Archive for the 'Press' Category
Catalog Choice registers half a million users! Monday, January 28th, 2008 by Matt
Catalog Choice on the Today Show.
On January 24, Catalog Choice saw its biggest day yet, when it was covered in a fantastic piece on NBC’s “The Today Show”:
Over the course of the day, the catalogchoice.org website saw over two million page views, and registered 60,000 new user accounts, bringing the total number of registered users, three days later, to over 500,000!
In addition, “Catalog Choice” was the number one search term for the day on Google:
Coping with the traffic.
Coping with a sudden increase in traffic, orders of magnitude more than typical, was a challenge. The front-end web application servers quickly became overloaded, and later the back-end DB server became overloaded (we were servicing over 2,000 DB queries per second!) Since it’s still not possible (with our hosting providers, at least) to bring on additional servers on-demand, we quickly made several modifications to the application:
We made a number of layout modifications in the application that would allow us to cache content to a far greater extent.
These same modifications also targeted the reduction of DB queries.
With these modifications, we were able to cope well with the secondary traffic surge.
Lessons learned.
It’s quite possible that Catalog Choice is now one of the largest Ruby on Rails applications running on the internet, in terms of number of users. Over the past few months of operation, we’ve learned some lessons:
Although not related to Rails, we’ve learned that it’s a good idea, especially for a site with this broad of a user base, to be conservative on the use of client-side technology. When originally launched, we had implemented elegant page transitions, catalog finder live type-ahead, and other similar UI features — all done with JavaScript (AJAX) in a way that gave the site a desktop-application feel. We considered this acceptable practice, as we were designing for IE 6/7, Safari 2/3 and Firefox 2/3.
However, when you have 500,000 users, even 1% on older browsers represents quite a large crowd! So we’ve since modified the site to work in a far more traditional manner, relying very little on client-side JavaScript, and where necessary, degrading very gracefully.
For hosting, our infrastructure, like many these days, is based on virtual machines. We have N number of front-end web application servers, each practically maxed out in terms of CPU and memory. Based on the experience with the Today Show traffic, we’re thinking now that it might be better to have 2N front-end servers, each with half the CPU and memory, since it’s a lot easier to quickly add CPU and memory to an existing server (to meet demand), than it is to bring on additional VMs. (This is, assuming 2N front-end servers with half the memory are roughly comparable in cost to N servers with double the CPU and memory, which might not be the case.)
It has been a very exciting experience to watch the site grow, analyze the usage patterns, and adjust the application and its user interface to not only improve the usability and user experience, but to adapt to the changing user profiles (i.e. now that over 500,000 of our visitors are no longer first-timers, and that we have over 1,000 merchants in the system.)
How the site is doing.
When the site first launched, the consumer response was (and continues to be) nothing short of amazing. It is clear that this site is meeting a very big need in the United States; that is the reduction of unwanted paper catalogs. The industry’s response was, expectedly, lukewarm, especially after the Direct Marketers Association (the DMA) issued an email to all its members to “Just say no!” to Catalog Choice.
However, with half a million vocal consumers behind it, Catalog Choice has become an influential heavyweight. A website feature we launched last week alerts users to which specific merchants have refused to honor their opt-out requests, and provides the merchants customer support telephone number, just in case the consumer would like to give them a call. Within 24 hours, after being inundated with phone calls from angry customers, we had merchants changing their minds :-)
A misconception in the industry (promoted by the DMA) is that Catalog Choice seeks to do away with catalogs altogether. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Catalog Choice is about doing away with just those catalogs that are unsolicited and unwanted.
All in all, Catalog Choice has been a fantastic project for MakaluMedia. We’re fortunate to be one of very few companies having the opportunity to build and operate such a large-scale Rails site, and a site that serves such a meaningful social purpose!
Phenomenal response to Catalog Choice Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 by Matt
HARDLY A MONTH HAS PASSED since we announced the launch of Catalog Choice, a website that MakaluMedia was chosen to design and develop by an amazing team of funding and supporting organizations, and the response to the site has been extraordinary.
In less than 25 days, more than 100,000 users have registered, opting out of more than 800,000 catalogs. And for us, as user experience designers and product developers, one of the most exciting statistics is the near 50% conversion ratio, meaning that nearly one out of every two visitors to the site has registered.
Update November 21, 2007: We are about at the one month point now, and have over 180,000 users, opting out of nearly two million catalogs!.
Catalog Choice has also been featured on the national television networks CNN, NBC and ABC (see videos below), and has been well received in the press and blogosphere:
- The New York Times
- The Boston Herald
- The Chicago Tribune
- Guy Kawasaki
- Joel on Software
- Adam Engst at TidBITS
The success of the site has served to validate much of our beliefs regarding user experience design. Some of principles that stand out include:
- Simple is better. Less is more.
- A successful user experience derives from near obsessive attention to detail.
- Don’t outsource your user support. On the contrary, put your best people on it. People love getting a personal response from somebody that knows what they’re talking about. You’ll reap the benefits in trust, patience and tremendous value in terms of feedback to the process of continually improving the user experience.
We’ve also learned a wealth about effectively operating a high-volume Ruby on Rails application. (On one particular day, the ABC “Good Morning America” spot was the very top news article on Yahoo News, and we saw 20,000 new user registrations in a period of four hours.) Having a great hosting partner helps a lot!
Finally, this project is proof positive that talented and motivated people, supported by an effective agile process and paying a lot of attention to clear communications, can build a successful project, even if separated great distances geographically. Our Catalog Choice team includes MakaluMedia staff located in the United States, Germany, Spain and Ireland!
And with that, we bring this article to a close. Our next project milestones include one million catalog opt-outs, and hopefully down the road one millions users! And remember, if you’re located in the US, and ready to simplify your life while helping the environment, head on over to Catalog Choice and sign up for a free account:
Be sure to check out the following video clips.
- Catalog Choice on NBC
- Catalog Choice on CNN
- Catalog Choice on ABC Good Morning America
Gauging Reactions to the Slashdot Redesign Thursday, June 1st, 2006 by Arto
Alex’s win in the Slashdot CSS redesign contest has been making the rounds on the net.
S/D/R — The Big Three
Mere moments after the official announcement on Slashdot, the story made its way to Digg and Reddit. To date, Slashdot’s original announcement has garnered 852 comments. The Digg story has been “dugg” 1715 times and commented on 203 times, while at Reddit the story has gained 110 points.
While we have been receiving a constant stream of private congrats via e-mail, comments on all three sites cover the full spectrum from “love it” to “hate it”; the latter kind occasionally moving on to some disproportionately extreme reactions that may perhaps be a symptom of an excessive disconnect with Real Life(TM). Goes with the territory, and Alex is taking it all in stride, I hope. This much is obvious: had this been a vote, instead of CmdrTaco’s call, I doubt any single one of the proposed designs could’ve sustained a clear majority.
Unfortunately, what contributed to an initial negative backlash of sorts was the fact that when the story broke, the design preview was missing a number of elements, including the actual Slashdot logo itself. Slashdot staff quickly corrected the situation, but the posted comments show that a significant number of people thought the erroneous version was the final design, and were understandably upset.
The press release
OSTG’s press release was published on MarketWire, eventually being picked up by MSN Money as well. It includes this comment attributed to CmdrTaco:
“Alex Bendiken’s entry was selected because his design improved upon many shortcomings of Slashdot’s original design. His design moves commonly-used functions into positions of prominence, and improves the readability of articles. His entry required only minor changes to our core HTML, and breathes fresh life into a site that has remained aesthetically unaltered over its 8+ year lifespan,” said Slashdot founder and site director Rob Malda (aka Cmdr Taco).
Blogosphere reactions
The blogosphere has received the new Slashdot with open arms and an almost unequivocally favorable opinion:
- Steve Bryant posts on his eWeek blog that he thinks he Slashdot redesign “looks pretty damn good. Contemporary, but not so much that it’ll be outdated soon”. He also comments that “all of Google-dom is filled with the name Alex Bendiken” — well, actually, it’s only like 600 entries at the moment, but you, dear reader, are more than welcome to add your contribution to the growing number…
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball likes the new design, calling it “a big improvement that preserves everything that’s good about the classic Slashdot brand.”
- Rui Carmo of The Tao of Mac agrees with Gruber that the new design is “very slick indeed”.
- An editorial in PHP Magazine calls Alex’s design “very nice and well done”, while drawing on their own previous experience to add that it’s no easy task to satisfy everyone. How true…
- David A. Utter, staff writer at WebProNews, details the differences between the old and new designs, without neglecting the runner-up.
- Ryan over at CyberNet News blogs: “I believe that Alex really deserved to win. From the bunch of redesigns that I saw his was the best. He kept the integral parts that makeup Slashdot but he also implemented a slick interface.”
- Philipp Lenssen thinks the design “is cool. The font could be easier to read, tho”.
- Phil Crissman likes the new look, adding “I’m sure I’ll see a lot of comments along the lines of It’s the same, only different (true), you just added round corners/gradients (no and yes — they already had some round corners), and more such complaints. I’m of the opinion that it retains the characteristic slashdotness of the design, but manages to make it look current. Good job, I say.”
- Ronald Heft, Jr. states: “I personally love it. I’ve always hated the current design, and while the new one does resemble the current design, it greatly improves upon it. The site feels less jagged and seems like a more calming place.”
- Michael Angeles thinks the new design ” adds a good deal of white space around the margins by removing the black background and increases height between lines of text, which makes the left nav much easier on the eyes. The previous design always felt cramped to me.”, and goes on to ponder the merits of the font selection and the differences between Arial, Tahoma and Verdana.
- BorkWeb labels Alex’s brainchild “a pretty clean and snazzy design”.
- Scott Troyan blogs that “it looks nice. Very clean, retaining classic Slashdot elements, while rejecting the classic Slashdot ugly.”
- Adrian Lee ponders what makes for an effective website and states the redesign “takes that general look, and makes it much smarter and cleaner. Much easier to read and skim over, generally nicer on the eyes and I don’t feel like my attention is pulled around as much. Generally I’m impressed.”
- S. Shreyas calls the new design “a very decent layout and 100x better than the older one”, though critizing aspects like the grey color and whitespace usage, goes on to lament that the runner-up’s, Peter’s, design was slashdotted and unavailable for review.
- Darren Foong is short and succinct: “it’s extremely awesome.”
International coverage
Here’s a quick sampling of reactions from the non-English part of the blogosphere:
- Chinese: Solidot, Gea-Suan Lin’s blog.
- Danish: Cssdesign.dk
- Dutch: Bakje.nl Jatlog, UZY.nl
- French: Scrapbrain
- German: Macelodeon, observatory, praegnanz.de
- Greek: pestaola.gr, Wiggler.gr
- Hungarian: Hungarian Unix Portal
- Italian: Luca Mondini
- Japanese: hirokixs
- Polish: miscz.pl
- Spanish: Abadia Digital, aNieto2K, Barrapunto, Bitperbit, DesdeGuate.com, menéame, Microsiervos, Un Blog Más, Vecindad Gráfica
- Thai: Blognode
- Turkish: Fazlamesai
More buzz in the blogosphere can be found at Technorati and, of course, Google.
Postscript to the Slashdot Effect Thursday, June 1st, 2006 by Arto
The actual slashdotting is now well over, and I’m glad to say we weathered the storm without any incidents. With the help of our sysadmin, Niall, we distributed the load across three dedicated servers in geographically diverse locations, and none of the boxes even broke a sweat.
However, that’s not to suggest the servers were idling; on the contrary, they were each servicing up to hundreds requests per second. I usually keep a monitoring console open to the servers, and when CmdrTaco originally posted the announcement, it was immediately obvious that something had happened. The staff in our colocation facilities noticed, too — it didn’t take many minutes for the first e-mail alert to arrive. (I fancy they heard the dual-CPU fans suddenly spooling up to maximum effect, but of course, their monitoring systems just warned them of a possible DDoS attack.)
Here’s a nice bandwidth graph from one of our servers, covering the first 24 hours. I thought the start of the slashdotting might be obvious enough that I won’t bother to specifically point it out:
On the software side of things, I was especially pleased to discover that no adjustments to Lighttpd’s settings were necessary in order for it to handle massive concurrency.
The load averages remained very reasonable, under 15.0 even with the nightly full backup running, except for a human error that resulted in one of the servers becoming momentarily unresponsive with a load average of almost 500.0 (oops); this was remedied within a minute.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to test our server systems’ capacity to the fullest under a simultaneous, combined Slashdot/Digg/Reddit assault, since both Digg and Reddit linked to the actual design preview, and the direct links pointing here from the comments didn’t bring in much traffic to constitute a hammering. Oh well, live to fight another day.
World-Wired: Beyond MATC Article Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 by Mike
At the very tail end of 2005, I happened to stop by my alma mater, Milwaukee Area Technical College to see 
instructors and friends. While there, I was introduced to the PR department (which is very near the place I used to work as a student). Somehow, I managed to get an invitation to be the topic of an article for a new online magazine at the MATC website, Beyond MATC.
In December, I received a call from Julie at MATC’s PR department, where I shared stories and insights from my years as a design student, about my work now and remote working in general. It was a great discussion — touching on globalism, distributed teamwork, creativity, blogging and more. Unfortunately, much of our discussions had to be trimmed from the final article (seems like a great reason for an MATC PR Weblog).
This week, Sue, the MATC staff photographer stopped by to take a few photos to accompany the article, to complete the process. Sue and I had a great time on the shoot, with a side benefit that my office is all clean and tidy. ;-)
Today, I was notified by Julie that the article was online:
World-Wired: Mike Rohde Serves Global Clientele
Here’s an excerpt:
You never know where on earth an MATC degree might lead. For 1989 Commercial Art (Graphic Design) graduate Mike Rohde, it led to colleagues and clients in Germany, Spain, France and Ireland. Rohde creates corporate logos, Web sites, Web applications and business blogs for firms around the world, working from his home office in Wauwatosa.
Privileged to be able to combine his passions for design, technology and new ways of working, he is, simply, an artist at heart. “I had always loved art and wanted to be an artist, but my dad warned me about ’starving artists’ and how hard it could be for me to make a living,” he says. So Rohde came to MATC for a night class in photography, which led him to the Printing associate degree program.
That program required classes in commercial art, and from there he found his calling. “The other students in printing said, “What are you doing here? You should be an artist.’ One great thing about MATC is that you are required to be exposed to other areas. I got good cross training between printing, commercial art and photography.”
His cross training also included working as art director for two years at MATC’s student newspaper, The Times, and a part-time job in the college’s Design Centre as a student graphic artist.
On the article page you’ll not only see a few shots of me in my office and kitchen, the photographer took a few shots of my sketchbook, some with a recent logo done for Panoramio and a shot of our kitty Jasmine playing around with my Faber-Castell pencil. Gotta love the cat photo!
BTW, it’s funny to me that my Mac is not shown in the photo above, while the crusty old vanilla PC I use for testing websites is — someone might get the idea I’m a PC user or something! :-)
The entire experience was very positive, all the way from the phone discussion with Julie to the photo shoot with Sue. I’m very happy with the article. Thanks Julie, Sue and MATC for the opportunity!