Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

Several readers and friends have asked me for tips and suggestions on how they can improve their blog or how to start  a blog. I thought it would make sense to list what powers this blog.

• Hosting service – I host this domain on BlueHost.com were I get much more that what I used to get from my previous crappy provider. I get more space (disk space, # of domains, email accounts etc), better tools, good CS support and a good price.

• Blogging platform - I use WordPress.org (self hosted). In my opinion this open source blogging platform is the best. It keeps evolving, improving and it provides a large variety of themes and plug-ins which extends ever further the platform’s capabilities. I have tried using other platforms such as Typepad, Vox, Blogger and the hosted WordPress.com and none come close to the capabilities of a self hosted WordPress.org blog.

• WordPress Plug-ins - One of the great things about WordPress is the variety of themes and plug-ins. The control panel inside WordPress makes it very easy to activate/deactivate plug-ins or switch themes. Here are the ones that are currently installed:
  • SnapShots – The product I am very proud to be one of its creators, provides a better user experience and an entirely new source of ad inventory for every web site owners.
  • Akisment – eliminate blog comments spam
  • WordPress Blog stats
  • All In One SEO pack
  • iWPhone – A plug-in that automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone.
  • AddThis – social bookmarking & sharing made easy
  • WordPress Database backup
  • Current theme installed is ISM – this might change in the future

• Other Sidebar widgets
  • Lijit – Search tools for a blog
  • MyBlogLog
  • Feedburner for content syndication (don’t forget to offer a “Subscribe By Email” option)
  • Site Analytics done by Google Analytics, SiteMeter with help from Lijit and MyBlogLog (all services show different stats for some reason…)

• Desktop blogging application – Windows Live Writer makes blogging very easy. I wrote in the past a detailed post, followed by another one, about it.

I hope it helps those who are currently blogging or about to start blogging.

Were PDF spammers the source of inspiration to the new advertising format?

I have noticed that one of the most popular sources of traffic to my blog is actually Google Images. Not surprisingly, users all over the world are searching for a David Beckham photo and they end up looking at my attempt to be a paparazzi.

I know it has been written in every basic SEO guide but I will repeat it again for those who might have forgotten. You can always use a "professional SEO software" that will do a lot of the work for you, or you can simply remember to set ALT text and a meaningful file name for images you post. That itself will do a lot.

A month ago I suggested to MyBlogLog to improve the way they display user’s online identities under the profile page. Today I noticed that they have listen and added favicons, with the matching social service name as Alt text, next to the usernames. This is a small change that makes a big difference.

Kudos for listening and fixing.

A few weeks ago, a new company bought the license to sell Apple product in Israel. Today, I read an interview with Eran Tor, the GM of that company, iDigital, and one of his quotes caught my attention:

אין משרד פרסום שלא פנה אלינו, כי כולם מבינים מה הולך להיות פה.

My own translation: There is not a single advertising agency that has not spoken to us, because everybody understand what is going to happen here…"

Yes, the advertising agencies understand that plenty of $$$ are going to be spent, but what about the consumers? Who is going to care of their needs and make sure Apple products are full localized to Hebrew? and how about allocating some of these marketing $$$ in order to buy apple.co.il? or making sure the iDigital site works properly on Safari for Windows and does not break(see below)?!

And what about the language used on the site? The English & Hebrew mishmash sounds really bad. Couple of examples:

• What does this mean in Hebrew?
  

• How should it be called? Mac or מק or מקינטוש

 

At least, iPodHE, the utility that adds Hebrew support to iPod (but not iPhone) is finally free.

During the 4th year of my undergraduate degree studies I took a Human Computer Interaction course. I remember that our professor used the ATM machine’s interface as an example of how to design a good interface to a product that is used by millions of people on a daily basis.

For many years I though that people who design and build ATM machines do not really use them. Otherwise, how would you explain the minimalist graphic design, poor messaging, lack of personalization and the length flow the user is required to go through in many cases.

Yesterday, I stopped at a Bank of America branch today to get some cash. A new machine made by Diebold was recently installed there. This specific machine was out of service, but instead of the typical small dark green screen with an “Out of service” message, a large full color screen with a very helpful message welcomed me. The screen listed all the nearby ATMs (I wonder when will they add a “Map This” feature using one of the popular mapping API services) — killer feature #1.

Since there were two other ATMs at the same location, I went and used a working one. This new model has another killer feature called “Fast Cash” – simply insert your ATM card, type in your PIN code using the touch screen interface, click on the Fast Cash button and you are done – it saves at least 3 key strokes to the average user and especially useful for those who tend to double park their card and block the road just to get some cash…

The machine lets you customize the “Fast Cash” amount, so every time you withdraw money using one of these new ATM machines, you are being presented with the same amount — killer feature #2.

Now this is what I call a user friendly product and a well designed interface.

Mazal Tov to one of the world’s fastest growing ad networks!

I posted more information, including highlights from the past 12 months, on the Snap Blog.

 Happy Birthday

Tiger Woods

Technorati Tags: Snap Shots, Anniversary

While doing a search on eBay I noticed an invitation to try their new search at the Playground. I took the plunge and immediately liked the new experience and that fact it became cleaner, more visual and with better search refinement controls – just like how a product search should be (see Like.com, thefind.com, PriceGrabber.com and others).

Here are a few additional observations on the new interface:

• The active search criteria is clearly displayed above the result set. The user does not have to guess which options are on. In the old version it was more difficult and less clear – the user had to look at the drop downs located at the long left column (often this required scrolling). In the new interface, it is also very easy to remove a criteria using the red [x]. One things that would be a nice addition is the ability to add multiple options from the same category where it is applicable (for example – Brand or Technology)

• As can be seen in the image above, a new mode for viewing results was added called “Snapshot”. It displays a tile of product images and when mousing over an image additional information is being displayed — just like Snap’s Snap Shots. This makes me wonder – is “Snap Shot” becoming a generic term (and verb) similar to what happened to Xerox and Google…?

• The “Refine your Search” left column was redesigned and is now cleaner, shorter and displays most of the options above the fold line. This was achieved by moving some of the less frequently used options into a popup window (although some design work is still required to make sure all options are visible and there is not need to scroll), the usage of cleaner controls like the price slider (very popular on travel search sites like Kayak and Farechase) and simple controls instead of check boxes and drop downs.

Bottom line – Kudos to the eBay team for creating an improved search experience. My only suggestion to you – add a “Filter by Color” option where applicable (Clothing, Shoes, Accessories and more).

Update: Renee VonBergen, a sr. manager for buyer experience at eBay, corrected me – a color slider is available in certain categories. The direction is really good but could be improved:

• It would be helpful to see it on more products – some people pick their cell phone or guitar by the color
• If you pick a color that returns no results, you get to something that is similar to a dead-end. In this case it would be helpful (for both eBay and the user) to get recommendations to similar products (“We could not find green shoes but we have blue ones”)

I find it pretty funny that the most searched term on Apple’s Support site is “Blue Screen”…

When do you think a “Leopard vs Vista – my blue is nicer” ad will be released?

AOL has acquired Yedda to make it the Q&A service of the AOL network.

Congratulations to Yaniv, Avichai and their team for creating a great product and becoming AOL’s forth acquisition in Israel, following Mirabilis ICQ), Relegence and Quigo.

Read more here: TechCrunch (English) and the.coils (Hebrew)