The online ramblings of Dylan Bland

Having reactivated my Facebook membership last month I’m sorry to say that Facebook is back on my list of daily distractions. It’s fun, although the actual benefits to my life (let alone my productivity) are marginal at best. Anyway, today I’ve spent a few minutes playing around with the new design and here are my thoughts…

What I like:

• When you’re viewing other people’s Profile, the new Profile page is great. Wall content (the stuff that changes) is now up the top of the page. Inputing content to other people’s Wall is now a lot easier too as form is at the very top.
• Adding filters to the Wall is useful (I think the Facebook team use Digg!)
• Wider page width works better on bigger monitors and I’m glad the design remains fixed width.
• Search box is now in the header where you expect it.
• Bigger photos make sense.
• When viewing your own Profile, you can finally edit your Profile information from this page. Previously you had to navigate your way to “Account” to do this which was clumsy.

What I don’t like:

• Now that Wall content seems to include what was previously “Mini Feeds”, when the fancy new filter is set to “All posts” (as it is by default) the design feels difficult to read. Previously Wall items were separated by a small version of people’s Profile photos and a horizontal line which made scanning for new posts easy. Now that it includes a mix of photos, icons and different background colours…it’s hard for your eye to separate where one post ends and the next post begins.
• The little yellow help boxes everywhere are annoying and need a “close” option. Hopefully this will come sooner rather than later.
• The huge “what are you doing now” form at the top of your own Profile feels OTT to me. Perhaps it’s a shot at Twitter?
• On the same note…I notice a lot of the forms are now expanded by default where as previously you had to click to view them. I like the old way better.
• I miss the drop down box on the “Friends” button where you could jump straight to “status updated” “recently updated” “recently added”

Overall though, I think it’s pretty good and it’s clear to me that Facebook has put a lot of thought into giving more weighting to the elements of the page people are using most often. I also like the fact that Facebook hasn’t done a MySpace and has so far resisted the temptation to let people use HTML and other methods of visual customisation on their Profiles.

When working on my own sites I’ve found that it’s often not until after the design has left Photoshop and I’ve *used* the site extensively that I get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. We seldom get it right first time (or the second or third or fourth for that matter!) and evolution is key. It’s fun to see much bigger sites like Facebook follow a similar process.

If you use Facebook I’d love to hear your thoughts. So leave a comment!

If you haven’t heard about James Stewart, the young entrepreneur from Christchurch who’s transforming his left leg into a canvas to raise the profile of New Zealand art and artists, I urge you to take a minute now to check him out…

Go to Million Dollar Leg >

I first read about James on Stuff and since then he’s received a lot of media attention both within New Zealand and as far away as the UK. So when James wrote to me earlier this week and asked if it would be OK if he auctioned off part of his leg on Zillion, I was only too happy to help. People with this level of commitment to their dreams don’t come along every day.

James has set himself a hugely ambitious goal that will require equally huge levels of commitment from generous New Zealanders who want to help James showcase New Zealand art to the world.

I wish him all the best and hope he succeeds.

I read on Stuff today that Statistics New Zealand is finally considering adding a question on sexual orientation to the census.

About time.

Sure it’s a very personal question, but what question in the census isn’t? How much money you earn? What religion you subscribe to?

This isn’t about the Government putting its nose into people’s personal lives. This is about putting an end to the assumption that all New Zealanders are straight, and enabling the Government to create more sensible and inclusive social policies as a result.

Could the person posting happysheep stickers on Coke vending machines in the Henderson mall…please stop.

It seems Coke has my email address :/

It’s said that company culture starts at the top and trickles down to every employee. Look at Apple, the polish, the design and attention to detail baked into their products has Steve Jobs written all over it. If Steve Balmer ran the company, it just wouldn’t be the same.

But relax, I’m not here to talk about Apple. Last week I was reminded of a great little business a little closer to home where you can witness the exact same thing…

Wildpoppies is a boutique flouriest in central Auckland with a strong online component to their business. I’ve used Wildpoppies for years and have always been impressed by their attention to detail and the genuine care they show customers. For example, whenever I’ve ordered flowers online it’s been followed up with a hand written email shortly afterwards…

“Thanks for your order Dylan, we’ll make sure your flowers are extra special for xxx”.

Brilliant. Given that I only send flowers for a birthday or a bereavement etc it’s really comforting to know that my order is being dealt with by a real person and that they understand the significance of the gift I’m giving.

But back to the point of this post. Last week I actually popped into the Wildpoppies retail store (that doubles as a distribution centre for their online operation) and witnessed firsthand where this attention and care comes from. At the back of the store is an assembly area where the florists are busy putting bunches of flowers together for online orders. Perched above on the mezzanine were some computers, one of which was occupied by Kerry, the owner. While I was paying for my order, one of the girls loudly asked for some help …

“I’m struggling to find the best way to arrange these flowers, can somebody please help me?”

At this point Kerry jumped from her chair, ran down to the ground floor and started to get her hands dirty…

“Arrange them like this dear…I’ll show you…it will look really, really beautiful.”

And there you have it. A business owner who leads from the top and whose passion for beautiful arrangements and making sure customers are happy has trickled its way down through her entire operation…right down to the order confirmation emails.

Impressive stuff, and a nice reminder that you don’t have to be big as big as Apple to have impressive and distinctive company values.

Tonight when I fill up my car, the pumps are on prepay because it’s after dark. Knowing that my 50 litre tank is near empty, I ask the attendant for $100 worth of fuel.

“I’m sorry Sir, the maximum you can pay on prepay is $99.”

Something tells me we’ll see that limit raised soon. Ouch.

Vodafone sent another spam email this afternoon announcing that three Vodafone stores nationwide will begin selling the iPhone 3G on the stroke of midnight this Friday.

Apparently full pricing details will be revealed in a follow up email tomorrow, so one can only presume that today’s email was to ensure the Apple faithful spend an extra night queuing outside their local store in the cold…meanies!

It was fun to see happysheep featured on TV3 last Friday night as part of Natasha Utting’s World Wide Wonderland on Campbell Live.

If you’re interested you can view the video online on the TV3.co.nz web site. Unfortunately it’s the final site mentioned in the piece, so you have to sit through a handful of other sites before getting to happysheep.

On Monday we launched an interesting feature for Zillion that allows sellers who use Auctionitis (a third party software application for listing on Trade Me) to export their listings from Auctionitis and import them straight onto Zillion.

This is a small but significant improvement to Zillion as it’s estimated that 60,000 auctions per week are listed on Trade Me through Auctionitis. Now those 60,000 auctions are just a few clicks away from being listed on Zillion too.

Sometimes it’s the little things that have the biggest impact!