However, this post isn’t about a major redesign, like the Timeline, which I must say, I think is pretty nifty, if not slightly useless.

No, what I am complaining about today (and I have a right to complain as a free user with FB ad blocking in my browser) is a tiny little tweak that I’m sure went unnoticed by the majority of the millions of Facebook users but greatly reduced the usefulness of the site (and thus, the entire user experience).

In the last couple months, Facebook rolled out a feature whereby you can view activity of your friends in “News” Feed; even if that activity involves interacting with someone that is not your Facebook friend. At first this perplexed me. I can see that you commented on Joe Smith’s status or Jane Doe’s photo, but I can’t interact with it in any way? Thank you for the opportunity, but no thanks.

This same rollout saw the introduction (or at least my first noticing of) the Subscribe/Unsubscribe feature. I personally didn’t really care for this feature either; I like my social media to be free-flowing and while FB’s algorithms that decide what content may or may not interest me are likely quite sophisticated, I’d rather just see it all and filter it myself [mentally, that is].

And the default option for the Subscribe/Unsubscribe feature was subscribe to “Most Updates.” So I had to manually change each person’s setting to “All Updates” as I saw updates from them. And they allowed a great deal of granularity in that you could decide what types of updates you wanted to see (status, photos, comments/likes, etc.).

I really am going somewhere with this. Bear with me here.

Then, all of the sudden, Facebook changes the little Subscribe/Unsubscribe dropdown menu and took away all of the granularity in types of updates to view and set everything back to “Most Updates.” That last bit has to be the worst part of it.

Up until I started writing this post, I thought Facebook had taken the granularity of update types away completely. Not so. But they might as well have.

To change the types of posts you want to see from an individual user, you now have to visit each person’s profile and change it there. You can no longer do it from the News Feed.

Bravo, Facebook. I understand that minor tweaks to a website are commonplace, but this was a useful feature that they took away (more like tucked away) without any real reason to do so. And the resetting of all of my previous settings just added insult to injury (I’m so hurt).

Oh well. The only real reason I even check out FB anymore is because my friends and family are there. Twitter is where I do most of my social networking, and, increasingly, Pinterest has captured my imagination; still getting acclimated to that one, though.

So what about you? Have you noticed any minor tweaks in Facebook (or any website for that matter) that have greatly reduced a site’s usefulness?

Social networking sites (SNS) have been around in one form or another essentially since the dawn of the Internet; however, over the past three to five years, with the explosive rise of Facebook and Twitter into the mainstream, SNS have come to dominate the lives of millions of Americans. Use of SNS largely revolve around individual’s personal lives, and it should stand as no surprise that people use these sites in the workplace.

The somewhat gut reaction of management is to ban personal use of social networks at work. And there are several reasons why this might not be a bad idea. For one, cyber security firm Sophos found in 2010 that reports of phishing, malware, and spam have increased as a result of increased use of social networks in the workplace.

However, while the cyber security threat is a very real one, the 2.2 billion dollar question is, “Does SNS usage in the workplace decrease productivity?”

Obviously, if you clicked on the link in the previous paragraph, the immediate answer would be “Yes, yes it does indeed decrease productivity.” This school of thought has plenty of supporters, as over half of US companies completely block employee access to Facebook and Twitter, and another 19% allow only SNS use for business purposes only.

And logic dictates that this is probably a good course of action. If (as a boss) I know my employees are tweeting or posting to Facebook on company time, then that is time that they are not devoting to work, which means the company loses money, investors aren’t going to be happy, and they’ll eventually want to find a new boss (quite the slippery slope).

While personal use of SNS are banned in many workplaces, there are actually social networks aimed strictly at businesses and are designed to be an internal tool for communication. For instance, Yammer is a Twitter-like social network that was developed to increase productivity by eliminating superfluous emails in one’s inbox. Instead of internal emails, employees use Yammer and can quickly read and respond to important messages, rather than having to wade through the bacn that so often clogs up employees’ mailboxes.

Even though business-oriented social networks are beginning to catch on, there are actually plenty of studies out there to support the idea that a bit of personal SNS use in the workplace or even just personal web surfing, in general, can have a positive effect on workers and morale. A 2010 article from Wired discussed how humans aren’t meant to work like a drone on a single project or task for eight hours straight and that stepping back from the project to let the mind wander for a little bit can increase productivity.

Similarly, Australian researchers have found that visiting social networking sites can increase productivity by up to 9%. This isn’t to say that a worker can spend his/her entire day on Twitter or Pinterest and still get their work done. However, the researchers found that workers that spent even up to 20% of their workday surfing the web still displayed the 9% productivity increase.

So, as with everything in life, from alcohol to fatty foods to tweeting on the job, moderation seems to be the key. A bit of personal tweeting or facebooking can do the body good, as well as the parent company.

Ifttt stands for “If this then that” and allows you to set up different “tasks” to automate actions across various social networks. So, for example, the first (and only) task that I have set up so far is for every blog post I make here in WordPress to be automatically posted to Twitter.

Seems like a pretty cool idea.

And they have tons of combinations taking advantage of open APIs from services like Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Dropbox, Craigslist, and many more.

So that’s what this post is all about. Telling you what ifttt is and creating a post to see how well it works.

And now… a theoretical “how to break Twitter using ifttt.”

It seems that you could really destroy the Internet (or at least a major web service) using ifttt, assuming they haven’t set up controls to block mischievous ifttt-ers from causing harm. As soon as I signed up for ifttt and set up my first “If-I-post-to-Wordpress,-then-tweet-it” task, someone could make what is essentially make the equivalent of this BASIC classic:

10: Print “Hello World”;
20: Goto 10

Which is able to kill a computer as it gets bogged down in the infinite loop of printing “Hello World” over and over and over and over again.

So on ifttt, it seems like some could create a task saying “If I tweet, then tweet.” Creating an infinite loop of Fail Whale proportions first bringing down Twitter, then everything connected to the Twitter API, and in the end, destroying the entire Twitterverse.

That, or ifttt has controls in place to make sure such jackassery can’t happen. That seems more likely

Lists.

If you follow lots of people on Twitter (as I do), you’ve probably run into the need for lists to divide up said “followees” based on relationship, interests, etc. The problem is that adding several people to a list (something you’d have to do if you don’t keep up with it actively or if you’ve created a new list) is an agonizing chore.

From the default homepage of your Twitter account, you have to click on “Following” (that’s one click) and then, for each person you want to add to a list, it is a four-click process [1. Profile Action; 2. Add or remove from lists; 3. Check box for the particular list; 4. Exit profile action box].

Every person, four clicks.

Now you’re obviously going to need at least one click for each person you’re trying to add to a list, but four clicks for each person?! Balderdash, I say!

What Twitter needs is a check box next to each name in your Following list. You would then check off every name you wanted to add to List X. From there, they would have some sort of “Add Followees to List” button (without using such a lame term as “Followees”). Or even the same Profile Action button. Either way, it would save users lots of extraneous clicks and headaches.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go update my Followees lists… don’t bother me for the next couple hours; I’ll be busy.

The first was a piece in Forbes I saw yesterday… by far the most doom and gloom of the articles I’ve seen. The author absolutely rails against them for being more concerned with trivial initiatives and numbers than the actual customer experience. Great comparisons to Amazon all throughout, as well. I strongly recommend reading it.

The second and third were about their terrible customer service and the gap that exists between the physical stores and their online presence (lending further credence to the first article).

I’m not quite sure what to make of all this yet. Sure, going to Best Buy is largely (but not completely) an awful experience, but they’re so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine them going away too soon. The evidence certainly seems stacked against Best Buy though. Plus, it happened to Circuit City, so why couldn’t Best Buy be next?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, and if an epiphany on the subject should strike me, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

The last half of the article discusses how Mobile Content Venture (MCV, the consortium of broadcasters and companies behind this latest push for mobile DTV) needs to secure broadcast rights to be able to transmit to these new mobile DTV-enabled devices.

My question is… WHY??!?

Broadcasters and major networks have been complaining for years that their profits are dwindling, whether it’s because of audience fragmentation due to cable, piracy, online streaming sources, or any number of other possible culprits.

So why are they forcing MCV to jump through these legal hoops when the end result of MCV’s efforts is to get the broadcaster’s programming (and more importantly, advertising) in front of a potentially much wider audience that will have ubiquitous access to their offerings?

There is a huge potential audience out there that may or may not have access to OTA DTV broadcasts, and the major networks are going to get into legal wranglings over content that is already being broadcasted over the air for free, just to a different type of device? I know that I personally do not have a DTV receiver in my home, but if my smartphone had one and I could watch live DTV broadcasts for free, I would. Advertisements and all.

No wonder these companies are losing money.

One trait of INTJs is to stick with a proven method of doing something, wholeheartedly endorsing it as the proper/best/most efficient way of doing X. Then, if an obviously better method of doing X comes along, the INTJ will immediately abandon the old way for the new proper/best/most efficient way of getting something done.

I am very much like this in many facets of my life. And my technology habits are not spared from this flaw (some call it a blessing) of my personality.

For example, for a couple months in the early parts of 2011, I was looking into how to upgrade an old Dell desktop tower into a media center. I wanted it to run Ubuntu Linux, have a wireless keyboard and mouse (to operate it from my couch), and it would connect to my TV via HDMI.

And I was successful. It worked up until about September when (I think) the motherboard fried. Up until then, it was fantastic. I could stream from the Internet (although not from Netflix) and I could play all of my local files off an external drive, as well as networked files.

Then I found my Boxee Box. And nothing was ever the same again. I can stream from nearly any site or service, it features nearly infinite codecs for video files, and I can connect to all media files on my LAN. And I sure as heck wouldn’t go back to a stodgy old desktop tower connected to my TV.

My iPhone is another example of my INTJedness influencing my tech purchasing decisions. I’ve had an iPhone 3GS since May 2010. My contract is up in May of 2012 and I had planned to continue with the 3GS (without a contract) until the (likely) iPhone 5 is announced in (likely) July of 2012. Then I would upgrade and all would be right in my world.

Then I happened upon a Best Buy Mobile. I only walked inside the store because I was curious as to what kind of products they sold. Then they had the audacity to tell me that they would pay me $123 for my old 3GS.

…nearly $130? For a phone that they’re giving away for free?

I thought I would never get a deal like this again. At least not for my 3GS, which has been acting sluggish for the past few months (especially since upgrading to iOS 5).

So, three days later, I decided to sell my aging 3GS and get the new iPhone 4S. And like any true-blooded INTJ, I stand firmly by that decision. A good deal for a better phone, and I got a brand new friend out of the deal, as well.

So here’s to the greatest tech decision I’ve ever made… of course, it’ll only keep that title until the next superior gadget comes along.

And I am very proud to say that my team won!!

I cannot really go into all the gritty details, since Accenture will recycle this challenge with other schools (how green!). But I will say that it was totally a team effort and a lot of hard work. And I mean a lot! We received the RFP on Monday, had a draft proposal written by Tuesday, created network diagrams and budgets on Wednesday, attended a bidder’s conference Thursday, and presented our proposal on Friday.

And like many CICS candidates before me, I stayed up all night on Thursday, despite our team’s successful work earlier in the week.

Now I just hope I can parlay this victory into a research job with Accenture. Here’s hoping!

So, for example, the McDonald’s website, now at <mcdonalds.com> could become <mc.donalds>. Or they could put the whole name of the company as the TLD and use the second level domain as individual pages. So when McDonald’s wants to bring back the McRib again, they could tell you to simply visit <mcrib.mcdonalds> for more details (as if you really need details on the McRib…).

This whole process of the XXX TLD and customized TLDs has been ongoing for the past several months; however, as we near the date where ICANN will begin selling these domains, objections are beginning to be raised.

And like their bellwether decisions to back VHS over Betamax and Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, pornographers have raised the objections first. Among other points of consternation, the pornography companies are concerned that if their websites are all under the .XXX TLD, it will make it that much easier for oppressive governments to block traffic from their sites, since government firewalls will just be able to sweepingly block all .XXX TLDs.

Of course, this may be part of the reasoning behind ICANN’s decision to allow the .XXX TLD in the first place. Also, many oppressive regimes go beyond simple firewalls to control the message of the Internet in their countries — for more on this, I recommend Morozov’s The Net Delusion; it’s an enlightening, critical examination of the Internet’s democratizing potential.

Another problem that has been pointed out is the threat of cybersquatters — these were the people in the mid-90s who had the foresight to snatch up hot online properties like <disney.com> and sell them back to their respective namesake companies for hefty profits. And they’re back to do the same thing in the early-10′s.

Beyond the cybersquatter just looking to make some easy money (albeit with large upfront investment), I could see problems with companies fighting one another for a TLD.

Let’s say two companies want to go the route described above of having the second half of their name as the TLD (the mc.donalds example). Those two companies are Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola. Each of them want to have the .cola TLD for their new website so they can have <coca.cola> and <pepsi.cola>, respectively. And not to sound too skeptical, but I don’t see them coming to an agreement where they co-own .cola and use it in tandem.

And what about .inc? That could be one of the best TLDs to snatch up right away. You could have companies like Apple Inc. knocking down your door trying to get that digital property wrenched from your control.

Assuming, of course, they don’t simply want <app.le>.

I also presented, along with my colleague, a poster about our research lab. At my job with the Center for Media Design, more specifically Insight & Research, we have a naturalistic lab space that is a house converted into a usability lab. The object of the lab is to provide a natural setting to participants for usability testing so that they don’t feel like they are in a sterile lab environment.

Here is a blog post with the content of our poster retooled for the blog format.

And here is the poster itself, although parts may be difficult to read since I had to scale it down from a 24″ x 36″ size.

Edit: Here is another blog post, describing more of the capabilities of the usability lab.