Garrett Murray of Maniacal Ragehas found a use for all the fuss about Gmail.
I have donated my remaining Gmail account invitations to him. So if you are still after one, please visit him, and consider a donation to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Let’s use the hype to do some good.
Strangely, I picked up a Gmailinvite just as a few bloggers were beginning to ask what all the fuss was about.
As most people rightly pointed out, most of the fuss over Gmail centers around the fact that you can’t actually get one yet. Google have cunningly tapped into a human drive that is with us from the day we are born until the day we die. The desire to want something we can’t have.
Now we all have Gmail, (and if anyone does not, I may – depending on when you are reading this post – be able to help you out with an invite) are we still mad keen on it, and is anyone actually using it?
My initial thoughts on the Gmail service is that it’s good, but I can’t yet see what advantages – apart from the 1GB storage – it holds over Hotmail or Yahooservices.
Gmail are pinning all their hopes on the way it is marketed. In their words, ‘Gmail is different’. They are massively plugging the 1GB of storage of course, but there is also the search facility, and the feature of showing messages in context as conversations. If Gmail does become successful it will be because these features catch the imagination of the public, and not because it is a superior email service to others.
My new Gmail address is andyhume@gmail.com.
Here’s a good one!
This afternoon, I managed to post a rather sensitive password on to a very busy community’s web forum. A forum, that many WordPressusers may well be familiar with actually, as you’re all very busy on it.
Anyhow, after a 30 minute password recovery project – involving a quick visit to a server admin panel, ftp clients, and the like – I popped back to the ‘forum’ to see exactly what, in my stupidity, I had done.
Perhaps it’s just me , but there is something about the login interfacethat is slightly confusing. It seems a little tied up with the whole ‘new post’ thing. Maybe it could be moved above the ‘new topic’ <h2>, or perhaps to the bottom near the submit button. May suggest it to Matt.
What’s ironic of course, was that I was already logged in – hence the message being posted – and didn’t even need to enter any passwords.
Learning about Sam’s Club’s new offer in a post from Scrivsyesterday, I decided to nose around at it a little more, with half an eye on the future of web professionals everywhere.
What they are offering appears to be slightly different to your standard $5 (£2.72!) web design package – if there is such a thing. It is certainly feature packed, with options for e-commerce with intergrated merchant accounts, server logs, message boards, and the like. Of course, without signing up for a yearly subscription to Sam’s Club and then paying the extra for the website package (neither of which I was particularly attracted by!), it’s not possible to ascertain exactly what is available for $5 a month; and frankly, I’ve lost interest in finding out anyway.
What has been raised though, is the question of whether freelance designers like myself – and Scrivs I believe – be concerned about the rise of template packages such as these, no matter how featureless or feature packed they are?
There is no doubt that these offers are taking work from smaller design firms and the freelancer. That is unfortunate for whoever is losing the work; but at the same time it is pushing us to understand how we need to extend our skills as designers and developers.
Services such as Sam’s Club, which offer a web based interface allowing pretty much anyone to set up a website ‘in less than 5 minutes’, lack one pretty crucial function. No one is planning or designing the site. Users are just dumping content into various holes, specified by the templates. How are these sites really different from a small business owner, sitting down on a Sunday afternoon with a copy of Frontpage, and ‘designing’ a site for his business? Anyone with a reasonable amount of common sense and patience can do that, but it does not guarantee a successful online store, or customer service solution, or anything really.
My point is this: Yes, these services will take work from freelancers; but is it work that we would value highly anyway? I, like all designers, take a certain amount of pride in my work. I happen to specialise for a particular client type in my work, and I have a measure of self-esteem, and belief that I offer an excellent service in that area. The expertise I offer, as do all designers and developers, cannot be funnelled into some templates for a £2.72 website. What about information architecture, site goals, target audience, search engine optimization, not to mention standards.
These are facets of design that web professionals obtain through knowledge, experience, and practise. They are also skills that cannot be replicated by a template, the skills that we should continue to learn and develop, and the skills which mean we have a few more years left in us yet.
The philosophy behind the Sam’s Club service is, as Scrivs rightly points out, to increase the number of small/medium businesses with a web presence. So let’s hope, firstly for good old Sam’s sake, that many people sign up for it; but let’s also hope that within a few years, these businesses come to see the importance of a successful site, and realise what they have missed out on by buying a template service.
Remember the digital watch you bought from the petrol station for 99p thinking you’d found a bargain? Me too, but Rolex didn’t have much to worry about did they?
Thanks for some of the nice commentsabout this site. The WordPress community, which I think is the majority of my visitors at the moment, seem like a pleasant and encouraging bunch.
Still totally at a loss with what to do with the side bar here at The Dredge. I am playing around with offering a DOM based style switcher, allowing users to choose between two or three styles of the side bar, and seeing which proves most popular. I am quite happy with the rest of the design so far, and once I have tied the side bar into the overall feel, I think I will be well on the way to possibly having a finished Web site!
Implementing a site design while the site is live is quite an interesting concept. I remember Zeldmandoing it a few years back, and thinking it was a very bizzare affair. In hindsight, I imagine he found it quite exciting, and no doubt received hundreds of thoughts from visitors during the redesign with their individual opinions and ideas. Having the time to mull many concepts and notions for a design is not something Web developers are generally used to. Many projects tend to end up with some deadline or other looming dangerously close, and time to sit on a problem or mull over a concept is often unavailable.
I have enjoyed, and indeed, am enjoying, the ‘no pressure’ aspect of The Dredge’s development. For example, yesterday I added the little ‘Dredge the Archives:’ image replacement for the search interface. Yes, that’s all I did.
Anyway, having said all that, you probably realise I would encourage comments about any aspect of the site’s design. Infact I would like them very much, as I have no strong feelings about where to go with the design, and will probably mull things over for a good few weeks before making any more changes.
Isn’t that great. I’ll just wait and see what springs to mind… no pressure.
Dan Rubin and Didier Hilhorst, the co-founders of Sinelogic Press, have recently published their first e-book, “Budget Design: Increase Profit by Improving Process.”
It is available for download from the Sinelogic PressWeb site in pdf format.
The book is aimed at small design firms and freelance designers, and covers every aspect of budget design; from contract negotiation, site planning, and content structure, to tips on implementing designs in quick and efficient ways.
Many designers will be able to relate to the issues discussed by Dan and Didier. How many times do small site projects seem straightforward in your mind, up until the moment you come to implement them? This book covers every corner of the process, helping save time and budget in ways that should make every Web developer think about the way they work.
I was a fan of this book from the minute I started scrolling, and would recommend it to anyone working in Web technology. Let’s face it, there are always ways in which we can improve our efficiency at work, and cut down on wasted hours – and wasted monies.