Brilliant Corners

One of the more interesting panels I attended at SXSW this year was “Design Patterns: Defining and Sharing Web Interface Design Languages”. I'd heard the phrase “design patterns” used before, but I never really read up on it. So, I've been trying to get everything together as a reference for myself.

Here is the round-up web post from the panel presenter Luke Wroblewski. It’s a shame that Luke had only a half an hour to present on this topic. His post includes a link to the slides (oops, it seems the link is broken now) he used as well as some links to others who have also put down some notes on this panel.

If you don’t want to dig into his slides, here are some of the external resources he pointed to:

• Patterns in Interaction Design
• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
• Web Patterns: A UC Berkeley Resource for Building User Interfaces
• User Interface Design Patterns: Introduction
• UI Patterns and Techniques, by Jenifer Tidwell, the author of…
• Designing Interfaces – an excellent, and quite recent, book on the subject
• Design Patterns: Introduction – Another post on the presenter’s website with loads of good information

And since the panel, I came across this article at 37signals, by Ryan Singer: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design.

It was just about three years ago when I got the idea for making Lists of Bests. It was the first idea that I had which I took from idea, through development, to launch; it was my first, real “web application.”

When I put Lists of Bests online, I didn’t expect too much; I thought it may gather a couple of hundred (at most) other folks who were obsessed as I was about film, music, and book lists. I was wrong. As of right now, there are just about 2,500 registered users who have checked off over 400,000 items off the lists. The site has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and a few other places. The site has definitely grown more popular than I had ever anticipated.

The bad news is, that in the last year or so, I haven’t had nearly as much time as I'd like to keep the site updated. New lists barely trickled onto the site, and all the features I hoped to add, well, never got added. So, I had to apologize to all those who wrote me emails asking when a new list would go up, or when I'd update the award lists (like the Academy Award list). I just didn’t have the time to devote to the site as I used to (having a second kid can really cut into your leisure time :) ).

So, it was with a mixture of reservation and excitement when Erik Benson told me that he and The Robot Co-op would like to buy the site from me. After a few emails back and forth it was decided: yes, I would sell them Lists of Bests.

Now, some of the functionality will change (almost all for the better), some URLs may change, and the interface is different, but from what I've seen the changes are all for the better. Lists of Bests now ties in very well with the other sites the Robots have put together (aka All Consuming, 43 Things, 43 Places, and 43 People). No longer will the site be restricted to books, music, and film. You will be able to make lists of just about anything, and have it tie in well with the other Robot Co-op sites.

I am a little bit sad that Lists of Bests is no longer mine, but my excitement for what the new Lists of Bests will evolve into greatly overshadows any reservations I ever had. The Robots have a great thing going with their network of sites, and I'm positive that they'll be able to make Lists of Bests even better than I had ever envisioned. And from what I've seen so far, it’s going to be pretty kick-ass.

Update: Here’s the Robot Co-op announcement.

Addendum at 6:23pm: Okay, I'm ashamed. I left something tremendously important out of the post above: the thanks! I want to thank from the bottom of my heart everyone who has signed up and used Lists of Bests to check off your progress. I want to extend a big thanks to many who helped me beta test the site before it launched. I want to thank everyone who suggested a list to add to the site, or helped me correct the ones that were already online. Thanks to all the Lists of Bests users!