Techcrunch: “I want the logo bigger and that cool pixelated tech look”.

I know many have had a few weeks to comment on the disastrous techcrunch site makeover…but I’ve been so busy and traveling that I haven’t had a chance to really see tc on a computer. This morning I was catching up on the article on safety from airbnb.com and found myself completely distracted by the over bearing green 90’s freshman college students attempt at typography. Clearly the message from above was “I want the logo bigger and that cool pixelated tech look, we’re leaders in this industry, we should look the part”. I’m so distracted by this design that it compelled me to stop reading the article and comment on this…

Few site design tips for Nimbula

Congrats to Nimbula.com who launched their first cloud infrastructure software “Nimbula Director”.
Their new site is up and I had a few ideas on how they could better achieve a cleaner site and message. (note:I don’t consider myself a webdesigner, but I like to play around on photoshop and generally create comps to hand off to designers to clean up)
-They have a great company bio video, but it’s hidden.
-Too many colors for navigation
-Colors chosen cheapen the brand
-In the banner, I thought the colored dots sit next to a paragraph. I thought they were bullet points, but aren’t. Not sure why they are there.
-the paragraph in the banner is a little too wordy.
-We’re Hiring is mixed in with their informational video.

First Image is Current Nimbula Site as of Dec 10, 2010 & Second Image has a few ideas of mine 🙂

quick list of websites from ryan.

the new hot startups to watch: quora.com, thingd.com, svpply.com

will check out…

Forbes.com major FAIL

Very much annoyed right now. Was googling a family friend my mom was just telling me about. “Glen Rice”. I narrowed it down away from the basketball player and found a forbes.com article and this is where the major fail comes into play.
Link I saw in google organic search:
people.forbes.com/profile/glenn-c-rice/120961

Here’s the problem. In forbes greed to lead their user with an advertisement before you see the homepage, they are routing ALL users to the homepage. I was expecting to land on the link above but was FORCED to the homepage because of this stupid lead in ad.
Fail 2: ok so I’m on the homepage and type into the search box, but while typing a huge drop down add pushes the homepage content down…Annoying.
Next I type in glenn rice into the search box and only get the basketball player links… all in all, Forbes experience was HORRIBLE.

Airbnb.com notes from today: maid service & awesome spam

Who washes the sheets?
Pretty simple question, my friend has an extra room in the Marina in San Francisco but just “hasn’t gotten around to posting it on airbnb.com”. We talked about going out to Hawaii to crash with my brother for a couple of weeks and he wants to post his place. Then we asked…well, who’s going to prep the place between guest if I’m out of town. Haven’t found an answer:
-This is the help page on airbnb with no answer.
-If I was into running a maid service I’d buy airbnbmaids.com and run a service specializing in this market. Or better yet, airbnb should spin this off and pick up some extra revenue and provide a great service to their customer base. Or maybe it could just be a directory that maid services who understand airbnb clientele’s needs pay to be listed. (should i invest $11.95 into my arsenal of godaddy domains and pick up airbnbmaids?)

When I googled for an answer I found something even more awesome. A blatant spam post which I fully support on tripadvisors forums and this thing is huge (71 pages). I laughed my ass off reading some of these post. Clearly a rep from trip advisor or somewhere came on trying to discredit airbnb with “illegal rentals” are dangerous etc etc. In the end, a big conversation brewed all around Airbnb.com. So my hat’s off to you jaygatz with 3 post and no avatar.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60763-i5-k2816894-Airbnb-New_York_City_New_York.html

Rentals vrbo.com

For anyone with vacation rentals it seem vrob.com is the way to go.
Case: our neighbor in tahoe has A nice looking vrob sign up in front of his place. While talking with him and comparing summer rentals he said his best results were from vrob and not the rental agency. My initial thought was of course; what does our small local vacation rental person know about marketing places online. It turns out very little…
Update: just jumped on vrbo and see great potential for this site. It’s still a little ghetto but I like that. It means that it’s success is based off functionality and users It doesn’t have to be sexy to work.
There’s a lot going on in this space, more to come with airbnb.com and the homeaway.com empire.