Don’t Klick on this website

A nice experiment in terms of usability: a site, where you must not click. No, really. Everything is accessible via mouse-overs. And if you click, you are being told off for doing so. A bit too confusing at first, but it works. Will be intersting to see if such a navigation has a future…

done.

First of all: apologies for not having posted in such a long time. I was on vacation and forgot to mention it.

While on vacation, I managed to read through the whole internet, or so it seemed, because at some point I reached the end of the internet: the end.

But I am confident that new pages will appear, so I just have to go back and surf down other clickpaths…

Come clean or post a secret – what’s the difference?

Companice pointed me to „come clean„, a site where you can confess anonymously, while other people can read your confessions on the website, or even within a screensaver (what for, though?).

Nice idea, but not so new. I have already seen this idea before (see here – in german). It’s Postsecret, a regular blog, graphically not as nice and without a link to a screensaver, but essentially the same idea…

Question is: did Crispin Porter Bogusky know about this? And if so, should they have won a Cyber Lion, the most prestigious award, with it?

[27th June:] I just learned at Companice that cp&b actually had their site up since autumn last year, while postsecret is only up since the beginning of this year.

Fad, gadget or trend? How do you rate Tiddlywikis?

Tiddlywikis are html files enriched with a lot of javascript. The main feature: all internal links, called Tiddlers, are contained within the file, even when their not visible. Once you click on a Tiddler-link, they open. And then you can also edit them. For more details see the link above.

A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it’s divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read it by hyperlinking rather than sequentially: if you like, a non-linear blog analogue that binds the individual microcontent items into a cohesive whole.

So we have a nice tool. But what for? It’s good for collaboration. But not better than other Wikis. It’s good for single-person use, as you can carry this one file with you (on a USB stick, for example) and work with it everywhere. That works quite will for notes, To Do lists, etc. There is also a getting things done GTDTiddlywiki, an adaptation of the Tiddlywiki for To Do lists, etc.

And there is a Tiddlywiki Novel, a nice idea with a non-linear plot where you decide for yourself which direction the story should take – depending on which Tiddlers you click…

So is this really something that will take off like the reguar wikis or blogs even?
I personally think, it won’t. The non-linear flowis interesting, but also confusing. Even though we have managed to improve our mind in terms of grasping complex setups (see the NY Times article (for non-registered users click here) about how television made us smarter in the last 20 years), I still don’t think that the general public is willing to work with or only read something that non-linear.
Even I don’t like it, when there are too many of side-tracking links in articles.
But in a couple of years this may be different…