Kyle LeBoeuf

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you probably know about the new Facebook design changes that have been implemented over the past month. Just like the last time Facebook made serious changes to the interface and page design, there has been a massive user revolt. Some of the latest numbers show that 25% of those that have checked out the new design have switched back. Groups are springing up everywhere, some of whom have numbers that range in the millions.

As is appropriate for Web 2.0 companies nowadays, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, addressed the member body of Facebook directly in a blog on Facebook’s blog site. In case anyone needs translation as to exactly what he means in this blog, it’s quite simple: the new profile/home page design is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere. Facebook will not be allowing people to switch back and forth between the designs and will not be maintaining the old design in any capacity.

Why?

Something I think people do not understand is that the site has been long in need of a refresh. Facebook hasn’t seen any huge changes in it’s design in the last 2 years, not since the introduction of the News Feed anyway. Since the introduction of the Facebook Platform and the ability to create custom applications to be used within the Facebook environment, some members’ profiles have become proliferated with so many applications that they dominate the page and push some of the original features of Facebook out of the way.

While most will argue that it doesn’t really matter; that the use and design of the profile should be under control of the user, and not Facebook, but I beg to differ.

Facebook was originally design as a place for communication between friends. When the primary forms of communication between users get pushed out the way (wall posting, messages, news feed) by custom, spammy applications, than it gets in the way of Facebook’s original purpose.

Also, one of the biggest criticisms of MySpace, is that the ability to allow people to customize their profile results in horribly coded pages that slow down and/or crash browsers. This carries over to Facebook, where some peoples’ profiles that have 50 applications take 5 minutes to load, where they occasionally slow down and/or crash by browser. It’s aggravating. The new design gives the communications features prevalence, where if the only thing I want to do is post on someone’s wall, I can just load their front page, and not worry about their 10 applications…with stuff like “Am I hot?” and “Pirates vs. Ninjas”.

I know it seems like I just went on a huge rant, but I think I’m pretty close to the money on how many users out there think. The vast majority of users like the new profile design and are looking forward to the ways that Facebook is going to tweak it.

A final message to everyone else: change happens. Get used to it. It’s part of the times we live in.

kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

A beta for the long rumored Google Chrome browser is finally available. I would recommend that anyone interested in browsers (basically anyone who doesn’t use Internet Explorer) should check it out.

My initial impressions are quite good. I really enjoy using the browser. It is a dead-simple browser to use, and does not over-crowd the screen real-estate like other browsers (to be fair, I use plenty of extensions for Firefox, so that does take up a bit of room). It’s also pretty fast, using the WebKit framework for page rendering (the same framework used by the Safari web browser from Apple). There are some other useful features that I’ve seen that I would implemented directly into other browsers (especially Firefox) without any kind of extention.

The chief of these features is the customized “home page” that appears when you first open the browser or open up a new tab. I’ve posted a screenshot of this page below:

A screenshot of the customized home page in Google Chrome

Some other features include a “private browsing” feature, which doesn’t store anything on your computer while browsing (cookies, cache files, etc.), allowing for more secure browsing for banking and other secure transactions.

This browser certaintly beats out Internet Explorer in my book, but it will not replace Firefox for me. I need my extensions. The only beef I have with it right now, is the fact that it does not always render complex CSS properly, but I imagine that this will be fixed down the road.

kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

Note: this a syndication from my personal blog

The proliferation of mobile technology and the presence of internet in almost every home has changed the face of hurricane reporting as we know it today.

Thanks to the internet and computers, many of the 2 million evacuees crowded around televisions and laptop screens around the country to watch as Hurricane Gustav slammed into the coast.  Also, the availability of web services such as uStream and Twitter gave those weathering the storm the extra edge in getting the word out about different aspects of the hurricane. For example, I caught a Twitter message from Lyndale Holloway, Associate Pastor at East Bayou Baptist Church, pointing followers to a Ustream feed, where (as long as he had power) he broadcasted a life webcam feed from his home, showing off some of the nastiness from the storm. Websites like Weather Underground and Stormpulse gave us constant, up-to-date information on the storm, so we could know what was going on at any given point. Local TV stations KLFY and KATC each had their own live video streams going, so I could check in on what was actually going on in Lafayette live, away from the destruction. My university also got a really good field test with it’s First Call system, where it used the system to distribute notices about school cancellations.

The inclusion of all of these new services really puts power in the hands of regular, everyday people. In a day and age where a lot of information comes from the people and not from mass media, it’s important to us have the ability to hear what’s going on from someone other than the news…

Advance of technology is never a bad thing!!!!

kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com