Turns out my highest goal is to take my part time freelance Web development and see if I can’t make a go of it full time. To that end, I’m going to consolidate the Rob Lindsey brand and focus on my Web presence over at RobLindsey.com.

Yeah, I just redesigned that site, too. But I’m going to change it up again. The main page will be a blog, which will deal with a lot of the topics that have popped up here. And you’ll be able to find out about my services and other pursuits on the sub pages.

For better or worse, I’ve got the blogging bug. So, instead of trying to become a blogger, I’m going to focus on becoming a developer who has a blog. There’s a difference. Anyway, thanks to all who have read and commented on this blog in the last three plus months. It’s been a lot of fun, and I hope you’ll come over to RobLindsey.com and check it out when I get up and running.

With Adobe’s announcement today that they’re opening up the source of their Flex SDK under the Mozilla GPL, they’ve gained a little more ground in the burgeoning competition between rich Internet application runtime environments. While I’m still learning about all this new technology, I’m starting to get the feeling that the “Browser Wars” are history and the “Runtime Wars” are just getting started.

There are some heavy hitters in the tech industry spending a lot of time on these new runtime environments. Microsoft has just announced Silverlight. Mozilla is incorporating offline capabilities into the upcoming Firefox 3 release. And of course, you’ve got Adobe Apollo. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, which I’m currently learning about. But all of them will be players in the next phase of the Web, when rich Internet apps take center stage.

The browser model is on its way out, with the burden of processing headed client-side. It will probably take a couple of years to get there, but I think that’s the direction we’re headed. Check back here for news and thoughts about the revolution.

After a couple pretty long posts, I’m taking it easy tonight with the first One Thing New Web 2.0 Linkfest. These are links to some interesting stories I’ve come across in the last few days.

• Bokardo posted a great response / analysis of the report in The Economist magazine claiming that traffic to social networking sites will outstrip traffic to porn sites. If that happens, it will be the first time that porn on the Web has fallen to #2 behind anything.
• Apparently at last weeks Web 2.0 Expo, Google might have tipped off some of their future plans in a survey they gave to their Google Apps Premier users. Web Worker Daily discusses this and predicts eight Google Apps in our future. I know folks already use Gmail for storage, but a Google online backup app would be awesome.
• A friend of mine who has very solid traffic on his Blogspot blog is going to be switching to stand alone hosting sometime in the next couple of weeks. Darren at Problogger.net posted an “open mic” about hosted versus stand alone blogging. Problogger is a great resource for bloggers of all kinds, but he has some particularly awesome posts about this topic.
• I was searching Technorati for some good posts about writing and found a great guide to writing for the Web. Writing for the Web is just as much about organization and marketing as it is about good grammar, and Kevin sums it up very well in his article.
• Finally, Wired magazine’s story about the lamest technology mascots will remind you why you hated Clippy so much.

So what is Apollo? Here’s how Adobe describes it:

Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

That’s a mouthful, but what does it all mean? An analogy: Apollo is like a CD player and Apollo apps are like CDs. By itself, a CD player doesn’t do much but wait around to play CDs. And the opposite is true. But together, they make music. So when you download Apollo, it’s not going to do anything but wait on your computer to run Apollo apps.

There are other runtimes: most notably the Java runtime, which you’ve probably run across if you’ve spent any time on the Web. Apollo is the same thing, but there’s an important difference that sets it apart. Instead of having to take night courses to learn Java so you can program Java apps, Apollo lets you use all of Web development skill you already know to design applications.

I look at Apollo like a Web browser without the “browse.” Browsers already run applications. You go to check your Gmail; you’re running an application. Well, you’re not running it. It’s running on a server somewhere. With Apollo, the application will run on your desktop, which accomplishes two things: it takes some of the load off the server and it lets the user work offline.

It’s this second feature that the development community is salivating over. Compose emails, set up eBay auctions, fill in your calendar, change your lineup in your fantasy baseball league. You can do all of this offline (say, on an airplane or if your cable goes out) and once you’re back on the grid, sync up to the server with one click, implementing all of the actions you’ve completed on your desktop. Applications with hybrid functionality like that are called Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and a lot of people think they might be what becomes Web 3.0.

Pretty cool, right? But before we jump in with both feet, there are a couple of caveats before anointing Apollo Next Big Thing status.

1. Security
   Every new technology that has come along in the Internet age has gone through some growing pains while the kinks in security are worked out. I can’t see Apollo being any different. The runtime is designed for Web developers to leverage their existing skill sets to develop applications. Well, hackers have those same, if not more advanced, skill sets. Just something to think about.
2. Compatability
   The runtime is cross-platform, but does that mean the applications will be? I did some looking for early Apollo apps, and I found an Apollo music player. I’m not sure which platform the developer used to create it, but it wouldn’t run on my Mac. Whether that’s an issue with the runtime or with his app remains to be seen, but still, it wouldn’t run.
3. Efficiency
   The other major Web-related runtime is Java, and anyone who’s used a Java app knows that the runtime is pretty cumbersome. You have to wait a while for Java to launch, and then you have to wait for the app to initialize. It takes longer than it should. While all the sample apps I’ve tried for Apollo have been very quick, they’ve also been pretty simple. When developers start adding deeper functionality and more complex interfaces, will Apollo bog down, too?

That said, I really believe the Apollo project has way more upside than downside. If you think you’ve seen a lot of Web-based innovation in the last couple of years, I have a feeling Apollo is going to bring it to your desktop.

ag·gre·gate (ăg’rĭ-gĭt)
n.
1. A total considered with reference to its constituent parts; a gross amount: “An empire is the aggregate of many states under one common head” (Edmund Burke).
v. tr.
1. To gather into a mass, sum, or whole.

I keep profiles on MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, YouTube, and, more recently, Bebo, LinkedIn, and aNobii: all social networks. And I have to admit, it’s a pain to keep up with seven different user names and passwords. How simple it would be to have one place to log in where I could check up on all my networks. But there are a couple of problems.

1. Diluting the Experience
   When you remove yourself from the individual interfaces of each service, you run the risk of removing yourself from participation. Your social network aggregator will homogenize your experience and become just another news reader. Instead of reading the news of the world, you’ll be reading the news of your friends, without adding to the conversation.
2. Crossing the Streams
   Say you’ve got a music profile on MySpace, a business profile on LinkedIn, and a personal profile on Facebook. These are three distinct aspects of your personality that you probably don’t want to mix. Or at the very least, you’d like to keep your business life separate. If all of your social networks are aggregated, a prospective employer or a fan of your music might be turned off by something they find there. There’s something to be said about segregating the various aspects of your life.
3. Who Aggregates the Aggregators?
   What is MySpace? It’s an aggregator. You can have your music, your blog, your photos, and your friends all under the same umbrella. And the killer function of MySpace is the ability to share all your cool stuff with your friends. If you use a platform like Spokeo to manage your social networking accounts, chances are you’ll have something cool on Friendster you want to share with your MySpace buddy. So you invite him to join Spokeo, and then you’ve turned your aggregator into a social network. Since there will never be a universal social networking platform (some like MySpace, some like Facebook, etc.), the impulse to bring them all to one interface is misguided. You’ll just keep creating networks once removed and on and on down the slippery slope.

What I’m saying is, the dynamic, participatory nature of social networks precludes easy aggregation. So with all these conversations at our fingertips, what can we do to help organize it all? Start with your browser.

My browser of choice is Firefox, and I have my bookmark toolbar set up with a “Daily Stops” folder with links to all of my networks. Firefox will also manage my various passwords, taking that hassle out of my hands. So checking in on each profile is as simple as clicking seven links. It’s pretty easy.

Every developer in the world has their eyes peeled for the Next Big Thing, and some think that social network aggregation is where it’s at. But even though it looks great on paper, doesn’t mean that it’s a great idea.

Both can be viable tools to enhance your user interface, but both have pitfalls to consider. I started to think about the possible applications of these elements from a design and marketing standpoint, and I came up with a few pros and cons for each.

Super Headers

Traditional page layouts include a header, a main body, one or two sub columns, and a footer. A super header is an extra strip of information, advertisements, or navigation above the header. Examples include FeedBurner, Technorati, and Daily Kos.

Pros:
1. Prime Real Estate. This is the very top of your page. The first place a lot of people look when they’re discovering your site and trying to figure out what it’s all about. As such, it can be a great place to put ads, like Daily Kos has done. There’s a wide banner ad above the header on their front page. It’s also a good place to put your “About” and “Contact” links.

2. Super headers are unobtrusive. If you’ve got some links that you need to publish like terms of service or affiliate information, you’ll want them to be out of the way yet accessible. A super header is a great tool for accomplishing this. Mashable uses their super header for this purpose.

3. Meta navigation. A super header is a great place to put links for logging in to a service or managing user accounts. Google has been using their super header in this way for quite a while. Between the super header on all Blogspot blogs and their placement of their login links, I actually think Google is responsible for the growing use of this design element.

Cons:
1. Easy to ignore. The only real problem I have with super headers is that they have a tendency to blend in with my browser’s toolbars. For example, when I signed up to use Feedburner to publish my RSS feed, I had very little trouble navigating their site. But when I returned to check my stats a few days later, it took me a good minute or two to find the very tiny, very gray super header with the login link. I passed right over it because it blended in with my browser. A good rule of thumb for super header backgrounds is to go bright or go white. Avoid patterns and muted colors.

Fat Footers

While I don’t have any plans to add a super header to One Thing New any time soon, I am strongly considering developing a fat footer. I’ve seen these used on sites like lifehack.org, Bokardo, digg and others to add lists of links, tag clouds, and other data to the bottom of their pages.

Pros:
1. Where am I, again? If your blog front page is super long, having a fat footer with your logo repeated and some basic navigational links makes sense. By the time someone gets to the end of your 10th post, it’s nice to remind them where they are and reinforce your brand.

2. Come back again. Your fat footer is an excellent place to put subscription options for your readers. Besides having a big RSS link at the top of your sidebar or somewhere equally prominent, you can add a ton of subscription chicklets to other services in your footer. That way, your sidebar stays uncluttered, but you’re still offering the option to your readers.

3. Recommended surfing. Let’s say your blog isn’t the only Web site you are affiliated with. Your fat footer is the perfect place to promote your other ventures. If someone has read your blog to the end, they’ll see your links to other offerings and might continue their infatuation with your content.

Cons:
1. No really, where am I? If you don’t reiterate your brand in your footer, your readers won’t know or care what they’re looking at, and they’ll gloss right over it. Also, using your footer to display ads is a bad idea. That’s not the last image you want your readers to take away from your site.

2. Location, location, location. In case you’ve forgotten, the footer is at the dead bottom of your page. Eight times in 10 your readers won’t scroll that far down — especially if you have your blog set up to post multiple stories on the front page. So, make sure you don’t put any vital information in your fat footer. Things you put down there should be semi-redundant, meaning the things you link to in your footer can be found in more prominent places on your page. Or as I mentioned with the subscription links, offer one option up top and put add ons in the footer.

Again, both super headers and fat footers can be beneficial if used properly. Keep your eyes peeled for a fatter footer on this site in the next couple of weeks.

Gallery2 is an image gallery platform that uses PHP, Smarty Tags, and a database backend to let you organize and manipulate your images on your hosting server. Gallery2 is crammed full of features, which actually becomes its main weakness: it has feature-itis. While modifying one of the prepackaged themes, I keep finding myself cutting away whole chunks of extraneous code.

It’s pretty frustrating because at this point, I know enough PHP to realize that Gallery2 is overqualified for this job. But I don’t know enough to build my own application from scratch. So for now, I’m stuck having to cut back an action-packed application like Gallery2.

Another problem I’m having with the Gallery2 guts is that the album pages are laid out with tables. I’ve been a div man for years now, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve worked with tables as layout elements. I know pages of thumbnails can be considered tabular data and thus would warrant using tables. But I’d designed my template using divs before I chose the gallery platform. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

My final gripe with Gallery2 is the same I’ve had with every content management system I’ve worked with — I’m talking to you Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger, phpbb, Coppemine, etc. How about instead of giving me preloaded templates and themes that have tons of features I have to remove, you make the out-of-the-box template as bare bones as possible? Then, instead of ripping a template apart and removing the features I won’t use, which has been faster than building one from scratch in every platform I’ve used except Wordpress, I can add features to a solid foundation.

Now let me add that, as is always the case when I discuss Open Source applications, I am eternally grateful for all the hard work the developers put in so that I can have access to these awesome products. When I have problems with these platforms, I’m typically as frustrated with my own limitations as I am with the applications. So just because I whine a little, don’t think I’m not appreciative. I’ve just had a hard day, and now I feel better. Thanks for listening, Internet!

Not only does the site look different, but the content is also going to change a bit. I’m not going to do Top Five Fridays anymore, and you’ll probably see a lot less of the YouTube-centric posts. My efforts will be focused on Web technologies and how they affect, improve, and in some cases, hinder your every day life.

Not to worry, though. I plan to add a supplemental tumblelog where I can post stuff that doesn’t quite fit One Thing New’s tighter focus.

I want to thank everyone who has stopped by in the last three months. I hope you’ll stick around and see where the blog goes from here.

At its heart ComicVine is a massive, user-created database of comic book information. They offer sections for members to write bios of their favorite characters, write reviews of current and back issues, participate in forums, and customize their profile page. On your profile page, you can add a photo gallery and a blog (reminded me of Gimme20’s profile features). And as with all social networking sites, you have a friends list to maintain. ComicVine hits all the high points of the Web 2.0 experience, but they have some unique features, too.

Since time began, comics fans have loved debating who would win in a fight between their favorite heroes and villains. Hulk versus Superman, Superman versus Flash, Batman versus Captain America, and on and on. Well, ComicVine has a feature that lets you vote on the outcome of those types of battles, and the winners are ranked on a list of most powerful characters. Right now, Superman is #1 (and Red Sonja is #4… one of the pitfalls of user-generated content, I suppose). If you have trouble deciding if Wonder Woman could beat Martian Manhunter in a fight, you can always pose the question in the forums where you’ll have dozens of folks ready to debate. It’s great fun.

Another unique feature of ComicVine is the ability to track your pull list on your profile page. Just visit the page for an issue of a comic you’d like to add to your list, and click a link to start tracking it.

I’ve been a member of ComicVine for several months (my handle is hooley21 if you want to look me up), but I’m still discovering new features. It is an amazing and essential resource for any comic book fan with an Internet connection.

And now it’s time to go watch Lost.

There are two things here that are potentially interesting:

1. I haven’t cut grass since I lived with my parents in high school about 15 years ago. I’ve been an apartment dweller in those years and haven’t had to worry about a lawn.

2. My parents were gracious enough to buy us a lawnmower as a house warming present. Thing is, it’s a corded electric mower. It’s what I wanted, but it takes some getting used to, having to mind the cord. So every time I have cord issues, I think to myself I could be having gas issues or starter issues or destroying the environment issues. And then I’m happy with my cord, even though I got some strange looks from people driving by.

In honor of my triumphant lawn mowing experience, I offer you this awesome mowing-related video for One Thing Tube tonight. Enjoy.

1. Joost
Last week I got my beta invitation for Joost, and I’ve been playing around with it some. For those who don’t know, Joost is a new Web 2.0 company that has created an application for streaming television on your computer. As opposed to the majority of Web 2.0 apps, which use your Web browser to push their user interface, Joost is a program you have to download and run locally. Another innovation of Joost is their adoption of a peer to peer back end for distributing the server load of their streaming content.

So far, it’s worked really well for me. I think I was one of the first couple of rounds of the OS X beta testers, and the program is a little buggy. Also, besides MTV, BET, and Comedy Central, there aren’t many channels of recognizable programming. I know that CBS just signed a contract to supply content, and I’m sure other networks will follow suit. But for now, there isn’t a lot on that struck my fancy.

If Joost takes off, I think we’ll start to see a lot more of these hybrid client apps that run on your desktop with Web 2.0 functionality. And on a related topic…

2. Adobe Apollo
Adobe has released a new runtime environment and SDK for developing applications that could run a lot like Joost using traditionally Web-only programming languages (HTML, Javascript, Flash, etc.). I haven’t downloaded it to check it out yet, but Apollo and Microsoft’s Silverlight could set the stage for the next Web revolution. Or they could fizzle. Time will tell.

And speaking of fizzling…

3. The Web 2.0 Bubble
I subscribe to Mashable, a blog that covers news and trends in social networking sites. It’s an excellent blog, but every day I’m amazed by stories they cover of some new Web 2.0 startup getting funding for letting users share pictures of their cats or some such thing. It reminds me a lot of the last days of the Web 1.0 boom during which investors were throwing money at any- and everything that had .com at the end of it. The recent buzz around twitter, a fairly useless one-trick pony with a funny name and some shiny graphics, has me worried. Could twitter be the death knell of Web 2.0? I can only hope investors and entrepreneurs are wiser this go around.

So there you have a few things I’ve been thinking about recently. Looks like I’ve got some waiting and seeing to do. I’ll keep you posted down the road.

If you’re bringing a pre-existing brand to your Web site, you should chose colors consistent with your logo, signage, letter head, business cards, etc. Your purpose for creating your Web site is to extend your brand, and if you go off on a color tangent on your Web site, it will be harder to maintain your brand identity from the real world to the virtual one.

If you are creating a brand from scratch on your site, choosing color goes hand in hand with establishing a brand identity. You’ll have to consider which colors best reflect your brand, if you want your color palette to be muted or bold, how many colors to use (too few is boring, too many is confusing), and how to combine those colors to best express your message.

Selecting your color scheme is an extremely subjective task, and it’s different for every business. So, rather than a step-by-step tutorial about color picking, I’ve put together a list of online resources that can guide you through the process.

1. Complete Color Matching Guide
   This site is about as comprehensive a list of color resources as I’ve ever seen. Of particular interest are the links to articles about the meanings, symbolism, and psychology of colors. For instance, did you know that yellow can represent intelligence or that different shades of green can mean anything from peace to jealousy. It’s fascinating.
2. 10 Tools to help you select a Web 2.0 Color Palette
   As the title says, this is a blog post with a great list of online tools for creating Web 2.0 color schemes. My favorite is ColorBlender.
3. COLOURLovers
   I haven’t even scratched the surface of exploring this site yet. From their About page: “COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.” The article that brought me to this site is an excellent analysis of the color palettes of Grammy-winning album covers. COLOURLovers looks like an incredible resource for designers of all kinds.
4. ColorZilla
   ColorZilla is a Firefox plugin that lets you pull colors from any Web page you’re visiting. I certainly wouldn’t advocate lifting entire color schemes from other people’s sites, but if you come across a shade of blue that you really like, this tool makes it easy to grab it. In the past if I wanted to do that, I’d take a screen shot of the browser and use the dropper tool in Photoshop or GIMP to get the color. This plugin is much easier.
5. Hex Hub HTML Color Codes
   I’ve posted this link before, but it is my go-to resource for picking colors. As much as I love the widgets that let you slide a bar or scroll around a color wheel to pick a scheme, there’s something about being able to see every color available on one page that is easier for me. A lot of times, I’ll find a shade of the color that I like on the Hex Hub, and I’ll take it to one of those automatic color schemers to flesh out the palette. Nonetheless, I use this site all the time.

Choosing colors is such a fundamental part of creating any sort of design project that a lot of folks, I think, take for granted how important it is. I hope these resources point you in the right direction when it’s time to develop your site’s color palette.

I read Slaughterhouse-Five in AP English, and after that it was all over: I was a fan. Cat’s Cradle, Mother Night, Welcome to the Monkey House, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, and on down the line his books combined historical fiction with humor with science fiction in ways I had never seen before (and haven’t seen done well since). Vonnegut was one of the iconic pillars of my adolescence, and I’m putting together a little musical elegy of sorts to pay my respects. Hi ho, Mr. Trout.

Here’s a link to the video if you’re coming from RSS.

As long as there have been newspapers, there have been writers using the medium as their platform to advance personal agendas. One of the first concepts I learned when I took an Intro to Journalism class in college was “agenda setting,” the theory that popular media can influence the masses by what stories they cover and how much coverage they give them. So, even if the writers try to be as objective as possible in their stories, their editors’ bias shows in the length and placement of their stories. Subjectivity is part of being human, and I think traditional media does itself a disservice by trying to hide it.

There have been those throughout the history of journalism who have embraced their subjectivity: satirists, political cartoonists, columnists, and now bloggers. And that is the beauty of blogging. Not that bloggers are subjective — everyone is subjective — but that they embrace their bias to provide their readers with content no one else can give them. Through the filter of the blogger’s bias, readers get a wholly unique perspective on words that would otherwise just lay on the page. Instead of “just the facts,” bloggers make the news more accessible by giving a face and a personality to what they report.

But do they get the facts right? Skewing the facts to suit your agenda can be a dangerous thing (Iraq war, anyone), but that’s why, if it’s important to you, you should get more than one opinion about a story. And goodness knows there are enough bloggers out there happy to oblige. On this recent fracas between Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team, I must have read at least 15 stories from all sorts of points of view before I formed my opinion.

In this growing world of subjective media, the onus is on the reader to sort it all out. And, while some folks don’t like to do their due diligence on any one story (the big reason why traditional media isn’t going anywhere, by the way), I’m of the opinion that the more points of view I read, the easier it is to make up my mind.

So, are bloggers biased? Sure. Is that wrong? I don’t think so.

Now, celebrities and paparazzi have gone around and around in the debate about right to privacy for public figures, and I’m not going to get into that here. What I thought was very interesting was a line Gould came back with that redefines the rules of the game a bit:

“Honestly, I think that there’s a shifting definition of what is public and what is private space for everyone not just celebrities. The Internet, blogs, MySpace, no one has the reasonable expectation of being able to walk around the street and not being noticed by someone.” - Emily Gould

And I think she’s right to say the definition of privacy is changing for folks on the Web. But there is still — and probably always will be — a distinction between two types of public/private interactions. It’s the Cult of Personality vs. the Cult of Information.

Celebrities like Paltrow or Tom Cruise, etc. have chosen a public life in the cult of personality. People want to be them and to be close to them. While folks on the Web who participate in social networking sites are participating in the cult of information. People want to know about them and about what they have to say. It’s really hard to be popular on the Web if you don’t have something interesting to say (porn stars excepted). A majority of the time, users on the Web just want information about other people. Paparazzi and the abusers of the cult of personality want the people themselves.

Typically, surfing MySpace, looking at stranger’s profiles is no different than peeking out your front curtains, trying to figure out what your neighbor’s building in his garage. In the cult of information, once you figure out what it is, you’ve gotten all you need from that person. In the cult of personality, someone would probably steal it.

That’s the fundamental difference between these types of interactions, and I think Gould misses the boat by not making this distinction. Granted, she had Jimmy Kimmel ramming his foot down her throat at the time, but I think she does Web 2.0-style social interactions a disservice by lumping them in with traditional invasions of privacy.

And please don’t think that I’m saying all peepers in the Web 2.0 style are above-board (ask Kathy Sierra). The world is a big place, and there are just as many bad people as there are good. I’m just pointing out a flaw in Gould’s statement.

CNN transcript of the show in question.

In this meantime, enjoy this fun clip. Happy Easter!

And another Top Five Friday comes and goes here at One Thing New. Enjoy your weekends, everyone. Happy Easter!

My motivation for losing weight is two-fold. First, I just turned 30. Now, I’m not saying I’m having a mid-life crisis or anything, but let’s just say I’m starting to feel Father Time nipping at my heels a bit. Second, in the process of moving into our new house last December, I hurt my lower back pretty badly lifting boxes. I spent a couple of excruciating nights during which the 15-foot walk to the bathroom brought me to tears from the pain. Laying in bed in constant pain, I promised myself that when my back healed and I was mobile enough to start working out, I would once and for all get myself in shape. It took almost a month before I felt strong enough to start, but I did start. And I plan to finish.

So, I had my motivation in place. But I’d been motivated before. When I was 25, I dropped about 20 pounds and actually had myself in pretty good shape. I marked my progress on the wall calendar in my living room, and seeing how much work I’d done really kept me going. Problem was, when I turned the page of the calendar to the next month, all of a sudden, I hadn’t done anything. The calendar was blank, and it was literally like a switch flipped off. I stopped working out. To avoid that happening again, I needed to be held accountable by a system that wouldn’t let me just turn the page.

And that’s when I started One Thing New. Even though it took me a couple of weeks to get to my first Lose Weight with Web 2.0 post, I had planned from the beginning that I would write about that. My thinking was if I publish my intentions to lose weight, then I’m accountable to my readers. And if I framed it as a project (testing out and comparing two Web 2.0 weight loss sights), then I would have a tangible goal to shoot for. Pretty smart, huh?

As I wrote in yesterday’s post, Gimme20 became my favorite of the two Web apps I reviewed. Tracking my workout — I mentioned using a calendar the last time I tried losing weight — and seeing my progress grow over time is incredibly inspirational. You want to keep it growing. Well, you can’t turn the page on Gimme20’s tracking page, and I think that’s important. And it’s not only the fact that I can see my stats growing; it’s also the fact that everyone can see them, too. If I put my goals out there, I’m held accountable by the people who read about them. It’s very motivating.

I can say that I wouldn’t have gotten as far a long as I have without the help of the Web 2.0 technology I’ve used. My age and my injury motivated me. And the potential audience and viewers of my blog and my Gimme20 page have helped me stick to my plan. I’ll continue to track my progress on Gimme20, and I’ll probably post periodic updates here. But I think I’ve gotten over the hump. My commitment to change is finally real, and I plan to see it through — with your help.

Oh yeah, since I started my program on Feb 28th, I’ve lost 12 pounds. Not bad for a month’s work, eh?

When I started out, my intention was to use Traineo to track my diet and my weight and Gimme20 to track my workout. I set up my accounts and got started.

INTERFACE
Traineo’s interface is very well done. They incorporate AJAX elements seamlessly into their pages. I never got the feeling that I was lost, and all of the interactivity enhanced the site rather than getting in the way. The graphics are typical Web 2.0 (shiny reflections and big, bold fonts). Overall, Traineo hits it out of the park with their user interface.

Gimme20 has a more traditional interface without as much AJAX slickness. They still have the look of Web 2.0, though, with their vibrant colors and big fonts. And their “Build a Workout” feature benefits from the AJAX treatment.

My one complaint about Gimme20 is that I had a hard time finding my personalized homepage where I could update my progress. On Traineo, once you sign in, there’s a big, green button on traineo.com that takes you to your personal page. On Gimme20, you either have to scroll down, click a link to your personal page, and click the “My Fitness” tab or click on a small text link in the upper right-hand corner (”My Workouts”).

First of all, My Fitness and My Workouts take you to the same page: they should be named the same thing. Second, the default tab for your personal page on Gimme20 is “profile” where you see information about yourself like homepage and blog posts you’ve written. The default tab should be the fitness tab so it’s easier to update your progress.

I guess that’s a fairly minor quibble, but I think it’s significant.

CONTENT
Traineo’s approach is a survey of fitness, meaning they offer a little bit of everything fitness-related. They don’t dig deep in any one area like Gimme20 does with exercise. In fact, this is Traineo’s biggest failing. Tracking your workout consists of choosing from a preset list of activities, noting how long you engaged in that activity, and selecting from four levels of difficulty. Not a very scientific approach, and as far as I can tell, you can’t customize any of it.

Tracking your diet consists of rating your diet from “poor” to “great” and entering your total daily calories. The calorie bit is helpful, but I could have benefited a great deal from some sort of calorie counting app that would let me enter what I’ve eaten and calculate the calories for me. As it stands, Traineo offers a link to the USDA nutrient database, which is cumbersome and has a useless search function. They could do much better themselves.

One thing that Traineo gets right is their offering original articles in the “Library” section. They have some really good articles about exercise, eating right, and what appears to be a dead link for articles about motivation (not very motivating if it doesn’t work!). Gimme20 could really benefit from a similar feature. Adding opinions from “experts” would give their site some extra gravitas.

Both Traineo and Gimme20 have large communities of users, but I didn’t really have the time to actively engage in either one. Gimme20 seems to have more features built in to their community, but that’s just my observation in a quick look around.

Gimme20 lacks the diversity of Traineo, but what it lacks in diversity, it makes up for in targeted content. Specifically, Gimme20 focuses almost exclusively on the exercise aspect of losing weight. And they do it very well. Users can add exercises to a list from which they or other users can create custom workouts. These workouts can be tracked pretty much however you want: reps, durations, weight, etc. Users can either create their own workouts or subscribe to pre-fab workouts created by other users. It’s an innovative way to approach working out.

Overall, I liked Gimme20’s content better. I think it’s more important to do one thing really well than to do a lot of things halfway, and Gimme20’s workout content is vastly superior to anything on Traineo. If Gimme20 added a similar interface for user-created diets and nutrition, they could very well corner the Web market on fitness.

Over the course of the last month, I spent far more time on Gimme20 than I did on Traineo. In the end, I pretty much just used Traineo for its weight tracker, which I liked better than Gimme20’s because it calculates total weight lost instead of weight lost since last weigh in. Neither site is perfect, but I think Gimme20, with it’s depth of content, is a lot closer than Traineo, which is really just a pretty face without much substance.

Check back tomorrow to see how I did with my fitness program, including how much weight I lost.