One of the details that can be tough to keep track of with a large or fast-moving website is language consistency. Of course, to be consistent, you need to decide what to use. I did an audit of the most popular English-language sites (as determined by Alexa and Compete), to see how three key phrases were being used. These were:

Login/Log In/Sign in - The action of authorizing your account.
My/Your - My Movies, Your Account, etc.
Join/Sign Up/Register/Create - Creating a new account.

Here is the raw data, see below for some analysis.

* Inconsistent

“My” is the clear winner over “Your”, with 27 mys, 3 yours, and 2 that avoid using possessive pronouns.

“Login” takes the edge over “Sign In”, 20-14. “Sign In”, however, seems to be more popular with the biggest of the big sites, like Yahoo, Microsoft’s sites, and Google. I’d say this is a tossup, and I have a feeling that in a few years signup with come to dominate. Of those using login, 13 use “login”, and 7 use “log in”, with the space.

There’s a plurality of choices for sign up, with “sign up” being used on 12 sites. 7 used join, 7 used register, 6 used create (an account), 1 used start, and 1 used enroll. This is not an independent choice, however, as “sign up” is often seen where “log in” is used, and sites that use “sign in” use something like “register”. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo use “sign in/sign up”. I suspect that some people think using such similar phrases would be confusing, and I agree, despite the appeal of the general consistency.

My preference is to use “my, “log in”, and “sign up”. “Join” seems ambiguous, “register” seems bureaucratic and expensive, while “create an account” just feels a little dorky.

Dishonorable Mention: The Apple Store, supposed paragon of usability and attention to detail, is the worst offender on this list in terms of mixing and matching the terms, often on the same page. They also fail miserably on one major point, there’s no logout button!

If you’re wondering why people aren’t accepting your Facebook application invitations:

Engineers, especially those of the software variety, have various types of projects to work on. Some pay the bills, some are for learning, some are to help others’ goals, and then there are the ones that we say “scratch an itch.”

It’s hard not to operate in a world of ideas without having a few of your own, and some ideas just keep popping up. If you’re lucky, someone else does it right and you can reap the benefits, but often you just have to go out and do it. These projects are often done at personal expense “to see if it works” or “because I can”, and not for fame or fortune. I have a few of these kicking around, and it was a new year’s resolution of mine to actual get some of them into the wild. So, as the first of these, I’d like to officially announce a new project that I’ve been working on (and one of the reasons for the lack of blog posts). The Open Data Bank.

The ODB is a simple idea. While tinkering with other projects, I’m often in need of data. Sometimes this is to test things out, sometimes it’s to get things started, but everytime it seems like I have to go and find it anew and coax it into some useful format. I assume that others like me have the same problem, and hopefully ODB will be a useful contribution to the tinkering ecosystem to complement other tools like open source libraries.

For the layman, the ODB is a place where we can put “open data”, that is to say, data that can be shared without restriction. Not only is the data open, but the formats it is shared in are open as well. Formats like XML and JSON don’t have to be licensed from anyone, and therefore people are free to write tools to read it.

If you’re interested in participating or just keeping track of the ODB, there’s a Google Group you can join and share info, ask questions, or offer ideas to improve it.

At some point in your life, your parents probably told you “life isn’t fair”. The Coen Brothers expand on this story with a ruthless, precise rendering that ended up being my favorite movie of 2007. Its not fun or funny, there’s a couple hiccups, but this film will stick to your ribs.

It was a clear, cold night in the suburbs. I can typically make out most of the major constellations, and other random stuff, and if the moon is down, a fair number more. The moon was about 1/2 this night, and I figured it was worth a shot. I took 9 3-second exposures with a 50mm/1.4 lens on a Nikon D300. The pictures themselves were pretty good, showing several times more stars than I could see with the naked eye. But then my friend showed me how to use DeepSkyStacker. This program basically does some fancy noise reduction to get rid of the haze of each shot and make the stars really stand out. The results speak for themselves.

Many successful musicians put out albums that aren’t “real” albums in that they don’t contain much new music, but they either have a different take on them (remix albums), round out the fan experience (live albums) or just milk fans and almost-fans of some money (best of albums). They aren’t marketed as heavily, bands don’t tour to promote them, sometimes you don’t even notice them unless you are a devout fan. Once in a while, however, these end up being my favorite (AKA the best) albums a band releases. One of these just came out, namely Daft Punk’s “Alive 2007″, which is “pretty remarkable” to quote a friend. A list is born.

Top 3 Unintentionally Best Albums

1. Linkin Park - “Reanimation” - LP had a mediocre first album and then dropped this bomb, sending this Emo-band-in-the-making on a detour into electronic spectacle. This is also one of the best DVD-A discs out there.
2. White Zombie - “Super Sexy Swingin’ Sounds” - Not only did they end up with the most interesting White Zombie album, they put together the ultimate “night driving” album.
3. Daft Punk - “Alive 2007″ - Like Mos Def, the problem with Daft Punk albums, even their songs to some extent, is the inconsistency. Going from boring to exciting beats, amazing flow to mundane limping, this album seems to fix that with great mixes of their best songs.

Honorable Mention

• The Roots - “The Roots Come Alive” - This might have made #3 before Daft Punk’s CD came out, but I’m not sure because their early albums were already so good. The highlight of this album is Jill Scott’s performance in “You Got Me”, which without exaggeration gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

I try hard to avoid posting the endless stream of videos and random pictures one encounters on the internet, but this one is just too bizarre not to share. This came in a spam that not only got through my spam filters, but somehow tricked Thunderbird into displaying the image without a prompt. I’m going to have to grant it the award of “most grizzled Santa Claus ever”.

A recent post at Seth Godin’s blog reminded me of an idea we had discussed a few weeks ago. Zoos and aquariums often have signs that give some basic information on the species of the animals they house, but almost never any information the actual animals themselves. You will only see it done now for major attractions like pandas, and I wouldn’t expect it for every prarie dog or lobster, but I think it could be done much more often.

In this day of easy and on-demand printing, it seems like it would not be a big effort to put up a little placard for each one. The names, birthdates, and birthplace of the animals, with a picture and perhaps some notes on the lineage or personality of the animals would make the whole experience much more engaging, and I might even say that it would boost donations or visitor involvement. This information exists, and you can get it if you opt to bother the staff, but they are always very busy and do most of their work before and after visitor hours.

This could even be taken to a new level if the information is online, editable by volunteers in a wiki-esque format and available as news feeds or email alerts when something happens involving your favorite/sponsored critters.

I often, as most people do, think up things that products/services that I use “should” do. Sometimes I even send these ideas in, if the company has made it easy to do so. I think from now on I will still send them in, but will also post them here, because ideas beget ideas and maybe someone will see mine and come up with an even better one.

So, as any reasonably regular reader can tell, I’m a fan of Flickr. I don’t really use the social features much, I find them a bit unweildy, but I do like it’s organization tools, overall UI, storage of full-size images, unlimited upload quota, and many other features. I don’t derive any direct value from the general public having access to my photos, but maybe the public does, or will someday, get some value. There are two features that I’d like to see added:

1. Virtual Cropping - I lack the time, patience, and/or skill to go through every photo and adjust levels and crop it properly before I upload. Flickr resizes photos to fit the various templates. I’d like to be able to draw a box (like they do with notes) that will be what people see, with the sole exception of the “original” size. This way I can keep the original intact but crop things on the fly as I’m organizing online.

2. Cross-User Sets - I recently went on a couple of trips and took alot of photos. A friend of mine, also a Flickr user, also took alot of photos. Some of his photos are ones I didn’t take, or better than ones I took. When I send someone a link to my collection/set of the trip, I’d like to include some of his photos inline, rather than telling people to look in multiple places. Technically this could be accomplished with groups, but these are typically one-off things and more geared towards collaboration than curation. Basically “Add to set” should be enabled for anyone’s (public) photos, especially those by contacts/friends.

Firstly, happy thanksgiving everyone.

Tomorrow is the biggest shopping day of the year, and all I ask is that you consider not giving gift cards. Over $8 billion per year in gift cards are given, and not used. If cards offered some kind of built-in discount ($45 for a $50 card) then they might be excusable, but they are essentially a crippled form of cash. Think about it, would you give someone stamps?

To me, gift cards say the following to your recipient:

“I’d like to give you money but I’m afraid you’ll spend it on drugs”

“I don’t know you well enough to even attempt to pick something out, but I’m absolutely sure what store you’d like to go to”

“I’m too lazy to go through the store and actually find something for you”

“I forgot about getting you a gift, so just be glad I had to stop for gas”

“You have bad taste and shop a crappy stores, so I’m forcing you to shop at a good one”

If you’re happy saying those things (sometimes I am), then gift cards are perfect. Otherwise, take a moment to try and think of something original, or just go with good old-fashioned cash.