scriptedlife

Some time ago FlightStats.com got the magical and much coveted Internet Cloak of Invincibility: Google decided to make her search results more R0X0r, and now lists FlightStats as #1 for every Flight Status search on Google.

FlightStats.com's Special Google Result

Unfortunately, when searching for flight statuses from a modern mobile phone such as an Iphone or G1 Google Phone, the user experience goes out the window.

Try searching for a flight status on your mobile phone (the flight has to be in progress, so you may have to try a couple of times to get the special result), once you click through to FlightStats.com, how many pages of Ads do you have to go through? SEVEN. SEVEN PAGES OF ADS. Thanks to Scott’s quick response, the number of pages has now been reduced to 4-6 pages.

1. Mobile Homepage – You click the result and are redirected to the mobile homepage
2. “Choose how you want to check your flight” page
3. “Enter the Airline code and Flight #” page
4. “Didn’t know the obscure Airline code? No problem just read through some more ads and select one here” page
5. “Re-Enter the Airline Code and Flight #” page -FIXED!
6. “This flight has multiple segments! Choose which segment you are interested in while you read more ads” page
7. “Oh hey, here’s that flight status you searched for 5-7 pages ago!” page

This is not quite in keeping with Google’s “Send users right to the content” manifesto.

Google,  (I’m speaking to the living breathing entity, as he/she will be the first one to read this), please, I implore you, throw your weight around with these guys, and if they dont budge why not direct your firehose at another equally deserving site.

UPDATE 04-09-2009 – Scott, from Flightstats.com, was nice enough to include some feedback and insights on this mobile redirect problem, below in the comments.  Its always good to know a company is interested in user feedback on the web.

I started to gather up a bunch of data from the “Twitter for music” service Blip.fm. All the music in the micro column of this website comes from my blip.fm account here. Blip is a music service that allows you to create a live playlist of songs that are shared and saved. You can find other members with similar tastes and follow their music as well.

Blip.fm

[from Flickr]

The web is changing the way we live and interact, blah blah blah. The future is now, and holy *&$# it is awesome.

FUTURE FTW!

The web really is changing and innovating at a breakneck pace, and often times it evolves faster than the cautious consumer is willing to change their habits. Below are a few examples of big changes to popular Web Services that were first hated, then accepted as the norm, and even loved!

1. Facebook Newsfeed
When Facebook first previewed its new layout, including a revolutionary new “News Feed” that would alert you to changes and updates made by each of your friends, all in one place, it was HATED.

Hundreds of thousands of facebook “traditionalists” showed their disdain by creating and joining “WTF I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK”, and “GET RID OF TEH STALKER-FEED” groups in Facebook. But Facebook persisted, and now everything on Facebook revolves around this feature, and Facebook certainly hasn’t lost any of its appeal.

Today, the feature has sparked a new industry, and has become so ingrained in youth culture that people have used it as a form of storytelling. “Social Media Aggregators” such as Friendfeed, have made a business out of creating “News Feeds” for users activities across multiple sites.

People have even recreated the Genesis Story as a Facebook News Feed.

2. Gmail Targeted Advertising

Just the idea of an email client from the same wunder-company that indexed the web was enough to get most geeks excited. But, when word got out that Google would be “reading our emails” and serving us targeted ads based on what they say, privacy advocates and regular users alike were up in arms. Most of the anger came out of ignorance, as non-tech savvy people found it hard to understand that computer programs would be scanning the emails, and humans would never see it. But nevertheless, it generated a great deal of press and debate, and certainly kept concerned users away.

But after the market had time to get comfortable with this new HAL-9000 advertising system, its unobtrusive display, frequent usefullness, and rare humor made it a welcome alternative to other email systems giant blinking banner ads. Gmail places targeted text ads that are often directly useful to a users immediate needs. (example below)

Also, when you purchase an item online, and the retailer might include a UPS tracking number. Voila! A link to the UPS page tracking your package shows up in the sidebar!

On the humor side, this author has a funny list of Ads that Gmail served over a year in his life.

3. Google Search-Wiki
Google recently made a famously rare change to its search results by adding “all these #$(*@ing buttons” as some disgruntled users have described it.

These #$%*ing buttons allow users to move search results around, comment on results, and even add and remove search results from a page. The changes users make are only shown when they are logged in, and they arent applied to other peoples results, but comments on results are shown publicly.

So far comments are mostly just test comments and spam, or confused Iranians, as the SearchWiki for Yahoo Mail below illustrates:

Many people are wondering: What is the point?

Good question my friend, but to that, I answer: Be Patient, let it grow on you, see what happens. This has the potential to yet again change the way we use the web.

The FilmGalaxy displays data around Films, Actors, Writers, and Directors using a 3-Dimensional “Galaxy” layout.  This allows for users to quickly understand 4 dimensions of data, using color, 3-axis position,  and size. Explore the FilmGalaxy here.

This was created using Processing, an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.

The data for FilmGalaxy is coming from numerous sources on the web.

Here is the first, extremely buggy version of the movie visualization project I have been working on.

Actor – Movie Visualizer

You can click and drag to move around, scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in, and click on an actor to see his/her worst and best reviewed movies, biggest blockbuster, biggest flop, and most cult-ish movie.  The Cult-ishness is calculated by looking at the difference in scores between users and critics.

KEY:

• Size of the Cube = Number of Film’s Where the person has had a pivotal role (director/writer/main actor) Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro are both Hulking Giants, with ~40 movies under their belts
• Color of the Cube = Monetization value of the person (the greener the cube, the more green their movies make on average) Look at how Green Sam Raimi is in the directors image, thats cause Spideyman makes the big bucks
• Height of the Cube = Average Critic’s score of all movies this person has been credited with. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is practically in the stratosphere compared to other actors.
• Distance of Cube from central Axis = This is a tough one, Amount of disagreement between Critics and casual reviewers. Critics seem to hate Christopher Walken’s movies, but the people give him love, thats why he’s so far towards the edge.
• Length and Direction of Arrow = Direction and amount of disagreement between critics and casual reviewers. Usually casual reviewers are nicer, but that niceness cant overpower critics’ love for Richard Linklater, of ‘Waking Life’ Fame.

UPDATE 2:September 29, 2008 – Scrabulous is over at Lexulous.com – It looks like, in order to distance itself from Scrabble even further, the creators renamed it.

• Login Still Works
• Statistics from Scrabulous are all there
• My crappy rating is still the same

Play Scrabble at Lexulous.com!!!!

UPDATE:September 28, 2008 – I just noticed that this Google Cached Page of Scrabulous indicates that just before it went to the GoDaddy landing page, it was down for maintenance, meaning hopefully its just down for some extended maintenance.

Scrabulous.com now results in a GoDaddy landing page!!!!

I can’t believe this, Scrabulous has had its share of downtime, but a GoDaddy Landing page means either:

1. They forgot to Renew their domain name, which doesn’t seem to be the case judging from this whois information.
2. Their GoDaddy Account was hacked, by some selfish bastard who wanted to deprive millions of wholesome scrabble games. doubtful
3. They are moving Servers, and decided to give scrabble fanatics worldwide a scare by not telling anyone.
4. They finally got some sort of serious lawsuit or takedown notice from Hasbro, like in the Facebook Scrabulous Scandal

Ahhh I hope its not number 4!!! (Although my rating on scrabulous could benefit from a fresh start.)