My instant reactions to the new Facebook redesign (#facebook)
First impressions matter. So, in that vein, I just clicked open my Facebook profile, and here’s my immediate reactions:
- Like the new featuring of games and apps in a much more visible space. Much better than the grey bar at the bottom which people couldn’t see.
- Dislike the disappearance of Lists. I use lists quite a lot to see what’s going on in my various groups of friends. It strikes me that Lists could sit where “Friends Online” is. Friends Online could be easily integrated on the right with the Chat window. They’re nested too far inside the interface now.
- I like the Games and Apps dashboards. They seem a little confused (some games turning up in Apps) and I care less about who’s playing games as much as finding actual games to play. But still, on the whole, not bad.
- Really dislike the placement of the search bar. No matter how they push it, Facebook isn’t really a search destination. Its new position feels forced.
- The messages, notifications etc area seems a bit cluttered. It’s because of the dominating Search bar. Does it really need to be that big?
- The consistency of the interface when accessing Events or other stuff is nice. It only goes one level deep though.
- The left sidebar feels visually just a little dominating. It’s a bit too wide, and the central column of content feels squeezed.
All in all, it’s ok. It’s nice that the apps have more visibility, but overall it feels compressed and not entirely friendly to use. The worst part is the insistence of pushing search front and centre when it doesn’t really feel like it’s the primary reason to use Facebook. The de-emphasising of lists is disconcerting, and the split attention of online Friends is somewhat jarring.
Facebook Begins Rolling Out New Home Page Design (expect to see lots of hate stories by Monday)
Time to Liberalise Immigration (#government #politics)
(http://startupvisa.com/modified-eb5-visa/)
There’s a really interesting movement going on in the US at the moment calling for the creation of a “Startup Visa”. Broadly speaking, the movement’s founders believe that entrepreneurship is the soul of the US economy but that the immigration laws in the US are acting as a serious constraint on the supply of entrepreneurs into the US economy, and that this in turn is restricting the ability of their economy to create new jobs, products and industries.
Which is all true.
However I think that maybe this doesn’t go far enough. One of the things that strikes me about the current international immigration laws is how arcane they are in general, and how very un-globalised they are. We live in an age where many of the rules of capitalism, such as the flow of money, trade laws and international protections for copyright, are becoming standardised and allowing an interconnected economy to develop. But th movement of people is held back.
For some sectors this presents less of a problem. For example, finance people, fashion models or doctors generally have an easy time of emigrating to wherever their skills are best suited. This is because of a variety of localised arrangements and laws between countries covering small individual needs.
On the other hand, most labourers, craftspeople, technology workers and various other sectors are basically forbidden. In some countries like Canada there are largely open arms to all sectors, but in others like the US the availability of visas to outsiders is a tortuous process which usually involves getting transferred via the company you work for, or whatever. And yet the people who often work hardest, strive to do the best and make something of themselves are immigrants, no matter what their skill-set.
So I think it’s time for countries to come into the 21st century and start placing liberalisation of immigration front-and-centre in their agendas. I don’t think it can all be done at once, but certainly a good start would be for developed nations (like the EU, US, Canada, etc) to adopt liberal economic migration treaties along the model of that currently practised in the European Union.
Broadly, this model allows anyone who is a citizen of a member nation the right to travel to any other member nation and work within its economy free of constraint or sector. That at a stroke would remove the need for startup visas, green cards, archaic control of specific sectors and generate populations of willing workers looking to apply their talents wherever they can succeed.
And eventually in time this arrangement could flow out to other countries (China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc). It’s the smart thing, for population, business, the flow of resources, ideas, entrepreneurship and the overall health of economies to allow people to live and work wherever they choose.
What do you think?
