UI Design for Social News Sites

LOOK UP! (need I say more??)

I'm a huge fan of HackerNews, I can't thank the community enough, I am slightly wiser for using the site, and have been introduced to an infinite number of subjects I need to learn more about. 

Like most, I don't upvote as many entries as I should, and I don't read enough of the comments, or get involved in the conversation enough. 

Why is that? Simple. 

When I click on an entry (I almost always open them in a new tab), I have to make an effort to go back to the entry and read the comments or upvote.

If you followed this link from HackerNews, look up, and you'll see (hopefully) that the HN entry is above. Click here if you didn't come from HN.

You can up vote, read the comments in context, etc. and because the HN header is so small already, it fits the page nicely and isn't too intrusive, unless you want to read the comments. 

Click the 'comments' link and the comments will show. 

Of course, with control of the HN domain, there could be a nice little ajax link to extend the view to show the comments, and therefore get rid of the scrolling in the upper frame. 

If you like this idea and think it would benefit the community, up vote it (hey, you might as well, the arrow is right above you), and maybe PG will implement it. 

If you don't like it, let me know why? I'm kinda curious. Clearly I think it's a pretty simple idea. 

Thanks, 
Pete

A shake-up for the US Auto Industry

Elon Musk of Tesla Motors was right that Silicon Valley can shake up the car industry, but maybe his view didn’t go far enough.

Tesla planned to take on the big 3 and recreate the US auto industry only went as far as designing an innovative product and creating demand for that product, things the big 3 have been somewhat unable to follow-through on recently.
However, where Musk didn’t go far enough was in his non-innnovative plan of creating his own manufacturing capacity.

Though lots of blame can be placed on US Automakers management teams for the current state of the US auto industry and requests for a bail-out, the biggest issue is simply that the Big 3 have been unable to build cars that people want to buy.

With the exception of the SUV market, US auto manufacturers have struggled to capture the audience and following which European or Asian manufacturers have garnerd, and even in the SUV market, competitors were able to take significant market share once they tooled-up to the growing demand for these types of vehicles.

There has been talk of breaking-up GM into it’s distinct brands. This would allow smaller companies to fail without having disastarous effects on the economy.

However, simply breaking up the brands doesn’t go far enough. Going a step further puts the US Auto industry into an opportunity position, rather than just struggling to survive.

The opportunity is to not only split the Big 3 into their component brands, but to split the manufacturing and logistics into a completely seperate company.

This creates an architecture in the auto industry of brands becoming design, engineering and marketing firms while the manufacturing sector focuses on solely manufacturing and the logistics involved in that.

Tesla and Fisker, just two new US based brands looking to take on the big 3, make the case for outsourcing manufacturing.

Tesla suspected to be in financial difficulty itself, has spent an enourmous amount of time and money tooling up for manufacturing, and is in preperations to build a new manufacturing facility in California.

Fisker signed a deal with Valmet Autotive of Finland to build the the Fisker Karma sedan. Valmet currently builds the Boxster and Cayman for Porsche.

 A redesign of the architecture of the auto industry, and seperating design/engineering from manufacturing could breath new life into the US auto industry and improve the abilities of market forces to drive the auto industry.

Strenghts

1) moderate disruption to manufacturing sector - retool for more flexible production if necessary

2) minimal disruption to external contractors

3) reliance on manufacturing and logistics expertise to direct future manufacturing capabilities

4) improved manufacturing quality as manufacturers will compete for contracts rather than just be handed the design

 

Weakness

1) lack of current agility in manufacturing capabilities

 

Opportunities

1) Lower impact of brand failure

2) manufacturing becomes a competitive market in it’s own right

3) lower barrier to entry for car companies - start-ups can purchase manufacturing capacity

4) agile manufacturing creates a more competitive and adept marketplace

5) market opportunities for growth in alternative fuel/energy sources

 

Threats

1)poor manufacturing quality reputation for North American auto makers. 

 

Is Facebook planning a Digg style feature?

After essentially killing off the HearWhere Facebook app this morning, and replacing it with a simple ability to post links to HearWhere shows on Facebook, I got to wondering if Facebook, and this applies to MySpace almost equally, will add a digg type feature to the site.

Obviously the social network is already in place, and link pages are a somewhat regular occurance.
so how big a step would this be to implement this in profiles.

The same applies for MySpace, though I don't know that linking pages is as ingrained.

FriendFeed is too Easy, and maybe Facebook should follow suit

Though I haven't been a HUGE follower of twitter, or friendfeed, in the past week I've started to slowly come around to what FriendFeed is offering.

So, I decided to give the FriendFeed api a try, and see what it was like.

WOW! that is just FAR too easy. The api set-up is simple, beyond words. I had the api sending data from HearWhere to FriendFeed within maybe 20 minutes of downloading the api pack.

Whether or not people actually share HearWhere shows using FriendFeed is an entirely different matter, but you can try it out on the HearWhere site.

The simplicity of the FriendFeed api, combined with the lack of interest in the HearWhere facebook app, and the upcoming changes to Facebook have also lead to changes sharing HearWhere shows on Facebook.

Now, rather than adding the application, HearWhere will just post a link to Facebook, and that link will be shared with your friends.
Unfortunately, that means that for the time being the capability of seeing what shows your friends are going to with a list of friends going to that show is no longer available.
Though with the low volume of users who signed-up for the Facebook app, it appears that functionality was limited anyway - can't see who's going if nobody has installed the app.

The FriendFeed team deserve a huge congratulations for making their api so simple.

HearWhere.com releases iPhone version of site

The HearWhere tagline of 'find live music anywhere' has taken on new meaning with the launch of the iPhone version of the site 'http://iPhone.HearWhere.com'.

Now live music can be discovered anywhere around the world, from anywhere in the world, no longer tethered to a desktop.

The idea for the mobile version (not supporting flash lite just yet), is that now while out to dinner with friends, you can take out your iPhone, lookup who's playing near by, have a listen to a few bands, and decide what to go see.

Now get out and support the live music scene!

PR with the lemmings, or go against the grain

With the US long weekend over, I am working on getting some PR to further the growth of HearWhere.

Lots of blogs advise to submitting Press Releases on Tuesdays through Thursdays.
The theory being that if you release on Friday, it sits around over the weekend and doesn't get enough attention when nobody is looking, and Monday people are catching up on the press releases that you shouldn't have sent in on Friday(?).

However, does this also mean that most Press Releases get submitted mid-week and therefore there is more competition on those days? Since everybody is taking the advice of the PR blogs, should I zig while everybody else zags? or follow the advice of the experts?

iPhone without Flash???

Thankfully nobody is reading this blog, but even if you are, and you've seen HearWhere, I assume it isn't a stretch to say 'hey, this would be cool on the iPhone'.
But there is a hitch, Apple has decided not to allow Flash to be installed on the iPhone.

I found this strange as so many great media sites use flash, but Quicktime supports flash files, so it might not be as detrimental as first impressions would make you think.

However, the question still has to be asked, why would Apple block flash? What is there strategy with using quicktime as a flash player? if that is there strategy at all.... puzzling...