Kevin Zak

I admit to my sins. I have signed up for social networking websites in the past. Most of these are looked upon as a blight upon the web — a vile place where no one should wonder. This is true for a vast majority of them. MySpace, which can only be depicted as a children’s park with hunting blinds set up especially for pedophiles. Bebo, where everybody knows your name… and your age… and your school… and who you’re dating… and every other piece of information you don’t want random strangers to know. Hi5, which sends out so many promotional emails, you would think their mail server was on a continuous loop.

However, the lack of privacy is not the only filth that comes from registering at one of these monstrosities. We now have to deal with a new kind of evil. Referred to by many different names, these sins against humanity are found on every major social network. Whether you call them widgets, applications, or add-ons, something titled, “Are YOU interested?” can never be good.

Beginning with Friendster and then adopted by MySpace, we suffered through these digital faux pas for an entire year with no real hope. In 2004, a new social networking site was launched. It promised to be different; it was designed for a different clientele. A popular spot for the college crowd, Facebook was born. For nearly three years, it was an an enlightening experience when compared to its competitors. The usual level of annoyance was non-existant.

In 2007, Facebook announced the Facebook Platform, which allowed developers to create applications for Facebook. Things started going down hill shortly after.

The concept started out with a good idea: give users more customization over what is displayed in their profiles. Applications have always existed in some form. It began with things similar to “The Wall”, which enables users to leave messages on their friends’ profile pages. At some point, however, a digression was made. The path to customization was left for a new road — one where developers would create anything, no matter how annoying, as long as it was popular.

This, I believe, is the root to our problems. These services are so focused on pleasing some people that they forget that such changes can alienate and outright annoy others. MySpace has always been a breeding ground for preteen users and their annoying habits. In the past, it was a profile design with blinking lights and neon colors. It regressed into polls which featured the most elaborate of questions: “Do you think I’m sexy?”, “Would you ever date me?”, and “Do you like Degrassi?” graced profiles far and wide, with seemingly no intervention.

Facebook is no longer enjoyable for me. At some point the developers need to put their foot down. They need to ask themselves, “Who was our original audience? What would they think of this?” They need to stop trying to compete with MySpace and start trying to retain what used to be a fresh look at social networking. While adapting for a changing userbase is a good idea in theory, forgetting the original userbase entirely is a serious mistake.

This is exactly where Facebook went wrong. They lost their originality; they gave up what made them different from MySpace. They decided that they did not want to be different — they wanted to compete. Worst of all, however, is what is outlined above. Facebook forgot their original cliente, and that is the biggest mistake a company can make.

I am the type of person who is interested in the statistics of my website. I find tracking my referrals and outgoing links can be a fascinating look at human mentality on the web. I have been in search of a superior alternative to the free solutions provided by most web hosts, AWStats and Webalyzer, for quite some time now. While both services provide intricate data, they also present appalling designs with very little intuitive usability. Customization is a no-go for both of them; neither offer plugins and both have very limited settings.

As such, I set out on a quest. My grail? A customizable website statistics system with an appealing design. I began research about five months ago. I consulted with friends, professionals, and the owners of some popular websites. I learned that many were in the same boat as I — they had not yet found a suitable replacement. I read articles on the subject, user-posted messages on forums, and compared reviews. With all my research and new-found knowledge, I still had not been fruitful.

Then, by a stroke of coincidental luck, a friend of mine started using a new statistics manager. Not only was he using it, but he was obsessed with it — to a near comical degree. I knew that Kyle, a user interface designer, would not be so involved with something that had a sloppy design, so I was quite excited. He provided me with screenshots and links to information, both of which I was thoroughly impressed with. However, it looked too good to be true, and even when disproving that by playing with the demo, I put off paying for a license. I recently purchased one, though, and after a week of use, I feel I understand the ins and outs of it.

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It seems as though I have been neglecting this place a little too much. Two weeks without a blog entry is unacceptable, especially when you consider that I set a goal of two posts per week. That said, I have been busy with work and school, so I haven’t just been playing my FPS game of choice (America’s Army). I will attempt to make up for my absence by detailing the events that caused it.

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No, I’m not switching keyboard formats. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of research concerning typography and its uses when applied to the web. It is an interesting look at how type should be displayed and formatted in terms of web design. Unlike most web-oriented learning adventures I partake in (I am notorious for learning the basics of a coding language and then getting bored with), I am actually intrigued by typography and find myself wishing to learn more of the concepts behind it.
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Recently I have been working on a very minimalistic design for a family friend that requested I make a website for her husband’s business. I started work on one last week and even half-finished I believe it is probably my best work. They recently backed out of the job, saying they’d need a little more time before they would have the information that I would require ready and usable. So I decided to use my design for this site, instead. It is very simple, but I’m fond of what I have done so far, something that has never happened to me before now; I always hate my own work. I think the key was that I designed it initially for someone else. Anything I’ve designed for this blog thus far has been with the blog in mind and I’ve always disliked the final result, and thus decided not to use it.

The theme concentrates on simplicity and typography more than being graphically “enhanced” and fancy. I think that it will be classy and dignified, yet still maintain the atmosphere of this site: a blog that no one reads by a guy who has no desire to be read. I am pretty excited about it so far, but I’m having a bit of designer’s block (if that exists, that is; I initially wrote that as “writer’s block” but thought that this made more sense). The header isn’t coming around as quickly as I would like, but I have a few good ideas for the lower region of the design including the footer.

I will try to keep you updated. As of right now, it is merely a Photoshop design. I want to make sure that I like it before I put effort into coding it. I’m not sure how long it will take to finish, but I will be disappointed if it is not done by the middle of next month at the latest.

The theme I’m currently using, Simpla, is great and I adore it. However, it is not my own creation and thus I feel like a personal blog should have a personal design.

This fall I resigned my position at InvisionFree after two years of providing support and documentation for its users. After two months of unhappiness, I finally decided to call it quits. This was not because of any one person. It was just a general boredom with what I was doing.

My resignation has reduced the amount of stress in my life significantly. I no longer wake up in the morning wondering if there was a late-night spammer that I now have to deal with before school. I no longer feel the pressure of documentation deadlines and I no longer feel required to log in and answer support tickets each night. While having less stress is usually construed as a good thing, I find myself having more and more free time. When I normally would be writing a documentation or giving support, I have nothing to fill these gaps of time. That is, until now.

Recently I’ve decided to become an active member of the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu is an open source Linux distribution that focuses on usability, regular releases, and freedom from legal restrictions. For over a year I’ve been using Ubuntu and its KDE derivative Kubuntu as a secondary operating system to Windows XP. While I still familiarized myself with Ubuntu and Linux in general, I never used it enough to grasp the concepts behind it. Lately, however, I’ve started using Kubuntu 7.10 full time and I find myself learning more each day.

While maintaining my position as an active member of Kubuntu’s IRC support channel, I now frequently visit the development channel, which is full of well-informed people willing to lend a hand. I’ve also started visiting Ubuntu+1, a channel dedicated to the next version of Kubuntu, whatever that may be. Currently, it is Ubuntu 8.04, which is an LTS release. I’ve recently installed 8.04 and have been testing it out for a few days.

I’ve also started the process of joining the Documentation Team there. I proofread my first documentation today, and I had a lot of fun doing it. An operating system is such a multifaceted thing to document that nearly anyone can find some area their interested in. I can tell already that I’m going to have a lot of fun documenting the system.

As the title indicates, I have an entirely new perspective of Ubuntu. Prior to my decision to become active in the community, I thought of it as simply another operating system. Now, after a couple weeks of seeing the community in action, it’s clear that it is so much more than that. Never before have I seen so many people from all over the world work for such a specific common goal. Whether they go about it the right way or not, everyone has improving Ubuntu on their mind. Programmers, writers, artists, and even the most basic of users want the same thing. The best end result possible. Ubuntu works towards a common goal to achieve a unilaterally desired result, whereas other organizations work toward specific goals to improve what they want, as opposed to what everyone wants. This is essentially what sets Ubuntu apart from any other group, and what makes me so eager to help out the project.