Friday, January 11, 2002

My First Review of Radio Userland 8 12:34:23 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

UserLand and Dave Did It Again! Well, Dave, you've done it again! Only this time even better than before. If I wore a hat I'd take it off to you. Radio 8 is perhaps the finest example of progressive revelation I've seen in software. It is so easy for a newbie to get started publshing that you'll probably get blamed for a sudden upsurge in Internet traffic. Yet, you haven't removed the juicy details and cool gems that have always characterized UserLand's software offerings. HyperCard was the best example of this approach to software design I'd ever seen, but it got left behind and abandoned. Radio 8 is such a marvelous example of what can happen when a software dude with real passion and boundless commitment and the sheer insanity to keep doing what's right even when everyone around him is telling him to give up. People who don't know how hard this stuff is won't appreciate the insight, the trial-and-error, the head-bashing that goes into getting a piece of software with this many layers not only designed right, but implemented elegantly. I'm going to tell every friend I have who isn't a Web-savvy techie but who's wanted to publish on the Web -- and some who didn't know they wanted to publish on the Web -- to buy a copy of Radio 8. This is a definite candidate for Product of the Year and we don't even yet know what you have in store for the inevitable improvements you'll make throughout 2002. Wow. 11:47:31 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

One-Way Weblogs I love Weblogs. They are a great way for ordinary folk to publish their thoughts and ideas and experiences to the Web without getting involved in a lot of technical folderol. But I wonder if ultimately we aren't going to want to declare on some level that a Weblog without a discussion feature is somewhat less rich than it might otherwise be? I'm not singling out any product here. Lots of the Weblog products I looked at over the past few weeks as I was searching for a solution for a colleague lacked that feature. I was intrigued at its omission until I realized that a Weblog really is a one-way, one-to-many broadcast medium. That's cool. I'm finding uses for it, obviously. And I think that not having to deal with discussions as an integral part of the process fulfills a desire of Userland and other folks who are working in this space to avoid complexity in the out-of-the-box experience. I applaud that desire. I'm just thinking in terms of the longer view. What role should discussion (or some other community-feedback mechanism) play in this phenomenon? I have a theory, which I'll expound in an article here later today if I can find the cycles, about the Web being a many-to-many model, that that is in fact what makes this a unique medium (along with a few other features, of course). See? I wish there were a way for me to open this up to discussion so you could tell me how wrong I am! :-) 10:22:43 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

© Copyright 2002 Dan Shafer.