Dear MySpace,

You just sent me an email. And I’m pretty sure you sent it to everyone on your system trying to make me use your services.  Here’s the content of your email.

I went to the University of Texas, population at time of attendance ~55,000 undergraduates.  What is the likelihood I know this person?  Zero.  Make your robots do some research first.

You are dumb.

Sincerely,
Dave Rupert

Today I came across these sweet wireframe stencils for OmniGraffle.  OmniGraff’ing is a bit of a hobby of mine. 

OmniGraffle Wireframe Stencils (via Konigi).

Today one article that came across Twitter started me down a vicious rabbit hole of Theory of Design and much, much more.  For kicks and because I believe they are read-worthy, I’ll try and trace that track:

1. “5 options when website budgets get slashed” -great article, sent me to the following sites:
   1. “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign” - This A List Apart by the famous Cameron Moll says “The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven”. Sure it’s great to have a fresh new image, but sometimes shifting does better than redesigning. Design-wise, I personally tend to want to flatten and start with a clean slate, but that’s expensive and sometimes it’s just a couple of functional tweaks that make the difference, like in the next article…
   2. $300 Million Button - Amazing article on how changing up 1 thing and understanding user perspective can make you millions… literally.
   3. Laws of Simplicity - I didn’t know this site existed, but it’s the personal blog of RISD President John Maeda who I’ve watched on TED before. This guy just oozes niceness.
      1. “The Laws of Simplicity” - This is a subsection and the thesis of John Maeda’s site. It’s a condensed version of his 100 page book. Almost all the articles in the site link-to or highlight themes chapters covered in his book, which I added to my Amazon Wishlist.
      2. Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) - I followed the our.risd blog and watched some videos of teaching staff speaking and I fantasized about going there until I realized that It would involve a) moving across country and b) lots and lots of money. But, what a beautiful opportunity it would be to become an expert in design - design not in the “pixel pushing” sense, but in the functional innovative sense.

I’ve read so much and was so inspired I’m feeling pretty enlightened. Like I read the whole Bible in a single word. Maybe that’s to esoteric or imaginative, but I really do feel like I’ve gotten a fresh revelation on what I do, and what we as Paravel do best. We’re not just a Design Team. Websites are just the tip of the iceberg of what we want to do to make businesses better.

Let me start off by saying “I know what this looks like”.  This appears to be “the little emo-kid trying to raise a huge ruckus by throw rocks at Digg because his/her articles never get dugg”.  But, let it be known, I have no gripe my lack of success in the Digg Popularity Department.

My problem with Digg is that it has seemingly abandoned the sections that would most appeal to technical/web professionals, the people who made Digg great.

State of the Union

Digg has seen a plateau in its number of visitors to its site, resulting in recent staff cuts . Although layoffs are normal to this economy, it doesn’t explain the leveling off of users.  And I’ve noticed a drop in my usage too, when Digg shut down the API key for Eventbox (an app which I’ve already blogged about here), I decided to just see if I could live without my digg addiction.  I have gone on living just fine and am quite happy.  And that sparked my “investigation” into why I wasn’t affected by cutting out 300 articles a day from my RSS diet.  My research led me to the sections that I care about most.

The Programming Section

There’s currently only 2 pages of frontpage articles an the 2nd page just has a handful.  On the Programming frontpage (see screenshot below) there are the typical stories you would expect to see - jQuery 1.3.1 and the Rails/Merb merger.  But the programming industry is extremely volatile and there are new technologies coming out everyday which should make it here (read Ajaxian.com).  Where are the .git tutorials and the WCAG 2.0 articles?

Most of the posts that get promoted are are titled “30 Essential Wordpress Plugins” and “100 Essential Firefox Plugins”.  The words “Essential” and “Plugins” must be key to getting your story promoted by the Digg Algorithm.  

The Design Section

This section is desolate as well. Although it has 4 pages of articles, by page 3 I noticed there were articles I read when submitted 19 days ago.  This is unnecessary because there are thousands of people churning out new web/print/illustrative designs everyday.  There are also designers out there looking for inspiration cruising countless inferior CSS gallery sites that don’t have the comment engine and user base of Digg.  Now, there’s a digg clone just for design and the only limitation of the site seems to be the low number of users.  Like the Programming section, Design is extremely fluid and changing everyday.  Design inspiration isn’t too hard to come by (see FFFFOUND!) and with modern/retro/web/print/UX/interface design all being sub-genres of this catagory, the well is clearly not being tapped.

Articles in this section tend to be titled “50 Free Wordpress Themes” and “20 Free Icon Sets”.  I guess “Free” will always be successful.

`

Rework Ur Algorithm Plz

Digg was an awesome+awesome alternative Slashdot and was a great new home for Slashdot refugees to participate in tech topics and discussion and feel like they’re on the cutting edge of web technology…  then came the high school kids… and Ron Paul… If there’s a reason I’m not going to digg now it’s because I’ve already got XKCD and Smashing Magazine in my Google Reader.

So, I’m pitching the usual whine of most digg users: “rework the algorithm”. Give me more stories that don’t have to reach the impossible algorithmic threshold to compete with “X Essential Plugins I need for Y”.

Today I shaved my beard and weighed myself on WiiFit before and after: I lost 0.4lbs!  That’s actually not a big deal, because yesterday I lost 1.1lbs taking a whiz.