When I found out that Google just celebrated its 11^th birthday last weekend, I couldn’t help but think about how integral it has been to my Internet experience, and the experiences of countless of other users all over the world. I find myself using Google as my main online search site whenever I want to find something fast, and I am always amazed how much more extensive and precise the results of my web searches are compared to those performed on other sites. It is believed to be the most visited site on Earth, which should come to no surprise to anyone. Even the word Google is a household name because it is unique and easy to remember.

I use Google News when I am looking for the latest headlines, Blogger when writing for two different blogs, and Google Earth when I am interested in determining what the surroundings of any location in the world are. I also use Google Maps when figuring out driving directions, but this function alone has been problematic for me in the past, because I must admit I have gotten incorrect directions from it. As a safety and when I have time to look up directions, I check at least one other site to compare the routes and determine which I will trust and follow more. I am also a big fan of Picasa when sending and storing photographs to friends and family, which alleviates the fear of losing images forever if my computer or laptop crashes and I haven’t backed up all my data. I am avoiding the latter, just in case.

Looking back at the good, the bad, and everything in between, I have to admit that the Internet has been a very interesting place since Google was conceived and launched to an unsuspecting public. The online experience would be a very different place if it never existed, and that would not have been a  good thing.

Google has been an integral part of my Internet experience, and as a search engine it is the closest thing to perfection I have seen on the Internet. If the company keeps doing what it is doing while striving to innovate and improve all of its services and programs, Google will continue to be on top for years to come.

We all know someone or at least have heard about people who put too much of their personal information on the Internet.  There have been numerous reports of people who are fired or refused jobs because potential employers find objectionable images or other details about them on their FaceBook or MySpace pages. I have always been conscious of keeping my personal information to a minimum in the public view. For example, when someone searches my name on the Internet, they only find some articles I have written and some of the social networking sites I have accounts with. My address is no where to be found; if I am required to identify my location, the information is as general as I can make it.

Many of the following tips are common sense, but I think they are worth mentioning.

·  In addition to your address, try not to put your phone number out there too. This obviously doesn’t apply to small business owners who want to promote their businesses. Still, e-mail addresses are ideal because you can always adjust your spam filter and block addresses if needed.

·  Setting your relationship status on FaceBook or MySpace to anything you want isn’t a problem, unless this information is something you don’t want other people in your life to find out about. If you are in an “open relationship” and one of the people in it are not aware of this, you may not want to publicize this. If you have the option to set your social networking sites to a private setting (accessible to friends only or completely private) then do so.

·  As mentioned earlier, any objectionable images of you (or those which can be construed as objectionable) should be taken down from public view, or placed on more private pages. Remember, even if you think your grandmother will never see the crazy vacation pictures you posted a year ago, I wouldn’t take the risk. After all, someone else could always print out them out or show them to her on their computer or cell phone.

Just be careful when you are on the Internet. The virtual space may seem imaginary because we cannot stand in it or experience it on a tangible level, but it is very real…and it can backfire on us if we are not cautious.

It isn’t news that most of us get our news via the Internet these days. If you have a computer with online access, it is much easier to find the latest news on national and other news sites that are far too numerous to mention. My father still gets the Wall Street Journal seven days a week, but when I am home I hardly (if ever) look at it. It is just easier to go online and find the latest news. What makes it so much more popular is that news is constantly being posted and updated every hour, if not every minute. Just refresh the Google News page and you can often see new stories listed ahead of the one you were just looking at.

But the idea that there is “too much of a good thing” does apply to the bounty of free, online journalism. The constant need to put the latest news on the Internet can affect the quality of the writing or ignore the credibility of the sources used. Many news sites (alternative, national, and international) have reputable journalists providing content, but there are those other sites that have questionable contributors with dubious writing and editing skills. I have seen a quite a few spelling, grammatical and even factual errors when reading articles online, but these can easily be corrected; once an article is published in a traditional newspaper or magazine, any errors are there to stay.

Last year I attended a conference on the future of micro-blogging and online news sites as a whole and was surprised to find that many of the attendees where in the advertising industry. Obviously, the tensions in the room were high; I almost expected a screaming match between one of the panelists and an advertising executive in the audience. The general consensus of the panelists was that a new advertising model must be developed to adapt to the rapidly growing online journalism industry. Journalists, editors, graphic designers, photographers, and all others that contribute to online content should be paid, and I also believe that traditional advertising methods must change. When one disgruntled audience member suggested charging visitors to online news sites a small fee, many others balked at the notion. I just don’t see it happening; what I do know is that the “powers that be” have to think of something. Online journalism is here to stay; and no one wants to pay for it.

What are your thoughts on the online journalism and its future?

No one can agree on a specific date when the Internet truly began. Some believe that its birth occurred forty years ago, but you don’t have to be an expert in the subject to know that the various aspects that make up the Internet were invented at different times to make it what it is today. Now it is a life line of communication throughout the world; many teachers use the Internet to assign homework and reading materials to their students, businesses rely on it for communications and other work-related tasks, and many people like me use it for just about everything. I can remember a time when I didn’t have a computer, or even an email address. My communications consisted of phone calls and letters exclusively. Now I have to sift through my teeming inboxes of several email accounts to find non-spam correspondence. I don’t have rose-colored glasses when I think about time before the Internet was a well-known household term, but I do know that I had less of a tendency to stay home for extended periods of time back then. Information is at our fingertips, and that is great, but we all know that too much of a good thing can have opposite effects sometimes.

This Labor Day, and just after the unofficial 40^th anniversary of the Internet, I find myself respecting the technology and the people behind it (too numerous to count) who created this virtual medium that has truly contributed to the world of communication and globalization. There really is no going back, and I look forward to the future of the online communications and technology.

Web designers & developers are constantly searching to find the best practices for guiding the user through completing a specific action or task on a website. And as more and more complex applications come online, and there is more and more user interaction with those applications, the problem to present information in a meaningful way for the user to interact with in those applications, becomes increasingly difficult.

But designers no longer have to work in a vacuum to figure out the solutions. They can now leverage all of the expertise, user behavior analysis, and best practices of the great user interface design patterns that are available online.

What is a user interface design pattern?

A design pattern is good design that has been vetted and tested for usability by designers, User Interface (UI) experts, and even the design community that have been proven to work well for very specific user situations and user issues. It is a package of proven expertise that informs the designer of the principles behind the design and what is known to work.

Using known and researched principles in your design will save you time and money and make your applications more intuitive for the user and easy to use.

All design patterns answer the following questions:

• What is the Problem we are trying to solve?
• What is the Solution?
• When and why to use the pattern?

Where can I find design patterns?

• Yahoo Design Pattern Library
  Yahoo! breaks down their design patterns into five categories: Layout, Navigation, Selection, Rich Interaction, and Social.  Within each category you will find an array of design patterns that not only answer the standard questions of What, When & Why they also provide real world examples, code examples, related patterns, and similar patterns from non Yahoo! libraries.  They also have a community where you can discuss the design patterns with people who are trying to solve the same design problems.
• Welie.com
  The patterns on this site are grouped in a very meaningful way.  The main categories are broken down into:
  User needs which include navigating around, searching, shopping, making choices
  basic interactions, dealing with data, personalizing, making choices, giving input.
  Application needs which include drawing attention, feedback, simplifying interaction.
  Context of design which include site types, experiences, page types
• UI-Patterns.com
  This website provides a good number of design patters but what makes it different is that they offer a lot of examples of actual sites that use good design principles via their screenshot collections and their resources.
• Open Source Design Pattern Library
  This is a community where designers, developers, and other people interested in patterns can come to reference material, collaborate on patterns and designs, and share their knowledge with everyone.

Do you use other resources that I haven’t mentioned?  Let me know if the comments!