DotNeil.com

I just read a great post from the Signal Vs. Noise blog (run by the talented 37 Signals guys) giving a quick heads-up on a few nice touches they’ve spotted on some recently visited sites. The best part had to be Flash-based ballpark seating visualisation on the Official Site of The St. Louis Cardinals:

I know nothing about baseball, but I like the visualisation

The top-down perspective of the ballpark let’s you check out the views from most areas of the ground; just click on a seat that takes your fancy, and you’ll be greeted with a photo taken from that area. Number 359 obviously has the best view - but don’t worry, I didn’t spend my entire afternoon browsing through them all….

I bet this is the worst seat in the park from a baseball fan’s point of view.

The next step for the development team has to be live video streams through each of the image loading areas. Imagine how cool that would be?! You could pay for an ‘access all areas’ virtual ticket, and during the game you’d hot seat round to whichever seating position suits you best. I suggested the same thing on the original post, but I don’t think anyone else felt quite the same about the idea as I did.

p.s. If you’re one of the few people who saw what I was working on before Christmas, you probably have a better insight in to why I’m so excited about this innovative use of the bird’s eye perspective!

p.p.s As I was typing this post (and waiting for WordPress to load……) the SvN guys made another interesting post, but this time on an idea for self-destructing media;

So we wondered… Wouldn’t it be cool if you could attach expiration dates to images, blog entries, or anything you put on the web? You could say “in 18 months this picture should be deleted” or “3 years from now delete this blog post.”

My opinion is that employers, recruiters, and HR managers are only becoming more accustomed to finding media on social networking sites that would, in times gone by, have seriously affected a graduate’s chances of winning a job. These days, I don’t think people are so naive as to think that, just because the photos weren’t tagged in Facebook in 2002, that people weren’t getting drunk at University. We just need to stop worrying about this, to stop scouring Facebook for dirt, and to start being more realistic in our expectations of finding a spotless, online candidate persona. I find it strange if I can’t find drunken photos of my friends!