Advising Web2 Immigrants— What do you think?

One of my Toastmasters friends asked me the other day if I would put together a 45 minute workshop to introduce other web2 immigrants in our local club to Facebook, and Twitter, and blogging. I think her idea is for me to launch the various sites, give them a tour, and let them see what it takes to set up the accounts and pages. She would like to blog, and she would like to check out Facebook, but has already expressed concerns about privacy.

What do you think? Is Facebook the best place to start? That's how I got started. I found it very encouraging to find people I knew who already had a presence in Facebook.

I have a couple of weeks before I'm scheduled to do the workshop. I'd really like some advice. What's do you think is the best approach?

Aggressive Advertising on You Tube

Until I started searching You Tube for an interesting video to blog about, I didn't realize how annoying and aggressive the advertising is on a large percentage of the videos. They remind me of those old car lot TV commercials where the salesman was barking at you like a sideshow carnie at the county fair.

After a while I became so annoyed by the “commercials” I was being bombarded with at the beginning of the videos that I refused to watch the videos that had up-front, aggressive ads. Some of the self-promotion was less aggressive, and many appeared at the end of the video. Those are much less objectionable.

Don't you think that a simple statement of who produced the video, and a short description of what you are about to see is more effective than yelling the company advertising slogan at you?

I really enjoy the county fair; Including the barking sideshow carnies. I think we should leave the barking to the pros in the traveling carnivals, and keep it out of social media.

Wiki Wiki What’s the Hurry

I've been browsing in Web 2.0 Wikiland. Of all the communication formats I've encountered on the Web, wikis are the most difficult to navigate. I have found that most, but not all, wikis are very poorly organized; with what appears to be little attention given to design and screen layout. It’s like the the person who designs the wiki site is just following their personal stream of consciousness to organize. You know . . . they put in one category, their cell phone rings, and by the time they get back to the wiki, they forgot where they were. Then they remember something else that needs to be added; and wherever it's convenient to place it on the screen is where it stays. Oh my gosh! Some wikis don’t even have a content list, or primary tool bar at the top of the screen. What's the hurry? They need to slow down long enough to organize the site! What are they thinking!?

I could give you some examples, but I'd rather provide examples of well-designed wiki sites. I think that the State of California Best Practices wiki does a good job of organizing their site. All the navigation and resource page links are to the left, and their main seven subject areas sections are prominently displayed on the main content area of the main page. Then once you are on the secondary pages there are bread crumbs to help you find your way back through the levels to the main page.

My second example of a well designed wiki is wikiHow. In addition to having a nicely organized and clean look, it is also very entertaining. It is worth a look.

I spent a very long time looking for other good examples, but this is all I could come up with. Help me, have you seen any well designed public wikis? I'm not talking about popular wikis, I'm talking about good visual design and well thought out organization.

Social Networking for Research Scientists

Since I work on websites designed not only for the public, but also for research scientists, I decided to take a look at where the research scientists might be networking on the Web. I found several sites that seem to have potential:

epernicus.com
mendeley.com
researchgate.net
scispace.net

One of my personal favorites is one for which I created the interface design. It is one of the best resources I know for research scientists.


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