Plays Well With Others

Whoa boy, hold back …

I appreciate the responses to my little survey the other day, regarding the project I’m working on at work. I’ve found that, while I have a lot of free time as a producer of the websites, being a project manager of a product is alot more time intensive.

The best feedback came from Tim, which was very indepth as to his reasons for liking/disliking certain things about journal services. I’m keeping it with my notes for this project, because while I find it useful to have the input of the people in charge of the networks, I find it more useful to have the input of people that might actually use the products.

I had a brainstorming session with the network heads to see what kinds of things they think are important in a journal/diary service and here a few things they came up with:

The ability to customize the journal was felt to be important, so users can change the fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc. Personally, I’m always afraid of things like this because, as a designer, I want things to look good, and most people just dont know what to do when given the power to change colors. A good example are some of those GeoCities pages with the bright green backgrounds and red type and one point fonts. So I’ll have to come up with a customization that doesnt give too many choices to the users.

Audio and photo uploading was felt to be a “cool” feature. We would have some moderation issues with something like this, so I dont know if it will fly, but it was thought to be a neat feature to be able to upload photos or add audio entries to a journal.

Have a feature to allow the journal to be public or private was very important to the networks. While most people want a public journal, so they can get feedback and interact with friends, there are some people that want to keep a private journal online, so this option is necessary. One person suggested a semi-private journal, where you could restrict access to only people with a “key”.

Of course, good navigation and the ability to surf through entries with ease, like Tim suggested. They also suggested a “send to friend” feature that would allow readers to recommend a journal by clicking a button, similiar to the “tell a friend” thing I have in the right hand column.

What I consider “fancy but not necessary” features included a mood indicator, similar to the iMood indicators so many people have and I somehow lost, an icon indicating whether someone has an Instant Messenger and whether they are online or offline. Also requested was a profile page, where you could click a link and get a page full of details about the diary owner, a list of favorite journals, and other features. Lastly, was a messageboard feature, where people could leave comments about the entry, or leave answer for a Question of the Day, or whatever the diary owner wants it to be used for.

So, if this is interesting to any of you, that’s what I’ve been working on. I have another question, what are some other diary providers, or automatic journal creators. I know of diaryland.com and opendiaries.com, but need to look into a few more.

So, I’m sure I’ve bored you all with my work. But it’s what I do with myself. Last night was my spanish class, which I enjoy more and more each time. Not so much the class, but the social aspect.

I usually sit down next to Doreen while Michelle sits in front of me, meaning I partner with Doreen and Michelle partners with someone in class.

Last night, this guy totally attached himself to her and she didnt know what to do about it. He was asking her a million questions about where she lived, where she was from, where she parked, etc … he followed us out on break, and even began walking to our cars with us, until he realized he parked in a different lot.

She wanted him to go away, but didnt know quite how to handle it. It’s not that the guy is weird or crazy or anything, but more that he is clingy and as it is Michelle doesnt like to tell people too much about herself, let along this guy she doesnt know. He even said he’ll park in “our” lot next time … yikes. I think we’ll have to find a new lot.

Anyhow, it’s a fun night, and we have a good time … now we are emailing each other. Woohoo.

Last night I was in a message board, and the producer of Freaks and Geeks said that the show would be off the air until mid-March. I was bummed, they were bummed, we were all bummed.

So, our favorite show is going through some more pains, and probably won’t make it to next season. Basically, it will probably finish up this season and then get put on the chopping block.

So, we are all hoping for the show to make it, we are working on getting a letter writing campaign going and getting the word out. If you like the show, nows the time to show your support.

I’ve been so lazy when it comes to getting things unpacked, so I’ll probably spend my weekend trying to do that. I really, really need to get things unpacked, but I’ve also got some freelance to take care of. I dont know how I’ll fit everything in.

Stress.

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