Tag: web

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Referring to…

Tim Bray writes about Referral Information Loss as it relates to links from Twitter clients (and in the comments, other pieces of software) and in the end says:

If someone follows a link in one of my tweets, I think whoever owns that URL is owed the information that they came from http://twitter.com/timbray.

As a person who uses the web, I don’t think Tim is “owed” that information at all. I think it’s my choice. When using a browser, I make no efforts to hide the referer when I browse the web (and there are many ways to do so, and many reasons to do so) because I tend to believe that it should be a personal choice. If you don’t want your browser to share that information, you have the power to control it.

The main issue he’s interested in, is that with Twitter clients that send a URL to a browser to display, there perhaps should be referer information, but isn’t. I agree that it would be nice to have, but it should also be controllable, the same way it is in a browser. In fact, I can see that Twitter might even find it useful (maybe even “monetizable” if that’s a word) to somehow pass on that referer info, as well as user agent, and other relevant info.

Of course Tim, much like myself, is a publisher on the web. A single person, a blogger, probably just looking for data for data’s sake. Neither of us are larger corporations looking to market to you and sell you the latest piece of crap (besides our ideas.) For me it’s more of a “wow, someone followed that link to get to my site!” rather than “wow, how can I make money off of this person who followed that link to get to my site!”

So I’m marking referer data as NICE TO HAVE but not REQUIRED.

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Users vs. Accounts vs. Signer-Uppers

I’m a signer-upper. I admit it. I have a problem. Most of my friends are too. (Well, my nerdy online friends, but then, that’s most of my friends.)

Space Available

“Hey look, Froblunet launched today!?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, but I should probably sign up, create a profile, and check it out!”

And so it goes…

Scattered across the web are pieces of me… Accounts I’ve signed up for, wanting to check out some new site, just to see how they do it. How do they handle importing friends? How do they do uploads? How? How? How? It’s a question web people tend to ask. We’re either convinced there’s something interesting to see, or something to learn, so we sign up, give it a try, and maybe use it. Or maybe not. I should probably sign up… this might be the next big thing!

And then sites get to brag that they have 1 million users. Or that in their first day they had 100,000 people sign up. (75,000 of which never return.) But the media likes those numbers, and the news sites, and blogs, and investors like those numbers. They make everyone feel good. Except me.

Here’s an idea… Now that I’ve signed up for Froblunet, which is the hottest new thing since yesterday, I’d be totally fine with them emailing me months later if I never log in again and saying:

Hey, we noticed you haven’t logged in for 3 months, are you still interested in using Froblunet? If not, would you prefer to:
1. Delete your account (We’ll delete your data, and your email, and never bother you again.)
or
2. Inactivate your account (You can reactivate any time… we’ll reserve your username, and keep your email on file in case you ever want to try it out again, but we won’t email you again.)

I’d probably pick option 2 in many cases. Yes, inactivate my account! (Maybe it’s just my fear of deleting accounts. Please tell me I’m not the only one.)

But it’ll never happen.

I mean, I’d like to see this happen… but I think it’s unlikely. Sure, some engineer at Froblunet might think it makes sense, and would probably prefer to know that the people using the system are actually using the system. More accurate numbers are things engineers tend to like. Capacity planning and all that. But the sales and marketing guys would never go for it. Why say “We have 200,000 (active) users” when they can say “We have 500,000 users!”

By the way, I’m launching this new site next week that I’d love to have you sign up for…

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PHP error_reporting

PHP (Once again a note for myself, but if you find it useful, well, you’re welcome!)

After a PHP upgrade, I noticed at least one bit of PHP code one the server wasn’t working (the TextLinkAds plugin for WordPress) so after a bit of digging around in php.ini, I found that this line was uncommented: 

error_reporting  =  E_ALL

Which was causing warnings to spit out when some PHP scripts were run. I commented that line, and uncommented this line instead… 

error_reporting = E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR|E_CORE_ERROR

…for a little bit less error reporting/warnings about things, and that fixed it.

I’m sure this is not a cure-all, as another site with the same plugin always worked fine, and was never affected, but still, I didn’t really like seeing those warnings (which I believe are harmless, but they may need investigating anyway.)

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Visitor Stats

I’m typically not one to obsess over statistics related to the visitors of this web site, but I figured I’d take a look and see what the numbers might tell me.

Stats by Browser

Firefox is the winner here, which wasn’t too surprising to me. I was surprised to see Chrome ahead of Safari though, even if by a small percentage. Of course I’m saddened that Internet Explorer even shows up at all. At least Chrome beat IE. Also, welcome SeaMonkey user!

Stats by Operating System

Too many Windows users! I’m kidding… sort of. I mean, I tend to write about things related to Macs, Linux, and open source… none of which are Windows. My assumption is that the people with corporate jobs who are forced to use Windows machines at work (but use Macs and Linux machines at home) tend to browse this site while on the job. Yeah, that makes sense. Also, welcome to both Android users, and that lone Playstation Portable user!

Stats by Browser / Operating System

Firefox / Windows users take the lead! So at least some Windows users are smart enough to install Firefox. Not surprising, as I think it’s been at least a few years since even die-hard Microsoft fans realized that Firefox is a better/safer browsing experience than Internet Explorer. As for IE being second? Those are obviously the corporate drones who do not have privs to install Firefox. At least Safari made it into the list once… Also, welcome Mozilla Compatible Agent / iPhone (what is that exactly!?) and your friend using Mozilla / Linux!

Stats by Screen Resolution

Hooray for more pixels! Is no one visiting this site on their shiny new Netbook? I spent so much time optimizing for 800×600 when I got my Eee PC.. all for naught! Those 1920×1080 screens must be all the designers I know. And that 320×396? That’d be the iPhone.

So join me in welcoming all visitors to the site… be they Chrome / Windows users, or iPad users, 1024×600 screen resolution users. Welcome!

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Data goes in, Data comes out.

Data Portability

When you’re building a web application (you know, like Twitter, or Flickr, or Facebook, or Last.FM, or Posterous) you obviously want people to put data into it, and you’re going to make it easy to do.

But are you making it easy for people to get their data out of it?

Here’s my simple rules for building a web application:

  1. Make it easy for users to get their data into your system.
  2. Make it easy for users to get their data out of your system.

That’s it. Do number 1, then do number 2, Do not stop in between number 1 and number 2.

If you’re convinced your application is amazing, you shouldn’t have to rely on lock-in to keep people using it. They’ll praise it openly, they’ll become your fans, they’ll shout it to their friends. Anything else is bullshit.