an update is brewing…

this in not an april fool’s post. i really am revamping the plugin.

so wordpress recently released their latest version 2.5. the main changes revolved around the administration console, so i decided to install it into my development environment and check to see if it broke my hacker’s diet plugin functionality. luckily it didn’t (that I could tell), but while surfing around the new menus I had a bit of an inspirational moment. i visualized how my plugin would best fit in with their new look. i quickly sketched down my idea and got to work. it turned out to be a case study on usability.

since starting my job @ yahoo, my focus on the user has been amplified. generally speaking, i specialize in back-end development. that means that most of the code i write isn’t what you see, it’s what turns the wheels behind the scenes. but since my background is in web development, i sometimes like to brush off my CSS skills and make something that people will interact with. placing yourself in the spot of the user and asking “what’s the best way to give the user exactly what they need, but not overwhelm them?” is a great way to really flesh out your feature set. it requires bringing the important stuff to the forefront and keeping the less important things hidden until needed or even discarded altogether.

when i first made my plugin, the question driving my design was “what features do i need to have in order to replicate the diet plan?” this time around, i had more to draw from. namely: a year and a half (wow) of plugging in my weight every morning, and tons of feedback from users.

so what came out of my rethinking? as a user, i need a few important things right at my fingertips:

• putting in today’s weight
• finding out my current “real” weight
• seeing how that weight has changed recently so i can adjust if needed

and that’s really it! anything that doesn’t fall within those 3 items has been de-emphasized. the other features still exist, but there is no reason to have any of that stuff on the main plugin page, “above the fold”. (which means stuff you see without scrolling down) how often do you really go back and add/change a weight for a previous day? once a month, maybe? so why clutter the page with all that old stuff when what you really want is today’s information.

and of course i gave the UI a little polish. i switched out the graph to use YUI charts so that gd is no longer required and so the charts are much more interactive. round corners are still in, right? :]

look for an update “soon”. (1-2 week timeframe)

Introducing Y! Live

so firstly… live.yahoo.com! welcome to what i’ve been working on for the past 6 months!

Y! Live basically allows you to have your own internet TV channel, where you can also interact with your audience via real-time chat and being able to see them if they also have their camera on while watching you. the really cool part is that since this is web-based, you don’t have to install anything. (except for Flash, but i’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you already have that installed :])

we think that musicians will really dig this b/c it would allow them to perform live online whenever they want. the example i give when explaining it, is that a band could bring their laptop to practice in the garage and let the world watch. they could probably get alot more fans that way. (since you can also easily embed the video into your myspace page, for example.)

this was also my first launch at Yahoo! since starting in June. I joined the team right when this project was kicking off, so it has been really cool to see how it evolved over time. the plan now is to keep the site running full steam, and then start working on making it cooler. we have alot of plans for new features, but decided that getting it public sooner was better. we have a blog setup at yliveblog.com so if you do the RSS thing, feel free to subscribe b/c i’m sure any new features will be posted there. (we also have a twitter, but does anybody back home even know what twitter is?)

launch day was pretty crazy too. thursday started off interestingly, b/c we found out that my manager was in the ER all nite. we were all freaked out by that, and then he shows up to work with a broken arm! (long story, lol) but luckily we had the site ready to go and were just waiting on final approval from teams like Customer Care, Legal and Paranoids (security group). after some last minute tinkering to get them to sign off, we open the site up around 5pm. we popped open the champagne and beer and started using the site with the public.

the response was overwhelming! we got posted on some tech news sites, and digg. (at one point kevin rose’s channel was full of diggers) unfortunately we hit some “technical difficulties” and i spent from about midnight to 5AM trying to figure out what was misconfigured and how with my superhero coworker, premshree. we turned the site back on, played the inaugural game of ping-pong in our break room and then spent the rest of the morning watching the site. luckily i was able to sneak in a nap today from 9am-2pm! :]

all in all, i’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished in this short period of time (the site was made by 6 people, in 6 months) and i hope everybody at least tries it out once. :P

here are my channels. when you go, i may or may not be live.

http://live.yahoo.com/afex
http://live.yahoo.com/guitarzero

and of course, any feedback is welcome. ping me on facebook or leave a comment.

New Year’s Resolutions

Stop flying.

Ended up paying $1500 to visit home for christmas. I guess all that extra money is to pay them to cancel my flight a few hours before I was supposed to leave, put me in coach when I bought a business class ticket and then lose our luggage. Thanks American Airlines! (?)

New language of the year: Objective-C.

With the iPhone SDK coming out soon, I’ll probably want to play around with building some apps for it, so I think it’s time to dive into mac development. I wonder if my knowledge of Visual Studio is going to taint my progress. Along that vein, I also want to make an iPhone-friendly version of my diet plugin. I haven’t made any web apps using the iUI library, but have been meaning to.

Get my apartment awesome by the summer.

I still have stuff in boxes and the place doesn’t feel finished yet.

Lose my christmas weight.

Weighed in this morning at almost 7 pounds over my target. How can I say no to fudge at christmas?? (Plus gumbo, etouffee, jambalaya, fried alligator, shrimp poboys, oh shi- [food coma]) Well that was easy, just get food poisoning! I also caved in and bought a gym membership, but since Yahoo! reimburses me for it I break even which is pretty good.

down with stick figures

if you’ve ever been my roommate before, chances are you saw me on one of my “drawing kicks”. i’d buy some pencils and a sketch pad at the LSU bookstore, doodle for a few days, and then eventually put them away and forget the whole thing. the usual reason for stopping was that i sucked at drawing.

so guess what: i’ve got the itch again. but this time it’s different. maybe it’s b/c i have more time to think about it, or maybe it’s b/c i’m older, but i think i figured out why i go on these art tangents. i’m a maker. i have this natural need to create. it’s one of the reasons i became a programmer, so that i could literally make something out of nothing. but while programming is definitely creative, it doesn’t really tweak the same nerve-endings as something like art and music do. and i know that if i actually get good at drawing it will make me better at my job, and break me out of my focused, analytical, logical rut.

so instead of just buying some supplies (well, i did that too) i went to a bookstore on my way home from work and bought The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. (aside: being able to just hop off your bike and walk it around the store rocks!) from what i can tell so far (i’m on chapter 4), this book is to drawing like Good Eats is to food. rather than just show you the steps and the results, it gets down into the science. the author spends alot of time talking how the brain works and the real physiological reasons why some people can’t draw what they see. (mainly due to the left brain dominating over the right brain)

so hopefully whenever i get through this thing i suck a little less, and maybe i’ll post a few pictures. i had to draw a “before” self-portrait, but i’ll wait to share that one until i have an “after”. :]

my first nfl game

i’ve never been to an nfl game before. and yesterday i realized that the saints were playing the 49ers this weekend! so off to craigslist i went. found 2 tickets for $150 (geez, $7 student tickets seem so far away…) but they were in an awesome spot right next to a bunch of saints fans who needed no reason to start singing ‘who dat’. the game was awesome, mainly b/c we whipped them up and down the field. a few of those scores were on our side of the field, so i got to see them up close and personal.

i brought my camera and had a really good time taking pictures (of the cheerleaders). unfortunately, it made me realize that while my 18-135 lens is great for general use, i really should get something with more zoom if i want to make a habit of taking sports photos. but honestly, i just put my camera on ’sport’ mode and pressed the button. i let it do all the rest! here are some of the ones i really like.