Web 2.0 Sites Must Answer Three Questions

To achieve popularity, Web 2.0 websites like Facebook, MySpace, Amazon, Twitter, etc. must answer these three questions simply and quickly:

1. How does it work?
2. Do you use it?
3. Do you like it and why?

If a Web 2.0 website can't answer these questions succinctly, users won't get it and won't join. In other words, a Web 2.0 website must "read quickly". The site must be intuitive and any sticky points explained within a few seconds of a user landing on the site's home page. This is why so many Web 2.0 sites have video "tours" that show what they do.

Twitter's tour is a perfect example. Though explaining the benefit of 140-character micro-blogging might be a tough sell for some, the Twitter crew uses clever animation to keep a user's attention through its demo, which is somewhat lengthy for a Web 2.0 tour.

Many Web 2.0 websites answer the above three questions, but my wife's newfound addiction to Facebook is puzzling; the site is complicated, overbuilt, riddled with confusing rules, and difficult to use.

The Facebook learning curve is quite steep. My wife asked me easily two dozen questions about Facebook last night that I couldn't begin to answer, mostly because Facebook doesn't seem to follow the lingua franca and the zen of Web 2.0. In fact, Facebook's complexity and visual overstimulation remind me of early versions of Amazon.com, which was chock-full of useless functionality.

So the benefit of using Facebook must be so great that it's worth negotiating its quirks.

Here are some other Web 2.0 site tours. Blogger | Jott

Stay tuned for an upcoming post: "How to Create an Effective Website Tour".

I just lost my wife to Facebook

Surely my wife can say the same about my half dozen websites, this blog, and all the online news sources I read daily, but now it appears that turn-about is fair play: I've lost her to Facebook.

She signed up one hour ago, and has since run down the laptop battery completely. She's barely glanced up to watch the Olympics; her first break from NBC since opening ceremonies. She keeps exclaiming to long-lost classmates, "XYZ, you can be my friend!".

I'm not on Facebook, so watching her reactions has been somewhat fascinating. Obviously, "Facebook" draws its inspiration from the class yearbook and the class reunion: you get to see what your acquaintances and enemies look like now.

Slightly disturbing to me, though it doesn't bother my wife, is seeing how many of our friends are on Facebook already. It feels a little like a class reunion I wasn't invited to or a club that I'm not a part of. Are all our friends happily chatting away online while I'm busy polishing my resume on LinkedIn? I'm not sure which is more lame.

Just now, my wife: "Now I have two friends! This is just like junior high - I just want so much for everyone to be my friend!"

Congress passes law to make toys safer

In early August, The New York Times editorial page took a rare opportunity to praise Congress for passing legislation that would:

• ban lead in toys intended for children under the age of 12
• require safety testing of children's toys before they could be put on sale
• permanently ban three types of phthalates and temporarily ban three more types
• raise the budget for the Consumer Product Safety Commission
• mandate a database of products that consumers could complain about

The Times notes that Bush is expected to sign the bill, which passed the Senate 89-3 and the House 424-1.

This is great news. Too bad it only took 30 million recalled toys, lead poisonings, powdered asbestos, and necklaces laced with the date rape drug to inspire some Congressional action.

Bisphenol-A continues to confuse

The FDA announced this week that it thinks bisphenol-A is not toxic for adults and children, but that they aren't sure about its safety for infants. The New York Times has a more readable summary of the story.

But the Environmental Working Group claims that the source studies the FDA used to arrive at its conclusions are scientifically flawed, using standards set 50 years ago by chemical manufacturers.

Here is a list of bpa-related posts on mediocre polymath.

Update 9/4: And now the National Toxicology Program (say what?) has issued a report voicing "some concern" about bisphenol-a and development in infants and children. 

Choosing a Safe Water Bottle

Despite this week's FDA announcement about the safety of BPA, it seems to me that ingesting weird chemicals is probably best avoided.

Several types of plastics seem to be safe, but The Good Human blog offers tips on choosing the safest reusable water bottle.

Interestingly (and I'm no expert), this is the first time I've seen anything resembling a non-hoaxy explanation of why to avoid #1 PETE plastics. After repeated use "this kind of plastic has been proven to leach DEHP (Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate) which "is a probable carcinogen". DEHP is a phthalate, one of the toxic plastics that has a pretty bad rep.

Another blog, National Geographic's The Green Guide, mentions a 2003 Italian study that found increased of DEHP in water stored in PETE bottles for 9 months. Okay, easy: don't store water in a PETE bottle for 9 months.

Boulder Entering Warehouse Sale Season!

In Boulder, we have six seasons. The usual four, plus two transitional seasons I call "pre-spring" and "pre-fall". Each pre-season has weather that's totally unpredictable. But you can always count on pre-spring deals on snowsports and pre-fall warehouse sales!

From late August through late September, which is also my timeframe for pre-fall, many of Boulder's outdoor industry manufacturers blow out perfectly good merchandise at wholesale or lower prices.

Here are the warehouse and Labor Day sales I've learned about so far. I'll update this post as I hear about more.

• Patagonia Summer Sale - Aug 12-21 - 40-60% off select merchandise. This isn't a warehouse sale, but since it's Patagonia and they rarely offer steep discounts, it's worth mentioning. The sale is online and in the Boulder Patagonia store.
  
• Title Nine Blowout Sale - Aug 21-24 - Up to 60% off discontinued and overstock apparel. Location this year is near the Staples at 29th Street.
• REI Labor Day Sale - Aug 22-Sep 1 - Sales up to 30% on regular merchandise and 50% or more on super clearance items. Perennial favorite items to watch for: REI Quarter Dome T3 tent, REI Sub Kilo +20 sleeping bag, and Gregory Packs.
  
• SNIAGRAB - Labor Day weekend - SNIAGRAB is BARGAINS spelled backwards. Get it? Gart Sports has blown out snowsports gear on Labor Day weekend for years. SNIAGRAB is like the unofficial opening of lift ticket season. Now owned by Sports Authority, all three former Gart locations in Colorado still had SNIAGRAB last year.Don't tell anyone, but the deals on hard goods are actually better in March than September.
  
• GoLite Warehouse Sale - Sep 12-14 - This is the big one in Boulder. The prices are at least as good as wholesale (50% off), and it includes their entire product line, even the newest products. Don't let the line of people waiting at the entrance scare you off; it moves quickly and it's worth the wait. I have my eyes on one item this year - the Wisp Wind Shirt.
• VeloSwap - Oct 25 - Swap used bike parts and buy last season's merch at blowout prices.
  

Olympic-sized Orchestration: China faking it up as it goes along

Our future Chinese overlords are doing all they can to impress their eventual minions, from digital fireworks to lip syncing little girls to government-approved throngs of fans.

Ironic that the culture known for inventing fireworks decided to add some during the opening ceremonies. The man responsible for pulling it off said later in an interview with the UK Sky News, "Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks. But most of the audience thought it was filmed live - so that was mission accomplished. Sky News explained that "the designers even added some haziness to simulate the polluted Beijing skyline." Check out the article to learn about other details like added "camera shake".

While searching for mythical China's poster child to sing their national anthem, the ruling Communist party found that no single poster child existed. China did what any good Milli Vanilli fan would expect: they had the cute girl on camera and the good singer on the mike. The cute girl's father noticed something was amiss with his daughter's voice. Check out the details here.

The Olympic opening ceremonies have always inspired host nations to go to extremes to entertain and impress the world. Certainly Beijing is not the first to fake it up a bit for the benefit of global bragging rights. Yet this year's orchestration extends beyond the first night and into some aspects of the competition.

Michael Barry, pro road cyclist, author, and contributor to VeloNews.com and the New York Times, placed 9th in the Olympic road race. A top 10 finish is noteworthy, but Barry took note of something fishy along the 152-mile course. A few excerpts from his NYTimes.com article:

• "In Europe, the spectators are cycling fans. Many idolize the riders, hunting for autographs and searching for souvenirs from the race and the teams, and madly cheering us on. In China, the crowds seemed orchestrated, lined along the roadside, holding Chinese flags every 20 meters with an Olympic flag in between, many uniformly dressed in yellow T-shirts. They encouraged us with military-like chants, a conductor cueing the crowd while police faced them to ensure they stayed in their spots."
• "Like the athletes’ village, aptly called the Dream World, the course was eerily clean as if it had been staged for television... Olympic banners covered the unsightly shacks. Buildings on the circuit were vacant. Policemen could be seen hiding in the woods, motionless, and focused on everything but the race."
• "I think we found reality, where people lived in shacks, with mounds of garbage in the streets, and chaotic pedestrian, bicycle and automobile traffic overwhelming the roads."

All praise our future Chinese overlords! What's sinister about police in the woods and conductors cueing the cheering throngs to begin their military-style chants? China just wants to present the cutest possible face to the world, to help us see that life under the overlords is quite nice, where every shack sports its own Olympic banner.

Update 8/25: NPR's Morning Edition reports that the Chinese may have stolen our national anthem! (or at least one arrangement of it)

Update 8/29: Three Chinese gymnasts just might have been underage after all. Some internet sleuthing finds Chinese documentation of their ages. China claims a mistake in paperwork is to blame for this misunderstanding, yet the gymnast's age was found to be underage on several documents from several sources.

Kevin's sweet new tent

"Just bought the Marmot Aelos 2P tent for a lightweight backcountry camping option. Great deal at $121 (REI.com has it for $370). Here are some scenic pics from the PacNW as a postcard thank you. You can expand the panoramic shot, which doesn't do justice to all the mountains on the horizon. I took the one in the forest, my buddy Travis took the panoramic when we did a hike together in June. The MT St Helen's shot is from USGS." --Kevin

more promo coupon tall tales

"Dave, I'm looking for a good bear-fighting knife. I hear Leatherman has a model out that placed first at the 2008 Grizzly Face-Off Challenge. I'd love to get my paws on that coupon." --JK

my sweet new backpacking stuff

The Outdoor Retailer show hands out pro deal coupons with show badges. This year's deals are pretty screamin', ranging from 40% off retail (Gregory Packs) to 75% off retail (Marmot). The product selection is somewhat limited and the offers expire between Sep 1-30. Here's what I've picked up.

Gregory Baltoro 70: forty-three hundred cubic inches of goodness at five and a half pounds.

Leatherman c301: 3 ounces and 2.8 inches of fiery mountain lion defense! Considering I've never taken my Swiss Army knife backpacking, I probably won't take this one either. But if I did--just 3 ounces!


Marmot Lightweight Crew: Polartec Power Dry for Erin!


Total cost = $182 plus shipping

Outdoor Retailer 2008: promo code contest!

• "In preparation for our trip to Australia and New Zealand, I’d LOVE to take advantage of the Helly Hansen and Marmot coupons! Do I win? Do I? Do I?" --Mat
• "I'm all about the Gregory, tout suite. Oh yeah, this would be used to climb Mt. Rainier. How much more outdoorsy can you get?!?!?!?!?" --Chris
• "Kevin says we are interested. He thinks he can make me outdoorsy and stuff. BTW do these fancy tents have toilets? I have tried to explain that bears are big and eat people and I'm not a very fast runner. He thinks I'm being overly dramatic." --Nicole
• "Yes please, me me. Would it count as outdoorsy/adventurous if I was writing this email naked in the woods? Too bad, it's not the case, I'm on my couch watching the Olympics." --Cris

Outdoor Retailer 2008: RedLedge.com teases the hard of core

RedLedge.com, a lower price point manufacturer of outdoor apparel, is making fun of high end manufacturers and their customers, who are sometimes of harder core, and other times simply overdressed:

Outdoor Retailer 2008: "eet's okay, you vill have ze music"

Today is our fifth day in the ESA, where show organizers are attempting to liven up the scene with non-stop music. Unfortunately, the ESA playlist is quite short, and we've been listening to U2, The Who, and Goo-Goo Dolls all day, every day.

An OR booth staffer at our hotel was saying goodbye to two of her coworkers who were catching a flight back to Germany. She said, "I'm going to be lonely in the booth without you!". A coworker replied, "Eet's okay -- you vill have ze music."

In other news, we have our first tradeshow-related injury: Jen has a blister.

Outdoor Retailer 2008: Sunday night schwag tally

Four days. It takes four days for me to become thoroughly tired of eating restaurant food.

Today's schwag haul is likely to be the most valuable booty-load of OR:

• Osprey Talon 5.5 backpack - $20
• 16 oz. stainless steel bottle with carabiner
• National Parks Conservatio Association "fanny" pack
• sweet EK USA lanyard
• carton of Sharkies
• sample pack of Sportwash

I've also amassed a 10 inch stack of magazines, including some outdoor industry mags I've never heard of before.

I'm now getting concerned about luggage space.

Outdoor Retailer 2008: Saturday night schwag tally

Jen: Falcon Pocket Guide to OR, DeFeet "police" cycling socks, eVent keychain, USA Triathlon cycling socks, Camerons Smoker Bag for oven/grill/campfire

Dave: Falcon Pocket Guide to OR, DeFeet "police" cycling socks, eVent keychain, USA Triathlon cycling socks, Camerons Smoker Bag for oven/grill/campfire, Spira t-shirt, Primus foldable fork and spoon

Outdoor Retailer vs. Interbike

OR # attendees (2008): 6,300 buyers + 12,560 exhibitors + "other" = 22,000
Ibike # attendees: 11,368 buyers + 11,606 exhibitors = 22,974

OR # exhibiting companies: 1,020
Ibike # exhibiting companies: 735

Subjectively, there's a noticeable difference in the personality of the shows. Interbike has always had a slightly sinister undercurrent to me, as if most attendees are trying to take advantage of you or get away with something. Perhaps this is due to the show's location in Sin City?

Outdoor Retailer is all smiles and tans and people dressed like normal people. The conversations with attendees are longer, more relaxed.

Interbike is more contrived, with tattoos, cycling "fashion", hair dye and chains. Conversations are shorter, more confrontational, more competitive. Perhaps this is due to male dominance of the show?

At Outdoor Retailer, all the beer is free and free-flowing. Then again, it's all nearly alcohol-free! At Interbike, your goal is to scam free booze.

At Outdoor Retailer, the industry party was open invitation and featured a badminton tournament, a drum circle, and a set from Rusted Root.

Interbike's unofficial industry party, the Sinclair party, is invite only and you nearly have to beg to get an invite. Last year's Sinclair party featured impossibly loud club music and six scantily-clad pole dancers.

Outdoor Retailer 2008: result of yesterday's Energy Solutions Arena uprising

We ESA exhibitors passed around a petition yesterday asking Nielsen Business Media to post more signage leading buyers from the back exit of the main show floor...

...across this street and around these, umm, buyer barriers...

...into the ESA, through the concourse, and down the stairs to the arena floor. The signage today is much improved. Except for the print job on this one below. What's wrong with this picture?

Outdoor Retailer 2008: booth review (priciest, best attended, most inviting)

I do believe that Life is Good wins the award for spending the most on promotion at OR. Check out this exhibit:


Life is Good also sponsored the industry party and produced a "goodminton" tournament.

The booth with the highest body per square foot ratio, though, was Smith Optics:


I found this booth to be the most inviting, and yet the worst-branded. I think it was Merrell (a Columbia brand), but I'm not sure...

Outdoor Retailer 2008: Friday night schwag tally

Dave: tasmanian merino wool hiking socks, smartwool arm warmers, collapsible cup
Jen: tasmanian merino wool hiking socks, smartwool arm warmers, collapsible cup

Outdoor Retailer 2008: Industry Party (plus a goodminton tournament!)

We exhibitors in the ESA closed our first OR show day disappointed and, in some cases, with some anger. A petition circulated urging Nielsen Business Media to add more signage to encourage floor traffic from the main show. The squeaky exhibitor gets the worm, and we were told that Nielsen would make hourly P.A. announcements on the show floor to spur buyers to the ESA, add signage from the main show to the ESA including sandwich boards every 30 feet from exit to entrance.

The evening ended on a high and hopeful note, though. The OR Industry Party was just outside the ESA, which should show buyers how to get to our show floor tomorrow. Free beer from Wasatch Brewery flowed like wine:


And there were a heckuva lot of people:


The Life is Good t-shirt company sponsored a "Goodminton" tournament, with 64 teams competing!

Outdoor Retailer 2008: schwag tally (friday noon)

Current schwag tally:

Jen: 2 pairs smartwool socks, 2 notebooks, notepad, 1 Flair Hair (blonde)
Dave: 1 pair smartwool socks, 1 notebook, 1 notepad, 1 headache, 1 Flair Hair (brunette)

Outdoor Retailer 2008: the Energy Solutions Arena is bad for exhibitors

Nielsen Business Media produces the Outdoor Retailer show. OR has been in Salt Lake City for 12+ years, and the only convention center of any size here is the Salt Palace, which is no longer big enough to contain the outdoor industry's many exhibitors. Nielsen's policy is to place exhibitors based on seniority - the longer you've been exhibiting with OR, the better your placement. Since the show is now too big for its britches, Nielsen's remedy has been to expand across a city street to the Energy Solutions Arena, home of the Utah Jazz basketball team, and place the newest exhibitors there. This is a bad idea, executed poorly.

Here's the main hall:

1. The floorplan provided to exhibitors before the show and now posted in the main hall makes it appear as if the ESA is an offshoot room of the main hall, when it's a 1-4 block walk, depending on where you leave the main hall.
2. The signage is infrequent and poor. There's no signage in the main hall directing you how to best exit the hall to get to the ESA. There's no signage on sidewalks. The ESA is not visible from 75% of the main hall exit doors. The ESA has a bunch of gates and construction barriers that are confusing.
   
3. If you make it to the ESA building, there's only one set of doors to get in. When you enter the ESA, you are one floor above the show floor. There are only two (poorly signed) access points to the show floor from the entrance and you have to walk by some exhibitors. Some might not realize there's a show floor off the concourse.
   

Worst yet, we've paid the same amount for booth space as exhibitors in the main hall. We definitely feel like second-class exhibitors.

Visitors can take stairs or an elevator from the concourse to the show floor. Should you take the stairs, you'd have this view on the way done:

Here's the extremely inviting and well-signed hallway from the elevator.


There is good news, though. As its a pro sports arena, the lighting is bright!

Since all the exhibitors in the ESA are new, we've got kind of a hodge podge of neighbors. Like these fine folks immediately to our left:

And this endurance sports fridge-freezer maker:

Outdoor Retailer 2008: Industry Breakfast - getting kids outside

This morning we attended the Outdoor Industry Association industry breakfast. This is one vibrant community! Check out the attendance, at 7 a.m. no less.

This year's OR theme is about engaging young people with the outdoors. Both speeches related personal anecdotes about children and outdoors adventures, and I found it pretty inspiring. We listened to speeches from Frank Hugelmeyer, OIA president, and from Larry Selzer, director of the Conservation Fund. Both speeches focused, with alarm, on the youngest generations lack of engagement with the outdoors, citing childhood obesity, shocking focus group surveys about fear of the outside, lack of cell reception, etc. Hugelmeyer related hopeful anecdotes about his 12-year old son's recent experiences with backpacking and flyfishing. Selzer used storytelling to describe how the outdoor industry needs a compelling story, like 1962's Silent Spring, to inspire our culture to get outside.

Outdoor Retailer 2008: International Buyer's Reception - it's a trap!

Have you ever been to one of those high pressure time-share sales pitches? I went on a trip to Florida with some high school buddies, and we all marveled at how low the hotel rate was until the trip planner said one morning, "Okay, this morning we've all got to go to breakfast with this guy. It's no big deal. We'll be back before Typhoon Lagoon even opens." Three hours later, we were all fried from the glaring light of an extended high pressure sales pitch from a rotating team of three interrogators.

Well, chalk one on the board for those wily Utahans. Contrary to our belief, there was not a single international buyer at the International Buyer's Reception. Instead, we enjoyed some speeches by the glad-handing Executive Director of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, a representative from the Utah Governor's office, and some sales people from the Utah World Trade Center. It was a sales pitch. "Use our services to export your schtuff."

They all looked like this:


And we, the duped, looked more like unshaven guys in shorts, t-shirts, and sandals.

However, there were hors d'oeuvres and free beverages.

So who really got duped, Utah?!

Outdoor Retailer 2008: pre-show setup

This begins a series of posts about the Outdoor Retailer tradeshow at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, UT. The show is Aug 8-11, and we're exhibiting for the first time. OR is the biggest outdoor industry tradeshow on the planet, and I've been hoping that I'd someday make it. Share in the outdoors-related capitalism!

A brief how-to for aspiring OR goers and exhibitors...

First, figure out how to get your stuff to the show floor. If you've got some nice 4' x 6' signage, that might mean some creative jamming of signage into a rental car.

Second, realize that your booth is located outside the main hall, across a 6-lane street, and, depending on how you exit the main hall, either a half-block or a three-block walk from the big exhibitors.

We knew that our booth location, "ESA318", was in the Energy Solutions Arena. It turns out that "Energy Solutions Arena" means "like the Pepsi Center". Energy Solutions is a company and the arena is an arena. I was thinking that ESA was some Outdoor Retailer "green initiative". Also, note that the building isn't any prettier on the inside. The entire thing is basically a giant block of hollowed out concrete.

Next, check out the crates. There were stacks of crates this high and higher along two entire city blocks, each emblazoned with its own outdoor industry company logo. Eep! I even got to see the Patagonia crates!

Scope out the competition. Okay, we're not competing with hardly anyone at OR, and certainly not Life is Good. However, check out this astounding booth! This thing must have been 80 feet by 80 feet! I couldn't possibly get the whole booth into less than three frames. It's two stories and beautiful - check out all those wood timbers. This thing is bigger than the Pearl Street Life is Good store--on just one floor!

Finally, set up your own booth. Everything arrived safe and sound and we were done with setup and off the show floor in under two hours.

Next up:
>the international buyer reception 5-6:30 pm tonight in the ESA
>show opens 9am tomorrow, stay tuned for tomorrow's hilarious documentation of our booth neighbor to the left...

Downside of news feeds: I read the same news stories 5-6 times

The news sources I check regularly include:

• NYTimes.com - traditional news media re-engineered for the web
  
• NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered - radio
• Lifehacker.com - blog-style media with reviews of web services, software, and offline how-to/DIY ideas and time-savers
  
• my local paper's website
  
• Google News - the most searched-and-clicked news stories online
• The Daily Show via Hulu.com
• Wired - I read the print magazine and avoid the website (though it's a great site).
  
• Webware 2.0 - a CNET blog with reviews of web services
• TechCrunch - blog-style media with hard news about web startups and web-related tech companies and products

Except NPR and Wired, all these sources are online. Except NPR and the Daily Show, all these sources involve reading.

Except for the Times and Google News, I preview each story using an RSS feedreader (called... FeedReader - screenshot) and then click through to stories that catch my eye.

Obviously, Lifehacker, Webware 2.0, TechCrunch, and Wired have similar editorial focus: the web, new media, etc.

However, I find myself part of a news demographic; I will often hear the same news story 4-5 times. I'll first read it online, then hear it on NPR, then around the water cooler, then on the Daily Show, then on NPR again.

Why? Am I well informed? Overly informed? Is there a real demographic involved: 30-something, college educated, middle class, and addicted to broadband? Or is this a sign of our mono-culture or just the web doing what it does best?

Sorry I Missed You

In mid-July, I mentioned that being too connected has its downsides, like not connecting.

And now, from the Gray Lady: "Don’t Want to Talk About It? Order a Missed Call".

The article introduces a webservice called Slydial that injects a phone caller directly into voicemail, allowing the caller to avoid the risk of actually speaking to the person they're not trying to reach.

My favorite part: "We are constantly just missing one another — on purpose."