peace on the web, too

And now, for a different top, check out the iA website:

The 50 loudest websites in 2006 and why they’re so successful

Marketing, Content, Usability, Design and Behavior are the main factors that make a website work.

1. Internet Marketing is a combination of Presence (how well is it pushed? How known is it?) and Self Dynamic (how well does it market itself as a product?).
2. Interactive Content is a combination of Constructivity (is
   the content/service productively usable? Are the texts authentic? Do
   they incite to write? Are they leading to positive action?) and Uniqueness (are they genuine? Are they special?)
3. Usability is a combination of Structure/IA (Are the contents organized in an understandable way? Where am I? Where can I go?) and the organisation of the User Interface (Do I understand where is what and why? Do I understand how it works? Does it do what I expect it to do?)
4. Web Design is a combination of Typography (Is the text easy to read? Is the typography web adequate?) and Attention to detail (does the website care about the little things? Is it characteristic and delicate or just bold?)
5. Online Behavior is a combination of Interactive Ethics (do the authors/owners have a positive open-minded attitude? Do they follow the basic rules of good manners?) and Democracy (Are they working towards a democratic open web or do they work only for their own pocket?)

The author, Oliver Reichenstein, goes on and evaluates the loudest websites in 2006. He notes the Marketing, Content, Usability, Deisgn and Behavior of the websites, picking les grands du jour and some personal favorites and gives us his top.

Wanna see what these criteria do to a classic websites top? Full article here.

My first impressions after a couple of days of testing 2 mail subscriptions services. I did a comparison between R|mail service and RssFwd one.

R|mail post email

From: Rmail
To: …
Date: Sep 15, 2005 1:24 PM
Subject: Let’s … share! - mapopescu was here, too …

About the Web 2.0 need for API discovery, sharing and integration.

web dev tagging
Click here to view the original Webpage.

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Sent using R|mail.
Click here to unsubscribe.

RssFwd.com post email

From: mapopescu was here, too …
To: …
Date: Sep 15, 2005 1:20 PM
Subject: Let’s … share!

Recently we saw a couple of blogs/people trying to put up a Web 2.0 APIs map. Just take a look at ProgrammableWeb.com and Web Service Finder (via ReadWriteWeb) and see for yourself..

[whole article content followed]

We are looking on something, but we don’t know what is it just yet.

Marius Popescu Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:03:56 +0000

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Source: http://mapopescu.blogsome.com/2005/09/15/api-sharing/
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My first impressions

R|mail pros:

• very concise
• showing the summary (have you an option for sending full text?)
• showing article’s tags (excellent). I don’t know if I like that they point at your site, though!

R|mail cons:

• the link to the article should be at the beginning, not the end of the email, especially because you are sending only the summary.
• I like better the RssFwd’s “From” content
• from the subject content you don’t know that it is a blog sending you an email, the name of the blog is rather lost at the end
• your website is kind of complicated for me (and I am a web power user), perhaps a usability test won’t harm
• your “unsubscribe” feature seems kind of too brutal, a confirmation would be necessary for me
• I don’t like the proposal for integration (the design)

RssFwd pros:

• “From” is better
• the article link is more visible, even if it’s at the end (as the email contains the whole article, the link becomes less important too).
• you can see all your subscriptions
• when subscribing you can see the feed’s contents before subscribing, on their page
• their site is more simple (and usable)
• you can subscribe using only a link

RssFwd cons:

• the site is slower
• no feedburner.com statistics

Conclusion

Sorry if I seem more attracted to RssFwd. For now this is the truth.

PS A special note: R|mail appears on my feed provider (feedburner.com) while RssFwd doesn’t.
I don’t know yet why, perhaps is their way of doing things. This could become important.

PS2 R|mail is a service provided by a single person. RssFwd started the same, now it seems to be sponsored by Sproutit.com. RssFwd is open source too.

PS3 I evaluated also FeedBlitz.com, but it look too orange to me, perhaps a much better service like the two presented here, as it seems to be a company, but way to complicated for me :)