By now you’ve probably had a chance to check out the latest round of changes to Facebook’s user interface – and likely read/heard plenty of opinions about the new look. Facebook’s quest to display content relevant to users’ interests and usage patterns has resulted in yet another update to the News Feed. The resulting design is a bit more, shall we say, busy, for a service that’s never been too strong on design.

But for a moment, let’s put aside purely aesthetic considerations – things have gotten much more cluttered on Facebook. And let’s go with the question we’d ask as digital marketers: “How does this effect brands and their ability to engage?”

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{Each week, our own resident technologist “Dr. Brisko” scours the Interwebs to find examples of the arcane and interesting. They are first shared privately in the inner FINE sanctum, where we retain some as pure trade secrets. But we switch a short list public to give you just a taste, from technology deep dives to design to the, well, unclassifiable info that just may be the cure for what ails you.}

I, Interface
Applying Asimov’s three laws of robotics to UX.

The Ruins of Dead Social Networks
A requiem for BBSes, the forerunner to today’s social networks.

Samuel L. Ipsum
[BEEEP!]ING PLACEHOLDER TEXT! In keeping with the expletive theme, for those who want to generate some saucier placeholder content.

SEO for Non-[BEEP!]s
With this great quote “Good SEO is a by-product of not being a [Beep!]” We’ve edited this NSFW title, but if you’ll click through you’ll read about practices worthy of an expletive.

List of Changes in the Star Wars Re-releases
Han shot first!

The Great Lie – Lorem Ipsum
Content shot first!

Portland ranks 11th in list of world major bike-friendly cities
… “The smallest city to make the Top 20 list is Portland. We are aware that it doesn’t technically fit into the major cities category, but we were curious to see how the USA’s top cycling city would fare… Besides, we’ll never hear the end of it from Portlanders if we leave them out…”

PointPoint
A Plugin For Pointing To Things

Not sharing is caring
Facebook’s terrible plan to get us to share everything we do on the Web.

Unfolding the IKEA Effect: Why We Love the Things We Build
The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert had created the same item.

Radiolab:
An appreciation by Ira Glass

{Each week, our own resident technologist “Dr. Brisko” scours the Interwebs to find examples of the arcane and interesting. They are first shared privately in the inner FINE sanctum, where we retain some as pure trade secrets. But we switch a short list public to give you just a taste, from technology deep dives to design to the, well, unclassifiable info that just may be the cure for what ails you.}

How long do users stay on pages?
Quick answer, not long at all. Maybe you’re already gone by the time you finish this sentence.

Why your business needs a Chinese name
What’s in a name? If you’re in China — the world’s second largest economy — a lot. In a country where each character carries its own unique meaning, the characters used to transliterate a company’s name can make or break it.

The Mysterious Paper Sculptures of Edinburgh
One day in March, staff at the Scottish Poetry Library came across a wonderful creation, left anonymously on a table in the library. Carved from paper, mounted on a book and with a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive – the library’s Twitter account – reading …

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The Chateau Ste Michelle mobile site, in action at Chateau Ste Michelle talking about the Pink Martini concert that was in action at Chateau Ste Michelle.

Credo Capital is a capital management firm providing financial planning and investment management services to high net worth individuals and institutions (you know, people who still have capital to manage). And their new website at http://www.credocapital.com/ manifests a brand that’s equal parts cool calculation and personal approachability.

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For most people, airline travel (particularly leisure travel) involves some research. Whether it’s a travel site like Expedia.com or directly on an airline website, over 93 million U.S. adults used the Internet for travel research in 2010, according to the U.S. Travel Association. In an online environment this competitive, converting users to customers is critical. And timing is everything. The Internet enables a cycle of simple touchpoints that can be used to nudge customers towards action.

A real world example. While researching flights to LAX for a trip to Los Angeles recently, I visited Delta.com and searched several itineraries but did not end up booking a flight. I also researched fares on one or two major travel industry sites. I decided to hold off on booking the flight and resume my research in a day or two. Which could easily have turned into 3. Or 4. Or possibly never.

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We’ve seen a number of references lately to the abysmal state of restaurant websites:

McSweeney’s Channels a Single Restaurant Site

Slate Lambasts The Entire Industry

It seems clear that the restaurant industry is not embracing the digital revolution. It’s as though the industry has surrendered to the mercies of Yelp. It’s true, many sole proprietor restaurants do not have the resources to deploy a state of the art online destination. But with as much attention as is paid to their entrees, a better result is within grasp of most.

With experience designing and building sites for high end and large scale restaurants and hospitality, we’ve learned a few simple things that help whether you’re a world-class destination or a mom and pop shop. So if you’re considering building a website for your restaurant (good idea – the web is probably THE single best place for a diner to find you), we share them here in an effort to clean up the whole Internet neighborhood.

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There’s more than meets the eye to aFINEsite. Here’s a glimpse at some of the behind the scenes technology evolution that’s going to enable us to deliver more and better web experiences through the magic of Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails aims to promote good ideas and technologies. As the Rails community (and the FINE PDX basement) get excited about the release of 3.1, it’s easy to see that gospel in action. Not only is Rails 3.1 dropping Prototype for jQuery, but we’ll see the addition of a couple slick dependencies: CoffeeScript and Sass.

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