h a l f b a k e r yVeni, vedi, fish velocipede
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uod is a website for accessing other websites that have a
crappy interface.
Tell us what's wrong with that website, and we make an
intermediate website that upgrades that site and gives it
the feel (if not the look) that you want.
Every "upgraded website" comes with several themes and
the call for people to create custom themes for them.
So for example my local bus company website forces me to
enter the name of the station that I want to get on at,
rather than asking me where I am and giving me the closest
station(s) and time-table. In comes UOD to help. I tell the
staff there about the problem, and within a week I have a
new website that will ask me for my location and
destination, or if I give it the bus line and it sees where I
am will give me the closest bus and the next one. Hooray.
[link]
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Good idea (so, [+]) except for two problems: |
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(1) The upgraded website would be very vulnerable
to changes in the primary website. |
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(2) Are you really willing to pay $500 to improve
somebody else's website that you use? |
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(3) There may be copyright issues with re-formatting
someone else's site content |
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(4) This means there are actually 3 problems, not
two. |
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So that's four problems in total. |
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(1) Since it is essentially a mapping interface, the
infrequent changes to the primary webstite can be dealt
with quickly. |
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(2) Who is paying $500 to improve somebody else's
website? This will be an open source effort, with dozens
of volunteer programmers. The hosting may cost some,
but then it will win the Google contest, and win each of
us a few thousand dollars in return. |
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(3) We are not reformatting anything. We are asking you
relevant questions which will be filled into the original
site's content. If its a terrible university student website
or dumb library website, the UOD will not be using any of
the images of the University or their texts. It will be
totally the UOD's property, and in the end either (a) it
leads you to the primary site with the result, a la
LetMeGoogleThat4U, or (b) it aggregates the results from
that site, and returns it to you. There of course will be
websites that you cannot plug into, but those are
probably well designed, and therefore well protected
websites, so typically they won't need the UOD. |
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(4) That means there is possibly one problem, but
probably it isn't one. |
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So that's half my answer. The other half is a 'thank you'
for considering half of this idea favorably. |
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One man's usability issue is another's feature.
e.g.
I want to access my neighbour's bank-account, but I
don't have their logon details, here is $500, can you
sort it out please? |
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Also, computability problems arise. Say you want to
know the fastest route between bus-stops A, B, C, D,
E, F, G, H, I and J. If you type in a particular
combination and say, "Is this the
fastest?" then fine, no problems. But if instead you
say, "Which is the fastest of all possible routes?"
the time taken to compute that result (rather than
simply check one already provided) will be
significantly longer. That (might) mean that the
solution to this particular usability issue will
require a bigger server,
rather than more coders. |
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//This will be an open source effort// Aha. That
was not in the original idea, but it makes it better. |
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Your concept is proven in the case of twitter: |
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Twitter's app & website are not that great, so there
are tons of "Twitter" apps on the mobile market that
are just new UI's in front of twitter's data & more
people use those apps than twitter. |
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But, to pull this off, you need the website to
provide stable API's, as twitter does. Otherwise, as
was earlier pointed-out, the underlying website
changes will break your integration. |
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Also, subjectivity: What's a better UI for some will
be worse for others, as the "U" in UI is the user, and
the users come in many different segments, skills,
languages, etc. |
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