I find it interesting that, as a developer, I tend to have very low patience for poor user experience. I sometimes feel stupid if I fail to use a piece of technology, though these are often kiosk based applications like checking in at an airport.
Then conversely, it seems that some people go out of the way to make something more complicated. Earlier today I renewed my Arsenal membership. There are several levels of membership and several variations of each.
* Junior
* Red
* Silver
* Gold
* Platinum
I just want the cheap option is which priority booking for match tickets, now there are four payment options.
* Lite
* Lite DD
* Full
* Full DD
I couldn't find the difference between Lite and Full, and the DD stands for Direct Debit, which is a payment option, surely not a membership option.
I just can't stand stuff like this, why do people go out of their way to make it harder for me to go about my day? Too many options are bad, make it clear what I'm getting. As for the crappy kiosk applications, I'm impatient and as such am likely to make mistakes, be forgiving and make it transparent what's going on.
I have to say, I think the London Underground have got it right with their ticket machines (though this may be as I'm used to travelling on the system - I actually found San Francisco's train network fairly confusing even though the premise is very simple). They have big colourful buttons on a touch screen, where I can easily search for the ticket I need for my journey.
Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Open Sourcing Twitter Apps
I know it's only a tiny app, but I've had people ask me about how I created the Twitter apps to post the latest football scores (e.g. http://twitter.com/arsenal_scores) so having a bit of extra time (no pun intented) this week I decided to grab the latest copy and put in on Google Code. It serves another purpose as I hadn't backed it up, so now it's in source control and I can point people to it who are interested.
Tuck in - all 3kb of it.
http://code.google.com/p/latestscorestwitter/
Tuck in - all 3kb of it.
http://code.google.com/p/latestscorestwitter/
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Spamming on Facebook
I thought I'd do my good deed for the day and post on the 'Arsenal Football Club' group on Facebook about the Twitter app/user I created to update according to the latest scores and final result.
I started a discussion, trying to share the app, explaining about Twitter and how everyone could benefit from free SMS updates. That was my good deed.
The first response was telling me that I shouldn't be spamming. I was somewhat shocked at this and of course, sent a Tweat. I thought I was sharing not spamming, and a little later the discussion was deleted.
I looked at the definition of Forum Spam on Wikipedia, certainly I may be guilty of trying to raise awareness of something away from the group/discussion, but I'm certainly no spambot and I thought I'd be doing some people a favour to highlight a really useful free product.
It made me think about Facebook, advertising and spamming in general. There's 20 odd thousand members on this Arsenal group and I presume most of them don't mind that Facebook puts ads on every page, or that their friends send them loads of crappy vampire bites, but they mind if a stranger posts something.
I just find it disappointing. When someone offers something for free and they are paying out of their own pocket (hosting isn't free people) that they get tainted with the word 'spam' when they feel like sharing something they think people may find useful.
I started a discussion, trying to share the app, explaining about Twitter and how everyone could benefit from free SMS updates. That was my good deed.
The first response was telling me that I shouldn't be spamming. I was somewhat shocked at this and of course, sent a Tweat. I thought I was sharing not spamming, and a little later the discussion was deleted.
I looked at the definition of Forum Spam on Wikipedia, certainly I may be guilty of trying to raise awareness of something away from the group/discussion, but I'm certainly no spambot and I thought I'd be doing some people a favour to highlight a really useful free product.
It made me think about Facebook, advertising and spamming in general. There's 20 odd thousand members on this Arsenal group and I presume most of them don't mind that Facebook puts ads on every page, or that their friends send them loads of crappy vampire bites, but they mind if a stranger posts something.
I just find it disappointing. When someone offers something for free and they are paying out of their own pocket (hosting isn't free people) that they get tainted with the word 'spam' when they feel like sharing something they think people may find useful.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Twitter as a messaging platform
When you have an itch, scratch it!
Well, that's what I've started to do. My itch is a common one in the UK and probably throughout Europe and certain parts of the world, but when you generalise it, it becomes a problem that nearly every one has. When there's a certain piece of information that I want to know as it happens, how do I find that out?
For me, it's Arsenal scores. I'm a big Arsenal fan, and unfortunately I don't get to see many games live (other wise I might not have this problem). As much as Arsenal play on TV, I often don't get a chance to see that either, I don't subscribe to Sky or cable, so I'll pop to the pub. Anyhoo, I want to know when there's a change of score, and I want to know the final score of all Arsenal games. So what did I do about it?
Let's put that question to one side for now and look at Twitter. I've been using Twitter for a few months and I'm lovin' it! One of the key points here is that it's a pulling mechanism of messaging. You have to 'follow' someone to view their updates but you can view those messages on the web, through RSS, third party applications (using the Twitter web API or RSS) or through SMS.
Let's get back to the question at hand. The Beeb has a great website for sport, particularly their refreshing latest score pages. Although not RSS, which is a shame, the page is formatted nicely, so writing an application to extract key data is pretty simple. Twitter can then be used to post that data too and anyone, myself included, can subscribe that information in my preferred means.
Looking back at the little application I wrote, it's screamingly obvious that with easy to use web APIs all you have to do is write some plumbing code to do what you want to do and scratch that itch that's been irritating you.
So far, I've created users on Twitter for Arsenal, Birmingham and Manchester Utd.
Soon, I'll be creating users for all Premiership clubs and pushing this a little more. Let me know if you have an itch (or well, at least a team you'd like to follow, it can be any team that has a live scores page from the BBC Sport Football website), let me know =)
Well, that's what I've started to do. My itch is a common one in the UK and probably throughout Europe and certain parts of the world, but when you generalise it, it becomes a problem that nearly every one has. When there's a certain piece of information that I want to know as it happens, how do I find that out?
For me, it's Arsenal scores. I'm a big Arsenal fan, and unfortunately I don't get to see many games live (other wise I might not have this problem). As much as Arsenal play on TV, I often don't get a chance to see that either, I don't subscribe to Sky or cable, so I'll pop to the pub. Anyhoo, I want to know when there's a change of score, and I want to know the final score of all Arsenal games. So what did I do about it?
Let's put that question to one side for now and look at Twitter. I've been using Twitter for a few months and I'm lovin' it! One of the key points here is that it's a pulling mechanism of messaging. You have to 'follow' someone to view their updates but you can view those messages on the web, through RSS, third party applications (using the Twitter web API or RSS) or through SMS.
Let's get back to the question at hand. The Beeb has a great website for sport, particularly their refreshing latest score pages. Although not RSS, which is a shame, the page is formatted nicely, so writing an application to extract key data is pretty simple. Twitter can then be used to post that data too and anyone, myself included, can subscribe that information in my preferred means.
Looking back at the little application I wrote, it's screamingly obvious that with easy to use web APIs all you have to do is write some plumbing code to do what you want to do and scratch that itch that's been irritating you.
So far, I've created users on Twitter for Arsenal, Birmingham and Manchester Utd.
Soon, I'll be creating users for all Premiership clubs and pushing this a little more. Let me know if you have an itch (or well, at least a team you'd like to follow, it can be any team that has a live scores page from the BBC Sport Football website), let me know =)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Twitter for group messaging
As what usually happens, I'm sitting somewhere or doing something completely unconsiderate for writing ideas down when something strikes me. I'm sitting in the car this time, driving home from a co-location day in Milton Keynes. I start thinking about Jay Fresh being stuck on a train, in the nicest possible way of course, and how Twitter could be used for more purposes then one to one or one to many communications. Perhaps an application could use Twitter to update those who are interested in certain information.
My thougths evolved into different kinds of application uses for Twitter and so far I've come up with two. Firstly, an account for an application to use for the specific use of microblogging. After this thought I went and set up an account for Mojo, a project I have been involved in at work, so those interested could hear what Mojo had to say.
The second use is more detailed to an application than say, a group of developers such as the Mojo example. As a football fan, I'm always interested in the latest Arsenal score, but I don't follow them extensively and am often out and about when they play choosing instead to watch highlights. I had thought about building an application that could slurp feeds from relevant sporting sites and post those to Twitter using their API. Then using features such as follow, I could get those feed updates straight to my mobile.
Cool eh? Now I have to go write it =)
My thougths evolved into different kinds of application uses for Twitter and so far I've come up with two. Firstly, an account for an application to use for the specific use of microblogging. After this thought I went and set up an account for Mojo, a project I have been involved in at work, so those interested could hear what Mojo had to say.
The second use is more detailed to an application than say, a group of developers such as the Mojo example. As a football fan, I'm always interested in the latest Arsenal score, but I don't follow them extensively and am often out and about when they play choosing instead to watch highlights. I had thought about building an application that could slurp feeds from relevant sporting sites and post those to Twitter using their API. Then using features such as follow, I could get those feed updates straight to my mobile.
Cool eh? Now I have to go write it =)
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