UX Challenges in Touch Interfaces (at evolt.org)

As mobile devices have been taking over the place of the mobile or home computer for basic apps and web access, developers are struggling with letting go of the mouse as the primary interface device.

I just wrote up an article for evolt.org titled UX Challenges in Touch Interfaces that outlines some of these issues, such as the lack of a hover state, fat fingers instead of mouse cursors, and general lack of experience on the part of web developers on planning for touch interfaces. It may not be the most exciting read of the year, but I do come off a bit smarmy, so that's got to count for something.

The article even includes this swell photo of a meatstick in use on an iPad trying to use scroll bars and expando/collapso boxes. In the interest of not being compelled to make some terrible jokes, I'll just stop now.

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Social Media Day in Buffalo #smdayBUF

Back in early June, the web site Mashable, known for reporting on all sorts of things related to social media among its other topics, posted an idea for creating a worldwide social media day (Join Mashable in Celebrating Social Media Day). They quickly mobilized some major cities for an event, and for smaller markets supported them with a Mashable-sponsored Meetup site (Meetup is the platform used to organize all sorts of real-life meetings based around random ideas).

Over here in Buffalo, a group of people mobilized about halfway through the month to start planning an event here in town. In record time, they got a Meetup page built, created a Twitter hashtag for the event, secured a venue, hired a DJ, and managed to trick social-media-savvy businesses into donating goods for an auction. All of this was managed using Twitter and the Meetup Buffalo page. @veganjesus (Norm Boyer) even set up a Foursquare venue just for the event (sadly, not everyone knew, so no swarm badge unlock). While my plan was to just enjoy the evening, I got pressed into service trying to make a Twitter wall, and simply cheated and used a Brighkite wall instead (yes, that was my sole contribution).

With only 50 RSVPs, one media outlet reported 140+ guests, and it seemed like far more than that cycling through the night. Scheduled for only two hours, the event went past midnight and turned out to be a huge success as people, many of whom had never met face to face but knew each other online, ended up getting along quite well, sometimes with surprising results.

You can surf the tweets that kept popping up all night with the local hashtag #smdayBUF.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, this post is really just a quick recap of the night and a great way to link to all the people who contributed something to the event. Catch all those links below, after you watch this Skunkpost video with some interesting interviews:

I suggest you jump to 2:26 and look for the burning question I posted a couple times over the course of the night. If the embed didn't work for you, watch the video on the Skunkpost site.

The event organizers: @skunkworks716 (Keith Stephen), @KatieKraw (Katie Krawczyk), @BlockClub (Patrick Finan), @Wingalls (Will Ingalls), @Djlopro (DJ LoPro), @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.), and @arampino (Amber Rampino). There were many others who helped out, lent support, provided gear, took photos, ate the food, stole some prizes, made the AV work, danced, and so on. In all, it truly was a community effort.

If you were there and you left early (say, before midnight), then you missed a good breakdance battle.

Related links:

• Photos from Clark Dever
• Social Media Day in Buffalo, NY Photos – #smdayBUF #smday (Clark Dever's blog)
• Photos from Block Club
• Happy Social Media Day! (Day-of announcements at Mashable for the worldwide activities)
• Buffalo Gets Social on June 30 (Announcement at Buffalo Rising)
• Facebook, Twitter, Myspace Celebration in Buffalo (Written story by local CBS affiliate, WGRZ)

Update: Read all about #smdayBUF 2.0, held on Tuesday, July 27 at Templeton Landing, as covered in the post Event Profile: #smdayBUF & #smdayBUF 2.0 by @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.). It even has a couple of my photos from the event.

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Travelogues, Places and Meetups

Today on ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick (Co-Editor and Vice President of Content Development) has posted an article titled Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location Based Social Networks. In the article he explores why people use services like Foursquare and Gowalla to post their physical location for the world to see. Given that Facebook is planning to add location features and Twitter is pushing its own Twitter Places feature, this is a question many people ask — including those who use the services. As a regular user, I am often asked why and this time I had an opportunity to provide an answer for this article.

Marshall put the question out on the Twitters (yes, I am being ironical), and thanks to a retweet, it came my way. I responded with a couple tweets (below) about using Brightkite as my own travelogue. I thought what I was talking about was relatively unique. Apparently so did Marshall, because he comments on how many people made similar statements, about how they also used these services as some form of personal history.

My ego aside, which I suspect we all know is no small task, the article also discusses how the game nature of some services motivates people, while the human connection (almost forced serendipity) is a motivator for others. While the article isn't exactly scientific (at all), his polling certainly demonstrates some trends. Though there are no big surprises, the anecdotal examples are interesting.

Meanwhile, over at Mashable there is an article discussing Twitter Places, What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location. You may recall me wondering how Twitter Places in its current form can really take over the world of location-social media in my post Twitter Pushes into Places. Mashable offers some reasons to ponder:

1. Location-Sharing to Become Mainstream
2. Boost Interest in Geo-location Apps
3. Promoted Places

In these examples, it's not that Twitter is going to take the lead, but instead that Twitter is simply going to use its "star power" to popularize and legitimize things we are already doing, or that other services are already doing.

While I've got you thinking about all these interesting bits related to location-based social media (we really need a simpler, universal name for that), take a look at this article from ReadWriteWeb: Is Geofencing the Next Evolution for Location Apps? Location Labs Thinks So. It essentially describes the thing I've always wanted Brightkite to do — notify me when I or a friend have entered some geographic area or zone and let us know each other is there. Certainly there is more to the service than this, but even if all you want is auto-checkins, then you may want to read this article.

If you've made it this far, then you may actually be interested in this stuff. If so, and you are interested in meeting people in your area who play and/or work in this space, Mashable is sponsoring a worldwide social media meetup on Wednesday, June 30. Many cities are getting in on the action. In fact, you could come to Buffalo and participate in our Mashable Meetup. If you don't, you'll be just like the other 6 billion people on the planet, and that's ok.

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HTML5 and CSS3 Confusion

Too often I have found myself trying to explain to people what HTML5 is and how it won't make the web look better. Then I get into a discussion of CSS3 and, other than the standards-obsessed, that's when I lose most people.

There is a post on PC Pro today (The confusion surrounding HTML5) that explains it pretty succinctly, and even lays some of the blame for the confusion at Apple's feet for its highly-publicized Safari-only HTML5 demos. That may be why this stuck out to me. After Apple showed it off, every two-bit basement-dwelling FrontPage-using webmaster-wanna-be decided HTML5 was awesome, completely missing the fact that it was the CSS3 and pretty pictures that really got their attention.

What I like about the post is that the author explains you can use HTML 4.01 with CSS3, or you can use HTML5 with CSS 2.1 (don't limit yourself to those two options, more fun can be had). I don't think this piece will convince those who disagree when I say the same thing, but at least it's easier to share this than wheel me into a room each time it needs to be explained.

If you are stumbling across web sites touting their HTML5 prowess, but the real whiz-bang is how they look, then you can be pretty sure that those sites are also using CSS3. And if you find somebody who claims HTML5 is all that, you can explain that without CSS3, it's not. At this point, HTML5 is an unfinished spec that simply defines structural and semantic elements and doesn't have a thing to say about style. Nor will it.

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W3C Browser and Accessibility News Bits

Three bits of news from the W3C this week related to browsers and accessibility. Well, two about browsers and two about accessibility with one of them acting as my cross-over reference.

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. This is not the same as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, but instead this is targeted at browser makers and other makers of software for remote viewing, such as media players, RSS readers, and so on. The intent is to outline the standards they must meet to be accessible to people with disabilities. W3C is looking for comments now before "last call" (your last chance to weigh in). There is also a working draft of the Implementing UAAG 2.0 supporting document, which is at least worth a glance over the main guidelines.

If you are somehow connected to the process of making a web browser, or are just oddly curious, W3C has created a new mailing list for fostering discussion related to web browser performance. It's brand new, so as of this writing there are no posts other than a test post and unsub instructions. You can check it out, and perhaps if it grows, even join it at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-perf/.

Bringing it back to accessibility, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) published a document to help you make presentations, talks, meetings, and training accessible to all of your potential audience, including people with disabilities. W3C announced it on its blog (Make Your Presentations Accessible to All) and provided a link directly to the document, How to Make Presentations Accessible to All. To steal a bit from its intro, the general gist is that presenters should be aware that some of their audience might not be able to:

• see well or at all,
• hear well or at all,
• move well or at all,
• speak well or at all, or
• understand information presented in some ways well or at all.

In short, speakers need to describe pertinent visual content, speak clearly into the microphone, ensure the facility is accessible, and consider the other points below (go read the document to see the other points).

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Twitter Pushes into Places

Earlier this week Twitter announced Twitter Places, allowing users to associate tweets with specific places, not just latitude/longitude or data pushed in from other services (Twitter Places: More Context For Your Tweets). Up until this announcement, you could associate a tweet with a specific place by pushing a location with the tweet, as Brighkite does when it pushes an update to Twitter. Twitter even made best-guesses from your latitude/longitude to regions on a map (such as "central business district" or general community names). Now the Twitter web site and mobile site will support this feature so you don't need to rely on an additional application. The mobile applications, however, do not yet support it.

Twitter has said it is working on an API to allow developers to integrate Twitter places into their applications. In addition, even more browsers should support the ability to add your location to a tweet thanks to some partnerships with other providers. Twitter has also claimed Foursquare and Gowalla integration:

Foursquare and Gowalla integration: Many Foursquare and Gowalla users publish check-ins to Twitter. Location is a key component of these Tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services. This means that if you click on a Twitter Place, such as "Ritual Roasters," you will see standard Tweets and check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla.

When I bring up the "add your location" menu in Twitter to see my options for a place, my current venue (Algonquin Studios) is not in there. I know the venue exists in Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite, but it is not an option for me. I checked in to Algonquin Studios using Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite (just in case you need to somehow initialize a venue in your list of options) and have pushed tweets from Foursquare and Brightkite from this venue. But no luck, it still doesn't show up in the list.

Given that I already use location-based services to track my posts, there is nothing in the Twitter Places feature, as of yet, that will move me away from them. The fact that I cannot even select a valid location means I probably won't be trying this feature again for a while.

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Brightkite Tries Another Angle

Brightkite is working to be more relevant to the average web surfer using its image-happy almost-food-centric users by allowing them to post tips to venues (Tippety Top. Brighkite launches photo-tips). Oddly, as a Brightkite user, I first heard about this from Mashable (Brightkite Launches Location-Based Photo Tips), and then pestered Brighkite about this until it posted the announcement to the official blog hours later (I'm not implying that I caused Brightkite to post it, I am not that awesome).

Brightkite does not share venues with Foursquare or Gowalla, but thanks to its Check.in service, which allows you to check in to all three services at once, we know they are capable of matching places. Unfortunately, the new Photo Tips feature doesn't leverage the Check.in service (or its functionality), meaning it really won't lure users from Foursquare or Gowalla to use it in place of (or in addition to) their current check-in and tip-posting behavior on those services.

Looking through this new feature, I also cannot figure out how to turn old photos into tips, and while I asked Brightkite on its blog post and via the service (and Brightkite is usually rather responsive), I've heard nothing back yet. That means a couple years of tracking food at my favorite local Italian restaurant isn't being treated as a tip for that venue.

New photos can be updated and flagged as a tip right off the bat. Unfortunately, I use a Windows Mobile phone, where there is no Brightkite app, which means I have to email my photos into the service. Using this method, there is no way to flag a photo as a tip, making my first issue more important.

How this may integrate with services like Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla and so on is anybody's guess. As a user, you really need to have some familiarity with the site to find tips, and there is no indication how they will make this repository available through Google or other similar search engines for users who have never heard of Brightkite. Interestingly, I currently add tips to a venue in Foursquare and add the URL of my Brightkite photo. It's not efficient, but it's some way to share the data. I will continue to use that method until I can see how this new feature will actually work.

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