For almost 12 years the incredible Duke Nukem has been living in the land of vaporware as every year there were rumors of Duke Nukem Forever coming but every time the faithful were let down.

Well no more.

It was just announced at the big PAX 2010 convention by the folks at 2K Games and Gearbox Software, the company behind the great Borderlands game, that Duke Nukem Forever was alive and well with the developers at Gearbox Software.

I am just watching the live stream of the announcement on Ustream but I will update as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: audience is being encouraged to use their cellphones and take screenshots and video

UPDATE 2: we did not get to see the intro but the live stream is showing people playing the game so expect the web to be flooded soon with reports on the game.

UPDATE 3: and we have the first of the YouTube videos showing up.

The feature described in this article is available as of YUI 3.2.0pr2, and it will be a part of the upcoming 3.2.0 release. You can start playing with it today by following the code in this article.

SimpleYUI is a new way of loading and instantiating YUI 3. The SimpleYUI file contains a rollup of basic Ajax library functionality: DOM tasks, event abstraction, UI effects, and Ajax. Unlike other ways of loading YUI, SimpleYUI creates a YUI instance immediately upon loading and binds all included components to a global Y variable. Using SimpleYUI is easy:

<script type="text/javascript"
 src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.2.0pr2/build/simpleyui/simpleyui-min.js"></script>

<script>
 //Y is ready to use; no instantiation necessary:
 Y.one("#foo").addClass("highlight");
</script>

This isn't a lite or de-contented version of YUI you still have access to all of the power and features of the entire library when you start with the SimpleYUI file. However, SimpleYUI does provide a nice convenience by rolling up some common functionality and creating a global instance (Y) that's ready to use immediately.

Work with the DOM

SimpleYUI gives you all of the standard DOM interactions in the YUI 3 API:

//get an element reference, add a click handler
Y.one('#demo').on('click', function(e) {/*handle click*/});

//add content to an element
Y.one('#demo').append('Additional content added to #demo.');

//listen for any click on any <li> that descends from #demo:
Y.one('#demo').delegate('click', function(e) {/*handle click*/}, 'li');

//move #demo to the location of any click on the document
Y.one('document').on('click', function(e) {
    	Y.one('#demo').setXY([e.pageX, e.pageY]);
	}
);

Create UI Effects

All of the UI effects that are part of the (new-for-3.2.0) YUI Transition module are available in SimpleYUI:

//fade #demo, then remove it from the DOM:
Y.one('#demo').transition({
    easing: 'ease-out',
    duration: 2, // seconds
    opacity: 0
}, function() {
    this.remove();
});

Ajax

SimpleYUI provides the IO module's basic Ajax functionality:

// Make an HTTP request to 'get.php':
Y.io('get.php', {
    on: {
        complete: function (id, response) {
            var data = response.responseText; // Response data.
            // ... handle the response ...
        }
    }
});

The rest of YUI is just a use() away

You aren't limited to what comes bundled with SimpleYUI. You can bring in any other YUI 3 component, YUI 3 Gallery module, or YUI 2 component with a simple use() statement at any time.

//Use drag and drop, which is not included in the SimpleYUI rollup:
Y.use('dd-drag', function(Y) {
    var dd = new Y.DD.Drag({
        node: '#foo'
    });
});

YUI 3 is good about loading anything you need whenever you need it; just master the use() statement and you're always just one line of code away from anything in the library that you need.

Use SimpleYUI when

• you want to get started fast and learn the ropes of YUI;
• you want to have basic Ajax library functionality available at any time in the life of the page without creating a new YUI instance.

Don't use SimpleYUI when

• performance matters more than convenience;
• you want to sandbox portions of your implementation into separate instances;
• you want to be deliberate about when different components load and what the precise module/submodule makeup is on the page.

The online personal-finance assistant Mint often mines user data for trends and interesting charts to feature on its popular corporate blog. Now the Intuit-owned company is preparing to release the data it's collected on behalf of its 3 million users. The new Mint Data product is currently publicly available as a soft launch, and should be announced to the public in the next few weeks. Instead of simply allowing logged-in members to look at their personal finances, now any visitor can access aggregate spending data for hundreds of U.S. cities.

Mint's data can be sorted to find things like the average tab at a certain restaurant, or the actual deals other people are getting for their memberships at a certain local gym. Users can also look at pretty charts that show the average monthly spending by Mint users in a city.

What would be really cool is if Mint released an API for this data, so other services could incorporate it. Imagine if you loaded up the Yelp app to find a nearby restaurant, and instead of sorting by the vague number of dollar signs associated with each venue, you could see how much other customers spent on their tabs on average. You could filter for dinner under $20 within two blocks of here at a four-star restaurant. (Of course, Mint doesn't have item-by-item data, so this would be just the average tab rather than the average meal per person, but hopefully it's still informative.)

I talked with some folks from Mint about the new feature at an Intuit product showcase last night, and they assured me that Mint Data is anonymized because it only features venues where at least 50 Mint users have spent money. In San Francisco, where I live, the most popular Food & Dining establishment is Starbucks, and the one with the most expensive average purchase is the wine bar Bar Bambino, where Mint users spend an average of $167.97.

If you want more publicly accessible aggregate spending data, you should also check out Bundle, which probably offers a more representative data set given it pulls spending information from Citigroup (c c) (one of its investors).

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):

Big Data Marketplaces Put a Price on Finding Patterns

Another big upgrade from Facebook: the company is currently testing search results which display articles ranked by likes. Additionally, the results for searches now shows the results from all around the web based on two things: the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object, most likely leveraging some of the technology shown in their recently approved patent. We first received reports of these search results showing up earlier yesterday.

The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn't accessible via Facebook's open graph search results. Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook's search box, however I'd assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook's search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul.

This new search shows how important Facebook's Open Graph is to the future of the company. It also underscores the continued tension between the company and Google, who is working feverishly develop their own competitor to Facebook. If there was any question that Facebook has grand search ambitions, the increasingly relevant search results for any keyword should emphasize this shift. It also illustrates how the like is most definitely positioned to replacing the link. We've reached out to Facebook for comment on the new feature, however we've yet to hear back. Are you seeing these search results? What do you think of them?

Thanks to Jesse Ferrell of AccuWeather for pointing out the upgrade to us yesterday.

Six Apart is shutting down its free blogging service, Vox, and as Mike points out this announcement is really about cleaning up for an upcoming merger with VideoEgg. With 250 million uniques worldwide spread across thousands of blogs and a growing ad business, Six Apart isn't a failure. But, like Slide and like Digg, it hasn't lived up to its promise either. And products like Vox are a big reason why: As blogging was getting more open and commenters more mean spirited, Vox was intended as a clean, well-lit place in the blogosphere. It had a great UI and some nice features like a Question of the Day to get reluctant new bloggers up-and-writing. But then it just sort of withered.

My takeaway from the shuttering wasn't so much Six Apart is cleaning up for a sale (which they are and Six Apart Japan is next) but Good God, Six Apart! What took you so long?

Back in 2007 when Six Apart sold off LiveJournal and named Chris Alden CEO, the mantra was the company was finally going to focus. There's a fine line between healthy diversification and doing too much to do anything well. Six Apart has always had an Intuit problemthey had several valuable properties but they didn't necessarily add up to one big consumer Internet brand in the golden age of huge consumer Internet brands. They were essentially a software-as-a-service company for media with MovableType, a Web publishing tool with TypePad and a consumer Web 2.0 play for teens with LiveJournal and for adults with Vox. Six Apart had essentially made itself a company no one could acquire outright because it was doing so many different things.

Here's a hint: If no one wants to buy you as is, maybe you shouldn't have so many disparate, under-developed products as a stand alone company. Every senior manager at Six Apart I've talked to for the last three years has said this was the company's biggest problem. And yet, we're only now seeing a move to shut down flailing properties. It's hard to say from the outside who is to blame, but Six Apart has clearly suffered from a lack of leadership and decisiveness.

I like Alden. He knows media, he's a nice guy and he came into that job with a lot of goodwill and fanfare. But perhaps that's too much of the problemhe focused more on publishers than readers and was too nice to make hard decisions faster. From what I hear things are turning ugly inside the company, with Alden blaming some of his senior team and much of that team turning on Alden. When (and I should say if, but it's likely when) this deal with Video Egg is announced, they'll be all smiles, there will be a great narrative about why the two make sense together and maybe they do. But none of that is what I hear is going on at Six Apart HQ right now.

It didn't have to be this way. Six Apart was one of the earliest blogging tools and one of the first to have the cojones to charge for simplicity and ease of use. A lot of the look and feel of blogs was shaped by Six Apart founders Ben and Mena Trott. And Six Apart had one of the more powerful and intriguing boards with the uber angel Reid Hoffman, superstar and Creative Commons founder Joi Ito and August Capital's scrappy David Hornik. Some of the smartest people around the Web clearly saw something great in Six Apart. And it had plenty of moneyit raised more than $20 million from investors and millions more when it unloaded LiveJournal.

Welcome to the sadly wistful phase of Web 2.0. The big winners Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedInhave already been separated from the obvious losersFriendster, Plurk, Friendfeed and a host of names we've already forgotten. Only now are we starting to get judgments on the companies in the middle. Ventures that succeeded in building real companies with sizable reach and significant revenues and outlasted a raft of competitors, but that nevertheless didn't live up to their promise. The best will go the way of Slide, a nice exit that no one loses money on, and some make money on. Then there's the situation Six Apart is in now poised on an uncomfortable merger with another private company that's not an exit for anybody and just means another four years of slogging to build something big.

For almost 12 years the incredible Duke Nukem has been living in the land of vaporware as every year there were rumors of Duke Nukem Forever coming but every time the faithful were let down.

Well no more.

It was just announced at the big PAX 2010 convention by the folks at 2K Games and Gearbox Software, the company behind the great Borderlands game, that Duke Nukem Forever was alive and well with the developers at Gearbox Software.

I am just watching the live stream of the announcement on Ustream but I will update as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: audience is being encouraged to use their cellphones and take screenshots and video

UPDATE 2: we did not get to see the intro but the live stream is showing people playing the game so expect the web to be flooded soon with reports on the game.

Gov 2.0 advocates have printed a run of QR (2D barcode) stickers they will stick at bus stops all over Washington DC today, allowing mobile phone users to quickly get up-to-the moment bus progress reports, post traffic status updates, and more. This augmentation of the physical world with real-time data from the ether strikes me as accessible and useful. The project was one of many ideas discussed at DCWeek this June and is being implemented by the Research and Development group in Office of the CTO, DC Government (on Twitter: OCTOLabs).

Sponsor

O'Reilly's Gov 2.0 correspondent Alex Howard shared a link to this photo on Twitter this morning. Smart phone users will use QR reading apps to snap a picture of the codes, then their phones will be shown relevant real-time information corresponding to the bus stop they are at. (That makes more sense to me than NYC's new QR codes on the back of garbage trucks, but hey - they point is, these things are growing more mainstream in the US.)

Here in my home town of Portland, Oregon, the ability to check "time-to-arrival" for busses by phone is much appreciated. Augmenting that kind of data with a richer experience, launched by QR code, sounds great. Santiago, Chile added similar QR codes to 4,000 of its bus stops this Summer.

"See" also this audio interview earlier this week with Bryan Sivak,
Chief Technology Officer at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) in the District of Columbia.

If you want an idea of what the Instant Outliner is, check out this excellent survey by Hutch Carpenter.

Very quietly, and I mean very quietly I've been working on rounding out the features of the latest OPML Editor-based implementation of Instant Outlining. This one is a keeper, I think -- more so than the previous releases.

The realtime updating code is pretty good. Based on long-polling and mailboxes. It works even if you're logged on at more than one location. Even if they both have the same IP address.

There's now a follow-unfollow paradigm, so not everyone is hooked in by default with everyone else. It works like RSS. The person being followed is not aware who is following, and does not have to give permission. However the updates are restricted to a single server.

The server is also part of the implementation. You can't get the client software without getting a server. However the server is disabled by default. The point is that is should be very easy to set up another instance.

Federation isn't implemented, but it is being thought about.

And the protocol is open. To prove that it's open, I've been working step-by-step with Marc Barrot, who is implementing an instant outliner that works with mine in his Javascript outline editor, iJot. It's important for a lot of reasons. For me, selfishly, it means I will be able to edit my instant outline on my iPhone or iPad, which doesn't have an implementation of the OPML Editor.

And I hear that might not be totally impossible.

Next week I'm going to Seattle to hang out with my old programming partner, Brent Simmons, and his lovely wife Sheila. We're going to get me booted up on kernel development. It's been way too long since I've gotten in there and been able to fix bugs and add new features. Funny how time flies when you're having fun.

If you want to try the Instant Outliner, let me know, send an email. All I have to do is create a username and password on my server. All the software is released.

Following this week's OAuth and apps announcements, some of our users have inquired about how bit.ly will work with Twitter's new link-wrapping service. Link-wrapping will enable Twitter to collect traffic data and block spam, but it will not interfere with bit.ly analytics, bit.ly Pro custom domains, or bit.ly Enterprise usage you will be able to shorten, share and track links with bit.ly exactly as you do now.

Many of our partners are already using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co, since all links shared via the Twitter Tweet Button have been wrapped in t.co since the button launched last month.

Link-wrapping will happen automatically and invisibly in the background. For example, if you share the long URL for NPR's Take Five Jazz Sampler (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90379427&sc=tw&cc=share) directly via the Tweet Button, the resulting tweet will look like this:

Though the link shown is automatically passed through t.co, it is displayed here as a truncated version of the underlying long URL. Note that the link as it is displayed here is not, itself, a valid and functioning URL copying and pasting npr.org/templates/stor will result in a 404 error, and the long URL itself may not display consistently across different Twitter clients.

bit.ly Pro links integrate easily with link-wrapping. Our friends at NPR are currently using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co and the Twitter Tweet Button, so a link shared via the Tweet Button at NPR currently looks like this:

The link shown here is also automatically passed through t.co, but the underlying bit.ly Pro (in this case, n.pr) link is displayed. This link is complete and functional as shown, and can be easily copied and pasted (and appended with a + for instant realtime metrics: http://n.pr/c0ujwA+).

We are working closely with Twitter and many other social media platforms to continually improve our service across the web for more information about sharing bit.ly and bit.ly Pro short links to many such platforms, please visit our guide to third party tools for publishers.

Facebook confirmed yesterday that it has begun testing a new subscribe feature for users and pages. The feature lets users follow a user or page and receive notifications when a new update or piece of content, such as a picture or video, occurs.

The new feature may be a move to make someone's news feed more specific and relevant to users. With the average user having 130 friends, it can make it difficult to stay up-to-date on what everyone's doing. With the subscribe feature, a user could choose the top friends they want to follow and see their updates in the notification stream, similar to what happens when someone comments on one of your updates. It also sounds much easier than managing your news feed settings for multiple groups of Facebook friends.

As pointed out by All Facebook, it isn't know what will happen if someone Likes a page or checks-in to a location through Facebook's new Places feature. The following Facebook statement was provided to All Facebook:

This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they've subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).

The new Facebook feature may remind you of the main feature of popular social network Twitter, which has built its entire 145 million member network on following other users and seeing only their updates. One can't help but wonder if Facebook is making a move to be a more complete social network, offering Twitter users the same features. And here comes more speculation about whether Facebook will kill Twitter.

Tags: follow, social network, Social networks, SocialBeat, updates

Companies: Facebook, Twitter

Mike Yang, Google's Associate General Counsel, just published a post on the Google blog, informing users that the company is making its privacy policies shorter and easier to understand for non-lawyers. They are also making some other changes, but to be clear, the Mountain View company isn't altering its privacy practices as such.

The updates will go into effect October 3, which is 30 days from now.

Until that time, all products and services will continue to be governed by the current version of the privacy policies and Google will update people on the changes via the Google Privacy Center and a notice the company will be putting up on the Google Account sign-in page, enabling people to learn about the changes when they sign into Gmail, Docs, Talk or Calendar.

There's now also a dedicated page in the Privacy Center where users can find the most popular privacy tools, and some of Google's product Help Centers will get more content over time.

So what else is changing?

Most Google products and services are governed by the main Google Privacy Policy, which was last updated in March 2009. However, Google writes, a number of its products also have individual privacy policies in addition.

The company will be getting rid of twelve of these product-specific policies to reduce unnecessary redundancies and/or to better reflect how the products work together. These twelve products will continue to be governed by the main Google Privacy Policy.

They are: 3D Warehouse, App Engine, Calendar, Docs, Firefox Extensions, G1, Gmail, Feedback, iGoogle, Maps, Talk and Tasks.

The main Google Privacy Policy will also be made more user-friendly.

Google says it is trimming redundancies and updating some of the legal language to make it more clear to users. For example, Google will be deleting a sentence that reads, The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies, because they realized it's kind of obvious that non-Google sites aren't covered by Google's privacy policies.

You can see a preview of the updated policy that will take effect on October 3, 2010. But even better is going to this page, where all the changes are indicated more clearly.

You have created a Facebook Fan Page. Now what? I bet these questions come to mind: Is my page a success? Who is engaging with us? Is our engagement effective? Does our content strategy work?

The Facebook Insights dashboard will help you answer some of these questions. As defined by Facebook, Insights provides Facebook Page owners with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.

So what's the best way to use this relatively new tool? We've outlined some steps below that should have you measuring Facebook engagement in no time.

Note that only page administrators can view Insights data for the properties they own or administer.

Examine a Wide Range of Data

There are two types of Facebook insights:

• User Insights: Total page Likes, or a number of fans, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption.
• Interactions Insights: Daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments, per post impressions), daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts, video posts).

The question then becomes: What do you want to track and measure? There is a lot of data offered, but you want to sort through it and identify what information is meaningful and will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy. If that data is not readily available, you might want to do some manual calculations to derive the numbers you're looking for.

Below are the insights I recommend you pay attention to and track.

• Monthly fan size growth: Record the number of fans (or Likers) you have on the first of every month to see what your growth looks like. I'd say if you are growing organically and you have 10 to 13% monthly growth, you are doing extremely well. That is probably the highest organic growth number anyone can achieve. You can even go more granular and calculate weekly growth. Whatever you decide to do, make sure to watch for the spikes in fan growth and try to identify what contributes to those spikes.

• The average number of Likes or comments: These are your engagement measures. If you know the average number of times fans interacted with you for every single post, you will be able to identify which discussions are of more interest to your fans. Watch for unusual spikes or drops in this number. I love this metric because it is extremely helpful in making immediate decisions in your content strategy and changes to your editorial calendar. Increase the number of posts around the topic your fans are more engaged with and decrease the number of posts around topics they are not interested in.

• Unlikes and attrition rate: The fact is that you will always have some unsubscribes, no mater how great your engagement is, but hopefully it is just a small number. I usually just watch for spikes in the unlike numbers. You want to try and correlate them with the activity on your page and understand why people are leaving your page. It is rather hard to nail down the exact reason, but if there is an unusual spike, you will usually have a pretty good idea.

  The simple attrition rate formula is:

  (Removed Fans + Unlikes Re-Likes) / Daily Fan Count

  This metric will tell you how many of your fans are leaving your site. It is normal to have small constant attrition over time.

• Demographics: No matter what your objectives are, you can always find the demographics data useful: the gender of your fans, their ages and where they are from.

• Page views: I like this metric because it helps you identify the number of returned fans. If you take the number of page views and subtract the number of unique page views, you will see how many of your fans are actually coming back to your page. You can also look at the Daily Active Users metric.

• Mentions: This is the number of times someone tagged you in their post. The reason why this metric is important is because it is the easiest way for your fans' friends to click through to your page. Every time someone tags you, the name of your Page appears as a link. It is much easier for someone to click on that link and learn more than to search for your Page manually. One of your goals should be to increase the number of mentions by your fans.

• Tab views: This is the new metric Facebook implemented a couple of months ago. If you have multiple tabs on your page, it will tell you which tab gets what percentage of traffic. This metric will help you decide on whether you would want to keep or maybe get rid of some of your tabs. This is especially helpful as you can only have six tabs visible on your page at one time, and this data will help you prioritize accordingly.
• Referrers: Another new metric that tells you where the traffic to your page comes from. You want to increase exposure to your page on the sites that bring you the most traffic.
• Impressions: If your page is over 10,000 fans, you will see the number of times your post was viewed - impressions. This metric is not exact since every time someone's page refreshes, it counts as an impression. This number is usually a little overblown, but can show you how many times your post has been seen.

Some of these metrics require constant manual tracking and analysis, which is a big downside. However, the above metrics will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy that would allow more effective interactions with your customers.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page
- 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
- The WikiLeaks Debate: Journalists Weigh In
- A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
- 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

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A fascinating post on Ars Technica on the Twtiter implementation of OAuth.

It confirms a concern I had. Since the OPML Editor is open source, and it supports Twitter's implementation of OAuth, I didn't see what good it did to pass around "secrets" in the source code. But I did what I was asked to do. I wasn't watching the developer mail list closely so I didn't see the discussions Ryan Paul mentions.

The more I read about what Twitter is doing these days, the more I see the shift away from developers and toward internal development. When people "argue" with me or have a "difference of opinion" about OAuth, they seem to only look at the technical issues. As if every developer could pour infinite resources down every hole. In practice, you only have so many hours in a day, and worse, you have fewer and fewer remaining hours in your life. So you have to choose carefully where you spend your time.

There are lots of ways for platforms to fail, and it can be hard to parse when the platform is failing, but the platform vendor is prospering. Sometimes that growth comes from eating the developers, which seems to me very much like what Twitter is doing now.

So the OAuth transition will be the first of many hurdles for developers. I choose not to jump over hurdles for platform vendors. I learned a long time ago that the only platform that actually works is one with no vendor. The more the vendor controls the developers, the less I want to be part of the community.

At the same time, I was running out of clever ideas for projects to do with Twitter. They haven't added any functionality that I'm interested in in a long time. I was at the point last year where I felt that everything interesting that could be done with Twitter had already been done. That every nook and cranny of their API had been explored. It seems they agree, more or less, because their approach is to try to capture the developer growth from two or three years ago. At the same time, no new territory is opening up. That, and the new controls, say the Twitter coral reef is no longer attracting much new life. With the caveat that that's how it seems to me, and I've been wrong many times before.

Why does Digg have a new design and a new CEO? Here's one answer, via a handy chart.

This one comes from Christopher Mascari, a Gawker Media marketing guy, and it illustrates the blog network's traffic from social media sites. Less than a year ago, Digg was the single most important social site for Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik et al. Now it has been eclipsed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and, a little surprisingly, StumbleUpon. And note that Reddit, Conde Nast's Digg clone, is catching up as well:

The other big takeaway from the data is the story that many publishers have been telling the in past year or so: Social traffic is becoming as important, or more so, than search traffic from the likes of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). Last fall Gawker was getting 10 million visits a month from social sites; now that number is up to 20 million. And Facebook, at 7.7 million visits, now represents more than a third of that number:

Only 24 hours after the launch of Apple's new social network, Ping, the service has been overrun by spammers. The fraudsters have created iTunes profiles and are posting links to a number of online scams, including ones that promises "free iPhones" or "free iPads" in exchange for filling out online surveys. For the most part, these suspicious links are being posted in the comments sections of the most popular artists on Ping, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and others, all of whom are among the recommended accounts linked to from the Ping homepage.

Sponsor

As security expert Chester Wisniewski points out, Apple doesn't require a credit card or any other positive identification in order to establish an account on Ping, which itself is a part of newly launched iTunes 10. Doing so wouldn't be advisable, either, as it would lock out a lot of "credit card-less" kids, teens and young adults from using iTunes. There's actually quite a bit of free content available from the iTunes Store, from apps to music to video, allowing parents to feel comfortable in letting their children manage their own iTunes accounts without close supervision.

Given those lax requirements sign-up requirements, however, it's somewhat surprising that Apple didn't build in a good spam filtration system into its social network, too. The types of links being posted now are what any halfway decent blog commenting system like Disqus or Echo would pick up automatically, or at least flag for review, especially since the posts contain links.

Although not mentioned by Wisniewski, we think the lack of attention to this security detail should have new Ping users concerned, or at least wary. If Ping's spam filter (assuming one even exits) doesn't block links to obvious online scams, how can we be sure it's blocking links of a more nefarious nature - like those to sites containing viruses, trojans or other phishing scams?

Where's the Spam Filter?

What's odd is that Apple is managing other aspects of the Ping network's security. User profile pictures have to be approved before becoming visible, we've yet to see blatantly offensive comments or posts which seems to indicative some sort of filter, and, as the Apple-watching blog MacRumors notes, there is a "report activity" mechanism in place. Clicking the "report" link on any spammer's comment brings up a dialog box of choices such as "offensive comments," "inappropriate photo or video" and "spam."

But typically a report mechanism would be used to deal with the items the spam filter missed, not as the first line of attack. Due to the rampant nature of the spam - we've yet to see an artist profile not affected by this problem - that means that either Ping's spam filter needs major improvement or the report mechanism is the only spam filter Apple has.

We would ask Apple for comment on this, but they never return our calls. (Working in Apple PR must be a great, right?) So we'll just leave you with this warning instead: you can't get a free iPhone from filling out an online survey, OK? Don't click those links.

Jason Calcanis says he spoke with Steve Jobs about the Facebook flare-up. Wheteher or not he did, what he posted in his email newsletter is dead-on:

via email

Anyway, here is what Steve Jobs is thinking during the keynote:

Now, certainly you've heard about Apple's huge data center in North Carolina. You know, the one that reportedly cost one *billion* dollars. Experts say that Apple's data center cost roughly double what Google and Facebook spent on similar facilities.

Apple's massive, cash-generating successes have come from soup-to-nuts services like iTunes and the iPod, the App Store and the iPhone. It's a logical conclusion that Apple would want to take on the social and search layers next.

PING is not music service; it's a social network precursor.

Game Center is not a game matching service; it's a social network precursor.

The largest and most-loved Apple product lineto the tune of over 275 million units soldis the iPod. Their second biggest revenue success is the iPhone, of course. In order to use it, you need to put in a credit card.

Facebook and Twitter have users. Apple has customers.

The difference? Customers give you their credit card number.

Jason goes on to suggest that Jobs should acquire Twitter and Zygna: maybe so. He doesn't mention Netflix, which I think is more central to his long term goal: the battle for the living room (see Social TV: The Future Of TV Is Social).

But it is clear that billions of iPod, iPhones, Mac, and iPads form an awfully large base of users to start with, if you are launching a new social network.

I remember trying to convince Adobe to roll out an instant messaging product in the late '90s, since Adobe's free player was on 98% of computers. They told me they didn't want to be in that business.

Jobs clearly wants to be in the social network business, and with one giant step he has gotten pretty close to the front of the pack.

related articles

• Ping-Facebook Partnership Killed By Onerous Terms,' Steve Jobs Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• If Apple Can't Deal With Facebook's Onerous Terms For Ping, Why Is It In Apple's Keynote Screenshots? [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
• Steve Jobs on Why Facebook Is Not Part of Apple's New Ping Music Social Network: Onerous Terms (kara.allthingsd.com)

The Yahoo! YUI is an incredibly feature-rich JavaScript library with a LOT of functionality but getting your head around all of those features can be tough. The YUI team wants to help developers get up and running more quickly and announced yesterday the release of SimpleYUI; a basic and more streamlined version of the YUI library.

SimpleYUI will contain basic DOM access and manipulation including support for CSS 3 selectors in the selector engine, animations via the new transition module, the event system, Ajax and JSON support.

The great thing is that when you're ready to leverage more advanced features like managed attributes and custom events, you still have the ability to do on-demand loading just like you'd expect from the full-featured version of YUI. This includes any YUI 2 or 3 component or YUI 3 Gallery module.

YUI team member Eric Miraglia put up a nice post about SimpleYUI which shows you some of the goodness include.

The problem with most web analytics is that they give you insight into numbers. You can see how many users are visiting your site, when they do so, and where they are coming from. But you don't understand anything about them as people.

That's where Frosmo, a Helsinki company originally founded as a tournament gaming company, could prove useful. Frosmo launched its Frosmo World casual game tournament business on Facebook last year. While doing that, it became intimately familiar with Facebook analytics. As Facebook expanded its reach to web sites this spring with its ubiquitous Like buttons, Frosmo saw an opportunity to deliver much better analytics.

Taking advantage of the fact that real people indicate whether they like a web site or not, Frosmo aggregates that information into useful analytics that companies can act upon. The company formally launched its Optimizer tool this month. It consists of a free analytics tool and a paid service that can be used to optimize the experience that return visitors have on your web site.

We are now measuring people, not numbers, said Mikael Gummerus, chief executive of Frosmo. It's like the social graph meets customer relationship management meets tactical selling tool.

The analytics are useful because the Facebook Like buttons have access to the information that people put on their Facebook pages. You can thus aggregate the demographics of the people who Like your web site. You can determine their age, their occupations, their job titles, and how often they visit your web site. You can see what they look at and gather statistics on a daily basis that show what kind of audience your web site reaches. In turn, you can take that aggregate data and share it with potential web site advertisers.

But the heart of Frosmo's Optimizer is the ability to engage with individual users. Now that you know who is visiting your web site, you can greet them by name every time they visit your page. Then you can steer them on a path that matches what their interests are, based on what you know about their past behavior. For instance, if someone has visited an e-commerce site 20 times and looked at the same car each time, the odds are good that user is getting ready to buy that car. The web site owner can then use that information to offer a discount on the car if they buy it right away. Each user can thus be individually optimized, Gummerus said.

It sounds pretty simple. But most companies are not doing this now. It's fairly new because the Facebook Like buttons only started spreading to other web sites in March. Now, more than 2 million web sites are using them. Those web sites are collecting considerable numbers of fans who are giving them real world, not anonymous, information. If you can better identify those people, you can provide them with more relevant and personalized service, Gummerus said. And that will generate much more revenue.

For instance, you can understand who shares your web site data with the most people. You can see where users are making use of your site and identify the bottlenecks that keep them from spending money. You can zero in on those people and offer them more rewards for sharing your information with their friends. You can identify people whose behavior patterns suggest certain marketing offers. You can also figure out who among your users is the most influential when it comes to promoting your site or products. You can do that with very little cost. Frosmo calls this process Social Networking Logics.

Of course, there are still a lot of people who don't use Facebook and who don't click on Like buttons. Their behavior can't be tracked so easily. But Gummerus thinks that the numbers of participants will grow over time. Customers already using Frosmo's Optimizer include China's RenRen social network, MTV Media, Kingnet, Yahoo, Sanook, Ekolay.net and a number of other companies. Frosmo still runs its game business, but Gummerus said the company may now make money from Optimizer.

Rivals include companies such as Google, Omniture and other analytics companies. Frosmo sees itself as offering a service that the others don't at the moment. The company tracks visitors on a daily basis now. But it may start providing actionable data in real time in the future.

We give companies information that they can use to take action, Gummerus said.

Web site owners can get the same data from Facebook Like buttons that Frosmo collects. But the data won't be packaged as neatly and the actions won't be as easy to take. Frosmo argues its dashboard-like tools are the easiest for web site owners to create a unique path into a web site for every user.

You know that companies like Amazon.com can do this, Gummerus said. Now, any site can do it. It's a very pragmatic way to increase your sales.

In games, Frosmo competes with the likes of Zynga, Playfish, Mindjolt and a host of casual game sites. Its investors include Riistos Silasmaa, a member of Nokia's board. It raised 1.4 million euros from the Finnish government and has also raised two rounds of angel money.

Before founding Frosmo, Gummerus was managing director of E-Sports Nordic. But he spun Frosmo out of that company once he saw its potential.

Tags: Analytics, Facebook Like, Frosmo World, Helsinki, Optimizer

Companies: Frosmo

People: Mikael Gummerus

Josh Duck has put together a fun and useful list of the 104 elements currently in the HTML5 working draft but organized like a periodic table of elements:

When you click on one of the tags more information appears:

Who says chemistry can't be fun?

[via Jackson Harper]

The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels some philosophical, to a certain extent between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess.

Image credit

In this article, we'll explore the relationship between the game of chess and the Web industry. We'll learn fundamental lessons from the pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen and king, and we'll highlight the factors both offline and online that determine best practices. The game is beloved by many professionals, so it seems fitting to apply its great strategy and elegance to the digital age; certain practices might help you lead a more successful working life.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Pawns

Of all the pieces on a chessboard, the most abundant and least strategically useful are the pawns. Acting as soldiers on the front line, these men of honor advance across the board in an attempt to reach the end of the opponent's side and transform into a more useful piece (i.e. another queen). While this doesn't happen often, pawns nevertheless play a fundamental role in shielding higher-ranking pieces from attack, and these simple pieces are also used at the outset to gain positions of advantage.

Always Move Forward

Pawns can only move forward. They can get a quick start; players have the option of moving the pawns up to two spaces on their first move and subsequently moving them one space at a time. When you work on projects in a business environment, the principle of moving forward without back-tracking is an inspirational perspective. If you cease to constantly drive your ideas forward, they can become stagnant; progress is critical to a website's development.

Here are some tips you can use to adopt this mindset:

• Don't get stuck using deprecated practices when structuring website code.
• Examine your community to determine needed features for future upgrades.
• Change a website's interface only if it would benefit the user experience.

Be Willing to Sacrifice

The ideal of giving something up in exchange for a greater good is realized by pawns, which, though limited in function, are plentiful and can protect others. In design, shielding the end user from issues that can damage the usability of the website is a worthwhile sacrifice. Having to let go of something that took time and energy is always unfortunate, but knowing when to say goodbye could mean the difference between success and failure.

Here are some tips for internalizing this attitude:

• Ensure that your Web layouts are flexible enough to meet the needs of various devices.
• Weigh the benefits of features against their pitfalls before eliminating them.
• Content is more valuable than design; never dilute its quality for eye candy.

Aim for Change

The pawn's greatest moment is arriving at the opponent's side of the board. Striving for betterment and aiming for your goals are behavioral ideals firmly upheld by professionals. This requires dedication and careful planning. When undertaking a creative project, it's important to think beyond the current ask and consider the long-term project.

Here are some tips to get into this mode:

• The website-building process is never complete; ensure that you maintain a steady flow of updates.
• Think of ways to enhance the website to better cater to your visitors' changing needs.
• It never hurts to have a business plan when scoping out a Web-based project.

Rooks

Rooks (or castles, as some people call them) are fortresses of strength that move across the board either horizontally or vertically. Their nature is similar to that of bishops in that they move in a straight line (although bishops move diagonally). Progress can be hindered by barriers, and interaction with other pieces is sometimes required, but the rook's overall benefit is stamina and longevity.

When working on Web projects, we often put a great deal of thought into things like conventions and patterns and their theory and implementation. The nature of semantics and following recognized pathways in order to structure a document properly is reminiscent of the way that chess pieces such as the rook have a particular function and invariably carry out unique tasks. Only with logical thought can we hope to change the ultimate goals of an event and avoid obstruction.

Structure With Purpose

A rook represents strength and structure. The castle of stone might be restricted in its interactions on the chessboard, but its value is in its character. Websites need to be constructed well in order to survive the trials of everyday use. Considering how such needs should be met will ensure a sturdy and durable display of data. Take great care when structuring your work to reduce illegal moves and syntax.

Here are some tips for strengthening your outlook and code:

• Always validate your code; it will reduce the number of bugs.
• Use the right element for the job to improve your code's semantic value.
• Keep code minimal to reduce file size and loading time.

Assist Those in Need

Like the other pieces on a chessboard, the rook is always on hand to help out by attacking or defending. Working with others to accomplish a task is only part of their job. In a Web environment, the same is true: if you take the time to assist those who use your website or service, not only will you increase your value, but you will gain the gratitude of the visitors, whom your website requires in order to keep running.

Here are some tips that might be of assistance:

• Providing ways for people to contact you is important to maintaining trust.
• Negative feedback can still be constructive; don't dismiss it as bashing.
• Provide social interaction aids to help visitors feel involved in your community.

Take Precautions

Sometimes things don't go as planned, in which case you'll want to hold the strongest position possible. Rooks, like all other critical pieces, are only tools to protect other pieces in play, but caution is fundamental to remaining in a position of power. Thinking of how future scenarios might challenge your strategy can help future-proof your work from obvious flaws. You don't want visitors to encounter obstacles that make them miss out on the benefits of your website!

Below are some tips for fortifying your website:

• Turn off scripts and styles to test whether your website is still usable.
• Test your websites on mobile devices, a market that is proliferating.

Knights

Knights are unique in their movement, going forward two spaces and then taking a single side-step. This means they can weave past other pieces and take up positions of singular advantage. Strategically, knights are most often used to pin hard-to-reach pieces in place through a clever attack. While this unique movement has its advantages, the knight does not replace the other pieces, which have their own strategic benefits.

Our uniqueness, whether as it is applies to our creative process, our products or our ability to solve common problems, is something we as professionals take for granted. We are able to incorporate creative flourishes when we forge applications, flourishes that can be tracked through the code (such as conditional comments, which give stylistic flavor to Internet Explorer). Like a white knight saving our sanity, our uniqueness helps us side-step issues that could otherwise become complicated.

Be Brave in Adversity

Mythology has taught us the familiar attributes of the knight: bravery, strength and honor. Thoughtful reflection on the Web-building process teaches us to be courteous to others and brave, while sticking to our guns when faced with the prospect of compromising in order to gain market share.

Here are some tips to make yourself more knight-like:

• Never take criticism personally; negative feedback is often the most useful kind.
• Don't resign in the face of competition; the only failure in life is to quit trying.
• Try to rally support for your project; there's strength in numbers.

Have a Selling Point

The knight is the only chess piece that move in two directions in one turn; even the queen can't do this! This attribute teaches us the value of having a selling point. Selling points give visitors a reason to choose one product or service over others that perform the same function.

Here are some tips on finding your selling point:

• Draw from other people's work, but never steal anything outright.
• Improving on existing services is a kind of innovation in its own right.
• Be focused in what you offer; reinventing too much increases complexity.

Avoid Barriers to Access

The knight is the only piece that can pass over others in its movement. This ability to navigate past barriers is somewhat reminiscent of standard recommendations for accessibility, which ask us to remove barriers to access on our websites. The goal is to allow freedom of movement and access to content.

Below are some tips on removing barriers:

• Consider the types of people who are not as able as you are online.
• Testing your work on an audience is better than going solo.
• Make sure your website works in different browsers to avoid serious breakages.

Bishops

The bishop is a piece that moves diagonally across the chessboard. The bishop scans the board for its next move, minding pieces that block its path, in the same way that a visitor scans content until a barrier prevent their progress. A bishop cannot step off the tile color to which it was initially assigned, ensuring a kind of vendor lock-in.

As Web professionals, we tend to get caught up in arguments about whether frameworks are useful, given their disadvantages (and even with graceful degradation, for example). The benefits of frameworks for certain situations occasionally outweigh their downsides (like trapping users in the environment), so make the most of what you have; dismissing less powerful options is not always the best way to go in fact it could increase the amount of work required.

Have Faith in Your Work

The bishop, of course, is religious in nature, an agent in the battle between two sides. Faith in a religious sense is not needed to practice Web design, but as a quality of character it does play a part in one's identity. Faith affects motivation and makes you believe in the project you're spending so much time and effort on. If you have no faith in your craft, the job is doomed from the outset.

Here are some tips for building faith in your work:

• Create a list of benefits to focus on your website's potential.
• Set realistic, structured goals to achieve success.
• Encourage visitors to recommend your work to people they know.

Know Your Limits

It may seem frustrating that each bishop is trapped on its own color, limited in impact. But if you make the most of it, bishops can still be useful. Know your own strengths and limitations, so that you don't attempt the impossible or unachievable if you do, the result will surely be flawed.

Here are some tips on knowing your limits:

• Get external support or advice when you hit a wall.
• If something can't be achieved the way you hoped, look for alternatives.
• Reduce your weaknesses by learning new skills regularly.

Stick to Your Guns

While being able only to move diagonally may seem like a disadvantage, this can prove useful on occasion. Having sheer determination to carry out a job in a certain way is admirable. We humans are sometimes stubborn, and we stick to our guns when possible. This can cause us to make mistakes or motivate us to persevere.

Here are some tips on being determined:

• Reflect on a project's overall goals whenever possible in order to reassess a plan's feasibility.
• Mistakes happen, and no one is perfect, but that's no reason to stop trying.

The Queen

The queen is the second-most important piece on the chessboard. She can move horizontally, vertically and diagonally across any distance, and her power spans the entire board. She is the king's most agile bodyguard, and losing her can be devastating. You have to use your power responsibly, both on the chessboard and in your profession; misusing your tools could cause you to lose visitors to the competition.

Sometimes we find ourselves swatting a fly off a nuclear warhead. Knowing exactly what to use, when to use it and how to use it appropriately is what ultimately distinguishes professionals from amateurs. In addition, taking advantage of the powerful tools at our disposal can speed up progress and eliminate the complexities that come with attempting the impossible with simple tools.

Realize Your Potential

A potent force, the queen moves freely about the chessboard, with few restrictions. The queen is a powerful piece and reminds us to exert the greatest effort to reach our potential. Rather than staying in our comfort zone, we must always learn new skills and achieve more than what is expected of us.

Here are some tips to stretch your skills:

• Everyone has the capacity to learn; keep your skill set up to date.
• Push yourself to become a better professional and to exceed your own expectations.
• Try not to let any of your skills go to waste when creating something.

Cover All Bases

In our work, we try to minimize error by viewing every situation from multiple angles this is important. In chess, players use the queen in much the same way, exploiting her power yet shielding her from harm. In the creative process, your only real limitation is being blind to critical elements, which is why getting some perspective from outside testers and users never hurts.

Here are some tips to cover your bases:

• The more time you spend planning a project, the better the results usually will be.
• Information architecture is your friend; make use of wireframes and mock-ups.
• Spend time testing your website intensively for critical flaws.

Strategy and Learning

You have two knights, two rooks, two bishops and many pawns, but only one queen. Her value lies in her singularity; each move of the queen requires strategy and consideration of consequences. We become better players and professionals through trial and error, constant learning and foresight. Being cautious in the game teaches us to be wise in business.

Here are some tips to help you strategize:

• Read blogs, books, tutorials, magazines and anything else that can help guide you.
• Analyze your target audience to get ideas on what your website might need in future.
• Researching the competition gives you a sense of what potential visitors need.

The King

No piece is as important as the king; it is the one piece that must evade capture. The king moves only one space at a time, in any direction, and whenever it is in immediate danger, either a piece must be moved to block the attack or the king must be moved to avoid it. The king has no equal and cannot be restored by a pawn sacrifice, and so prevention is imperative.

Web professionals have to protect what is important, too. We deal with payment details, databases, passwords and other sensitive information. If we lose any of that through carelessness or a lack of preventative measures, we end up losing something greater: the customer. Establishing trust takes time, but it can be lost as quickly as a surprise checkmate!

Avoid Traps

Protecting the king is the primary concern of every chess player. Gaining advantage to prevent loss is important. While Web professionals usually have no reason to evade capture (unless they're doing something wrong), the benefit of avoiding common traps (the equivalent of foolsmate in chess) becomes apparent when testing the cross-browser functionality of a website.

Here are some tips on avoiding traps:

• Try to reduce the intrusiveness and obtrusiveness of your website to enhance the visitor's experience.
• Actively seek out errors in your work to improve your service.
• Internet Explorer is a pain. Watch out for its rendering faults.

Value and Importance

A common tactic in chess is to weigh the value of the pieces against the benefits they represent. The king is critical because the game is lost without it. Comparing value has an important role in the Web industry, too, especially when losing mission-critical features would undermine the entire process. Comparing value also helps when prioritizing maintenance work or scheduling upgrades.

Here are some ways to tip the scale:

• Accurately pinpoint the value of your service.
• Upgrades are avoidable, but reduce downtime as much as possible.
• Price your service fairly; prices that are either too high or too low create problems.

Know When to Resign

Sometimes we get so excited or stressed, as the case may be about complex or next-to-impossible projects that we forget the option of saying no. We never like to resign or throw down our sword; we feel as though we have failed because we couldn't meet the client's needs. But firing bad clients and knowing when to scrap weak ideas is a part of being a professional. You can't win every fight.

Here are some tips on recognizing when to throw in the towel:

• Trust your instincts when deciding whether to undertake a project.
• Salvage something from anything you work on.
• Learn how to deal with clients from hell.

Chessboard

Chess players focus on the pieces in play and on capturing the king, but they must also understand the chessboard as a battleground on which this drama plays out. This relates to the website-creation process (and to a lesser extent, the Web industry): lessons are to be learned from the chessboard itself.

Image credit

Light and Dark

Like a chessboard, the Web industry is full of light and dark, good and bad. We weigh benefits and pitfalls when performing our roles. A chess game tells a story; likewise, the fruits of our labor and our highlights and disappointments all appear online.

Think Ahead

One of chess' biggest lessons is to think ahead, instead of in the moment. Being able to predict how your opponent will move helps you gain advantage. This is also true of the website-building process. Unjustified decision-making leads to problems, whereas well-planned strategies that entice people to visit and use your service lead to faster results and greater rewards.

Weigh Your Options

In chess, there are literally millions of ways a game can play out, and with every move the number of potential outcomes decreases. Knowing your options and which route affords the best opportunity for success is a critical skill. Website creators have many different methods of production and implementation as well, but missing the mark with scalability or usability can diminish a website's user-friendliness and jeopardize its success.

Make Your Move

Decision-making can be tricky; in chess, a wrong move can cause you to lose a piece, a good position, an advantage or even the game. The same could be said of building a website. Preparing for different projects, services and eventualities is one thing, but having the courage, skill and understanding to carry them out successfully takes practice. After examining your options, make your move: put all your careful planning into action.

Checkmate!

So many useful lessons can be learned from chess. If you haven't played it before, visualizing what we've gone over might be hard, but the fundamental principles of the game how the pieces interact and the role of strategy in the big picture should not be ignored. The game actively promotes logical thinking and strategy both useful skills.

More lessons could certainly be drawn from the game, but hopefully this article will serve as a source of inspiration, especially if you feel your goals are out of reach. We often learn the most from making mistakes, losing a battle and then returning to win the war. Nowhere is this been truer than in chess, where a mixture of practice, skill and occasional luck is required to become the grandmaster.

So many aspects of the Web industry (such as syntax, design and ideals) change constantly, but the fundamental principles of learning, growing and trying your best often mean the difference between failure and success. Try to incorporate lessons from the chessboard into your own work; while having all the pieces doesn't guarantee victory, having the basic skills will give you the confidence and awareness that you need to succeed.

(al)

Alexander Dawson for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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