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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Recently a good friend of mine, Kyle Meyer, created a new website with a unique premise. Kyle is a user interface designer at Clockwork Active Media Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also the author of Astheria, a blog focusing on design, but specifically the usability and typography of design, which (in my opinion) happens to be his forte. This new site would focus on reviewing sites across the web that exceed in just that forte, typography and usability. He spoke of his ideas to create such a site to me previously, but it just recently became a reality.
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Just before Christmas I decided that I needed a bigger mp3 player. My music collection was growing and my 8GB Rio Carbon just wasn’t cutting it anymore. With this in mind I set out to find a ridiculously cheap player with nice battery life. I needed no special features like video playback (that’s what my laptop and PSP are for) nor a nice LCD screen (it just needs to play my music, not look pretty) nor did it need to be tiny (it would sit in my lap or in the cup holder of my car, not in my pocket). Unlike the vast majority of the population, I do not support overpriced iPods (or other equally overpriced Apple products) and thus was not ready to purchase one.

I began reading reviews on several major brands. While all of them had unique features that made them appealing, only one brand had the thing that caught my interest: battery life. Supposedly Creative destroys other mp3 players’ battery life by a wide margin. The only problem was the price. While they were reasonably priced for their caliber, they weren’t quite in my price range. Then I stumbled upon the Creative Zen Touch. It was not nearly as pretty as Creative’s other models, yet it had an interesting concept with it’s vertical scrolling device and it had amazing reviews on battery life. Best of all, I could get a factory refurbished 20GB model for only $49.99. I convinced my parents to order me one and they ended up buying one for my brother, as well.

Size Doesn’t Matter After All

It came via UPS four days later. I quickly opened up the box and was slightly surprised. This thing was by no means small. When I researched it, I didn’t pay much attention to the dimensions or weight. I was more interested in the things I cared about (battery life and capacity). I expected it to be a little bigger than normal mp3 players, but this was a bulky, beast of an mp3 player and that bothered me a little at first. When I held it, though, I found that it fit my hand perfectly. It did fit into my pocket (as well as my car’s cup holder), and although it was bulky, I liked the feel better than my friends’ skinny iPods. I knew that if I dropped this thing, it wasn’t going to break. It’s as solidly built of an electronic device of its size as I’ve ever seen.

<3 Storage

With 20GB of storage, it can hold my entire music collection with plenty room for growth. This was nice, since at about 12GB, I had to carefully choose what I wanted on my previous mp3 player and what I did not. With my entire library on it, I can fire up Winamp, head to the portable devices section, and hit the nifty sync button whenever I buy a new CD. It’s nearly a flawless process.

Firmware should be more Soft

My initial reaction to the firmware was that this was going to suck. I despised the menu layout. The vertical scrolling was either too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Then I read the manual. It turns out that different parts of the scrolling area are for different speeds. This made all the difference. I could now navigate through menus flawlessly. It turns out that the menu schema Creative designed was actually very nice once people understood how to use the scroll pad.

I <3 My Zen

Overall, I couldn’t be more satisfied. I can get 24 hours of battery life while continuously playing music, which is great for me because I forgot to recharge things every night. It syncs flawlessly with my Winamp collection. 20GB of storage is great for me, and this way I can keep adding music to my collection. Once I got used to the scroll pad, the firmware was great. It’s a great mp3 player. It’s not for people who desire these tiny players that are as small as memory cards, but it’s great for what I use it for. It fits in my cup holder while I’m in the car, on my desk while I’m at home, in my pocket when I’m at the mall or walking elsewhere, and in the stuff-holders that my workout equipment all use. I would definitely recommend it to anyone not obsessed with iPods. The one bad thing I could find about it is that the headphones that come with it are terrible. Luckily I still have my $70 noise canceling ear buds from my old mp3 player.