It’s sort of funny to announce a new blog using a blog post, but I guess that’s the way to do it. We’re launching Postbubble, a weblog with a slightly different take on Web 2.0, with the great guys over at ACS. Apart from having done the UI and layout for the weblog, as well as the illustrations, we’ll be co-editing it with ACS, and inviting a few industry leaders (in several distinct areas) to share their thoughts about what really is hot (or not) about (and in) the Web 2.0 space.

Make sure you visit the weblog, subscribe to the feed, and get in touch if you have something to say (either about the design or the idea itself).

Tim O’Reilly has a post on the O’Reilly Radar that caught my eye today. He mentions how Java developers at the JavaOne conference showed signs of (and I quote) “envy and angst” against Ajax, and follows that with “Java had the vision of rich web apps long ago, and is still a great platform for building network-enabled apps with great front-ends”.

Now the misconception here isn’t that Java is a great platform to build applications front-ends (network-enabled or not), but that it can be compared to Ajax. The two can’t be compared for several reasons. Here’s two:

• The technologies behind Ajax alone (XML, Javascript) are not enough to build an application. Ajax is a means to an end - or part of it. It depends on other code layers, both for data presentation, as well as application flow - and those aren’t Ajax at all. Thats why you don’t see web apps purely based on it - it’s simply impossible.
• The percentage of Java (some people still confuse Java with Javascript) being used on the web is declining, and has been since alternative - and far lighter - technologies (like Flash) came along that removed the need to load a JVM to do what Java used to do. In fact, why would I, as a developer, pick Java over anything else that allowed me to do the same thing and not frustrate my users by slowing their machines down a notch?

Tim O’Reilly concludes the post with this sentence:

It’s impossible to think through what people are going to want to do until they start doing it, so sometimes it’s best to seed the market with a hack that gets people going, and then follow up as you watch what they do with it.

Tim, the major problem here is that the time for Java-based front-ends on the web is gone. Others have emerged in this space and took its place, not because they were “hacks”, but because they were better solutions to the problems developers faced. Why should anyone change from Rails+Ajax (or anything else+Ajax), Flex or anything else to Java? What does it really have to offer that we haven’t seen before?

And I mean on the web, Tim. Because the application you mention on your post isn’t web-based. It’s desktop Java, using Swing. There’s no competing with Ajax, or anything else on the web, because they’re not even playing in the same field, here. Let’s not compare Apples to Oranges, or hype technologies because the enthusiasts behind them (which I respect, naturally) are feeling angst for their ball being taken away, not by hacks, but by several other solutions which people have grown to use.

Update:

After reading some comments (and getting some IMs), I realized I didn’t make a proper distinction between what I meant with the time for Java on the web being gone. It’s not the server-side Java I’m talking about. What I *am* talking about, though, is Java as a presentation layer for web applications, the front-end, the frickin’ applets - which is what Tim was talking about as well. This being explained, my point may be clearer.

Change in a big portal is not something to be taken lightly. The new Yahoo! homepage, which is now close to launching, is an attempt to revitalize the way people see the company and the services it offers, and to provide users with a new starting point to their online world.

In this post, we take a look at what has changed between the old and new layouts, and share some thoughts on what might be the next steps important for the team in charge of the portal homepage to take. Read on.

Content organization

The new Yahoo! homepage focuses on personalization and on delivering what’s important to the visitor, fast. In looking at both the old and new versions of the page side-by-side, it becomes clear that Yahoo! paid some attention to how people navigated their layout, and what parts of it got the most attention. The result was the reorganization of the content categories (Yahoo! services), moved from the top of the page and into the left, filtering out (to a hidden layer shown on demand) those that got the less attention.

The tabbed approach to the features area (Featured, Entertainment, Sports, Money) is a good metaphor to have more valuable content in while taking less space. However, I expect some people to be confused by how content is split between the four areas, and how the sub-stories are picked for each section. While this new organization is easy to get used to, some people might prefer featured news from specific areas like Health on the homepage without having to click through to the health area. User customization might be the key here.

The same tabbing scheme is used for the news section (In the news, World, Video). Here, the organization is much easier to understand - even though the difference between “In the news” and “World” may sometimes be slim (at the time of this writing, these two tabs shared 3 out of their 8 stories). In a small note, I might move the stock widget to the marketplace section below for two reasons: it’s not tabbed, meaning it’s always visible (people who’d use it would prefer it that way), and it makes more sense from an organization perspective.

Personalization

The highlight of the new design are the personalization features. During the last year or so, we’ve seen a lot of focus on productivity dashboards, with the slow rise of personalized homepage solutions from all the major players. Yahoo! has decided to give a first step into integrating personal features into their portal.

I don’t think the transition to a user-centric Yahoo homepage is complete, and can only hope they figure out the best way to provide me with content I care about right on the homepage, to save me the time browsing, looking for it. There’s a few ways that can happen, which would be subject of a whole different post, but Y! seems to be on the right path.

Personalization makes sense because it makes the Yahoo! homepage cross the boundary from “informative” into “utilitarian”. I don’t feel compelled to visit a page if it doesn’t provide me with information I actually need, so by integrating things that are either close to my business life or close to my heart to the homepage I’ll be visiting more often.

So, all this to say that the Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Local integration is the first step into what can be a pretty interesting homepage, tailored to the individual user. I know how change in big organizations can be troublesome and difficult, but can only hope Yahoo realizes the potential of full homepage personalization, and runs with the idea. Because we don’t need a My Yahoo, we need a Yahoo that’s more mine.

Concluding thoughts

Little has been said about the design itself - focusing on the new experience seems to logical given the changes -, but the main reason is because it’s clean enough to appeal to Yahoo!s broad audience. There are a few juicy details about it, like the possibility of picking a wide or slim layout, as well as changing the predominant color from a blue/grey into green, yellow or orange. Did I talk enough about personalization already? Right.

The overall conclusion is that this is a win for Yahoo. The new page is clean, relevant, and well designed. The job of the Design and User Experience team at Yahoo! isn’t easy - the amount of information that needs to be managed is huge, and that task is not to be taken lightly. I take my hat off to them for the step forward, and can only hope they continue to improve the homepage based on relevance. Because I need to know what’s important to me, all the time.

Siteblimp, the PPC application we developed for the guys at ACS, relies on the Google Adwords API to provide its service to the users. We previously wrote about the problems of depending on 3rd party APIs, but nothing in writing comes close to real experience. This (somewhat technical) post highlights some of the problems we faced during the development stage, in hoping to illustrate some of the issues you may run into working with code you don’t control.

From initial goals to reality

Siteblimp is a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign management web application with some innovative features. Initially, the goal was to support both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) but for reasons we’re about to explain, Y! support was dropped. Still, we’ll highlight the advantages (and the many shortcomings) of both APIs and the companies behind them. (more…)