Light my fire

Overheard today on campus, one Penn student talking to another:

"Light a man a match, and he's warm for a minute.
Light a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life."

 

Maxwell Zagorski

Max Zagorski is Fishy's new obsession. He discovered him yesterday at a mall in Atlanta and he won't stop talking about him. Maxwell is the "New Face of Abercrombie and Fitch." He has a nice body, certainly, but i think Fishy mostly just likes his hair.

Thirty issues, problems, compliments, and complaints I have with Ma.gnolia

Ma.gnolia is a new social bookmarking tool, very similar to del.icio.us in a lot of ways. As a result, it can't help but draw comarisons.

I'm writing this as I explore magnolia for the first time. Some of the features I list as missing may be available but just not obvious to me. And some of my frustrations will disappear as I get more used to this new tool, but they do represent the frustations that an actual new user is experiencing. To be fair, ma.gnolia is *FRESH* out of beta (like, as in a day or two), but to be real, it is still *OUT* of beta, so I don't think criticism is unfair.

First things first: I want to make it clear that I have a lot of hope for Ma.gnolia. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend my time testing it out and writing this long post about it. I do find it frustrating, though, as you are about to read, but none of my complaints is something that can't be fixed fairly easily.

These are listed in the order I wrote them, not in order of any importance. That being said, feel free to jump to #23-28 for the most egregious complaints and save yourself a lot of frustration. In general, I tried to write this with a constructive tone, so don't read any anger into my complaints, but #23-28 admittedly just plain pissed me off. Webosphere was much more complimentary than me.

The first thing you will notice is that Magnolia beats delicious hands down in the looks department. But as you are about to read, there's so much more than looks.


1. Ma.gnolia advertises that it takes screenshots/caches bookmarked pages so you don't have to worry about losing the contents of a page when it eventually goes 404 and disappears. (A truly awesome idea. Kudos to whoever thought of that. ) But how do you see these? It's not anywhere that i can find.

2. They need a tutorial that goes into more detail on the features. And they probably need a special tutorial specifically for users of del.icio.us who are used to certain things working in certain ways and being in certain places. I am one of those people.

3. "Less Detail." This is a nice feature, which ideally should streamline the appearance of lists of bookmarks, but it's way too slow. They need to use javascript with an alternate stylesheet to hide the details instead of reloading the page everytime someone clicks it. Also: there's a line at the end of each bookmark that reads something like "Saved by JohnDoe on Mar 14, 2005 at 12:39 PM". You can click on "JohnDoe" to see that user's profile. But every bookmark already has that user's avatar sitting right next to it that does exactly the same thing. (not to mention, why do i care what day and time it was bookmarked anyway?) Hide that line too!

4. There's a little arrow icon next to each bookmark that does exactly the same thing as clicking on the name of the bookmark itself. Why? This is a great spot for an icon that does something different and useful.

5. Same thing for the groups. There's that group icon next to the name of the group that just takes you the same place as clicking on the name of the group. How about setting the icon so that it makes you join that group? (I shouldn't have to view that group's page just to get to the "join this group" link. General rule of thumb: the more clicking a site requires of me, the less likely i am to use it. Especially when it's competing with another site--del.icio.us in this case--that I already like and am used to.)

6. Say I'm in the photography group. And I click on one of the tags at the bottom of a bookmark. That gives me a list of other bookmarks IN THAT GROUP with the same tag. That, as Martha would say, is a good thing. But is there an easy way from that screen to give me a list of ALL bookmarked sites on Magnolia with that same tag? Or do I have to do a search from scratch? (see #23-27 for searching issues) Same goes for the list of my own bookmarks.

7. Preferences. If we have to be logged in anyway, we might as well be able to customize our experience:

• Let the user choose a default view (More detail vs Less Detail. Maybe vs. NO detail even. Or even select which parts of the bookmark record they'd like to see. For example, i don't really care about the rating.)
  
• Let the user choose how many bookmarks they'd like to see per page. 10 is not enough. 100 is enough. I use the browser's search function to search a screen to find what I want, and I can't do that very easily with only 10 records at a time.
• Let the user choose the default order for a list of tags (ie. alphabetically, frequency, or the order they were originally entered.)
• Let the user keep their "contact" list private, including from those contacts themselves. See #17 below.
• When copying a bookmark from another user, keep that other user's tags. See #22

8. Ok, I *think* I finally found where you can see the cached screenshots. But I found it totally by accident. On the "view details" page for each bookmark. Also on that page is a list of users who have bookmarked it, along with the title they've chosen, the rating they've given it, and the date they bookmarked it. That list is in reverse chronological order by the date it was last bookmarked. How is this a useful order? Again, I ask, why do i care when it was bookmarked? And that table is not sortable. Sort by rating. That would be useful. Sort by user. That would be useful. Sorting by date bookmarked is not useful to me.

9. There's not enough contrast on the ratings stars. Either just show 3 stars (instead of 3 dark stars next two two slightly less dark stars), or make them different colors entirely.

10. Date added. I'm giving this its own bullet because i keep mentioning it. Why do i care when a bookmark was bookmarked? I can imagine the date being important only if i wanted, for example, to see a list of everything bookmarked with a certain tag or tags since the last time i logged in. Or since a certain date. Or between two dates. But on its own, the date is completely irrelevant to the entire function of social bookmarking as far as I can tell.

11. Good job making it fairly simple transferring your del.icio.us bookmarks. That was pretty much a necessity for me to even consider using magnolia. But it takes way too freaking long for them to show up. I know it takes time for Magnolia to cache each page, but that's no reason the rest of the information can't show up sooner and the cached page could say "Pending".

12. I really like that you can make select bookmarks private. Now I don't have to worry about referring my coworkers or family to my bookmarks the way I did with del.icio.us.

13. How do I see a list of ALL of EVERYONE's tags? Both alphabetically and as a cloud. If it's possible, it certainly isn't obvious how to do it.

15. Cached page thing. Doesn't work, at least on this bookmark. Or maybe it was an out of date bookmark imported from del.icio.us or something like that.

16. Del.icio.us's "related tags" feature is awesome. Especially the ability to click on the plus sign to add a tag to your current view. I really hope they consider adding it to magnolia.

17. "Contacts" makes me uncomfortable. To me, a contact is someone I know, someone I communicate with (ie. someone i'm in contact with.) I don't feel right adding someone I don't know and have never communicated with as a "contact". (If I add them as a contact, will they know? 'Cause that seems weird. You definitely need to allow for anonymity. I'll add that to the preferences section above.) How about "favorite users"? Or even just "People." Or maybe not. I dunno. But definitely not "contacts."

18. "Featured Linkers" - good idea. They've found some "cool people" like Ted Allen from 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' or NPR's Ira Glass to use Magnolia and add bookmarks which you can see. I'll be checking a few of these out regularly or subscribing to the rss feeds for them.

19. There's this "Messages" tab. What's that for? Is it just for messages from Magnolia's administrators to me? I'm trying to figure out how to send a message to another user but can't figure it out. I even went and (reluctantly) added someone (Ira Glass) as a contact to see if I could do it then, but stil no dice.

20. Groups -- good idea. Wish del.icio.us had that.

21. Magnolia is prettier, no question, but del.icio.us is more streamlined and more intuitive if you ask me. It's very simple but gives you lots of information and lots of functionality. And, especially now that Firefox 1.5 supports site-specific user stylesheets, it's easy to skin del.icio.us to make it more attractive, mag.nolia needs to compete with features and not just with "pretty".

22. The "copy bookmark" button should copy the tags, too. You have to add your own tags anyway, so why not at least leave the previous user's tags so you can choose to leave them or delete them or edit them as you see fit? Or at least make this one of the user preferences. I'll add this to #7 above.

23 HOLY CRAP, BATMAN! I've been searching Ma.gnolia all day and just figured out that the freaking search box doesn't search tags by default!! THAT'S WHY I TAG THINGS! SO I CAN SEARCH AND FIND THEM AGAIN! Go to the Ma.gnolia homepage. There's a searchbox in the upper right. Search for "firefox css" without the quotes. Nothing. "Found 0 of Everyone's Bookmarks With firefox css (Show Search Options)" But now click on that "Show Search Options" link. You'll see 2 radio buttons indicating that ma.gnolia is only searching title and description. So you have to click the "tags" radio button just to search the tag space!!

24. But wait! There's more! Picking up where we left off, click the tags radio button and then on "go". And you know what you get? ZERO AGAIN! And you know WHY?? because it's searching what you typed as a phrase. So whereas you thought you were searching for bookmarks that were tagged with 'firefox' and with 'css' you were in fact searching for bookmarks tagged with a two-word-with-a-space-between-them-tag called 'firefox css' which is completely different than searching for two separate tags. So click on "Show search options" yet again (i don't understand why i have to keep clicking on "show search options" Why aren't they just there all the time????) and insert a comma between firefox and css. then click on go. As of this writing, I get 3179 hits.

25. And the final search-related gripe i have is that i can't choose to search for tags to start with. Because there is no "show search options" on the original page. There's just a search button. So you have to do a search, which fails, then you click on show search options, then click on tags, then click on go. Is it me, or is that annoying as hell?

26. Sorry. Another search gripe. If I search for "firefox, css" with a space after the comma, I get 3179 hits. But if I do a search for "firefox,css" without the space, I get 15,973 hits. What's up with THAT?

27. Oops. Yet another one. Note that the search we've been doing (firefox, css) is an "OR" search. Ma.gnolia returns booksmarks that are "Tagged With "firefox" or "css" or Similar" (I don't know what counts as "similar" in this context, but they should probably explain that somewhere). So how do I find bookmarks tagged with firefox AND with css? "firefox AND css", "firefox+css", "firefox + css", "firefox & css", (ignoring the quotes, of course) none of those will do it.

28. ALERT TO ALL DEL.ICIO.US USERS: (sorry for the dramatic red text) As I alluded to in #24, Ma.gnolia tags can contain a space. So if you enter tags in ma.gnolia with a space between them, then you will be screwed. you must enter them with a comma! I repeat: you must enter with with a comma! This warning should be plastered all over magnolia's site. I discovered this on my own. Thankfully I hadn't bookmarked too many new sites yet. I don't recall reading it even in the tutorial. (update: it *is* in the tutorial, but just in the basic tutorial, not the tutorial for social bookmarking veterans. So i stand corrected about them not mentioning it, but they really do need to create a page for del.icio.us users, and a link on the homepage that says, "Del.icio.us users start here") Note that it will import your tags from del.icio.us just fine, even though you entered them there with a space between them.

29. I like the idea of the "Snap Mark" bookmarklet, which lets you quickly add a bookmark to magnolia but doesn't make you tag and describe it right away. But there needs to be a simple way of going back later and getting a list of the bookmarks that I haven't tagged yet. Otherwise, they just disappear into my huge list of bookmarks and I can never find them again. Even with the search box, because I search for tags, and to a lesser extent for descriptions, but not for titles. Who the heck remembers the titles of web pages??

30. A nice feature might be for ma.gnolia to periodically check the bookmarks and make sure they still represent active pages. Maybe it could alert you with a list of your bookmarks that no longer work, and ask whether you want to delete it or change the URL or to keep a cached copy of that page around.

If Ma.gnolia were my introduction to social bookmarking, I have little doubt that I would have fallen instantly in love with it. But it's not. I'm a del.icio.us user (although not a hard-core one by any stretch of the imagination). So for now, I plan on continuing to use del.icio.us, which I am used to and which provides me most of the functionality I feel I need in an intuitive streamlined interface. I'll certainly being staying current with any developments in ma.gnolia, and maybe switching over in the future as it improves. I know I listed a lot of complaints above, but ma.gnolia is not bad. It does the job, just not as well as it could and not as well as del.icio.us does for the most part.

So anyway, lemme know what you think. And I'm especially interested in corrections to anything I got wrong above.

Young Hannibal Lecter

Apparently this is the face of the new young Hannibal Lecter:


All I can say is, this boy can eat my liver any day. And I'll even supply the fava beans and chianti!
 

Dillweed

Conversation on the way to Wawa:

Itchy: You dillweed!
TvDetective: You know what the word for that is in Spanish? "Dillweedo."
Itchy: Really??
TvDetective: No.
 

Gmail as a spam filter

I came across this great post today about using GMail as a spam filter for your regular email account. The general idea is that you forward all of your email to your gmail address, which filters out the spam and forwards the good stuff back to you. (gmail has a fantastic spam filter built in)

In my case, I use a whitelist for my main email account, which lets through mail only from people I've told it to, and everything else goes to a spam folder. The problem is that if someone is emailing me for the first time, or their email address changes, then they aren't on my whitelist, and they get shuffled into the spam folder even though their email is legit, so I have to check the spam folder periodically to make sure nothing "good" was put in there, and to delete the rest to prevent myself from going over my rater pitiful 40MB mail quota.

So rather than filter everything else into the spam folder, i'm now forwarding everything else to my gmail account, which filters for me and sends the rest back.
That way I don't have to worry about all the spam making me go over my quota, and I'm not forwarding the bulk of my email to GMail, which still has me a little concerned about privacy issues.

We'll see how it works out. I just implemented this about 5 minutes ago.

Snow Penis

I took this photo on Penn's campus around lunch time. When I left work at 4:30, it had been destroyed. Thank god for photographic evidence. Oh, and my prediction: front page of the DP tomorrow, or else it makes it into the April Fool's issue this year.
 

TvD's priorities in life

Conversation I had today with TvD after she ran head-first into a tree and I heard her shriek.

Itchy: Holy cow! Are you ok? I was afraid you left your eyeball hanging from that hanging tree branch!

TvDetective: Yeah. Is my hair ok?
 

phantom vibrations

Does anyone else experience the phenomenon of phantom vibrations in locations where they keep their cellphones? There are times I could swear my phone is vibrating but then I check and there's no sign of a missed call, or the phone is turned off, or, as just happened, i don't even have my cellphone on me. Freaky stuff, people.

New Ken

Have you seen the new Ken doll? First of all, he's not even blond. Second, he has a man-purse. Third, he looks like he has a perm. Fourth, he looks like a caucasian version of Prince (and not, as Fishy says, Prince William). Personally, I still prefer gay Ken.

...Pants on fire

I *so* called it. In update 4 of the State of the Union post, I commented about Bush's comments to end this country's oil addiction, "I don't believe that he means a word he's saying." Well guess what:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

Full article here.