BigBlueHat

I recently read a blog post at Gadgetopia about Google’s initial entry into health information filing. While I’m sure an entry like an information organizing heavy-weight like Google will have some undoubtedly positive ramifications, it does cause some concerns about privacy given that Google’s model is advertising driven.

That said, it’s less concerning then giving a saliva sample to 23andme.com:

After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself.

If you’re hesitant about entering your social security number or credit card information into a web site, I wouldn’t recommend sending any spit…unless you’re brave and curious and don’t mind advertising targeted at your specific eye and hair color and maybe where you’re great, great, great aunt lived.

Most web sites build with a Content Management System (CMS) do not send the correct “Last-Modified” date to the browser. The average CMS (include WordPress which runs this blog) show the current time as the date the page was last modified. The truth, though, is that the average web page or blog entry hasn’t been touched for some time (and certainly not in the last 30 seconds).

BlueInk, however, outputs the date the page was actually modified last. If you view the home page, for example, and click “Tools | Page Info…” (or the like for your specific browser), you’ll see “Modified: 02/13/2008 11:19:30 AM” That is, in fact, the last moment I made a change to that page. Yesterday, though, before we added this marginal but useful feature you would have seen whatever your current date and time are.

So why should I care?
While this may be the first time you’ve ever bothered to look at the page info for a web page, this data is useful to other web sites and web services that may interact with your web site. Search engines would be the first most obvious group of services to perhaps use this info. The growing number of “Web 2.0″ applications and even what are being called “Web 3.0″ or the “Semantic Web” applications could (and likely will) make use of that data.

We hope that our increasing “geekiness” about HTTP, REST, and other web standards will continue to pay off for our users in ways none of us may yet have envisioned. We’ll keep the future in mind.

Regular users of BlueInk may have noticed that BlueInk now has backend search functionality. Brad began work on this near the end of last week, and got it rolled out on Monday–which also happened to be National Inventor’s Day, though, like most inventors, we forgot to celebrate.

The new search functionality provides a quick and easy way to find content items without needing to remember its name. Additionally, users will see a list of pages the content item appears on. This allows the user to know exactly where the item is in use before they decide to edit it.

If you’ve not tried BlueInk yet, please check out the demo. We’d love to know what you think about it.

One of our primary goals with BlueInk is to save web content editors as much time as possible. We hope this adds to the arsenal of usability BlueInk already offers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 13/02/2008

Contact Information:
BigBlueHat
107 East Park Ave.
Greenville, SC 29601
Tel: 864.232.9553
Website: http://www.bigbluehat.com/

Greenville, SC — BigBlueHat announced the completion of a new BlueInk-based web site for Interfilm Holdings, Inc. web site: interfilm-usa.com. Building on the foundation of their BlueInk Content Management System, BigBlueHat created custom content types for Interfilm Holdings, Inc’s product line. These content types give Interfilm the ability to create and edit structured product data for display in a customized product table featured on the products page. The product table sports sortable columns, downloadable data sheets, and colorized categories.

In addition to the custom content type for Interfilm products, BigBlueHat created a custom map widget that displays contact items for their regional account managers. When users move their mice over various regions of the map, the contact information and photo of the account manager is displayed. This smooth navigation provides quick and focused data for users of the Interfilm web site.

BigBlueHat is a foothills-based web manufacturing company. We specialize in designing and developing web sites and products for the web. Our current feature-length production is known as the BlueInk CMS. We focus on web-related innovation with each product we build. Our clients benefit from our future-focus by receiving software and web sites that are built to last and receiving free upgrades to the software hosted with BigBlueHat.

Brad’s been hacking on some niggling little inconsistencies in BlueInk: notification messages weren’t consistently placed, sessions timed out too quickly in Media, the loading message stayed up after renaming files, and a few others. After his changes things are much smoother now.

Inspired by his work this morning, I added some new icons for each of the content types. It’s now more obvious which content type you’re working with under the Content section.

Minor changes like that can get overlooked when we focus on “big picture” feature additions and long term architectural decisions. We’ve come to the conclusion, though, that these little things make a big difference in how enjoyable a web based software application is to use. The more enjoyable a product, the more usable. That’s our theory, anyway. Do you agree?

Check out the new improvements on the BlueInk demo site.