If, like me, you were expecting to download a fully bootable ISO, you’re going to be disappointed. The launch consists of:

1. A name change from “Chrome OS” to “Chromium OS”.
2. A new Chromium.org website containing information for UI designers and developers.
3. An early version of the source code.

Google has stated that the OS is a full 12-months away from release. The source code is not a beta or even a pre-alpha. It’s possible to create a build but few people will bother: you need Linux, various developer packages, and a lot of patience.

Screenshots and videos are available, but they’re mostly conceptual line drawings rather than actual footage of real-world use. This video is one of the more informative:

So have we discovered anything that we didn’t know before?

• It’s a pure browser-based OS. It’s essentially the Google Chrome browser with additional pop-up management. Even simple applications such as the calculator appear to be web-based rather than an OS executable.
• The left-most tab shows the Chrome menu which links to standard applications like GMail or panels.
• Small panels can be opened which overlay the main window or can be docked at the side of the screen.

The OS is mostly what I expected, but I’d really hoped to be booting a virtual machine today. It’s great that Google has released the code and is asking for developer contributions, but whipping up frenzied media excitement wasn’t the best move. I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed.

Have you built or tried Chromium OS?

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In the spirit of planning, next week I will be kicking off a week-long series on goal setting, including how to identify and plan for your goals, how to measure your success, how to stick with it when you hit a challenge, and how to celebrate your success.

But before we dig into the goal setting series, and in order to position ourselves to make the most out of the process, we need to open our minds to the possibilities. When we’re doing the same thing, day in and day out, it’s hard to break out of routine thought and encourage our minds to think beyond the immediate.

So in preparation for next week, let’s take some time to open our minds to what’s possible and prepare ourselves to break free from routine as we plan for a new year.

Be Willing to Change

Change is scary for many of us, but growth and advancement is impossible without it. In order to open your mind and prepare yourself to reach a new level, you will have to accept the changes that will happen at the same time.

Get Ready to Be Proactive

Goal setting is about figuring out where you want to be and going for it. Nothing good will happen if you’re stuck in stagnancy, waiting for change to come to you. Be willing to commit to your goals and do what it takes to see them through.

Practice Open Thinking

Start practicing acceptance of new ideas, listening better to those around you, and giving every possibility an equal chance. If you can avoid writing off any one idea or dream as unrealistic or unachievable, your open thinking will bring about more possibilities.

Face Your Fears

Everyone fears something, and your fears could become one of your biggest obstacles in the goal setting process. Instead of ignoring them in an effort to get around them, take time to face them head-on, get an idea of where they’re coming from and come up with a plan for conquering them so they don’t impede your planning process.

Let Go of Control

This is a big one for many of us, myself included, but in order to truly experience an open mind, we need to give up some control. Once we stop trying to mold the world to fit our outlook, we will experience a powerlessness that can lead us to new insights and ideas.

What do you typically do to open you mind and prepare yourself for setting new goals and intentions for your business and your life?

Image credit: Grafix007

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Interview Transcript

Kevin: November 20th, 2009. The team assembles to discuss Patrick’s Blog World and New Media Expo panel on the dark side of online communities. This is the SitePoint Podcast #37: Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly.

Kevin: And welcome to another episode of the SitePoint Podcast. It’s a bit of a special one this week. Normally, in between our new shows we have interviews and one-on-one type things but we’ve got all the troops with us, the usual suspects, we’ve got Brad Williams, Patrick O’Keefe, and Stephan Segraves, and we’ve come together today to talk about—Patrick, you chaired a panel at the Blog World and New Media Expo a few weeks back called Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly and you had a great suggestion that we should go through it here because it’s very relevant to our audience.

Patrick: Right, sounds great. That’s a great setup! Basically, the premise of the panel is to discuss trends in social media that concerned us as far as the growth of the medium as a whole – and “us” being myself and Amber Nusland who is Director of Community at Radian6, Wayne Sutton who is a partner of OurHashtag in blog, SocialWayne.com and also Robert Scoble who is the Managing Director of Building43.com at RackSpace – and basically, trends in social media that we feel are maybe a detriment to the growth of the medium as a whole.

Kevin: Yeah. So I suppose you said there were six things that you covered in the panel?

Patrick: Six specific trends, yes.

Kevin: Alright. Well, maybe we should just dive right in with number one.

Patrick: Okay, and the first one we talked about was the unforgiving nature of the loud minority. So basically, what this means is it seems like there’s always a group of people online who are waiting for someone else to make a mistake and it’s almost like you can never make a mistake anymore because it’s going to be saved online, archived forever, talked about, trending topic, shared with everyone. It’s like an expectation to be perfect. Otherwise, it’s boycott or petition or fail and that’s dangerous to me because, well, I look at it as a user. That was the perspective of the panel. So as a user, why don’t you want to do this? For me, I think you want your words to have meaning. Boycotts and petitions these days are really so cheap. I mean, it’s as cheap as table salt. There are boycotts and petitions at any second on Twitter and everything is a fail – but not all of those things are meaningless, and you want to be someone who, when they boycott something or when there’s a petition, you want people to view it as being truly meaningful. But if everything is a fail, like I said, then your words are going to be discounted and you’ll become the boy who cried, “Fail”.

Kevin: Yeah, definitely. There’s that old saying, “Oh, oh, someone is wrong on the internet.”

Patrick: It never happens. So I guess the answer to the question is how can you be better than that? How can you not allow yourself to fall into that trap?

Kevin: Well, sometimes, we can definitely talk about trying to avoid making mistakes but as often as not, I think it’s as much about how you deal with the mistake you’ve made after the fact. If you own up to it and if you take ownership of your mistake and you go out of your way to do the right thing by the people who’ve been, in most cases, simply inconvenienced by the mistake you’ve made, often, you end up better than when you started if the exercise had gone perfectly.

Patrick: None of us here have ever made mistake. So this is all simply a scientific discussion, right?

Kevin: I know. It’s all talking hypothetically.

Patrick: Yeah, totally hypothetical.

Kevin: I know definitely SitePoint has made one or two mistakes. It’s inevitable as a publisher that a typo will slip through or the shopping cart setup will be not quite right when we launch a new book and we’ve had cases of people being unable to open the PDF files that they have paid for. Things like that happen every now and then and we find that if we’re diligent in owning up to it and apologizing and doing a little extra something to make it up to our customers, they become our biggest advocates.

Patrick: And just on the other side of that just as a user, so how do you not become that person who’s waiting for someone else to fail? I think it starts with giving people the benefit of the doubt and assuming good faith and treating people as you’d want to be treated. That says we all – but we don’t – but we all make mistakes. So everyone makes mistakes. So how do you want to be treated when you make one? I mean, do you want …

Kevin: Right, people in glass houses and all that.

Stephan: Sink ships.

Brad: I almost like it is human nature at this point but to kind of want people to fail, just like in entertainment in general, I mean, look at the whole bubble boy story. Everybody was fascinated by it and as soon as the first word hoax came out, they were wanting to burn them at the stake – whether they knew it was a hoax or not. So it’s almost like people are more fascinated by watching someone fail than they are by watching someone succeed.

Kevin: That’s definitely true. I have a double life. In my spare time I do a lot of Improv comedy and Improv is all about failure. People don’t come along to see you make up on the spot a seamless, perfect piece of theatre. They come to see those glitches when you’re sweating because you can’t think of the right words. That’s what people come along to see Improv comedy for. They want to see you take the risks and every once in a while slip off the balance beam and do terrible damage to yourself. So yeah, there is this, I don’t know, it’s like the traffic slowing down as a road accident happens to rubber neck. There is this culture on the internet – that we’re all watching for the people making asses out of themselves.

Patrick: And we try to take this from a company perspective, right? That’s a scary thing. I mean, as a company getting into the Internet or making some strides in social media – that you can’t make a mistake or someone’s going to pounce on you. That’s why I think it’s a bad thing and I think the perception is that there are a lot of people out there waiting to fail but personally, I think those people are just more vocal than others. I mean I think most people are well meaning people that are not looking to triumph your failures, so to speak. I think we can probably move on at the second point, which is related, which is the mob mentality. So where does this differ? This is more about the spreading and I guess dissemination of information. So a mob mentality, a mob in this light is basically a group of people who is just passing something along for the sake of passing it along, people that are piling on when they don’t really know the full story or taking the time to understand the full story. You could apply this at Twitter with re-tweets, when you’re just like re-tweeting something without looking at it, and then that thing becomes trending and maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it’s a bad thing, maybe it’s true or untrue. You can apply to a lot of other different things as well but what can happen is, and this is a bad thing for, again, social media and the Internet because it’s sort of has its reputation of being unreliable with some things and there’s this phrase that I don’t like, ‘the blogs’. When you hear it in mainstream media, you hear people say, “Oh, the blogs are talking.” There’s really no such thing but there’s just this perception of this nasty mob that’ll just pass along false information.

Stephan: Okay, I’ll be the first to admit to this – when this Northwest thing …

Patrick: Really?

Stephan: Yeah, I’ve done it once. I’ve done it once, once. I’ll give you an example. When this Northwest Airlines thing happened with the pilots that everybody thought went to sleep, there was a tweet out there that these guys were actually twittering on the flight and that’s why they were distracted and they had this whole conversation. Well, then it just seemed like great cannon fodder to re-tweet it and come to find out that it’s fake. I did my best to go back and say this was fake, don’t read this, this is a joke so, but I fell into the trap. I saw something out there that was really interesting. I read it. It actually looked real and re-tweeted it, and it was fake.

Patrick: So the question I think is what did you learn from that as far as next time?

Stephan: Wait a little while and see if it gets…

Brad: Don’t trust what Stephan tweets.

Stephan: Yeah, don’t trust me.

Patrick: That’s not what I learned.

Brad: I actually saw you tweet that. I scrolled down to the very—like they have a bunch of tweets from the pilots and one of the very last one said, “Oops, missed the airport, I guess we’ll turn around,” or something – and as soon as I read that I was like this is fake.

Stephan: Yeah, it just didn’t click with me. It just didn’t click. Yeah, yeah, I’m an idiot, I know.

Kevin: But it’s true. Sometimes the fake news is so much more tantalizing and interesting than the correction that comes after the fact and because of the mob mentality, as you put it, Patrick, the fake news gets more exposure and so many people read it and pass it along and many of those people never get to see the correction, the correct information.

Stephan: What I thought was interesting people actually re-tweeted when I said this was fake.

Kevin: Oh, that’s good.

Stephan: That was good. I was glad to see that because I felt stupid for doing it but it was good to know that other people were like, “Oh, he wasn’t just jerking us around.”

Kevin: There’s a great blog I follow called Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait and every August, it seems like a hoax email makes the rounds about how Mars for the next week or so is going to be at its largest in the sky for a decade – and I’m quoting from the email here – “It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide at a modest,” blah, blah, blah. It goes on to say Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Now, anyone who knows anything about astronomy knows that that is completely impossible and that Mars will – to the naked eye – never be more than a particularly bright star, and yet every single year he has to debunk this email. It’s gotten to the point where he goes, “Yep, it’s August again, you can read my last three annual posts about this to find out why it’s a bunch of bunk.” But what used to be the unreliable nature of news arriving passed along as a chain letter in your email, that problem has spread to social media in all of its forms and will we ever reach the point where we can trust news that is spread by the mob?

Patrick: I don’t know the answer to that but I think another question – I’ll answer the question with a question – so how can we, as individuals, take responsibility and not be a part of it and then maybe one day from that, there’ll be more trustworthiness available in passing news along through this medium. And I think the way that you’ll do that is it’s going to – on us as individuals – not to trust everyone in the world implicitly and do your own research when something seems odd or maybe oddly sensational and of course, people will pass along the juiciest stories. That’s been happening since the beginning of time – cavemen passed on the juiciest stories but us as individuals…

Stephan: Fire!

Patrick: Exactly. That’s a vicious rumor. So I think we all have to decide how we want to be taken and that responsibility will then dictate our voice in what we pass on.

Brad: I think another service out there that’s kind of fueled this mob mentality is social news sites like Digg and Reddit and these are very popular sites, and literally, people are up-voting articles based on one sentence or maybe two sentences of the title and they’re not actually not reading the articles but they’re making their decisions based on that. So something may hit the front page at Digg that’s completely false but most people that see it aren’t going to read the full article and they’ll probably automatically assume it’s true or it’s accurate because it’s made the front page and a lot of times that’s not the case.

Kevin: So Patrick is right. We do need to think about how we can do better. The thing about social media is that it makes us all responsible for the news that we choose to pass along and before you hit that re-tweet button, maybe you owe it to all of the people who follow you to do a quick Google and make sure that this absolutely spectacular news that just arrived in your Twitter stream is actually something that is legit and worth passing along.

Patrick: That sounds like a good closing point for that section.

Kevin: Then what’s number 3, Patrick?

Patrick: So the third one is finally something a little bit different – unreasonable time expectations. There’s a couple of immediate examples of this. One would be something like, “Why haven’t you replied to the friend request that I sent you seven minutes ago?” I think we maybe all had those people who email us or maybe it’s not a friend request, maybe it’s a Twitter DM or maybe it’s a voicemail or an email or a forum post where someone says, “It’s been 10 minutes, where are you?” And I think that’s a side effect of social media because I know a lot of us are viewed as being always online or always connected from your cell phone, from computer, from a laptop. You’re always in front of a screen and people then place an expectation upon your time and expect you to respond within what, to you, maybe an unfair amount of time.

During the panel, I actually passed this question over to Robert Scoble because he’s a great example of that because he is someone who is connected all the time and he is someone who has a family, has a job, has other things to do, but he’s always viewed as this always connected person. I’ve seen him say things before in public about how this person wanted his time here or his time here, and it’s just not possible to accommodate every one when you have so many people latching onto you for a moment of your time or sending you a product to review or whatever it may be.

Those time expectations again apply to like a company trying to even the space and if they can’t respond in 10 minutes, then they’ll have someone who liked them now be angry at them, and that scares people away from the space.

Kevin: Something that I’ve had experience with on this and it’s something we’ve had to deal with in the SitePoint Support Team – is that your response time isn’t always consistent either. If you send something at 6 p.m. Australian time, everyone at SitePoint has gone home and you’re going to be first on the list when we get to the office in the morning, but nevertheless, that means you’re going to be waiting 8 or 9 hours for response. And then someone who sends an email maybe 4:30 p.m. Australia time – our support staff by that point have cleared the day’s backlog and they may be replying to stuff in real time.

Depending on when you send it, you get a very different support experience and if you get an immediate response one day, you may come to expect that the following day when you send something after we’ve all gone home. I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts on how that expectation can be managed.

Patrick: Well, I’ll say that I think one thing that comes to mind is – I guess – communicating expectations. One way you could do that, I guess, is through response email to their email, it’s probably some sort of ticket system and communicate, “We respond to tickets during this time for our reply time to be between x and x hours, and we will respond as soon as possible.” I think with a community support perspective or a support ticket perspective like a host support for example or in SitePoint’s case, the support of the books and products and whatever, it’s very feasible to post operating hours on your site or to send that because it is a business and it is seen that way. I don’t now if that’s something that businesses enjoy over individuals, but it’s interesting to consider.

Brad: In my own experience, sometimes I’ll work on client work on the weekend or maybe in the evenings just to kind of catch up and get ahead. Then you’re right, you do send out some emails maybe late at night or on the weekends and a lot of times, once you do that once then they just assume, oh, he’s working all weekend, so I can call him and send him emails and this and that. Always – I’m very upfront about it as well. I’ll say, “Look, I may email you on a Saturday night because I’m working on something. That doesn’t mean next Saturday night I’m going to be working and you can just pick up the phone and call me.” I’m always pretty upfront about that too, and I think most people understand as long as you tell them.

Kevin: Getting away from support email for a second and getting back to these social networks, more and more of us are carrying around phones that let us access things like Facebook on the go, and that creates an even more real time expectation – “Hey, my poke to you on Facebook – you could have picked out your phone out of your pocket at any time and seen it and poked me back, why didn’t you?” Maybe it’s as simple as your batteries died that day and you just were offline when normally people do expect you to be checking your phone every 5 minutes for a Facebook message.

Patrick: Right. It’s something that I think people need to work on to have that expectation on other people. So, with you, just be reasonable, be fair with people if they can’t get back to you within a specific amount of time.

I know there was another example that Wayne talked about and I was actually with him at the time, so it was funny. We were in Orlando at another conference and it was like 10 p.m. at night. We’re kind of getting into a social event for the conference and he says someone actually left a message on his Facebook wall about some information that they wanted him to send them that he had already taken care of – he thought. It was a request for information posted actually on his Facebook wall, like “Why haven’t you done this, why haven’t you done this yet, I’m waiting on you.”

So it’s in front of everyone where this person could just as easily send their message through Facebook or, if you know Wayne, you know he’s available everywhere; you can Google his name and you get his phone number and all this kind of information. So to actually take it and post it publicly at 10 p.m. at night – publicly at all really is the issue, but not having the proper respect for boundaries of time – it’s always a dangerous thing.

Kevin: Yeah, and this kind of comes back to the first point of how you choose to point out when people – whether you’re right or not, when you feel like someone has failed you online, whether they’ve made a mistake or whether they’ve not gotten back to you in a timely fashion. If you choose to point that out in a public forum, that’s a strong thing you’re doing and you really need to think that through. Whereas in many cases, a private message can do just as well and you need not draw attention to the temporary failings of the people that you are dealing with online.

What’s number four?

Patrick: So the fourth point is self-entitlement and this is against many forums. “Only the A-listeners get attention” is the popular one online, whatever it be the Twitter A list or A-list bloggers or people on Techmeme, or in the technology field anyway. Whatever it is, there’s a sense of entitlement to Twitter followers, to RSS subscribers. This is related to our appeal of course and web developers and technology people; and a good example is this celebrity getting on Twitter and having a lot of followers all of the sudden.

I’ve heard people tweet and I’m sure probably all of us have heard people tweet “This person just got on Twitter, they got all these followers and they don’t deserve those followers, gosh dang it! I’ve been here since day 1 and I have 1,000 followers.”

It’s just this entitlement online where it seems like it’s almost a disease with some people where if someone has more than them, then they don’t deserve it. I don’t know how you’re experience has been with that?

Kevin: What does it mean to deserve followers?

Patrick: Right. I mean, that’s the question, what does it mean to deserve followers, subscribers, whatever it is because to me, there’s not really such a thing as that, and if we talk about celebrities for example – Oprah got on Twitter, that caused kind of a stir. She’s got a lot of Twitter followers all of a sudden, yet she rarely tweets or at least she did at the start, I haven’t checked her account now – but the thing about Oprah and the thing I think people don’t understand or they forget about Twitter and about any of these services is that your work you do everywhere gets you more following, everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Twitter or you’re on some other site. If you are creating media and you’re getting in front of people and you’re getting exposure, that’s obviously going to help you everywhere – and that includes your Twitter followers.

We could say like I released a book – Kevin released a book – that wasn’t about Twitter or anything, but, because we put out a book, people bought it, they searched for our names so they went into our sites and they found us on Twitter and they followed us. The book is not about Twitter, but the book helps us gain a larger audience and that translates into more Twitter followers if you want to look at that metric or more web traffic, or whatever it may be. I go speak at a conference – I’m not doing that for Twitter followers – but yet everyone in the room might follow me on Twitter.

I think the key is that you have your work everywhere and you could use Oprah as a great example as probably one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time especially on television in the entertainment field. She has this huge audience and she brought that to Twitter or people who are already on Twitter know her and followed her – so just everything that you’re doing is contributing to your overall success.

Stephan: See, I have 300 followers on Twitter.

Patrick: You deserve every single one, I tell you!

Stephan: I worked really hard for those 300, but it doesn’t bother me. I have less than all of you guys, and it doesn’t bother. Who cares, right? I mean… For people who follow me, I try to make good tweets. Sometimes, I fail – Balloon Boy stuff.

Patrick: It can only be you.

Stephan: Exactly, and I think people who see me set low expectations themselves when it comes to followers.

Patrick: I mean, followers – that’s just one example. And maybe it’s not the best example, but it is one that gets put out there a lot because people are always talking about the number of followers.

Kevin: So, when you are judging someone’s worthiness for the followers they receive on Twitter, it isn’t just about Twitter. The biggest Twitter star – if all they do is Twitter – they’re only going to reach a certain amount of people whereas the Oprah and the other celebrities of the world who have made their bones in other media, of course they’re going to come on and capture a lot of eyeballs.

Stephan: You see, that’s the thing too. I don’t contribute to WordPress. I’m not a WordPress developer, Brad.

Brad: Loser.

Stephan: I don’t write a book, I don’t have a network of sites, Patrick, and I don’t work for SitePoint. I don’t have the means out there for me to have a bunch of Twitter followers right now. In that case, even blog readers. I don’t even know what my numbers are, but my numbers aren’t that high and I don’t have a huge expectation of getting a lot of readers. I’m just writing. I guess, I’m really confused by this one because I don’t really understand people’s obsession with it.

Kevin: I think there’s a certain enviable aspect to having a small, focused number of followers. I mean, I don’t have – by Twitter rockstar standards, I think all of us here are pretty C- if not D-list, to be honest.

Patrick: Well I never!

Kevin: And I don’t mind that at all. I like that the people who are following me, most of them have met me personally and those who haven’t are genuinely interested in the stuff that I write about, that I speak about, that I find interesting day to day. I never, as I’m writing a tweet, need to check myself and think, is this interesting enough to my follower base or is it only going to be interesting to 25 percent and I’m going to annoy the other 75 percent, so I better just keep my mouth shut? It’s nice not to have to check yourself.

Patrick: I kind of had this conversation with someone I know who’s in the music industry because I caught them using something that generates followers – and the power of your following is in what they will do and what they will share. So, if you have 10,000 followers but they don’t read what you write, that doesn’t really mean a whole lot. If you have a thousand followers and they read every word, that’s very powerful.

I think that’s the difference and I don’t know what that translates to or how you measure it in numbers. We can’t lie, right, and numbers are important and numbers are what you get judged on. When you sell ads, you get judged on traffic, you get judged on click-throughs and that’s kind of the balancing bar is the actual traffic that converts. But, numbers are still important and you need to work for those numbers. You are entitled to one reader, one sale, one follower, one anything – you’re entitled to nothing. You have to work for #1 and then you work for #2, so you shouldn’t fall into the trap of self-entitlement.

Kevin: Number five?

Patrick: Point number five is trying to force everyone to use a tool or community the very same way. So we’ve all seen this, I would assume, on various platforms whether it be Facebook, social networking, Twitter, microblogging, forums, whatever – someone who is basically saying we use it this manner and you should use it in this manner too.

Kevin: The World Series has highlighted this for a lot of people on Twitter over the past week. I myself am not really a baseball fan and yet so many of the people in the technology world that I follow on Twitter seem to be huge baseball fans because that’s all they have tweeted about for the past week. Understandably, there has been a bit of a backlash – people going, “Man, I wish I could just filter out the baseball tweets and there have been calls for people to get a new Twitter account if they want to Twitter about baseball and keep their normal Twitter feed about technology the way it always is. Obviously, this prompts a lot more negative responses than constructive ones – people saying, “Well, if you’re not interested in my baseball tweets, there is a big Un-follow button right over there – go ahead and click it.

You don’t want to click it. You want to follow the person’s stream and so – but yeah, you need to accept the fact that you’re not going to be able to dictate the way people publish to these networks just to suit you. The best you can do is to look for a better tool for yourself.

Patrick: I think at our core – and I don’t know if you guys agree or disagree with this but – at our core we want people that use them differently I think – or a lot of us do – because here’s the thing. We didn’t see all the uses for Twitter when it first came out. We don’t see all the uses for any tool when it first comes out, and if we’re all doing the same thing then none of these tools ever grow. They never become any better. It always takes someone to use it differently. The first person to use a tag, let’s say; the first person to use Twitter to track their location. You always have to be the first person to do something to determine whether or not it’s good or not. So I think that instead of complaining about people doing it differently – and you can let people experiment and to try new things without being there to judge them because even if it’s not a good idea. Again, if we never try anything new, the medium would never grow.

Kevin: And if you’re in the business of creating these social networking tools, it’s probably best to be open-minded about how your users are going to use it. If Twitter were quick to implement things like a re-tweet feature or as we’ve spoken about on this podcast before, taking URLs out of the character count for Twitter. If Twitter made quick decisions on those and changed the service to tighten the way people use it, it wouldn’t be the big success it is now because as you say, Patrick, the users wouldn’t be free to experiment and play with it and find interesting, unexpected ways to use it.

Patrick: When Twitter first came out no one ever – they didn’t see it as someone tweeting from jail saying, “Arrested” right? I mean, they didn’t really see it as that sort of thing and that’s just one of the great things about the service is it has evolved and it becomes what you want and I would never say, “You know what, there’s an Un-follow button. Hit it.” But I would say that that is the power of Twitter. You know, we all can follow whoever we want to follow and rather than complaining what someone else is doing, you can – it’s true, you can always un-follow.

Kevin: Social networking in general gives every user the power to vote with their eyeballs as the case may be for the types of publishing that they appreciate.

Patrick: Exactly, and you know there’s a bunch of people out there that don’t like automation in Twitter feeds and I can understand that. But I would say also, and this is something I’ve said many times to people is, “You and I know what RSS is. Guess what, most people don’t” and most people want to subscribe to their favorite publication in one way or another and a lot of the people like to do it on Twitter. I hate to break it to you but some people do follow their favorite blog or CNN, or whoever, because they want to see the new entries on Twitter. That’s just how they receive information. And guess what, it’s not really hurting you or me for publications that do that because we don’t have to follow them. So just let them breathe I guess is the point.

Kevin: Yeah, I’ve seen you can get traffic alerts on Twitter for your particular area – if the traffic authority offers updates in that particular form – and sometimes even volunteers will automate the scraping of the traffic authority’s web site in posting new updates to Twitter. I know when we had the big bushfires last year here in Australia the fire association opened up a Twitter account and were posting updates as to where the fire fronts where and where evacuations were being considered, and all that sort of stuff was coming through Twitter. It was really quite useful.

Patrick: So the sixth and the final trend that we highlighted was being a sock puppet and just to elaborate on that. Basically, it’s pretending not to be affiliated with something that you are in fact affiliated with. I have a really great example of this and that’s a poker tournament that was promoting itself on MyCommunities. And they came to my site and first they asked me if I wanted to work with them, I said no. So they came to my site anyway and posted an advertisement. I removed it. A little while later they posted again but this time they acted like they were an interested consumer and they asked, “I’m looking for a destination to go with my fiancée” and then a member on our site replied helpfully. I replied and said I didn’t have any thoughts but good luck. And then that person replied and said, “Oh, thanks for the replies but have you heard about this tournament?” So you know that’s a really good example of it and they had done a lot of other things as well but basically it’s posting promotional comments where they’re not welcome or more specifically where you’re hiding your affiliation with whatever it is that you’re promoting. So you’re acting just as a third party when really you’re not.

Kevin: So we can all agree this, from a user perspective, is undesirable.

Patrick: Right.

Kevin: Having fake users out there shilling for products. But how do we avoid it? It seems like there will always be – as long as there will be social networks there will be companies interested in getting their message out there by any means. Does it pay off when people do this?

Kevin: Yeah, I mean the perspective of the panel is basically why you don’t want to do this, right. So why wouldn’t you want to do this? It’s clear I think why users don’t want it because it’s lying – which is a bad thing, but you know I think the problem is – and again, it’s funny because we mentioned Oprah. She had a quote about doing things in the light and not doing things in the light and how it will all come out in the end and I can’t remember the quote, but the point is that if you’re hiding something there’s a pretty good chance it’ll come out. It came out with this tournament, I exposed it and you know people will find out and when they do, they can’t trust you and that trust irreparable for a lot of companies. There are some times you can come back but I wouldn’t bet on your side, if you’re caught to be doing this sort of thing, that you can regain some of the public’s trust. So I would hope with most people they would know this is a bad thing but I think a lot of people would be surprised about how many people think it’s okay. How many businesspeople either don’t have a concept for it or the Internet or how it all works, or people who were just totally results driven and they don’t care because they think the Internet’s anonymous and they’ll never be found out. But I mean the reality is that people can be tied to organizations and to companies. Their IP addresses can be helpful. People can tie names, email addresses. The odds are that you’ll slip up rather than that you’ll be able to hold the façade up. So from the start you always want to disclose who you are and who you work for when posting comments that relate to your company because when you do so, you’re fostering trust.

Kevin: And because if you don’t and you do slip up, that’s going to do way more damage to your brand than whatever message you were trying to get out there would benefit you.

Patrick: Right.

Kevin: Is there any way to do this – if you do it out in the open is it okay, necessarily? Is it beneficial? I’m thinking right now it’s November, for people interested in writing it’s – what do they call it? NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and the idea is that people who are interested in writing as a hobby will try and hunker down in November and write an entire novel during the month of November. Now I can imagine that – I’ve already seen a lot of ads and sales for software for creative writers, things like Scrivener for the Mac. They’re out there trying to push their products obviously during this month when people are going to be thinking, “Oh, I could really use a better software tool to help me get my novel written in November”. If these companies wanted to get it out there in these National Novel Writing Month forums where people are discussing their creative writing and saying things like, “Well you know there’s a great feature in Scrivener that let’s you lay out a timeline to plan your writing.” Is that okay? Is that going to work for you if you put, “By the way I work for Scrivener” at the bottom?

Patrick: You know it’s… I did it though from my background is forums so that’s a good example. Thank you, Kevin, for the softball.

But no, I don’t think it will work because there’s more to it than that and I think it varies by the medium. If you go on Twitter and you sign and that you identify who you are. Also community discussions lead to Twitter, if that wasn’t already clear. And so if you go out on there and you disclose who you are in your little description, your little bio, and you discriminately contact people that you think might be interested in your services, that’ll be one thing, but forums are a whole different beast. They’re really a structured community and most of them have guidelines or moderation of some sort. Most of the active ones, most of the ones that you would care to reach do have some sort of moderation. Before you enter any community, whether it be Twitter – which is a community to some, not to others – or forums or any other site, you need to check the ground rules and observe before you jump in so you see how other people are using the service. You see what the guidelines say if they mention that you can’t mention your company or if there’s even any doubt in your mind, you should never jump in and just start posting. You should always ask the staff and make sure it’s okay just because the damage that can be done – like you said – far outweighs the potential benefit if in fact they don’t like what you’re doing or what you’re doing is not allowed. So I think with forums and structured communities like that in particular, you definitely need to check the guidelines, check the staff and always err in the side of caution.

Kevin: Alright. Those are the six points you covered in your panel at Blog World and New Media Expo. So how was it received?

Patrick: It was received really well. It was interesting to hear all the feedback in person, on Twitter. Very positive stuff from a lot of different people. There was a lot of people that were there that I know and know that they’re very savvy, smart, and that the panel was – not necessarily their area but they still showed up to support and be a part of it like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, like Mari Smith who knows a lot about Facebook, and afterward it was very well received. So it was really good. I think that the overwhelming – how we closed the panel was why do people care? Why should you care if social media grows because that was the theme of the panel and I think the thing is the growth of social media is good for everyone who’s in it legitimately – and everyone who wants to benefit from it in some way – professionally, personally, business-wise. If it grows and you’re doing it right then we all win, and if you are part of the problem then you know it’ll be reflected on you very badly and your company and so on, and you won’t benefit. But with proper consideration you can benefit from the space greatly.

Kevin: So think twice before you join the loud minority when someone makes a mistake. The mob, if you’re going to be a member of the mob you should try and be a thoughtful one. Before you pass things along you check them out. Be reasonable about your expectations about people’s time. Try not to think less of people who get many followers on Twitter because often they’ve earned it in some other medium. Be flexible about how people choose to use these tools because that’s what enables them to evolve in exciting ways. And finally if you’re trying to get a commercial message out there, do it openly and be sensitive to how people are going to take it in any given forum or environment. That was a great talk, guys. And yeah, I think that the more people can take those pieces of advice to heart, the better a future that we can see in social networks. Guys, let’s go around the table.

Brad: I’m Brad Williams from WebDevStudios and you can find me on Twitter @williamsba.

Patrick: I am Patrick O’Keefe of the of the iFroggy network ifroggy.com and you can find me on Twitter @iFroggy.

Stephan: I’m Stephan Segraves. You can find me on Twitter @ssegraves and my blog is badice.com.

Kevin: And you can follow SitePoint on Twitter @ssegraves. I though we’d just throw you a few extra followers there Stephan.

Stephan: And add them to a list too.

Kevin: You can follow SitePoint on Twitter @sitepointdotcom and you can follow me on Twitter @sentience. You can visit us at sitepoint.com/podcast for the latest episode and email us at podcast@sitepoint.com.

This episode of the SitePoint Podcast was produced by Karn Broad and I’m Kevin Yank. Bye for now!

Theme music by Mike Mella.

Thanks for listening! Feel free to let us know how we’re doing, or to continue the discussion, using the comments field below.

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Windows 7 Home Basic and Premium users are unable to use XP Mode. This is unfortunate since the vast majority of new PCs have those editions installed. However, there is a workaround that allows Windows 7 Home developers to use XP Mode integration.

1. Check your PC’s compatibility

XP Mode requires hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV). This is supported by most modern processors, but it may need to be enabled in your BIOS. The BIOS menu is normally accessed by pressing DEL, F2, or ESC immediately after switching on your PC. Microsoft provide a useful HAV detection tool which can help you with BIOS configuration.

2. Download Virtual PC

You must download Virtual PC for Windows 7 from the following location rather than the Microsoft Virtual PC website:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b6d5c18-1441-47ea-8309-2545b08e11dd

You might be prompted to install Genuine Windows Validation Component in your browser if you’ve not installed it before.

3. Create a new Virtual Machine

Start Virtual PC from Start > Programs > Windows Virtual PC > Virtual Machines then click Create virtual machine on the toolbar.

You will be prompted to enter the name, location, RAM (256MB is enough) and create a new virtual hard disk.

4. Install Windows XP in the VM

You will now need to start your VM and install Windows XP using an original CD or disk image. You will also require an XP licence — you may have one if you’ve scrapped or upgraded a PC.

Alternatively, you’ll need to buy a copy of Windows XP. The OEM versions generally cost less and you might be able to grab a copy on eBay — but ensure it’s legitimate.

You will also need to install the latest updates including SP3. However, do not install IE7 or IE8 just yet!

5. Enable integration

From the VM Tools menu, choose to install the Integration Components. Once installed, click Tools > Enable Integration.

6. Install the Windows XP SP3 RemoteApp upgrade

Within your XP VM guest (NOT the Windows 7 host), you should download and install the RemoteApp upgrade from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2f376f53-83cf-4e5b-9515-2cb70662a81b

7. Configure the VM resolution and color depth (optional)

By default, IE6 and IE7 will run in 16-bit color mode and your subtly-shaded web application can look a little strange. To fix it, refer to step 3 of Running XP Mode for the First Time at the bottom of the original XP Mode article.

8. Create IE6 and IE7 VMs and desktop shortcuts

You can now follow the instructions on page 2 of the original XP Mode article to create two cloned VMs and Windows 7 desktop shortcuts for IE6 and IE7.

click to enlarge

Many thanks to logic_earth on the SitePoint forums for providing a great solution for Windows 7 Home users.

Are You Considering a Windows 7 Upgrade?

The solution above is ideal if you’re already using Windows 7 Home and have a spare XP licence. However, if you’re considering a Windows 7 upgrade, purchasing the Professional edition may save you time and money.

Prices appear to have reduced a little in the US:

• US Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade — $175
• US Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (full version) — $265
• US Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade — $200
• US Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (full version) — $292

UK prices have not altered significantly, but the full version price is confusingly similar to the upgrade and less expensive than the US:

• UK Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade — £150
• UK Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (full version) — £150
• UK Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade — £167
• UK Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (full version) — £170

Has Windows 7 XP Mode reduced your IE testing time?

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Retro styles are popular in just about every aspect of design. I love looking at them to see how the designer puts together a look and feel that conveys a long gone era. Take a look at fashion, advertising, print and even cars. Designers revisit the past to plunder the good, the bad and the sometimes downright ugly elements to use in new design. Web designers are no different of course and there are many fabulous web sites out there using retro styles.

So what makes a site retro?
Sites falling into the retro category aren’t necessarily representing any one particular period. One dictionary definition of retro is “a fashion reminiscent of the past” so that leaves it wide open to interpretation. On the web retro web sites can be distinguished by the type of illustration or photographic images used, the typefaces and the colour palettes.

Photography and illustration

For many retro sites, the illustration used has a major influence on the overall look and feel. Take a look at the CSS Tinderbox website (image farther down the page) which uses distinct Soviet era style drawings to achieve its look. The site is also dirtied up to make it look aged. Likewise the photography on the Ernest Hemmingway site is mostly of the younger Hemmingway. The photographs look yellowed and give a feeling of another age.

Typography
As is the case in both web and print design, the choice of typography is a huge factor in conveying a look and feel. For some sites the retro typography in the logo and headings There are a number of specialist font foundries who specialise in retro typography. I love Letterhead (see their website below), Font Diner and Fontoville for their cool typefaces.

Color

Many of the retro style sites have muted colours with a bit of dirt or grunge thrown in to evoke age. The colours tend to be earthy hinting that the colours may have been more vibrant in the past, but now are old. In the most successful retro designs, the appropriate color palette works in conjunction with the other elements to give the feel of earlier times.

So without further ado, here are ten websites displaying a unique retro look. I’ve chosen these because I think they represent retro design from top to bottom. There are no sites here which just have a retro logo but nothing else linking them to another era. They are fairly consistent throughout.

World Domination Design Group employ clever use of old style video, voice-overs and 1940’s upbeat tunes.

The CSS Tinderbox does a nice job with Soviet style graphics and typefaces.

Ernest Hemmingway Collection uses old photographs, paper objects and muted worn paper colours to convey the feeling of a certain era.

Detectiv Nali shows an old leather case with aged illustrations, photographs and typographic ornaments depicting the time of Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes appears to have been a major influence in this design.

Letterhead Fonts have recently redesigned their site to showcase some of their beautiful typefaces. The new design has an art deco feel.

RobotMania has been on the web for years and won a lot of awards when it came out. It has a very cool retro vibe about it.

Selling a dream. The Edgewater Cottage Community has a 1950’s feel for selling a modern residential area.

Rejected Robot is the portfolio site of William Tamplin and has an endearing feel about its toy robot box design.

Prospect Denim by Media Boom (itself a retro site) is also an award winner and has fabulous illustration and flash work.

And finally, the Big Fat Institute have updated their site recently, but this is a link to their old site which was a great example of brilliant retro design using video and typography to create an authentic looking 50’s site.

So there you have it. Not a style that’s appropriate for every site, but done well it can be very effective.

What do you think of these sites? What other good retro web sites have you come across?

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But sometimes when our focus is on the visual, we overlook one of the most important elements of a powerful web site: the copy. If your web site copy is more of an afterthought than a main focus, your site may not be functioning as the marketing tool it can be.

So what do you do if you’re not really into the writing part and struggle with creating copy that draws prospects in and helps to sell your services? Here are some easy-to-implement tips you can use to spruce up your web site copy today.

Know Your Goal

All good marketing copy, web site and otherwise, focuses on moving the reader to a specific action. In many cases, the call to action in your web site copy will be getting prospects to contact you for more information, fill out a form, or something else that will move them from being a prospect to a lead.

As you’re writing your copy, identify what your goal is first and then reiterate it throughout your copy, making it easy for prospects to move to the next level.

Focus on the Staples

There are many different pages and sections you can create for your web site, but don’t forget about the four most important, the staples: Home, About, Services, Contact. Clients look for these pages because they tend to be standard on business web sites; it’s how they compare one professional to another. So make sure your copy on these pages, especially your homepage, is stellar.

Solve a Problem

Your potential clients are visiting your web site because they need you to help them solve a challenge they are unable to solve on their own. Put yourself in your clients’ shoes to try to understand how they think, and then show your expertise by offering an easy-to-understand solution to their problem.

In order to explain how you can solve your clients’ problems effectively, go back to any market and industry research you completed before starting your business to bolster your copy.

Be Conversational

While your web site copy is a marketing tool, it doesn’t have to be salesy. Take a conversational tone, talking directly to each web site visitor from a personal point of view. Ask them questions, address what you believe to be their challenges and make it a one-on-one exchange. This can be especially effective on your homepage and about page, where you can provide some insight into who you are and why you’re a great fit for the client’s needs.

Answer Questions

Prospects who are interested in your services will have specific questions after reading through your site. While you certainly want them to contact you directly, you should try to anticipate some of the most common questions and provide answers, either throughout your copy or in a designated frequently asked questions section. This will help give your site visitors confidence that you understand them and their needs.

Make It Work with Your Design

To avoid a disconnect with your copy and your design, take time to fine-tune each page to make sure it flows and that the copy remains valuable within the shell of your design. Keep your pages short, use graphics to enhance your content (not compete with it) and make your navigation support your copy.

Get Proofing Help

One of the best things you can do when you’re ready to launch your newly improved web site copy is have someone other than yourself read through your content. When you write it yourself, your ability to proof for typos, grammatical errors and other discrepancies is significantly reduced. So having a fresh pair of eyes is essential.

What steps have you taken to make your web site copy work with your site and attract potential clients?

Image credit: ralaenin

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Data Visualization with Flex, Part I is the first in a three part series in which Toby Tremayne will show us how to use Adobe’s Flex Builder to develop sophisticated data visualizations. In Part I, he focuses on extracting a useful subset of data from a huge dataset, and importing it into Flex in a format we can use.

Here’s the cool part: the dataset he’s using is a collection of posts from our very own SitePoint forums! By the time Part III rolls around, we’ll have the tool running live so you can take a look at how different technologies are discussed in the forums. And if you haven’t been to the forums before, this is the perfect opportunity to drop by and introduce yourself!

We’d like to thank Adobe, who are our sponsors for the multiple choice article quiz—if you find the article interesting, be sure to check how closely you paid attention!

Article: Flex Data Visualization Part I
Quiz: Flex Data Visualization Part I Quiz

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I recently looked at Google’s Go programming language. At first glance, it seems to be a good option for desktop or server-side web development, but it appears that Google has more ambitious plans.

According to source code comments and interviews with the development team, Go may be integrated within the Google Native Client (NaCl). NaCl is an open-source plugin which allows native 32-bit x86 code to run directly within a web browser. The code is sandboxed, verified, and restricted to ensure it cannot cause any damage to the browser, other applications, or the underlying OS. Although NaCl is experimental, it is already included (but disabled) in the Chrome web browser and Quake has been converted to demonstrate the technology.

Potentially, Go could be a good fit for NaCl. Developers could deploy compiled executables, or even the raw source code, which would run quickly within the browser. Complex games and processor-intensive applications would be possible.

Do We Need More Plugins?

How many plugins do you have installed? Most people will have Flash, Java, Adobe Reader, and perhaps Silverlight or Google Gears. Novice users who click “Yes” to every prompt probably have dozens.

The web’s main attractions are platform independence and instant deployment. Yet the industry’s obsession with moving every desktop application online is provoking plugin development which negates the advantages:

1. Relying on a plugin violates platform independence. Creating a Go-based client-side application will almost certainly tie you to Google Chrome since NaCl will never be available for all OS and browser combinations. Many web applications still rely on IE because ActiveX was used — even though Chrome and Firefox have ActiveX implementations.
2. NaCl and Go will offer raw speed so games, graphic, and video applications are logical choices. However, complex applications can be hundreds of megabytes in size — instant deployment is unlikely. While I accept NaCl is very clever, processor-intensive applications will certainly run better outside the browser.

Mozilla expressed similar concerns in their recent criticism of Google Chrome Frame. Although Chrome Frame is a niche solution to a known problem, Mozilla is worried that the web could become fragmented if companies eschew web standards in favor of plugin-based solutions.

I’m not saying all plugins are necessarily bad and, in some cases, they provide facilities that will eventually become a browser standard. For example, Flash allows us to view a video today rather than wait a few years for HTML5’s video tag. However, the web and the desktop are different platforms with their own strengths and weaknesses. Although the boundaries are increasingly blurred, is it sensible to use plugins to shoehorn a desktop application into the browser?

If you find yourself becoming increasingly reliant on plugins, perhaps you should consider a redesign so your application exploits web technology. Alternatively, release a desktop application that utilizes web connectivity when necessary.

Google — have fun with NaCl, but please don’t turn the web into a distribution platform for Go-based binary applications!

What do you think? Is NaCl and Go a great idea? Do we have too many plugins or do they improve the browser experience? Should web browsers be used as an application platform if they continually need bespoke improvement?

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The main benefit that a free conference service provides is the ability to conduct teleconferences with multiple parties, usually anytime you want, without needing any special telephone or bridge line equipment. It’s as easy as giving participants a regular toll number and a time to call.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to fine tune your targeted teleconference selection criteria and find a service that meets your needs so you can make your business communication process a piece of cake.

Common Free Teleconference Service Selection Criteria

Here is a list of some of the most common features you’ll review when analyzing teleconference services.

• Conference Limits: This can be in terms of length of calls, number of calls per period of time, and maximum number of participants per call.
• Reservationless or Scheduled: Can you conduct a teleconference on the fly or does it need to be scheduled in advance?
• Call Recording: Is it available and how do you access the audio file? Is there a charge?
• Moderator Control: What features are available? For example, can you mute participants for presentation-based calls, pause recordings and turn off entry chimes?

Most free services don’t offer many more features than what’s listed above, so usually the number of participants and call duration limits are the most important criteria to consider.

Free Teleconference Services

1. Free Conference Service: Free, unlimited teleconference services available 24-hours a day for up to 50 parties on each call. There are no restrictions on call length.
2. FreeConCall.com: A free conference service for up to 30 participants per call, available 24/7 on a reservationless basis.
3. FreeConference.com: Free web-scheduled or reservationless conference calls with 24-hour automated access, call reporting, conference mute, up to 150 participants and a maximum call length of three hours. They also offer a paid plan, as well as add-ons, such as conference recording.
4. FreeConferenceCall.com: Free, reservationless conference calling that provides a dedicated dial-in number and an access code, 24/7 access, free recording, listen-only mode, call reports, up to 96 callers and maximum of 6-hour conference calls.
5. FreeConferencePro: A free service that provides scheduled or on-demand conference calling for 2 to 200 participants on calls of unlimited duration. The service provides multiple call modes (conversation, Q&A and presentation mode), online account access, reporting and customization options.
6. FreeGreenConferenceCalls.com: A free service that’s available 24/7 365 days a year for reservationless calls including up to 250 participants per call and an unlimited call length. The service provides free call recording and downloading of WAV files for each call, and presentation mode so all callers can be muted by the moderator.
7. No Cost Conference: Free instant, automated conference calls, available 24/7 with no scheduling required. They also provide an unlimited conference time, and free recording and retrieval.

While these services are free, users will incur local toll/long distance telephone charges when dialing in.

Do you use a free conference service? What has your experience been?

Image credit: Sergio Ramirez

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In a typical web layout, a designer needs to place a logo, text, photographs or illustration. By making a conscious effort to work on the relationship between these elements to produce an eye catching design.

Balance in design is very much like balance in life. It tends to be a good thing. An often used example of real life balance is the see-saw (which I believe is also called the teeter-totter in distant lands). A see-saw is not much fun when only one person sits on it. Balance is achieved when two people of equal weight sit on each side. Balance can also be achieved when one heavier person sits on one side and two lighter people site on the other side. And balance can be achieved if a heavier person slides closer to the center of see saw, while a lighter person sits on the end of the other side.

As humans we’re balanced physically. We have an arm and a leg on each side of our spine and head that balances top center of that spine. We’re able to stand and move despite being different sizes and weights. In design we try to achieve a balance between elements because it is pleasing on the eye. But balance isn’t always achieved through symmetry. Take a look at the boxes below.

The white line in box 1 and 2 is symmetrically balanced while in boxes 3 and 4 the line is asymmetrically balanced.

Symmetry

Symmetrical balance is mirror image balance. If you draw a line through the centre of the page, the elements on one side of the line are mirrored on the other side. We can achieve it by placing elements fairly evenly in the design.

Symmetry in nature

A typical example of this occurs on the web, where blocks of text mirror each other in buckets or columns. Symmetry can also be achieved using colors and typography.

Mobile Web Book – on this web site, the mobile phone image divides the page in two, with the blocks of text on either side balancing each other out.

On the poster for the movie The Day I Became A Woman, the block of large white text in the top right corner is mirrored in the bottom left corner both in terms of colour and shape.

The very colorful Florida Flourish site could be almost be cut in half down the center. It has a very strong sense of symmetrical balance.

The Havoc poster below is balanced left and right using similar shapes (and body parts). The red text above and below the title is balanced in color and size above and below the title.

Asymmetry

Asymmetrically balanced layouts have elements that don’t mirror each other across a centerline. These layouts can be more difficult to design but can be appealing to viewers. We can create an asymmetrically balanced layout by placing several small items on one side, and one large item on the other side. If you have one dark item on one side, you may place several light colored items on the other side. An asymmetrical balanced design can create tension, drawing the viewer in.

MattWeb has a large graphic filling the left side of the homepage. A sense of asymmetrical balance is achieved here using matching colors and a sans-serif font which is in keeping with the spirals in the graphic.

Dann Whitaker’s site has several elements that don’t reflect each other symmetrically, but do balance each other in terms of color, texture and content.

Off-Balance

Ok, so it could be boring if ALL of your design work involved balance. If you know the rules, then you can break them of course, and lack of balance can convey action and motion. It can make people feel a little uneasy or even disturbed. An off-balance design can make people think. Just don’t let it happen by accident.

Poster by Barbara Kruger

Next week, we’ll take a look at Proximity. In the meantime have you come across any websites showing strong symmetrical or asymmetrical balance?

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