. I think I understand now that I could use those tools to build and manage my online communities a lot better.

In the future, I guess our online brand will be critical for both our personal life and professional life. We need to manage them. One issue I have is the separation between those online identities. I don't want my regular employer to know that I am blogging about the Wii or anything else. I don't want anybody to look at my family pictures unless they are very close friends and so on.

Let's start from my need:

- Use some tools to keep in touch with my close friends and manage my personal brand with them
- Spend more time on the Kitesurfing community (and some other forums)
- Develop the community around the Zhorba blog
- Create my professional online brand

A complete list of tools possible:
- I would prefer to have one tool as a dashboard for everything else

Possibilities:  Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Mail, Mailing-list, Forum, Linkedin, friendfeed, su.pr, thwirl, seesmic, flock

For a dashboard, there are 3 possibilities: Seesmic, Tweetdeck and Flock. I am biased for Seesmic as I am following Loic Le Meur for quite some time. But even if Seesmic has tons of fancy features, Flock seems to me more universal. I can update my blogs, forum, tweeter and so  on with just one interface.

And now for each need its process:

- Use some tools to keep in touch with my close friends and manage my personal brand with them

Solution: Use Facebook only in Flock and gmail on Flock. My personal blog is automotically published in Facebook.

- Spend more time on the Kitesurfing community

Solution: Have a page that summarize all the forums activity on Flock

- Develop the community around the Zhorba blog

Solution: Create a twitter account for Zhorba - Use Twitter/su.pr to develop my blog

- Create my professional online brand

Solution: Use Linkedin

Use Flock as the dashboard for everything.

Some good reference:
"Tribes" from Seth Godin
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/twitter-apps-ratings-reviews/
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/facebook-not-replace-twitter/
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/start-settle-fall-love-twitter/
http://www.jamessenior.com/post/Facebook-ate-my-blog-content.aspx

A good example of community online:
http://www.communityofsweden.com/

SEO 101 for this blog

I am trying to get more visitor to this blog. I guess it is a reasonable objective for any blogger...

The first step is normally to get in Google. It is kind of weird as even if I selected on blogger the option "publish this web site on Google", Google does not index it. Perhaps later...

I subscribed this site to yahoo.com and to bing.com. This later is amazing, just 1 day later, it was indexed!

The next step is to find some Blog index web site. I subscribed to some of them. Let's see how it goes.

BTW, I also got a Beta access to su.pr. This Just seem amazing. In one hour: 8 visitors. Almost 1/3 of the traffic I got since the beginning of the month!

Wii Hack

 

Ok, I have discovered the dark side of the Wii… I was trying to check how to copy a wii game (just by curiosity of course) and I found a all new world.

Here are some web sites:
http://hbc.hackmii.com/
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=98

Basically, it is possible to load a 3rd party soft on the Wii called an Homebrew channel and from there install tons of other software (DVD player, Games, …).

And the best explanation I found about copying wii game:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/769824

Never tried it though.

the good news for me is that the hacker scene seems to be well alive on the Wii. Always nice to know.

Wii as a media center

 

[Update September 2009 – See my updated post on this subject after more testing, the post below was written after just a couple of weeks of testing.]

Ok, I bought a Wii last week. My main goal was to get rid off Comcast cable (too expensive). I thought that instead of buying an expensive laptop to stream hulu, It would be better to buy a gaming console. I have 2 daughters (1 and 3 years old so I thought the Wii was the best fit as a gaming console for the next 2-3 years).

Looking at the Console competition landscape: Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wii seems not, at first glance, the best console as a media center:
- Can't just plug it to a Windows media center
- No upnp capability
- No Hard drive so limited streaming capacity (In fact it is possible through the homebrew hacking scene.)

Anyway, here is my need:
1) Stream my music from my windows PC
2) Possibility to use Hulu
3) Movie streaming from my PC

The only interesting link I found about this subject is this one:
http://www.last100.com/2007/06/25/five-resources-to-create-a-wii-media-center/

But related to Mac only software. I need to build a page like this for windows server.

so far, I have been very disapointed with the Wii quality as a media center. for the following reason:

- Lack of Flash 8 and 9 on the Opera browser (Impossible to watch Hulu, Youtube, Last.fm, Deezer.com, …).
- Quality of movie streaming is *really* bad on the Wii. Impossible to watch a movie on the Wii from your local PC.

Here are the current solution I am using:
Web site usable on the Wii: http://www.liquidicelabs.com/wiiportal/

Current solution that I am testing for browsing streaming content from my PC: Orb, TVersity and Weezo. Those solutions basically let a Wii connect a remote PC with media content.

So far, Orb as the better interface and Tversity seems better to stream video (still not watchable though).

I can’t wait for the playon (http://www.themediamall.com/playon) addon for Wii!

Other application in my radar for testing:
- Ampache (Winamp streaming over http)
- Jinzora

Browsing around about this subject I found those amazing web sites:
http://moblog.net/view/885546/watch-movies-perfectly-every-time-on-wii-best-wii-media-center-solution
http://wiimediacentre.com/
http://www.wiiloaded.com/Announcine-WiiMC-The-Wii-Media-Center-t-5917-wii
http://wiideocenter.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I will improve this article after some more testing.

I have seen this answer from Orb forum:
http://forums.orb.com/viewtopic.php?t=7982

That’s amazing news!

The new applications I am desesperatly tracking…

 

1) Xmarks for google Chrome. I can’t stand Firefox anymore (too slooowww!!!, eating all my cpu). I still have a firefox running on my laptop for a couple of reasons: Xmarks, websites not working with Google chrome, some other addons.

I need a way to sync my bookmark between all my PCs and between my browser applications (Firefox and Chrome).

Track this: http://blog.xmarks.com/

2) Playon for the Wii. This is coming soon. I can’t wait to see the quality of Hulu on the Wii. If it is good enough, I can at last remove my comcast subsciption.

Track this: http://www.themediamall.com/blog

3) New Iphone 3.0 applications and New iphone. I am using an Ipod touch right now because I just don’t want to pay 30$ a month for the data plan. Beside, it is a good test to see if I can live with only wifi without email pushed after nearly 5 years plugged to a blackberry.

I am planning to switch to a real Iphone sometime around September/October.

Track this: http://www.iphonehacks.com/

and this: http://reviews.cnet.com/iphone-atlas/

and this one: http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/

4) New Wii hardware and software. When Nintendo will take seriously the HTPC market with the Wii??

They should support the latest Flash on their Opera Browser and support the DLNA/uPNP with an external Hard drive. this would be a killer app for the Wii!

Track this: http://www.mywiinews.com/

and this: http://www.n4g.com/wii/default.aspx

How do I use Evernote

First of all, I don’t understand why it is not possible to use Evernote offline on Iphone/Ipod touch. Please, Please, Please Evernote add the offline editing capacity on the mobile application of Evernote!

Evernote processing:

1) As part of my regular GTD process, I process all Evernotes notes:

- Each note should have a tag: Temp, meeting, Task, Blog

- meeting notes should be copied on a txt file. I don’t trust Evernote for long term storage.

- Notes with a Tag “task”, should be treated as an “in basket” object (see GTD).

2) In meeting, I am using the Evernote application to take my meeting minutes. The landscape view is perfect for fast typing. I can’t modify my note though which is a pain but I didn’t find another application to do that.

3) On my laptop, quick Notepad application. Shortcut are a big part of it:

A newest version of EverNote had been released, and how it allowed for a couple of interesting global shortcut keys: CTRL+ALT+V and CTRL+ALT+N. The first would allow you to paste the contents of the Windows clipboard into a brand new note. The second would open EverNote and start a brand new note for you.

4) Tracking Blogs Ideas. Everytime I have an idea for a new Blog post, I just add a couple of lines in Evernotes, tag it with “Blog”. I will update the blog post multiple time until I find the quality of the post good enough.

5) In my everything in the cloud personal strategy (perhaps another post about this one day), I use Evenotes as my data hub. This means, if I loose everything, I can go in a cybercafe, log to evernotes and find everything (where to find everything and some login/password).

First Post

This blog will be used to give some feedback to the community about things I found on the net. I hope it will be useful to somebody oneday...