SOME RANDOM DUDE

Wow, that did not take much time at all… Adobe reports over 83% penetration for Flash Player 9 in mature markets and 84% even in the US. Of course, Flash 9 penetration is significantly more important than prior releases as the latest release is the only player that is compatible with apps built in Actionscript 3. I have briefly glossed over a couple of the important features Actionscript 3 brings to users which could open up completely new doors for interaction. I knew Flash 9 would be adopted quickly, I just had no idea it would be this fast.

Via Flash Obscuraactionscript 3, browser plugins, flash, flash 9, flash player, penetration statistics

Lately, I have been devoting significant time into a daily blogging schedule. This has definitely taken an increased amount of discipline, but the results have been staggering. The increase in writing has led to a decrease in participation in discussions on the site - something I am going to try to reverse in the future. I much rather post slightly less and participate more if it really comes down to it.

This whole blog thing started that out as a bit of an experiment has become a daily fixture. Some people go hiking, others shop, I blog. One of the things I am going to move towards is increased sharing of information and allow more engagement from readers. I thought it would be interesting for some of you to be able to have access to the site’s traffic statistics. As many of you well know, I am absolutely fascinated with web statistics and the patterns/trends they can show. Traffic statistics seems to be this both coveted and highly secret object - I thought it would be interesting to open it up for everyone to see. If you are a web publisher/blogger and you do in fact have your statistics open, please drop a comment and let me know. If would be interesting to see how many folks have open up their numbers and who they are.

In the next six months, my goal is to increase this site’s traffic by another 30%. This may seem a bit arbitrary, but if this traffic increase continues, I think some interesting possibilities could begin to open up. I think it would be interesting to allow readers to see for themselves if this goal is achieved and to follow its progress.

My goal is to make this site as open and transparent as possible. This is obviously a very small and relatively inconsequential piece of that puzzle, but nonetheless an interesting one. So, please, go ahead and look under the hood. Be my guest.data, experiment, information sharing, mint, numbers, open, statistics, traffic, transparency, web analytics web statistics

Anyone that has read Andy Rutledge in the past knows that his style is intended to immediately get your attention. The articles begin with a strong opinion that is usually backed up with good thought. Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback when I read a recent article of his, Objectivity Be Damned, where he seems to pit designers against analytical statisticians - “Objective data is helpful in this arena, but it’s the designer’s intuitive ‘feel’ that must prevail else design is the realm of statisticians.” My argument is that designers for the web need to take a lesson from their fellow statistician. Most of the work on the internet that designers do is directed towards leading users to definable and definitive actions. Therefore, I suggest that designers ultimately cannot rely solely on “feel” or subjective solutions to solve these objective problems.
(more…)beautiful, design, empirical, logic, numbers, objectivity, statistics, subjectivity web design