Done21

We got a chance to speak with Alex Payne at FOWA Miami 2010. Alex is an engineer at Twitter, and was able to give us some insight into how the massively popular service works. Here’s what he had to say:

I know, I know, enough news about the iPad already! I haven’t picked one up yet because I’m much more keen on having a device with 3G access. However, this isn’t about the iPad itself, but something very interesting I stumbled upon while playing with the iPad Simulator.

With the iPad comes a special Safari bookmark labeled “iPad User Guide.” The page it links to behaves almost exactly like a native application, but in the web browser. It has a split-view with all of the UI flare in UIKit. The crazy part is, it’s done completely in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Check out this video to see the iPad User Guide’s split-view scrolling panes in action:

Breaking the Rules

What’s particularly interesting is that it does something that shouldn’t really be possible in Mobile Safari: It includes scrolling panes that can be manipulated with a single finger, complete with the signature iPhone OS “scroll bars” and elastic transitions. If you have ever worked with Safari on the iPhone, you know that having scrolling boxes of content is sort of possible, but requires a special two-finger gesture to scroll.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I loaded the page in Safari on my laptop (and changed Safari’s user agent to mimic the iPad) and got to work with the developer tools. After extracting the JavaScript and de-minifying it, my suspicions were confirmed. Apple was manually reading the touch events, calculating the inertia of the scrolling, and manually drawing the scroll bars. It was incredible that it worked so smoothly in the browser.

The Mystery of “AD”

What was more interesting is that there was an entire framework running this web application. The framework weighed in at 4,300 lines of code, and was unmistakably an Apple-born API. Every class and constant was prefixed with the letters “AD” and some of the classes include ADTabBarController, ADScrollPane, ADViewController, ADView, ADToolbar, and dozens more.

What does the AD prefix stand for? I don’t know. The framework itself was contained in a file called AdLib-ug-ipad.js, so for the time being let’s call it AdLib. I also appreciate the sense of humor the developers seem to have about the name. The accompanying application code that utilizes the framework is about 1,500 lines and offers a few clues as to how to use the AdLib framework. There is no documentation in the code or anywhere online, and the local variables are shortened to a, b, c, etc… If you want to know more about how it works, take a look at the code linked below.

Is AdLib a framework that Apple plans to release for the public? I sure hope so. The framework looks to be extremely well thought out and complete. Perhaps this will be a framework to support a future release of Dashcode, an application for writing dashboard widgets and Safari/iPhone web apps. Maybe we’ll hear something about it this Thursday at Apple’s event for iPhone OS 4.

What do you think?

I have copied and de-minified the code, however there is absolutely no license from Apple for use of this code. This is purely for informational purposes.

• AdLib.js
• iPadIntro.js (AdLib Usage Example)

What do you think about AdLib? What does “AD” stand for? Is Apple about to release a JavaScript framework? Let us know, in the comments.

Update

So It looks like Apple has no intent to release these tools to developers to create iPad interfaces. I was informed that GitHub (the company that was hosting the code snippets) received a DMCA takedown notice from Apple for the code, and has removed it. If you are still interested in seeing the code, visit http://help.apple.com/ipad/mobile/interface/ with a browser using an iPad user agent.

We caught up with Steve Huffman at FOWA Miami 2010. Steve is one of the co-founders of the popular social news site Reddit and had great insight into how Reddit has grown since it started in 2005. Here’s what he had to say:

Watch this video in HD on the Doctype Facebook Fan Page.

Earlier today, the extraordinarily popular design blog Smashing Magazine posted a one-page site takeover asking their readers for financial help. Every page on the site redirected to a screen asking readers to purchase an eBook from them, should they continue to provide high quality content. As anyone would expect, there was a mixed reaction in the design community. Many were supportive and many were annoyed.

I think this really all comes down to one thing though: Precedent.

Setting the Precedent

When Apple first opened the App Store, they had paid apps and free apps from the start. Can you imagine if they had free apps at first, and then added paid apps later? A huge company like Apple probably wouldn’t receive the same outpouring of support that Smashing Magazine has been graced with today.

Our show Doctype is another example. We insisted upon having sponsors from the very first episode, so that viewers would know what to expect. If we released the first few episodes for free and then suddenly added video ad spots, it would create an unexpected disruption and greatly take away from the content of the show. We rarely receive any complaints though, because fans know what to expect. The precedent has been set.

Now, I’m in no way blaming Smashing Magazine. They had some tough calls to make and I feel they did the right thing today. But this should serve as an example to the web industry; the cost of "free" is very high.

The Age of Free

Content is one of the least-free things I can think of. However, content has the appearance of being free because there’s such a huge abundance of it. Additionally, there are very few (obvious) material costs to produce it, compared to, say, the material costs of producing furniture. We’re fortunate that our fans understand the tangible costs of producing high quality video; It requires cameras, lights, and editing software.

Everyone in the content biz knows though, that materials are cheap. Time is the expensive part.

How can content producers help consumers understand the costs involved? How do you monetize in the age of free? Leave a comment and let us know.

At FOWA Miami 2010 we got a chance to speak with Alex Hunter, perhaps better known as @cubedweller on Twitter. Alex is a great speaker and always has a lot to say about building community.

Watch this video in HD on the Doctype Facebook Fan Page.

Nick’s previous post “SEO is a terrible idea” seems to have ruffled a few feathers, and it has also been praised by many. There has been a lot of discussion in the twitter-blogoshpere saying that either we were out of our minds, or speaking the truth. It was a strongly worded post that enraged people who disagree, and pumped up people who agree. That is the point.

A blog article’s purpose is to be read and discussed, by people. The title, the headlines, and the words are all deliberately crafted to get people’s attention and deliver what the people want: information and emotional response.

We optimize our content for people.

SEO is Common Sense!

Photo by Allan Branch.

If SEO is common sense, why do we need a name for it? They don’t build sidewalks with fire hydrants planted in the middle of them. Do we call that Sidewalk Optimization? No! It’s common sense. We think about the people who use our product, and try to make it the best experience we can.

The SEOs argue that SEO is necessary. Here are some of the things that they talk about when we have the “SEO is bullcrap” discussion:

• Have a meaningful title.
• Have unique content.
• Update your site frequently.
• Put relevant keywords near the top of the article.
• Use alt tags for images.

Why do they get to call that Search Engine Optimization? When I am looking for information on a page, whether I came from Google, Twitter, or a random link, I look at the title first. I want to make sure the content I’m about to view isn’t a copy-paste of another article I read before this. Time is limited, and clicking the back button is easy.

Optimize For People

Nick mentioned an anecdote from a WordCamp Miami Session on SEO. When discussing Google’s Caffeine Update, every head looked up from their laptops and side conversations stopped. When the presenter started talking about how your rankings could change, looks of terror spread over the faces in the room.

If the words “Google is changing their algorithm” sends shivers down your spine, you’re doing it wrong. Google’s search engine has one goal (besides serving advertising, which is their primary goal): Be More Human. Google Search exists to help people find what they want. They hire some of the smartest people in the world to do this.

Looking at Google Search’s history, I am confident that all future updates will bias for the content people want to find.

We caught up with John Resig (creator of jQuery) backstage at FOWA Miami 2010 to talk about the recent release of jQuery 1.4 and future plans for jQuery. Here’s what he had to say:

Watch this video in HD on the Doctype Facebook Fan Page.

There’s only one kind of SEO that I like. The SEO Rapper kind:

When I was at WordCamp Miami a few weeks ago, I attended a session called “WordPress SEO” mostly to just pass time until lunch. Towards the end of the talk, the speaker said that a major update to Google’s search engine algorithm is coming very soon. He went on to say that the last time Google updated their search engine without warning, many people went out of business because their once highly ranked pages dropped off the face of Google.

The background chatter and the clacking of laptop keyboards stopped. A hush came over the crowd. People were scared out of their minds.

Chasing the Curve

Getting high up on Google is a terrible marketing strategy. In fact, if the success of a business hangs in the balance, it’s dangerous. When you optimize for search engines you constantly have to update your site. Not only do you have to stay ahead of other SEO goofballs, you’re also running away from the Google Cops (a term coined by Jim). Any time Google updates their search engine or you change servers or you repurpose a domain or whatever, you risk losing your search engine ranking. This is reckless. When you market your site to real people, this risk is avoided.

Diet and Exercise

Most SEO tips I’ve heard are just tricks and hacks; you know what I’m talking about. They get you that last 5% of benefit at the expense of focusing on things that matter. It’s almost like taking diet pills instead of eating properly and exercising. These are the SEO tips that I find to be most toxic because they have nothing to do with real people.

However, I’ve also heard SEO tips like “keep your site up to date with fresh content” or “get relevant sites to link to yours.” This advice isn’t quite as bad, but it’s coming from a cold and calculated frame of mind. If you care about what you’re doing and you’re interacting with people in your space, these things will just happen.

Don’t optimize for robots. Optimize for people.

Done21 has been a company for over a year now, and during that time, we’ve developed a varied marketing mix. We have tried…

• Image ads
• Engaging with people on Twitter and Facebook
• Handing out thousands of business cards
• Creating lots of video content
• Making lots of cool stuff
• Being mentioned on WineLibrary TV

We try to measure the effectiveness of all this stuff. Some of these things have worked insanely well while others have not worked at all. There’s really one thing it all boils down to though:

PEOPLE

(Done21 does not recommend that you attempt to boil people.)

Over the past several years, we’ve met lots of amazing people at BarCamps, meetups, tweetups, and conferences. Talking to people and forming real relationships has worked so well, we don’t even have to measure it to know that it’s working (how would you measure it, anyway?). It’s kind of shocking how simple this idea is, and I feel like I’m just adding to the echo chamber on this topic, but I think it’s a message that’s worth repeating until it sinks in.

The title of this article is misleading, because there’s no trick here at all. Just follow the golden rule, be nice, care about people, and don’t forget to take a breath mint before the after party.

Do you have any marketing tips to share? Let us know, in the comments.

At BarCamp Miami on February 21st 2010, we talked about our process for making Doctype every week. We kept it short on slides so that we could spend time answering the numerous questions from the audience. Below you’ll find the video, and our slideshow.