Messages from Usability category

Good Call-To-Action Buttons

The call-to-action button is an important tool in the user experience designer
Publication date: 2009-03-20 more

IxDA to use Drupal

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) , representing an international community of interaction designers, has recently announced plans to re-launch the ixda.org website using Drupal . For those that don't know, the IxDA is a 10,000-strong organization of design professionals. The IxDA supports almost 70 local groups, hosts conferences, and provides education and outreach in support of its mission to advance interaction design. It speaks well of our project that the IxDA selected it a
Publication date: 2009-03-20 more

Web Site Metrics

A metric is used to measure something. In SEO we want to measure the effect of the changes we are making to the website to know we are doing the right things. Ranking used to be seen as a sign that SEO was working and we would rejoice whenever a key-phrase would reach that page [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Gmail Does Something It Should've Done A Long Time Ago

Gmail has been all about improving usability lately. Most recently they've announced a big improvement in this area fixing a problem that has annoyed countless emailers including Googlers themselves. You know how when you get more than one conversation going based on one message, you don't always have time to read each new one? It can get pretty confusing when trying to remember which ones still need to be read when you go back to them. If you mark the whole thing as unread, then you have to
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

The PeC Review: iCharts Has Great Potential

Many online shopkeepers want interactive, Flash-based charts that allow them to compare product features, enumerate benefits, or offer an effective pitch. A new online beta tool lets site owners do just that.The iCharts beta is a web-based, Flash, chart development tool that makes it pretty simple to create, share, and embed interactive charts. Although the beta does have what I consider to be some minor bugs, it clearly has the potential to be a great resource for developing and publishing rela
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Facebook Changes Good for Business

If you
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Let the (Usability) Madness Begin!

It
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Is Your Marketing Department/Agency Robbing You (Banner) Blind?

Let
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

[Web Forms] Build Amazing Online Forms With Wufoo

Forms are used to do a lot of interesting things online, however, unfortunately creating forms which definitely do serve the correct purpose and at the same time are usable is a pretty much up the mill task. Thanks to Wufoo you dont need to worry about this anymore.  Wufoo
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

75+ Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design

In this article tripwire magazine presents an overview of more than 75 excellent free fonts you should consider using for your designs. Not all free Fonts are worth using but the Fonts listed in this article have all been picked out because they are better than the rest.
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Why Website Usability is Important for you

Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system - whether a web site, software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.According to Usability Expert Jakob Nielsen: "On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a web site is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Ecommerce Know-How: Alternative Sources to Acquire Inventory

While many ecommerce businesses trade only in new merchandise, there is a booming market for used, refurbished, and surplus items. Savvy ecommerce merchants can identify niche markets and use public auctions, websites, and classified ads to source valuable inventory for resale. In this Ecommerce Know-How, a recurring Practical eCommerce feature, I will introduce the idea of using auctions and classifieds to find inventory that you can flip quickly and easily for a profit on your own site or on a
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Sales Killer: Cycling important messages on a home page in Flash! Proof from a client case study

March 18th, 2009 by George Aspland We started a Google Adwords PPC campaign for a new client in January. It
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

5 ways to make use of twitter

Its been long now since twitter totally tookover almost every social networking site. Facebook one of the top social networking site has almost revamped its user interface to match like twitter. Some on twitter only said
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Hotspots and Hyperlinks: Using Eye-tracking to Supplement Usability Testing

Summary This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. User performance on two usability tasks with three e-commerce websites is described. Results show that eye-tracking data can be used to better understand how users initiate a search for a targeted link or web object. Frequency, duration and order of visual attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) in particular are informative as supplemental information to standard usability testing in und
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Things I Learned From a Box: Packaging Design Principles for Interactive Design (Part 2)

Yesterday, we discussed the key elements of packaging design, including messaging, presentation, structure, and brand artifacts. Using our
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Southview Design - Minneapolis Landscapers get a makeover (again!)

We are pleased to announce the launch of our latest makeover! Southview Design came to us several years ago (through our friend Kristin Kowler at Genius to Go ) in search of a clean, professional site that reflected the caliber of work which they were producing in landscapes. The new site not only improved their image, but made their team proud to share it. That was the site design
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Minimal Screen Resolution for Application

Have you ever tested your application against uncommon screen resolutions? Let
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

More about the Safari 4 Beta

Two weeks ago I wrote down my first impressions upon downloading the Safari 4 Beta. Over the past 15 days I
Publication date: 2009-03-19 more

Engagement and optimisation: Success Metrics

You hear alot about engagement, and not just in the UX community. How do you engage your website users? What exactly constitutes the different parts of a website
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Things I Learned From a Box: Packaging Design Principles for Interactive Design (Part 1)

The other day, my mom sent me to the store to purchase a new skincare product made by Oil of Olay. I set out on my errand and procured a small tube of mysterious serum, sleekly packaged in distinctive, sculptural, plastic packaging. When I returned home with the goods, however, we made an amusing and shocking discovery: We couldn
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Drupal7 UX Project is Go! - Now's the time to get involved

You may have heard the excellent and very exciting news that following on from our work on Drupal.org, Mark Boulton Design has been contracted to take a look at the User Experience for the upcoming Drupal 7, and I'm very happy to be working with him on this project as well. Work on this project kicked off at the recent Drupalcon, and there are a number of current discussions that would really benefit from getting as many different perspectives and opinions as possible. Please take a moment to
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Participate in Usability Testing for HP

A friend of mine at HP is looking for small business owners (1-20 employees) to participate in some usability testing of online tools for marketing their business. Participants will receive a $50 gift card to Amazon.com or Best Buy, or a discount on design services like brochure creation, for an hour of their time at the HP office in American Fork, Utah. If you're interested, just send a note to Esther at HP. Tags: usability testing utah
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Doors and the Design of Everyday Things

A door that defies basic usage principles Over the past week I have been reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, a book about how product designs can hinder their functionality. Using his background in psychology, Norman explores how people perceive and interact with objects they encounter in their daily life, paying particular attention to how the design of those objects often trip up the user. An example that Norman often refers to is doors. When a person approache
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

100 Great Resources for Design Inspiration

Finding inspiration is not always as simple as it sounds, whether you
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Rate it!

March 18th, 2009 Goto commentsLeave a comment Analyzing responses on a rating scale can pose a challenge because there is no universal standard in measuring each component. We do not know the variation in severity from
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

one usability test is better than none

How Much Can You Learn in 73 Minutes of User Research? describes one persons experience standing on a street corner and observing bike riders. When did you last take some time to watch how people use your library? It is possible to learn quite a bit about what people think of your institution without having to conduct a survey. Why not connect with a few of your work mates and assign some times to record the goings-on at your library or in your department. Then debrief over lunch at the
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Applying anthropological research methods in design processes

As you might have read last week, Ferry kindly invited me to co-write on his blog and share my experiences regarding my final internship at Tam Tam . I am Rosanne Vredenbregt, student of Communication and Multimedia Design at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. 100% Dutch, but I will be writing my stories in English, since I decided to follow the international course. Graduation project What are the functional and graphical consequences when designing for different cultures?
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings

If you need to edit some of the advanced preferences of Firefox, and you need a neater way to get that done, gui:config is right for you.  This extension of Firefox will give you a lot of the
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

How do you get others onboard with using 37signals tools?

There are two common issues people face when trying to get others onboard with using 37signals tools: 1) “The IT department doesn’t like employees doing anything outside of its firewall.” 2) “I love your tools but I can’t get the rest of my team (or my clients) onboard with using them. They keep using email instead because it’s what they already understand.” We’d love to hear solutions you’ve come up with for these trouble spots. For #1, have you gotten your IT deparment to green light 37signals apps? How did you do it? Any suggestions for others who face the same battle? For #2, how do you get busy people/clients to start logging in and using 37signals apps instead of messy email threads, phone calls, or whatever? Any suggestions for others who are in the same position? Leave a comment here or write us at email[at]37signals[dot]com.
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

QUOTE: People who sign up for free services tend

People who sign up for free services tend to resent a company for trying to wring revenue from the business later. —From All That Twitters May Not Be Gold, Analysts Say which claims “the Web 2.0 model of building a product and then figuring out how to monetize it has been largely debunked.”
Publication date: 2009-03-18 more

Stupid users are a myth

As developers we often berate our users for being stupid, but let me ask you something, are you as a developer absolutely certain that the user is stupid and the fault doesn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

5 Tips to Make Your 404 Page More Usable

A 404 Message can be disorienting, but it doesn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

The PeC Review: Elgg Lets Any Business Create an Online Community

Elgg is an open source platform to power any kind of social media community, and it is a tool that online merchants can use to help develop a loyal flow of site traffic. Social media communities similar to Facebook and MySpace are extremely popular. For example, eMarketer, a marketing analysis firm, estimated that more than 44 percent of Internet users would visit a social networking site at least monthly in 2009. What
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Good Website Usability Means Not Making Your Visitors Think

Good websites are designed to be both easy to use and attractive.  When visitors come to a website they don
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Checking Alt attributes - Website Testing Series

One of the cool things in CSS is the ability to add styles to elements with certain attribute values - so you can style based upon the context of an HTML element. During website testing a useful thing to do is to test and make sure that images, where appropriate, have an alt attribute. Having a good alt attribute is not going to change your SEO performance on its own - it will going help make your website more accessible and user friendly. Good alt attributes are part of SEO housekeeping - shou
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Links for 11 March 2009 through 18 March 2009

Stilgherrian
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Your Ad is Only as Effective as your Landing Page

When talking about e-commerce design and usability we often compare web users and customers to monkeys swinging on vines through a dense forest. I wish that one of us at RKG could take credit for coming up with the metaphor, but a well-deserved hat tip belongs to Seth Godin for the concept. In his book, The Big Red Fez , Godin suggests that web surfers are a lot like monkeys: they
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Collecting the little annoyances

In my day to day usage of apps I often run into little annoyances. I know I should be filing bugs but I instead did the next best thing and created a rant usability page that lists the things I wish I could do in an application but couldn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

jQuery Disable On Submit Plugin

This small plugin disables form buttons when the user submits the form. This prevents novice users from double clicking the button and submitting the form twice.
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Accessible Twitter

Accessible Twitter takes Twitter and makes it more, er, accessible. Excellent work! Thanks to @littlelaura for the tip. Possibly related posts: Keeping it in the family Twitter in slides Boris isn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Rethinking Tabs In Firefox 3.2

Like many other features in the software world, we seem to have weared out the tabs. Oliver Reichenstein proposes a browser design, inspired by media management, such that the need for tabs is reduced . Tabs, when overused, get unusable. Oliver
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Microsoft is ignoring web standards and should use its position to promote competition among browsers, the chief technology officer at Opera has said.

The complaint comes as Mozilla, the makers of another rival web browser, declared the
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Design Patterns for Errorproofing

Persuasive technologies are those which are designed to change the attitudes or behaviours of users. Errorproofing, on the otherhand, is concerned not with behavioural change , but in ensuring certain behaviours are met. Errorproof technologies, then, are those which
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Data Gathering in User Research

March 17th, 2009 Goto commentsLeave a comment Moderator: Now I would like to understand how you would switch this device on. Begin at the sound of the buzzer. Let me know when you have completed switching it on.Usability testing is a combination of observing user behavior and gathering explicit quantifiable data from the users. The above scenario tests users on multiple levels.a) How long it would take the user to switch on the device.b) Whether the user is successful in this goal.c) The number
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

7 Common Web Usability Problems

However great you may think your site looks, If it
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

The Wisdom of the Crowd

Every once in a while a site comes up with a new UI (User Interface) concept or idea that forever shifts the paradigm of the market and redefines people
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

What should the homepage do?

Every website has a homepage. But what should the homepage do? What purpose should it serve? The homepage is a lot like the cover of a book. It needs to quickly convey to the user what the purpose of the website is, much like a book cover must convey what genre of book is. It also has to convince the user to spend more time reading and exploring its content. The homepage must inspire the user to go deeper into the site, just like a book cover must convince the browser to read through the bo
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

I Can See Clearly Now, The Glare Is Gone

In the post If You Like Tales From the Glitter Gym , I slammed the design of one of my favorite websites T-Nation . It is sad that his phenomenal web site has such a hideous web design.  TC, if you are reading this post, imagine your writing on a clean readable site like the WSJ or Mike Industries . This afternoon I decided to go searching other opinions on reading light text on a dark background.  I am SO GLAD I did.  Over on 456 Berea St , at the end of the article Light text on d
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Year of Science - JetBlue and Cell Phones

In conjunction with the COPUS Project
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Facebook Rant Pt 2

Apparently I
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Feel better about your body, with Readability

I didn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Usability Testing vs Software Testing

We were asked by a couple of clients last week to wade in on the issue of
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Dell Adamo Live Images, Details, Pricing

We can finally share all the details of the Dell Adamo. It is a 4lbs, 0.65" thick aluminum laptop. We've played with it briefly and we can say that the construction quality is very high. The keyboard also has slightly curved (backlit) keys. The power supply is smaller than the ones found on most laptop, and that's quite a nice surprise. There's not much point in having a super-thin laptop if you have to carry a big power supply with it. Finally, it has a 13.4" 1280x720 display. So far, the only
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Jihad Ammar, Qaym and Closing the Gap Between Classical Media and New Media

March 16 th 2009 I was at www.Qaym.com
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Online convenience for tax payers

RSAWEB is proud to be the hosting partner behind a handy little Free-To-Use web application that affords South African tax payers the convenience of logging their travel related expenses online. The application, Travellogger , was developed by White Wall Web in response to recent stipulation enforced by SARS , which states that effective 1 March 2009, South African tax payers will be required to properly track their travel and related expenses in order to qualify for rebates. Travellog
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

On silly websites, and St. Patrick

Today I was listening to what is becoming my new favourite radio station, BFM 89.9 , and I heard the Marketing Manager for Guinness (well, GAB Sdn Bhd) talking about a range of topics, from the sin tax on alcohol (2nd highest in the world, following Norway!) to what a big deal St. Patrick
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Stupid Users and Usability of UI

Who do you blame for the user
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Important Trends in SEO

Convergence Technology is changing. Every device you buy today has a screen and the ability to do the function of three gadgets you bought last year. This characteristic is known as convergence.   We are seeing convergence in many areas of technology and it is important to consider the effect that it will have on our search [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Latest release candidate of Typolight CMS now available for testing

The Typolight team have released their latest RC for the upcoming Typolight 2.7 release. This release promises to have som exciting new features and usability changes, some of which are shown in the following video that the Typolight team has put up for your viewing pleasure.  You can also play with their demo as well which has been updated to the latest release. Collapsible two-column form layout The most notable change in version 2.7 is the collapsible two-column form layout, which h
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Jakob Nielsen: Kindle Content Must be Kindle-Specific

Jakob Nielsen offers an in-depth look at Kindle formatting best practices: For Kindle, it's certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content . But you can't repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures. [Link included in original post.] ( Via Joe Wikert's Twitter stream ) Related Stories: How to Read any Type of Document on the Kindle (Almost
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Consistent Attributes

Improving a sites usability doesn
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Best of the Web: February - NETTUTS

With the end of February comes a new monthly roundup on the TUTS sites. Each month we like to bring you some of our favorite articles, tutorials, and code snippets from all around the web. Today we will go over the best of the web from February 2009, covering everything from Ruby On Rails to Wordpress tutorials.
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

My Peeps on Twitter

Somehow I
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Webroot Spy Sweeper 6.1.0.107

Webroot Spy Sweeper is award-winning anti-spyware software that effectively detects and safely removes spyware and adware from your PC. Spy Sweeper protects you from spyware
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

8 CSS tips for better linking

In this collection you
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Usability, Style & Cost: Making mHealth Really Work

By Karen Katz, Esq. Director of Business Development, Health, Medtech and e-Health at Mintz Levin
Publication date: 2009-03-17 more

Ask 37signals: How does 37signals use its own products on a day-to-day basis?

Scott Semple asks: Like crack cocaine, we are using a little more of each of your products each day… Now I’m at the point where I have to pause and ask myself, “Is my next piece of communication best disseminated as an email or a comment on a milestone in Basecamp? An email or a note to staff in Backpack? An email or a note in Highrise? An email or a chat message?” I’ve also just enabled the global RSS feeds for each of the above, so I’m starting to fantasize that in-app comments and reviewing RSS may reduce the email glut. Anyway, I would certainly be keen to hear how 37signals uses their own products on a day-to-day, piece-by-piece basis. I suspect that other customers would be keen on reading that as well. First off, there’s no “right” way to decide what goes where. We keep our products simple in part because it allows people to decide for themselves on a system that’s best for their needs. One thing I know plenty of customers do is use Highrise as a sales funnel. Any pre-project communication goes there. Once they win the deal, they move communication with that person/company into a Basecamp project. For us, that method wouldn’t really apply (no sales funnel). I’d say our process is an unstated approach that goes like this: 1) If it’s a comment revolving around an item that’s already posted somewhere, we’ll put it up as a comment to that item. 2) If not, does it relate to one (and only one) project in Basecamp? If so, we’ll generally place the communication within that project. 3) If still no, then we’ll decide between the other apps. If it’s an internal item, it goes in Backpack. If it’s an external conversation with someone outside the company, it goes in Highrise. Some examples… Our conversations about the book go in Basecamp: That way we can share them with our book agent and publishing company easily. If there’s something we want to discuss internally about the book, we post it as a private item so only we can see it. More...
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Five ways to put your netbook to good use around the house

You
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Rude awakening

Have you ever participated in a user test of your product, or at least watched someone brand new try to use the application that you have built without any training? I recently had the opportunity to do just that, and boy, was it an eye opener!
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Sites Without Menus: Do You Really Need a Main Nav?

Is Navigation Useful? Jakob Nielsen posed that question in an Alertbox article from 2000. He came to the conclusion that
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Ergodesign Forum: Conference on Ergonomics in Product Design

From June 8 to 10, 2009 the Ergonomics in Design subcommittee of the International Ergonomics Association ( IEA ) is organizing the ErgoDesign Forum in Lyon, France. If I understand the somewhat peculiar text on the website correctly, the goal of the event is to stimulate the exchange of knowledge on ergonomics in design between the various disciplines that are involved in product design, such as marketing, management, quality management, manufacturing, but of course also design and ergonomi
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Best Practices for Designing a Social News Website

How do you get your daily news these days? Well
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Motion J3400: video demo, breakdown & accessories

We may only have found out about the Motion J3400 rugged Tablet PC earlier this morning , but Rob Bushway over at GottaBeMobile has been putting it through its paces for the past week or so.  That means a two-part video overview and plenty of pictures, including some of the J3400 broken down to show the ruggedization inside.   Demo video & gallery of the J3400 after the cut Considering the J3400 is less than an inch thick, Motion have packed in a lot.  Rob
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Review: iPhone Apps for Kids - iPhone Maths Games from Anusen

This week I have chosen to review four applications, all from the same developer because for the last three weeks my children have played these games every night. They are engaging for primary aged children. These apps make math fun. They are improving my children's test results at school. And, the developer is not asking a ridiculous price for them. They are between $1.19 and $2.49 And based on that I'm pleased to share them with GeekDad readers. Four iPhone Maths Games from Anusen
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

New facebook interface fails usability test

Over the weekend I was re-organizing my home office and came across Steve Krug
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

The age of stupid

Something in Alistair Campbell's blog caught my eye. He, like many others, was lamenting the changes to Facebook's interface . Last night, I was trying to put a message on Alina's wall to thank her for sending me a Canadian review of my novel, and for doing the New Statesman piece. It went up as a status update. So then I put up something lamenting my failure to differentiate between a message and an update, and added as an afterthought ... 'and where did this new [Facebook] design come
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

How to be a Program Manager

Good reading: How to be a Program Manager
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

Emerging Mobile Technologies

UnknownMarch 15, 2009Usability ProfessionalsTags: Band width, design on the mobile devices, Mobility - Opera spans from the former USSR, Third World Countries, people who need mobility sharply contradict those views in the US.- Widgets should be built for cross media or device types, opening the device types on WEP, which has a huge potential in third world countries.Why is the mobile web interesting? Mobile web is a billion people, or astounding users, of which 80% of those users have mobile
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

EverGreen

Are you ready for an invasion of adorable animals? The invasion has begun with these cute alternatives to all things Hello Kitty. The new Chinese Horoscope MP3 players from EverGreen are big on cute, small on usability. Buy them all and you
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

EverGreen's Chinese Horoscope MP3 players begin their adorable invasion

Looking for some equally cute alternatives to all the Hello Kitty gear out there? Then you may want to consider these new Chinese Horoscope MP3 players from EverGreen, which sacrifice only a tiny bit of usability for a whole lot of adorability. You will get some actual, if not entirely intuitive, controls on the rear, however, along with an adequate 2GB of storage space, but you'll apparently have to make do with just five hours of play time. Then again, at less than $30 each, you could just col
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

XenApp Testing

Testing is the most important stage of any project, it allows us to iron out the
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

10 Things That Suck About The New Facebook

Just eight short months ago, Facebook redesigned the home page for a logged in user. At the time, I bashed on the News Feed, as it made a poor use of whitespace and seemed haphazard and disheveled. Facebook took to repair and tighten the design down a good deal, and I grew to find it functional, informative, and useful. Facebook began rolling out their new design two days ago, and it
Publication date: 2009-03-15 more

Facebook Doesn

So, waiting perhaps 36 hours more than some people seemed to have to wait to get their Facebook update rollout, I
Publication date: 2009-03-15 more

Safari iPhone bookmarklets: Clunky setup, but very useful

iPhone apps are cool, but sometimes bookmarklets are helpful, too. (Image by Victor Svensson via Flickr) As an avid iPhone user, I love my apps ! I use several of them daily, including Omnifocus , GroceryZen , Twittelator Pro , Google Mobile , iBART , and Google Maps . Apps are not enough, however. First of all, some online services I use (like Gruvr or My511 , nudge nudge) don
Publication date: 2009-03-15 more

Arguments for the Usage of Personas

Jeroen van Geel from Johnny Holland (Interaction Design focussed blog) wrote quite an interesting article about personas, titled Why shouldn
Publication date: 2009-03-15 more

Winning the 7 Second Race

Whether you are a sprinter or marathon runner the race online is fast and furious. The internet is gigantic and your visitors are an impatient bunch. 7 seconds can make or break the sale. Before you continue reading, close your eyes and count out 7 seconds, because that how long you have to turn a website visitor into a customer. You have Only 7 seconds to capture your customers attention Did you know that you only have 7 seconds to capture the attention of a visitor before they decide
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

The PeC Traffic Report: Asian Survey Provides Insight Into Search Habits

From time to time it is useful to take a look at other industries to see how they are doing business and to glean tips for boosting web traffic to your own ecommerce site.In this edition of The PeC Traffic Report we
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

Incorporating Usability into Airport Design

Last week, I received a press release for the expansion of the Abu Dhabi International Airport .  In it they noted:
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

New Facebook: Seriously

I don
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

FedEx

FedEx Courier: Sign here. Me: Sure. Hey, how do you like this device? Do you mind showing me how it works? FedEx Courier: This thing? I hate this thing. The UI is decidedly utilitarian
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

Me pimpin

Cross-post from my Mapanui blog , because I can, right? Me pimpin
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

StixCampNewstead - Gian Wild

Gian Sampson Wild works in accessibility at Monash University and has been heavily involved in web and accessibility standards development, including the eGovernment web accessibility toolkit for Victorian Government. The point of adhering to accessibility standards is to ensure that people with disabilities are able to achieve the same objective with a website as a person without a disability. This requirement is embodied in the 1992 Disability Discrimination Act (C
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

Image searchers are much different than regular searchers

This is a really interesting video from Peter Linsley , a Product Manager at Google Image Search. He explains some of the fundamental differences between regular Google searchers and Google Image searchers: Google Image searchers look all over the page and are not necessarily looking for the #1 result. If they find an image in the lower right or left corner that interests them, they will click through. They also go very deep into the result set, looking for images. He also goes into some
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

Safari 4

I
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

On Writing: Before you apply to this lab...

There are certain places that people expect text to be rote, boring, and dry. When you come in with some humanity instead, it really stands out. Example: Sönke Johnsen’s “Advice For Potential Graduate Students,” a wonderful piece of writing that is given to lab applicants. An excerpt: In many ways you will turn into your advisor. Advisors teach very little, but instead provide a role model. Consciously and unconsciously, you will imitate your advisor. You may find this hard to believe now, but fifteen years from now, when you find yourself lining up the tools in your lab cabinets just like your advisor did, you
Publication date: 2009-03-14 more

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability by Trenton Moss A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

iPhone Navigation

I
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Putting the wrecking ball to the UI

A couple of weeks ago, I loaded the Scott Rosenberg
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Insights: The Case for Use Cases

Website design to some people is a little like a secret, magic box. You tell someone what you want and then presto-change-o, out pops a website, champagne falls from the heavens, and you win all sorts of awards and are gratified by the applause of your peers and colleagues. It never works that way. It actually takes a lot of foresight and planning to build a website that meets the strategic needs of an organization. At the risk of oversimplifying, doing this requires understanding: what the
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

The most powerful word is no

It’s so easy to say yes. Yes to yet another feature, yes to an overly optimistic deadline, yes a mediocre design, yes, yes, yes. We all want to be loved. But the love won’t keep you warm for long when you’ve taken on yet another obligation that you don’t whole-heartedly believe in. You very quickly become trapped in a pit of guilt when the stack of things you’ve said yes to loom so high that you can’t even see the things you really should be doing. That’s not a good way to live or work. Which is why you have to start getting into the habit of saying no. No to things that just don’t fit, no to things that just aren’t the most important right now, and no to many things that simply don’t cut it. It’s incredibly rare that I’ve actually regretted saying no, but I dread my yes’s all the time. Use the power of no to get your priorities straight. Take the brief discomfort of confrontation up front and avoid the long regret down the line.
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

PHOTO: Preview of the new 37signals.com launching

Preview of the new 37signals.com launching soon.Blue Sharpie on inkjet paper.
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

QUOTE: Speaking to a recruiter friend of mine recently

Speaking to a recruiter friend of mine recently, I mentioned that job titles in the “experience” field have always been hard to understand. What’s the difference between all of these? user experience designer user experience analyst interaction designer user interaction designer visual designer information architect usability specialist —Mark Hurst, Good Experience Newsletter, March 12, 2009.
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

PHOTO: Where do you turn when you need "Happy Birthday

Where do you turn when you need “Happy Birthday, Sam” spelled out on a red velvet cake in binary? Well, Tipsy Cake, of course. We can’t thank them enough for complying with our unusual request so elegantly! Make sure to give them a call when you need an awesome nerdy cake.
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

New Videos Debut on MSG Today, Kicking Off With GyPSii; Why (Location) Context Could be King

Regular readers will recall that MSG has partnered with bnetTV to cover industry events such as CTIA and, more recently, Mobile World Congress (MWC). The team did an awesome job, producing 200+ interviews. I focused on analysis, and conducted some 20 interviews with senior executives at companies including abphone , BuzzCity , Movius, Gracenote , Mob4Hire , GyPSii , AdMob , BuddyMob , Gigafone , BubbleMotion , Visto, JumpTap , and SurfKitchen (in no particular order). From Ju
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Usability and Your Website - Time to take a critical look

Your site is fine you say . It is not hard to figure out how to use it you say. You designed it yourself, and you have been building sites for years. There are no known problems with the site. Here is something I will say; I bet your site is failing your visitors at least 50% of the time. Understand the value, and learn the basic methodology of usability testing in this four-part post. Understanding Usability Testing I think most of us understand what usabil
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Ten New Great Ecommerce Ideas

Practical eCommerce recently asked 50 industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce firm. Here
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Linkdump for March 12th

Follow The Oregon Trail on Your iPhone at TheAppleBlog: "Maya has died of dysentary." I love this game! (tagged: games iphone todo ) Tab click-through areas at Manton Reece (tagged: ui usability todo ) Happy Birthday Krakatoa! at Information Junk (via Julia) (tagged: reptile surreal weird blog ) JsMag the magazine for JavaScript developers (tagged: via:fogus javascript webdev todo ) LiveQuartz at RhapSo
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Contributing to WordPress, Part I: Development

A week or two ago at WordCamp Denver , I gave a presentation about some plans to create more opportunities for people to contribute to the WordPress open source project. The icon design contest was such a success that it seems clear we need to come up with ways for non-developers to contribute their talents and skills to WordPress. Since the launch of 2.7, we
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Sixth Sense Seamless Technology

Ted continues to be cutting edge and exciting. The idea of having pertinent, semantically appropriate information literally at your fingertips in the moments you need it to make a decision about your next action is what we really want. This technology could make it happen. Its called Sixth Sense and is being developed by Fluid Interfaces [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Episode #83: Voice Recognition Software

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers.  This week's word is: Voice Recognition Software . We want you to join the discussion.  There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show.  The call in number is located in
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

HTML 5 Canvas Game Demo

U should hav latest FireFox to see your future, i mean this demo.
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Less online hurdles = more egovernment customers

The complexity of screens and the registration and sign-in processes for some Australian egovernment (online) services disturbs me. In the commercial world I lived by a simple rule of thumb, on average each hurdle I erected between a customer and their goal reduced the number of customers who reached their goal by 30%. To visually demonstate, Hurdles 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Customers 1,000,000 700,000 490,000 343,000 240,100 168,070 117,649 82,354 57,648 40,354 28,248 Percentage usin
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Stop Internet Pollution

If users don
Publication date: 2009-03-13 more

Make Sure Your Domain Works Without the

As I process more and more business cards over at my new startup, one thing I
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

The Purpose, Power, and Presence of Design by Ryan Burrell

Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Context free spelling correction

When sending a meeting invitation, Outlook checks my spelling. It prompts me to correct a possible spelling error. However, I can't see, or switch to, the context in which the text is found. Without seeing, I can't tell if the spelling needs correcting. How about displaying the text in question in context?
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Can usability be worth $4/form submission?

Recently I decided it was. People generally agree investing in usability for Websites and Web applications is a
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

In-Your-Face Web Ads:The Next Step?

I just read in the Los Angeles Times today about the new " in-your-face Web ad formats ." According to the article, these new formats are "designed to be both more obtrusive and interactive." There are 3 types of these new supersize ads Fixed panel- which looks like part of the page but scrolls up and down with the user XXL box- which allows users to turn pages within the ad Pushdown- which opens to display a larger ad The reason for these new type of ads? The reason is because
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Important Note for Technola RSS Subscribers - Please Read

On Thursday March 12th we
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

When you simply get it wrong

It
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

cxpartners at South by South West (SXSW)

cxpartners are off to SXSW. Me and Giles Colborne , cxpartners MD, are spending the next week in Austin, Texas for SXSW the largest interactive festival in the world. If you want to talk user experience with a European angle or just say hi and catch-up just drop me an SMS +447905 33 4163 or contact me
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

A bit more about me

I
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Stupid Passengers and Usability of UI

When you develop UI, it has to be intuitive. If a user does something wrong,  the first reaction of rookie developers is,
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Overnight success takes years

From the outside, it often seems like certain companies or products just blow up unannounced and become huge overnight. In reality, it rarely works like that. It certainly didn’t for us. When we launched Basecamp five years ago, I think we had less than 2,000 people subscribed to our RSS feed. Add a few thousand more who were just checking the site manually and it’s probably reasonable to guess that our initial audience was below 5,000 people. By today’s standards, that’s tiny! And that audience had even taken a few years to build. But it was what we had and it was plenty to launch a very successful suite of products. It wasn’t enough to make us blow up overnight, though. To get today’s levels we’ve relied on the compound interest of attention. Every year a steady stream of new readers and customers have joined the flock while still keeping the bulk from the year before. That’s why it annoys me dearly when our advice is discounted with “that only works for you because you’ve got this massive success to roll from”. That “massive” success was built convert by convert. Nobody handed it to us. We’re sharing exactly how we got there and hoping that our experiences and discoveries will help get you to where you want to be as well. So stop thinking that you can’t get there because you don’t have a huge audience already. Start building that audience today. Start getting people interested in what you have to say. Then in a few years time you’ll get to chuckle about your overnight success as well.
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Harney & Sons Guide to Tea

I love good tea. You should too. Tea is full of history, flavor, and mood. It’s a fascinating beverage. There are hundreds of variations, but all white, green, black, oolong, and pu-erh come from a single tree: The camellia sinensis. Then you can get into the science of it. All the different flavors and aromas (around 600 have been identified) come from a mashup of six chemical compounds: color pigments, amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, caffeine, and polyphenols. Different combinations, different flavors. How cool is that? Through the cultivated combination of climate, sunlight (full or shaded), time, damage (oxidation), and fixing technique (steam, dry heat, etc), you end up with an incredible world of choice, style, flavor, and color. Even the brewing water temperature has a huge impact on flavor. Getting the water temperature right has more to do with enjoying tea than almost anything else. It’s why most people don’t like green tea — too-hot water scalds the tea and turns it bitter. If you’re interested in reading more about the history, the science, the flavor profiles of popular variations, and the tasting notes of one of the true experts of tea, check out The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea book. The hardcover is beautiful, but it also comes on the Kindle. It’s the best balanced book I’ve found on the subject. I hope it helps you appreciate tea in a whole new way.
Publication date: 2009-03-12 more

Readability fights back against "today's cram-all-the-ads-on-one-page Web"

An article at CNNMoney.com: Those ads move too. Same article after Readability bookmarklet cleans it up: The problem: If workarounds that ignore ads take off, how will good content get funded? Then again, there’s got to be a better way than the headache-inducing status quo. It seems doubtful that visual punishment of your customers is a sustainable business model.
Publication date: 2009-03-11 more

There's always time to launch your dream

“I’d love to start a company / become a great programmer / write an awesome blog, but there’s just not enough time in the day!” Bullshit. There’s always enough time, you’re just not spending it right. Now that’s some tough love, but I’m sick and tired of hearing “no time” as an excuse for why you can’t be great. It really doesn’t take that much time to get started, but it does take wanting it really bad. Most people just doesn’t want it bad enough and protect their ego with the excuse of time. This excuse is particularly depressing when it comes from students. Oh, I have so many classes. Oh, I have so much home work. There’s simply no time to learn outside of school. Then you’re doing it wrong! Never let your schooling interfere with your education, someone clever once said. Being willing to sacrifice at the edges is one of the most important skills you’ll ever learn. I’ve received plenty of Bs and even Cs for classes that I was incredibly proud of because they came from hardly no time spent at all. Time that I could then spend on reading my own curriculum, starting my own projects, and running my own businesses. And I did. During my undergrad, I created Instiki, Rails, Basecamp, and got on the path to being a partner at 37signals. Do you think I could fit all that and still get straight As and have lots of time left over for playing World of Warcraft? No. If you want it bad enough, you’ll make the time, regardless of your other obligations. Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s too easy and, to be honest, nobody cares on the other side. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come through.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Sell Your By-products

The software and web industry can learn a lot from the lumber industry, the oil business, and corn and soybean farmers. They take waste and turn it into hefty profits. The lumber industry sells what used to be waste — sawdust, chips, and shredded wood — for a pretty profit. Today you’ll find these by-products in synthetic fireplace logs, concrete, ice strengtheners, mulch, particle board, fuel, livestock and pet bedding, winter road traction, weed killing and more. Ultra refined petroleum finds its way into plastics, cosmetics, food, rubber, synthetic fiber, insecticides, fertilizers, heart valves, toothpaste, detergents, waxes… The list goes on. Corn and soybeans are refined and processed into just about anything these days. By noon you’ve probably consumed a few pounds of corn energy without even knowing it. It’s hidden in your food in the form of HFCS, xanthin gum, dextrin, maltodextrin, MSG, or ethanol in your gas tank. By-products Everything listed above is a by-product. Lumber was originally cut for boards for building. Oil was originally drilled for fuel. Corn and soybeans were originally farmed for food. But today these industries have figured out how to use the waste to make even more products. They’re squeezing, pressurizing, refining, heating, cooling, and otherwise processing leftovers into money. We’re lucky and not so lucky In some ways, we’re lucky to be software people. We have easy jobs. We think, we type, we move the mouse around. We make stuff by putting pixels in the right place and words in the right order. Yeah, that’s pretty much what we do. But that also makes it tough to spot our by-products. A lumber company sees their waste. They can’t ignore their sawdust. But we don’t see ours. Or we don’t even think that software development produces any by-products. That’s myopic. When you make something you make something else When you make something you make something else. Just like they say you can not not communicate, you can not not make something else. Everything has a by-product. Observant and creative entrepreneurs spot these by-products and see opportunities. More...
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Design in Progress: Product bubbles

A few weeks ago Jamie posted a screenshot of a concept we were exploring to help someone choose the right 37signals product. It looked like this: The idea was a series of tightly arranged conversation bubbles pointing to one of four different product icons (one for Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire). Each bubble would contain a use case. “Keep track of all the hours spent during the project” would point to Basecamp, for example. It wasn’t a final design, it was just an exploration. We liked the spirit and friendliness and essence of it, but the execution was messy. We learned that we liked the bubbles. That’s what quick explorations are for. v2 Last week we wrapped up another exploration using the bubbles. We’re not going with this direction, but we thought it would be interesting to share the progress. Here’s what we came up with. Instead of random bubbles tightly packed, we went with a major bubble per product and then 2 secondary bubbles on either side. The major bubble was the big picture idea of the product and the secondary bubbles were key uses or features we wanted to communicate. Note: This is not final copy — it’s good enough copy for the exploration. We liked this, but we still felt it was a little messy and lacked focus. A lot of imagery and shapes to communicate a few things per product. But, this design lead us to what we think is the right design. We’re keeping the bubbles but reworking them again. We hope to have the new 37signals home page redesign live within a week. Thanks for everyone’s feedback thus far. We hope you like the behind the scenes “Design in Progress” posts.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

9 great UX presentations to help you build better website

User Experience presentation to help you build better website
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Bargain Basement Usability Testing

The subject of usability generates a dichotomy between what we think and what we do. We know it is good to focus on usability. We need only look at Apple and the iPod to know that it provides tangible bene
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Balsamiq Mockups

I had a really great time this morning doing some actual work with Balsamiq Mockups (if you followed me on Twitter , you would know about this by now
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Kindle2 Usability Review

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen takes on Amazon
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Good News on Wall Street

Who says there
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Social Media Expert Burnout Syndrome (SMEBS)

Marcus Brown investigates a sad ailment of our technology-driven world, Social Media Expert Burnout Syndrome (SMEBS): Similar Posts: Help Victims Of Hurricane Katrina Blogging For Jobs - Interview Notes links for 2006-08-14 Google Trends Gets MUCH More Useful For PR Pros Targeted Internet E-mail Marketing
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

A Glimpse Ahead

Microsoft created a video montage envisioning the technology of tomorrow. Watch it and look for examples of how current prototypes may evolve in the years ahead: (Via: officelabs.com ) Related:  Augmented Reality
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Easyjet: the most senior friendly airline ever!

I was booking some flights when I was faced with this drop down list for selecting the date of issue of the passport: I wonder how a passport issued in 1850 will look like. I think it won't be possible to read it in nowadays electronic readers. It will need manual inspection (carefully, so that it doesn't break apart). But most importantly, the real question is: how old is a person whose passport was issued in 1850? Assuming he/she was 18 years then, that person would be 177 years old toda
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Complete Beginner

Information architecture is an often misunderstood job title. Are they designers? developers? managers? All of the above? In this article we'll discuss what information architecture is, why it's related to usability, and what are the common tools/programs used in information architecture.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

No more lolcats in tech presentation, plz!

I love cats as much as the next person, but this fad to include LOLcats in every tech presentation was stale a year ago. Today it’s downright rotten. I wonder when the smell will be stark enough that even those putting slides together at the finishing line will think twice.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

How did the web lose faith in charging for stuff?

We’ve been talking about the basic wonder of putting a price on your product for such a long time that it almost seems trite at this point. I certainly thought that point would have lost propulsion long ago, but I keep being surprised by the contrary. It seems that the web has been so thoroughly infected by the memes of “the future is free”, “we’ll all live from ads”, “VC money will get us there”, and “acquisition is nirvana” that it has almost lost its faith in the simpler ways. I’ve been approached by a great many entrepreneurs since the Startup School talk who all tell a similar story. They found a niche, made a product for it, and then thought “what the hell, let’s do something crazy!” and decided to charge money for it. To their surprise, it worked and they’re paying the bills and growing. While that’s fantastic, it’s also perverse. There shouldn’t be any element of surprise unveiled from that order of actions. It should come as a natural conclusion, but it doesn’t. Because the startup culture has caught this disease that there’s something unnatural in being profitable from the get-go. That making money early means you won’t make it big later. It’s depressing and it’s wrong, but I also think it’s going to change. I think the days of the traditional San Francisco startup approach are numbered. It’ll be flushed down the drain along with CDO’s and zero-down mortgages. On the other side we’ll have a world where having a price will be the expected. A world where Jason can’t make headlines saying “free is not the future”. A simpler world where most people, even on the web, will live from direct customers. I look forward to that day.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Introducing the ProjectSearch Rails plugin:

Two years ago I was feeling some pain. I was trying to find a particular helper method in one of our applications, and full-text search across an entire project was not easy to do, by default. I was using TextMate at the time, which has a full-project search feature, but unless you took the time to actually configure your project just right, it would search everything (log files, Rails, etc) and that was painful. Furthermore, I was at the command-line a lot, and it wasn’t very fun to have to switch back to TextMate just to search the project. What I typically did was just issue a suitably arcane Unix command via the command-line: grep "def some_helper_function" app/helpers/*.rb That’s not too bad, really, though it gets tedious when you do it often. What’s worse is when you want to find everywhere in your project that you reference that method: find app lib -name '*.rb' \ -o -name '*.rhtml' \ -o -name '*.rjs' \ -o -name '*.rxml' | \ xargs grep some_helper_function That’s where the pain begins to feel crippling. So, about that time I created a utility script, called (unimaginatively) “find”, which essentially was a thin wrapper around find+xargs+grep. Instead of the above, it let me simply say: script/find some_helper_function However, I could scope the search, too, for narrower (and thus faster) searches: script/find helper "def some_helper_function" It turned out to be so handy that we’ve since copied it to nearly all of our projects. For two years I’ve relied on this script, to the point that when I started a new (personal) project this last week, I really felt the lack. So I got permission from David to release it as a Rails plugin. I rewrote it a bit so it doesn’t rely on find, xargs, or grep (so it can be used on more than just Unix platforms), added some simple documentation, and posted it on GitHub. Behold: the ProjectSearch plugin for Rails. And if you happen to be a fellow Vimmer, you might find this vim script handy, which uses script/find to search in your project: function! RailsScriptSearch(args) let l:savegrepprg = &grepprg let l:savegrepformat = &grepformat try set grepprg=script/find set grepformat=%f:%l:%m execute "grep " . a:args finally execute "set grepformat=" . l:savegrepformat execute "set grepprg=" . l:savegrepprg endtry endfunction " search with explicitly provided arguments command! -n=? Rgrep :call RailsScriptSearch('<args>') " search for the word under the cursor map <leader>rg :silent call RailsScriptSearch(expand("<cword>"))<CR>:cc<CR> " search for the method definition of the word under the cursor map <leader>rd :silent call RailsScriptSearch(expand("'def .*<cword>'"))<CR>:cc<CR> Enjoy!
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

PHOTO: I can't believe American Airlines' booking

I can’t believe American Airlines’ booking panel still looks like this in 2009. Blows out on the right side in Safari. The “Go” button is 19×12 pixels. Everything either feels too squashed or too airy. And check out the < Enhanced flag next to “Price & Schedule”. Looks like one of those “we’ll tidy that up later” things that never got tidied up.
Publication date: 2009-03-10 more

Writing Decisions: Anticipating readers

We’re busy writing our new book. So far we’ve handed in our first draft and are now working on the second draft. One bit of feedback the publisher gave us: “It will be important to anticipate readers
Publication date: 2009-03-09 more

Letting things go

Capistrano had been my baby since mid-2005. It was a fun project, and all the more gratifying because it was fairly popular as a deployment tool for Rails applications. But this last year I’d begun to notice something. I wasn’t enjoying Capistrano as much as I used to. It had become a chore to work on. It already did everything we at 37signals needed it to do, everything and more. I didn’t feel any need to extend it, and yet bug reports, feature requests, and patches still trickled in. I began to resent each issue that was raised. I began to resent Capistrano itself, because it stood between me and other projects that I wanted to participate in. And yet, Capistrano was my baby. I couldn’t just leave it! How can you just walk away from something that you’ve put almost four years of blood and sweat into? Is it even possible? More...
Publication date: 2009-03-09 more

All-in-one I-have-no-idea

My parents old all-in-one printer just crapped out so it’s time for a new one. They asked me to make a recommendation. I’m like “Sure, no problem.” I figure I know enough about this stuff to check a few out and find the right one for them. Turns out I’m an idiot. And so is everyone else who’s looking for a printer like this. Well, we’re not really idiots, but we sure feel like it. Buying a printer remains the last confusing part of modern computing. Do I choose the MP620 or the PIXMA MP480 or the C4580 or the MX700 or the J6480 or the P2055, or the MFC-8460N or the SCX-4500W. More...
Publication date: 2009-03-09 more

Install phpmyadmin using wget on godaddy or other hosts

Recently i shifted to godaddy hosting and i realized that godaddy
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

What Are Good Design Foundations with XHTML?

Good design foundations with XHTML are primarily the knowledge and principles that any web developer / web designer should take into account while designing the front end to a website or to an application. Many applications exist in this day and age, the application that stands out the most is the application that relies heavily on a great user interaction ratio. When visitors are using your web application, you really have about 5 to 10 seconds of whats called
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

Reencoded

I
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

MVC Framework Commentary from WickedSciences Resources Q&A on Facebook

WickedSciences was recently met with an obstacle to getting some scalability consideration into an interface which we
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

Website Usability

Website Usability
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

25 Reasons You Don

When you were in High school did you do the same things that everyone else did ? I know I didn
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

The Big Honkin' Lens usability question

Since Rick was kind enough to bring his Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens rental over for me to look at, I got to experience an additional data point in my on-and-off quest to figure out what makes for a good handling camera/lens combination. This has been bugging me since the first trip I took with the EOS 40D and 28-135mm lens: while the camera body itself falls perfectly in my hand, there is something about the balance of the combination that feels uncomfortable after a while. The EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Mac
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

Library Usability Links 3/7/09

Noupe has a fun list of 40 useful & handy designer
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

Usability Mistakes In Web Design

Mar 8, 2009Web DesignBy now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy your visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them, with smart design decisions. Here are 9 usability problems that websites commonly face, and some recommended solutions for each of them.Usability Mistakes In Web DesignTags: blunders, mistakes, problems, solutions,
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

A Little Style

So what
Publication date: 2009-03-08 more

FME Evangelist #28: Inspector Gadget

Contents: FME2009: The Small Stuff, Transformer Defaults: A Reminder and An Update, FME2009 Example: MeasureExtractorToZ, Your Spy at Safe: Inspector Gadget, Sketchup! Did I see that right? Feature Types to Read: Now More Dynamic! 2009 FME International User Conference: Update. This Friday afternoon (Pacific Time) the FME Evangelist gives you some weekend reading on the top FME2009 updates you probably never noticed, and drops some very hot-off-the-press information your way regarding a
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

3 Ways To Get Rid Of The Vista Taskbar

The Windows task bar is in itself a minimalist solution to the problem of a usable GUI OS. However it is not everyone
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

Web Interfaces: Not just about the hockey stick, people.

I love the variety of purpose-driven interfaces that you can leverage to deliver info on the web successfully: This, and a heck of a lot more, here.--- Thanks for subscribing to my feed. Check out the whole shebang at the Notchcode Blog.
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

9 must know pitfalls in web hosting

It
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

A Rant on Validation

Coding Horror: HTML Validation: Does It Matter? : Interesting comments from Jeff Atwood about HTML validation and whether or not it matters. The whole HTML validation exercise is questionable, but validating as XHTML is flat-out masochism. Only recommended for those that enjoy pain. Or programmers. I can
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

Top 25 common programming bugs every tester should know

Just a quick note to share a useful resource with you. Just came across a good article
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

CCHIT Does Not Measure Usability, Implementation Service, Product Maintenance, Technical and Application Support

A very passionate poster on EMRUpdate recently found something anyone familiar with CCHIT already knew. It
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

Progress

Either a page is going to load or it isn
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

Toolbarize Wordpress Plug-in

Well - here it is. As promised earlier, my first ever software release into the open source world is an adaption of Eric Meyer
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

Usability Newsletter is Published

The latest edition of Usability Interface is now live. Usability Interface is a quarterly newsletter about web usability. If you
Publication date: 2009-03-07 more

jQuery Masked Input Plugin- Increase usability by using input masks on text fields

Summary The jQuery masked input plugin lets you improve the form filling experience by providing an elegant solution to inputting data for fields such as date and telephone number, etc. Use a single text box with built in formatting cues and achieve effective error prevention instead of using the usual combination of dropdowns or a calendar date picker. How do you let users input date in your form? The usual method While designing a form that requires the user to enter date, you probab
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Clearly on a Fun Page

I thought I would expand a little about my last poll, Logo Link. The question was
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Some tips to improve the usability of your website

Would you like to find out what those-in-the-know have to say about Website Design? The information in the article below comes straight from well-informed experts with special knowledge about Website Design. No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally. The first method is to make sure the t
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

11 Reasons Why Your App Sucks

If you're using an "Under Construction" sign, you might want to read this and learn something...
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Human Factors Issues with Voting Systems

On Tuesday, Kim Zetter posted at Wired.com about a California Secretary of State report (.pdf) investigating 197 tallied ballots that were lost during the November 4th, 2008 general election in Humboldt County. In essence, the report states that a
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

WordPress iPhone app

What a wonderfully usable iPhone app that wordpress have managed to roll out. I literally signed in about 60secs ago and I
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Cognitive entropy & the Paradox of Choice

E very now and then, I stumble upon a website in search for something. Now, since the Internet is such a vast place to search something in, and since we usually give our browsing of the Internet a limited amount of time, if you find yourself in the condition of searching something, speed is many times a preferrable quality to have than the accuracy of the research. That
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Usable

What is it that makes some really good things, idea
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Readability

Readability is the greatest thing ever. It
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Google world

Well, I
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Southwest and how limiting options can save you money

Have you seen the weapons prisoners make out of soap, spoons, or whatever they can get their hands on? It
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

QUOTE: I'm very opinionated. When I was at art college

I’m very opinionated. When I was at art college, the teachers who helped me were not the ones I agreed with, or the ones who encouraged me, but the ones who took very strong positions. Because if someone does that, you can find your own position in relation to it: what is it that I don’t agree with? In the studio I want to articulate a position clearly enough so that other people can use it – or chuck it away if they don’t want it. — In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of manoeuvre. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic and stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people. -
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

A couple of new things in Basecamp: Work with milestones on the Dashboard + Writeboard email notifications

This weekend we pushed a couple of new features to Basecamp. One was long overdue (email notifications on Writeboards), and the other is a sign of things to come (working with Milestones on the Dashboard). Milestones When you log into Basecamp you are dropped onto the Dashboard. The Dashboard is information rich but functionally poor. There’s a lot to look at but not a lot to do. We want to change that. The first thing we wanted to tackle was milestones. Milestones show up in a few places on the Dashboard, but mostly you’ll see them right at the top of the screen. They are either overdue or they’re due in the next 14 days. Prior to this update, if you wanted to change the date or check off a milestone you had to click on the milestone. Then you’d be taken deep into the project so you could do your thing. That’s fine if you only have one thing to do, but if you want to complete a few milestones or move a couple back because the schedule changed it was a hassle. You had to move back and forth between project and Dashboard repeatedly. It was click consuming and frustrating. No longer. Watch the video to see how we solved this problem: This is the first step to “flattening” Basecamp. We want to bring more functionality to the Dashboard so you don’t have to click deep into a project to take care of common tasks. We’re exploring more ways to implement this technique in more places. More...
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Ask 37signals: How many hours should I work per week?

Alexander Borisenko asks: We are a small, early stage startup from Russia that is getting ready to get out of the concept phase into development. Coming from an investment banking background of 18 hour days…sometimes I start to question if we are doing enough, if we have to be working on weekends, etc… And although after starting to keep track of my time actually working I realized that 10-11 hour days are just as effective if done right, it still would be extremely helpful to know if successful company like yours works on weekends and on average, how many hours a day. I really hope I can get an answer from you on that, as it would solve the last big puzzle that I have before starting execution. 37signallers can set their own schedules but I’d say, on average, we work a typical workday (8 hours) and we don’t work weekends. (Unless we’re really feeling a project and don’t want to stop. Then we’ll take that inspiration and run with it.) But normally, it’s a typical workweek. Investment bankers may work 18 hour days…but look at the state of the investment banking business. It’s not the quantity of hours you work, it’s how you spend the hours you do work and what you’re working on that matter. Too many people think they have to work 80-100 hour weeks. They think,
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

How to attain inbox zero with Highrise Tasks

How I use Highrise Tasks to “snooze” emails and keep my inbox empty. Inbox zero. It’s like a holy grail. There’s a badge for those who attain it. There are tons of blog posts by people like Merlin Mann and Mark Hurst telling you how to get there. And today in the NY Times: “An Empty In-Box, or With Just a Few E-Mail Messages? Read On.” It outlines four options for dealing with an email: archive it, respond to it, forward it, or hold it for later. The last option is the one that trips people up… HOLD IT FOR LATER This is the trickiest option. Some e-mail messages demand complicated answers. You don
Publication date: 2009-03-06 more

Web Analytics: Making Sure Your Online Offerings Are Working for You

Basic fundamentals:  to keep moving forward in tough economic times, make sure you spend every dollar wisely.  In the nebulous world of traditional advertising, this isn
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Usability, touchscreens and cell phones

As with so many devices and apps and sites and so on, there are some assumptions behind the move to touch screens, particularly when used by phones (or an iPod Touch). They are designed for people under 40. They are designed for people with no disabilities. They are designed, more or less, for physically perfect people. Afterwards, sometimes as late as after the first generation is on the market, usability for people with limitations is taken into account. Even when usability is taken into acc
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

[UPA] March 12, 2009 6-8pm Open Book - Usability Testing with Mahtab Rezai

Mahtab Rezai, VP at EatonGolden will be talking about keeping usability relevant at the March 12 UPA-MN meeting (6-8pm at the OpenBook ). $10 members, $30 non-members (Cash/Check only at the door).
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Quick Usability Checklist

Got a moment to see if your site passes this quick usability checklist? These are some common usability mistakes we encounter on the web while reviewing sites.
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

What makes designing for the web different to designing for Print?

Design for the web is considerably different to designing for print. This post discusses ten ways they differ and explains how we at Distilled design for the web. As a web designer, I
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

RE: Security OR usability?

For Windows 7, Microsoft has made some changes to User Account Control to counter the criticism that UAC was too intrusive.
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Benefits & Principles of User-Centered Design

We, the people, have been around for quite some years now. Computers, software, applications and the web not so much. Therefore it is clear that applications have to adjust to the people and not the other way round. Many design principles have developed throughout the decades, but the main difference of user-centered design to others is that UCD tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work , rather than forcing the users to change how they work to acco
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Baynote Emerging as Market Leader in Recommendations Space

Baynote, Inc., today announced continued significant growth in adoption of its Collective Intelligence Platform (CIP) as part of the larger growth trend in the overall recommendations space. Counter to an overall decrease in spending on software, companies continue to adopt Baynote because it can rapidly lead to higher revenue and lower costs. Over 130 organizations and 200 websites now leverage the Baynote CIP. One indication of Baynote
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

5 Easy Steps for Improving Website Usability

Usability is a serious concern for many websites
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Different Strokes for Different Folks: usability from a member perspective

So excited; I just ordered my fave usability expert Joshua Porter's book, Designing for the Social Web. [Don't get it at this Peachpit link though, it's way cheaper on Amazon.] Here's just a little snippet. Different Strokes for Different Folks Each person who visits your web application has their own agenda: they're trying to do something specific. While we don't always know what that something is, we can identify recurring roles that seem to crop up again and again. Here are some roles to
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Workshop Wrap

Yesterday, at the Advancing your Intranet through Innovation, Collaborative Planning and Communication conference, I ran a workshop that explored some usability fundamentals as part of my current role as Research Manager at UsabilityOne . The relatively small but dynamic and diverse group spent much of their time establishing information architecture through card sorting, developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and usability test tasks, and planning a half-year website project with usab
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Make Your Web Site More User-Friendly (Top 5 List)

Small businesses have a particularly difficult time in determining exactly how their web site should be built. Central to this issue is how to make the site user-friendly. Most small businesses concentrate their web design efforts on just getting something up there. Unfortunately, this often leads to a confusing web presence that users have a hard time understanding and navigating. Just "getting something up there" is the wrong approach. You have to think like the visitors who will be using yo
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

11 Reasons Why Your App Probably Sucks

1) Your users can
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

More HTC Handsets on the Horizon

WMPoweruser caught wind of HTC
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Website Nightmares

Do you ever watch the show Kitchen Nightmares (either US or UK) with Gordon Ramsay? I do. It
Publication date: 2009-03-05 more

Yahoo! is schizophrenic

Yahoo! Briefcase is shutting down on March 30th. I don
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

New Poll - Logo Link

Most sites do it. Does yours? Having your logo link to your home page is a fairly common practice. As a user of a website though, do you expect it to be like that? Does it improve a sites usability at all? Here is the poll: Do you expect the logo of a website to link to the home page? Archive of Previous Polls Related Posts New Poll - Video Introductions (0) Defining Your Home Page (2) New Poll - Adjusting Font Size (0) New Poll - Captcha Grief (2) A Moving Form? (2)
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Lingo Podcast #82: Reciprocal Teaching

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Reciprocal Teaching ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

New look, same great taste

I'm proud to unveil the new face of CatalystDirect.com. It's sleek and sexy, but then again, I'm partial... The new look is more than just a design; it's a story. I don't want to give it all away in this post so sit back, relax and enjoy
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Topify Upgrades Twitter

Arik Fraimovich (the co-creator of QassamCount which I blogged about in the past) together with Ouriel Ohayon (VC & Blogger) launched a very useful service for Twitter called Topify . It is an improved new follower email alert that solves a very basic pain of Twitter - getting bio information and other usefull stats (following/followers counts) inside an email and being able to follow back using a simple
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Usability nightmares

Never mind what design you have, and never mind which functionality you have to offer. If your visitors don
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019 (montage + video)

Packed with experience concepts and interface eye candy, the 2019 video from MS Office Labs is pretty entertaining for those interested in that sort of thing (or anyone who enjoyed Minority Report). Watch the video and learn more here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090228/microsoft-office-labs-vision-2019-video/
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Amnesia Razorfish explores gestural interfaces with Surface

In what
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Can your intranet manager evolve your IM system?

I spent an hour constructing a list to display RSS feeds so they would be easy to add and find, starting with these columns: Feed URL - included URL and the name of the link Category - with a generic set of choices lifted from our Daily News service Adding content from my own list of RSS feeds, I realised I wanted to find podcasts and vidcasts easily. This required more columns: Feed format - option of text, audio (podcast) or video (vidcast) Some feeds are updated many times per day. How
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

The 5 Laws of the Website Anything

Via Eric Goldsmith , I found today this nice Web Performance 101 article, where the author, Alberto Savoia, states Top Four Laws of Web Site Performance. The article is as old as 2001 (heh, back then "website", being a relatively newer concept was spelled "web site" ) and the topic is performance, but the "laws" are strikingly fresh and applicable not only to performance, but to any aspect of the web development, and to the websites in general. I couldn't resist the urge to comment and add
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Samsung Emporio Armani - Ultra Stylish Yet Highly User Friendly Samsung Phone by Adam Caitlin

The latest Samsung Emporio Armani is a gorgeous and light weight widget that has been furnished with a fantastic case design. This gadget has been designed by aiming at the next generation people who seek more functionality and usability from their device. The physical appearance of this device is moreover, gorgeous and it can draw the attention of the common masses at the first sight. Modern people love to possess light and sleek mobile phone. Thus, this handset has an added advantage. This won
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

enthusiasm from a click

Lovely Charts is an online diagramming tool. It
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Usability and Social Applications

I
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Procedures Like Cretiny

This was going to be a rant about Thus PLC
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Vovici and Netprofiler Partner to Serve Online Marketing Needs - PR Web (press release)

Vovici and Netprofiler Partner to Serve Online Marketing Needs PR Web (press release), WA Specializing in the measurement and improvement of online performance, Netprofiler consultants help companies in the Netherlands measure website usability, conversion improvement, search-engine marketing and web analytics. Netprofiler has used Vovici ...
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Safari 4 Beta - Review

Just downloaded and tried out the new Safari 4 beta which Apple launched a some time ago. I
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

this elevator can improve your library

Here
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

Add Usability Services and Earn a Profit For Yourself

For years Cre8pc has supplied web site usability reports or site audits to companies and individuals, from small business to Fortune companies.  Some of the most well known marketing and SEO companies have sub-contracted these reports, many on a regular basis. New for 2009! Partnerships with several top name SEO
Publication date: 2009-03-04 more

QUOTE: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!” —W. H. Murray Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe [thx SM]
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Recent jobs posted to the 37signals Job Board: UT, Clinton Global Initiative, Harmonix, ShareThis, etc.

Design Jobs Apple is looking for a Sr. Web UI Engineer in Cupertino, CA. University of Texas is looking for an Asst. Prof. in Arts & Technology in Richardson, TX. Clinton Global Initiative is looking for a Web Developer/Producer in New York, NY. Acquia, Inc is looking for a UX Design Engineer in Andover, MA. Harmonix Music Systems is looking for a Web Designer in Cambridge, MA. View all Design Job listings Programming Jobs Etsy is looking for a Director of Engineering in Brooklyn, NY. ShareThis is looking for a Lead Architect/Developer, Web Team in Mountain View, CA. Yammer, Inc. is looking for a Front End Developer in Los Angeles, CA. Total Attorneys is looking for a Senior .NET Developer in Chicago, IL. Prosper, Inc. is looking for a Senior Marketing Web Developer in Provo, UT. View all Programmer Job listings More jobs View all of the jobs at the 37signals Job Board. (The Job Board now has internships too!) More...
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Skittles: Great attempt, but you fall short of appeal.

One of the big topics of discussion today is the new Skittles website. What
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

ECommerce Partners Wins 2008 Ad Tech Limelight Award (press release)

by admin - March 2nd, 2009 4:01 pm Leading Interactive Agency Receives Top Honors for Consumer WebsiteNew York, NY
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Shipping is Part of the User Experience

A lot gets discussed about having clear information about your shipping destinations and prices. I also often touch on making sure you communicate throughout the ordering and shipping process so your customer knows what
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Day 2 at Strategically Managing Intranet Developments

I spent today at Ark Group
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Congratulations to the winner of the ALA Store gift certificate!

Emily Woodward of Denver, Colorado was randomly chosen from the group of members who took the online Website Focus Group survey. She will receive a $50 certificate to the ALA Store, courtesy of ITTS. Congratulations, Emily! We hope you have fun shopping.   The twenty-eight members of ALA who participated in the Midwinter Focus Groups will also be receiving $50 gift certificates. Their participation in the 1 1/2 hour sessions was very helpful, and has led to several initiatives to reorgan
Publication date: 2009-03-02 more

Obscure headlines do not work

Some headlines work only after you
Publication date: 2009-03-02 more

Bookmarks for March 1st from 22:05 to 22:33

These are my links for March 1st from 22:05 to 22:33: Typical Programmer - Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming - The Evolution of a Programmer - The evolution of a Ruby programmer at Will.Whim - The Evolution of a Haskell Programmer - The Evolution of a Python Programmer. - TDWTF Forums - State of the Computer Book Market 2008, part 4
Publication date: 2009-03-02 more

rl date-picker

A date picker based on one real-world interactionLovemore recently posted on his blog about calendar-based date-picker solutions within the jQuery UI framework. Upon seeing his
Publication date: 2009-03-02 more

Accessibility can be a selling feature

A couple of weeks back I gave a presentation at an event that was hosted by Microsoft. During the Q&A period the subject moved to how well/bad consumer electronics companies, including software suppliers, cater for the problems of physiological ageing. As is my wont I made an all encompassing statement that I thought they didn
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Library Usability Links 2/26/09

A short Harvard Business Review article highlights the importance of ethnographic studies to inform strategy. Via Experientia , Christian Lindholm identifies three layers of UX in mobile phone design : Bling, Control, and Utility Andy Rutledge analyzes the CNN page design for something he labels
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

New web site for Saint Louis Associates in OBGYN

Launched this afternoon is a brand new web site for Saint Louis Associates in OBGYN. Presented with a clean and fresh look/feel, the site information is organized in well structured categories, from "Practice Areas" to "Woman's Health by Life Stage". The user is able quickly to hone in on their information of interest. Home Page Woman's Health by Life Stage Visit the site at www.snowdenmd.com
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Displaying a smaller banner in an Openx zone

Did you ever want to chain a zone with smaller banners after a zone with big banners in Openx? This sounds like useful feature. We don
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

This Feb

Interesting things I learned this month. On security 10 Steps to protect the Admin area in WordPress by Smashing Magazine. This is excellent stuff. Must read for every self-hosted blogger. (Here
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Five in the Morning

A little while back, Steve Woodruff tapped me for continuing his excellent "5 in the Morning" series, which allows bloggers to highlight articles you might have missed. Below is my contribution. How to approach a problem by Inspire UX Is the beautifully simple Macintosh OSX interface the panacea of interface design? Not according to Bruce Tognazzini of NN/g. Anyone who has ever bought a bleeding-edge device and had difficulty trying to use it can surely appreciate this piece from the Onion via
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Drupal 7 Usability Testing - Day 2

Another 12 hour day of testing has come and gone. Yesterday, the two testees were beginner users who were asked to attempt a slightly different test plan than the more advanced users: dive into quite a few core utilities by creating content, categorizing content with taxonomy, creating menus and blocks, and configuring permissions and paths. The tests with new Drupal users are nerve racking for all of the observers. We saw that something as simple as adding a menu and positioning the menu's
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Windows 7 heads for official release

Well it seems as though Windows 7 is now due for its official release as Microsoft have recently announced that it will not be releasing another BETA version of the operating system. Yet the company are yet to give an official release date for the software other than sometime in late 2009. The disclosure came in an end of January update to the Engineering Windows 7 blog by Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

External Links: New Windows or Not

In the spirit of my post about the HOME button , I
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Safari 4 sucks, but how badly?

While Safari 4 gets a lot of things right and is definitely a step in the right direction in many areas, there are a lot of things that are confusing at best, downright poorly designed at worst.
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Ignore Usability and Search Marketing at Your Own Risk

My submission for this month
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Automatic Bug Reporting for Firefox Extensions

We want to make Ubiquity awesome at reporting errors. In our original release, a transparent message with JavaScript exception information was displayed, which wasn
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

The Ultimate Mans Guide to Internet Dating The premier mens resource for finding attracting meeting and dating women online Ultimate Mans Guide

The Ultimate Mans Guide to Internet Dating The premier mens resource for finding attracting meeting and dating women online Ultimate Mans Guide Proven methods for men who want to quickly and easily find sexual success, companionship or romance with women online
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Welcome the newest Signal: Michael Berger

In a few weeks we’ll be welcoming Michael Berger to our team. Michael will be joining Sarah on customer service/support. We want to provide the best customer support in the business. Sarah has been kicking ass on her own, but it’s definitely time to add another person to the team. We’ve interviewed and tried a few other people, but we just haven’t found the right fit. Until now. Turns out it’s a small world. Last year my mom went to an Apple Store in suburban Chicago to have an Apple Genius look at a problem with her laptop. She raved about the service and mentioned that the guy who helped her recognized her last name and asked her if she was my mom. Yup, that was her. And yup, that Apple Genius was Michael Berger. Why Michael? Michael has been working for Apple since 2004. He started as a Mac Specialist and was promoted to Genius in July of 2005. He was famous among co-workers and customers alike for providing “Bergercare” — beyond kick-ass customer support. Michael really cares about helping people. He’s built for it. Fast forward to late 2008. Michael heard we were looking for another support person through some mutual friends. We interviewed him a few times, put him through a few weeks of part-time support work and basic training, and decided that he’s our guy. We offered him the job last week and he accepted. So everyone please welcome Michael Berger to the team!
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Fit to be used

We get a steady stream of requests from people who have apps that integrate with one of ours asking to be included on the Extras page (here’s the Basecamp Extras page, for example). A nice move whenever someone sends one of these: When they include a badge image that’s the right size and text that’s the same length as the other entries on the page. It’s just a little thing but it really makes a difference for the person who has to add that extra. It saves a step and makes the request ready to go “out of the box.” It’s funny how little things like this can have an impact. When someone sends in a request like this, it comes across as them saying, “I’ve thought about what this request entails for you. And I’m guessing this might be a pain point so I’ve gone to the trouble of making it as easy as possible to take care of.” We tend to think of usability as applying only to interfaces. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about delivering something that’s fit to be used. That means it’s about writing copy that’s understood the first time. It’s about requests that are as easy to accomplish as possible. It’s about manuals that are one page instead of 40. It’s about code that you can paste in and works right away. It’s about putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. It’s about looking into the future, foreseeing any potential obstacles, and removing them. And that’s a great way to get people on your side. Update: Here’s a related example. Someone mocked up a screenshot of a Highrise feature request the other day. Neat way to “get real” with a feature and show exactly what you have in mind.
Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Who needs a board of advisors?

Publication date: 2009-02-28 more

Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen is well-known in the field of usability. All his articles are actually very current in nature and very useful for those designing interactions, UIs, Websites and any type of media that interacts with users. Here is his take on the 10 most common mistakes commited by bloggers as far as usability and design are concerned Weblogs Usability: Top 10 Design Mistakes Posted in eLearning 2.0 Tagged: blog, design, jakob, jakob nielsen, jakob_nielsen, mistakes, nielse, nielsen, UI, usa
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

iPod Touch first impressions

Now I have an iPod Touch. Why the Touch and not an iPhone? It
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

23 amazing JQuery Photo/Gallery Plugins

A collection of 23 JQuery Plugins to prepare your site for the use of photos.
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Text That is Easy to Scan

Time for part 4 of 35 covering my usability and design analysis, Text That is Easy to Scan. Your Website is Not a Book So why is it so, so, so important to have text that is easy to scan on the web? Your website is not a book. What
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

San Francisco Take Two

Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Musical Instruments of the Future

Futuristic musical instruments will hold center stage this weekend in Atlanta, where Georgia Tech will be hosting a competition and performance to showcase innovative instruments. Georgia Tech
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

User experience inside and out: The strategy of persuasive design

A brilliant webcast over at Human Factors International about how the Internet has created a
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Web site orienteering

As all good Web designers know, Web sites should be set up so that if a visitor gets air dropped on any page they can easily answer three essential questions: Where the @#$% am I? Where can I go from here? WTF can I do here? (OK, some people won
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Things I would like to see in

1. Unicode VBA Seriously, Microsoft, what part of
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Back to Close

The Back to Close add-on for Firefox adds a simple ergonomic feature to Firefox I am sure a lot of people will enjoy.  When you are browsing via the browser or via a tab, if there is no history to go
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Make Life Easy

I want to tell you a story. A few days ago I had dinner with a friend at a restaurant in downtown Toronto. We had stellar service from the waiter at the restaurant and my friend, who picked up the check (thanks!) left a hefty tip for him. The waiter then pointed out a website that we could go to and at which we could leave feedback in order to obtain a free appetizer next time we went to the restaurant. My friend spotted a telephone number option on the receipt, too, and pulled-out his black
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

A Few Lessons From Real World Usability

Have you ever noticed that in some movie theater
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Drupal 7 Usability Testing - Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of usability testing in Baltimore. The focus of this particular usability study is around Drupal 7. 3 patches Beginning with Drupal 7, we applied three patches yet to be committed in order to test the functionality provided. The vertical tabs patch is one of the biggest user-interface improvements. In summary, if javascript is enabled, it combines all of the fieldsets on node/add and node/edit forms (such as comment settings, menu options, path alias) into a singl
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

Google Eye-tracking Study

Where do your eyes go  when you first see a Google result page? Did you check the title of the first results or check the terms in bold to see if they matched your search? Google user Experience team has done a study on this and have found that most users make decisions unconsciously. In order to test users decision to pick a result to visit Google employed the use of eye tracking equipment. From Google
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

The Polaroid approach

Producer Quincy Jones on producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller album: Well, we had great rhythm sections, which we did first. We did what we called Polaroids. We must’ve looked at 600 or 700 songs. When you get a song you feel you like, you put it down with a rhythm section to get it on its feet, and then you hear Michael sing a couple of takes on it, maybe with a couple of background lines to see how it holds up, so you can see what it might be and you’re not just wasting your time. We called those Polaroids. Then, when something sticks, you develop it further, get into background lines and horns or synthesizers or whatever else you’re going to be using. I like “Polaroids” as a way to quickly get across the idea of rapid prototyping. Go through a ton of stuff and give it all a quick shot. Then see what sticks and devote more resources to that. That way, failure is cheap. You’re actually expecting failure and embracing the idea that only a small percentage of your ideas are truly good enough to earn a big chunk of your attention. The LAByrinth Theater Company, a collective in New York that specializes in new American plays, provides another example of the Polaroid approach. Every year, LAB has a two-week
Publication date: 2009-02-26 more

PHOTO: Less as a sales tool: five by Haagen-Dazs

Less as a sales tool: five by Haagen-Dazs. “All-natural ice cream crafted with only five ingredients for incredibly pure, balanced flavor… and surprisingly less fat!” Ingredients: skim milk, cream, sugar, ginger, egg yolks. What’s being left out? Looks like corn syrup, corn starch, pectin, alkali, etc.
Publication date: 2009-02-25 more

QUOTE: Left to my own devices, with no family, I

Left to my own devices, with no family, I’d start writing at seven p.m. and stop at four a.m. That is the way I used to write. I liked to get ahead of everybody. I’d think to myself, “I’m starting tomorrow’s workday, tonight!” Late nights are wonderfully tranquil. No phone calls, no interruptions. I like the feeling of knowing that nobody is trying to reach me. —Author Michael Lewis [via JK] on the alone time zone.
Publication date: 2009-02-25 more

Product Blog update: AlertThingy and Basecamp, using Basecamp for your design process, GTD with Backpack, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp AlertThingy brings updates from Basecamp and other social apps to your desktop “AlertThingy v3 brings the very latest updates from your favourite social networks direct to your desktop. Plus send Tweets, update your Facebook status, upload photos to Flickr, post to Tumblr and more. With v3 AlertThingy makes it faster and easier to manage the online you. Plus you get the coolest looking RSS reader on the interweb. Now, for business users we have Yammer, Basecamp and Huddle integrations. So you can mix work and play.” Anthony Brewitt: “Basecamp Changed My Design Process” If you’re a designer who uses Basecamp, you may find Brewitt’s approach interesting. The post offers a detailed analysis of how he uses Basecamp throughout his design process. “Its changed my design process forever, improving communication with my clients and allowing me to easily run multiple design projects.” Virtual assistant for realtors calls Basecamp “phenomenal” “My favorite feature of Basecamp is the ‘Dashboard’ and the fact that tasks that are due can be assigned to different associates, but we can all see if they are past due. I also like the fact that my Realtor clients can log in 24/7 without playing ‘seek and find’ – from the minute they log in, they can see an overview of all their projects, what’s been done, and what’s coming up. I believe this feature allows us to retain clients that are nervous about ‘virtual’ assistance, it gives them a glimpse into our ‘office’.” More...
Publication date: 2009-02-25 more

QUOTE: People are subject to trifling likes and

People are subject to trifling likes and dislikes every day. There seems to be no end to the division and subdivision of taste. In India, in those days, if I wanted ice cream after a meal, I simply ordered ice cream. At most there might have been two or three flavors; often there was only one. Today I have one hundred and forty-seven varieties to choose from, and it’s not enough to want chocolate; I have to decide between possibilities like Dutch, Bittersweet, Super Fudge Wonder, and Chewy White Chocolate Macadamia. (Often I just tell the clerk, “Give me the one you like best.”) And for coffee I have to specify French Roast, Colombian, Kona, or one of a dozen other varieties. I know people whose whole day is affected when they can’t get the coffee they like, made just the way they like it. As our preferences get fractioned finer and finer like this, the range of what we can tolerate narrows to a slit—in everything, because this is a habit of the mind. - From Chapter 5 of Take Your Time-Finding Balance in a Hurried World, by Eknath Easwaran
Publication date: 2009-02-25 more

Stop fighting the established conventions

It
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

New Social Media Case Studies

Newly added to Social Media Case Studies the Hot List - I really must sort this list out soon!    Namecheap O
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Application Launch Learnings for Developers

So, as my avid readers will know, yesterday we launched a new web application called Chatterbloc to the world. Well, I say the world, I actually mean to the HN user base for some feedback, but it
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Ryanair could do better online

There
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

The UXBooth Reviews Silverback | UX Booth

The UX Booth finds Clearleft
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

8 Well-Designed Sites and What You Can Learn From Them

Making a website is a process that requires a good amount of technical expertise, but there
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

When did this become acceptable to me?

I clicked my laptop out of hibernation the other day, and spent an hour or so working on a screen set at 1024×768, mostly reading RSS feeds in Netvibes. (Click the image to enlarge) I realized after a long while that my workspace was very small, and just wondered when I decided that this was normal, as I
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

The Economics of Time and Effort

When people think about economics they usually just think in terms of money but economics is about understanding the flow of limited resources within systems in an effort to make those systems more efficient (or if you are cynical making those systems be more efficient for a specific group). Money is just a system we have used to quantify the worth of those resources to counteract the inefficiencies of bartering. Since money has the ability to be traded for almost any resource (including money
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Usability & Customer Experience

Usability Can and Should be Applied Across the Entire Customer Experience (Not Just a Web Site) Many years ago, while working at a large health insurance company I stumbled across a great usability truth. It wasn't by design that I found this truth, just dumb luck really. What was that truth? That usability is not just about web sites or web applications, that is has the potential to help the entire customer experience. At the time, I was busy trying to make a difference for our company by cond
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Simplicity is the key to Usability

I was reading Meg
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Usability Testing for Library Websites: A Hands-On Guide

Usability Testing for Library Websites: A Hands-On Guide How good is your library's Website? Unless you're the librarian who set them up, online library services can be hard to navigate. In fact, many users give up in frustration without ever finding what they're looking for. Nowadays, many of the search and retrieval services that previously were ...
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Jane Hart's Directory of Learning Tools...

For those of you who do not know, Jane Hart has a terrific directory of 2700 online learning tools.  Many of them are free. DIRECTORY OF LEARNING TOOLS Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup     Dave Boggs SyberWorks, Inc.  SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series  Sy
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Design in the details

If you haven
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Options for Measuring Software Ease of Use

I
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Gmail is off line

Gmail is unavailable to me at the moment. The funny thing is that I only noticed this because I cannot get at my contact information. I have been happily reading my mail, sending out mail. The annoying thing is that Google does not yet support the contact information off line. Thanks,       GerardM
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Gmail Login

Gmail Login News Posts Software *sorta* lets you cut through SSL encryption like nobody
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Untitled Document Syndrome

John Gruber laments the illogical, yet human, tendency to avoid saving new documents, which occasionally leads users to the loss of data when an "Untitled Document" is left in limbo and a crash leaves them scrambling to figure out what happened to it. The point is that users often can't be bothered with things like figuring out where to put this thing on a file system because we're too busy with the task at hand, e.g. writing the thing that we might not have a name or place for yet. Good sof
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Social Media: A Marathoner

Every year around October, I get the urge to run another marathon. A bunch of premier races are held in the Fall including New York City, Chicago and Marine Corps (Washington, DC) marathons. Having already run five, the notion of my running another isn
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Readers Not Happy with JDate Design

A reader wrote in about the JDate design. Have you visited JDate lately. It seems they hired Elmer Fudd to redesign their website. First, in the past, I could display the search gallery on my screen. In the past, they had introduced the silly member spotlight, which seems to pick randomly select individuals display at the top of the search. I say it
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

SEO and the Different Types of Architecture

Your website has to be many different things. You need it to be optimized for search engines, which means it has to be crawlable, indexible, keyword rich and PageRank high. You have to provide content that the search engines recognize as relevant, and learn how to ensure a speedy evaluation and approval. You want to be listed on the SERPs in a favorable position, so you have to sculpt your pages to spread your PageRank around. You have to decide when to no-follow and no-index, where to get your
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Tropicana Orange Juice Gets A New Design - The Old Carton

Consumers are consumers no matter what online service or product they use. Once we use a product and like it, we are emotionally attached to it and become very passionate about it. This has not changed for years, but in current days, we (the consumers) have powerful tools such as blogs, twitter and facebook, to express ourselves quicker, louder in order to make a change. Seeing companies make a (stupid) decision and then revert back as a result of users protesting against it using all sorts of
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Web Standards Checklist, How to make a proper website?

A web standards checklist The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is 'table-free sites', for others it is 'using valid code'. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc). In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

IE 8 still does not resize text sized in pixels

As most accessibility and usability aware web professionals know, Internet Explorer does not by default allow the user to increase the size of text whose size has been specified in CSS pixels. Some believe that is in fact the correct behaviour, while others (me included) think IE should do what all other browsers do
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Comparing Form Strategies

A little more than a week ago, I wrote a post about forms, and how a moving company could improve their conversions by asking less questions. I found another site today, Vancouver MRI Clinic, that is trying to accomplish a similar task for their visitors. This post is just a little comparison of the two. Comparing the Forms If you compare what the moving site is trying to accomplish, and what this MRI Clinic is trying to accomplish you will find their are very similar. They both want to get t
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

User-centered Internet Policy

As a new President takes office, the online world is full of speculation about the future of Internet policy in America. Hopes are high, given that President Obama is considered to the most tech-savvy political candidate to date; in fact many are touting him as the first politician to really get the nature of web 2.0. A recent memo from John Horrigan of the PEW Internet project offers Obama some thought-provoking suggestions for technology policy that are motivated by an interesting analysis of
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Prioritizing Web Usability

Prioritizing Web Usability Prioritizing web usability should be one of the first considerations of web site design. However, unfortunately this is often not the case. More often than not, the various stake holders who have an interest in the web site design are to busy prioritizing their specific interests to give reasonable thought and consideration to prioritizing web usability. Why Prioritize Web Usability Ok who needs it? The web site looks real cool, it
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

The most useful FireFox Extensions of February

Those of you following me on twitter know I tend to spend a bit of time every couple of days in finding new extensions for FireFox (and sometimes Thunderbird) which are making my life as an Information Architect, Web Designer or Project Development Manager easier. These extensions may be some all of us have been using for ages but never really realised we had them installed, or some we really wanted to see or use for some time, but never really spent the time researching whether these extensions
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

DEMO and the Economic Slowdown

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Book Recomendations To Improve E-Commerce Website?

I read your articles monthly in
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Bookmarks for February 22nd from 13:32 to 17:49

These are my links for February 22nd from 13:32 to 17:49: Top 10 Activities of the Product Owner | Agile Software Development - 30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs - A List Apart: Articles: Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times - Increase your website ROI : Boagworld web design podcast - 20 Steps to Better Wireframing | Think Vitamin - 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine -
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Planning geeky things

Here are a couple of middle-term geeky purchases I am planning. 1) A PS3. Assuming household budget to cover it, I will probably buy a Playstation 3 this year. Partly for the Blu-ray, and partly for the games. In truth, it
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

I Ditched Google Reader & Gmail to Increase My Productivity

When I used multiple computers throughout the day it made sense to use web apps to read RSS feeds and email. I
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

Website usability evaluation package

Why get a website usability evaluation? An easy-to-use website encourages return visits and, ultimately, greater sales and word-of-mouth referrals. So, why not get it right?
Publication date: 2009-02-23 more

oh b*gger

I accidentally deleted my blog datadase when trying to back it up.   How silly is software that enables that accident? I may manage to restore the December back-up
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Oh burgger

I accidentally deleted my blog database when trying to back it up.   How silly is software that enables that accident? CRAPPY CRAPPY CRAPPY SOFTWARE   My last back-up was Dec 17th.  All your lovely comments and my fabulous thoughts between now and then have just become a figment of our imaginative memories
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

15 Incredible Conceptual Designs (you wish existed)

Talking about usability and consumer products. Creativecloseup.com published this collection of 15 great designs that, as they say, for several reasons may never reach the production stage, but may set a trend and definitely make us whish they really existed .
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Beginner experience with Silverlight and WPF

My job as a testing software engineer doesn
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

A Really Bad Example of YAGNI

In his recent blog post, A Quick Example of YAGNI, Jeremy Miller presents what is quite possibly the worst example of YAGNI I've ever read.
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Strategies for Designing Application Navigation

"Getting the navigation right is one of the most important aspects of design. Navigation is the framework within which screens, interaction, and the visual appearance are designed. The most basic axiom of usability is that one should make interaction with the software as easy as possible, allowing users to focus on the tasks that brought them to the software in the first place. To the extent that navigation is confusing and requires the user's attention to figure it out, usability will suffer.
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Bookmarks for 02/21/2009

These are my links for 02/17/2009 through 02/21/2009: Roblog
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

An Interaction Designer Who Understands the Need for Documentation

Yesterday I met with the interaction designer (I
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Consumer Trust in a Health Website

Dani Iswara .Net has some notes on how to gain a consumer trust in a health websites and weblogs. Increasing trust of users generated content in a trend of Web 2.0+, Health 2.0+, Medicine 2.0+, or... Please visit Dani Iswara .Net for the full content
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

Links for February 21st

fav.icio.us2 for Greasemonkey - Delicious Toolbox: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources - iList Classifieds - Post and Search Free Classified Ads - Twittez - Questions & Answers on Twitter! - muxicall - TinyChat.com - Create a free chatroom - Personal time management software - ManicTime.com - Eclipse plug-in for creating wireframes and screen mockups - WireframeSketcher - Find Who Follows Whom on Twitter - the quickest way to see who several Twitter use
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

programming as it could be: part 1

Over a cup of tea in bed I was pondering the future of business data processing and also general programming. Many problems of power-computing like web programming or complex algorithmics, and also end-user programming seem to stem from assumptions embedded in the heart of what we consider a programming language, many of which effectively date from the days of punch cards. Often the most innovative programming/scripting environments, Smalltalk , Hypercard , Mathematica , humble spreadsheets
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

OpenID is a good idea, but how to use it really?

OpenID is a good idea; you log on once and once you are logged on, you are authenticated against your active credentials. The idea is simple and it makes the password hell manageable. Passwords are a pain because there are too many places where you have to maintain them. When the Wikimedia Foundation introduced Single User Logon, it was great because it replaced 435 websites where I had a password with only one password. I want to reduce the number of places where I have to enter a passwo
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

I feel the need. The need for speed.

  Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation revealing the results of a large online customer satisfaction survey. Some of the finest minds in online research were presenting. Very thorough. Very thought-provoking. Very insightful. And very slow. I know this because, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the client nodding off. Falling asleep. Frolicking in la la land. Ok, we
Publication date: 2009-02-22 more

What everybody else is doing is irrelevant

People sometimes ask us how much we look at the competition. The answer: not much. We can’t control what they do. We can control what we do. So we focus on that. Someone who responds to a constantly shifting landscape with a similar approach: Conan O’Brien. In “Building a Home in Late Night
Publication date: 2009-02-21 more

How does your marketing fit in a

We
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

The economics of ratings systems

Tyler Cowen on the economics of ratings systems : Evaluation systems with fewer and grosser distinctions are often more credible because they are easier to monitor. On the topic of Spin magazine going from rating records on a scale of 1 to 5 to a scale of 1 to 10.
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Grand Usability Designs

When watching Grand Designs recently, Kevin McCloud was talking about the usability of a staircase. It
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

The Most Important Pages on an Ecommerce Site

To be successful in ecommerce you need to be proactive not passive. Continually analyzing to discover problem points and testing methods that better those points is essential. You must market, promote, adapt and be willing to go out on a limb in some cases
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Can You Define Usability?

When interviewing software developers I often ask them to define the term usability . What I
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

databases as people think - dabble DB

I was just looking at Enrico Bertini
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Rotating Image

Rotating images of your products on the home page. It
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series #28 Preview

Here's a sneak preview of our next  SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series episode on Mary Polley-Berte's new article in the SyberWorks Online Media Center, "28 Web Conference Training Tips". Audio Preview Time: 28  Seconds Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

PPC Advertising: Use Dynamically Generated Ad Text, Relevant Landing Pages

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the most important tools are targeted keywords and relevant landing pages. For targeted keywords, it is possible to develop dynamically inserted keywords simply by monitoring search activity on your site and in your ad campaigns. Identify Targeted KeywordsBelow are some practical tips to help you discover the key phrases consumers are typing into search boxes, and how that knowledge can be used to your advantage.Here are some suggestions to h
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Delicious Bookmarks for February 19th

These are my Delicious links for February 19th: Silverback
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Milo

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Friday

Usability and User Experience Matter in Enterprise 2.0 Apps Welcome to the third in a series of Friday
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Java ME: Burning a Blu-ray disc

Despite the current economic climate, nearly 10 million Blu-ray disc players were sold in the US in 2008 (a third in the last quarter), and consumers bought 2.5 times as many Blu-ray discs as the year before.
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

All major Search Engines Work Together to Solve Duplicate Content Issues

Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Soon the world will be just one big googlemap

I love the little yellow man on Google maps, navigating my favorite city, in which I also happen to live, among photographic images. I can show my house to my mom, who lives far away, and say: look, I am on the sixth floor, and this is my window. Some kind soul took the pictures and Google assembled them rather seamlessly. Paris is one of the cities mapped this way completely. When last week a friend called to consult me whether she should take a certain rental apartment, I let the little yellow
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Large Sites and Information Architecture

I apologize in advance, because this is going to be more of an article of philosophy, than a technical how-to.  A while back I wrote a piece on the subject of breadcrumbs .  In it, I made a comment about how breadcrumbs are a tool that helps expose the information architecture (IA) of a site to a visitor.  A discussion ensued where a rebuttal was offered that visitors simply don
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

The placebo effect of the

Apparently, the
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Web Design, increase your usability

It is easy to make a dorky web page. It
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Introducing Sprockets: JavaScript dependency management and concatenation

For a long time we’ve been struggling to manage the growing presence of JavaScript at 37signals. We needed a way to share common JavaScript components and behaviors across our applications and web sites. And we wanted the ability to organize our JavaScript source code into multiple files and folders without the overhead of including dozens of <script> tags on every page. So we scratched the itch by creating Sprockets. Sprockets is a Ruby library that preprocesses and concatenates JavaScript source files. It takes any number of source files and preprocesses them line-by-line in order to build a single concatenation. Specially formatted lines act as directives to the Sprockets preprocessor, telling it to require the contents of another file or library first or to provide a set of asset files (such as images or stylesheets) to the document root. Sprockets attempts to fulfill required dependencies by searching a set of directories called the load path. It helps you turn messy JavaScript into clean modules for development and a single .js file for deployment. More...
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Multitasking is the fastest way to mediocrity

I’ve been buried under a lot of work lately. I don’t know what happened, but in the last 10 days or so I feel like I’m working three jobs. Paperwork, administration work, design work, vision work, writing work, misc. work. My desk is a mess. My desktop is full of icons. My inbox is overflowing. I have a list of people to get in touch with. I have what feels like a hundred decisions to make. I’m not complaining, I’m just observing. And the primary observation that comes out of all this is that multitasking is the fastest way to mediocrity. Things suck when you don’t give them your full attention. I’m not thrilled with the work I’ve been doing lately. This isn’t a breakthrough, it’s just a reminder. If you want to do great work, focus on one thing at a time. Finish it and move on to the next thing. It means some things aren’t going to get done as fast as some people may want. It means some people aren’t going to get your full attention for a while. But doing a bunch of crappy work, or making a bunch of poorly considered decisions just to get through the pile isn’t worth it.
Publication date: 2009-02-20 more

Gems of Unnoticed Problems

Pleasure and Pain alerted me to a talk series not unlike the TED talks called the Gel Conference . One talk to catch my attention was by Oxo
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

Why write your own rendering engine anymore?

I just installed and ran the latest version of Lavasoft
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

full page zoom coming on Google Chrome, and soon ?

I definitely see page zoom being available on SRWare Iron (A browser based on the free Sourcecode
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

Links for February 19th

Domain Pigeon - Free Domain Names - Subversion - A Summary Cheat Sheet - Learn svn in 10 minutes
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

Twitter to really integrate search

So, mashable are reporting that Twitter will finally fully integrate search into their UI very soon (currently in testing). I blogged about the lack of this feature last month. I said then, and what I
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine (Retweet This!)

By Dmitry Fadeyev By now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy Who 33% Delicious Popular (@deliciouspop)|33% Adam Kmiec (@adamkmiec)|32% Alexis (@baires) Phrases 100% web design|100% usability mistakes|100% mistakes web|100% common usability|33% 9rules common|33% smashing magazine|33% howto smashing|33% design howto
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

How to deal with large webforms

When developing/designing business applications you might face long (or large) webforms. You can have tens of fields and it might be a real mess. I know that it's often the client's request (you know, they want the forms to look exactly like paper documents - the famous one), but, whatever the reason, you have to think about user experience.
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

SEO: Estimating Sales Potential from Keywords and Phrases

The perception that search engine optimization is a limitless source of free traffic and sales is one reason that SEO campaigns sometimes fail to live up to expectations. Yes, SEO efforts can deliver excellent returns on investment. But how much expected return is realistic? This article will help you estimate the potential growth in traffic and sales that SEO efforts can drive to your site.First, you need to know how much traffic and sales natural search drives to your site today. Start by mini
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

10 Quick Win jQuery Plugins

Let
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

How Test-Driven Development Increases Overall Usability

This is an abstract and technical post. In writing this, I would like to question our notion of usability: namely, that our practice applies solely to the user-interface of an application. Usability can be achieved from the
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

PHOTO: Neat how the iTunes music store lets you

Neat how the iTunes music store lets you choose your level of depth in a genre (i.e. The Basics, Next Steps, Deep Cuts, or Complete Set). You can dip your toe or dive all the way in. Reminds me of how video games allow players to compete at a beginner level or a more advanced level. That keeps people coming back for more. You can be a newbie or an expert and still get something out of it. Apps, on the other hand, usually offer a one-size-fits-all interface. It’s a compromise that tries to find a decent meeting point that’s not too tough for beginners but not too dumbed-down experts. That’s a sweet spot that can be tough to find though.
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

PHOTO: The copy at Urban Spectacles > Philosophy

The copy at Urban Spectacles > Philosophy offers a nice example of how little guys can compete against bigger competitors by emphasizing the strengths of things that are handmade: “Whereas eyewear mass produced by means of machines and computers results in the exact same pair of frames every time, two human hands, even if they wanted to, would not be able to make exact duplicates of anything. This is very true of the spectacles I create. Every pair stands alone as an absolute original, born from my hands, to live on the bridge of your nose.”
Publication date: 2009-02-19 more

The moment of truth is a real audience

“Act One: An Autobiography” [Amazon.com] is playwright and director Moss Hart’s look at the long, arduous road that led to his breakthrough hit “Once in a Lifetime.” Designer Michael Bierut calls the book “the best, funniest, and most inspiring description of the creative process ever put down on paper.” It really is a terrific read. One thing I found interesting in the book is the way the play’s words on the page are often meaningless. The play is slaved over by its authors and rehearsed endlessly, yet it is still almost completely rewritten after it goes in front of early audiences. In this passage, Hart describes why the only genuine test for a play is a real, paying audience. [Fellow playwright George S.] Kaufman did not hold with the theory or the practice of having run-throughs for his friends or friends of the cast, or even for people whose judgment he respected and trusted. He held firmly to the idea that no one person or collection of persons, no matter how wise in the ways of the theatre, could ever be as sound in their reactions as a regulation audience that had planked down their money at the box-office window, and in the main I think he was correct. There is perhaps something to be learned from a run-through for friends or associates; but more often than not, it can be as fooling in one way as it is in another. I have witnessed too many run-throughs on a bare stage with nothing but kitchen chairs and a stark pilot light and seen them go beautifully, and then watched these plays disappear into the backdrop the moment the scenery and footlights hit them, to place too much reliance on either the enthusiasm or the misgivings of a well-attended runthrough. The reverse can be equally true. however well or ill a play may go at a run-through, there are bound to be both some pleasant and some unpleasant surprises in store for the authore when it hits its first real audience. It’s the same for plenty of other products too. You can do all the planning you want. You can focus group. You can beta test. You can theorize. You can project. But nothing will ever match the feedback you get from real people, especially ones who are paying to use what you’re selling. Everything up until then is conjecture. It’s one more reason to kick your project, whatever it is, out of the nest as soon as you can. It’s often the only way to know if it can really fly. I know it’s tempting to counter, “But it’s not perfect yet!” Does it have to be? Trying to make it perfect often puts a shield up that closes you off from what you need most: feedback. Instead of improving, you wind up delaying the moment of truth that can provide the map to improvement. Reminds me of a quote in “How Google Decides to Pull the Plug” [NY Times]. Jeff Jarvis, author of the new book
Publication date: 2009-02-18 more

Design In Progress: Choosing the Right Product

Now that we’re almost done redesigning our product sites it’s time to turn our attention to the mothership: the 37signals site. A large portion of traffic to our product sites originates from the 37signals site. It’s important that we direct potential customers to the right products that meet their needs. There is currently a page—37signals.com/which—that does a decent job of informing the customer which product to choose. However we are all in agreement that this is a temporary solution and it can be done better. Yesterday I was experimenting with a different approach that would help these customers choose the right 37signals product. Right now it’s just a concept that might not even see the light of day (except on this here post). The copy is also not final. The overall shape, arrangement, and wording will ultimately determine if this concept will fail or succeed. Nonetheless, it’s an early iteration. Here’s a sample slice of the illustration: The idea here is that software feature charts are boring. Maybe there’s a better and more interesting way to help people see what each app can do. The customer would click on the “word bubble” that is closest to addressing their need. This would link them to the relevant site: Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, or Campfire. What do you think? Trying to be too clever or am I onto something here?
Publication date: 2009-02-18 more

PHOTO: "Where is your money going?" from the new

“Where is your money going?” from the new Recovery.gov site. The numbers are so big that $8 billion is a small circle simply labeled “other”. I also like how the image name is investmentbubble.jpg.
Publication date: 2009-02-18 more

Bookmarks for 02/17/2009

These are my links for 02/15/2009 through 02/17/2009: Michael Leis in bite-sized servings
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

New SyberWorks Media Center Article: "28 Web Conference Training Tips" by Mary Polley-Berte

Here is the press release on the article: SyberWorks Media Center Presents a New Article
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

The case for and against gimmicks on a travel website

Travolution reports that TUI travel has signalled a move away from technology
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Get More Comments with a Better Discussion Experience

One of the usual questions new bloggers ask me is,
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

BBC increase most read stories to top 10

Shock horror! The BBC has changed it's top 5 most read to a top 10. OK, really it's not that exciting despite the fact that many SEOers and usability people tend to hang on the BBC website's every move. I can understand why, they have the space, it encourages click-through, increases average page depth per visit. An easy decision really, wonder why they took this long? Not quite sure why they haven't changed the most emailed to a top 10 yet though. The "most popular stories now" as of 3.20
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

spokeo - this could be the next big thing!

Growing number of supported networks 43 Things Amazon Bebo Blogger Buzznet dailymotion deviantART Digg Facebook Flickr Flickr Group Flixster Fotolog Friendster Goodreads Hi5 iLike imeem Last.fm LinkedIn LiveJournal Multiply MySpace Netlog Pandora PhotoBucket Picasa PictureTrail Slide Stumbleupon Twitter Upcoming Veoh Vox Web Results WebShots Windows Live Spaces Wretch Xanga Ye
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

10 business days for a reply

I emailed the New Zealand Stock Exchange ( NZX ) with a usability suggestion for their website. The automatic reply: The message you sent to info@nzx.com has been received, NZX Information staff will review your message and will endeavour to reply to you within 10 business days. If your inquiry is urgent, please phone +64 4 472 7599. Ten business days for an email response in the internet age - may as well just ask people to call the number and don
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

How to Compare Demand Generation Vendors: Choosing Summary Measures

I
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Eye Tracking, Heat Maps and Pamela Anderson

I came across something very cool for the boys, a quick eye-tracking study involving Pamela Anderson. So where did you look at?
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Communicating With Your Customers

With a four and a half month old baby I
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

The of a commercial game physics engine to rise physics educational materials: An investigation

Commercial reckoner games contain "physics engine" components, responsible for providing realistic interactions among game objects. The source presents the findings of experiments that probed the accessibility and fidelity of UT2004's physics engine, examples of educational materials developed, and an evaluation of their use in high classes.
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Keywords - What

Keywords - What
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

TED Talks: Siftables

Interesting new technology called Siftables showcased at TED Talks .
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Links for February 16th

Integrity | The easy and fun automated continuous integration server - Humanized > Enso -
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Dug up

Feb 17 A few of my posts from the Flame blog archives from last year. Possibly worth a gander:Books or online tutorialsA discussion on the benefits of books or online learning, the clue
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

QUOTE: He who argues for his limitations gets to keep them.

He who argues for his limitations gets to keep them. —Richard Bach
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

LINK: Don't Blame H-1B Workers for Woes

Don't Blame H-1B Workers for Woes “More than half of Silicon Valley startups were founded by immigrants over the last decade. These immigrant-founded tech companies employed 450,000 workers and had sales of $52 billion in 2005…The critics of skilled immigration may get their wish. We will scare away the world’s best and brightest who have always flocked to our shores. But the next Silicon Valley won’t be located in the U.S. It will likely be in Hyderabad or Shanghai.”
Publication date: 2009-02-17 more

Improve your pagination

A quick tip to improve the usability of your pagination: give your a elements a decent amount of padding . We know clickability is an issue for seniors , but when it comes to the set of barely-separated-small-fonted numbers that so often comprise a website
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Arranging a Website Menu for Better Usability

The issue of website usability is one of the main topics today in web development. There are many moves regarding the push of web development to accommodate a wider range of visitors. Different sectors of society have taken their initiative in terms of improving their websites to be able to make them more user-friendly. The [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Car pool usability review, with 3 common usability mistakes

After my usability review of New Zealand car pool websites, the man behind Carpool King contacted me to see if I could include his site. First point: his site is at position 8 on page 4 of a Google search on
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

MS Office and the new digital dark age

I
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Shire competitive analysis

Whilst working at Bostock and Pollitt I was asked to undertake a competitive analysis for their client, Shire (a pharmaceuticals company).Usually I would conduct such an analysis and present the results in visual fashion using Adobe Illustrator. In this instance, due to time constraints and the way in which the information was going to be presented (in a Powerpoint presentation) I developed an Excel spreadsheet that scored each website against a set of usability, accessibility and user experienc
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

London 2012 website Information Architecture pitch

Whilst working on a pitch for a top London design agency, I was involved with developing a new information architecture for the London 2012 Olympics website.The work involved reviewing the existing website from an IA, usability, accessibility and user experience perspective and making recommendations of how to improve it.I worked closely alongside the creative team to ensure the IA vision was delivered and the resulting designs conformed to usability and accessibility best practice.The result of
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Energy Saving Trust IA pitch

Whilst working on a pitch for a top London design agency, I was involved with developing a new information architecture for the Energy Saving Trust.The work involved reviewing the existing website channels from an IA, usability, accessibility and user experience perspective and making recommendations of how to improve the websites.The pitch work is in the process of being submitted and fingers crossed the said agency will win the bid.DeliverablesUsability and accessibility review documentSitemap
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

PREPARE FOR RECOVERY

We
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

My custom LaTeX styles

By popular demand, my custom LaTeX styles are now available for download. (All of them have been dedicated to the public domain, I disclaim all copyright.) There are four for now, but the set will grow. The first lets you use OpenType fonts (which is pretty much any system font); the limitation is that this works only with a single distribution, XeTeX, available only for Mac OS X, and a new experimental build for Linux. A second style typesets all chapter titles, sections, subsections and subs
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Forthcoming Rosenfeld Media books

Rosenfeld Media , which is run by Lou Rosenfeld , publishes short, practical, and useful books and webinars on user experience design. Here are their forthcoming titles : Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable by Nathan Shedroff Design makes a tremendous impact on the produced world in terms of usability, resources, understanding, and priorities. What we produce, how we serve customers and other stakeholders, and even how we understand how the world works is all a
Publication date: 2009-02-16 more

Every Word Counts

On the restaurant's Web site: penne pasta, seared oyster mushrooms, greens, basil, reggiano. At the actual restaurant: penne pasta, winter greens, alfredo. Not much difference, right? Except that I was totally starving. I'd walked ten minutes out of my way in the bitter cold, just because this walk-up's food was totally killer. And they didn't say on their Web site the magic word: "alfredo." I'm not a totally persnickety eater. I have no problem with a little cream on my noodles. They ma
Publication date: 2009-02-15 more

Website Accessibility and Usability

Website Accessibility and Usability is often a difficult issue to tackle. How easy it for people to use your site? This can include navigation, access to information, readability, and other items. Website accessibility and usability is often intertwined. Where usability describes how easy your site is to use, accessibility describes how many people can use it. [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-15 more

Product Blog update: new invoicing extras for Basecamp, Outpost update, Propane for Campfire, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Basecamp integration added to The Invoice Machine “With just a few clicks you can easily generate invoices of your Basecamp data. If the Basecamp integration is enabled, an “Insert From Basecamp” option will be available when you create or edit an invoice or a recurring template. You can also import your companies and people when you create or edit a client.” CannyBill integrates with Basecamp to provide invoicing, billing & web hosting automation “CannyBill integrates seamlessly with Basecamp, allowing you to import / export customer details, track project time and invoice clients for work or services rendered. CannyBill adds not only the invoicing, billing and paid time tracking functionality to Basecamp, but also automates the process of setting up new domain names, hosting accounts and even SSL certificates, by linking in with popular APIs from the likes of Enom, GeoTrust and Plesk.” More...
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Moving towards signs of life

David Pogue is bummed that Apple is no longer worrying about owners of tape camcorders. In the days of olde iMovie, you could export the results back to your tape camcorder. You
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

iPhone Usability

Eben bin ich über diese sehr gute Präsentation gestolpert: How people really use the iPhone . Eight rules of thumb for iPhone app development: 1 Take advantage of learned behaviors 2 Avoid interaction inconsistencies 3 Provide clear conceptual link across widgets 4 Put space between action widgets 5 Plan for accidental overswiping 6 Don't rely exclusively on multi-touch 7 Provide visual feedback for taps 8 Provide interaction affordances Absolut sehenswert.
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

In World

In World February 13, 2009 9:32 PM Posted by Mitch Joel When was the last time you thought about virtual worlds? Do you have an avatar? When was the last time you were in Second Life? It became amazingly apparent that we have switched from talking about Second Life to Twitter without missing a beat. So much so, that after reading the AdWeek article, Second Life Attempts to Stage a Rebirth, I wondered who is still popping "in world" for a little virtual existence? It doesn't seem like such a
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Why we need interaction designers, not Photoshop jockeys

This article came up on my linkdar recently: Future Practice Interview: Bill Scott . (I don't know why its title is so un-explanatory.) The interviewer (Lou Rosenfeld) talks to Bill Scott, who heads up "interface engineering" at Netflix. The $64,491 question Lou asks the driving question of the interview (from my viewpoint, anyway): "What do engineers wish designers understood?" And the answer is a longish bulleted list (go ahead
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

"First, tell the caller to do this...."

There's nothing that demonstrates the differences in assumptions between VUI designers and IT or business people than the way they express their ideas for how prompts should be written. "First, tell the caller to do this. Then tell them to do that. Then, they'll pick this option and they'll be where they should be." That's IT/business speak. "Telling" callers to do things over the phone is a losing proposition. Assuming that they'll follow your cryptic commands isn't reasonable. Usually, they
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

How to write for the web

Recently, a member of the Web Team was reading a mailing list thread started by a guy by the name of Marvin who wanted feedback on his Star Trek fanboy website . In it
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Increase your website ROI - The Better Way

Discover more about how this works in practice
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Site Feedback for FreeGlypeThemes.info

It
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Top 10 Gifts

Well this post may be a little late for you webmaster trying to sell Valentines Gifts, but it could help any type of retail site when it comes to improving their sales. The tip is telling your visitors what your best products are, and making it easy for them to find. It
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Under Construction

photo credit: carboila So as some people have noticed lately my blog
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

A Moving Form?

This Dallas Moving company was nice enough to let me use their home page form as an example on how to improve it
Publication date: 2009-02-14 more

Going rogue inside a big company (a la Best Buy)

How can you apply Getting Real-ish ideas inside a big company? Here’s an idea: Go rogue. Pick something and do it under the radar. Create something in a few weeks that normally takes a few months. Do something in a way that works better than the status quo (or shows the promise of working better), Then you won
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Product Decisions: Why did we spend time on a color picker for Backpack?

Last week we introduced custom color schemes to Backpack. While our customers love the new feature, we’ve also gotten questions about why we chose to build a color picker for Backpack. Aren’t there other things we could spend our time on? Why was customizing colors a priority? Actually custom colors were the latest push in a series of updates to take Backpack a level up. Here’s a look at the string of updates and how custom colors fit in to the story. In late 2008 we decided Backpack was due for some development. The last major push was “BPMU”—Backpack Multiuser—in February ‘08. The multiuser capability gave businesses and small teams the chance to organize their lives and work with Backpack. Adding multiple users to Backpack was a big effort. As usual, we did the bare minimum necessary, but there were still a lot of details, edge cases, and challenges. By the time we launched in February ‘08, we were glad to be finished and also really excited to use Backpack together as a team. Marinating with multiple users The best part of building ‘as little as possible’ comes after launch. Every feature you skipped or held off on is free open space in the app for later development. Instead of a lot of baggage and maintenance, a bare-minimum release means new possibilities for feedback. After we launched BPMU in February, the customer feedback and personal experience we accumulated became a magnetic field that gradually pointed our compass for development. By late 2008, we knew where to go next. More...
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

LINK: Jason makes "The 2009 Creativity 50"

Jason makes "The 2009 Creativity 50" In this brief profile, Jason comments on the trend of turning knowledge and infrastructure to the public, such as Amazon’s opening of its web services, and the similarities to Basecamp’s early life: “The things that people build for themselves are going to be better than something you have to build for somebody else. I think if Amazon was hired to build this S3 and EC2 it wouldn’t have been very good. It’s good because it solved an actual problem that they had, not an imaginary problem somebody else cooked up. Business isn’t really that different for everybody; the truth is, especially in the entrepreneurial world, people don’t have time to customize stuff, they just want something that works. They can live with something that isn’t 100% tailored to them.” See who else made the 2009 Creativity 50.
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

PHOTO: MenuPages redesigned. Mostly nice, but the

MenuPages redesigned. Mostly nice, but the search area is so styling now that it doesn’t even look like a search field anymore. Took me a moment to figure out it wasn’t just a design element. Old-fashioned text fields may look a bit clunky, but at least we all know what to do with ‘em.
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

how I

Apple
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Starting from zero: winning strategies for no search results pages

Greg Nudelman discusses designing search results pages when there are zero results . To quote: The typical product team has no coherent strategy for cases when there are no search results. Most teams spend the bulk of their design phase working on the search results pages for a successful search. Then, at the last minute, the engineers hurriedly slap something together for the no search results page and launch. Such an approach is detrimental to the success of a search experience. Search, m
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Call for participation: Useless Tools

(Forwarded from Isabelle Massu) Museums narrate the history of man
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Design With The User In Mind

You cannot run a successful website without having the design and functionality geared towards your users. The user does not care if you are offering unprecedented prices, exceptional sales, the perfect answer to their question, or that one-bit of info that will change their life for the better in some way if they cannot use your site. It has been proven time-and-time-again that it is the easy-to-access product which puts user
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Design with the User in Mind

You cannot run a successful website without having the design and functionality geared towards your users. This guest post runs through some reasons why it
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

8 Seconds

My brother was a bull rider. He had a lot of fun, even created some of his own bull riding events and raised bulls. It
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Best Usability Mockup Tools

In my current role I am really  noticing the huge rewards delivered through extensive prototyping and usability testing. The ability to better capture and illustrate user feedback (internally and externally) as well as accelerate application development cannot be undervalued. As they say a picture tells a thousand words, but in this case a functional picture replaces a thousand words in a requirements document with ease. Requirements documents still have their place, but not as a basis for user
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Designr.it

Portfolio of Piotr Fedorczyk, Graphic and Web-designer, Usability and Accessibility Enthusiast based in Florence, Tuscany.
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

The User in Mind

Design with the User in Mind heisst ein neuer Artikel auf uxbooth . Keeping your sites and products accessible by the user is the key to generating traffic and sales in any industry, but sometimes it can be hard to tell when your product/design has become unusable. Here are a few guidelines to check when creating your product to help keep you in the green with usability. Sind ein paar gute Tipps dabei - sozusagen zum Auffrischen. Für Profis aber wenig neues ;)...
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

Solution to the Camtasia Studio flickering cursor issue

Summary To prevent the cursor from flickering during recording, open Camtasia Recorder, go to Tools > Options and deselect the
Publication date: 2009-02-13 more

blog fodder - 2009-02-11

Zeldman plugs Art Direction plug-in Post about persuasive design Show off your Twitter followers with pride - hattip Allyson Newell New buttons for Gmail - a how-to walkthrough Trying out Mr Tweet - hattip to Paul Boag Technorati tags: twitter , wordpress , plug-in , design , usability Blogged with the Flock Browser
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Speeding Up Your Website: Optimizing PNGs images

We are going to learn how to reduce the file size of our PNGs images without loosing quality, removing these chunks of information that we won
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

If a bull charges at them, they will run

It
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Don't forget to download a Railo license

Either I wasn't paying enough attention to the Railo website, or they don't explain well enough how licensing for the Community Edition works. Probably both. But I got a suprise on my Railo-based website yesterday... In any case, I was a little suprised when a pre-production website running on Railo stopped working, instead showing a 500-level error message that explained that the developer edition was limited to access by 10 IP addresses. I was aware of this limitation for the developer editi
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

$10 Off Blog Optimization Report

I am launching a new service that focused on analyzing your blog and making it better.  The Blog Optimization Report Services evaluates the follow aspects of your blog: Design and Usability Report that includes personalized feedback about your blog overall appearance, branding power, consistency, readability, image usage, and article quality. Search Engine Optimization Report that includes key statistics and personalized feedback about your metadata, headings usage, sitemap, robots.tx
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Lingo Podcast #79: Domains of Learning

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Domains of Learning ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

A Wish list for Axure

I
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

How to destroy a good brand

Inspired by this post by Lewis Green.
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Well, The Onion gets it.

NSFW for language You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Get your FREE eBooks at BookFundas.com

BookFundas.com is a FREE eBooks website with a comprehensive collection of popular ebooks written by famous authors from the world
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Eberl Claims Service Selects the SyberWorks Hosted Learning Management System to Provide Claims Adjuster Training

Eberl Claims Service Selects the SyberWorks Hosted Learning Management System to Provide Claims Adjuster Training Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup Dave Boggs SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation P
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

Nokia 6220 Classic for AT-T Cingular

Do you remember the Nokia 7210? Did you think that it would have been much better had it been a little less flashy and a little more executive? Then your wish has been granted by Nokia with the release of the has a decent-shaped keypad with nicely finished keys that give excellent feedback. The curvature of the keypad as well the sunken parts in the center of the keypad make usability excellent. The neon backlight in the keys adds a very classy dimension to the phone as well.  One of the reaso
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

CSS Landing Pages

So what inspired today
Publication date: 2009-02-12 more

The Onion on Sony's New Stupid Unusable Product

The Onion's latest product review is brilliant. Video embedded below. (Warning: language may offend some!) Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work (via uselog.com)
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

PCI Compliance Explained

PCI Compliance Explained Published by Your SEO Mentor under PCI Compliance, PCI Scanning, Trust Guard, Web Design & Usability Feb 10 2009 If you already know about PCI Compliance but are yet to take action then you need to really understand why the importance of PCI Compliance and how it can save you money and make you money. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a collaborative effort to achieve a common set of security standards for use by entities that pro
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Lessons Learned from Creating a Data Intensive, Multi-tier Application in JavaFX

In comparison to that initial release, the most obvious difference appears in the user interface; however, the real changes run much deeper than the GUI skin. The most significant of these stems from embracing JavaFX as a real RIA technology instead of treating it as simply a graphical markup script. This might sound like an odd statement for a data intensive, multi-tier, production level application like Sapphire, so let me explain in a bit more detail.
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Using Flickr to Socialize Your Products

Flickr, a photo sharing site, can be a powerful tool for promoting your products. Not only can you upload images of your products, where they can be seen throughout the Flickr website, but you can encourage your customers to participate and socialize with your company and products by uploading and sharing their own images of your products.The Action ShotProduct pictures on ecommerce sites should look professional, with well-designed placement, colors, and layouts. However these images often do n
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Google Looks At Itself Through Your Eyes

What captures a user's attention on their screen can play a large part in whether or not they click through to a search engine result. Naturally, that makes finding out where eyeballs go on a SERP vital to their overall search experience, and hence, vital to Google's strategy. Google of course obtains this knowledge through extensive eye tracking research. The company has a post up today revealing some findings from their latest efforts in this area. read more
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Daily website usability review

We shall use blip TV, because it rocks.Watch this space No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post) Share/SaveIf you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Feedback for a tourism website

Hello, I'm new on this forum, and I registered because I'm new to web design too. Actually I've just finished my first site for a client and I would love the see what do you think about it.Here is it: Sample site I feel that is missing something, it's somehow, to empty. Please help me with some feedback and tips. Thank you.
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Enhance your business globally through Net4manpower at free of cost

Welcome to net4manpower.com home of the best web master project. Whether you are a webmaster seeking to avail the service of a freelancer or whether you are a freelance programmer in search of a competitive webmaster project or permanent job, we are here to help you with your outsource project needs. The advantage of using our site is we have great customer support, advanced features and most of all we are unique. Join now !. We offer you a rapidly growing webmaster projects service solution
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Usability Design a course from KUL

Some months ago, while discussing with some girls from U-sentric, I discovered some really interresting courses from the KUL: Usability design and Human-Computer Interactions. At first, I appeared to me as a huge administrative montain to climb on but UCL and KUL have some agreements that allow student from both univesity to follow courses in the other one without any administrative tasks. Thanks to them I can follow those courses, one this year and one next year. I decided to follow the cours
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Zoomable Interfaces

Usability Post, who I should point are a great blog that I enjoy reading, have a new article on the future of the user interface, especially as how it applies to operating systems. They suggest the
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

LINK: Get Real randomly with the Random Reality Bookmarklet

Get Real randomly with the Random Reality Bookmarklet Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software (makers of MarsEdit) puts together a bookmarklet that loads up a random chapter of Getting Real each time you click it. Just drag the Random Reality bookmarklet into your browser toolbar and Get Real randomly. Thanks Daniel!
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Lesson from The Flip: Do less and you get to print less

One more thing that’s cool about underdoing the competition: You get to streamline your documentation. For example, this Sony Handycam manual (PDF) has 40 pages. Compare that to the quickstart guide that comes with a Flip camera: Click for larger version. Wow, an instruction manual that actually gets read. Impressive. In fact, it’s almost like the instruction manual is an ad for the product. “It’s so simple this is all we have to say about it.” And I bet there’s a lot less support documentation needed too. Related: The Flip takes 13% of the camcorder market by doing less [SvN]
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Recent jobs posted to the 37signals Job Board: Facebook, Netflix, Happy Cog, Joost, Yelp

Design Jobs Facebook is looking for a Product Designer in Palo Alto, CA. Six Apart, Inc. is looking for a Web Designer in New York. Netflix is looking for an Information Architect in Los Gatos, CA. Happy Cog is looking for a Web Designer in Philadelphia, PA. Clinton Global Initiative is looking for a Web Producer (New Media Specialist) in New York. TripIt is looking for a Visual Designer in San Francisco, CA. Brainbox is looking for a Senior UI Designer anywhere in the USA. The Mechanical Zoo is looking for a Senior User Interaction Designer in San Francisco, CA. Programming Jobs Joost is looking for a Flash ActionScript Programmer in New York. Zivity is looking for a Javascript Application Developer in San Francisco, CA. Creative Circle is looking for a Ruby on Rails Developer in Chicago, IL. Yelp is looking for a Software Engineer in San Francisco, CA. Avid Life Media is looking for a Senior Web Developer in Toronto, Ontario. Prosper, Inc. is looking for a Senior Marketing Web Developer in SProvo, UT. Ideate.com is looking for an Experienced Web Services Developer located anywhere. Click Harmonics is looking for a Rails Developer in Boston, MA. More Jobs View all of the Design Jobs and Programming Jobs at the 37signals Job Board. The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

LINK: Edward R. Tufte

Edward R. Tufte
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Survey of The Month: SEO is Both Important and Misunderstood

Ecommerce merchants overwhelming said that search engine optimization (SEO) was an active part of their marketing efforts and that they believed it accounted for a significant portion of their web traffic, but many of those same merchants identified black hat SEO tactics, like purchasing links, as an effective way to boost their pages
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

3 Non-Obvious Things eCommerce Can Do When Rankings Implode

3 Non-Obvious Things eCommerce Can Do When Rankings Implode Feb.9th,2009 Your friendly Captain-obvious-inspired search marketer might argue you shouldn't have done so when you depended on your organic rankings so much
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

Automatic SVN Revision number in source code

Versioning is essential for source code control and there is fabulous amount of possible benefits. One of the possibilities is to let your source code know and make decisions using it
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

Make less user interface whenever possible

Smart programming isn't always about the hard stuff. Sometimes, it's just doing the simple, but clever, things. Here's a tiny example.
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

Using Usability Design To Improve Your Overall Business

More and more businesses are recognizing the value of having a website with a usable design. They understand that by focusing on the needs of their visitors and then building a site to best match those needs they will gain a big return on their website investment. By improving the usability design of your website you will gain a better return on your investment than any other business action can produce. A recent study showed an increase in Key Performance Indicators of over 83% by just corre
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

LinkedIn: Social Interaction Design Lessons Learned (not to follow) - 1 of 2

Why LinkedIn Needs to Have a Better Grasp of Social A heavy user of LinkedIn,I have been hearing identical complaints to my own as regular business networking event conversation fodder for the last six months or more. Light users of LinkedIn as well as those of us who have over 600 connections have nearly identical problems. At its core the social interactions design is severely flawed and poorly thought through. LinkedIn integrating social interaction components and features as if they were p
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

BEDPOST.COM - SOCIAL MEDIA ROADTEST

Category: Design / UsabilityCategory: Social Media There seems to be a free online planner for everything these days - none more intriguing than Bedpost.com for which I recently received a invitation to trial their beta website. Pitched as
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

11 Quick Tips For More Usable Content

This post examines 11 quick ways to ensure your website offers content in a usable way, and includes some suggested reading for digging deeper into writing more usable content.
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

e-Learning Book: Designing Successful e-Learning: Forget What You Know About Instructional Design and Do Something Interesting

  e-Learning Book: Designing Successful e-Learning: Forget What You Know About Instructional Design and Do Something Interesting by Michael Allen Synopsis: "..This book examines common instructional design practices with a critical eye and recommends substituting success rather than tradition as a guide. Drawing from theory, research, and experience in learning and behavioral change, the author provides a framework for addressing a broader range of learner needs and achieving superior performa
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

Usability, SEO & Eye Tracking

Interesting article about how Google use eye tracking to understand user behaviour. This also explains a lot about why ranking is so important. Heatmap tools like CrazyEgg (NOT like the tool in Google Analytics) also give some insight - not as rich as eye tracking, but a lot cheaper. We
Publication date: 2009-02-08 more

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Publication date: 2009-02-08 more

Dropping support for Java 5?

So far, I've maintained compatibility with Java 5 for my stuff (all the "blueMarine cluster": blueMarine, Mistral, jrawio, ForceTen, OpenBlueSky and the young blueOcean). Given that people who upgraded to Java 5 don't have much troubles in going to Java 6 - I mean, the big jump is from Java 1.4 to 5 - the reason of this choice was to continue supporting PPC Mac OS X and 32-bit Intel Mac OS X, since on Mac OS X Java 6 only runs on 64-bit Intel processors.
Publication date: 2009-02-08 more

Shopping Cart Woes

The shopping cart is one of the most familiar online metaphors. Most people are able to understand the concept of adding items to your cart, whether in the supermarket or on a website, and then heading to the checkout to pay. Recently, we have seen an increase  number of sites whose shopping cart and checkout process have caused confusion for users. This is in part due to designer trying to move away from traditional, apparantly boring cart design, but also because online shopping now caters
Publication date: 2009-02-08 more

Axl vs. Frank: More time doesn't mean a better product

Commonly held notion: “The longer I work on this, the better it will be.” Maybe up to a point. But after a while — and it might be just a short while — you
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

Why you shouldn't copy us or anyone else

The hot article of the day is Why Your Startup Shouldn’t Copy 37signals or Fog Creek over at OnStartups.com. I agree. And I’m sure Joel Spolsky agrees too. I think this comment on Hacker News nails it too. Here’s the problem with copying: Copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is. When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath. The article is referring to ideas and business models, but I think interface design is an example more people can relate to. Have you seen an interface that was obviously copied from someone else’s interface? The copy usually lacks depth and detail. They miss the spacing, the proportions, the relationship between colors and objects and buttons and links. It’s usually pretty close, but there’s something not right about it. Why? Shouldn’t copying something be easier than creating it? Someone else already did the work, right? The problem is that the work on the original is invisible. The copier doesn’t know why it looks the way it looks or feels the way it feels or reads the way it reads. The copied interface is a faux finish. This is why future iterations of a copied interface begin to break down quickly. The copiers don’t understand where to take it next because they don’t understand the original intention. They don’t know the original moves so they don’t understand the next move. Look around at interfaces that were clearly copied from someone else’s UI and you’ll find a lot of inconsistencies and sore thumbs. That’s the new stuff. While I’ve been using interface design as an example, the original article was more about business models. I think copying leads to a lack of understanding there as well. Be influenced by many, copy none. So bottom line: Copying hurts you. You miss out on what makes something good. Instead, try to be exposed to a variety of perspectives and points of view. Take whatever you find useful and leave the rest behind. Fill in the gaps with your own ideas. In the end you have make your own way forward.
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

PHOTO: Two great tweets today from the ever-inspiring Kathy Sierra.

Two great tweets today from the ever-inspiring Kathy Sierra.
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

New in Backpack: Customize your color scheme

We just released a really great update to Backpack. Now you can completely customize your color scheme! Whether you want to personalize your individual account or brand your business account, this feature is a lot of fun. You can set your own colors for the header, the links in the header, the sidebar, and also the general link color. The color customizer uses the same beautiful picker we released for Basecamp last year. And you can preview each color choice live, so you can be sure each color fits perfectly with the rest. To customize your color scheme, just click the “Settings” link. Once you’re there you’ll also find a new selection of preset color schemes (by our designer Jamie) to give you inspiration. Thanks for your continued support and enjoy customizing your colors in Backpack!
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

Parallel Design Comparison Part II

This is the second of a three post article on a parallel design comparison. The first part of this article can be found here: Parallel Design Comparison So if you have not voiced your opinion yet, only one of you have so far, it
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

Wait a minute, that

This is the story of a feature in the Thunderbolt Content Management System (CMS). It is so tiny, almost to the point of being insignificant, but the tale of its evolution demonstrates the value of detail. Let me set the scene. When our articles have been through a peer review process, their author logs in to our CMS and submits it via a form. An editor then comes along and adds the screenshots and complementary images, does a final check and publishes the article. However, this isn
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

Form fields created with JavaScript not posted to Firefox?

For the longest while, I've known that it's possible to create form fields on the fly with JavaScript, say, for the purpose of offering as many file upload fields as a user needs in a form. I could always get the script to work, either with the appendChild() function or by writing to innerHTML. And though posting the dynamic form would work in IE, I could never get the form fields to POST to Firefox. Happily, I've just found out why it didn't work for me while other developers never seemed to m
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

Related Posts

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a buzzword that is around for a long time. There are as many misconceptions about SEO as there are webmasters. Some webmasters are afraid of SEO, thinking it is too complex and not worth the effort. Others believe that SEO will get your website banned from the search engines and there are the few that actively practice SEO. Improve the Search Engine Ranking of Your Website in 3 easy steps!Fact #1: SEO can be complex if you want to compete with the big guys.
Publication date: 2009-02-07 more

A quote from Chris Messina

... Facebook will be hosting the second User Experience Summit for OpenID on February 10th. The goal is to convene some of the best designers that leading internet companies can muster, and bring them together to develop a series of guidelines, best practices, iterations, and interfaces for making OpenID not just suck less, but become a great experience - Chris Messina
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Clearleft Ltd.

We create sites that are elegant, engaging and easy to use. We have Big Agency skills but small agency flexibility and you
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Emblematiq

Emblematiq is the home of Lucian Slatineanu, an interactive and graphic designer with over 10 years experience. Based in Chicago, he delivers award winning solutions for a variety of challenges, from interactive web based applications to corporate branding.
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

BBC News

The image gallery BBC News uses for the front page of their website defies some fundamental rules of usability. Actually, it looks like it
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Improve Search Engine Ranking

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a buzzword that is around for a long time. There are as many misconceptions about SEO as there are webmasters. Some webmasters are afraid of SEO, thinking it is too complex and not worth the effort. Others believe that SEO will get your website banned from the search engines and there are the few that actively practice SEO. Improve the Search Engine Ranking of Your Website in 3 easy steps!Fact #1: SEO can be complex if you want to compete with the big guys.
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

10 Tips For Online Persuasion

I've started to make a collection of persuasion 'nuggets' that can help towards those difficult website conversions, I thought I'd share a few in this post. All of these are tried and tested so I hope you find them useful. I'll share some more later but if, in the meantime, you have any your prepared to reciprocate with please just add them as a comment or email me.
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Dimdim: Web-Based Meetings Made Elegantly Useable

Friday, February 6th, 2009 When it comes to business meetings, the next best thing about being there is the money you save by not having to go there in the first place.  That, of course, doesn
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Brush Lugg

Get a load of this handy little tool design from Lee Valley & veritas. It
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Keeping an Eye on the Battle of the Social Networking Titans

Friday, February 6th, 2009 In a fantastic piece written for Social Media Insider, Catharine P. Taylor notes that according to an interview with Charlie Rose, MySpace co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson view Facebook
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

JavaScript makes relative times compatible with caching

It’s easy to think that the relative-time style of “this comment was written 15 minutes ago” is incompatible with caching. How are you supposed to cache something if the text changes every minute? Static pages with JavaScripts, that’s how! I put together a new mini app for our new status site yesterday that needed exactly this technique. I wanted the content of the application to be entirely page cached, so it would withstand the onslaught if the terrible should happen and we need to redirect all trafic to the status site. I also wanted the relative time style, especially since it’s timezone independent and you don’t want people to think you’ve been down for two hours when it’s really only been twenty minutes because they did the timezone conversion wrong. It looks like this: To make this trick work, I embed the time stamp for a given entry in the DOM as a custom attribute that I can query for conversion like this: <li> <span time="Feb 05, 2009 15:30:00 GMT">09:30 AM CST (15:30 GMT)</span> / The aliens came out of no where and took Basecamp! We're trying to hunt them down now. Stay tuned while we bring the lasers online. </li> I only want to convert the entries from today into relative time. The entries from yesterday and before should just use the specific time-only style. This means looking for just the span’s inside li’s from the ul with the class “today”. They’re then converted when the document is loaded with this function: convert_all_times_from_today_to_words: function() { $$('.today li span').each(function(e) { e.innerHTML = this.time_ago_in_words_with_parsing(e.getAttribute('time')); }, this); } The function uses a simple DateHelper JavaScript class that mimicks the DateHelper in Rails. This technique can be used for things other than just dates. You could imagine a cached page where you wanted the name “David Heinemeier Hansson” replaced with the text “You” if there was a match. It’s a great way around otherwise cache-busting requirements.
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

VIDEO: Really nice screencast from Krop. Good flow

Really nice screencast from Krop. Good flow, moves quick, and interesting how they include the signup process too.
Publication date: 2009-02-06 more

Product blog update: New Outpost, Backpack and productivity, Campfire to Jabber interface, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Bring Basecamp to your iPhone or iPod Touch with Outpost (just updated to 1.0.2) David Kaneda of Morfunk says, “We released Outpost 1.0.2 last week to a really great response
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

PHOTO: Weather Underground's iPhone-optimized version

Weather Underground’s iPhone-optimized version is the best weather experience out there. I love how their forecast explains today’s weather relative to yesterday’s weather. I highly recommend bookmarking it on your iPhone home screen.
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Learning from failure is overrated

You’ve heard it over and over: “Learn from your mistakes.” Or maybe you’ve heard “fail early and often.” There are plenty of catchy quotes about failure. Most of them end with a clever little twist that makes it sound like it’s a good thing. Is it? I don’t understand the cultural fascination with failure being the source of great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn’t work. Now you won’t make the same mistake twice, but you’re just as likely to make a different mistake next time. You might know what won’t work, but you still don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson. Instead, put most of your energy into studying your successes. What have you done right? What worked? Why did it work? How you can repeat it? Instead of making something worse a little better, how about making something good a little better? Don’t spend so much time looking down. Look up more. There’s a significant difference between “now I know what to do again” and “don’t do that again.” The former being better than the latter. It’s true: Everything is a learning experience. Good and bad, there’s something to be learned. But all learning isn’t equal. I’ve found that if you’re going to spend your time pondering the past, focus on the wins not the losses. The lessons learned from doing well give you a better chance at continuing your success.
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

How to film customer case study videos

The new Highrise site features video interviews with customers (the first time we did this was for Basecamp). Here’s a look at the process that went into creating these videos: Finding subjects First, we posted an alert inside the Highrise application asking customers to email us if they lived in Chicago and were interested in participating. We got a few dozen responses and started the vetting process (appropriately, we use Highrise to track all the conversations we have with candidates). During this process, we’re trying to gauge a few things: Who they are, what their business does, where they’re located, what their offices are like, who we’ll be able to talk to, when they’re available, etc. Of course, we’re also looking for people who really love Highrise and are talkative about it. Also, we try to get a well rounded pool of subjects, not just tech/design firms (which often express the most interest). Setting up the shoot Once we pick our subjects, we schedule out the shoots, two shoots per day over three days. When shooting day comes, we travel out to their location. Steve Delahoyde from Coudal Partners helms the A/V equipment and does all the editing for the videos. He brings an assistant too so we have two cameramen. (Multiple angles helps give the final cut some more life.) After we shoot the interview footage, we capture some B-roll footage too: people working at their desks, entering the office, talking over some stuff with coworkers, etc. It helps liven up the final product so it’s not just talking heads the whole time. We usually work pretty quickly. Find a good backdrop for the shot and start filming. We vary between interviewing one person at a time or having two people talk together. Depends on the situation. Sometimes you can get a good conversational rhythm going when people are actually interacting with each other. Also, it’s interesting how often coworkers finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. But sometimes, it’s best to shoot just one person at a time, especially if there’s more of a boss/assistant vibe going on in that workplace. We begin by having the subjects talk about themselves, their company, what they do there, etc. It’s a good starting point because people are used to pitching their own companies, so it gets the ball rolling and gets them used to the process. We try to keep them off of any talking points schpiel so it doesn’t sound too rehearsed. More...
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Models vs. Modules

When an application grows organically it accrues features like a snowball rolling down a dirty hill. With a little careful engineering, this works great (since the snowball is actually quite willing to be guided) but sometimes you need to stop and rethink things, do a little refactoring. We’ve done this (many times) with all of our products. Most recently, I’ve been working on some cleanups and optimizations to the person avatar and company logo code in Basecamp. The evolutionary snowball (for the avatar feature, at least) progressed something like this: In the beginning, there were no people avatars. Then one day, we added the feature. This introduced methods on the Person model like avatar? and avatar_path and attach_avatar. There were something like seven new methods that were added to Person as a result of this. Some time later, David went and cleaned it up, moving those new methods to their own module. This was great, as it kept the definition of the Person model clean, and kept the avatar-related code separate. This brings us to today. The code remains really clean, overall, because we’ve continued to follow the pattern of moving related methods into modules, and just including those modules in the base model. More...
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Happy Birthday - Basecamp Turns Five!

Today is a very significant day in the life of 37signals and Basecamp (and, indirectly, Ruby on Rails). Today Basecamp turns five years old. We launched Basecamp with a post right here on Signal vs. Noise on February 4, 2004. No traditional PR blitz, no advertising, no real expectations of big success. Just a product and a post and “let’s see what happens.” Basecamp was a side project. We were a web design firm at the time. We built Basecamp because our projects and client communications were a mess. We were using email to update our clients. That works for about 5 minutes, then goes from ripe to rotten pretty quicky. We looked around at some of the industry standard project management tools at the time. The leader was Microsoft Project. We didn’t get it. Projects aren’t about charts, graphs, stats, and reports. Projects aren’t broadcasts. Projects are about people and communication and collaboration. Projects are about back-and-forth, give and take. Collaboration, not management We also didn’t really like the idea of “management.” Management is hard work. Management is administrative. Management gets in the way. Collaboration better described what we were after. So after experimenting with a manually updated blog-like project site, we decided to build our own tool. At the time, 37signals was just myself, Matt, and Ryan. Three designers. We weren’t programmers, so I hired a student from Denmark who I met over the web to write the code. I’d hired this guy before to write some PHP for a client project. I was happy with his work. We saw things the same way. This guy was was David Heinemeier Hansson. You know the rest of that story. More...
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Minifying HTML and JavaScript Using Microsoft Expression Web

I don
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

userfly: Instant web-based usability testing service

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo. Userfly is a new web-based usability testing service that looks pretty exciting. When you set up a new test on the service, you're given JavaScript to enter into your site template. Userfly captures sessions including link clicks and time spent on the page, and records screen events including mouse movement and keystrokes. This looks like a pretty nice service for certain types of observation. There doesn't appear to be any options for interacting
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

New Twellow Feature Increases Usability

Twellow introduced a new feature today that allows users to easily follow and unfollow Twitterers directly from the Twellow interface. Whereas in the past, you would have had to clicked through to a user's Twitter page to do so. read more
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

jQuery on Whitehouse.gov - A Closer look

Some bigger news to come out last week other than the inauguration of President Obama was that the new White House.gov website uses jQuery! Below is a deeper a look into how they
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Constructive criticism on Website

Hi Folks My friend has the following website up and running http://www.bathandbodyworks.co.uk/ . He doesn't feel completely happy with the site but isn't sure what the problem is. I suggested that a more comprehensive layout would help. If anyone has any comments on any aspect of this site, we would appreciate hearing from you? Best regards Catherine
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Chart of the Week: China and U.S. are Top Internet Browsing Nations

Internet analysts comScore reported this month that worldwide unique visitors topped one billion for the first time in December 2008.
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

Video On Your Website, There is Another Way

Last week I wrote an article about adding video to your website, Giving Life to Your Site. If done the right way, it can really compliment a site. If done the wrong way, it
Publication date: 2009-02-05 more

QUOTE: It was very challenging to try and get that

It was very challenging to try and get that exact 12 minutes. I found that in a funny way it was very freeing. O.K., these are your boundaries, so put everything that you have into just this box. If you do it right, you should feel the tension of it wanting to spread beyond that time frame. But it can
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Remember the strop

Last night I made some time to do some wood carving. I haven’t had much opportunity to carve anything since October, and I’ve missed it. There’s something supremely meditative about it: just you, a few blades, and a block of wood. Good tools definitely help, so last year I invested in some nice gouges. They’re really sharp, well balanced, and just very comfortable to hold for long periods of time. The “really sharp” bit is probably the most important though; it’s remarkable how easily a truly sharp blade can cut through wood. With just a tiny bit of pressure, the gouge hisses softly through the wood, and the shavings curl up over the blade like little pillbugs playing dead. Sometimes, though, I’ll hit a tougher part of the wood, where the grain is thicker or less even. Or I’ll need to cut across the grain, which requires a little (but not much) more force to do. So I push a little harder, and with a soft whisk the blade does its magic just as before. Push, whisk, push, whisk, push whisk... Hypnotic, almost. Very meditative. Because I’m always adapting, almost unconsciously, to the different grain directions and densities, it’s so easy to forget how easily the blade cut through the wood when it was newly sharpened. I find myself thinking, “it’s still plenty sharp, I’ll go a few more minutes and then hone it.” Always just a few more minutes. One more cut. Just need to finish this one section… When I finally sit down and run the blade over the strop, it only takes a few passes to hone it. Four or five trips down the leather, maybe about thirty seconds total away from the project. But what an amazing difference it makes. Those four or five runs across the strop are enough to bring the blade back to its original keenness, and it never fails to amaze me how easily the blade cuts through the wood, compared to just before stropping. I thought the blade was plenty sharp before. I had forgotten just how sharp it could be, and what a difference that makes. Now, let’s jump back four years. Four years ago (almost exactly! January 27th, 2005, in fact) Jason and David invited me to come to the Building of Basecamp workshop in Seattle. I was working for BYU at the time, but Jason and David were doing their best to show me a better way. I was comfortable at BYU. I had responsibility. I was involved in technology decisions. I was capable. I was able to push through the fibers of my career without too much trouble, I thought. But then I attended Building of Basecamp. It was relatively short—a few hours in a room, listening to Jason and David talk about Getting Real. What they had to say was simple, to which anyone who has ever attended a Building of Basecamp or Getting Real workshop can attest. It was, for me, a few brief passes over the strop. I came out the other side sharper, renewed. I wasn’t satisfied to be merely a career programmer; I remembered the passion and delight I originally had in writing software. (It was just a month later that I quit my job at BYU and started working at 37signals.) This concept is not new. (Stephen Covey talks about it in his Seven Habits book, where he calls it “sharpening the saw”.) But it’s still valuable. All too often we can get stuck in a rut, thinking the resistance we feel to life or career is normal, forgetting the thrill we felt when the blade was new. All it takes is a moment to step back and remember the strop; the time spent will more than pay for itself in the long run.
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

QUOTE: So, I'm going to give up and use tables.

So, I’m going to give up and use tables. It’s going to take me all of 45 minutes to undo the last two weeks worth of CSS work. I’m going to launch my site. And then, I’m going to go and get a donut. —Tables vs CSS: CSS Trolls begone. We use tables for layout in select parts of our apps too. Design is a compromise of both ends and means. When it comes to tables vs. CSS positioning, my #1 criteria is this: Which technique will be easier to work with over time? Tables are different structures with different behavior, and sometimes they’re the simpler and more maintainable means to an end. I also like the “CSS Troll” monicker. It cuts a bit closer to the bone than that lofty alternative: “Purist.”
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Add Social Media to Your Site with Google Friend Connect

People want to be social on the web, whether it is to share things about themselves through a personal profile or to discover other people with similar interests. It
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Twitter - the next step in information manipulation

Riaz Kanani on February 3rd, 2009 It is clear that the growth of Twitter has started to accelerate - especially in the UK. Today, it is mostly used by people to disseminate or collect information using a large group of people - hopefully useful information However, Twitter has always been a platform which others have connected to and used to diversify the Twitterverse. An example only yesterday was Ben Marsh
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Twitter Bowl

Some nice Twitter visualisation from the NY Times. (Although the score doesn't seem to update as it ought to, in Firefox at least.)
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast #23 Interview with Fran Schnack of Advanced BioHealing, Inc.

Here is our latest press release and LMS e-Learning Implementation Series podcast: Press Release: SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcasts: Episode #23 2008 Interview with Fran Schnack of Advanced BioHealing, Inc. Podcast: Episode 23: Interview with Fran Schnack of Advanced BioHealing, Inc. Fran Schnack, Project Leader for Advanced BioHealing, Inc. talks about their use of the SyberWorks Learning Management System to train and manage compliance training for their medical
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Ryerson University Develops New Program In Digital Media: User Experience Design

On January 28, 2009, Ryerson University called on local digerati to come up with ideas for their upcoming program in Digital Media:User Experience Design. The workshop session was hosted by the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University and featured three leading experts in the areas of usability and experience design. Tedde van Gelderen, President of Akendi, spoke about the importance of experience design and how companies should align all the components that touch
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Three Cool Things You Wish You Knew Before About Bibliometrics

Three Cool Things You Wish You Knew Before About Bibliometrics
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Site Optimization Resulting in a ~40% Conversion Rate

Now that's the kind of conversion rate I wish I could achieve more often. Based on a Google Website Optimizer run on one of my sites from January 14th to today, February 3rd. And the best part is that the aggregate percentage has been rising steadily over the past week, which means that the current effective conversion rate may be 5 to 10% higher than this.
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Building Trust Through Design

In an industry in which consumer trust is so important, niche pharmaceutical web designers are in a bit of a pickle: how does one go from making a faceless pharmaceutical corporation look like one that truly cares about each and every patient
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Find of the day: Quince: A UX Patterns Explorer

03 Feb, 2009Posted by: Jure Cuhalev In: usability Being subscribed to a million of different obscure mailing lists and blogs has some advantages. Every once in a while you grab announcement of a rare gem early. Today I receivend an email about Quince - A UX Patterns Explorer by Infragistics.It
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Ambivalence is the price of innovation

At a recent professional gathering, our speaker disparaged the "best practices" argument because, as professionals, we should advise to aim for something better than what everyone else is doing. "Best practices" is the entry fee. Innovation is the goal. I understand her point, but there are instances (particularly amidst the group of interface and application designers and developers she was speaking to), when "best practices" do indeed have an important role in building a company's brand.When
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Make Money with Facebook Ads

January 30, 2009 | By Glicletesep In SEO | If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!If you
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Letting Go of the Words - Book Review

Since it is a very Scottish Saturday here in not so sunny Barcelona, I finally get round to writing the book review of 
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Solving information architecture puzzles

Quickly-made websites and intranets are puzzles When someone commits a crime, their intention isn
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Big and Clean

Here is a site from a recent client that uses the big, bold, and beautiful technique to building a website, Used Cars in Lakeland Florida. With exception to the sites logo, the site is absolutely perfect, user experience wise. Big text, wide template, clear division of content. Even the form for searching for a car is extremely easy to use. The Search Form Search forms are a big deal, and when a user needs to add some specifics, forms can get messy. Part of having a successful form is making
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

jQuery 1.3 Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet is a quick reference to all functions and properties contained with the jQuery 1.3 library. Note that this cheat sheet does not cover any of the jQuery UI functionality.
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Interesting Site: five second test

3101/09 Usability testing is important for any web project that
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Whitehouse.gov Redesign: The Change Has Come

By Katie Kelly The US government is a brand; the world
Publication date: 2009-02-02 more

Patterns: Great self promotion

The 37better Project (archive from 2001 – some links may not work) was one of the best promotional things we ever did for our company. It brought us tremendous exposure. The 37betters were linked up everywhere and discussed at length in all the right places. The goal of 37better FedEx wasn’t to win FedEx’s business, it was to win someone else’s business. Someone else who saw what we did and said “That is better. We could use better ourselves.” Further, it showed people that we weren’t just designers, we were thinkers. We were curious about solving problems not just painting pictures. You may have disagreed with our solutions, but we explained what we thought was wrong and why we thought our design was better. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more designers/firms try to make a name for themselves this way. It works. Take on a few brands, redesign a few pages or flows, explain in detail why you did it and why it’s better. It’ll spread like wildfire today. Back in 2001 there weren’t many outlets to get the word out. Blogging was in its infancy. There was no Twitter or public Facebook, etc. Today it’s different. Take advantage of it. A modern case in point: Patterns by R.BIRD R.BIRD primarily designs physical packaging for consumer products. In the last few years they’ve been churning out Patterns — “a series of professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories.” Patterns are free PDFs anyone can download. They have Patterns on tea, women’s razors, sliced bread, energy drinks, among others. They’re insightful and well executed. They’ll look at a category, study it, compare it, dissect it, and share their findings. It’s a competitive analysis without the us vs. them. If you’re looking to hire a brand design firm, wouldn’t you want to consider a company that likes this stuff enough to do it for free? Unclaimed colors in the children’s cold medicine market. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-31 more

Verify your work with checklists

WHO has recently shown that surgical deaths can be reduced by a third when hospitals follow their Surgical Safety Checklist. The checklist is very low tech. It includes questions like whether the patient has been properly identified, whether the proper tools are available, and whether everyone knows what kind of procedure is about to be done. If a checklist so simple can save so many lives, I thought the technique could surely help us do better as well. So after reading about this study and their checklist, I’ve been pushing us to create checklists for all the common procedures at 37signals. We now have checklists in Backpack for confirming that a feature is complete, we have a checklist for preparing the feature for deployment and for executing the deployment, and finally for verifying that the feature is working as expected in the wild. The last one looks like this: It’s the kind of stuff that we all know, but that we’ll often forget if we’re not being reminded about it in the moment. Thinking back to the mistakes we’ve made in the past, there are plenty of those that could have been avoided or caught much earlier if we had been using checklists. Think about what kind of checklists could help you save if not the lives of your customers, then at least their data and your uptime.
Publication date: 2009-01-31 more

January UX Roundup

4 Up Down January UX Roundup (http://www.uxbooth.com) Submitted 20 hours 19 min ago by ReddH to Web Design comment share
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Presentations From Usability: What

Thanks to everyone who came to last nights usability event that we sponsored in Manchester, Usability: What
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Ecommerce Hint #6: Eliminate unnecessary splash screens

As site owners, we must demonstrate to our customers:You are our top priority This site is here to serve you We respect your time We won't waste your time by imposing unnecessary steps We have done our utmost to make our site easy to use Splash screens, for the most part, communicate the exact opposite. Especially egregious are those that impose themselves on us every time we visit. A good example is www.futureshop.ca. With each and every visit, customers must first indicate their language pref
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Jared Spool to deliver Thursday morning keynote

This year, WebVisions is welcoming back Jared Spool as a keynote speaker for his timely presentation on
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Building a consumer site in a vacuum

In December 2008, our Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Website reached its 6th month birthday.  We decided this was a perfect time to take stock of our mission as a consumer centric brand and conduct a usability study to determine how on target we were with it. We also sought to discover if what we built back in July was meeting the needs of our customers and serving as a step forward for online real estate.Our mission was clear. With a hefty to-do list of  web enhancements for 09, we believ
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Which principle was it? Open-closed or dependency inversion?

My last post discussed how my understanding of the Open-Closed Principle (OCP) was clarified by a recent project. However, several readers asked if I really illustrated the Dependency Inversion Principle more than OCP. In this post I discuss how the open-closed principle goes beyond just inheritance.
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Websites, Branding and Splash Pages

Today, I
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

When the eye doesn

I noticed I was being charged twice for my hosting account. The first time I noticed the charge, I logged into my account and there it was, 2 hosting accounts under my name. I clicked the checkbox next to the New Account and hit
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Book Review: Subject to Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World

I just finished reading Subject to Change (yeah, I just put the book down) and I think it
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Are You An SEO Hybrid? (Search Engine Land)

During search engine optimization (SEO) consultations, have you heard any of the following statements:
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

How we reduced chargebacks by 30% (as a percentage of sales)

We’ve never had a lot of chargebacks (a chargeback is when a customer calls their credit card company to dispute a charge they don’t recognize), but last year we made a simple change that reduced our chargebacks by 30% as a percentage of sales. I can’t be certain the reduction is entirely due to this technique, but we didn’t change anything else related to how we deal with chargebacks. Background One of the issues we have at 37signals is that many people know our product names better than they know 37signals. They sign up for Basecamp or Highrise without knowing that there’s a company called 37signals behind the product. So sometimes people see a charge on their card from 37signals but they don’t know what it’s for. And even if they did remember 37signals, they still may not recognize the charge. We also sell more than just our web apps. We sell job ads on the Job Board and Getting Real as a $19 PDF. So we sell a lot of different things at a lot of different price points, but the line item on people’s credit card statements always look the same. We’ve recently gained the capability to change the charge statement entry to reflect the product being charged (“Basecamp” for a Basecamp charge instead of “37signals, LLC.”), but for various reasons we haven’t enabled it yet. 2007 When we charge someone’s credit card, “37signals, LLC” used to appear on their card statement. We also included a phone number that played a recording explaining the charge. This was alright, but it didn’t feel good enough. Ideally we’d have a live phone number, but we’re just not set up to take customer support calls at this time. (we’re entirely email based). 2008 I was thinking about how we could do a better job explaining a charge, but we were only allowed a limited number of characters on the customer’s billing statement. According to the merchant/card rules: Your company name/DBA section must be either 3, 7 or 12 characters and the product descriptor 4, 8 or 13 characters. That means we could do something like: 37signa*Basecamp 800.xxx.xxxx IL or even… 37s*Basecamp 800.xxx.xxxx IL But that doesn’t help a whole lot either. It’s definitely better than just 37signals or just Basecamp, but it’s still not as clear as I’d like it to be. If you don’t use a product descriptor (“Basecamp” or “Backpack”), you get 22 characters. So I decided to register 37signals-charge.com, redirect it to 37signals.com/charge, write up a page explaining why there’s a charge on your card, and put that URL on people’s charge slips instead of “37signals, LLC” or “Basecamp” or “Highrise” etc. Now when someone buys something from us, this line item shows up on their credit card statement: 37signals-charge.com 800.xxx.xxxx IL Visiting that URL takes you to this page where we explain the charge, the products, some suggestions if you don’t recognize the products, and a link to our billing support form someone needs additional help. Quick win for 30% less chargebacks So while chargebacks in raw dollars are up because sales are up, chargebacks as a percentage of total sales were down 30% in 2008. And the best part about it is that it only took one day to implement this change. Register a new domain, then call the merchant card company to update the message on our customer’s statements, write up a page explaining the charges, and set up a redirect on the server. Simple.
Publication date: 2009-01-29 more

Opening of Center of Excellence Focused on Accessibility and Usability in Prague

xDesign cooperates with Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) for more than 5 years. For example in 2004, we have opened first local usability lab, from 2005 we organize every year local World Usability Day and also recently we cooperate together on local chapter of Prague ACM SIGCHI. Czech Technical University is one from the oldest technical universities in the world, established in 1707. Computer science department was established in 1964. The department has long term experience in
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

5 More Tips to Make Website Headers More User Friendly

In this post, we revisit what it is that makes a heading more user friendly, and why headings play an important role in the use of any website.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Assistive Technologies on the Access and Inclusion Blog

Assistive Technologies on the Access and Inclusion Blog
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Easy YouTube

Easy YouTube
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Apple Patents MultiTouch

Well, it seems like apple managed to get the patent for multi touch (at least the way I read it). I am an avid Apple products user, but this is amazingly a bad move for Apple.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Using jQuery for great user feedback

One of the great things about jQuery is its built in event handler system, which gives you a whole host of predefined user events that you can listen out for and act upon. When I talk about user events, I am talking about keydown, keyup, mousedown, blur, focus etc
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Leveraging Usability to Profit in a Down Economy

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 Let
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

5 Minute Usability Tip: Let the user open windows when & how they want.

It should go without saying but these days we all compare things - products, services, offers, jobs, even content sites yet many sites let technology get in the way of the user by preventing multiple windows. This is a simple and easy to address issue but one that plagues thousands of websites and turns users away in seconds. It doesn't matter what your site is for, if you want to protect items from being saved, how the controls help your business or any other arguments - if a user can't view i
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Gmail Game Changer

Jump to CommentsI
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Design Decisions: The new Highrise signup chart

A couple weeks ago we launched the new Highrise marketing site. We’re still iterating that design post-launch, and we have a big post brewing about that design process, but today I wanted to share some of the iterations we explored for the new signup chart. The start Here’s where we started. This was the signup chart for the previous site. You can still see the design action on the Basecamp or Backpack site. Design A One of the earlier design directions for the new Highrise site included a light blue background and dark highlight boxes. This was the signup chart direction we were playing with while this design was in style. We wanted to highlight the main 3 differences between the plans (users, storage, and deals) so we darkened those boxes and colored the text blue. We also introduced a YES/NO list top right to get some key points across related to our signup policy. This was inspired by Southwest’s NO NO NO list on their home page. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: Now that's advertising. Leather Creations Furniture.

Now that’s advertising. Leather Creations Furniture.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Malcolm Gladwell on meaningful work and curiosity

Charlie Rose interviewed Malcolm Gladwell recently. They had the following discussion on meaningful work (at 26:00 into interview). Gladwell: Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out… If you are convinced that the work you are doing is meaningful, then curiosity, there’s no cost to it. If you think there’s always got to be a connection between what you put in and what you get out, then of course you’ll run off with a great excitement after an idea that catches your idea. Rose: People often ask me to define leadership and I say to them what you just said all the time. You have to communicate what the mission is all the time — and how meaningful someone’s contribution is to the mission. When you believe that the work you’re doing has meaning, it’s an extra shot of adrenaline. Good food for thought for anyone trying to create a workplace culture that engages employees. In the interview, Gladwell also mentioned he meets with Nathan Myhrvold once a month to discuss ideas. Myhrvold sounds like quite a character: formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, began college at age 14, worked under Stephen Hawking studying cosmology, is a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer whose work has appeared in scientific journals like Science and Nature, is a master French chef who works at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants, and he won the world championship of barbecue. Talk about a renaissance man!
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Getting Real and Design

I’ve only known one method for approaching a Design project. There are many variations out there, but it can essentially be broken down into 4 steps: Discover, Plan, Design/Develop, and Deploy. It didn’t matter where I worked—agency or internal design department—these were the steps, and I didn’t question them. Then 37signals published Getting Real, and I wondered if this might be a better way of approaching a project. I’d like to share with you a few stories from past Design projects while reflecting on how Getting Real would have helped. I’ll also share some insight into how the process here at 37signals works. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Trademark hysteria

Have you noticed how everything is trademarked these days? Company and product names I get, and some taglines I understand too, but some of this stuff just seems a bit much. A few days ago I picked up some new shampoo. I was reading the bottle and it said “The Kiehl’s Patch-Test™: Before applying…” Why does that need to be formally trademarked? Are they worried Aveda or Redken or some other shampoo brand is going to suggest you use the “Kiehl’s Patch-Test” before you try their shampoo? What exactly is Kiehl’s trying to protect? In the end none of this is a huge deal, it’s just something I’ve been noticing more and more lately. I wonder how much of this is lawyer driven. I assume it’s a pretty easy way to send a client a bill.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: My work revolves around the routinely spectacular

My work revolves around the routinely spectacular resolution of the human eye-brain system. —Edward Tufte
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

A better way to learn grammar

Learning grammar has to be one of the most boring parts of studying language, especially studying the grammar of your native tongue. There are always exceptions of course—perhaps grammar is your cup of tea—but I’d bet it’s safe to say that most of us would rather undergo a root canal than sit through a lecture on inflectional morphology or modal forms. However, when my wife was in college, studying linguistics, a classmate of hers had a really fascinating senior project. He proposed (and in fact, implemented) a sixth-grade grammar curriculum with an interesting focus: he had the kids create their own conlangs, and introduced both grammar and orthography concepts as part of that process. He supported the curriculum by showing the kids interesting real life examples, including (among other things) Mayan heiroglyphics! I wish wish wish wish WISH that I’d had that man as my English teacher when I was in school. What a fascinating way to present an otherwise dry topic. Practical applications trump contrived examples every time. Also, if you happen to be into conlangs, you may be interested in the 3rd Language Creation Conference, to be held on March 21 and 22 in Providence, Rhode Island. Whether you want to present or just attend, it looks like opportunities are available. (Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with the conference, but it’s being organized by a friend of mine.)
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: Beauty is more important in computing than

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. —David Gelernter, Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUESTION: Where should we take 37signals Live? We'd

Where should we take 37signals Live? We’d like to do more live audio/video content, but what sort of topics or content or concepts would you like to see us cover in 2009?
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Making Highrise faster with memcached

Last week I set out to improve the performance of the Dashboard and Contacts tabs in Highrise. Both tabs would frequently be much too slow. Especially the Contacts tab, which for our own account some times could take upwards two seconds to load. The number one rule for improving performance is to measure, the number two rule is to measure some more, and the third rule is to measure once again just to be sure. Guessing about performance never works, but it’s a great excuse to get you out in the weeds chasing phantom ponies. Looking outside the epicenter So I measured and found that part of the problem was actually not even part of the epicenter, the notes and the contacts. In fact, we were wasting a good 150ms generating New Person/Company form sheets all the time (through a complicated Presenter object that’s high on abstraction and low on performance). Even though these sheets were the same for everyone. That left me with two choices: Either I could try to speed up the code that generated the forms or I could cache the results. Since speeding up the code would require taking everything apart, bringing out the profiler, and doing lots of plain hard work, I decided to save myself a sweat and just cache. People using Highrise couldn’t care one way or the other as long as things got faster and frankly, neither could I. I ended up with this code: <% cache [ 'people/new/contact_info', image_host_differentiation_key ] do %> <%= p.object.contact_info.shows.form %> <% end %> This cache is hooked up to our memcached servers for Highrise. The image_host_differentiation_key makes sure that we don’t serve SSL control graphics to people using Safari/Firefox, but still do it for IE, in according to our asset hosting strategy. Good enough performance But saving 150ms per call wasn’t going to do it. So I added memcached caching to the display of the individual contacts and notes as well. The best thing would of course be if I could cache the entire page, but since Highrise is heavy on permissions for who can see what, that would essentially mean per-user caching. Not terribly efficient and hard to keep in synch. So instead we just cache the individual elements and still run the queries to check what you can see. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

iPhoto '09 and Domain Language

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. —Phil Karlton Karlton’s quote isn’t just for techies. Interface designers are in the business of naming things too. We’re copywriters. It matters if we call something an Event or a Milestone or a Deadline. And it also goes deeper than that. The names we choose shape our software. They define the way we think about it and the way our customers interact with it. To understand why this all matters, you should meet two important ideas from the programming world: domains and domain languages. When you’re working on software, the domain is the life situation your software is involved with. Basecamp’s domain is the life situation where people are trying to collaborate together on a project. iPhoto’s domain is that situation where someone has a collection of photos and they want to look at those photos and share the photos with others. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Each application has a way of approaching its domain. Software designers think of a domain like a big cake and cut it into slices. Basecamp cuts project management into Messages, Files, Milestones, To-Dos. Photo organizers before iPhoto ‘08 always sliced their domain into Photos and Albums. In both cases, the software designers take a complicated life situation and boil it down to a few easy pieces with names. No domain comes pre-sliced—unless you’re blindly copying someone else’s software. It’s up to the designer to cut the pieces and give them names. This process results in a domain language. A domain language is the set of words that reflect the way you cut up a domain. It consists of the pieces you sliced and the names you chose to give them. This language defines an application and makes it special. And for the last couple years Apple has been innovating iPhoto’s domain language very intentionally. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Design Decisions: Saying more in less space on the new Highrise site

Last week I took you through the Highrise signup chart redesign. This week I want to talk about part of the Highrise home page redesign that we’ve already redesigned. The design is alive – we’re making a lot of small tweaks post launch. Original: In the cards When we launched the new Highrise site, we had a block in the middle of the page that looked like this: Three “cards” as we call them. Each card highlighting a major feature of Highrise. The idea was to rotate these cards every once in a while. They looked good and gave the page a nice splash of color, but they didn’t communicate very well. We were using 163,566 pixels, but we weren’t really saying anything. Redesigned: In the icons So we decided to make a change. Instead of using all that space to advertise three features, we thought we’d try using it to communicate eight benefits instead. So in a couple hours we came up with this: Eight benefits, concisely explained, each with an icon for some color and identity. Now that block says something. There’s more to swallow, but it’s easy going down. And it’s only 98 pixels taller than the cards design. Here’s the overlay (the red is the extra height): More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Mr. Moore gets to punt on sharding

Sharding is a database technique where you break up a big database into many smaller ones. Instead of having 1 million customers on a single, big iron machine, you perhaps have 100,000 customers on 10 different, smaller machines. The general advise on sharding is that you don’t until you have to. It’s similar to Martin Fowler’s First Law of Distributed Object Design: Don
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: Peculiar error from QuickBooks Pro. You can

Peculiar error from QuickBooks Pro. You can’t enter a $ into an accounting app? Sure, the dollar may be invalid sometime in the near future, but…
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Leap before you look?

Gordon Segal, founder and CEO of Crate and Barrel, says lack of wisdom is the reason his store got off the ground. “We didn
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

How to do Basecamp-style subdomains in Rails

div.line span.n, div.line span.p { color: black }Code example
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: The financial crisis in America is really

The financial crisis in America is really a moral crisis, caused by the series of proofs which the American public has received that the leading financiers who control banks, trust companies and industrial corporations are often imprudent, and not seldom dishonest. They have mismanaged trust funds and used them freely for speculative purposes. Hence the alarm of depositors, and a general collapse of credit. —The Economist, 1908
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: My first thought after looking at this DSLR

My first thought after looking at this DSLR collage is: Why hasn’t anyone made a white SLR? Why are all SLR’s black or dark grey? Seems like an opportunity for someone to stand out. [via df]
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

New in Backpack: Reorderable sidebar links

We’re excited to announce a new Backpack feature. Now you can reorder the pages linked in your sidebar. Sidebar links are no longer limited to alphabetical order. Our customers have been asking for this and we’re glad to deliver it today. In the past, people have been using all kinds of tricks to keep their pages in a certain order. We’ve seen people numbering their pages or prepending them with funny symbols like * and # to force the pages to the top of the sidebar. Now all you have to do is hover over a page and drag to move it up or down. Hover over a page link and you’ll see the drag icon on the right-hand side. Grab onto the icon and drag up and down to reorder the page. When you drop the page, the position is saved. It’s that easy. We hope you enjoy taking control of your sidebar with this improvement to Backpack. Thanks for your continued support!
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: People think entrepreneurs are risk-loving

People think entrepreneurs are risk-loving. Really what you find is successful entrepreneurs hate risk, because the founding of the enterprise is already so risky that what they do is take their early resources, the small amounts of capital that they have, whatever assets they have, and they deploy those resources systematically, eliminating the largest risk first, the second-largest risk, and so on, and so on. —Jeff Bezos
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: The office on a quiet Sunday morning

The office on a quiet Sunday morning
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying

Not all publications are on a financial deathwatch. Cook
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: (1) Windows 7 Explorer vs. (2) Dance Dance Revolution.

(1) Windows 7 Explorer vs. (2) Dance Dance Revolution.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Writing Decisions: Headline tests on the Highrise signup page

We’ve been rotating some headlines and subheads on the Highrise signup page to see if they have an effect on signups. Answer: They do, sometimes significantly. The test Here’s how the test works. We used Google Website Optimizer to randomly rotate five different headline and subhead combinations on the signup page. We’re measuring the number of clicks on any green “Sign Up” button. We’re not measuring any specific plan, just that “someone picked a paying plan.” We ran the test for 4000 page views. Why 4000? The numbers didn’t change much after about 3000 page views, so we stopped at 4000. Note: We recognize that switching both the headline and the subhead isn’t quite as informative or scientific as just switching the headline or the subhead. We’re OK with this. This experiment was part learning how to use Google Website Optimzer, part curiosity, and part conversion research. More detailed tests will follow. The original: Worst performer This is the headline we launched with. The headline asked people to “Start a Highrise Account.” “30-day free trial” was centered bold in the subhead. The rest of the subhead highlighted that Highrise is a pay-as-you-go service and that there are no hidden fees. The winner: 30% better conversion than the original This combo put the emphasis on the 30-day free trial by making that the headline. The subhead let people know that signup was quick (less than 60 seconds). The second part of the subhead asked someone to “pick a plan.” This was also the only combo to feature an exclamation mark. Would be interesting to run this headline against itself — one with a period and one with an exclamation mark. Second place: 27% better conversion than the original This one also promoted the “30-day Free Trial” in the headline, but instead of highlighting signup speed, we highlighted other benefits: Pay as you go, no long term contracts, no hidden fees, no surprises. Third place: 15% better conversion than the original This combo went back to the original “Start a Highrise Account” headline, but tacked on “Today” at the end. The subhead was the same as the second place finisher: Pay as you go, no long term contracts, no hidden fees, no surprises. Fourth place: 7% better conversion than the original This combo featured the winning “30-day…” headline, but replaced plan information in the subhead with quick customer testimonials plus a link to the buzz page. Even though this was the only design with a link away from the signup page, it still performed better than the original design. What did we learn We have some theories, but we’re curious to hear from you. Why do you think these combinations finished the way they did? What other combinations would you like to see us try? What other tests would you like to see run on this page? How else do you think we could increase conversion?
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: Death is my exit strategy. I'll be doing

Death is my exit strategy. I’ll be doing significant customer service only as long as I live. —Craig Newmark
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

37signals Live: Thursday, January 15 at 11:00am central time

We’re going to be doing a 37signals Live show on Thursday now that I’m in town. Please join us with all your questions and we’ll do our best to answer.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

The bullshit of outage language

Service operators generally suck at saying they’re sorry. I should know, I’ve had to do it plenty of times and it’s always hard. There’s really never a great way to say it, but there sure are plenty of terrible ways. One of the worst stock dummies that even I have resorted to in a moment of weakness is this terrible non-apology: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused”. Oh please. Let’s break down why it’s bad: “We apologize” You say “I apologize” to someone when you bump into them on the subway, not if you spill your coffee all over them. Then you’re “really, really sorry!”. If your service is important to your users, it’s a lot more like spilling coffee all over them than it is like bumping into them when you go down. Also, you should find someone willing to take personal responsibility. Even if it’s not directly their fault. There’s always someone who’s in charge, someone who stops the buck. Hiding behind a faceless “we” is weak. “Any inconvenience” First of all, if I depend on a service and can’t get to it, it’s not an inconvenience. It might bloody very well be a full-on crisis. An inconvenience is when I can’t get my flavor of milkshake at Potbelly’s or if there’s line at the grocery store. This ain’t that. Using the word “any” makes it even worse. It’s implying that you don’t really care what bucket my frustrations fit in. Every feeling I have about this will apparently fit the “inconvenience” header. Wrong. “This may have caused” Again, this is slighting the very real experience that I am actually having right now. If this didn’t affect me, you don’t really need to say you’re sorry. If it did affect me, it didn’t “may have caused”. It caused! Stop wavering. So what’s the perfect way to say that you’re sorry? Well, if I could come up with such a generic way, then it would probably sound pretty hollow pretty fast. There’s just no relying on a stock answer for these situations, but I’ve found the number #1 principle that helps me: How would I feel about it? The most important part of saying you’re sorry is to project some real empathy. If you can’t put yourself in your users’ shoes, then it’s going to out wrong. So I try to pick a tone that’s proportional to how I would feel about the outage. Which is very situational depending on the length of time, the response, the updates, etc. Oh, one more thing. Never, ever call an outage an “availability event”.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Distinguishing decorative from meaningful elements in UI design

As interface designers, we want our work to look good and also to make sense. Every element on the screen should please the eye, and at the same time interfaces aren’t merely art objects. They have work to do. Interfaces need to provide information and clearly indicate the possible courses of action. These two factors—sex appeal and function, prettiness and clarity, decoration and meaning—they often co-exist when the designer is skillful. But still there is a potential for conflicts between how we want a design to look and how that design is understood by our customers. I recently ran into one of these questions of decoration versus meaning on GitHub. Global navigation on GitHub After you log in to GitHub, the global navigation appears at the right-hand side of the header. The navigation block is wrapped and held together by a rounded rectangle. Look at the rounded rectangle that holds this nav block together. There is a grey border around the outside and the whole block has a light blue background. The border and background are decorative. They stylize the block and add visual interest. To help you see that these elements are decorative, I made a quick comparison with the original on top and a new version below with no border or background: More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Theatrical Aspect Ratio

I was looking at the Pinnochio Blu-ray page on Amazon last night and read “Expand Your Viewing Experience Beyond The Original Aspect Ratio Of The Film” in the product description. What does “Original Aspect Ratio” mean? We all used to have (or still do have) 4:3 CRT television sets. I know that Pinnochio was released in the ‘40s before Hollywood was shooting and presenting in CinemaScope or Panavision. So I went to the web and discovered the TCM Movie Database site. The TCM Movie Database has an illustration for each film that shows how it would have looked in the theatre, on your 4:3 CRT TV, and on your 16:9 Widescreen TV. These illustrations clearly communicate exactly how the picture will be presented on the screen. Pinnochio (1940) Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Star Wars (1977) If numbers like 1.33:1 or 2.35:1 confuse you, or if your Dad asks, “Why is Wall-E letterboxed on your widescreen TV?” you can now reference these great illustrations. You can also learn more about theatrical aspect ratios by reading the article entitled Widescreen-O-Rama! at the always excellent Digital Bits site.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

LINK: Achatz and Keller: A Tale of Two Chefs

Achatz and Keller: A Tale of Two Chefs How did current Alinea chef Grant Achatz get a job working for Thomas Keller at French Laundry? He sent his résumé to the restaurant almost every day for a month until he finally landed a job there. The reason Keller gave in:
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUESTION: You identify some UI you want to improve

You identify some UI you want to improve in your Rails app. You need to figure out which templates and styles to edit. Where do you start? Do you use a web inspector or jump straight into the views directory?
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Hulu CEO: "We screwed up royally"

Great apology note from Hulu’s CEO [via DF]: This note, however, is not about the fact that episodes of ’’It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’’ were taken down. Rather, this note is to communicate to our users that we screwed up royally with regards to how we handled this specific content removal and to apologize for our lack of strong execution. We gave effectively no notice to our users that these ’’Sunny’’ episodes would be coming off the service. We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have. We believe that our users deserve the decency of a reasonable warning before content is taken down from the Hulu service. Please accept our apologies. Given the very reasonable user feedback that we have received on this topic (we read every twitter, email and post), we have just re-posted all of the episodes that we had previously removed. I’d like to point out to our users that the content owner in this case – FX Networks – was very quick to say yes to our request to give users reasonable advance notice here, despite the fact that it was the Hulu team that dropped the ball… The team at Hulu is doing our best to make lemonade out of lemons on this one, but it’s not easy given how poorly we executed here. Please know that we will do our best to learn from this mistake such that the Hulu user experience benefits in other ways down the road. Mistakes happen. It’s how you handle them that really matters. Related: Hulu figures out how to bring TV online [SvN]
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

New in Backpack: Post comments on list items and notes

We’re very excited to announce a new Backpack feature. Now you can post comments and add attachments to list items and notes on your Backpack pages. Every list item or note can be a starting point for a discussion. To comment on an item, hover over it with your mouse. You’ll see a comment icon appear on the right side: Click the comment icon to see the comment page for that list item. You can check and uncheck the item at the top of the page. Use the comment form to post your thoughts or attach files: After one or more comments are posted to an item, an icon will appear beside the item with the number of comments inside it: This is an incredibly useful feature that turns every page into an opportunity for discussion and clarification. We hope you enjoy posting comments to list items and notes. Thanks for organizing your life and business with Backpack!
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: It is certain that every organization has

It is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones. The main reason we don
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Full-Day Workshop with Ryan in London

I’m happy to be teaming up with Carson Workshops to offer a full-day workshop in London on April 27. I’m going to take complete advantage of the full day to go deep into all aspects of UI design and development. I’ll cover everything from feature conception and sketches to HTML/CSS mocks and collaboration with developers on Rails templates. In addition to insight on designing clear and truly understandable interfaces, I’ll also be giving a rare look into 37signals’ coding style from HTML markup to CSS to Rails templates. A great thing about these workshops is the size. We’re capping the day at 40 people so I will surely be able to take questions throughout the day and follow your own interests at length. Think of me as your consultant for the day. This is a great opportunity to get a first-hand experience of 37signals’ design process from the big-picture vision all the way down to individual pixels and coding decisions. Where and When? Mon, 27th April 2009 Workshop: 9:00am
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Writing Decisions: Saving space without losing meaning

As we continue to make tweaks to the Highrise marketing site, I wanted to share the writing process I went through last week. The goal was to fit the same amount of information into roughly the same horizontal space, but one-third less vertical space without just shrinking and cramming everything together. I didn’t want to shrink the icons or the font sizes. This meant the actual copy was on the chopping block. Almost every paragraph on every page on every piece of paper or every screen can be edited down without losing meaning. I love the challenge. The process The first thing I do when I want to cut out some words is not read the original version. I just write a new one. I don’t want to be influenced by what I thought I had to say before. I want to think about what I want to say now. After I’ve written a new one I go back to the old one to see if there was anything critical I missed. More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: Our office bathroom has a new theme - Movie

Our office bathroom has a new theme – Movie website title mashups. Our favorites include “Raising Arizona.state.us”, “Threadless Than Zero”, and “Ernest Goes to Basecamp.”
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Different approaches to positioning a comment icon in Basecamp and Backpack

Last week we launched a new feature for Backpack that allows people to comment on the to-do items and notes on their Backpack pages. We had actually built this feature a few months earlier for Basecamp. Since we had already built commentable to-do items for Basecamp, we could have just retraced our steps and built a look-a-like feature in Backpack. However there were a couple bumps in the experience that we didn’t want to carry over. We took the Backpack implementation as a chance to reconsider those bumps in the earlier Basecamp version so that both apps can be better in the end. Along the way we found a really nice method for positioning our comment icons relative to the flowing text of a to-do item. Here’s how the feature works in Basecamp. When you hover your mouse over a to-do item, a comment icon appears on the right side of the to-do text: We implemented this by rendering the comment icon after the text of the to-do item as an inline element. The to-do text and the icon are rendered within the same containing block like this: <div> This is the text of the to-do. <img src="comment_icon.png" style="display: none;" /> </div> More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

QUOTE: That's how I'm stretching myself, by writing

That’s how I’m stretching myself, by writing something really simple. —Andrew Bird
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

New in Backpack: Bookmark tags in your sidebar

We’ve been working hard to make it easier to organize and access your Backpack pages. Earlier this month we released reorderable sidebar links. Today we’re announcing another feature for your sidebar. Now you can add tags to your sidebar too. Tags are like keywords you can use to label a page. If you have some pages that relate to sales, you can add a “sales” tag to each page. Then you can click “sales” on your “All Pages” screen to quickly see all pages that have been labeled “sales.” Basically tags are a simple and powerful way to group your pages together so you can easily find them later. Tags have been available in Backpack for a long time. What’s new today is that you can bookmark your favorite tags in your sidebar so you can easily jump to tagged pages. Here’s how it works. First make sure you have some pages tagged. You can tag a page by clicking the “Tag” link on the top of any of your pages: After you have tagged some pages, you can click the “All Pages” link in the sidebar to see a list of all your tags. The “All Pages” screen has a list of your tags on the right side: More...
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

PHOTO: What? A win for the _IRS website?_ In this

What? A win for the IRS website? In this case, yes, for their clearly designed and concisely explained “Where’s my refund?” section. I especially like the last line and how politely they ask you to not ask them things they have no idea about.
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Job Hunting in Interaction Design

As of a few days ago, I
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Dark gtk theme

Long time no post
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Wi-Fi and VoIP Migrating to Mobile Phones

In the next five years, the nature of mobile phones will change radically, according to the latest market study from In-Stat. Increasing availability of mobile broadband, operator support for data-intensive devices, and improvements in usability for mobile devices brought about by the influence of the Apple iPhone will evolve the designs of handheld devices."Consumers are nearing their limits adjusting to the added complexity of converged mobile phone devices," says David Chamberlain, In-Stat an
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

TZ: Round Door Knobs

January 27th, 2009 - Author: Jussi Posted in Events, Usability In Texas we got to know a new breed of door knobs, at least for us. Well, they had similar ones in Tanzania.The only exception was that these knobs obeyed European logic: horizontal means
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

How to display tips by creating a jQuery plugin

We are going to learn how to create our custom jQuery plugin to show tips on mouse over event on our desired elements. We will also be able to customize the appearence of the tip division for each kind of elements in the CSS code and much more.
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Devastating honesty in Marcus Duveskog

Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Tips for Designing Effective Web Site

No doubt, you
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Why do people pay for software...

... when there is so much available for free? Probably the most important reason is that companies that charge for software pay someone to ensure that it installs properly and has a manual that actually describes the version you're using. I upgraded the version of troubled open-source project OpenOffice on my main machine to 3.0 recently. After a lengthy process, the installer spends about ten minutes checking itself. The user is then presented with this: While it's inexcusable that an upgr
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Slides From Rob Knight

Here are the slides (in PDF) talk on interaction between usability professionals and software developers.interaction between usability professionals and software developersSorry for the delay (Rob did send them promptly)
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Essential strategies for creating a successful web product from Dion Hinchcliffe

There is some excellent advice from Dion Hinchcliffe in this article outlining '50 essential strategies for creating a successful web 2.0 product' Although web 2.0 is mentioned in the title I think these ideas could apply to most online products, especially "start by solving a simple problem". I have a feeling that this is one of those reference articles that I may have to come back to from time to time. Its a great checklist.
Publication date: 2009-01-27 more

Snapshots and Usability

I am sure the creators of Snapshots wanted to make money improve the usability on blogs with their little popup window widget. However I think they have done the opposite. I personally find it very intrusive and distracting. I think mouse-over-preview-windows make sense on things like thumbnail pictures (to see the larger image), portfolio links (to see the the previews of digital works)
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

My iPhone review

Ok I
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Tracking Usability Problems in The Shopping Cart Process - A sample

Tracking Usability Problems in The Shopping Cart Process - A sample Posted on November 27, 2008 Filed Under Usability
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Opera Mini 4.2 - 30% Faster And Runs On Android

Opera Software today, 25 November 2008, released the next version of the Opera Mini mobile browser, Opera Mini 4.2. From the first time I used Mini I never looked back as there is just no alternative to Opera Mini for a truly rich mobile internet experience.
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Upcoming event : Usability,why Should You Care?

Whether it
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Customer-Centered Versus User-Centered Packaging

So here I am, making (bake off) croissants. And thankfully, the packaging designer put some distinctive icons on the packaging (left picture) to help me to prepare them properly. So far so good, but here's the thing: the icons are a nice idea, but they don't contain the right information. The icon on the left indicates I should put the croissants in the oven. I kind of figured that one out. Then there's the icon in the middle saying that the croissants should be in the oven for 4 minutes. Ok,
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

The Blackberry Storm (add weather pun here)

At FoxLand we
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Inernet Marketing Case Study

Inernet Marketing Case Study November 27th, 2008 Toll Free Forwarding is a service provider for (guess what!
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Accessibility Day in Vienna

Last week I talked at the Vienna Accessibility Day (
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Check Multiple Checkboxes with Ease

Nobody likes having to click on checkboxes, in our e-mail or on the online forms we might need to fill out. It is a pain in the rear process, that I wish sometimes I did not have to do. With that said, I have found one experimental add-on that promises to make the pain go away. CheckBoxMate, an add-on for Firefox, allows you to check multiple checkboxes with ease by drawing a box around them to automatically select them all. Here is what the developer of the extension had to say about it:
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Hard to have 'no comment' about this BT email survey

I had so much hassle with Greek state telecoms monopoly OTE, that I figured that dealing with BT in the UK could only be a breath of fresh air. Ho! Ho! Ho! Anyway, tomorrow morning I'll be waiting in for the engineer who will maybe finally give me a glimpse of broadband in the UK. But not before I had to deal with the BT customer contact satisfaction survey. Actually, the contact I've had with them so far has been just fine to be honest, it was the survey itself which irked me with some odd in
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Redbull

Check out this highly interactive site by Redbull. You can easily build your own plane design in this fun application and take it to the sky, to see how well it flies. A great inspiration for all those who program flash. Also, what I found really well done was the level of detail as far as making even forms and buttons usable. Also VERY surprising for this brand: MOZART. Can only be explained by the fact the Red Bull
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Make HTML messages readable in Apple Mail

Long time readers may have noticed that I dislike receiving email in HTML format. It
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Legal:

Legal:
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Don't Follow Trends: Set Them!

Following trends won
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

How to Accomplish Website Designing with Ease.

Internet has evolved from childhood era to adult stage, designs have become more mature and goal centric. More sophisticated look is desirable for a clean and well-defined website. Web designers have also grown up in terms of their website designing skills. Gone are the days of tacky online look, technology of flash, graphics, animation, etc are not used just for the sake but wherever required. Elements that make a website hit hasn
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Arabic Fonts

Arabic Fonts November 28, 2008
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

A Short Story About

Often it is the close attention to small details that makes a design outstanding. During the development of a website, designers tend to quickly forget about small details and focus on major design elements, such as navigation, typography and layout. If done properly, the result is usually a solid, impressive and highly professional design that communicates information. However, it is not memorable. The reason is that such designs often do not have a memorable voice: they may look visually app
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

Font Size Poll Results

Thank you to everyone who voted. It looks like we have a group that likes those larger fonts, with over half of the votes coming in for the #3 and #4 fonts. According to our font size chart, this means that our readers
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

More than 80% use Google instead of the actual URL when visiting a brand website.

In order words. You sure as hell wanna make sure that brand of yours is found among the top searches on Google. SEO is more important than ever. Building websites that get listed and linked up is key. So, if you wanna get our management team on board, do the following 3 steps: Print this beauty that I found on Anton
Publication date: 2008-11-28 more

"37signals is the (Lotus, iPhone, Disney) of software"

Recently we asked commenters here how they would describe 37signals to average civilians in 20 seconds or less. A quick recap below: A lot of people turned to analogy. Some things 37signals is like…
Publication date: 2008-11-27 more

PHOTO: The Art of the Title Sequence: a great site

The Art of the Title Sequence: a great site for opening credits aficionados.
Publication date: 2008-11-27 more

Hire managers of one

When you’re hiring, seek out people who are managers of one. What
Publication date: 2008-11-27 more

Product blog update: Email replies to Backpack Newsroom Messages, Timepost project timer for Basecamp, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Backpack New in Backpack: Email replies to Newsroom Messages We introduced email-reply to messages and comments in Basecamp a few months ago. It’s been a huge hit. Today we’re excited to be able to print this new feature to Backpack. Highrise [Case study] How a home design and plan provider uses Highrise “Highrise proves its self everyday when I receive an email or phone call with someone that I had been in correspondence with but had forgotten about. I quickly open Highrise and search their name in the nice fast search utility. This way it reminds me of their information and allows for a personalized phone call as well as eliminating the need of asking them to remind me who they are. Another way this helps me out is if my boss loses a phone message that I had provided him I still have a backup of the numbers, addresses, and any other information provided to me during the conversation.” Basecamp [Case Study] Broadband Genie: “You name it, we manage it through Basecamp!” “The biggest thing straight away was quite simply the ability to upload graphic designs, specifications and so on and have everybody comment on it in one place, then iterate and so on. Attempting this sort of thing with a large group via email is pretty much a non-starter and can end badly. What Basecamp gave us was a single place where everybody could see everything that was going on, and (just as importantly) a record of what had gone on previously.” Timepost, project timer that integrates with Basecamp, now available for both Windows and Mac Timepost is a project timer that automatically downloads projects and to-dos from Basecamp. Previously available only for Mac OS X, it is now available for Windows too.
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

QUOTE: The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler

The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler overlooks an important fact. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and SUVs per year, employing (in 2006) 402,800 Americans at an average salary of $63,358. That’s vehicle assembly alone; the rest of the supply chain employs even more people and generates more income. It’s an industry to be proud of. Its products are among the best in the world. Their names are Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru. —Peter Klein (via Andrew Sullivan)
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

PHOTO: Make a reservation at OpenTable and the confirmation

Make a reservation at OpenTable and the confirmation screen smartly offers to send a custom invite to your other dinner guests.
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

Jason Polan explains with a sharpie

The new Criterion Collection website features a cool introductory video in the upper-right corner. A pair of anonymous hands draw on white paper with a sharpie as a narrator introduces the site. Turns out the hands and voice belong to artist Jason Polan. A Google video search revealed he’s done more of these sharpie videos. He also sells a couple on his site, like How to Draw a Giraffe and How to Draw an Apatosaurus. Too bad those last two don’t have preview clips. Check out this video he did for the State Bar of Texas: Love this stuff.
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

When hi-tech is too-much-tech

Is anyone else annoyed by the “just speak your choice” automation in so many telephone menus? I feel like an idiot mumbling “YES!” or “CHECK BALANCE!” into my phone. Maybe it’s the misanthrope in me coming to the front, but I’d much rather push buttons than talk to a pretend person. What problem does the “speak your choice” technology solve? Is it just to work around the limitation of rotary phones not working with the other menus? (Does anyone even use rotary phones anymore?) It feels, to me, like an example of “we do it, because we can” syndrome. Sometimes, lower-tech really is sufficient-tech.
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

Backpack: Some things you may not have known

We recently conducted a survey of our Backpack customers. We got some great feedback — including that 97% of our customers would recommend Backpack to a colleague, friend, or family member. Thank you!! We also included some open ended questions and comment boxes. I recently finished reviewing every response and noticed some suggestions about things that Backpack already offers. I thought I’d pull out some of the more common suggestions and show you where you can find these features in Backpack. SSL on Solo A few people mentioned that they didn’t have SSL on their Solo Plan. The Solo plan does include SSL, but it’s possible that it’s turned off. To check, click the Settings link in the top right corner. Then you’ll see this option: Difficult to upload multiple files (or a folder) at once A good way to handle multiple file upload (or uploading an entire folder) is to zip or compress the files or folder into a single archive. Then you can upload that single file instead of trying to upload all the separate files separately. Both the Mac and PC have zip/archiving/compression tools that allow you to do this. On the Mac OS X 10.5, for example, you can select multiple files or a folder, right-click, and select “Compress items”. I believe 10.4 said “Archive items”.
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

Hulu's New Video Search and Site Features

Hulu introduced a couple of new site features today to make it easier for users to find the videos they are after. For the first one you can thank Hulu's Beijing team according to a post on the Hulu Blog. read more
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series #26: Interview with Guy Wallace

Here is our latest press release and e-Learning Series podcast: Press Release: SyberWorks e-Learning Podcasts: Episode #26:
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Morae 3 and dual camera support

One of the main limitations of Morae 1 & 2 was that it could only do PC based user research. The new version offers dual camera support, which is a big deal. This means you can now use Morae to do mobile device testing (shown below), paper prototype testing, paper card sorts, participatory design studies, group activities
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

How Did You Get To Work Today?

Have you ever stopped to think about all the signs, infrastructure, access, and coordination it takes just to get people to work each day in a major city? World Usability Day gives us a chance to do just that. The day itself was Thursday November 13. I hadn
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

What Happened to the Digital Music Boom? Ask Apple. | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

"Big music ignored digital music for a long time. But over the last few years, that
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Crowdsourced Usability Testing?

Feedback Army is a new service where you submit your website, $7, and you receive 10 comments.  I wonder how effective such ultra discount usability evaluation would be.  I guess if some is better than none, this is a pretty good service.  However, who exactly is offering the feedback, what are their qualifications?  And is it more than,
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Association Website Design Mistakes: Information Architecture

While people may love options in life, they rarely do online. In fact a well designed website leads the visitor through the information, guiding them along the way. An overload of options must be avoided because it creates so much work for the user that the easier solution is to just avoid using the site at all.
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

User Experience, Attribute Exchange and MapQuest

Last month at the first Content Provider Advisory Committee meeting in New York, several media companies and affinity groups identified two desired areas for improvement around OpenID: the user experience as it reaches mainstream adoption and the increased ability to exchange profile information given user consent. Since then, the OpenID Foundation, its members and the wider community have been working hard to understand what it will take to make OpenID more usable by mainstream users and why t
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Writing Your Tag Line

Hopefully after reading my last two posts, you are on your way to writing a tag line. Don
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Halo3: Flowmaps and Frag-Grenades, Part 1

Halo3 is one of the earliest
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Edward Tufte in SF

Edward Tufte in SF November 25th, 2008 Tagged architecture, courses, Design, edward, grand hyatt, graphs, information, san francisco, statistics, tufte, usability I am registered for the Dec. 8 course and am looking forward to meeting Edward Tufte as well as pick his brain on Interaction Design, graphs, charts, data and statistics. I highly recommend going to see him in SF, San Jose, Austin or Houston. At the very least, take a look at his books which are indispensable if you deal with inf
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Buy New Zealand

In the USA alone, 2,400 typed
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

10 more inspiring admin interfaces

Get to know sexy administration interfaces hidden here and there on the web!
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Victory!

I fixed it! It seems like the first installation of PC Suite failed but when I run remove program, the program was not removed. So when I reinstalled it, the error remained. But when I removed all the files manually and restarted the computer, I could complete the installation. But the installation function of PC Suite is a shame for the industry and for Sony Ericsson. But I fixed it and that is what is most important right now.
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Date & Time Issue with Mozilla ThunderBird. Bug or Usability Problem?

When mail arrived in Inbox , it doesnot get sorted as per the system date or download date/time , but get sorted as per the date set in sender's PC . I am using Mozilla Thunderbird ver version 2.0.0.17 (20080914). I observed a typical behavior of this software . It may be a usability issue or it may be a bug too. I set the mail sorting for Inbox. I set Mail sorting as per Date , means the last
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Usability testing isn

To get the most from usability tests you need the right environment.
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

PPC Keyword Research - Why PPC Keyword Research Is Critical For A Successful PPC Campaign

Email marketing can be a very effective tool for generating an income online. Unfortunately, there are many pitfalls to email marketing, not the least of which is getting your emails flagged as spam. With all the spam filters that have been put in place by the various ISPs, it is getting harder and harder to write an effective email ad that actually gets through to your intended target. This article is going to give you some basic tips and strategies that should greatly increase the chances of
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

404 Error Page: Features and Implantation

Because many people stumble on your 404 page, it is important to know which features a good 404 error page should have. This article will also learn you how to implant your custom 404 error page on your blog or site.
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

First Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) alpha hops into view

The Ubuntu developers have announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1, the first prerelease for this version. Ubuntu 9.04 is codenamed Jaunty Jackalope and is scheduled for official release in April. The initial plans for Jaunty were published in September, prior to the release of Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth aims to boost the software experience and make the popular Linux distribution more competitive with Windows and Mac OS X on the desktop. Canonical intends to push
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Feedback Army [Website Feedback Service]

Uses Mechanical Turk:
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Yahoo Design Patterns Library

The Yahoo Design Patterns Library is a must-see if you are into web design and web development. There you can find answers to common design problems, such as how to correctly implement tabbed navigation, date-pickers, sign-in wizards, etc. Each section details the problem faced, when to use a certain UI solution, and the proper ways to implement it, considering both usability and accessibility issues. You can also join the forums to further discuss each pattern and suggest ways to improve it
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Targeted Bounce

So you may be asking what is a
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Back to Sony Ericsson

When buying a new private phone, I was leaving Windows Mobile behind. I've not used Sony Ericsson for about ten years and I was really wondering how fast I could come in to the different UI. Despite me trying to tap the screen, it went smoothly. Except two things: recurring calender events (I cannot understand how they've let those bugs get out in production) and the PC Suite, which I've not yet gotten to work. I'm now trying to reinstall the program, since the support hasen't gotten back to me
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Progress bars

Something that really amazes me is how progress bars are used in software. I might be getting old but a couple of years ago the progress bar showed progress. To get a visual image of how much of an installation has been completed and how much remains. Now I think a progress bar says "no, you are imagining things, your computer is not dead". The so called progess bar on the picture comes from PC Suite from Sony Ericsson, a program which I've come to love as much as I love ITunes. You know what
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Are We There Yet? eCommerce Navigation Mistakes

You
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Practical ways to assess CMS usability

The usability of a content management system is paramount. If authors and site owners can
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Looking For A Social Media Specialist?

That is me over there on the left. I
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

How to improve the customer experience

Seth Godin wrote this morning about a terrible user experience calling the KitchenAid IVR service line. The automated phone system is an easy target and one that many (arguably most) companies do a poor job of. It may be the most blatant customer experiences flaw your company is inflicting, but probably not the only one. As [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Defining Your Home Page

So on my last post I wrote about the value of defining your site, and if you don
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

5 Ways to Get Usability Testing on the Cheap

Usability testing is a good idea for any new web site. Increasing the usability of your web site is a good idea because it will increase visitor satisfaction, which in turn increases sales and user loyalty. On the business savings side, usability testing can also save you money in development, maintenance, and support costs. Unfortunately, traditional usability tests is pricey
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

NEW 2 x Stylus for Apple iPhone iPod iTouch Black

NEW 2 x Stylus for Apple iPhone iPod iTouch Black November 24, 2008 | By admin In Electronics | Comments(0) NEW 2 x Stylus for Apple iPhone iPod iTouch Black Use a touch screen stylus to prevent scratching your screen. Soft beaded point. Compact and light weight design. User Ratings and Reviews 4 Stars Nice The stylus actually works. I use this item every day. It helps a great deal when I have to input items. 3 Stars Inadaquate solution - Keep your fingers! I have both
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts

Every now and again we take a look around, select
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

My New Column on Search Engine Land

I
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Brokers: Tackle the Tough Questions Using Video

In the last few weeks we have posted a few different videos that essentially accomplish one thing: taking a complicated topic or a current trend many may not know about and explain them in
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

How To Space Your Code For Maximal Interoperability

The new rule for indentation and alignment: use tabs for achieving an indentation level, spaces for character alignment within an indentation level. Christopher Bowns (and independently Peter Hosey) The arguments make total sense to me. Here
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Deconstructing Joomla 1.6 SEF Settings

Most people don't read manuals. All we can do is make sure our applications are easy and intuitive for everybody. Joomla does pretty well in that area, hence it's success, but the work is never done. And many third party developers seem to confuse 'options' with 'features', and 'configurability' with 'power'. When working on Nooku, we constantly ask ourselves: "Do we really want the user to make a decision here? Can the system decide this without user interaction?" For each configuration optio
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

Facebook did WHAT?!

Today
Publication date: 2008-11-25 more

'Kind regards, your Scottish Power robot!'

Having just moved back to the country, I've been, ahem, "enjoying" the British customer service experience as we try and get all of our taxes and utility bills set up for our new home. As frustrating as this has been at times, it still seems a damned site easier than doing it in a foreign language. I could, though, probably write a book about the user experience and service design nightmares we've encountered. Here is just a minor case that seems symptomatic of how many of the corporations tha
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Web Usability & Conversion: Free Tips for Target.com

Here it is, 7:00 on a Sunday morning and I am browsing for pre-holiday bargains in my comfy chair with a cup of coffee and the toasty warmth of the fireplace. (Here in the northeast, an early cold snap puts the morning temperature at 23 unbelievable degrees!) Like other shoppers, whether you intend to visit a brick and mortar or not, you can easily plan your shopping and grab up discounts and coupons with the ease of a click. Which lead me to click on a call to action from Target.com. Sign up
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

First Impressions: Day One With Nokia E71

Yeas: Keyboard better than expected Thin Has a hole for wrist strap (finally!) E-mail setup was fairly easy WiFi GPS (yay!) Great default settings for profiles, home screen application shortcuts Overall excellent use of the home screen (idle) Very nice mechanism for releasing the back battery cover (squeeze and lift) 3.2 MP camera Pre-loaded bar-code reader, which looks cool, but I can
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Little Links to Become Big Business?

Anywhere that it is possible to advertise, someone will. This age old idea continues to be proven out online. With the rise of text messaging and now
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Internet Download Accelerator 5.6.1.1133

Most effective acceleration, resuming, and management of your downloads Internet Download Accelerator is an easy-to-use and effective download manager that can increase download speeds by up to 500 percent. It uses intellectual multi-section download to provide the best possible performance for all connection types. The acceleration is achieved by splitting a file being downloaded into several parts and downloading these parts at the same time. IDA resumes downloads, broken due to l
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

My Take On Google's New Wiki-Style Features

My Take On Google's New Wiki-Style Features by Ian Mikutel / November 23, 2008 / in Technology, Usability Google recently launched, then took down, then re-launched a set of new features that add Wiki-style capabilities to the search results pages of their site. The features (see video below), let you do things like put comments on search results and adds Digg-like voting to results that consequently change the ranking of that result. These changes are substantial to the rarely modi
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Skyfire Browser Beta 0.85 for S60 - Full Review

Several readers have confirmed that the latest SkyFire Browser Beta can be downloaded and used anywhere in the  world.  Just point your mobile or PC Browser at get.skyfire.com and download.  No registration is required.  Skyfire runs on most Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and Symbian S60 3rd edition phones. I've been using the new Beta, v 0.85.0.7935, on my N95-3 for a couple of days now - here are my impressions. Keep in mind that Skyfire is a Beta. There are parts of Skyfire that are clearly not fin
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

10 Signs of a User-Focused Design

When building a new website or re-designing an existing one, web designers are faced with all kinds of significant challenges, including keeping the client happy, creating a site that gets results, and catering to users at the same time. During the design and development process it
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Gerry McGovern on Web Content Migration

Dropping names seems to work in this business so the tactic today is to take one of my pet peeves about content management, as I
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

World Usability Day banner at Bangalore Airport

World Usability Day banner at Bangalore Airport November 24, 2008
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Excellent Analytics Tip #14: Measuring Value of Ecommerce Sales Tools

An Analysis Ninja, let
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Inconsistent ActiveState

Quick-UX provides for the rapid, simple and quantifiable assessment of a product
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Easy-to-use, intelligent technologies to extend independent living for the elderly

Press release: IBM is announcing a collaborative effort with European Union partners to develop new technology that will help support active aging and prevent cognitive decline in the elderly population. Based on intelligent audio and visual processing and reasoning, the
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

i18n and social web: We still haven

Internationalisation (i18n for short, where 18 represents the 18 letters in the middle of this long word) is still an unsolved problem. A lot of things fall under i18n, such as correct handling of character sets (not everybody uses the Latin alphabet), time zones (not everybody uses PST or GMT), numbers (not everybody uses the dot as decimal separator), currencies (there is a world outside the US dollar), writing direction (not everybody writes from left to right) and of course translation int
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Forms 101

http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Will Apple and Google ever clash over their Mobile Phone strategy?

This week we noted the new voice search app from Google that turns the iphone into a personal assitant in moments when rumors point to a possible entering into Search Business by Apple, but the real problem could be if Apple decides to incorporate Voice Commands to the iPhone OS, this will overlap Google recent update to its search application forcing them to kill it or avoid the Apple implementation. Both companies are working their ass off to bring the most higher satisfaction to their res
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

Clearing my backlog, a mix of links

My browser is full of tabs, each representing something I intend to blog about. I need to clear some space, so here
Publication date: 2008-11-24 more

QUOTE: So maybe a recession is a good time to start

So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It’s hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn’t matter much either way. It’s the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now. —Paul Graham on Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

Defensive design: Magnetic zones on the unibody MacBook

To access the RAM slots in a unibody MacBook you must first remove the back plate—a thin piece of aluminum attached by eight tiny screws. Half of the screws are hidden beneath the battery cover, and each one is surrounded by a recessed magnetic zone. The purpose of these zones is ostensibly to help keep the battery cover seamlessly attached to the case. But removing the screws made it clear that the magnetic zones serve a second function. When my screwdriver slipped, the screw didn’t fall into the depths of the case. Instead, it flew right over to the magnet, and I was spared the pain of extracting a three-millimeter needle from an expensive electronic haystack. It’s a perfect example of real-life defensive design: anticipate where your customers might slip up and try your best to keep them from doing it. Have you encountered any good defensive design lately?
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

Etymology: One

Etymology is fascinating to me. Most recently I was reading about the history of the word “one”. Have you ever wondered why it’s pronounced wun instead of rhyming with own? According to the sources I’ve read (including the awesome Online Etymology Dictionary), it originally did. In fact, the word only still uses that pronunciation, and derives from the same root. The change apparently began in the 14th century in southwestern England, and by the 18th century it was in common usage. Related: did you know that the term “one night stand” was originally used in reference to theater performance? It wasn’t until the 1960’s that it was first used in a sexual sense. Also, “one-of-a-kind” was first used in the 1960’s as well. On the other hand, “one fell swoop” was first used by Shakespeare, in Macbeth.
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

PHOTO: Who doesn't want to play with this? Totally

Who doesn’t want to play with this? Totally lickable UI. FourTrack.
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

QUOTE: A complex system that works is invariably

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system. —John Gall
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

PHOTO: Pizza pie charts from The Economist's "Get

Pizza pie charts from The Economist’s “Get a World View” campaign. Philly pizzerias distributed the boxes which display pie charts with statistics related to world food distribution, emphasizing those used in pizza production (e.g. global wheat consumption, world cheese imports, arable crop land, etc.).
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

Stop pretending

I’ve recently recognized a nasty coding habit I seem to be developing. It’s been developing for a few months now, and while I kick myself every time I discover myself doing it, the habit itself is remarkably hard to kick. I’ve been working on enhancing our internal Queen Bee application, this time making it so we can more easily track the performance of our Job and Gig boards. The change itself is pretty straightforward, but I found that when it came time to build the actual UI, I got stuck. I kept chasing my tail. I’d look at the existing reporting UI that we have for our other products, and then I’d start thinking what needed to change to adapt it for the Jobs/Gigs reports. That would then lead me to think about potential refactorings in the code needed to support the (hypothetical) UI changes. Thinking about the code refactorings would lead me back to the UI, where I would think some more about the visual impact of the code refactorings, and so I would go, loop after loop, ad nauseam. It’s ironic that, even after nearly 4 years of drinking the Getting Real message almost every day, I’d get stuck in such a trap, because the solution really is to just stop pretending and make something. In my case, I had to sit down and just mock up the page, throw together some HTML with fake data in it, and see what it looked like. And it turned out that I didn’t need to change the existing UI or code much at all—the new stuff was actually independent enough that it stood almost completely on its own. Oh, the bitter, bitter irony! I had wasted almost two days worrying about a non-issue. So, if you ever catch yourself playing mind games with your code, just stop and make something. Pretending is poison. Stop drinking it!
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

LetsBuyIt Test Workshop: Perspective Site Improvements!

As we have already mentioned, each month we organize a workshop party in our office where we invite a group of people to enjoy refreshments and test the LetsBuyIt site. This week, 7 people kindly participated in our monthly workshop. Each person provided their impressions about their first visit to our site. We received dozens of pages of feedback, giving our team the opportunity to observe our site in the eyes of the user, something that is not so simple when you pass each day working on the
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

15 Resources To Get You Started With jQuery From Scratch

Maybe you're a seasoned jQuery pro. Heck, maybe you're John Resig. On the other hand, maybe you read words like "Prototype", "jQuery", and "Mootools" and think to yourself, "What the heck are these?" Now is the time to learn.
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

User Experience at Google

At CHI 2008, Google presented a paper called "User Experience at Google
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

iPhone 2.2 Update Adds Podcast Downloads, But The Usability Is Truly Horrific

Apple today introduced iPhone update 2.2. It
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Kindle Navigation Tips #4 - The Back Button

If you really want to get around the content on your Kindle, the
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Retail, redesign and lost visitors

Thinking of redesigning your site? For major corporates with big websites, that is a huge task, and not something to be undertaken
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Effective Website Designing Tips

Website designing has a major role in determining the usability and search engine visibility of a website. A website is an online individuality of a company, its products and services in Internet Marketing. The website should be designed in a way to attract more visitors, generate more business leads, promote more sales of company
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

12 Indispensable Readability Measures to Increase Conversions

Many SEO practitioners still apply optimisation techniques like in 1999. Back then popular belief was that it was perfectly enough to lure Internet users to a website with whatever means it takes and then everything else would would work fine. Things like readability were far off the SEO agenda. For a few years now the SEO industry focuses on conversions, that is converting a website visitor to a client through web design for ROI. In order to achieve that the foremost task is to keep the visit
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Agile Usability - some misconceptions corrected

Jakob Nielsen, Usability guru and author of Usability Engineering, raises the concern that Agile methods are a threat to traditional approaches to designing usability. He goes on to propose solutions so that usability designers can work together in the Agile world. In addition Alistair Cockburn, while generally supporting Jakob, takes issue with a few of his points
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

SpoolCast: Follow-up to Conducting Usability Tests in the Wild

SpoolCast: Q&A Follow-Up from Conducting Usability Tests in the Wild Recorded: November 12, 2008 Brian Christiansen, UIE Podcast Producer Duration: 29m30s | File size: 17 MB [ Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes. This link will launch the iTunes application.] [ Subscribe with other podcast applications.] [ Text Transcript Available ] Back in October we had the good fortune to host Dana Chisnell
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Why Do We Fall Down? So That We Can Learn How to Pick Our Self Up!

The following is a guest post by Paul Prewitt the Electronic Communications Coordinator at the University of Arkansas Alumni Association.  Paul was kind enough to share an inside
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Are You Following the Principles of Top Notch CSS Design?

CSS can be an extremely powerful markup language for designers. However, the CSS that is produced is only as good as the principles that are being followed by the designer creating the code. While you may think that anyone can crank out CSS, there is a big difference between writing CSS and producing top notch CSS. To ensure that you are on the right track, here are eight CSS principles that every web designer should be following.
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

How to Convince you Customers they need a CMS

Currently, I am dealing with one of my current clients. They control a multi-national non-profit organization. In the past they have used basic html to do the work for them in the web side of things. They came to me through a person I knew and asked me to do very minor things for their web site. I agreed and started working with them. There last request was to accept payment through the website and I told them to look at PayPal. I thought it was the best bang for their buck.
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

The telepathic desktop: apps are out, people are in

This article is a humble opinion piece of a GNOME user who wishes to stop using communication software and just be in touch with people. I want to write mail to, chat with, talk to, and have video conferences with real people without worrying about applications and technology. All my suggestions are doable with existing technology in GNOME, no extra magic is required. I write as a user, not as a developer, just in case maintainers and developers of relevant software are in need of ideas, as wel
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Work Smarter Not Harder

I was driving up to work today and thinking about productivity and how I utterly fail when having to switch contexts between say, web programming to desktop programming to filling out status reports (which I avoid for this same reason) to working on finances for the board.  The problem isn
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series #26 Preview

Here's a sneak preview of our next  SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series episode on Guy Wallace's e-book, "Management Areas of Performance". Audio Preview Time: 28  Seconds Get the &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Shout List Icons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns

Kendall Guillemette and I are gonna get a discussion session together at Seattle Mind Camp tomorrow on sustainable work/life patterns. We
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Google SearchWiki - Pros and Cons, but overall, I

So I was watching this video today about Google
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Blogging Tips for Wahms

Blogging Tips for Wahms Friday, November 21, 2008 16:02 Posted in category Blogging, Branding, WAHMs No Comments Blogging is one of the best ways to start a Wahm business because it is so easy to get going. However, that does not mean that it is easy to make money from your blog. Don
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Bringing Site Control Out of the Admin Interface

Sometimes it just makes more sense to put the controls right on the site. Watch this quick screencast to find out how we let one of our clients order the stories in their main content well with drag & drop ease. Bringing Site Control Out of the Admin Interface from Dancing Mammoth on Vimeo.
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Mouse Work and Navigation

You might guess by the title of this post that it is about using your mouse and navigation. It is, but really, it
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Remembering Password in Browsers.

I primarily use Firefox at my Windows machine but in Mac i use Safari ( why? ) . But there are multiple things i dont like about Safari than Firefox. One of them is how Safari shows popup confirmations to remember passwords . Safari doesn
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

5 Beautiful Icons Set For Web Designers

Icons are the basic requirement of any web related projects and good icons are like a treasure for web designers. Being a successful creative web artist has a lot to do with the way you work. Sure, you can
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Blackberry Storm: No Threat to the iPhone?

I had to stop by my local, friendly AT&T retail outlet the other day to see if they could help make my Blackberry Pearl well. My Pearl ball had stopped going down. It would go in every other direction: Up, left, right. But not down. It hadn't been a good week between AT&T and I. Something had trashed my AT&T home phone connection (not the first time), and I was sans my voice umbilical cord to the world for a good 36 hours. When your home is also your office, these things are
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Usability: a nine letter, four letter word

I recently published, along with a website realign project, a white paper on Usability. It
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Accessibility is getting better in CMS products

I
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Apple iPhone 3G Soft Polycarbonate Slim fit Case Transparent Cozip Smudge Free Screen Protecteor Made in Korea

Apple iPhone 3G Soft Polycarbonate Slim fit Case Transparent Cozip Smudge Free Screen Protecteor Made in Korea November 20, 2008 | By admin In Electronics | Comments(0) Apple iPhone 3G Soft Polycarbonate Slim fit Case Transparent Cozip Smudge Free Screen Protecteor Made in Korea The iPhone 3G Polycarbonate Case - the Ergonomic design cover is comfortable and form-fitting, and provides scratch and slip protection for your iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G Polycarbonate case also has opening
Publication date: 2008-11-21 more

Sitting on the Google tree

Always criticized for its too minimalistic visual design, Google Mail now comes with a set of new themes offering the world the delights of colors, images and fashionable graphical effects. The
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Our website evolves

A good website is never finished. The fluid nature of the web & technology in general, demands that you need to be constantly upgrading, redesigning and publishing if you want to stay on stop. We often advise clients to adopt a continual improvement philosophy when it comes to their website, encouraging them to keep content fresh and to make a few small improvements every month. However, from time to time a major change is needed, we felt that time had come. It
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

(De)personalized

The online world is increasingly personalized, while real-world settings are increasingly depersonalized. Will it change?
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Sun.com Plays Catch-Up by Launching a New Home Page

If you
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Banner on a Heat Map

Kevin Vigneault, Project Manager at VigetAdvance has post a great article about banners placement on a heat map. The heat map helps to visualize the current trend in banner advertising. It shows banner size and placement (highlighted in white) on 50 different popular sites. The brightest white areas are where banner ads were most frequently placed and the black areas are where no banner ads were displayed. The two red lines are 1,024 pixels apart to provide scale. His conclusions are: The
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Impress Task Pain

Each and every time I open an Impress window I have to close the task pane. No, I don't want it. I don't need it. It just consumes screen space. If I need it I want to be in control and open it myself and close it afterwards when no longer needed. RFE: The state of the task pane should become a persistent Impress setting. ISSUE# 96381
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Why digital research is important in tough financial times

Michelle Fuller, Director at eDigitalResearch, writes in the Financial Times on the user experience of online banking: With the banking sector moving towards consolidation, it is crucial that customers are understood, reacted to and rewarded for their loyalty. With the UK office of national statistics estimating that almost half of the UK population is now banking online, the role of the website in the customer journey has never been more important to financiers. Our best advice is for ban
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #72: Core Capabilities

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Core Capabilities ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media C
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Nearly half of technology users need help with new devices

New research from the Pew Research Center
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

NetBeans for PHP

Sun Microsystems has added PHP support to their open-source Netbeans development IDE. I just tried the latest version (6.5) and I
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Creating a Press Section for your Website

Creating a Press Section for your Website November 20th, 2008 by Michael Buczek Tags: News, Press, Press Releases, seo Press or news sections of a website should have a very specific goal.  The main purpose is to give journalists and bloggers quick information about your company or website.  If they can
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

The weekly YouTube addresses are great but...

How much more impressive is the idea of a "craigslist" for community service?! For everyone who workd full time and has a busy family life besides, here is a way to volunteer in piece-work fashion, finding things that you can do and are interested in with ease and without a lot of advance notice or ongoing commitment. Genius! Our first Internet presidency is going to rock. All this said, of course, I'm not knocking the presidential YouTube addresses.
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Recent Donald Norman writings

Donald Norman has posted a number of columns/essays on his blog: People are from earth, machines are from outer space [Interactions 2008 column] People are from earth. Machines are from outer space. I don
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Working through Screens

Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

In UI Design, the

One of the nice things about the Mac OS X operating system is the attention and the little touches that may seem illogical at first but then make complete sense when you think about them.  One of these things is the scrollbar arrows. OS X scrollbars have two arrow buttons, up and down, just like Windows
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

De-clutter Your Interface With Hover Controls

4 Up Down De-clutter Your Interface With Hover Controls (http://www.usabilitypost.com) Submitted 12 hours 4 min ago by puns to Web Design
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Screen Capture Tools: 40+ Free Tools and Techniques

Make your screen capture and sharing experience more interesting, here
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

More Resume Trickery!

BOSTON, MA - Today I was looking for a resume with the following keywords:coremetrics omniture SAS analytics decision store applications research merchandising behavioral usability
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Happy Cog adds UX Professionals to the Lineup

Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog makes amazing websites. His team is the best of the best and now he
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Mobile Web Epiphany

When I set out to research information for an article about the Mobile Web, I had the mindset that Mobile Web was quite immature, that the challenges of getting content onto the mobile phone were many and not well addressed yet. And then I found Tomi Ahonen
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Domain Name should be SEO and User friendly

Domain Name should be SEO and User friendly B2B marketplaces, Recommended Sites No Comments
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Pagination still sucks

There are certain usability patterns that one would think would be in use almost universally across the Web in 2008. Unfortunately, pagination is one of those patterns that companies just can
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Give Up and Use Tables

I don
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Change.gov

Have you visited Obama's transition website yet? Change.gov was live within 24 hours of the election result, and is a beautiful blog style website which continues Obama's dialogue with America, and indeed the rest of the world. Watch a video of the transition team at work, apply for a job with the new government, subcribe to the website for updates, read a plain English summary of a topical agenda item, submit your vision for the country or simply follow the countdown to the inauguration - it
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Make Better Decisions - Test Your Ideas

Until recently it cost thousands of dollars a month to subscribe to sophisticated testing services that would let you gather empirical data about proposed website design changes. Now there
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web

A couple weeks ago on Twitter I said: “I still maintain the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web. Has been for years.” A few people agreed, but most didn’t. Some thought it was a joke. I wasn’t kidding. To clarify, my definition of design goes beyond aesthetic qualities and into areas of maintenance, cost, profitability, speed, and purpose. However, I still think that the Drudge Report is an aesthetic masterpiece even though I also consider it ugly. Can good design also be ugly? I think Drudge proves it can. Here are a few reasons, in no particular order, why I think The Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web. Staying power People talk about timeless design all the time. But most things people point to that are timeless end up being time stamped. The Drudge Report, on the other hand, has proven timeless. It’s generic list of links, black and white monospaced font, and ALL CAPS headlines have survived every trend, every fad, every movement, every era, every design do or don’t. It doesn’t look old and it doesn’t look new — it looks Drudge. It hasn’t changed since at least 1997, and I believe the design goes back even further. How many sites can survive — and thrive — unchanged for a decade? That’s special.
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

QUESTION: CB2 and Land of Nod, both sister brands of

CB2 and Land of Nod, both sister brands of my previous employer Crate and Barrel, are holding a contest for writing product reviews on their respective websites. Do you expect the reviews to skew positive in order to win the prize? Does this call into question the authenticity of the review? What do you think?
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

VIDEO: Here's a demo of some thoughtful UI on Ffffound.com.

Here’s a demo of some thoughtful UI on Ffffound.com.
Publication date: 2008-11-20 more

Greatness, analyzed through love songs

Hey kids, it's poetry explication time! Give me five double-spaced pages on Robert Frost's "Nature's First Green is Gold" by Friday or your grade is toast and your parents will disown you, you'll never hold a good job, and you'll die destitute and alone. Just kidding. I hated dissecting poetry in school, but loved the promise poetry held for me. So while rebelliously faking the teacher out in my assigned schoolwork by day, I put myself through my own Poetry Education Camp by night: no cabins,
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Rise Creative Group adds NuVision Water to client list!

Rise Creative Group is excited to announce a new web design project for
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Microsoft

Today, Microsoft took a revolutionary step with their XBox 360 console by giving gamers a brand new dashboard. The NXE, New Xbox Experience, rolled out this morning and is the first time a console manufacturer has ever taken such a radical step by not only updating features to the existing
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Implications of Ecommerce Sales Slowing Down

The New York Times has had a couple of stories recently about ecommerce sales slowing down along with everything else. Here is a blog post from the Times on this. They are still growing but at a much slower pace. There are some implications here for anyone who makes direct sales via their web site. The primary one is that the usability of your online store is more important now than ever. When times are good, it
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Defining User Experience pt.2

So we have determined that a balanced approach is necessary to provide a quality user experience for our users. Lets look at the first foundational aspect of a good user experience. Just a note hear my primary focus is on web design, and user interfaces, but this process can apply to web based products, or most [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Spotify is right on the spot

I
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Is SEO Hampering Your Site

One of the biggest mistakes I run across is website owners getting so obsessed with SEO they completely ignore the usability of their site. They get so crazed with the idea of ranking well in the search engines that it
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

WALKTHROUGH: How SoundCloud Excels at Web Music Usability

Online music and its controversies are unavoidable, and with no end of hunger for access to tunes, the market has been an evolving battleground. With mavericks (in the non-Palin sense) like the aptly-named Grooveshark seeking to take a bite out of things, it
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Sniglet of the Day

Disemvowlmnt: The process of pruning a word of its vowels in order to cram an idea into the requisite 140 characters allowed in a Twitter post. [word seen at @Quatrainman]
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

OPLIN 4Cast#123: Reference Extracts, domain backlinks, usability, image editors

1. Librarians to Construct Filtered-Web Search Engine - From Reference Extract: Reference Extract is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Con
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

iPhone Usability Test: How People Really Use The iPhone

More iPhone Usability Stuff
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

SABCNews

SABCNews just launched (or at least made active) the latest version of their site. It
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

On iPhone and usability tests

This presentation supports my idea about the typical usability tests: they usually suck, they are worthless and almost always done by people who know nothing about design (and try to make a virtue of it). Check it out, please: How people really use the iPhone View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: development interaction) How could they dare extracting usability conclusions based on first usage? How can they say things like
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Pocket PCs Suck!

Pocket PCs suck! Well, they do at least suck sometimes, namely when they don
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Apple Iphone

A Brief History of the Apple iPhone Apple has a long standing reputation for always coming out with modern products that are geared to cater to the masses. Already before the release of Apple iPhone in June 2007, guesses had been made widely about the outlook, the specifications and about the general properties of the product. No wonder, as the Apple iPhone seems to be an innovative and a novel product, combining the technology of iPods, a revolutionary mobile phone and a handy internet devi
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

CanUX day 1, part 1

Here
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Shermco Industries Purchases the SyberWorks Learning Management System to Manage Technician Certification and Training

Shermco Industries Purchases the SyberWorks Learning Management System to Manage Technician Certification and Training Get the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&quot;&gt;Shout List Icons&lt;/a&gt; widget and many other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/galleryhome/&quot;&gt;great free widgets&lt;/a&gt; at &
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Long Dropdown Menus in Google Insights for Search

A very long dropdown menu Google Insights for Search is an exciting tool and if you haven
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Top Content - Google Analytics

I monitor all of my sites with Google Analytics, and here is another reason why. It
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Incredible Spatial Interaction System makes Minority Report a reality

This isn
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Web Usability for Associations: Designing for Your Members - The Recap

Want to find out how it went and get the slides? Check out my post on the BFWire.
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Rise Creative Group is pleased to launch Dad

Rise Creative Group is pleased to announce the launch of the Dad
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

PDF manuals: the wrong paradigm for an online experience

Mike Hughes writes about the problems with PDF manuals. To quote: Let me describe a familiar user assistance experience. A user installs a new application, and when the user wants Help, the application directs her to the user documentation on a Web site or CD-ROM. What the user finds there is a PDF file containing the manual
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Usability Testing Ensures Your Website Meets Mission

Usability expert Steve Krug just rolled through DC to conduct his one-day website usability testing seminar. I attended along with about 35 other folks who love to discuss the placement and colors of buttons. We
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

See where you are driving from a vantage point outside your car

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a system which allows real time views of a vehicle and its surroundings from a virtual view point. The system combines the images of four cameras mounted on each side of the vehicle into a panoramic view. What amazes me, is that the view point can be located outside of the car, for example, from a vantage point behind and above the vehicle. This way, the driver gets a very good impression of the relative position of his/her car within its surroundings. I
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Camino Web Browser is Best in Mac Universe

Camino Web Browser is Best in Mac Universe November 19th, 2008 The Camino Project released its newest version for Mac OS-X in September 2008. Version 1.6.4 of this union of Mozilla and Macintosh offers a solid, Mac-compatible browsing experience with quick load times and crystal-clear renderings using the Gecko engine. For the past several weeks, Practical eCommerce has been reviewing the leading web browsers, pointing out each one
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

StickySorter from Office Labs

Card sorting is a popular usability activity to help determine intuitive menu structures.  There are several options for doing a card sort on a computer but for one reason or another I haven
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Quick & dirty user testing

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-methods.html I found this article interesting as it spells out problems and solutions for combining UCD and agile project method - that I have had difficulty pinpointing during my project work. I wish my project team would read and understand this stuff. This article made me realise that as an EA, I need to become skilled in, and get good at conducting fast and quick user tests. Testing could be part of my day-to-day activity, rather than needing it to be a
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Opening CHMs from other machines via network

Opening CHMs from other machines via network Filed under: Ergonomics and Usability, Uncategorized
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Drawing parallels in the usability of everyday things

As I stuck my foot into the elevator
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

User experience in online travel webinar

Time and date: Wed Dec 10 2008 | 11:00 AM EST, 1 hour Summary: If you want to find out more about what influences the booking decisions of online travel customers then this webinar is for you! With a focus on usability and user experience, you'll learn all about the online travel customer's user experience. Host/Sponsor: Webcredible
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Improve the Kotsego Blog

We
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

QUESTION: Now that Jerry Yang is out as Yahoo CEO,

Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

13 Tips for a more accessible web

Simple tips on making your HTML or Ajax application more accessible.
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Small E-card Feature For Blog

I NEED A SMALL E-CARD APPLICATION WITH FOLLOWING FEATURES: programming and design of e-card feature will contain 3 e-cards, I will supply card designs visitor sees suggestion text on the card and can change it visitor sees card preview before sending visitor can send same card to multiple senders, recipient doesn
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Think! (It

I
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Adobe to Offer New Tools for UI Development

Adobe Systems, facing greater competition from Microsoft, is updating its Flash platform with new tools for building user interfaces for Web and enterprise applications.
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

[How-To] Make sure that your websites works with different browsers

As web developers or programmers, it
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

I hate my HTC Diamond

I long for another phone (but not an iPhone yet). I
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

FT.com relaunched

Some weeks after the relaunch of the WSJ the international Financial Times website relaunched: http://FT.com Tagged: .EN, FT, News, Publishing, Relaunch, Usability, Web, Webdesign
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

State-of-the-Art: Speecy Robot

Speecy SPC-101C demo from Laurent Haug on Vimeo. From the amazing LIFT conference
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Tealeaf Introduces Mobile Analytics Solution with Mobile Session Replay

Helping companies monetize e-commerce via Web-capable mobile devices, Tealeaf
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

ALA 272: Accessible web video, better 404

18 November 2008 9 am eastern ALA 272: Accessible web video, better 404 In Issue No. 272 of A List Apart, for people who make websites: This is How the Web Gets Regulated by JOE CLARK As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Oblong

The funniest thing about this is that I watched Minority Report last night, I swear to God, it
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Lessons Learned: Myspace Profile 2.0

A few months ago, an uproar emerged on my Twitter:
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

The Free Site Validator: Validate Your Entire Website!

The process of validating the markup of a website is now quiet easy and quick. One can do the same by either installing the HTML Validator Extension or using the Tools
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Vote for the Golden Spiders

I was on the judging panel for the Golden Spiders for this year. It was very interesting. The judging process is pretty thorough, but it
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Future of Mobile

I am here in London now at the Future of Mobile. Great conference, it
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Constant Gateway

Quick-UX provides for the rapid, simple and quantifiable assessment of a product
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: Agile Development Projects and Usability

Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain.
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

World Usability Day 2009 in Review

World Usability Day 2009 in Review I drove up to Phoenix for the 4th Annual World Usability Day event last week. Normally, we hold an event here in Tucson, but our generous facility sponsor had a client-conflict and couldn
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Photoshop in the Real World

My dad just emailed me this cool picture of Photoshop in the
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Capture More Leads on Your Web Site

One of the top objectives for your Web site is to capture qualified leads for your sales team. But simply having a Web site won
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

The Tony Wilson Experience 2009 Website

Webiste proposal for Reification/The Tony Wilson Experience, an event created and maintained by the Manchester City Council.
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Nielsen on Agile development

"Summary: Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain" Long story short: Agility without usability is bad. "Agile's biggest threat to system quality stems from the fact that it's a method proposed by programmers and mainly addresses the implementation side of system development. As a result, it often overlooks int
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

What if your contact form fails?

Did you ever think about it? Someone types the message, clicks on send and gets the error message like "Something went wrong. Sorry...". Ok, what now? How TF can I send you a message? Read in this article/
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Power of the Home Page

We all know that the home page of a website is the power page and is typically the starting point when visiting a site. Navigation starts here, site message is found here, and the beginning of the customer hand holding starts here. When visiting EliteClocks.com I found a weak power page, the home page, followed up with strong category pages. What is happening here? If you look at their home page, EliteClocks.com you will see few characteristics of a weak page. In-consistent type font, no rea
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Silverlight vs. Flash (or Microsoft vs. Adobe)

There's a lot of software envy going on at Microsoft when it comes to some essential web tools. Adobe has long held a widely established platform for publishing and document delivery with Acrobat. With the acquisition of Macromedia (2004), Adobe had its eyes set on Flash, Macromedia's ubiquitous web animation and interactivity platform. Adobe has expanded on that platform and added Flex and AIR to the mix. YouTube, quite arguably the biggest online video sharing site, has pinned its platform wi
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Five Navigation Tips for the Kindle - #3: Turning Down the Corners of Pages

This navigation tip for the Kindle comes under the heading of
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Boy Howdy Balsamiq is cool

Before I switched over to full time software development, I used to write functional specs for some of the applications at ATG. The most frustrating aspect of this wasn
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

How people surf the Internet and read your posts

Jakob Nielsen is the guru of the Internet website usability. Jakob
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

Make your blog content scannable and sticky

We have previously looked at how users surf internet and how they spend time reading blog posts and pages. Now we will look at how this should be presented in your blog writing, to maximize your blog potential, its readership and the blog revenue. The first point is that 79% of Jakob Nielsen test users always scanned any new page they came across and never read word by word. As a result of this, bloggers have to employ scannable text in their blogs and blog posts. Ways to employ scannable tex
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

The Perfect Thank Your For Shopping Page

The Perfect Thank Your For Shopping Page Besides having a BBB certificate, free both way shipping, customer testimonials, live help/chat, phone number with 24hrs support, free returns
Publication date: 2008-11-18 more

PHOTO: "More effective, useless." The Devil is in the details.

“More effective, useless.” The Devil is in the details.
Publication date: 2008-11-17 more

Asking for feedback, getting a redesign

We
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Link ambiguity and how to avoid it

These days I find myself using JavaScript libraries, specifically jQuery, to add lightweight visual effects to my websites. One of the most useful things you can do with them is hide and show content. For instance, if you
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Frame-Up

  The idea is that the camera itself is integrated within a pair of sunglasses. Using your fingers to frame the portion of your viewing field you wish to photograph (like a hot-shot photographer framing a scene), wink with one eye to capture the shot. [via Walyou] OK, clever interface. I love the conceptually seamless interleaving of real and virtual realities. But
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Mint: Personal Financial Management with a Soul

I had the amazing opportunity to sit down with the product team (Justin, Jason ,Val and Aaron) of Mint.com this week. It was great to meet the guys and hear from them why they love their company.  I figured I
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Tsuru Origami

New project. Visit my portfolio. My name is Edinaldo Marques, I am 24 years old, a native of Recife, currently living in Sao Paulo. I work as an art assistant in One Digital, creating pieces, sites, campaigns, to customers such as Bradesco, Samsung, American Express among others. So far, I enjoy doing it, however, soon I intend to be working with video and 3D as well. Posted by dimarques for Design Yout Trust, 2008. Permalink | No comments Design You Trust sponsors. We're proud all of t
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Visual design for the web: great articles

As a web designer, i am always trying to find resources related to information design, usability issues, navigation techniques that will help me make things better on my next project. Don
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Was ist eigentlich User Experience

Zu den Kommentaren Der Begriff User Experience wird inzwischen genau so selbstverständlich verwendet wie Usability. Doch was genau ist eigentlich User Experience? Hierzu ist auf User Pathways ein kurzer Artikel erschienen. Our job as UX people is to make the complex simple. It is to aggregate our learning, rationalize and synthesise our thoughts and then design with empathy.
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

You say potato, I say OMG, WTF!

Our local produce delivery came the other day and there were some surprises! When agribusiness stops, the entertainment begins.
Publication date: 2008-11-16 more

Fun Software SMS & MMS Diary 0.99.4 - Fastest SMS and MMS Viewer

The Fastest S60v3 SMS and MMS viewer in the world! Fastest in the world!!! The SMS & MMS Diary program is undoubtedly the fastest message viewer in the world! Some people claims that IPhone has the fastest and best user interface for list boxes in mobile phones with the support for
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Usability and SEO: An Interview with Randy Pickard of UserCentric

Within the last week, I
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Cart of the Week: MightyMerchant Offers Full-Service Ecommerce Platform

Cart of the Week: MightyMerchant Offers Full-Service Ecommerce Platform November 14th, 2008 Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this, our
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Twingr Registration: My mind was made up before I even tried the product

I very rarely will say anything about a site if the only opinion I have is negative. Twingr looked like an interesting idea. The service let's you create your own Twitter-clone microblogging site, as does Yammer, but without any constraints regarding who you may invite. Alas, I can't say that I know what the experience is like because I couldn't get past the front door, so I walked away possibly never to return. So here's the criticism, and my advice for how not to run a product alpha/beta.
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

CSS or Tables - still confused?

You prefer CSS or Table based layouts?
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Camera designed for specific context-of-use

I was reading the Qantas in-flight magazine yesterday, and came across a review for the Olympus Tough Smart 1050SW which was claimed to be
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Web conference: Edge of the Web (Perth)

Last week I attended the Edge of the Web conference in Perth, Australia - along with WebJam 9, Western Australia Web Awards 08, a Port 80 and a PTUB. I wrote a blog post on Edge of the Web for SitePoint - go read it!
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

74 Great Web Apps for Web Designers we have forgotten about

The amount of Web Based Apps available are phenomenal, some we forget about
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Multi-touch input: when is it really needed?

Multi-touch input is an emerging input modality where several point of pressure can be detected on a surface. To a great extent the success of graphical user interface was that it was possible to perform direct manipulation of graphical objects with minimal effort, namely pointing and clicking. The mouse lies on the table and does not need to be continuously held by the user. Then, switching from mouse to keyboard is very easy (even better with touchpads in laptops). Now with multi-touch scr
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Apala Chavan

Apala Lahiri Chavan is Vice President,Asia for HFI and manages offices in India, China, and Singapore, and a Contextual Innovation lab in Bangalore. She is an award-winning designer (International Audi Design Award) and has led teams spanning design, development, testing, and deployment of software products. In addition, she is ACM SIGCHI
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Mercedes-Benz.tv 2.0

Finally we got there: Mercedes-Benz.tv 2.0 is online. It
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

16 Websites to Increase your site statistics

Here we go guys we have some websites for you to increase your site statistics and submit your design news, We already post here in our blog about 15 sites to promote your website and now were posting another half of it. This websites help you boost your websites traffic so submit now and increase/promote your website.
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Product blog update: Basecamp monitor on production floor, Highrise Deals API, Tasks vs. To-dos, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Large monitors on production floor show company’s Basecamp milestones “I love my new production schedule monitor. Great job and the best part is that I can see the red dates from my office. Everyone here likes it so far or until their project goes red for everyone to see.” A monitor displays milestones at A. D. Williams Engineering. VisioPlanning for Basecamp: Keep track of projects and employees in real time “When an employee is working on a certain project, he must keep his interface up to date by activating the flashing light corresponding to the task(s) he is working on. This update is then automatically carried on to the supervisor interface. This way, the supervisor always knows what the employees are working on in real time.” Basecamp FAQ: How can I upload or change the photo that appears next to my name? Tired of seeing that generic person icon inside Basecamp? Then you and your team should upload photos. It’s a simple step, but it really humanizes things when can you see a person’s face next to their words. Highrise Highrise Deals API Attention developers: The Highrise API now works with the new Deals feature. Multiple products Discussing when to use Highrise tasks vs. Basecamp to-dos “There is almost NO time that seeing everything we have to do in one place actually helps us, other than by making us anxious. Theoretically, it sounds nice, but I don
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

PHOTO: "Origamized" Basecamp logo

“Origamized” Basecamp logo
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

VIDEO: Starting in 2006 Peter Schiff goes prescient

Starting in 2006 Peter Schiff goes prescient. He nails the current crisis in detail. The other talking heads can’t get the bull [market] out of their mouths fast enough. They’re even laughing him off. My favorite moment is when Ben Stein says Merrill is a super bargain at $79. “It’s a joke it’s so cheap” he says. MER closed today at 13.80. Here’s the MER chart from August 17, 2007 — the day Ben Stein called it. Bueller…Bueller?
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Ask 37signals: Does "Getting Real" work in this economy?

David asks: The recent economic downturn has me wondering… Are small ‘Getting Real’ businesses like 37signals more resistant to the declining economy or is it just that any downside is much less dramatic than multi billion dollar failures and job cuts in the thousands? Have you been impacted directly in reduced growth or increased cancellations as far as you can tell? How do most companies handle economic downturns? They keep a closer eye on spending, they cut back on hiring (or lay people off), they waste less time, they focus on their core competencies, they push to eliminate complexities, they cut back on long tedious projects and instead focus on quicker wins that have a more immediate impact on the bottom line, and they consolidate roles and trim fat. This is what Getting Real is all about. Staying small, being frugal, focusing on just a few core things at a time, quick wins, eliminating abstractions that lead to miscommunication and complexity, only doing what you need to do instead of everything you could possibly do, etc. We believe companies that live these ideas are better off all the time — but especially when times get rough. Charging for your product is safer Another key tenet of Getting Real is charging for your product. You make something and your customers pay for it. Connecting your revenues to your customers helps you stay focused on the things that really matter to the people who pay your bills. It’s a healthy alignment that helps during tough times. This isn’t the case when advertisers are the ones funding your operation. When the people using your product aren’t the ones paying for your product you’re at a strategic disadvantage. Your improvements can’t just be targeted at users, they also have to be targeted at advertisers. So now some of your energy is split into pleasing two different groups. It’s possible advertisers and users have the same goals, but it’s less likely. You’ll notice I’m calling people users now. That’s what people become when they don’t pay for your product—they are users, not customers. That changes the entire dynamic. One more point on advertising-funding businesses: They’re at greater risk in economic downturns. Advertising budgets are among the first to get cut when things go bad. If your business is based on someone else’s advertising budget, you’re in for an especially difficult time in a down market.
Publication date: 2008-11-15 more

Happy World Usability Day

World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Cold Night at World Web Usability 2008

I arrived late in the event. It isn
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Canon PowerShot A2000 IS Review - Digital Camera Reviews

Digital Camera Reviews Canon PowerShot A2000 IS Review Digital Camera Reviews, OH - 16 hours ago Canon's PowerShot A-series digital cameras enjoy an almost legendary reputation for affordability, practicality, usability, durability and dependability, ...
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

World Usability Day 2008 in Manila Reflections

November 13, 208 was a tiring day
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Part 3 of ?: Swing Application Best Practices

If you haven't seen Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I invite you to read those. I'm really excited about the amount of response I have received on these posts and I really think something good can come out of this. The only problem thus far is I have received an email from 1 person wanting to join the project. I can't do this alone and I can't do it with 2 people. For this to work I really need more participation on the actual project so if you would like to help in any way please send me a gm
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Test driving the iLiad

I appreciated the marketing initiatives of the Simplicissimus patron Antonio Tombolini since when I first met them during the
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Haiku Heaven

@copyblogger is hosting a Twitter-based haiku contest, with a MacBook Air as the top prize. Here are some of my favorite entries:
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

World Usability Day!

World Usability Day! November 14th, 2008   Participate to make life easier! As a user, you can participate on the World Usability Day by sharing videos /photos/ comments from your transportes experience. The Portuguese Association from Usability Professionals (APPU) in coordination with Usability Professionals Association (UPA) is celebrating the day inviting the users to use the transports and register any difficulties by using them or even objects or services that helps us to do the trip
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

Protonotes: HTML prototyping collaboration tool

Protonotes provides a service to allow teams to add notes directly onto html prototypes. Check out the video below for a demo. After you register the confirmation email provides a few snippets of javascript to put into your html prototypes to insert a menubar over the top of your site. The menubar provides controls for creating notes and can be configured to be unobtrusive.
Publication date: 2008-11-14 more

giving the user a CHOICE on a form

giving the user a CHOICE on a form Nov 14th, 2008 Written By Ian It never surprises me how, even in 2008, websites still force users in to either giving away information they would rather not provide, or insisting that they sign up to some form of regular contact. To become a member of a certain group or community, providing your credentials should always be enough. Providing a valid email address and clicking on an approval email is fine, and giving additional information should always be
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Learn About Usability Testing-Test and Refine

In a usability test, representative users try to do typical tasks with the product, while observers, including the development staff, watch, listen, and take notes. The product can be a Web site, Web application, or any other product. It does not have to be a finished product. You should be testing prototypes from early paper-based stages through fully functional later stages.
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Ever wish selenium tests were less verbose, more resuable, and supported TestNG, Groovy, and JUnit?

I recently started using the tellurium framework for my functional testing. It is amazing, my tests do not contain any selenium code in them, all that is contained in small descriptive UI modules. If you have been following selenium, there has not been a major update in years, this is that update that you have always wanted to see.
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33 Free Tools to Make Your Website Better | FutureNow

Bryan Eisenbergn blogs about some of the tools to make your website better 25. Sitescore - analyzes the quality of incoming and outgoing links, keyword density, page titles, plagiarism, popularity rank, the usage of popups and the effectiveness of sites structure. Sitescore also grades the printability,
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e-Learning Lingo Podcast #71: Bloom's Taxonomy

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up!   This week's word is  "Bloom's Taxonomy ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show.  You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Ce
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The persuaders

A really interesting walkthrough from Human Factors about persuasion design. It
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Is Your App Responsive?

You
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I didn't even know that today is World Usability Day

which is related to the idea of robust systems.... Sara Snyder, a webdesigner for a Smithsonian unit, writes: Wishing you all a very happy World Usability Day today! This year
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Web Directions South Gov Podcasts

Web Directions South Government 08 have their podcasts and presentation slides online. It would be nice to see improvement in the Tasmanian e-Government, maybe I
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Take your Website to the Dentist

This post was inspired by my recent dentist visit and the start of my silver grill as stated if you follow me on twitter. Having a long term website is a lot of work. You have to update the content, keep the Content Management System up to date so it
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Optimizing by Color

Evolt has some research in an article titled Optimizing by Color which investigates how colour can affect site activity and performance.
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The Pitfall of Adding Keyboard Shortcuts to Web Apps

I
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A Different Look at Creativity Part II: the social media mix

Before we go any further
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Make all usability test cash payments divisible by $20

Quick note: when setting usability test cash payments, pick a number divisible by $20, so the ATM is enough. In summer sessions, we offered $125. Rounding up that $5 triggered minor pain for every session. Lesson learned. This week, we scaled back to $120, and the money flowed like credit in 2005. If the economy
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PHP V5 and object-oriented programming

PHP V5.3 is designed to prepare developers for PHP V6 when it comes by adding new features, cleaning up existing features by tweaking the functionality, fixing platform-specific issues, and deprecating old features that won't be in future versions of PHP. In this "What's new in PHP V5.3" series, discover the new features and see how they can be used in your Web application.
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Kindle

Imagine my surprise when I got an email from Amazon telling me that my Kindle was out of memory and that they were waiting to download some content onto my Kindle but that there was no place to put it.
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Holiday Season

The holiday season is nearly upon us, and I know what you are thinking. You want to buy me the  3M Littmann
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Feedback is a valuable brand

Here
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Bookmarks for November 13th

These are my links for November 13th: Create with Context - How people really use the iPhone - A pdf presentation based on a usability study of iPhone applications. via Overlobe RjDj - This looks really really cool. It is an application and system for listening to generative music on the iPhone. Tracks or 'scenes' can respond to sounds in the listener's environment via microphone, sampling and incorporating them into the music in real time as well as motion data from the inbuilt accelerometers
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Bionic Man: Vision

In an attempt to find out if I am not a bot and am a human, they want to make sure that I am also super human. (courtesy Yahoo Games). Bionic people need try only
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Show rows?

The Google analytics interface has recently had a change in the way it does tabular data. There
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Infopoint, more words

The idea?? with the Infopoint is to facilitate the daily tasks of a real group, without being intrusive or bureaucratic. It will not replace a group of people, but it will help to organize its work. The infopoint is a live cd to install a NOC, a Network Operations Center, in a social space. Is linked to the physical space is built for, and to the people that makes the space run, or comes to it. The Infopoint is a machine that runs on the local network and provides several network services lik
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The long road to kill the iPhone

The stellar entrance of Apple into the mobile phone arena has taken ancient carriers by surprise and has force them to put its marketing and design departments to work, some of them launching excellent and full features mobile contenders and others failing to impress us all, but launching a mobile phone that looks like a iPhone is one thing, the most difficult is the other missing part, make it appeals to the public as the iphone. There is a very long road to kill the iphone, it is about tim
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This Is What Ticks Me Off With Sun and Swing

So I have been spending most of my evening trying to get drag and drop from a JTree to a JList to work with Java6's alleged "simpler D&D support". Simple is relative. I need to actually transfer the user object from the DefaultMutableTreeNode for my application to really work correctly so that meant providing my own TransferHandler and Transferable implementations.
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Web Site Usability Testing - Overview

Web Site Usability Testing - Overview November 14th, 2008 by Allison Kulage A usability study or usability test is a great way to learn from a sample of real people to provide a better user experience with your web site. When you work closely on a project, sometimes it
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What is search engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not about beating Google. It is about ranking high in the Google search engine results page for your online business targeted keyword phrase(s). www.ABFX.co.nz targeted phrase: The best resource for training on SEO is StomperNet. These folks have been in the industry since the web began, and their trainers have literally thousands of websites producing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. They know their stuff. Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins are the t
Publication date: 2008-11-13 more

Missing Home

I
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World Usability Day 2008!

It's World Usability Day today, and the UPA asks you to take the Global Transport Challenge to Measure your everyday transportation usage Monitor your personal carbon travel footprint and compare yourself to others around the world Minimize your energy usage through alternative transportation choices, carbon offsets, and simple travel changes thereby maximizing the impact on our world. Go visit the WUD 2008 page and take the challenge today!
Publication date: 2008-11-13 more

Stork Craft Lennox Change Table

Stork Craft Lennox Change Table Review: I was looking for a changing table that was sturdy and wouldn
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Online catalogue software?

Dear Lazyweb, I was browsing FACES recently, and noticed that they had an e-magazine. Nothing fancy, you have to zoom in and out to read it, making it kind of annoying on a laptop screen (the real experience will come on the 24
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Coming Up: World Usability Day 2008 in Manila

There will be World Usability Day 2008 celebration in Manila! WHEN: 13 November 2008, 6-8 PM WHERE: 2VC Tech Bar at the Orient Square Building, Ortigas Road (formerly Emerald), Ortigas Center, Pasig City On this event, there will series of talks on usability and real-life experiences of usability professionals, and is yet to be finalized. The tentative list of speakers include members of the Globe Usability Team, Rey Mendoza and Ely Apao. Regnard Raquedan - Welcome Remarks Rey Mendoza - Usa
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The usability of use-by-dates

Recently, Tesco changed the packaging of their Coleslaw. Not exactly front page news and I suspect their motivation was driven by a desire to reduce the amount of packaging they use - or was it cost saving, I can
Publication date: 2008-11-13 more

My Super Charged Firefox

After several iterations of firefox add-ons recommended by blogs like LifeHacker, Digital Inspiration and a host of Internal ones - my Firefox has truly become my super-charged powerhouse. An inventory of this beast. Get Firefox Download Firefox Add-Ons - External FfChrome - trims the number of items in your context menu (right click menu) Download Statusbar - removes the additional download window Download Helper - best tool to download videos from YouTube etc Down Them All! - a downl
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The iPhone and usability

One of the (many) things I take heat for is my insistence that, with very few exceptions, there
Publication date: 2008-11-13 more

Trying to understand YUI 3

I
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Has the Google Talk desktop client been abandoned?

I
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8 Rules of Thumb [!] on iPhone Usage

If you have any connection with the mobile industry, User Experience, User Interface design or application design, then this presentation is definitely worth your time: How people really use the iPhone View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: development interaction)
Publication date: 2008-11-13 more

Compact Your Menu Bar Even More in Firefox

One add-on I keep adding on is Tiny Menu, due to the fact that I like to have a minimalist browsing experience. However, I have found one extension that does an even better job than Tiny Menu at compacting the standard menu bar down to one small popup menu, Compact Menu 2. The major benefits Compact Menu 2 has over Tiny Menu are: An even smaller footprint (one small blue globe to access your regular menu bar items) You can move it anywhere (Tiny Menu was locked to one location) As far as
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Windows Live Writer doesn

Probably the team that is developing Windows Live Writer never tested it with
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OpenID market research

Brian Kissel (of JanRain) has a nice set of slides on Slideshare, OpenID Foundation Market Research Report from IIWb 2008,summarising the market drivers, technology enablers and business benefits of OpenID, then listing some of the challenges currently being faced and the initiatives underway in response. I've been meaning to write up some of this stuff here but these slides capture the issues very succinctly so I won't bother :-) The user experience of OpenID continues to be one of the major
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Five Tips for Navigation on the Kindle - #2: Flipper Options

OK, so now you know how to use the Enhanced Progress Bar to jet around the book you are reading. If it is a big text, then this is an immense help. Otherwise, you are left clicking
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World Usability Day

Today is World Usability Day which is
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The User Is Always Right A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web VOICES

The User Is Always Right A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web VOICES How do we ensure that our Web sites actually give users what they need? What are the best ways to understand our users
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Usability: The Forgotten Problems

Usability is the broad discipline of applying sound scientific observations, measurement and design principles to the creation and maintenance of website to bring about the greatest ease of use, ease of learnability, amount of usefulness and least amount of discomfort for humans who have to use it.
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RIA Frameworks: And the Survey Says

Given the number of frameworks now available for rich Internet application (RIA), choosing the right one, if not the best one, can be a difficult decision. Inside RIA recently completed an online survey that asked Flex/ActionScript RIA developers about their preferred frameworks.
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My talk at the Business Innovation Factory 4 Conference

My talk at the Business Innovation Factory 4 conference in Providence, RI last month. While you’re at it, be sure to watch Tony from Zappos, Dennis Littky walking the walk on school reform, Matt Cottam rethinking the nursing home experience, and Colonel Dean Esserman (from last year’s conference).
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PHOTO: Rollover menus can be finnicky but the ones

Rollover menus can be finnicky but the ones at Threadless are very comfortable to use. Overall, Threadless is very disciplined about keeping the front page clean. You can actually read the whole thing. There aren’t any blocks full of links that you have to skip over and copy is kept to a minimum.
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Jules: A robot that mimics faces

Scientists have created the first ‘humanoid’ robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being. Full article at Mail Online.
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Highrise: Better import and export

Highrise has been on a roll lately. The new Deals feature has been a huge success. Let’s keep the good news coming. Today we’re excited to roll out two of the most requested features in Highrise: CSV (Excel) import, and exporting of notes/emails from contacts, cases, and deals. CSV (Excel) import You’ve always been able to import contacts from vCards, Basecamp, Outlook, and ACT!, but we didn’t provide an option to import data from a CSV file. Many people keep their contacts in Excel, so now you can export those contacts from Excel into a CSV file and import them into Highrise. Here’s how it works (from the Highrise help section). Jamis did a great job putting this feature together. Export your notes/email You’ve been able to export your contacts from Highrise in vCard or CSV format for a while now. But starting today you can also export your notes/emails from your contacts, cases, and deals. Here’s how it works.
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Why an 'iPod killer' will never kill the iPod

Apple must be smiling whenever one of their competitors bill their next MP3-player as an iPod killer. It reminds everyone who the market leader is and invites them to evaluate the product on Apple’s terms. If you’re going to be an iPod killer — and not just a great new music player — you have to first out-Apple Apple at all the things that makes the iPod special. That means superior industrial design, an iTMS-beating catalogue of content, and a better desktop experience than iTunes. That’s almost an impossibly tall order. Which is of course why it hasn’t happened yet and probably won’t happen any time soon. That doesn’t mean that there’s not room for other entries in the music player department, just that you’re going to have a hell of a time making it if you think cloning the market leader and saying you did it better is the way to do it. Now replace Apple and the iPod with the gorilla and blockbuster in your niche. Are you setting yourself up to be a Zune?
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PHOTO: Blue lobster caught off coast of Scotland

Blue lobster caught off coast of Scotland: “Blue lobsters are caused by a genetic defect. Rather than containing the pigments that combine to make the normal olive green and brown colour, the shell contains only a blue pigment.” [thanks HLO]
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QUESTION: Is RSS dead to you too? I haven't used an

Publication date: 2008-11-12 more

The importance of setting expectations

This week I’m having a new roof put on my house. I did the research, got the quotes, picked a company, and they’re working on it now. They’ve been at it two days so far, but I’ve already been surprised twice. It reminded me how important it is to set your customer’s expectations. Day one They tore off the old roof(s). You can’t see the sky, it’s just the old roofing material—the ceiling is still in place. I had no idea this would make a mess inside the house on the top floor. Paint chips, roof dust through some cracks and removed skylights. I guess I should have assumed, but I’ve never been through this before so I didn’t think much about it. Would have been nice if the roofing company said… “Hey, when we tear off the old roof you might get some black dust and paint chips on the top floor. You may want to cover up some of your furniture or other valuables just in case.” Day two Out come the blow torches. I didn’t know they’d be torching today. But I’m working from home and wondering what the acrid burning smell is and light smoke filling the house. Now I know. Would have been nice if they said… “Hey, today we’re going to be working with torches and toxic materials. Some smoke and fumes may get inside during this process. You may want to leave the house while we’re doing this.” Day three I have no idea what’s next. What happens tomorrow? They don’t tell you, they just do it and then you find out. Would be nice at the end of each day if they said… “Hey, so far we’ve finished A B and C. Tomorrow we’ll be doing D. Here’s what you can expect.” Setting expectations is key I have confidence in their work, but the experience has been soured by the the lack of expectations. Just giving me a feel for what’s gonna happen today and tomorrow would go a long way towards making the experience significantly better.
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PHOTO: Beards in Battle, By Phineas X. Jones.

Beards in Battle, By Phineas X. Jones.
Publication date: 2008-11-12 more

Then just say it like that

Stream of consciousness rant: I’ve been in too many meetings, too many conferences, too many discussions where someone goes “I’m having a hard time explaining this or that…” Then they say “I just really want to say this…” And then they say it and it’s clear, concise, and obvious. But it’s as if they aren’t even listening to themselves because they’re right back to thinking about how to say what they just said. Only now they’re back to trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. They should just say it like they said it a minute ago. We’re all told to be good listeners when someone else is talking, but we should work on being better listeners when we’re talking. We might find that we’ve already got the answers.
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Carbon Copies: I write dead people

This gets a 10 for creepy and a 10 for clever. The creepy part This is a 240 pencil set made from the carbon of a cremated human. Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the deceased. The clever part Only one pencil can be removed at a time. You sharpen the pencil by putting it back in the box. The shavings then occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings — turning the box into a new urn (it’s filled with the shavings which are made from the cremation). Designed by Nadine Jarvis. Linked via Marc Ecko.
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Unconferences?

I just got back from RubyConf 2008, in Orlando, Florida. It was really a fantastic conference. It came off really well, and everything was top-notch. What I loved most was reconnecting with the community, just sitting, chatting and hacking with people from all over the world with whom I normally interact only online. It made me realize that what I really want to attend is an “unconference”, where people pay to come and listen to one (or maybe two) keynotes by prominent community members, but then the rest of the time is spent in unstructured hacking sessions, where people cluster and work together on any number of different projects. If people want to stand up at a mic and talk about something that interests them, that’s fine, but the focus would not be on presentation, but on working on interesting projects. Barcamp sounds kind of like this, but the emphasis still seems to be on presentations. Has anyone ever attended something like this?
Publication date: 2008-11-11 more

QUOTE: This crisis is as much about values, trust

This crisis is as much about values, trust, and business integrity as it is about declining stock prices and limited credit. Be sure to remind your colleagues, your customers, and the world at large why what you do matters, why you started the company in the first place, and what kind of impact you
Publication date: 2008-11-11 more

Hanson: Still at it and more successful than ever

Gapers Block has a great piece on Hanson, the band. Hanson is a great case study for the music business and the business business. They’re a group of guys — brothers, no less — who love what they do and don’t care what you think. They’ve built a deeply loyal fan base, they’ve built a great business, and they’ve been able to mobilize their fans to support causes that the band — and their fans — believe in. And they’ve done all this after being written off and largely ignored. What I found most impressive about the story is how dedicated they are to their community. They are part of the community, not just facilitators of the community. For example, to promote charity, and their “Walk Around the World” tour, they are walking a mile with their fans before each show. For each mile walked, the band donates one dollar on the walker’s behalf to one of five causes the walker can choose from. That’s just cool. I think the whole Hanson story is simple one of dedication, product, and patience. They’re dedicated to their music, they put out a solid product, and their patience has allowed them to sustain long-term success. They’ve made it on their own terms on their own schedule. Sidenote: In a strange set of circumstances involving Ryan Singer and his former employer, I happened to go see a Hanson show at the House of Blues in Chicago a few years ago. I was impressed and thoroughly entertained. I also got a chance to meet the guys and was impressed by their down to earth nature and genuine love for what they get to do every night. They love their music, they love their fans, their fans love them, and their fans love their music. It’s the perfect loop.
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PHOTO: All I want in life sometimes is for AT&T

All I want in life sometimes is for AT&T to say, “Sarah, you have accumulated so many unused minutes and texts that your next bill is free, since we realize ‘rollover’ means nothing to you. Have a nice day.” Next best thing: Restructuring of the entire wireless industry so YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU USE.
Publication date: 2008-11-11 more

World Usability Day 2008 plans

World Usability Day 2008 plans November 8, 2008 - 8:57am
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

UX Matters Survey

For all you Usability Specialists out there, I hope you are accessing and reading the articles from UX Matters. In celebration of their third year of publishing, they are taking a survey from readers and you can provide feedback about what content you would like to see in the coming year. Just click HERE Authored by [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

HomoZappiens & Digital Immigrants

HomoZappiens & Digital Immigrants November 8th, 2008 Dear readers, thank you for reading my blog and I hope you did not wonder why I did not write for a longer time! Due to some work schedules and a sports-accident, I did not finish any blogpost about sports- and webscience-research-news. However, today I write again and would like to introduce two kind of funny terms I thought about while I was describing the difference between Wikipedia and Google to my father:
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Adventures in self-checkout UI

Part of being me is that basically every possible task I decide to undertake in my day-to-day life is completely unaccounted for by city planners, architects, designers, doctors, software engineers, and so on. Sometimes, this is simply due to the fact that I am tall[1], as in the case of the face-level wall sconce mounted in the hall next to my desk at work, or the fact that everything from doorknobs to toilets are generally too low for me to comfortably operate. Other times, it
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

KDE application collection

It;s interesting site where stored are apps for linux KDE by category. p.s. I'm using a Gnome in Ubuntu 8.10 , because unlike KDE(not usability interface).
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

Hatter, Alicia N.

Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

World Usability Day Event in Dublin

It
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

Good Accessible Form using CSS

A form laid out using 100% CSS that looks good and implements good accessibility and usability practices.
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 11/08

John Galt [EDIT] removed, sponsored 3-columned, search-engine optimized, widget ready, highly customizable WordPress theme with an emphasis on usability. SEO Blog Three column gravatar theme with widgetized sidebar and footer, customizable header and with twitter integrated. GreatIdeas Three column, fixed width, widget ready theme TDAge TDAge is a light-blue two column theme with big, bold feed and
Publication date: 2008-11-09 more

Excel Applications for Cost Accounting: Gaylord N. Smith

Excel Applications for Cost Accounting: Gaylord N. Smith Posted on 09 Nov 2008 under Business & Investing Editorial Reviews Introduce students to the power of spreadsheets. This workbook contains 51 spreadsheet problems that reinforce principles of accounting concepts. The problems incorporate formula development and model building skills that may be used in a variety of accounting applications. Emphasis is placed on what if analysis. $Order Excel Applications for Cost Accounting: Ga
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LINK: The missing iCal calendar

The missing iCal calendar The US Holidays iCal is great but I wish there was an iCal for things that aren’t really holidays but that everyone stops to “celebrate.” Like the Super Bowl, the Oscars, presidential debates, etc. Basically, a calendar that will tell you “if you’re planning on scheduling an event, avoid this night.”
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Dion shows how to give good interview

A lot of musician interviews wind up with a pulling-teeth vibe where you can sense the artist would rather just let the music do the talking. “Dion Pays Homage To Guitar-Rock Giants,” an audio interview with the singer-songwriter on NPR, is the opposite of that. You can sense he can’t wait to tell stories about his music and his peers. You might think you don’t give a shit what Dion has to say, but take a listen. You’ll be fascinated. In fact, it’s a great example of promotion through education. Instead of just some old fogey plugging his latest record, he really gives ya something. He bring his guitar along and weaves in bits of songs, anecdotes about the greats he came up with, musical lessons, etc. He covers “Summertime Blues” and explains how he loves the sense of humor displayed in the third verse. He talks about the song “Ruby Ruby” which led to the greatest compliment of his life: Little Richard’s mother telling him he’s got soul. He mentions how Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” changes keys six times. He tells the story of writing “Born to Cry” as a 16-year old after he walked past a synagogue and heard the cantor singing. And he breezes through all of that in just a few minutes. It’s a great lesson for anyone who’s trying to promote something. If you just show up to plug something, it’s easy to tune out. But if you give your audience a story they want to hear and/or teach them something interesting, they’ll eagerly pay attention.
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Firefox navigation heaven - Drag & drop zones

I recently read about Drag & Drop Zones on Lifehacker and it
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Inform and UX Workshop

You have asked and we have delivered. Today we're announcing new services that our clients have been clamoring for. We now officially offer Usability Testing, Expert Evaluation, and Training services. Continue reading "Inform and UX Workshop"
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Crowdsourcing Usability

Maybe we have been going about this User Experience Professional thing all wrong. Wouldn
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

End of an era

usability.gnome.org is no more. Well, okay, that
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Learn the Essentials of Effective Visual Design

While it's still two weeks away, here's a Webinar that you don't want to miss. Especially, if you've been working to utilize visual design to not just be user-friendly but design-friendly as well. The folks at User Interface Engineering -- a research, training and consulting firm specializing in Web site and product usability -- are hosting Essentials of Effective Visual Design on Thursday, November 20, at 1:30 p.m. EDT. This Webinar aims to help you take advantage of a visual hierarchy, so the
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Phoenix WUD (Phoenix, AZ, USA)

November 13, 20086:00 pmto8:30 pm Arizona professionals interested in hardware/software usability and human factors are invited to attend the second World Usability Day event in Phoenix. Please join this awareness and networking event designed to grow the Arizona usability community. The event is scheduled for Thursday, November 13, 2008 from 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. Seating and refreshments are limited, so you must RSVP to attend this event. Cafe/Dining Room, 2233 West Dunlap Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 8502
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Library Usability Links 11/7/08

New to me: 10 Steps to User Persona Personas expert Lene Nielson has a question and answer session on personas with the Journal of HC Vistas earlier this year. She is also the author of the above 10 Steps to User Personas.
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Find and Measure Links Better with Linkscape

Find and Measure Links Better with Linkscape November 7th, 2008 One of the most important attributes of search engine optimization (SEO) is link building, which is garnering quality inbound links to a website. A single link from a high-quality, trusted source can raise the rankings of multiple pages on a website because search engines aren
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

T-Mobile Austria and RIM Launch the BlackBerry Bold Smartphone

Vienna, Austria
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Whatever happened to Kathy Sierra?

Because of death threats, her blog has been frozen in time since April 6th, 2007. If you
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Designing Online Social Networks: The Theories of Social Groups

Online communities (facilitated by Web 2.0) have become very important over the past few years - not only to niche communities, but now to mainstream brands. Social networking is about human connection and links between people. The reasons why people join groups and social networks are typically that groups can: Provide encouragement and support Establish identity with others and fulfil the need to feel included Provide the outlet for some people to establish their need for recognition, social
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Measuring the User Experience

Regular readers of SM probably have seen my rants against
Publication date: 2008-11-08 more

Like Bigfoot, Windows Mobile 6.5 exists.  Has same problems.

Gizmodo has Microsoft
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Reinstalling Windows XP Professional SP3: Operation PC Forgiveness 2008

This week I
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Demo: "Please listen carefully..."

"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed." I've blogged about this useless little IVR nugget before. The IVR script writer believes that misroutes are solely caused by callers' inattention to the recorded prompt - certainly not because the menu options are confusing or misleading. Some brilliant individual created a working demo that makes that point far better than I can in writing on my blog. Call 888-583-2801 and enjoy. Thank you Brad Lehman for the pointer.
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Non-Constructive Linux Bashing Does Require A Kevlar Suit

An article published in iTWire titled
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World Usability Day 2008 in Manila

Professionals and students alike are invited to the World Usability Day 2008 in Manila event. The World Usability Day 2008 in Manila Event will be on November 13, 2008 (Thursday) at the G2VC Tech Bar located at the Orient Square Building, Ortigas Road, Pasig City. The event will be a series of talks on Usability and it will run from 6pm to 8pm. More details about the World Usability Day program will posted in this blog soon. For those interested, pre-registration is required. The online r
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Will the internet work for your business?

The short answer is no. The internet will not do everything for you. It will not work for you. You will only get out of the internet what you want to and it will be directly related to how much you put into it. Businesses consistently believe that by simply having a site with products and / or services on it that suddenly their sales will increase and this, for the most part, is simply untrue. In Australia, the e-boom is taking a lot longer to gain momentum in comparison with America. Aust
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Office and the beast

The recent post by Phil Barrett, Using the Microsoft Ribbon without anyone getting hurt, reminded me of my first experience using Microsoft Office 2007. I was in remote New South Wales conducting field research (almost literally!) and had been given a laptop on which to conduct the research. It is always a joy not using your own equipment, but I was running usability tests on a working prototype and needed a machine with a server in a hurry, so I was given
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Time Map

Time Map November 8, 2008 Time Map is an OS X Dashboard Widget that overlays city locations on a world map. It shows the current time in your selected cities and tells you at a glance whether it
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The art of the field study

11/06/2008 02:06:00 PM I'm Dan Russell, a member of the Search Quality team doing user experience research. This post is part of our ongoing series to talk about the Search Quality team at Google, showing a bit of what we do in the day-to-day course of improving the quality of the user experience.The role of "user experience" research is to try and get the inside story on what people do when they search. We're constantly asking: What's the user's experience of search? What works and doesn't wo
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New Google Help Forums

11/06/2008 03:37:00 PM For the last few years, the Google Help Forums have been a great gathering place for users, developers, and anyone else who has an opinion about Google or its products. We've been taking stock of what you have to say, and we've been impressed by the hundreds of thousands of people who really understand our products and are willing to share their knowledge. It's because of experts like the orkuteers, Google Apps Power Posters, Webmaster Help Bionic Posters and many others
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Finally Using Firefox 3

I took the plunge today and upgraded to Firefox 3
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Attention to small things

Small business owners sometimes are so worried about the next deal, the next contract that they don
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Featured on the Product Management View

November 7, 2008 It gives me great pleasure to announce that I will now be guest blogging for the Product Management View - a blog focussed on product management and strategy , run by world class product managers from various backgrounds and vast experience in this field.I am pleased to be associated with them and look forward to some great discussions over there. Thanks to Stewart Rogers from PM view for making this happen. My first post for the Product management view is about maximizing pro
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Call for participation - World Usability Day 2008, Bangalore

Call for participation - World Usability Day 2008, Bangalore November 7, 2008
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Null is foreign concept to users

Is it hard to imagine
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Web Content Strategy Seminar

There
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Windows 7: lucky seven?

Yesterday I gave the new Windows 7 beta build a try, with a positive feeling afterwards. From a usability point of view, Windows Vista failed a several points: user account control annoyances, desktop cluttering, common functions hidden away (such as Network control), etc. In Windows 7, I am already seeing improvements correcting the mistakes of Vista. The taskbar [...]
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Design things that maintain the pleasure of accomplishment

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Borders for Search and Address Bar in Firefox

With the way I have my elements arranged inside of Firefox, using the default Firefox theme is a little hard to do. Why? It bugs me that there is no border around the address or search bars. It just does not look that polished to me. See on the top and bottom? It has never looked right to me. So I did a little playing around with the Stylish extension for Firefox, and turned it into this: Now I am far from being a Jedi master of Stylish, and writing user styles. I am just learning
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Product Planner-Helps You In Creating User Flows and Demo Tour

Product Planner was introduced in the market with the sole motto of helping people understand and craft user flows for their online web products! The main idea is to look at various examples that other successful web products have to offer, and then get a better idea out of them all. Then create your own User Flows and Demo Tour. Product Planner is always immensely beneficial in crafting demo tour for web applications as well. The applications assist the user in understanding as to how one
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Product blog update: Versatility Skateboards case study, Open Bar video, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Versatility Skateboards: “Basecamp is the body of our business
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LINK: Making Sure the Shoe Fits at Zappos.com

Making Sure the Shoe Fits at Zappos.com What happens when you treat every customer as if they might be a reporter? Occasionally, one of them is a reporter: “Last spring, I called Zappos.com about a pair of shoes I wanted to buy for my upcoming wedding that they did not have in my size. The representative said Zappos.com would e-mail me when the right-sized shoes arrived back in stock. But she didn
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Accessibility: Making Video and Audio Usable For The Deaf

Accessibility: Making Video and Audio Usable For The Deaf November 6th, 2008 Using video and audio in a website increases the probability of an accessibility problem. Where text can be readily translated into a wide variety of alternative mediums for the disabled, the complex nature of video and audio make this kind of machine-generated comprehension nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that reading a transcript hardly conveys an experience equivalent to the excitement of an expertly-pr
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Logitech

Every once in a while I bump into one of Logitech
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HiPPO - Highest Paid Person

What have I been doing? It turns out there is a phrase for it, and it
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Idea 8

IDEA 8 is out, full of new features. The new release of the best ide.
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Minority Report UI, consumer style

Remember the coolness dripping user interface from Minority report? (oh, come on! who doesn
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GCpedia: Will it be More Than a Place for Geeks in Government?

November 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm
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Google Chrome: Trend in browser usage (October 2008)

Browser Statistics Month by Month 2008 IE7 IE6 Chrome Fx Moz S O October 26.9% 20.2% 3.0% 44.0% 0.4% 2.8% 2.2% September 26.3% 22.3% 3.1% 42.6% 0.5% 2.7% 2.0% Two months are already gone since the launch of Google Chrome. Its market share still around 3% (source: w3school accessed on the 6th of November 2008). From the data available, we can see how IE still losing market share. Users who leave IE6 (-2.1%) are more than the ones who move [...]
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PowerPoint Notes to accompany Fundamentals of Financial Accounting: Fred Phillips, Robert Libby, Patricia Libby

PowerPoint Notes to accompany Fundamentals of Financial Accounting: Fred Phillips, Robert Libby, Patricia Libby Posted on 06 Nov 2008 under Business & Investing PowerPoint Notes to accompany Fundamentals of Financial Accounting: Fred Phillips, Robert Libby, Patricia Libby Editorial Reviews About the Author Fred Phillips is a Professor and the George C. Baxter Chartered Accountants of Saskatchewan Scholar at the University of Saskatchewan, where he teaches introductory financial account
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How does Web 2.0 Include the User Experience Perspective?

Tonia M. Bartz's article "The Importance of Strong Usability within Web 2.0 Content Managed Systems", which she has recently published in the November Issue of the UXProfessionals (Vol.3), raises very interesting questions regarding how poorly supported are the 2.0 key activities of creating/contributing, collaborating, and sharing in CMS (Content-Management Systems). Tonia starts with identifying 3 major potential issues with CMS 2.0 features: Disjointed Content Pieces Poor Search Results and
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How Are You Communicating Through Your Web Site

I
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AT&T Offers Home Cinema Installation Service

AT&T introduces ConnecTech, a service that offers support for installing and configuring home cinema sets, home networks, and computers. Similarly, mobile phone provider Sprint recently launched a ReadyNow, a service to help you set up your smartphone. Great news, but not really new. In the Netherlands, mobile phone provider KPN was offering (optional) installation support more than three years ago, and last year created a breakthrough do-it-yourself ADSL installation package that led to a 3
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How to Convert a PSD to XHTML - video tutorial

This screencast will show you exactly how to take a psd website design and convert it to a work website using XHTML and CSS. There is about 90 minutes worth of training here!
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Intranet scent: best links are 7-12 words

(AARHUS, DENMARK)
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CSN Stores Eases Howsers Last Minute FUDDs

Jason Billingsley shared with me his positive shopping experience with a multi-store retailer while shopping for a birthday gift for his wife Amy, and we both agreed it would make a great blog post. (Unless you
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Understanding the new

November 6, 2008 I just finished going through the Consumer experience report, from Razorfish a survey which has documented the online behavior and characteristics of more than 1,000
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Supraelastic

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Nervous About Dropping Your Kindle?

Watch the drop test from 30 inches: Schools often get nervous about the fragility of the equipment.  Looks like Kindle could pass the test.
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10 CSS Tips for a Web Design that Sucks!

If your website doesn
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Pacecar - Faster, more focused reading online

Say hello to Pacecar: - Pacecar is an online reading tool, designed to help you read faster and with more focus. It masks the distracting elements on the page, giving you a reading window that follows your mouse. If you
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SSL Error Pages in Firefox 3.1

If you
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Bootloader gets chattier

Since openSUSE 11.0. we have some basic speech support in our bootloader. This enables visually impaired people to use the bootloader as there is usually no other output device available at that time (BIOS doesn
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Tactile Touchscreens

Over the past year we
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Convert Site To Drupal

Convert existing website to Drupal avivainstitute org Link up existing zen cart to log in
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Airport Check-in, Las Vegas Style

  I recently spent a weekend visiting friends in Las Vegas, a city I lived in for many years and that I travel to often.  On my return flight, my friend introduced me to a fantastic thing.  McCarran Airport has housed a row of SpeedCheck kiosks since 2006. What makes these machines fantastic is that no matter what airline you are flying on, you can check in and print your boarding pass from one convenient machine! One caveat of using SpeedCheck is that they provide no option for checking bags
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Godin Gets To The Point

Godin Gets To The Point By Michele Neylon on November 6, 2008 8:36 PM | No Comments I've been a fan of Seth Godin's writings for quite some time, so I was delighted when my copy of The Big Red Fez arrived a couple of days ago. In common with some of Godin's other books, The Big Red Fez is not a hefty volume with tiny print. It's just over 100 pages long, but every second page is a screenshot of a website or email, so it's actually a mere 50 pages in total. But a book shouldn't be valued
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Letters to the Editor Blog: Why didn

One of the things I
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U.S. 2008 Presidential Election Visualization at NY Times

From the NY Times, the
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QUOTE: Figure out the absolute least you need to

Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience. —John Gruber’s one central, overriding guideline for iPhone UI design
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Describe 37signals in 20 seconds or less

We’ve got a problem. We don’t know how to describe to average civilians just what it is that 37signals does. Like when we’re at a cocktail party and someone asks, “What does 37signals do?” The answer typically starts with “a web software company…” and goes to something like “that helps small businesses organize information…” and ends with the other person snoring. What do you think our hook should be for average people? What’s a good way to quickly describe what 37signals does that doesn’t put non-techies to sleep? How would you make what 37signals does sound interesting to civilians…in under 20 seconds?
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Fun with Highrise stats: Countries referenced more than 1000 times in over 8 million Highrise contacts

+--------------------------+---------------+ | country | country_count | +--------------------------+---------------+ | United States | 403585 | | United States of America | 201800 | | USA | 127270 | | Canada | 88615 | | United Kingdom | 77154 | | Great Britain | 41376 | | Australia | 27648 | | Germany | 25266 | | Spain | 23312 | | France | 22422 | | UK | 16280 | | Netherlands | 15488 | | Ireland | 15439 | | New Zealand | 12391 | | Belgium | 9648 | | Italy | 9608 | | Deutschland | 9600 | | Switzerland | 9281 | | Mexico | 8866 | | US | 8351 | | Denmark | 7044 | | India | 6302 | | Brazil | 5835 | | Sweden | 5662 | | China | 5139 | | Poland | 4963 | | South Africa | 4894 | | Schweiz | 4514 | | Japan | 4168 | | Singapore | 4141 | | Norway | 4125 | | Austria | 3793 | | England | 3434 | | Hong Kong | 3422 | | United Arab Emirates | 3410 | | Thailand | 2705 | | Israel | 2598 | | U.S.A. | 2496 | | Portugal | 2491 | | Russian Federation | 2360 | | Costa Rica | 2337 | | Philippines | 2269 | | Viet Nam | 2142 | | Jordan | 1973 | | Nederland | 1928 | | Finland | 1848 | | Brasil | 1804 | | Argentina | 1750 | | Turkey | 1713 | | Peru | 1488 | | Malaysia | 1481 | | The Netherlands | 1433 | | Russia | 1398 | | Greece | 1144 | | Chile | 1142 | | Romania | 1106 | | Danmark | 1063 | | België | 1056 | | Ukraine | 1048 | +--------------------------+---------------+ For example, there are 1481 people in the Highrise contact database from Malaysia, 3422 from Hong Kong, 23,312 from Spain, etc. Note: People can enter whatever they want in the country field which is why some enter USA, some United States, and some United States of America.
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QUOTE: "North Dakota is a rural state and its communities

“North Dakota is a rural state and its communities maintain close ties and networks. North Dakota’s system of voting, and lack of voter registration, is rooted in its rural character by providing small precincts. Establishing relatively small precincts is intended to ensure that election boards know the voters who come to the polls to vote on Election Day and can easily detect those who should not be voting in the precinct. This network of small precincts reduces the need for voter registration.” —North Dakota, the only state without voter registration
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PHOTO: I like to dream that somewhere out there

I like to dream that somewhere out there is a person who only carries Diner’s Club and Carte Blanche credit cards exclusively. “Really, I’d love to pick up the check but…”
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QUESTION: In the past, historic front-page moments

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Interview with User Experience Consultant Leisa Reichelt

View tweet Leisa Reichelt (Blog www.disambiguity.com) is a freelance Usability pro living based in London.  After her well received presentation at last year
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Ubuntu's Intrepid Ibex: Usability is Hard to Do

Ubuntu
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Atlas Selects the SyberWorks Learning Management System to Manage Technician Certification Training

Atlas Selects the SyberWorks Learning Management System to Manage Technician Certification Training Get the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&quot;&gt;Shout List Icons&lt;/a&gt; widget and many other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/galleryhome/&quot;&gt;great free widgets&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;a href=&am
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Windows Movie Maker

As a free download, the Windows Movie Maker (Windows XP) 2 has got the best market share in its category of software applications.  It has been said to be second to none with the various features that it has to offer. It caters to all important needs of a movie maker and its simple usability allows even a novice to use the application and go on with the task. the Windows Movie Maker (Windows XP) 2 is primarily a tool that helps in creating, editing and sharing of home movies. The user can also
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Bristol Skillswap: User Experience

The next Bristol Skillswap is about user experience, and is in The Pervasive Media Studio on Tuesday 11th December. As well as our very own Joe (the uncle of usability) Leech, we have some experts from further afield as the gig is partnered in with Dan Dixon and Alex Older
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New Windows Live Hotmail - What was wrong about the icons?

Today I got access to the new Hotmail interface. Pretty, but lacks the usual icons. I feel lost. The icons were a great help on finding what I needed. Now I just have to read the labels
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AT&T and Firethorn launch iPhone Application

AT&T and Firethorn Holdings have a long history of cooperation that goes back to 2006, when they worked together to give customers a good usability experience while using their mobile banking service. And in order to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies, both companies got together again to launch their mobile banking application for the iPhone. What [...]
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2008 Election Maps

Have to agree with Jason here on his 2008 Election Maps comparison, The New York Times had the best interactive Election Map last night. It
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IMAGES: USPS Usability

The United States Postal Service really impressed me today with their mail forwarding process.  What an example of usability at its finest
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A historic moment

It happened just a few days ago. Windows 3.x died. You might have thought that Windows 3.x met the Gods years ago but until November 1st, Windows 3.x survived in some imbedded systems. For example on air planes. Being an old Mac gal, the transition to Windows was hard, and there is still some kind of sorrow and feeling of loss. But why? What I felt as a Mac user was that the people making the user interface had the user in mind when they thought of ideas. They were not just thinking usability
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World Usability Day in Bristol on 13th November

In case you didn
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Selling Products Online: What Legal Jurisdiction Applies?

Selling Products Online: What Legal Jurisdiction Applies? November 5th, 2008 Most ecommerce merchants want consumers from all over, whether that means all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, or the world. But e-retailers need to consider local laws when they ask for business in another state or another country. And it is important to understand which jurisdictions might apply to a given online transaction. In many cases, laws from the customer
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Best Western Mobile

BestWestern.com detects mobile browsers and redirects to a mobile site where you can find and book hotels in the Best Western chain, which operates in the United States, Canada and Australia. Like just about every mobile hotel booking site I've every seen, this one has some pretty horrendous usability problems. Things start fairly well with a search form where you enter the city and dates you want to book and then choose the state and country from a drop down. The date fields expect input as M
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The election is over - a lesson in usability?

It is the morning after the election - a historic moment in American history regardless of party or vote. Now comes the pundits, the analysis and hindsight brilliance. But, one thing has been evident all along - the web and social media made a difference in this election. And, one candidate used them much more adeptly than the other, the one that won. President-elect Barack Obama hired one of the co-founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to run his online strategy - not a bad move. I came across a
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Controlling computers with your brain

Imagine being able to move objects with only your thoughts. Simply thinking a thought, and then an object does your bidding. For many humans struck with paralysis such as Lou Gehrig Disease or Locked In Syndrome, this isn
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Web Usability for Associations: Designing for Your Members

Beaconfire is hosting a round table in downtown Washington DC from 3-5 pm on Friday, November 14 on the topic of Web Usability for Associations: Designing for Your Members. During this casual gathering, we will share examples from some associations we
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Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites

By Dmitry Fadeyev Web design isn
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SITEX Singapore Website Usability and SEO Review

Heh, I hate to say this, but I think the organizers of SITEX can afford to put together a better website. But before, I go on, check out the SITEX site for just 10 seconds. Tell me - what is the FIRST think you notice? Got it? Good. Did you notice
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6 Steps for Building Successful Websites

[via Smashing Magazine - this article was very concise and follows the exact guidelines of every UCD class I teach so as both a refresher for those who have taken it as well as a prelude to those about to next quarter I've included the entire article here for your enjoyment and learning pleasure] Web design isn
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Gruber on iPhone UI Design

4 November, 2008 Gruber = Daring Fireball says:
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Standardization is usability?

Standardization is usability? November 4th, 2008 The last week of my summer vacation this year is used to redecorate the apartment where i live. After painting the hallway i ran out of paint and went to get a new box. The hue i used was
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40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets

Some of the best things in life are free. When it comes to icons and icon sets, there are many talented designers and artists that choose to provide beautiful and useful icon sets for commercial and/or personal usage.
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Windows 7 Walkthrough and video of the new Taskbar

The new Operating System from Microsoft, Windows 7, is looking up. This article by Gizmodo features some videos and screenshots of an OS that really could be something good. This video shows a short guided tour of the new, improved Taskbar for Windows 7, and I must say, it really looks good. Some of the features could really help improve productivity, if you
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Decade Of Finding Context

Um, did nobody notice that the mobile Internet turned 10 years old this summer? I was going over some old documents and realized that I started working on Nokia's WAP Toolkit (later Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit) in 1999, and at that time Nokia hadn't even released their first WAP phone yet, so WAP couldn't have been too old at that time. And indeedy, I just found a reference to WAP Forum, the organization of telephone companies coming together to formalize the WAP standard for the mobile Intern
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Amazon: Two Steps Forward, 1/2 a Step Back

So, Amazon just announced a large effort to work with their vendors to get rid of packaging. They are touting this as customer service usability, which it is. (I think there's a couple of side effects they aren't disclosing such as a)preventing returns of Amazon goods to brick and mortar stores and b)getting Amazon off of the Stupid Shipping Gang usual suspects list). So I think, "Yes! Amazon is helping to make packages safe to open and making the online shipping process much more green." I'm
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On Usability Problems with Voting Machines

On Usability Problems with Voting Machines November 4th, 2008 by Sergio Paluch Today is the big day, and not matter for whom or what you are voting on November 4th, you not only want your vote counted, but you also want it counted correctly. In the spirit of fair elections with a twist of usability geekiness, we at Montparnas compiled a few resources where you can learn more about usability of voting machines. Usability in Civic Life: Voting and Usability Project The Usability  Professionals
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Link bucket: Distinctly non-election reading

Links all wishing I had gotten to them sooner: No news is no news: Jeff Jarvis' thoughts following a conference on new business models for news. Gannett pushes for more tech hires, data centers, niche sites: Mark Glaser interviews Jennifer Carroll, Gannett's vice president for digital content, about the company's Information Center strategy. An update on our Drupal conversion: Steve Yelvington provides great insights into Morris newspapers' conversion to the popular open-source site framework
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Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.
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Deaths in Hospitals Due to Misuse of Equipment

Medical equipment of course is one of the product categories where the 'effectiveness' component of the ISO 9241-11 usability definition is the most dominant one. Resources expended in the interaction (efficiency), and how the staff feel while using it (satisfaction) are also important - and can be expected to influence the effectiveness - but the one variable that everyone looks at is effectiveness: how many people live. Report: tens of deaths per year A recent report from the Dutch Healthcare
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Obama.com & Military.com

Obama.com & Military.com Posted by Kent Anderson under Authority, Authors, Experimentation, Research, Social Media, Sociology, Technology, Usability, World of Tomorrow
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In-Store Pickup Tips for Multi-Channel Retailers

With the holiday Christmas shopping officially underway, and many holiday shoppers using the internet to ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) - offering ship-to-store services to online customers is a competitive advantage to multi-channel retailers. Here are some tips to ensure a satisfying online and offline experience of your ship-to-store service for your customers: On-Site Messaging and Usability Because ship-to-store is a key customer service, it needs to be communicated well throu
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Allofme - Timeline

After having met Addy Feuerstein at the DLD 08 Conference by Burda in Munich last January 2008, Allofme has now opened their ports to the beta users. Being a fan of timelines, we just had to try out this interesting media-aggregator for ourselves. The BillyTimeline has been enriched with some few videos, photos and entries and it already looks interesting. Not all the uploading features are active yet however you can upload all some offline files or your data from Picasa, Flickr, YouTube &
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Usability & knowledge: UI Strings

I
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Simple Tip To Improve Usability, Stickiness And Page Views

A very simple way of improving your blog usability, its stickiness and increasing the page views per visit is to use more internal links within your blog posts. We have already looked into plugins that automatically place relevant content at the end of a blog post. Using internal links is similar. The difference is that internal blog linking is done within the post content as I reminder to your blog reader of an older blog article or more information on the topic they are reading about. As
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Automated Chat Captures Prospects After They Leave A Site

Automated Chat Captures Prospects After They Leave A Site November 4th, 2008 UpSellit
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Web Usability

Here at Pixel Internet we like to keep on the pulse of good web design. To look back at the web ten or so years ago is always amusing yet some things have remained constant through out the years of the web and they are namely the principals of what makes a site easy to use. We like to think that the Pixel site is user friendly and is easy to navigate but it is not easy to construct a site to suit everyone! Recent research has indicated that roughly 80% of things found ten years ago are still
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The courage to redesign

People are still griping about the recent redesigns of Facebook and iGoogle, but I think we should cheer on any company brave enough to disregard user feedback and embrace change. Lots of big-name, highly successful sites eventually reach a state of paralysis in which they're too scared of alienating their customers to examine their interaction design and information architecture from a fresh perspective. The cautionary tale of Amazon.com Look at Amazon: The online retailer adopted DHTML navi
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The fat lady sings?

The fat lady sings? November 3rd 2008, 10:16 pm | Browsers | Computer Games | Computers | My Life | WWW | ajax | javascript | nablopomo | RIA | usability This wasn
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Writing quicker messages with Swype

A revolutionary way of creating messages is called Swype. The company founders Cliff Kushler and Randy Marsden with their team have developed a system that recognizes words when you slide over the qwerty keyboard with your fingers. Instead of typing the words, like hardware keyboards this is a touch screen. When you want to write a word you simply connect the dots and the program will recognize the word. QWERTY history This reminds us about the QWERTY keyboard history. Originally Christopher Sho
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Use Blog Search Function To Learn More About Your Visitors

Majority of WordPress blog themes have a search box included in the sidebar. Blog search box is a great usability tool to provide to your blog visitors, they can easily search for the information they want to get. It provides usability to your visitor, and it provides stickiness to your blog as the visitor is bound to stay longer on your blog site if they find what they search. That is the key question here, do your visitors find what they search for through your blog search box? Search Met
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Mechanical Turk

I may be a bit slow on the uptake, but I
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

Comment paging in WordPress 2.7

Comment paging is a great new feature in WordPress 2.7. However, how do you not display the pager when there are no previous or next pages? After digging through the code for quite a while I found the (I think) correct solution: If you want to g
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

5 Minute Usability Tip: No such username, no problem!

We all belong to dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of websites so it's no surprise that one of the most popular errors people hit is the "invalid account" page. Whether it's because the login name was wrong or the user has never been to the site the fact remains, they're ready to take the next step. Most websites produce an error page when someone enters a bad login name but why not take them to a registration page instead? Flag the error of course, make it visible and give them option
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A new page

This blog was getting tired in its design so I
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Oops, I wanted to vote, really!!

This is an awesome viral app/video. Simply type in your name, and you get blamed for Republicans winning the election
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

Daring Fireball: iPhone-Likeness

Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience. -- John Gruber on iPhone Application Design. In a world where services are moving online, and people aren't so much buying your software as choosing to use your service, I'd argue this applies to not just the iPhone but almost any "non-sovereign application" -- pretty much anything short of a word processor, web browser, or spreadsheet program.
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Komen

Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced the new Komen.org site launch today. According the new website announcement email, they claim the purpose of the redesign was to achieve:
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Article summaries help improve usability for content sites

When publishing articles online, there are a few guidelines that help people read your site
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

Wordpress Weekly - Usability with Jane Wells

This past Friday I joined Jeffro for another episode of WordPress Weekly.  This week we had the good fortune to interview Automattic
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PHOTO: WSJ redesigned. What do you think?

WSJ redesigned. What do you think?
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PHOTO: Fractal food: Romanesco

Fractal food: Romanesco
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PHOTO: This antique Skippy Racer is absolutely beautiful.

This antique Skippy Racer is absolutely beautiful.
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PHOTO: Great shot of Mies. Photo by Werner Blaser.

Great shot of Mies. Photo by Werner Blaser.
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PHOTO: Interior of a 1958 Subaru 360.

Interior of a 1958 Subaru 360.
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PHOTO: "Pixlr is a free online image editor, jump

“Pixlr is a free online image editor, jump in and start edit, adjust, filter.” I dig the way the arrows/text add a touch of context to these screenshots.
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PHOTO: 1. Who the fuck designs this shit? And 2

1. Who the fuck designs this shit? And 2. Gotta love the white remote.
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

PHOTO: The first time I saw my baby nephew crawling

The first time I saw my baby nephew crawling around all over my place I thought, “Wow, I should put some Swiffer pads on this kid and turn him into a human Roomba.” Looks like someone beat me to it with “Baby Mops” (above). Love the little horsey on the outfit too. Of course this is a joke…right?
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PHOTO: Flash hiccups aside, the latest incarnation

Flash hiccups aside, the latest incarnation of Squarepusher’s website is still bold, fresh and interesting. I like the trend that’s grown steadily over the last couple years toward background elements that stretch to reach the vertical or horizontal bounds of the browser window. The combination of stretchy elements and fixed elements produces a figure/ground relationship that adds depth to the site and makes it more immersive.
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PHOTO: Stunning. via Flickr.

Stunning. via Flickr.
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PHOTO: Amazon launched

Amazon launched
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A radical idea: Charge people for your product

In “A Radical Business Plan for Facebook: Charge people” [Slate], Farhad Manjoo proposes “something crazy”: Tech companies should start charging people to use their services. David is interviewed in the piece and explains why “having a price is really cool for making profits.” “[Hansson:] “You have customers, they pay you money for the product or service, and you get profits! It’s almost too simple to work.” Of course, 37signals didn’t come up with this idea on its own, either: “I’ve heard that over time
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LINK: 73-year-old to play college basketball

73-year-old to play college basketball Inspirational story of the day. The last time this guy played college hoops, Dwight Eisenhower was President.
Publication date: 2008-11-04 more

Wacom CapPLUS capacitive touchscreens up to 46-inches in 2009

Wacom are confirm that panels from 3-inches to 46-inches will be available. According to Wacom, their capacitive system - which uses Reversing Ramped Field Capacitive (RRFC) technology - surpasses rival touchscreens in a number of ways.  Accuracy problems around the edges of the screen, drifts in calibration and sensitivity to electromagnetic interference have all been bypassed in CapPLUS; it can also be used when wearing surgical or other thin gloves.  In addition, a CapPLUS panel can be c
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On the new shell

It
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How Web Analytics can Help You Better Understand Your Customers

Brett Crosby - Google Analytics
Publication date: 2008-11-03 more

Mystical Presdo

Intra-product-type consistency, the Recognition and intuitiveness present within a product, is a key component in determining the overall Usability of a product. For an air travel website to be usable, it should have some basic, recognizable, consistency with other airline products. For example, on the top-left region of most every air travel website you will find a form to enter starting and destination locations, departure and return dates, as well as the number of passengers traveling on th
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Information Pollution

Jakob Nielsen has
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A social interaction primer

Adrian Chan, a social media expert and social interaction theorist at Gravity7, makes a nice attempt at setting out a new model for social interaction design.
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Behind the Candidates - who

Although I
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Brain-only Computer Interfaces Becoming Reality [Mind Hacks]

Brain-only Computer Interfaces Becoming Reality [Mind Hacks] Sun, 11/02/2008 - 22:49
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Website Optimization Measures, Part V

Website Optimization Measures, Part V Almost half a year since my last article in that regard it
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Five Second Test - A simple online usability test

Five Second Test - A simple online usability test
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What tools can you use to measure WHY people are leaving your site

Here
Publication date: 2008-11-03 more

Tools to measure WHY people are leaving your site

Here
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Growing your community - Features that set you apart part II

Last week I talked about the importance of developing new and unique features to make your forum community stand out above the crowd in order to win & retain visitors. But the story doesn't end with adding features, there's a lot on off the shelf forum software to customize and customize it you must. In the second part of this series I explain a few of the prime areas to change because at the end of the day to win the user over your site needs to get them back. When it comes to using features
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Bird

Bird
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Plastic Jelly Styles

In this tutorial, we
Publication date: 2008-11-03 more

Utilising XHTML Prototypes

Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley have written an article on Boxes and Arrows which discusses the XHTML Prototyping Methodology, a faster and more flexible approach which overcomes some of the inherent weaknesses of the more traditional methodologies being used. One major advantage of XHTML prototyping is that you are working in the environment that your interfaces or application will use in the real world, rather than trying to simulate interaction on a static Photoshop mockup. And it
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Nitpicking or Usability, What's the Difference?

Easy on the Eyes There are two schools of thought when it comes to being overly picky as it pertains to website design. One says that there are better uses of your time and perfect never makes you any money. You will likely hear this from entrepreneurs. The other says attention to detail will make your site look professional and classy. You will likely hear this from designers. I think both are right and that the perfect balance is somewhere in the middle. Everything in moderation, right? We
Publication date: 2008-11-03 more

Thoughts on International Domains and Usability

I responded to a question on Linked about the use of domains. Here is the original question: I am about to start an internet marketing campaign in Canada for a product that I am importing from the USA. Their website (example) is www.CoolProduct.com, my question is: do I promote www.CoolProduct.ca, or www.CoolProductCanada.com, in my marketing? I have both registered, and one will have a redirect to the main site I end up using. Here are my thoughts: The focus of domain selection process sh
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3 dimensional navigation by Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research is obviosly a pretty cool playground. At first glance you might think this is another video of Microsoft Surface, but it
Publication date: 2008-11-03 more

Usability, WordPress 2.7 And More

Our special guest on Halloween night was Jane Wells of Automattic. On this episode, Keith, Jane and I discussed a wide assortment of topics and issues surrounding WordPress and usability. Here is a short list: The Definition Of Usability WordPress 2.7 And Usability The Usability Testing Centers/Environment How WordPress 2.7 Came To Be Is WordPress Bloated? Lessons Learned After WordPress 2.5 Was Released The Status Of WordPress 2.7 And Whether Or Not It Is Delayed In Depth Discussion Of Many O
Publication date: 2008-11-02 more

New website for guitar studies

My seven year old son is learning to play the guitar at school and so when I read about the launch of
Publication date: 2008-11-02 more

CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework-It's Free!

Free CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework not only works on separating HTML from CSS, but takes care of the fact that the CSS definitions are categorized properly, keeping in mind the structural and thematic types. This further creates an entirely new theme! According to the Official Website, the features are: Modular, with themes. Not only HTML is separated from CSS, but even CSS definitions are categorized into structural and thematic types. Thus creating a new drop-down means creating only a
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Michigan World Usability Day - Nov 13, 2008

It is all day dedicated to usability, two usability events happening on the same day. The first costs just $25 and includes lunch. The other is free and happens right after the MSU event, both of their details are below, Getting to the Point: Improving Transportation through Better Design The focus for World Usability Day 2008 is Transportation. Transportation in its broadest sense means moving products and people. Usability in transportation speaks to the interaction of people and vehicles, t
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Design as in hidding buttons

Check this out: Now, this is what I call design. Or at least is the kind of design that I do on a regular basis. Many of my clients come with their own
Publication date: 2008-11-02 more

Social Bookmarks Do What?

Yesterday I was asked to take a look at this car audio site, and the first thing that came to my mind was
Publication date: 2008-11-02 more

Eye-bird usability

Eye-bird usability November 1st, 2008 I have been reflecting during the last months about usability and how tests are conducted. I am doing a lot of experience at Venere.com where we test our prototypes in many different ways (and this is not banal at all if you think that I am talking about Italy!). I will probably get back to you with some examples of an interesting method I
Publication date: 2008-11-02 more

Prototyping with XHTML

Prototyping with XHTML November 2nd, 2008 On Boxes and Arrows the article Prototyping with XHTML by Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley explains how you can work more efficiently by adopting a layered methodology (often referred to as web standards best practices) and building on the underlying information architecture in the XHTML, rather than creating Photoshop mockups and then doing XHTML and then cutting up the mockups and pasting on the facade. Posted in usability, (X)HTML, design
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QUOTE: One thing to remember in economics is that

One thing to remember in economics is that you can
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

New in Highrise: Much faster sidebar searching

Today we’re excited to unveil an enhancement that makes using Highrise even more convenient: The sidebar search-for-a-person feature is now significantly faster than before. Searching for a person or company from the sidebar on the Dashboard or a person/company’s page is the most frequently used feature in all of Highrise. Highrise is about getting to a person/company’s page so you can enter a note or look up a previous conversation or grab a phone number. Now you can do that a whole lot faster. More speed and less wait time makes this experience markedly better. Making this faster on the user experience side wasn’t the only goal here: The new sidebar search also reduces call-backs to the server. That lowers the number of requests to the database which, indirectly, makes everything else a little bit faster too. Watch this video to see it in action Sam Stephenson, one of our developers here at 37signals, has been working hard to make this a reality. And now that we’ve launched it, he put together a video showing you the before and after: We hope this helps makes using Highrise an even better experience. Thanks for your continued support!
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

LINK: Bokeh

Bokeh Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke
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PHOTO: 2975466425_5ab0883b27_b.jpg

Stunning. via Flickr.
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

CachedExternals: managing application dependencies

We’ve been slowly trickling some of our internal projects onto GitHub, making them more widely available in the hopes that (for one) they’ll be as useful to others as they are to ourselves, and (for another) that people will contribute patches back to make the projects even better. Today I moved our CachedExternals plugin there. You can read all about it in the README, but read on for an overview (and justification).
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Recommended Web Host: BlueHost.com (Dallas, TX)

Just wanted to take a quick minute this morning and recommend this hosting company, BlueHost.com. I actually found them on Wordpress
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Search or navigation? That is the question.

Search or navigation? That is the question. Written by: neal October 31st, 2008 I was part of a presentation recently where one of the speakers made this statement:
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

Density Changes The Visuals

In 1996, while I was knee-deep in medical computing, one of the press releases that caught my eye was about Xerox spinning off a display company for displays with a very high pixel density, around 300 pixels per inch. Your average computer display has 72 pixels per inch, newer ones do 96. 300 pixels per inch is in the league of newspapers and the first home laserprinters to be deemed 'good enough for professional use'. This means the dots used on a computer screen are very big compared to paper,
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Codamon

Codamon.com is one of the biggest personal blogs about gaming and entertainment in the Philippines.
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

Technogra.ph

Technograph covers Technology in the Philippines, featuring commentary, news, reviews, event coverage, and other related developments. Those big tech websites based in the US are great for gadget freaks, yet ultimately don
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

New Blog to Watch - WhatMakesThemClick.com

Susan Weinshenck, Ph.D. in Psychology and Chief of Technical Staff at Human Factors International, is launching a blog and about to publish a book. I have heard Susan speak a few times, at World Usability Day and at Internet User Experience conferences, and she is a terrific speaker, thoughtful and animated. Recently I have heard her talk about persuasion - what makes a website or advertising persuasive and user experience designers can improve websites and application experiences with this kn
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Custom Favorite Actions For WP 2.7 (Beta)

The upcoming WordPress 2.7 will include a
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Cart of the Week: Interspire

Cart of the Week: Interspire
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Accessibility Expert Reminds: Accessibility is More Than Compliance

In an Interview at SitePoint, Derek Featherstone, a noted accessibility expert talks about accessibility being more than just meeting the minimum requirements for compliance. It's very difficult for us non-handicapped developers to properly put accessibility in its rightful place, not understanding or better experiencing the difficulties of a handicapped user. A common misconception amongst developers is that building a site for accessibility needs only to satisfy usage of a screen reader. Scr
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The New Yahoo Homepage

Yahoo did more than just putting a custom logo for Halloween today. They also released a new homepage, currently visible probably to a small percentage of users. Lucky me
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

SlideRocket Player (Beta v.69) - usability comments

SlideRocket Player (Beta v.69) - usability comments Originally uploaded by dankeldsen Have you tried SlideRocket yet? It's a web-based slide creation and presentation package. For all of you Windows OS users who are jealous of the Apple Keynote presentations you may have seen (slick transitions, very crisp photos, effects, text) or who are tying to move to an "Office 2.0" (all your "office" applications on the web), you really need to give SlideRocket a try. That said, while I'm talking it up
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

Hugin Panoramic Photo Editor Extends its Reach

Linux.com: "The developers of the free panoramic photo editor Hugin released version 0.7 this month, culminating a two-year development cycle. The new release incorporates key new technical abilities and usability improvements to help demystify the panorama creation process for the average shooter."
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Library Usability Links 10/31/08

The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) has a call out for papers for next June
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

Unbranded grocery stores

Assumptions: Food is a necessity. Without food, human beings can't live. Most people do not have easy access to farmer's markets or community shared agriculture schemes. Most North Americans shop in supermarkets. Observations: It's impossible to look anywhere in a grocery store without seeing invasive brand messages. Okay, that last sentence was a tiny exaggeration. The ceiling is almost always free of brand messages and in most cases, so is the floor. The remainder, on the other hand, is gener
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Lightweight access PINs: a modest proposal for enabling OpenID in desktop and mobile apps

While the news that Google is now an OpenID Provider was generally welcomed, a common chorus decrying their support (along with others large OPs like Yahoo, Microsoft and others) at best as half-hearted, at worst as ruining OpenID has revealed a significant barrier to such large providers becoming relying parties (even beyond usability). Eric Sachs (Google Security Team) writes: One other question that a lot of people asked yesterday is when a large provider like Google will become a relying
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Sample size and size of effect

I read with interest the latest newsletter from London based UX agency Foviance, including the article The more the merrier? by Mariana da Silva (the latest newsletter is unfortunately not on their website yet). Overall this was a fairly well written discussion of sample sizes in user research, in layman
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Chrome beta update lands with security and performance tweaks

Google has announced the availability of Chrome 03.154.9, a beta release that fixes several security bugs and brings several other performance and usability improvements. Google will deploy the new version through its automated update channel, but users who want to get it now can select the update option from Chrome's About dialog. A security vulnerability that [...]You might also want to read:BTW: Apple Outlines MobileMe Improvements it Launched Last SeptemberSimply Hired Looks For Jobs Oversea
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Philadelphia World Usability Day (Philadelphia, PA, USA)

November 13, 20086:00 pmto8:00 pm Please join UPA Delaware Valley and PhillyCHI in celebrating the 4TH ANNUAL WORLD USABILITY DAY. Speakers include Kenneth Allendoerfer from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ, and Scott Page with Interface Studio LLC, an urban design and planning firm based in Philadelphia.
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

JS-KIT - wonderfully workable widgets of wonder! I HEART YOU.

JS-KIT gives you the ability to add some amazing features to any web page with 2 lines of javascript! It's simple crazy brilliant!
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Forrester Consumer Forum 2008: Maslow is Dead - First in a Series

I attended the Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas earlier this week. It was my 16th Forrester event which that tells you something about how I respect the company, value their people and study their work. It
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

&436/ Watch to Be Inspired: Eye Candy? Eye Meat!

Or was it Media Lab tofu? Citing TED.com: The talk. "The MIT Media Lab's John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology and art, a place that can get very complicated. Here he talks about paring down to basics."The speaker. "John Maeda is a programmer and an artist - and is committed to blurring the lines between the two disciplines. As a student at MIT, studying computer programming, the legendary Muriel Cooper persuaded him to follow his parallel passion for fine art and design. And when c
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Designers challenged to include disabled

CNN reports on how Donald Norman wants designers to be more inclusive: The future of design could see the divide between able-bodied and disabled people vanish. Don Norman , design Professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, and the author of
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Common problems with blog usability

A while back I did a post on some of the common conflicts between usability & SEO on websites. That sparked some interesting questions in particular around the use of blogging in SEO and some of the common usability problems I see with blogs. photo credit: soapbeard Firstly a few caveats
Publication date: 2008-10-31 more

Converting PDFs for the Kindle

The PDF conversion is better than advertised in my experience. I converted a 400+ page PDF and it reads beautifully on the Kindle. The limitations are that 1) the converted document does not offer a Table of Contents that the Kindle recognizes and that 2) the navigation aids in the original document, like section indicators, are missing. The converted document is easy to read but difficult to move around in. I set some bookmarks as I scanned through the text to make it easier to find my place.
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MS Arc Mouse Reviewed. Verdict: An Excellent Travel Companion

By Ian Chiu For road warriors going on a business a trip, the second most important thing other than a notebook is a mobile mouse, which can greatly affect productivity. Having said that, Microsoft has had numerous . The aptly-named Arc sports a hinged semicircular shape that allows it to close to nearly half-size for travel, and to unfold to a full-sized mouse. The mini USB dongle is also hidden in a crevice on the underside of the folding wing, which becomes the mouse
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Second Light

Second Light is a new development of MS research on Microsoft
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

NCSC Releases 20th Anniversary Edition of Future Trends in State Courts

NCSC Releases 20th Anniversary Edition of Future Trends in State Courts The National Center for State Courts just released its 20th Anniversary Edition of Future Trends in State Courts, which includes an excellent article on online document assembly by Kate Bladow and Claudia Johnson, as well as a great article by Richard Zorza on a judicial curriculum and leadership package developed by the Self Represented Litigation Network. Other topics in this edition that may be of interest include websit
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Beanstalk: New interface for Releases

While we work on improving the performance and speed of our deployment tools, we also wanted to push a small, but important update to the releases interface. The previous interface contained some javascript and ajax requests to show/hide the settings and enable/disable servers. We decided to get back to the basics and keep things simple. The new interface uses the same work flow as our integration tools, which creates a consistent interface in our app, reduces code we need to write, and gets
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Web Hosting Firm, Netfirms, Premieres XLR8 Control Panel Upgrade

Web Hosting Firm, Netfirms, Premieres XLR8 Control Panel Upgrade Posted by Bot | Hosting News | Thursday 30 October 2008 3:45 pm Web hosting provider for small to medium-sized businesses (SMB), Netfirms, has debuted the launch of a new version of its XLR8 control panel, designed for easier and faster use to enable the benefits of clustered hosting and Web 2.0 cloud computing. The control panel is now available to the more than 1.2 million Websites, worldwide, hosted by Netfirms. At the reque
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GMTristan.com

GMTristan.com is voiced by Mon Macutay and was created to fill the growing need for content on gaming, Philippine online games, MMORPG and the Internet/infotech. His site focuses on news and reviews of Level Up games, among others. It will also serve as a source of community and industry news - a platform for a GM
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #69: Value Proposition

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up!   This week's word is  "Value Proposition ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show.  You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media C
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Interactive Chat Improves Sales, Customer Service

Interactive Chat Improves Sales, Customer Service October 30th, 2008 Memorysuppliers.com offers more than just electronic-device memory cards. It also offers one-to-one, 24-hour-a-day chat. With four people dedicated to chat and email responses, Memorysuppliers.com is one of thousands of ecommerce companies adding chat to its marketing and customer service mix. And why not? A February 2008 study from Forrester Research,
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Are fluid-width designs making a comeback?

FLUID VS. FIXED Before we get into my reasons, I want to clarify what I mean by fixed-width and fluid-width. A fixed-width website has a specific width in pixels. All the content fits into a container of this measure. The container may or may not be visible. This is the most common type of layout being used right now. On the other hand, a fluid-width website uses a percentage measure rather than a pixel measure to specify widths. This means that as you resize the browser window, the design
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Accessibility in Adobe Flex

The common thoughts about why not to use Flex is that it is not accessible to all users. But this is in fact a myth as Adobe Flex claims to be able to create the most accessible rich internet applications (RIAs). It has 28 components that can be used which are all accessible and create a consistent and usable experience for users with disabilities. Components such as: Button, Accordion, List, Slider, ToolTipManager, Tree, ColorPicker and DateField.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Toilets, Door Handles, the Wii, and Web Sites...

"It is about time we designed things that can be used by ALL people -- which is the notion behind accessible design. Designing for people with disabilities almost always leads to products that work better for everyone." -Donald Norman More: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/30/design.approaches/index.html
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Meteli.net to sell DRM-free mp3 downloads + Wins award

Finland's most comprehensive music information service and database Meteli.net enters the music download scene at the end of this year. Emphasizing usability and user friendliness, the store will offer tracks and albums in DRM-free MP3 format ONLY, along with extensive search capabilities. + Wins "Best Domestic Web Media" award.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Missed

Many opera companies stream live performances or post excerpts online, but the Metropolitan Opera goes one step further with Met Player. This new online subscription service was developed with POP as a technology partner, and offers 13 high definition videos, 37 historical TV performances, and 120 radio broadcasts, all delivered on demand through Internet streaming. With operas dating from 1937 to today, this is a chance to watch classic performances such as Maria Callas in
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

5 Minute Usability Tip: Phone number formatting sucks!

Here's an easy tip that can help you reduce abandonment in any form be it lead gen or ecommerce - don't require formats for your phone number field it's a huge error spot as we all type numbers differently. If you insist on having "valid" numbers (not that there's anything stopping people from making one up regardless) allow a variety of formats from all numbers to dashes to spaces to parentheses around the area code. Forcing people to just one format is an error waiting to happen and having an
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Hey ma! Look! I

Here
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

50+ Must Read Web Design for ROI, Usability and SEO Articles

Web Design for ROI is a book that had huge impact not only on myself. It has changed the way the SEO industry approaches web design and finally made people embrace usability to it
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WordPress 2.7 Re-Designs the Admin Side Again.

It wasn
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Links: Windows 7, visualizing complexity, Cruz

Ars Technica: First look at Windows 7
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New LiquidPlanner release: Halloween treats from our team to yours

The team at LiquidPlanner has been hard at work designing, developing, and testing features for last night
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

A Brand is a Person

Neumeier:
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Web Design: Is Your Website a Friend or Foe of First Time Visitors?

Acquiring first time visitors to your website is one of the riskiest endevours in Internet Marketing.   Where should they come from? How much are they going to cost? Can we convert them to buyers or leads? Will they ever come back? In my experience, businesses are very familiar with these concerns.  And these concerns are legitimate.  But often the concern is misfocused.  Typically, businesses are concerned about the traffic itself.  The appropriate concern should be the website itself and
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Obama

While I understand that there may be a political charge to the calculator, as well as questions as to the validity of the results, there is no denying the simple usability of Obama
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Dev Blog: Usability Testing Report: 2.5 and Crazyhorse

A question I hear pretty frequently is,
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Extending CSS

While we are all waiting for the next release of CSS and for more browsers to support the latest specification, some people have taken it on their own to further the usability of CSS. Nicholas Cannasse has developed HSS,  which extends CSS. What's great about HSS is the ability to create variables. For example, the following variable could be used throughout a stylesheet: var mycolor = "#3c3c3c"; Then, that variable can be used anywhere by calling it with this syntax: color: $mycolor; If I th
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Gallery's First Sprint

By Chris Kelly, Gallery Project Manager Last week, Google's Open Source Team hosted the Gallery project's first team sprint. Ten core team members, some from their offices at Google and some from as far away as Serbia, got together on the Google campus on October 22-24 to figure out the future of the Gallery project. During the weeks prior to the sprint, the Gallery community embarked on some ambitious discussions about what we could do if we took advantage of new technology. We evaluated vari
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Lessons Learned: 3tailer Co-Founder Jon West

Lessons Learned: 3tailer Co-Founder Jon West October 29th, 2008
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

99 Graphic Design Resources

Below is a list of 99+ graphic design resources, in English and (and a few other languages), that all designers must know about.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Failure is a Requirement

Failure is a Requirement October 30th, 2008 Jared Spool has written Failure is Not an Option - It
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

How To Improve Blog Usability and Make Your Blog Sticky

Now we will take a look at the WordPress blog plugins that will improve the user experience of your blog visitors, improve your blog site usability and make your blog content sticky. Sticky content refers to content which holds the attention of the blog visitor and gets him/her to spend longer periods of time at the blog site. Popular Posts plugin - Lets you put links to your most popular blog posts in your sidebar. This plugin displays a list of the blog posts which have been viewed the mo
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Buy Laptop at QxBid Computing Auctions Posted By : auctionsdir

Buy Laptop at QxBid Computing Auctions Posted By : auctionsdir Laptop Computers have evolved and are available in many variants according to size and usability. The tablet computers and the ultraportable laptops are the smallest and lightest laptops. wordpress4dummies Posted By : tataia wordpress4dummies wordpress blog with seo resources
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

The absolute power of useful infographics

The absolute power of useful infographics Posted in Humor, Usability
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Texas GIS Forum Presentation

A few months back I was invited to talk about the "GeoWeb" at the Texas GIS Forum. Somehow I pulled a great slot - first presenter in the first session following the keynote by Dr. Bill Gail from the Virtual Earth group.  I chose to talk about "Usability in the GeoWeb" - you can download the presentation (as PDF) at SlideShare.net and view it below. The basic gist of the talk is that traditional Web Development groups are moving into our market space. In order to avoid having them "eat our lun
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

With Windows 7, Can Microsoft Lift the Vista Hex?

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) gave developers their first hands-on experience with the upcoming Windows 7 operating system (OS) Tuesday. Set for release in 2010, the version of Windows 7 shown at the company
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Our Corporate Culture Should Support Failure

Organisations have historically supported success and frowned on, even punished, failure. The industrial society we live in had, for a long time, the notion that good ideas work and make money and bad ideas don
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

The Simplest Way Of Increasing Your Blog Page Views

function lets you break your post and only include a short preview on your main blog page. To read the full blog post, the visitor must click on the
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Paper prototyping

Paper prototyping October 29th, 2008 One of the things I like to do the most is to create graphical user interfaces (and I referring more to desktop programming here than web). Not just the design but the whole stuff. It is the way you have in programming to transform something complex in an easy and pleasant tool to use. We all know how to do some scratches in a paper to come up with the looks for a new interface. Some time ago I was told about paper prototyping and it is a nice, fast and
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Adding Rollovers to your HTML without JavaScript

Three simple CSS tags to make your page more usable.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Why usability matters to the world

Tricky ballots. I hope they
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Look at the Usability, SEO, Web Design and Cool Stuff I Saved Up For You

Every town should have a winning team and Philadelphia is no different. Traditionally, our sports teams get whisper-close to huge wins and then crap out in the last seconds. Tonight, nobody is breathing anywhere near Philadelphia. If the Phillies beat the Tampa Bay Rays tonight, no cheese steak is safe. To celebrate any excuse to root on the Phillies, I decided to open my secret stash and share some of my finds with you. Strategy Where to put those danged ads is nicely presented in 17 Ways To
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

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1. Who the fuck designs this shit? And 2. Gotta love the white remote.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

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The first time I saw my baby nephew crawling around all over my place I thought, “Wow, I should put some Swiffer pads on this kid and turn him into a human Roomba.” Looks like someone beat me to it with “Baby Mops” (above). Love the little horsey on the outfit too. Of course this is a joke…right?
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

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Flash hiccups aside, the latest incarnation of Squarepusher’s website is still bold, fresh and interesting. I like the trend that’s grown steadily over the last couple years toward background elements that stretch to reach the vertical or horizontal bounds of the browser window. The combination of stretchy elements and fixed elements produces a figure/ground relationship that adds depth to the site and makes it more immersive.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Learning from Harley-Davidson's comeback

From 1973-1983, Harley-Davidson’s market share went from 78% to 23% as Japanese manufacturers flooded the market with high quality, low priced bikes. Unable to compete on price against the Japanese producers, Harley had to establish other market values and improve quality. A Case Study of Harley Davidson’s Business Practises looks at the management, marketing, and manufacturing techniques that brought the company back. The company started to use an emotional appeal that hooked into something bigger than just technology/features: “The real power of Harley-Davidson is the power to market to consumers who love the product.” Harley-Davidson’s President and CEO, Richard Teerlink says the bike represents to America, “the adventurous pioneer spirit, the wild west, having your own horse, and going where you want to go – the motorcycle takes on some attributes of the iron horse. It suggests personal freedom and independence” (Executive Excellence 6). Brand loyalty for Harley-Davidson is emotional. They are considered more than motorcycles-they are legends. It is an American icon brand. The Harley-Davidson symbol is based on a pattern of associations that include the American flag and the eagle; reflective of the passion and freedom Americans enjoy… A desire to escape the routine and become anyone you like. While their competitors base their advertising on product technology and features, Harley promotes: a mystique appearance, individualism, the feeling of riding free, and the pride of owning a legend. With Harley, you can live out your fantasies, as well as experience camaraderie with fellow bikers. Telling a story makes such a deeper connection than a feature list. _No feature list here._It’s also interesting to see how Harley chooses not to compete on price and intentionally fails to meet demand: Harley-Davidson quickly learned it could not compete with the foreign manufacturers on cost. Not only did Honda have a low priced product, it was able to defeat Harley in advertising 40-1. Therefore, Harley developed a strategy of value over price. This was created through the development of mini-niches and the heavy construction of the parts. Japanese manufacturers used plastic while Harley used steel, which is able to be rebuilt and rebore. Harley was careful not to exceed demand in production of their motorcycles. Currently, people must wait six to eighteen months for a new motorcycle and the price for a year-old Harley is 25% to 30% higher than a new one. By not being able to meet demands, an attitude of must-have has developed. Therefore, Harley has plans to double capacity to 200,000 motorcycles annually by 2003. Harley Shifts Gears [Fast Company] discusses the company’s success and how Harley tries to build a life-long relationship between the company and its customers. Harley extends its learning to its family of owners: the Harley Owners Group, or HOG. A 15-year-old initiative to build a life-long relationship between the company and its customers, HOG is the world’s largest factory-sponsored motorcycle club, with 325,000 members and 940 chapters. Harley offers HOG Seminars, sessions for the club’s 7,000 chapter officers to help answer questions on whether and how to incorporate, how to draw new members, or how to organize an event. The company’s CEO says watching real customers use the products is the most important way Harley gathers information. The company’s most important intelligence gathering comes at Harley-sponsored events such as the Daytona Bike Week, where dozens of company volunteers — ranging from Rich Teerlink, chairman, president, and CEO of Harley-Davidson Inc. to factory and office workers — interact with customers. “This is real-time market research,” Teerlink says. “Our engineers see what our customers are doing with their motorcycles, and they come back with things we could improve on or new ideas we could try.” We’re thinking of trying something like this too. Stay tuned.
Publication date: 2008-10-30 more

Cracker packaging

The first graham cracker company that produces decent packaging will win my loyalty forever. There is very little as frustrating as breaking every cracker in the package as a by-product of opening the package—especially when you’ve got a yowling one-year-old watching impatiently as you do so. The plastic envelope around each set of crackers is all but impossible to open cleanly, and you can forget about it being “resealable”. Once open, you have to resort to a plastic bag to prevent the crackers from going stale in a hurry. I won’t go so far as to say how hard could it be?, but this can’t be the best possible solution, can it? Saltines could definitely use some packaging love, too, but graham crackers are the worst.
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

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Great shot of Mies. Photo by Werner Blaser.
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

Target micromedia

What we’ve found: When it comes to spreading a story, the mainstream media isn’t as important as the micromedia. Being written up at the right blogs has had way more impact for us than the press we’ve gotten in big-circulation publications. Traditional media is losing ground “10 reasons why newspapers won’t reinvent news” [via JK] explains why papers are having a tough time keeping up with the web: Newsrooms don’t trail the leading edge simply because they’re too dumb to keep up…Most newspapers can’t see what’s coming…Most newspaper payrolls are bloated with pluralities of resentful Luddites who struggle with the complexities of e-mail…Inertia, uncertainty and toxic paralysis rule most newspaper companies…In 2008, all meaningful political discourse — the essential element of social currency — takes place on the Web. Print (and televised) political coverage is now but a pale shadow of the real action online. This bit from “On the Bus, But With No Reason to Go?” [Washington Post], an article about the evolving role of the press in the presidential campaign, shows the impact: The mainstream media just doesn’t matter that much anymore. Obama advisers have concluded that newspaper and magazine stories no longer have the same resonance but that a brief item by, say, Politico bloggers can spread like wildfire.” We’ve noticed a similar trend in our sphere too… Time vs. Daring Fireball We
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

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Interior of a 1958 Subaru 360.
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

VIDEO: Touchscreen fun on SNL. (Hulu = US only)

Touchscreen fun on SNL. (Hulu = US only)
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

QUOTE: *Brown:* So are you going to run for governor

Brown: So are you going to run for governor? Barkley: I plan on it in 2014. Brown: You are serious. Barkley: I am, I can’t screw up Alabama. Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view? Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere. —Charles Barkley interviewed by Campbell Brown on CNN.
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Product blog update: Backpack case study, calendar tip, Propane for Campfire, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Backpack Basetwo Media: “Backpack’s ease of use encourages collaboration from all of our employees.” “After having tried a variety of other online tools, shared calendars and a Wiki, we’ve that found Backpack’s ease of use encourages collaboration from all of our employees. Best of all, it’s fun to use.” Backpack Tip: Jump to a specific date/month Video shows you how to jump to a specific date/month in the Backpack calendar. Basecamp Owner of Adam&Co. (a design firm): “Basecamp CHANGED my life for the better” “It really has made my life sooooooo much more manageable and I have to say – I didnt thnk about how I could leverage it to deal with non-work things until this situation arised. We have a growing list of contacts on there so everyone has the most recent numbers, a constant to-do list that we each can knock stuff off of as we accomplish it rather than each of us doing the same things twice – as well as a journal of events so we all have the same story. It’s truly been incredible.”Changes to how we handle raw HTML input in Basecamp If you type ”<b>hello</b>”, you’ll see the tags in the message text instead of an actually bolded hello. Campfire Propane takes Campfire’s immediacy and “turns it up to eleven” “When you drag an image from Safari…how many times have you been asked ‘Where’s that from?’ Propane does that for you.” Highrise Raves coming in for new Highrise Deals “Highrise ‘Deals’ is genius!”...”Deals is fantastic, we really love it.”...etc. Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

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“Pixlr is a free online image editor, jump in and start edit, adjust, filter.” I dig the way the arrows/text add a touch of context to these screenshots.
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

Gamers And Boomers Are Not Isolated From Eachother When It Comes To Digital Experiences

The Wall Between Digital Natives And Immigrants by Jack Pierce... Excerpt: "Clearly there are differences between Gamers and Boomers (the terms we like to use, here at w/) just as there are differences between the residents of New York and Omaha. But to date, I've not seen a wall between these groups. And not to minimize the differences, but it's a mistake to minimize what these groups have in common. Each is exposed to the same media on a daily basis. They are not isolated. In fact, there are l
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

More Thoughts On The ADDIE Model...

The dilemma of ADDIE By Chirnside Derek Excerpt: "This model is often regarded as being too linear and inflexible.  (More on that later maybe)  Furthermore, too rigid an application of this model can bring dilemmas into the practical, day-to-day activities of a learning designer because many projects as they work out do not fit this model
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

How To Make Your Portfolio Better And Get More Clients: Part 2

Now, there are an abundance of ways for freelancers to market their portfolio in order to get more exposure and ultimately get better clients. I
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Five Second Test

The five second test is a simple usability test that helps you measure the effectiveness of your user interfaces. There are three tests you can setup...
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

30 Essential PDF Documents Every Designer Should Download

Well it took me a lot longer than I had originally expected but I was able to track down the original links to more than thirty PDF documents that I have collected over the past couple of years. I have personally archived every one of these files due to the high quality of content. No matter what you call them; ebook, white paper, or resource they all contain information that no designer should go without.
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Site Review of Cheap Auto Insurance

Need some cheap auto insurance ? The Cheap-car- insurance -tips.com website offers free advice and tips on how to keep your rates down. Sometimes your insurance company just needs a little wake up call so they know you are not complacent
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Amazon Windowshop

Amazon has a new interface for
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

A Spot on myPunchbowl

Intra-product-type consistency, the Recognition and intuitiveness present within a product, is a key component in determining the overall Usability of a product. For an air travel website to be usable, it should have some basic, recognizable, consistency with other airline products. For example, on the top-left region of most every air travel website you will find a form to enter starting and destination locations, departure and return dates, as well as the number of passengers traveling on th
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Must-Have WordPress Blog Maintenance Plugins

We have looked at the different search engine optimization WordPress blog plugins that you shuld install on your blog. Now it is time to look at plugins that will improve the usability of your blog system and make it a more easy, quick and automated process. Akismet plugin - More popular your blog is, more spam comments you will start to receive. This blog plugin will help you save a lot of time. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web s
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Text Based GUI Prototypes

Text Based GUI Prototypes
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Help Your Shopping Cart Overcome Abandonment Issues

It
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Kindle Battery Life: Fact vs Fiction

The different experiences that people have with battery life on the Kindle has led to a bunch of theories: 1. that turning the Kindle off saves more battery than sleep mode 2. that
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

The Web: The Rules Are Different Here

Tonight we
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Voting Machine Problems

The US is once again demonstrating its supremacy when it comes to screwing up elections (with technology). Kim Zetter at Wired's Threat Level blog is tracking problems with electronic voting machines in early voting. That blog is a good jumping-off point for lots of other coverage. Regarding touchscreens in particular I posted more at my other blog.
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Democratic Usability: Where to Find Information on Local Elections

I
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Mobile news websites need improvement

Usability News reports on a study into the usability of mobile websites, originally reported by CNET. As part of the study, more than 75 participants were asked to find an entertainment news story, read it, and search for a story on another specific top and then send that story to a friend. Keynote found that even big Internet brands, which have invested a lot in mobile development did not score exceedingly well in terms of satisfaction. In fact rates were low for both Yahoo, which only score
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

You should never use flags for language choice

Flag icons are pretty (especially fam-fam-fam icon set). But flag represents a country, not a language. Isn't it obvious? No, it's obviously not! While I surfed the web yesterday I found several websites that use flags for language choice. Here are a few reasons why you'll never want to do that.
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

OpenID Goes Mainstream

OpenID Goes Mainstream Posted by Kent Anderson under Authority, Business Models, Research, Social Media, Technology, Usability, World of Tomorrow
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

The intelligent fridge is neither useful nor desirable

Hubert Guillaud has written again a short analysis on why it makes no sense at all for companies to create something like intelligent fridges. His main argument is that nobody has any need for such a device. Although the article itself is in French, much of it was written based upon English-language materials, including this overview of intelligent fridges currently on the market by Mike Kuniavsky, a short article by Nicolas Nova, and the study entitled
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

Scroll to the first error in form - using jQuery

Oftentimes we ask our users to provide us with an awful lot of information in things like registration forms. It
Publication date: 2008-10-28 more

web of data practioner

I am at the Web of Data Practitioners Days (WOD-PD 2008) in Vienna.  Mixture of talks and guided hands-on sessions.  I presented first half of session on
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Cool or just plain useless?

  OnaLatte Printer This was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH. It
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Progressive Degradation

I love a good buzzword. Two of the more recent ones in web design are these multi-syllabic beauties. Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement. They both address the issue of the unknown quantity of the end-user
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

access.see.be, WAI-ARIA based Accessibility-Library

Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Intuitive?

We
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Is consistency really the hobgoblin of little minds?

Is consistency really the hobgoblin of little minds? Written by: neal October 23rd, 2008 Ralph Waldo Emerson said that it was, but on the Web, I
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Epic 2008 (IN)VISIBILITY

A big surprise when attending the EPIC 2008 conference was the lack of talk around the next stages beyond ethnographic research. The academic stance was accompanied by representatives of large corporations, though it felt mainly a concentration on the methods and findings of ethnographic praxis. Something is missing - Invisible? The problem for me is that this is not enough, especially for a conference that touts itself as being about ethnographic practice in industry. The big disconnect
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Top 10 Gripes About My iPhone 3G

Top 10 Gripes About My iPhone 3G Speed. Usability. The latest in technology. Hordes of sexy women. These were the things I was promised when I bought an iPhone. And, for the most part, that
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Early Voting Machines

A fascinating article from 1936 on voting machines. They are not some new invention, Inventors of the voting machine undertook to eliminate (improperly marked ballots). First man to give the problem attention appears to have been Jan Josef Baranowski in Paris, France, in 1849. He suggested that adding machine principles be applied to voting and that a closet be provided in which the voter could make his choice by turning handles or pushing buttons opposite the names of candidates. De Brettes i
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Vanguard Fund

Vanguard Funds is a large US mutual fund house specializing in no-load, low cost index funds.  I'm a Vanguard customer and I like the company but I'm disappointed by their mobile site at vanguard.mobi (you will need a mobile browser to see the mobile version). There isn't much content and usability is not as good as it could be. Vanguard.mobi can be used by anyone, whether they have a Vanguard account or not, to view the current value of four major US market indexes and read financial and mark
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Corpus 2.0

Marcia Nolte has produced a series of portraits through which she tries to extrapolate what future human evolution or adaptations might make us look like in the light of our current fashions and technologies. This is what it might be like if we continue to change to suit our stuff rather than designing our stuff to suit us. [Corpus 2.0] [Marcia Nolte]
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Proportional Code

Few things are less sexy than command-line parsing. It is one of the most mundane tasks a programmer has to execute in their career. But, it surprises just how much code is required to do basic command-line parsing in a lot of languages, including Ruby. So I got to thinking, why does this bug me so much? I think the answer is that requiring so much code for such a relatively trivial task violates my sense of proportionality in the code. I hate having to say so much more about this teeny little
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Yahoo! OpenID Usabilty Study

Tom Allen from Yahoo! Membership posted an article on the Yahoo! Developer Blog about the
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

The Great Screen Coating Debate

Computer, phone, and handheld users of the world, I ask you: Glossy or matte? I find that my preference for a particular screen type depends entirely on the device I
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Flickr: Flunkr

About once a month or so, I
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Large Display Advertising

Nokia has an enormous digital presence at London Heathrow
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Emoticons from the 1880s

You read that right: 1880s. 1881, to be exact. That
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Design usable buttons

When you are designing a web form and focus on the usability you have to take in consideration a lot of elements: labels, input fields, validation messages, hints and at the end
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

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This antique Skippy Racer is absolutely beautiful.
Publication date: 2008-10-26 more

Joe the Plumber as a Persona

There is an interesting and active thread on the IxDA listserv about the potential of using the
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

ThoughtWorks GeekNight on UCD and Agile

Last night myself and Paul attended a ThoughtWorks GeekNight event, held in central Manchester.  The speaker was Luke Barrett and the topic of discussion was the state of modern usability, user-centered design and how this can fit in with best-practice software development techniques such as Agile development. Luke
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Does Google Adsense need more total quality management?

As an adsense publisher, I am observing the effects of the financial crisis on my advertising revenue. It dropped by more than 50% in the last three weeks. While I was going to blog about only that, I have read Vered
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Library Usability Links 10/24/08

LITA National Forum topic on website redesign, including usability Interesting, free, and surprising web analytics service ClickTale. Including heatmaps! Feng GUI analyzes the look of your site
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

KOR ONE water bottle review

I was pretty excited when I heard about the new KOR ONE water bottle. All the water bottles I
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Key Relevance Review of eMetrics: Hotels.com

By Liana
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

The Return of Table-Based Layout (Well, Sort Of)

How many of you have lost countless hours while developing the perfect layout for your websites? How many have lost in fact money because of the extra time needed to complete a job? Not anymore.
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Google Map Shows Blocks at the street level a.k.a why Google rocks

Despite everything you crib about, Google (along with Apple) remains a shining ray of hope for web-based consumer products by really pushing the boundaries of User Interaction and usability. New Map for Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA Notice that each street you see has small numbers next to it - these are the block numbers/ house numbers. So much more usable to figure out where the approximate address is just by looking at the map. Nice touch.
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Use games to improve learner motivation...

Here is an interesting post which talks about using games to improve learner motivation. eLearning Games - It's All About Learning Motivation by Garin Hess Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup     Dave Boggs SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
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4 out of 5 stakeholder interview participants recommend

Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Clip-on Rubber Coated Case w/ Belt Clip for Motorola RAZR V3XX, Red

Clip-on Rubber Coated Case w/ Belt Clip for Motorola RAZR V3XX, Red List Price: Publisher: Eforcity Salesrank: 7469 Our Price: Availibility: Costumer Rating: Features: Cell phone is as attractive and usable while protected from dust and scratches in this rubber coated plastic clip on case accessory Extremely tough, durable case molds perfectly to your phone
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Weblog Tools Collection: Homemade Yummy Pie!

In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Keith and I dissect the news of the week. We discuss why commenter
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Youtube

Youtube
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Ranking crowdsourced data with curves

I
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Weekly links roundup

Here
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Feedback Central @ Quicken Loans

Check out Feedback Central, our newest venture at Quicken Loans and sign up while you're there. We're always looking for people to provide feedback, whether in a 1-on-1 user feedback session or in a larger focus group. You provide your feedback and opinions and get paid for your time and effort. Most sessions take 30 to 90 minutes and many can be done remotely over the Internet. You help make a positive difference on our websites and we help make a positive difference in your pocket. What c
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

25 More Tweaks for Your Firefox Status Bar

Seems like a few people thought I forgot a few favorite extensions with the 25 Tweaks for Your Firefox Status Bar. So, I thought why not revisit the idea and toss in some of the suggestions I received from all of you. Flagfox - displays a country flag depicting the location of the current web site
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

The Art of Programming

Do you think of programming as an art or as a necessity? Do you think of programming as a passion or just something to make money off of? Do you find that when you write a program you are brought to a place that can no longer be called a job, but a life changing experience? "A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasey's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece." - Man on Fire
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Javascript Calendars for lazy webmasters.

Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

A Semantic UMW Blogs

Patrick Murray-John has been working tirelessly over the last month to realize an extremely exciting possibility for marrying the Semantic Web with WPMu, although this experiment is by no means limited to this application. What he has been doing is scraping the available data from the uber RSS feed of public blogs from the UMW Blogs Tags Site, and pulling it into a suite of semantic web tools provided by MIT
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Instapaper lets you create a library of online articles on your iPhone

Hands down my fave iPhone app: Instapaper (created by Marco Arment). Whenever I come across a long article online that looks interesting — Bill Simmons’ list of the best sports pieces ever written is where I started — I click Instapaper’s “Read Later” bookmarklet and then the app automatically stores it on my phone so I can read it later. The offline storage makes it great for subway rides in NYC. Left: List of saved articles on Instapaper’s iPhone app. The app downloads a text-optimized version of each page which removes the need to zoom or horizontally pan. No more accidentally side-scrolling from a long text column. Left: How a stripped down article looks onscreen.Even the online version of the article list has a pleasant simplicity to it: And the app’s creator plans to keep it that way: Will you add (obscure feature)? Probably not, sorry. There are plenty of other sites that offer similar functionality but with thousands of additional features to satisfy every obscure desire. Instapaper is great because it
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

Embrace real constraints, not artificial ones

I’ve been doing research for my RubyConf presentation on November 6th, and while digging through one of my old projects, I ran into an interesting bit of code. The project in question was Needle, a result of a brief love affair with complexity. (This was before I met 37signals, and both 37signals and my wife have since forgiven me.) It was a fun project, but I added features because they “sounded cool”, not because I had any practical need for them. Adding new features always results in increased complexity. (For some features, the added complexity may be fairly small, but there is not necessarily any relation between the perceived complexity of the feature and its implementation. That, however, is a topic for another dissertation.) In the case of Needle, I wanted (essentially) to be able extend objects on the fly, and I had two ideas for how to do this. In one, you specify an existing extension to append to the object. I called this the “with” approach, since the object is extended “with” another one. In the other approach, you specify an anonymous block of code to extend the object with. I called this the “doing” approach, since the object is extended by “doing” something. Both sound cool, right? Yeah, man! Extend objects on the fly! Whee! So I implemented both. The problem was that I couldn’t immediately see how to make both work together. What would happen if wanted to extend an object both “with” something, and by “doing” something? Adding the features themselves added complexity to the project, and I wasn’t willing to further complicate things by making the two features compatible, so I created an artificial constraint: the library would raise an error if you tried to use both features on the same object. Now, constraints are good, and you should certainly seek to embrace yours. But creating artificial constraints because you’ve painted yourself into a corner is code smell, and the solution is not to accept your corner and wait for the paint to dry, it is to unpaint yourself out of that corner. In the case of Needle, I should have either worked harder to make the two features compatible, or removed one of them. (Or both of them!) Ultimately, Needle failed because it didn’t fill a real-world need, and so its code is a graveyard full of things like these artificial constraints. Real projects need real applications. But complexity being what it is, eventually you’re almost certain to find yourself heading for that corner with a trail of paint chasing you. When you do, pause for a moment and consider whether this is a true constraint you’re embracing, or whether you can do with less complexity. Chances are, the prospects aren’t as bleak as you thought. This is all related to a RubyConf presentation I’ll be giving in Orlando on November 6th, entitled Recovering from Enterprise: how to embrace Ruby’s idioms and say goodbye to bad habits. If you’re going to be there, do stop by and introduce yourself!
Publication date: 2008-10-25 more

The Daily News: Stolen designs, site conversion, and usability

Let
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Does your website speak your visitors language?

Many websites exist in multiple languages. However, the way you institute language switching (or country detection and language selection) can make a large impact on your visitor
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Software testing resources for novices

When we first started our Open Source software development project, we were pretty much running on a shoestring. We had to do our testing on the fly, within the team, as we released. And we still do it that way. I think it
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Creating Leads with Customer-Centric Design

Now that we
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

The art of the favicon

Today's item is a guest post by Ai fender Skottey Forden. The visual components of a website are, quite obviously, the primary impact on a user's impression of that site. Ai takes pride in creating visually compelling sites while taking an immense amount of care with the gears grinding behind the scenes. One aspect of the visualization that is often overlooked is the shortcut/favorite icon, more simply referred to as the favicon. This tiny 16x16-pixel icon shows up in the address bar of nearly
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Ask 500 People

I just came across this amazing site www.ask500people.com and I wanted to share - see for yourself!
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Guide in Moving in Miami Real Estate

If you lay out to replace with your family in Miami, you undoubtedly will have a pleasant stay in this city. While replication, you will be confronted with many changes. Relocation and Moving The major part of the move in the different city is due at the request of company. If c
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Gone in 51 Seconds

I recently saw a blurb on EmailStatCenter.com that usability guru Jakob Nielsen said that readers only allot 51 seconds to e-mail newsletters. 51 seconds? 51 seconds is an eternity. I write a lot of e-mail copy. And if I thought the reader was going to spend the better part of a minute on my prose, I
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Stripes and jQuery: AJAX forms and HTTP Session Validation

How to submit forms with AJAX and validate the user's HTTP session.
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Um, Excuse Me But You Have Broccoli in Your Teeth

How many times have you encountered a web page or blog where something isn
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Usability metrics for the family truckster

Last week I went along to the Australian International Motor Show (formerly the Sydney International Motor Show) since I had a bit of spare time and a free ticket. Despite being an
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Google CEO On Layoffs, Obama, Cuts, Cloud, And Ads

The WebGuild Silicon Valley is a forum for IT professionals, webmasters, corporate internet marketers, content managers, web project managers, CIOs, SEOs and entrepreneurs to learn about emerging technologies, new innovations, new business models, best practices and industry standards in the web field relating to usability and design, technology an Source:Google CEO On Layoffs, Obama, Cuts, Cloud, And Ads
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Ten Examples of Daily Tangible Interaction

A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. Hornecker and Buur state that tangible interaction relies on tangibility and full-body interaction, and gives computational resources and data physical form. Research, not products Currently, most tangible interaction concepts are explorations of the possibilities of tangible interaction; design/research projects as presented by the tangible media group at M
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

6 PDF Power Tools for Firefox

With the economy taking a nose dive, people are looking for a way to save cash where ever they can find it.  One good way would be to save on ink and paper for your printer by instead printing to PDF.  That is only the start of it though.  Here are six PDF power tools for the Firefox browser: PDF Download - The most powerful of the bunch, PDF Download allows you to do just about anything imaginable.  View PDFs in Firefox as HTML, automatically control how the browser handles the PDF format,
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

A Usability Check Up for Small Business Websites

Here are 7 questions to help your business gauge how your website treats your users experience. If you
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

E-Commerce: A Control and Security Guide: Gordon E. Smith

E-Commerce: A Control and Security Guide: Gordon E. Smith Posted on 24 Oct 2008 under Business & Investing Editorial Reviews Review
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Ornamental humidifiers

Problem: My office is spectacularly dry in the winter. Dry air means dry skin and eyes. Dry skin means excessive use of hand cream. Dry eyes mean discomfort when staring at computer screens. Standard humidifiers are a hassle, and they look ugly, too. Solution: To introduce more moisture into dry rooms, I've decided I need to build an ornamental humidifier. First, picture one of those little tranquility fountain things. You know, the tiny fountains that you plug into the wall and fill with water
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Girls Play Too

The words
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

The problem with virus detection

Mike Davidson from Newsvine talks about how anti-virus software regularly can create more problems than they solve. We have even had issues when users simply click on a regular drop-down menu - and then nothing happens.
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. October 24th, 2008 by Erik There is always a fine balance between K.I.S.S. and giving users the flexibility they really need. I
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

[Screens Around Town] Apple screens: "Learn your way," support as a feature, and a greener icon

“Learn your way around a Mac” = friendlier language than the typical “Take a tour…” (seen here). Interesting to see that, at the end of the Macbook features page, Apple devotes a large block to pimping its support efforts (“Your own team of experts.”). The Energy Saver icon in System Prefs goes green. [via Treehugger]
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Recent jobs posted to the Job Board: Nokia, Rainforest Action Network, Hewlett Packard, Joost, etc.

Design Jobs Nokia is looking for an Interaction and Visual UI Designer in Burlington, MA. Rainforest Action Network is looking for a Web Designer/Developer in San Francisco, CA. The University of Iowa is looking for a Web Applications Designer in Iowa City, IA. A stealth-mode startup is looking for an Lead Interaction Designer in London, England. FIRST ROI is looking for an Flash / Interactive Designer in Austin, TX. Boston Apparel Group is looking for a Web Designer – Chadwick’s in West Bridgewater, MA. ShermansTravel Media, LLC is looking for a Exciting Interactive Web Designer in New York, NY. Clorox Creative is looking for an Experienced PHP Developer in Oakland, CA. CashNetUSA is looking for a User Interface Engineer in Chicago, IL. Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board. Programming/Tech Jobs Hewlett Packard is looking for a Web Front End Engineer in Marlborough, MA. Janus Health, Inc. is looking for a Web Developer Maverick in San Diego, CA. Meetup.com is looking for a UI/Front End Engineer-Javascript/CSS in SOHO-NY. Joost is looking for a Flash ActionScript Programmer located in New York, NY. The MITRE Corporation is looking for an Experienced Ruby on Rails Lead Engineer in Bedford, MA. Tribune Interactive is looking for a Developer (Java/Rails) in Chicago, IL. Patch is looking for a Quality Assurance Engineer in Soho, New York. Starbucks Coffee Company is looking for a Front End Web Developer in Seattle, WA. Sitezoogle is looking for a Senior Programmer anywhere (telecommute). Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board. More jobs! The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

Real life usability

Very Clever: The Virginia Employment Commission preprints the return address of payment envelopes with their own address. Not Clever: New York state Workers Comp Board tells me to mail my payment right away, but does not include the address to send it to. I have to call them to find out where to send my mail.
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

PHOTO: brassica_romanesco.jpg

Fractal food: Romanesco
Publication date: 2008-10-24 more

New in Highrise: Track proposals, bids, and estimates with the new Deals feature

Today we officially announced a big new Highrise feature called Deals. Deals lets you keep track of proposals, bids, and estimates you’re submitted, won, or lost. This new feature is especially handy for designers, developers, contractors who bid on projects for clients. Now you’ll know which proposals are still out for bid, when you sent them, who you’re expecting to hear back from, which ones you won, which ones you’ve lost, and how much money you’ve made from each customer. I wish I had Highrise Deals when we were doing website design. I had a hard time remembering all the RFPs we’d responded to and how many projects we’d won or lost and why we’d won or lost them. Saying I was disorganized would be kind. The best way to get a feel for the new feature is to watch a video demo: (See a bigger, clearer version on the Product Blog) If you don’t have a Highrise account, sign up today. If you do, we hope you find Deals useful! Thanks again for your continued support.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

My talk at the Business of Software conference (September 2008)

From the Business of Software conference in Boston, September 2008.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Introducing WysiHat: An eventually better open source WYSIWYG editor

For a while we’ve been exploring switching to WYSIWYG text editing in our products. Up until this point we’ve been using either plain text, manual HTML, or Textile formatting. Depending on who you are it’s either fine or annoying. We want to do a lot better. We’ve looked at a lot of existing options (Yahoo’s WYSIWYG plug-in, TinyMCE, etc), but we weren’t happy with any of them. Currently available WYSIWYG editors don’t offer much flexibility when it comes to modifying their look and behavior. You are stuck with their HTML, buttons, and design. Modification was possible, but it was really ugly behind the scenes. We really needed a framework for building our own editor with beautiful code and a low cost of change. WysiHat So we decided to make our own. It’s called WysiHat and we’ve open sourced it. Get it? WysiHat. Hat instead of Wig? Funny, we know! Today we’re releasing a very stripped down early developer release. WysiHat is a WYSIWYG JavaScript framework that provides an extensible foundation to design your own rich text editor. WysiHat stays out of your way and leaves the UI design to you. Although WysiHat lets you get up and running with a few lines of code, the focus is on letting you customize it. We are giving developers early access to the project while we continue to work out the remaining issues. Note: It’s extremely early. Contributors are welcome so please check out the project on GitHub and send us your feedback.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Crusty Gold: Basecamp's footer badge

A few weeks ago at our Maine meet-up, David was telling a story about preparing for his latest RailsConf keynote. His plan was to talk about bad code from our own apps*, and we were cracking up when he explained his hunt for all that “crusty gold” buried in our repos. I ran into my own nugget of crusty gold today while taking a peek at Basecamp’s footers. The footer of each page in Basecamp may show a badge that says “Managed with Basecamp.” I wanted to figure out when and why that badge is displayed. So I found my way to the relevant template and saw this: <div class="Footer"> <% if @account.free? || @account.show_footer_badge?%> <a href="<%= @account.free? ? "http://www.basecamphq.com/?ref=free" : affiliate_link %>" target=_blank> <img align="right" width="112" height="30" src="/images/poweredbybasecamp.gif" alt="Powered by Basecamp" border="0" align="absmiddle" style="margin-right: 8px;" /> </a> <% end %> </div> The first order of business was the question: Under what conditions do we show the badge? The first condition, @account.free? is clear enough (it means the account is on a Free plan). But what’s up with the second condition: @account.show_footer_badge? Since the method is on @account, the first place I checked was our Account model. But it turned out that show_footer_badge? isn’t a method. It’s a column on the database. That meant I had to find where that value was being set by the user and saved into the DB to figure out what it really ‘means’. Some grepping revealed that show_footer_badge? is actually a relic from our first BC affiliate program. People on this old program had the choice to check a box to hide or show the footer badge to all their employees and clients using their Basecamp account. What’s crusty about this? The problem is that @account.show_footer_badge? gave me no indication that this is really about affiliate settings. A simple change to the name of the method would have really clarified that: <% if @account.free? || @account.affiliate_wants_to_show_badge? %> This comes back to a favorite design pattern: Intention Revealing Interfaces. @account.show_footer_badge? says what to do, but it doesn’t reveal the original author’s reason or intention. To round out this nugget, let’s improve that nasty anchor and image tag from the first excerpt above. We’ll use a Rails helper and some CSS to clean things up: <div class="Footer"> <% if @account.free? || @account.affiliate_wants_to_show_badge? %> <%= link_to basecamp_url_with_affiliate_code, image_tag('poweredbybasecamp.gif'), :class => 'affiliate_badge' %> <% end %> </div> The next time we go digging into Basecamp’s footers, this code will be a lot easier to understand. Related: Behind the scenes: Redesigning and coding the Highrise sidebar modules, What belongs in a helper method?
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Rural Internet: Stuck in the Slow Zone

I recently acquired an old farm house in rural southwestern Wisconsin. I’ve always wanted a place out in the country. With the real estate market taking a hit I figured this was a good time to buy. Time will tell on the financial return, but the peacefulness return is already paying off. However, it’s not all about relaxation — I do want to work from there from time to time. Foolishly I assumed that broadband was just about everywhere now, but it’s not. If you’re a mile off the highway, or not in a town of thousands, you may be stuck in the 90s. DSL: Too far away First I checked into DSL. Verizon provides it in the nearby town which is a few miles away. But the central office is too far from my house so it’s a no go at this time. Cable: Not available Then I checked with the local cable company. There aren’t cable lines in the area so that’s not an option either. No cable TV and no cable internet. Wireless ISP: No line of sight I discovered an interesting option from a neighbor over the hill (land, not age). He uses a wireless service. He has a dish-like-thing on his roof and he has a line of sight view to one of about a dozen towers in a 30 mile radius. The speeds are multi-megabit up and down, there are no transfer limits, and it’s about $40/month. It’s a pretty sweet service. Unfortunately (from an internet service perspective) my property is stuck in a valley so I don’t have line of sight to any towers. They even tried climbing this old windmill on a hill, but it can’t see any of the towers either. So that’s a no go. 3G EVDO: Not in range (but I do get EDGE) I have a Sprint 3G EVDO card which is wonderful when I’m on the road in big cities, but there’s no 3G out where I’ll be. I do get EDGE out there, and the card can handle that, so I can get access but it’s very slow. At least it works. I checked Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Cellular, but no one has 3G out there. US Cellular has the best cell coverage, but it’s EDGE-speeds at best. US Cellular does say they are rolling out a 3G network starting early next year. T1 I don’t even know if this is an option, but I fear if it is it’s going to be hundreds or thousands to install and hundreds a month. Not an option for a sometimes house. Satellite: Please no It appears the only way to go is satellite. That means the horribly reviewed HughesNet. Terrible customer service, satellite latency (who knew the speed of light wouldn’t be fast enough), 2-year contracts, hardware and fees, and draconian download limits (200 MB/day or they throttle you way down). Is anyone out there using HughesNet? I know message boards and forums are usually filled with the worst of the worst complaints, so any personal experiences with this service would be useful, thanks. Any other ideas? Please tell me someone has a really creative solution here. Is there something I haven’t thought of? Any geniuses out there with an answer? I’m afraid I may have exhausted my options beyond satellite. So satellite it may have to be, but I’m hoping there’s another way.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

LINK: Twitter vs. Yammer: Should web apps go for popularity or income?

Twitter vs. Yammer: Should web apps go for popularity or income? The economic crisis might leave growth-oriented companies like Twitter with little choice but to start focusing on the bottom line.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Behind the scenes: Highrise Deals icons

I had the opportunity to design an icon for the newly launched Deals feature in Highrise. Jason approached me one morning to think of some icon ideas to depict “Deals”. The development site used a stack of gold coins icon that Ryan had created, so I used that as a jumping off point. I started sketching variations of stacked coins. After a few minutes I decided to think about it in a different way. The word “Deal” kept bringing me back to the concept of card dealing. Card dealing is in no way related to the Deals feature however. I just couldn’t shake card dealing from my head, so I started sketching stacks of cards. I really dug the form that the stacked cards were making. The missing piece was: How is this related to “Deals”? I decided to take some inspiration from Super Mario Bros. and add a star to the top card. I finally had an idea to kick around with Jason and Ryan. Jason and Ryan were not sold on the star idea. I assured them that it needed more development, so I started producing the idea in Illustrator. I usually start icon work in grayscale. It is way too hard for me to lock down colors right away. The nice thing is that I can concentrate on getting the form just right. Color can always be added later. Once I completed the form I realized that I had the perfect icon. In the Deals tab of Highrise you can set your proposals/bids as Pending, Won, or Lost. The black and white icon would be the Pending state. I would add green for the Won state and red for the Lost state. It was all coming together. There was a problem though. Jamis and Ryan were already deep into development, and this dynamic icon concept would add scope. I shelved that idea and went back to Ryan’s original gold coins icon. Let’s use gold for the Deals icon. Jason and Ryan were still not digging the star. We went back and forth for about 10 minutes when Ryan had a great idea. Let’s ditch the star for the currency symbol. When you’re dealing with USD proposals then use a dollar sign. When you’re dealing with Yen then use that symbol. I loved that idea and started producing the rest of the icons to map to the currencies that we currently support in Highrise Deals. It is refreshing to work on a little project like this. Jason and Ryan were able to make quick decisions about my icon design direction. As a result the project took less than a day to finish with a majority of my time spent learning about the feature. Side note for those that have kids: WebKinz KinzCash uses the same symbol as the South Korean Won. Feel free to track Deals in Highrise with your WebKinz Krazy kids by using the Won hack. You heard it here first.
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Presenting at the 2008 National Conference on Information Technology Education

I feel it wasn
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Familiar pingg

Intra-product-type consistency, the Recognition and intuitiveness present within a product, is a key component in determining the overall Usability of a product. For an air travel website to be usable, it should have some basic, recognizable, consistency with other airline products. For example, on the top-left region of most every air travel website you will find a form to enter starting and destination locations, departure and return dates, as well as the number of passengers traveling on
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Selling User Experience

Selling User Experience October 22nd, 2008 Selling UX (UXmatters)
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Micro-Apps

The way I see it, micro-apps are the future of the web application. These tiny apps only do one thing in particular - but they do it well. As opposed to more robust applications, micro-apps focus on a single task and target that problem with a specialized solution. (more
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

New Google Analytics Interface Tweaks

Logged in this morning to notice a few tweaks to the GA interface, looks good and makes some of the reporting options easier to find. From the Google Analytics Blog Today, you may have noticed a little polish in your Google Analytics report interface . The layout is a little cleaner because we added some color consistency and contrast between sections in the interface so that it
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Erlang Makes Money go Round

Erik Stenman gives a short introduction to Erlang, arguing why it is so well suited for building high availability financial systems. He presents some key features of Erlang which have helped in making Kreditor a success, as well as touches on the downsides of using Erlang and some lessons learned from building a start-up with Erlang technology. Finally, Erik gives some advice on when to use Erlang and when not to. This talk was part of the QCon in Finance eXchange 2008 at Skills Matter in Lond
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

14 Killer Tools That Reveal Why People Abandon Your Website

14 Killer Tools That Reveal Why People Abandon Your Website Submitted by boydy - Promoted on Wed, 10/22/2008
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Need it now!

My sister-in-law Mary, who works at a large architecture firm, told me a funny story about a recent BlackBerry text entry gaffe. A co-worker was on a job site and needed a certain numbered document sent over in a hurry. So she used her company issued BlackBerry to e-mail a message to someone back at the office saying, "I need 428 now." As is probably common with BlackBerry users in a hurry, she momentarily confused the shift key with the unlabeled ALT key (with funky half moon icon and locate
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

The Daily News: GIMP, usability, and Wordpress

I decided that I would start rounding up interesting links each day and pass them along to my readers. I will still be publishing my own articles, but find that I don
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

WYSIWYG editor for wikis

Have you ever entered content into a wiki using the Wikitext markup language? Wikitext was created with the goal of being simpler to write than HTML. That may be so, but that still doesn't make it easy, especially the first time you try to use it, and especially if you're a non-technical user. So what should you do if you want your user base, all of whom are decidedly not technical, to actually start using the wiki you created for them instead of ignoring it because they don't want to bother le
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Content coordinator @ TNT

TNT is a worldwide operating company with an active global network. Across the world, around the clock, TNT delivers millions of parcels, documents and freight shipments to customers in more than 200 countries. The base of our success and leadership position in our industry depends largely on the engagement of TNT
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!

The Google Analytics team announced the release of seven features today. The next stage in the metamorphosis of the popular web analytics tool. Without a doubt the feature that I am most excited about is Advanced Segmentation. This has been a long time coming (can you sense my pushiness!), and in this post I wanted to share with you all how to use this awesome feature. Along the way I
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Shutterfly lost me with their site

I
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Is 39 the New 28?

Google
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Article on Usability Testing....

As always, Jarod Spool has some good articles up on his site, User Interface Engineering. The article talks about usability testing for web sites, but it has some very good points that can be applied to usability testing when developing e-learning..... Quick and Dirty Usability Testing: Step Away from the Book By Dana Chisnell, UsabilityWorks Get the <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons">Shout List Icons</a> widget and many ot
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

OPLIN 4Cast #121: Screen Readers, Usability Testing, Elections, AOL

1. Screen Readers - The American Foundation for the Blind estimates that 10 million people in the US are blind or visually impaired and 1.3 million are legally blind.  The increasingly graphic nature of the web has made it more difficult for people with visual disabilities. Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility Things Just Got a Whole Lot Clearer . . .ZoomText 9.x JAWS for Windows Kurzweil 3000 for Windows 2. Usability testing - When building new web sites or applications, it
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Welcome to Our Web Site, You Poor Thing

Welcome to Our Web Site, You Poor Thing Maybe the reason why persuasive web site design fascinates me so much is because I'm a cold call sales person's worst nightmare. The best invention ever made was "Caller ID". They want me at the wrong time. For a web site or web-based application to rock someone's world, many factors have to miraculously kick into place at once. They may be credibility, trust, easy to read content, etc. And you can still miss your mark because you didn't take into acco
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Search engine submission

Hi, Situation #1 I am the owner of 1 site with 2 languages (english and spanish). There are no difference regarding URLS for english and spanish t Continue
Publication date: 2008-10-23 more

Ditch the book - Come to a virtual seminar on "usability testing in the wild"

Ditch the book - Come to a virtual seminar on "usability testing in the wild" I'm excited about getting to do a virtual seminar with the folks at User Interface Engineering (www.uie.com) on Wednesday, October 22 at 1 pm Eastern Time. I'll be talking about doing "minimalist" usability tests -- boiling usability testing down to its essence and doing just what is necessary to gather data to inform design decisions. If you use my promo code when you sign up for the session -- DCWILD -- you can
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Increasing Pageviews per Visitor

As we
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Web 2.0 context menus vs. Web 1.0 link lists: Style over usability?

As Ajax spreads new UI conventions to the masses, it's important to apply a critical eye to the usability of those conventions. Several big-name sites have launched extensive redesigns in the last few months, from Twitter and FriendFeed to Flickr and Facebook. Certain trends are solidifying, especially the use of context menus that are hidden until a user mouses over an item, then displayed as a series of icons, text or both. First up we have Flickr, whose homepage redesign emphasizes the so
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Customer service powered by search technology

I was on the train, on my way to Copenhagen and UX intensive a four day seminar hosted by Adaptive Path. Looking forward to this week I was also contemplating the past year and the projects we
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

How do you feel about blog navigation and design?

This is a follow-up to my previous post regarding how easy or how hard it might be for internet users to navigate standard blog designs. To help answer the question I
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

How To Skyrocket Sales By Decreasing Your Work

Would you throw away your time filling up a lengthy order form to purchase an ordinary cup on the internet? I know I would rather leave. Whoever is selling it is clearly short of web copywriting skills. I
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

25 reasons why saving time on your intranet is a bad metric

We
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

UIEtips: Quick & Dirty Usability Testing: Step Away from the Book

At last week
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Why Flash sites usually suck

I
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Is this the end of KDE for me?

I have always preferred KDE over GNOME. But, the KDE 4 have given me lot of headaches. My be it's time to switch to GNOME of Xfce with Ubuntu 8.10 release.
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Three Steps Forward, One Back

What did you think of the new MacBook? I think they are nice, I don
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Flaws with Utah Reporting System

I was surfing John Gruber
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

HTC G1

A whole two days early, my G1 arrived on my doorstep. And now, for your viewing pleasure, the unboxing, and for your reading enjoyment, my first impressions of this snazzy new phone and it
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Health, Moving into the Realms of Health and Well-Being

In order to efficiently combat the ill-effects of stresses and tiring life schedules, a person needs to pull up his socks and make a meaningful enquiry into what he requires for well- being. Wellness of mind and body is paramount to counter any disease which might creep into us. This is the age of materialization and in our pursuit of wealth and worldly comforts, we often lose our way. It is then catch-up time. Thankfully there are diverse wellness products to help us with our well- being. For
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Be Kind to the Color Blind

Hi, my name is Chris Campbell and I have a color vision deficiency. Like roughly 7-10% of all males, my deuteranomaly makes it difficult to differentiate between some colors, like red and green. Color deficiency, or color blindness as it
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Top 126 Ajax Tutorials

Helpful tutorials to learn Ajax....
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

The First OpenID User Experience Summit

As OpenID continues to gain momentum, over the past few weeks both Google and Yahoo! have released the results of usability studies they
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Collaboration Techniques that Really Work - Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

Leisa Reichet in her workshop (of which i lost the first 30 minutes) talked about ways to improve productivity while planning a new web experience. Nothing new, but it was a good idea splitting the attendands in several group and ask them to work together. Even if the workshop lasted for 3 hours, however, many arguments where just drafted. Some notes taken while not brainstorming with my group: build collaboration into your project methodology - collaborate with your project team collaborat
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Beware of future creep

So, you’ve got your scope creep, and you’ve got your feature creep. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking a lot about a little gremlin I’ve been calling “future creep”. Future creep is not about adding features to your products. At least, it is not directly about that. Rather, it is about adding infrastructure to your products in preparation for features that may or may not be added later. In the future. This is really subtle, because it can happen even (or perhaps especially) when the feature list for a product has been frozen. So, sure, you can’t add any more new features for this release, but there has been talk about some new feature X being added eventually, and if you just tweak the code a bit here and here, and maybe there, the way can be paved for X that much more easily! That feature X can be anything: a programmer interface (API), a drag-and-drop UI, element categorization, data export/import, batch processing, anything at all, anything that you don’t intend to implement immediately, but which has been bandied about as a possible addition someday. Paving the way doesn’t sound bad at all, though, does it? In fact, it sounds proactive and laudable. And if that feature X goes through in a timely fashion, exactly as you envisioned, I’m sure you’ll be praised for your foresight. BUT. Even the simplest of potential features can be implemented in a number of ways. Or not implemented at all. At best, your “foresight” can result in wasted time, where you spun your wheels for a few hours (or days!) playing “what if” and “let’s pretend”, trying with too little information to think of how best to architect your code to accommodate that future feature.Worse, it could result in dead code, smelly sections of your application that no one is going to have the time to clean up, and which will remain for years until no one working on the code even remembers why it is there. Which means they are unlikely to remove it, because why remove something that obviously isn’t affecting the app? At worst, though, what seemed like a good idea at the time can make things actively worse down the road. It might get in the way of how the feature will actually be implemented, or prevent some other feature from being added cleanly. The solution? It consists of three parts: First, never implement more than you need to. That sounds harsh, in a grasshopper-and-the-ant kind of way, except it really isn’t. It isn’t a mandate to slack off, it’s a command to do what you know. Implement the feature you’re working on, not the feature you hope will land someday. Keep it simple, keep it minimal, and keep it real. Second, never plan further than you can see. Yeah, that new feature might land next month. In fact, people may be talking about it as if it were a dead certainty. But the future can change, and it can change dizzyingly fast. Unless a feature is actually part of the next release, don’t implement it. This certainly isn’t saying you shouldn’t be proactive; you should just restrict your proactivity to items that aren’t pretend! Third, don’t be afraid of imaginary work. That work you think of when someone says some feature might be implemented someday? Yeah, that’s imaginary work. If you’re perfectly honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you really don’t know what the feature will entail. Often, what you think will require a pile of work turns out to have a simple solution. (And, frankly, vice versa.) Regardless, wait until you have the information you need to do a project right. Don’t let your fear of imaginary work drive you to imaginary solutions. It is so easy to fall into this trap, since it runs under the heading of “saving myself work down the road.” Except it doesn’t really save you work, and it can even result in more work. Beware future creep! This is all related to a RubyConf presentation I’ll be giving in Orlando on November 5th, entitled Recovering from Enterprise: how to embrace Ruby’s idioms and say goodbye to bad habits. If you’re going to be there, do stop by and introduce yourself!
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Acquire taste

Having great taste is one of the most important characteristics of designers, programmers, and managers alike. Being able to discern what’s good from that which is bad. Which of the thousands of possible little details are key to make whatever you’re working on just right. The problem with the concept of taste is that it’s so ephemeral. One view of the world is that some people just have it and others don’t. Either you’re lucky enough to be born with it and you’ll be forever awesome or you’re a tasteless sod doomed to create crappy work. I don’t subscribe. I think taste is mostly about developing an eye for the details that matter and that it’s absolutely something that can be learned. The best way to learn what details that matter is to examine the details of great and not-so-great work and contrast and compare. It requires determination and dedication to develop an eye, to develop your taste, but it’s absolutely possible. Some may be predisposed, but anyone willing to be a student can get there. So what are you waiting for?
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Apple iPhone Ad: "Sequence shortened"

A couple months ago I posted “Sour Apple: How an Apple ad sets the wrong expectations” here on SvN. I felt that the interface response time and network transfer rate was unrealistically fast. It looked like they had to cut out a bunch of frames to make things as fast as they were advertising. I felt that was deceitful without claiming that the sequence was simulated or shortened in some way. Yesterday I noticed they are now adding some fine print to the bottom of some of their ads that says “Sequence shortened” (the red box above is mine for emphasis). It’s good to see them adding the disclaimer to these ads. The fine print doesn’t distract from the ads in any way. I think it’s a win-win.
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

VIDEO: This promo video for SoundCloud shows how

This promo video for SoundCloud shows how much style you can inject into a screencast. You can tell they are speaking directly to a certain audience through their attitude, visuals and music. I particularly like how they intentionally show some purple desktop background around the browser window. Screencasts often look the same when you don’t see anything beyond the edges of the browser window. Well done guys!
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Filmmaking and participation

Emphasis on participation and trust have been my favorite part about working 37signals this first month. It reminded me of my favorite director’s filmmaking process. Traditional filmmaking, essentially: write a script, cast actors, go on set and film. British indie director Mike Leigh takes a different approach. I start with no script. I do a brief of the film for myself, which is usually pretty fluid. Then I work with the actors for an extensive period creating the characters, through conversation, research and improvisation. Then we go out and invent the film on location, and structure it and shoot it as we go. To me, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about using film as a medium in its own right, not as a way of including the decisions of various committees (via MovieMaker). It pays off. Leigh’s characters shine with curious originality. The sometimes strange dialogue and situations tend to provoke some response no matter how foreign to the viewer. I attribute this to level playing field; encouraging the cast to improvise and create. An exemplary clip from ‘Naked’, developed almost exclusively by the two actors in a run of improvised sessions who then cull the cruft in together with the director. This is a great example of how going in unprepared yields fruit, and how encouraging people to participate brings out the best in them.
Publication date: 2008-10-21 more

Think online and offline to avoid getting stuck in the clouds

The Telegraph Media Group (TMG) recently announced it is not refreshing its current Microsoft Office, Exchange and Windows XP deployment and is instead moving about 1,400 internal users to cloud-based service Google Apps. TMG
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Obsessed by Technology

It's time for a more realistic view of technology. Human input is still useful, and in some situations essential.
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

My talk @Shift 2008

Posted by: Susana Vilaça on: October 20, 2008 In: Thesis| Work Comment! Last friday I did a talk at Shift 2008 entitled
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Hassenzahl on UX, pleasure and beauty

Marc Hassenzahl is Junior Professor for Economic Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Koblenz-Landau. He is also a freelance usability consultant, president of the German Chapter of the Usability Professionals
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

CAPTCHAs and Friends

As spam bots are getting smarter CAPTCHAs are getting harder and harder. We got to the point that it
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

MediaBank 3.5: Multi-Media Support

MediaBank 3.5: Multi-Media Support Posted by: Kayla Martin in Multi-Media, Tech Talk, WAVE News, News, Product Releases on October 20th, 2008 MediaBank 3.5 Feature Name: Multi-Media Support MediaBank Version: Workgroup and Enterprise Benefits: Users now have convenient access to large video and audio files using minimal network and computer resources. Description: Mediabank 3.5 supports multi-media files such as MOV, MPG, AVI, WMV, etc. The MediaBank image engine will generate streamab
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

The Three Dimensions of User Studies

Christian Rohrer has a good article up earlier this month on the three dimensions of user studies: Attitudinal vs. Behavioral Qualitative vs. Quantitative Context of Website or Product Use He
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

LITA National Forum 2008: Web Site Redesign: Perspectives from the Field

Presented Saturday, October 18, 2008, at the LITA National Forum. Speakers from four academic libraries talked about various aspects of their web redesign projects and participated in a Q&A after the presentations. Presenters were: Elizabeth L.
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Usability in Gaming: Doing It Wrong

While computer/video games certainly have a number of good things to teach about usability in software and web design, there are also quite a few mind-bogglingly bad examples. exhibit A: Mario Kart Wii turn on Wii console confirm health & safety warning from the console
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Usability Tip for Law Firm Email Alerts: Use Italics for Emphasis, Underlines for Hyperlinks

A client recently asked what formatting style they should use for emphasis in their email alerts and newsletters. Among other text, the question concerned how to format case names (e.g., ABC Company, Inc. v. XYZ Company, Inc.). From a usability standpoint, the answer is that one should never using underlining in an email except to indicate a hyperlink. As usability guru Jakob Nielsen has advised: "Don't underline any text that's not a link, even if your links aren't underlined. Reserve under
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Convergence

Posted by aloktyagi on October 19, 2008 We live in a time of convergence where examples are littered show casing various technologies or products converging to enhance end user experience. One case in point digital media and home entertainment serving to improve everyday experience. Just pick one category of your liking and you will soon find someone is pushing the envelope either bringing adjacency services closer or building one if it doesn
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Fight of the Century (Usability VS Reusability)

October 19, 2008
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

The Plight of Filipinos

No other artistic medium has reached a staggering impact in the lives of Filipinos these days other than digital photography. We are talking about millions of Filipinos
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Categories versus Tags

Categories versus Tags October 20th, 2008 Categories are more appropriate to blogs and tags seem more appropriate to sites with user generated content - Categories versus Tags. Dmitry explains the difference between them and wants to know your opinion. What do you use tags for on your site? Posted in usability, design
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

First came the voice, then came the finger and now comes the voice again

Aha. So you
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Recession proof your business, make your website usable

User experience guru Andy Budd and why businesses with websites that are usable, and user friendly, will have an edge over competitors with not so easy to use websites. Well, first off, most websites are incredibly inefficient and converting customers, and can you blame them? Up until now it
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

25 Tweaks for Your Firefox Status Bar

Want to add a few more features and functionality to your Firefox status bar? Here are a some common tweaks you may want to make, and how you can get them added to your own browser. Extended Statusbar - check out speed, percentage, time and loaded size and more Organize Status Bar - clear the clutter out of your status bar Cookie Button - C is for cookie, and this add-on makes it easy enough to access cookie permissions. (ok, so it doesn
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Building the E-Service Society: E-Commerce, E-Business, and E

It comprises the proceedings of I3E2004, the Fourth International Conference on E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government, which was held in August 2004 as a co-located conference of the 18th. IFIP World Computer Congress in Toulouse,
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Next-Generation Ecommerce With Service Oriented Architecture

For example, an online retailer who began 10 years ago with a home-grown ecommerce platform has updated its systems several times over the last decade - each time patching new functionality on top of what
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

Integrity in Marketing

I signed up to receive emails from a visitor
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

eStoreKeeper POS with Integrated Ecommerce Software Review

This scalable web based POS system combined with e-commerce solutions will give you detailed reports on products, sales, customers and employees. eStoreKepper makes it easy to share information including inventory levels,
Publication date: 2008-10-20 more

20 Websites to Help You Master User Interface Design

As web technologies progress, websites and web applications are becoming more responsive, providing us with more ways and techniques to interact with the users. Form, more than ever, has been superseded by function. The following websites deal with interface design, user experience, user-centered design, usability, and everything in between
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Twittering a Usability Test

We noticed that when the Labs were running user tests, we would see a flurry of email about status and schedule. Stuff that was highly relevant at the moment and then not at all. Material that seemed like it should be on ones twitter-feed not ones inbox. So for the last two user tests , we tried something new. We created a twitter account for the user test , got a badge for it. We placed the badge on the website we create for the client-product group. Now we could tweet about schedule changes
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

What to Do, What to Do

What to do, what to do. After reviewing this story telling website, Tales from the Treasure Trove, I am not sure what to do. Visit their site, and let me know if you see the footer with the links without scrolling down. If you missed them when visiting you might feel like I do, and not know what to do. It
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Flash and the Pan: 4 Tapeless AVCHD Camcorders Tested

Wired: Gadget Lab: Still using tapes in your camcorder? Okay, Grog
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Browser comparison

I use three browsers daily: Chrome (80%), Firefox (15%) and IE (5%). A stab at listing the pros and cons of each Google ChromeMozilla FirefoxInternet Explorer BookmarksA: From location barA: From location barC: From Menu/Shortcuts KeywordsC: NoneA: Smart keywords C: None Ad-blockingC: NoneA: Yes, adblockplusC: None Loading SpeedA: InstantaneousC: Very SlowB: Mediocre SearchA: From location barB: From Search boxB: From Search Box FindB: Ctrl+FA: Find-as-you-typeB: Ctrl+F CompatibilityC: Lots
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Categories vs Tags

What should you use to organize content on your site: categories or tags? Usability Post discusses each one's benefits and downsides and gives recommendations.
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Home links verses logos

Facebook appears to be testing (with a far greater audience than I could), the current state of web conventions. A few years ago, few regular people knew that the logo on a website would link back to the homepage. Anecdotally, I have noticed more people using logos for that purpose in usability testing, but it
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

AY! GOOGLE!: A Runt Rant

AY! GOOGLE!: A Runt Rant Posted in October 17th, 2008 by Wayne Kurtzman in Content One of the benefits of having a blog is that you can rant. This is a runt of a rant, but I would love to hear what you think! -W iGoogle, the personalized home page of Google users had a makeover this week. While many users like the left navigation bar and expanded story previews, power users like myself (with 9 tabs full of RSS feeds) are not as happy. I check my iGoogle for the latest in business, marketing,
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

I'm Leaving iGoogle...wait not yet

The new iGoogle launched and I hate it. iGoogle is my homepage. I keep weather, stocks, mail, and feeds on there...mostly feeds. The new iGoogle destroyed it for me. The old one showed me post titles with a plus box to open up and read the item. This worked well. If I wanted, I could click-thru to the main site, but I rarely did. The new iGoogle chose to do away with the plus boxes and just give me the first two lines of the RSS items. This was terrible. It wasn't enough to read and it made the
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

F# Cheat Sheet

A6 Systems has posted an F# Cheat Sheet for those who are using or learning F# and need something easily accessible to remind them of the syntax. You can print this sheet out in landscape mode and keep it around your desk - or pull up the pdf (available at http://a6systems.com/resources.html) when you need a quick reminder.
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Bookmark: The Experience is the Product

There are some very interesting lessons for libraries in this slideshare on user experience design: Experience Is The Product View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: adaptivepath dconstruct2007)
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Daily Links for October 17th

10 Best Protest Songs Of The 21st Century - The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method: 36 slides that pass the Squint Test - Two Families Named McCain - WSJ.com - The black and white McCain families have long acknowledged their shared history at Teoc, a name that applies to both the plantation and the now-sparse community around it. A cousin of the senator still owns 1,500 acres of the original 2,000. Sen. McCain's younger brother, Joe, and other white McCains have attended family reunions organize
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

9 Skills to Supplement Design

I was having a discussion the other day with some fellow web designer friends on the skills that you required to be stay in this field long term. Sure we all agreed you need to at least have the core design skills, understanding of layout, colour theory, typography and the usual tricks of the trade. The platform that you used to deliver your designs was immaterial, be that Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks or the like it didn
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Along with Steve Krug
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Best Programming Practises

Recently I have gone through some of my old code and have found many programming nightmares. Me, as with many other coders when starting out, tend to make the program work and care about practically nothing else. I mean the client we are doing this for doesn
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

From raw experience to personal reflection

Just a week to go for deadline for this workshop on the Designing for Reflection on Experience that Corina and I are organising at CHI. Much of the time discussions of user experience are focused on trivia and even social networking often appears to stop at superficial levels.  While throwing a virtual banana at a friend may serve to maintain relationships and is perhaps less trivial than it at first appears; still there is little support for deeper reflection on life, with the possible excepti
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

Smart Bookmarks Bar

Running out of room in your bookmarks toolbar? You could do some spring cleaning - but winter is quickly coming upon us. Next idea? Well the Smart Bookmarks Bar add-on for Firefox promises to simplify your cluttered bookmark rat
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

User Friendly 2008 count-down in Shenzhen

User Friendly 2008 count-down in Shenzhen Internet News, User Experience Design No Comments
Publication date: 2008-10-19 more

QUOTE: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful…What is likely is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over. —Warren E. Buffett on when to buy
Publication date: 2008-10-18 more

Product blog update: To-do list comments in Basecamp, Highrise on your BlackBerry, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp A file organizing strategy using Basecamp comments Jamie and Sam are working on creating HTML emails for all the 37signals products. They setup a project for this in Basecamp, and they’re using the newly available comments on to-do lists in a cool way. There’s a to-do for every email template that needs to be updated and, once completed, the template itself is attached by Jamie as a comment for easy retrieval. Highrise Access Highrise on your BlackBerry using Bridge Bridge is a subscription based BlackBerry application that “enables synchronization and convenient online and offline access to Highrise.” Highrise’s four levels of permissions Highrise lets you set permissions on people, companies, cases, and notes. It’s a great way to select who gets to see what information. Keep your personal contacts private. Limit certain data so only, say, the marketing department can see it. Or open information up so anyone on your team can access it. It’s up to you. Backpack Create a calendar for a specific person/category in Backpack In Backpack, you can have different calendars within your master calendar. These calendars are useful for grouping events by category or person. You might have calendars labelled “Sarah,” “Jeff,” or “Juan” for each one of those people. Or “business,” “personal,” or “travel” for those categories. Each of these calendars can have a different color also. Events will then show up in that color. Campfire Campfire video tip: Name shortcut 37signals’ Jamis Buck shows a quick shortcut you can use to call out individual names in Campfire. Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-10-18 more

VIDEO: This promo video for This promo video for SoundCloud shows how much style you can inject into a screencast. You can tell they are speaking directly to a certain audience through their attitude, visuals and music. I particularly like how they intentionally show some purple desktop background around the browser window. Screencasts often look the same when you don’t see anything beyond the edges of the browser window. Well done guys!
Publication date: 2008-10-18 more

QUOTE: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas. —Warren E. Buffett on complex securities engineered by Wall Street mathematicians
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

LINK: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things - Personal Lessons From The Financial Meltdown

Why Smart People Do Dumb Things - Personal Lessons From The Financial Meltdown As we deal with the fallout from so many executives making such terrible decisions, the simplest advice seems the most appropriate. Figure out what you care about and devote yourself to that purpose. Stay the course, even when your colleagues wander off course. And never forget that if something sounds too good to be true
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: A "busman's holiday" is a holiday or vacation

A “busman’s holiday” is a holiday or vacation during which you do the same thing that you do for your usual work. —Wikitionary
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

PHOTO: map319_1001339i.jpg

A map of the world that reflects casualties from war in the second half of the twentieth century. (via Re-Mapping The World)
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: Rails tip: Use subdirectories to namespace

Rails tip: Use subdirectories to namespace images by resource. Eg. images/people/add.gif vs. images/add_person.gif. —
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: In the world of ideas, to name something

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. —Thomas L. Friedman
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

LINK: It's not its.

It's not its. A single serving site for those wondering. (Now where’s “There not their”?)
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: It's the small touches that won me over.

It’s the small touches that won me over. Well designed, a bit of attitude, and useful. —App store reviewer Jragon on Sketches. Should good software have ‘a bit of attitude’?
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

VIDEO: Aaron Draplin talks about shitty signage at a funky motel.

Aaron Draplin talks about shitty signage at a funky motel.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: There ain

There ain
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: There is a home for creatives in between

There is a home for creatives in between poverty and stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric bestsellerdom, but higher than the obscurity of the long tail. I don
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

LINK: Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research

Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research None of the users had heard of OpenID before, and none of them even noticed the OpenID sign-in box displayed below the traditional email/password login form on the site. In many cases, the test subjects entered their Yahoo email address and Yahoo password to try to log in. We had told the test subjects that they could sign into the site using their Yahoo! account without having to register…Certainly there is a lot of work to be done on the OpenID UX (user experience) front.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

LINK: Noodlr, the online noodle soup oracle

Noodlr, the online noodle soup oracle What, you thought we hired Joshua just for his sys admin skills?
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

A brief summary: Skateboard Graphics

I presented a slideshow of Skateboard Graphics to my co-workers while we were in Maine a few weeks ago. Skateboarding and its culture had a strong influence on me during my adolescence. Skateboarding is the main reason why I pursued a career in Art and Design actually. It turns out that a few of my co-workers also had fond memories of skating. Mark Imbriaco used to skate and Jeffrey Hardy still does. Jason Fried used to light his Vision Gator deck on fire and ride it down the street. Now that’s hardcore! Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz, etc. Ah the ‘80s. The graphics of V. Courtlandt Johnson and Jim Phillips are iconic. Menacing, horrid, grimey. Punk Rock and Metal. I would spend endless hours drawing skeletons and dragons in my school notebooks. During this time, all graphics were influenced by this style. However, as the 80’s came to a close that would change. World Industries The graphics for World Industries changed the industry. They were different than the usual skulls and gore that were popular at the time. Artists Marc McKee and Sean Cliver introduced an element of wit and pop-culture commentary that would take the entire industry in a different direction. World Industries gave birth to Big Brother magazine which in turn gave birth to Jackass. Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender I loved it when skaters did their own board graphics. I should have also included Ed Templeton in the presentation too. These guys weren’t just great skaters but also incredible visual artists in their own right. Chocolate Chocolate is a company that broke away from World Industries. Their graphics continue to innovate. Artists like Evan Hecox take seemingly mundane images like guitars and soda bottles and elevate them to art by putting them on skateboards. More… Obviously this is all just scratching the surface. There is so much more to explore with skate graphics and skate culture. Here’s my presentation below. I’d love to hear your stories about skateboarding and how skate culture has influenced you.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

Learn from the right people at the right time

You often see aspiring entrepreneurs reading books by Jack Welch, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, etc. I can see how their advice might be valuable if you
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

QUOTE: In a connected world, countries, governments

In a connected world, countries, governments and companies also have character, and their character
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

Goodbye, Mothers

Sad, sad economic news: Mother’s Cookies has shut down. Mother’s produced Iced Oatmeal cookies, Mini Chocolate Chip cookies, and the grand old favorite of many, the Iced Circus Animal cookies. The iconic company started out as a one-man shop in Oakland, CA, by a newspaper vendor from San Francisco. As Foodlocker puts it, ”...He toiled all night baking cookies in a three square foot oven with a nightly capacity of about 2000 cookies or 150 boxes. These sold for $1 a box and his vanilla cookies were an overnight success.” The success unfortunately could only weather 92 more years, and just last week Mother’s closed after seeking bankruptcy protection during these tumultuous times. This isn’t some behemoth of an investment firm folding, its CEOs running off with arms full of millions. This isn’t a mismanaged bank selling themselves to some other giant bank. There was no bailout plan for this piece of American history. I am sad. I am craving Circus Animal cookies, the pink and white frosting and rainbow sprinkles reminding me of much better, much happier times. I can’t buy them anymore.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

Going in Unprepared

This year I’ve spoken at about a dozen or so conferences and another dozen or so meetings or classes or gatherings. What I’ve started to notice is that I’m better unprepared. That doesn’t mean I go in without any idea of what I’m going to talk about. And it doesn’t mean I may not have some slides to support the ideas (although lately I’ve been speaking slide-free). But it does mean that I’ve stopped practicing. Web 2.0 in NYC This year I spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. I gave two talks — an hour talk on “The Things We’ve Learned at 37signals” in front of a few hundred people and a 15 minute keynote about “Software Curators” in front of a couple thousand. I’ve sorta given the Things We’ve Learned talk before, but it had been many months. I didn’t practice at all. I had some slides prepared that I’d used before, but I didn’t review them prior to going on. I’d never given the Software Curator talk before, so I practiced and practiced and practiced the night before. I was manic about it. I ran through it a few dozen times. When it came time to give the “Things We’ve Learned” talk I was relaxed. I looked at the slides with everyone else and I just said what came to mind. I think it was one of my better talks. When it came time to give the “Software Curator” talk, I was nervous. Not because I was speaking in front of a couple thousand people, but because I kept thinking about what I was supposed to say based on hours of practice. I kept reliving the practice, not living the moment. I keep reaching for the script in my mind instead of my current thoughts. I wasn’t happy with the talk at all.IDEA Last week I spoke at the IDEA conference in Chicago. I had no idea what I was going to talk about. The topic was just “Getting Real” so it was pretty open ended. I went up on stage, grabbed the mic, and just started talking. No idea what the next sentence would be. I wandered through a bunch of ideas that came to mind in the moment. I think it was one of my better talks. BIF-4 And just yesterday I spoke at the BIF-4 conference. I spoke about the marketing inspiration we’ve taken from chefs who teach (cooking shows and cookbooks). We’ve written our own “cookbook” called Getting Real which shares everything we know with the reader like a chef who writes a cookbook shares their recipes with their audience. I didn’t really prepare for this talk either. I just took the mic, told a story, and let my thoughts flow freely. I think it was one of my better talks. The more talks I give the more I notice that the less I prepare, the better the outcome. I think less about what I’ve told myself to say, and more about what I’m really thinking. I’m free to just say instead of just recite. Of course you have to know your material. You have to believe in the stuff you’re saying. But if you know it, and you believe it, you may want to try not practicing it. Spontaneity, chance, flow, and a bit of fear may produce your best presentation. Being in the moment may surprise you.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

The studio commentator arms race needs to stop

According to Bill Simmons, overcrowding plagues NFL pregame shows. His explanation for why the trend keeps getting worse: They don’t like firing people or eating contracts, but they loooooooove hiring people. Nothing makes a network exec happier than announcing, “We’re bringing in so-and-so!” And the sheer power of numbers makes shows feel like a bigger event than they actually are, so instead of choosing between Emmitt and Keyshawn, or Marino and Boomer, or Tiki and Bettis, they just keep both under the “bigger is better!” premise. Even if it inadvertently clogs up their shows and flies against the face of everything that has ever worked well on a Sunday pregame show. Unfortunately, cable news networks seem to be picking up this fumble and running the wrong way with it. Here’s MSNBC’s wall of experts covering the Wall Street crisis. Jon Stewart labelled it “the decabox.” Not to be outdone, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 featured 14 (14!?) people onscreen at the same time analyzing last night’s debate. If CNN ran a restaurant, the kitchen would probably look like this:
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

PHOTO: WSJ.png

WSJ redesigned. What do you think?
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

VIDEO: This is the guy who taught me how to balance

This is the guy who taught me how to balance rocks. I saw him balancing rocks in Stanley Park, Vancouver about 5 or 6 years ago. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There had to be a trick. Turns out there’s no trick. Everything has a center of gravity. It just takes patience, time, a steady hand, and the right feel to find the balance point. It’s great fun and really soothing. Next time you’re on a shore with natural stone, give it a try. You’ll amaze yourself.
Publication date: 2008-10-17 more

Burger King vs. First CityWide Change Bank

Here’s what this Burger King cup says on the side: Maybe you want a lot of ice. Maybe you want no ice. Maybe you want your top securely fastened, or maybe you want to go topless. Hmmm? Maybe you want to mix Coke and Sprite. Maybe you want to let your cup runneth over (we wish you wouldn’t.) Whatever you do, make sure to have things your way. Alex Bogusky, partner and executive creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, Burger King’s lead agency says the burger chain decided “to create a dialogue with the consumer” using the immense amount of white space available on its current packaging. The packaging is an extension of the “voice of the brand.” Voice of the brand, eh? Funny, because the whole bragging about things you can get anywhere (e.g. “Maybe you want a lot of ice. Maybe you want no ice.)” sounds a lot like the fast food version of Saturday Night Live’s First CityWide Change Bank: Maybe Burger King should end it’s cup copy with this: “We can handle special requests like that, usually in the same day.”
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

Sequoia Capital: Armchair quarterbacks

Sequoia Capital’s “R.I.P. Good Times” deck made the rounds on the web last week. It’s Sequoia’s take on what happened with the economy and what their portfolio companies should do to weather the storm. Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturnView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession) What was their advice before the downturn? The analysis is good and the advice sound, but it also begs the question: What was their advice before the downturn? Now they are saying you should: Control spending Throttle back growth assumptions Cut earnings assumptions Focus on quality Lower risk Reduce debt They also say that you “need to become cash flow positive” and “spend every dollar as if it were your last.” So what was their old advice? Did they encourage their companies to spend more than they had, skimp on quality, grow grow grow, take on more risk, and accumulate more debt? Was being cash flow positive not a favored strategy before the downturn? If it wasn’t then, when was it going to be? If you weren’t in a position to make money when times were good how are you supposed to be in a position to make money when times are bad?“Good Times” Another thing I want to take issue with is this notion of “good times.” What was so good about the times a few months ago or even a few years ago for these companies? If you had to keep borrowing to stay afloat, were those good times? If you were running a business with no revenue coming through the door, were those the good times? If you were hiring more people than you really needed, where those the good times? There’s nothing easier than spending other people’s money. So fun and frivolous times, maybe, but good times, no. Monday morning analysts One of the things that always bugs me about downturn analysis is how the “experts” always seem to be a day late. After the missed earnings call or the market downturn the analysts come out and downgrade a stock or sector or market. So they miss their earnings number on Monday and on Tuesday you’re telling me to sell the stock? What’s expert about that? This Sequoia deck gives me the same feeling as the stock analyst who screams “SELL” after the gloomy numbers go public. Good advice comes before the bad times roll, not after. Anyone can look back at an event and dole out sound advice after it happens. The people worth listening to are the ones who were giving the good advice before it was fashionable.
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

Video

Aaron Draplin talks about shitty signage at a funky motel.
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

There ain

There ain
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

The difference between common knowledge and universal knowledge

In “Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User,” David Pogue points out the difference between common knowledge and universal knowledge. (The piece, which includes a list of seemingly obvious tips, was the most emailed article at the NY Times site for a few days.) One of these days, I
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

There is a home for creatives in between

There is a home for creatives in between poverty and stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric bestsellerdom, but higher than the obscurity of the long tail. I don
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

Dark and dark

I spent a few days out in the country last weekend. The city may have the energy, but the country helps me recharge. Something I really noticed this time was just how dark dark is in the country. The view through the window at night is empty. It might as well be painted black. In Chicago you can’t find total darkness outside. Nighttime is tinted orange. Street lights, lamps, passing cars, reflections — they all dye the dark. When you look out the window at night in the city you can what’s outside. It’s not any better or worse, it’s just different. You also can’t really see the nighttime sky in the city. You can look up, but you can’t see what’s really up there. You may catch a few lucky stars and that moon, but there a million things missing. All of this reminds me that everything is relative. Dark here isn’t dark there even though it’s nighttime in both places. The sky there isn’t the sky here. Even though you’re looking up at the same thing, they aren’t the same. That’s a good thing to be reminded of from time to time.
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research

Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research None of the users had heard of OpenID before, and none of them even noticed the OpenID sign-in box displayed below the traditional email/password login form on the site. In many cases, the test subjects entered their Yahoo email address and Yahoo password to try to log in. We had told the test subjects that they could sign into the site using their Yahoo! account without having to register…Certainly there is a lot of work to be done on the OpenID UX (user experience) front.
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

Experience vs. Function

A good UI should fade away, putting content in the front seat
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

101 CSS Resources to Add to Your Toolbelt of Awesomeness

All the cool kids are using CSS to separate content from appearance on their sites. Here is 101 resources that will get your feet wet with CSS, teach you some new tricks and techniques, clean your code, and hit the ground running with pre-made layouts.
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

FME Evangelist#23: Creating Measures, Shutdown Scripts, Logged Features

FME Evangelist#23: Creating Measures, Shutdown Scripts, Logged Features Contents: Anatomy of an FME Project: Parts III and IV; Measure Generation from Z Values; Shutdown Scripts and Logged Features; Updated Transformer Help; Drag and Insert Updates - This edition of the FME Evangelist is back to a general mix, with a good example of generating measures, a useful new TCL/Python function, and a sneak peak of a new Transformer Help document; not forgetting the ongoing anatomy of an FME project.
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Columbus Day....

We will not be posting because of the holiday.... Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup Dave Boggs SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series SyberWorks Learni
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Free Usability Assessment Worksheet!

I won
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

The Top of the SERPs is Only the Beginning

This excellent article in Search Engine Watch covers something that many businesses forget - getting to the top of the SERPs is only the beginning of their online marketing campaign, not the end goal. They describe four aspects of online marketing - attract, optimize, analyze, and retain. Attraction is obvious - it is driving traffic to your website. Optimizing means making sure your site is easy to navigate, easy to understand, and otherwise highly usable (including being simple to find with
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Wrapping the Season of Usability 2008

By Ellen Reitmayr, OpenUsability Inspired by the Google Summer of Code
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Book Review and Thoughts:

Posted by Steve on October 13, 2008 Don
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Online retailers should work on their navigational menus

Complicated, deep nested, popup, navigation menus annoy me. I
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

On the Recognition of Quick-UX

On the top-left of the front page of most air travel websites you will find a form to enter the starting and destination locations, and departure and return dates, as well as the number of passengers traveling on the given trip.   A common thread amongst blogs, regardless of the theme, is to have a top-level search box alongside an obvious RSS subscription link.   With online shopping websites, some of the most familiar and common characteristics a
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Pimpin

Due to a nasty Chinese Virus my computer at work died. As I just got a new Laptop (as shown in the post before) I
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Owners' Manual

The funniest thing I've read in years, via the Southwest Airlines "Spirit" Magazine. Owners' Manuals: The Owners' Manual [I was going to post an excerpt here, but I couldn't decide which part to use. So instead I'll say the least funny part is the missing manual for the Internet, and the rest of the article (including the sidebar on manual cautions) had my sides hurting from laughter.]
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

All CSS Properties Listed Alphabetically

All CSS Properties Listed Alphabetically
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Users is a dirty word

Language matters.  How you describe something frames your reference.  One of the problems with so much software is that it is designed for generic
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

IE6 should be dropped like a sack of angry teething rats.

On a daily basis I spend anywhere from five minutes to three hours cursing and wishing ill will upon Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. Sometimes I do this silently under my breath and sometimes, to the dismay of my coworkers, I do it quite vocally. The reason? Internet Explorer 6 is an: insecure, slow, outdated, and non-standards compliant browser. Let me illustrate this a bit further. If browsers were cars
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Design Registration Forms

Afshan Kirmani, User Experience Analyst for boxesandarrows.com has start a series of posts about Getting a Form
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Yahoo introduces Web Analytics

Last week, Yahoo introduced a new service that creates a helpful feedback loop for e-merchants, website owners, advertisers, and developers based on how well they did with you in critical moments like these. Born out of Yahoo acquisition of IndexTools in May, Yahoo! Web Analytics (beta) provides powerful data and insights reporting that help website owners evaluate their marketing performance and tweak their website designs. They
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Mozilla Launches New Developer Tools Lab

Mozilla has just announced its Developer Tools Lab--headed up by a new group that will focus on "the research and development of developer tools for the open web." According to Mozilla officials, "the primary initiative of the newly formed squad is to create Web development tools that make life better for Web developers
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

The "Remember Me" Rant

The
Publication date: 2008-10-14 more

Kwiqq (seriously) adopting OpenID

Image via Wikipedia OpenID has been the topic of the week in the Kwiqq offices. OpenID for people who are less aware of it is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, single sign-on, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

A very simple idea

A very simple idea October 13, 2008
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Choosing the Right Classification Words

Climate change or global warming? Pandemic flu or bird flu? Learning or training? Should we choose the 'correct' words or the words people actually use?
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

The trials of user testing with mobile devices

We're running more and more usability tests on mobile devices, this is a guide to talk through how we run these tests to get the most from them.
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Apple's iPhone versus Google's Android versus Nokia's 5800

Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Goofy in

Here
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Credit, where credit is due

I was quick to complain about Contact Energy when I found their online billing frustrating. How about something more positive
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Redesign Your Website - 10 Good Reasons from SiteLab

Cleaning up my inbox and came across this list from the folks at SiteLab. I work with a lot of clients on redesigning their sites and this list rings true. I
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Designing a Better Ballot

The design of the ballots in the 2000 election was a huge issue. The ballots in Florida (and perhaps elsewhere) were not properly designed and certainly not user-tested. AIGA (America Institute of Graphic Arts) tackled this problem and their solution was featured in the New York Times:
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Relative Font Size Reference Chart

I thought I
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Dear Marriott, Snail Mail is Not the Internet

After my stay at the Times Square Marriott a few weeks ago, I received a postcard in the mail asking me to complete a survey. The first 900 people to complete the survey would receive a $10 Amazon gift card. Sounded good to me; I needed some reading for my next plane trip. However, I soon realized the challenge would not be to be among the first 900. The challenge would be to follow the steps to get to the survey. Below is the text from the printed postcard: Enter the link exactly as it is p
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Want to see the website you worked on in 2001?

As a part of Google
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

Really oversized small keyboards

People have become very good at typing on ITU-T text entry interfaces - the common multiple key-press interface found on most phones. With the rising popularity of sub-notebooks, it makes me wonder if the form factor wouldn
Publication date: 2008-10-13 more

EveryBodysNuts.com, Dan Kennedy and Seth Godin - WPYP #13

Listen in as we talk about pistachio nuts and how to engage customers, how to use online videos to dominate your market, plus Dan Kennedy and Seth Godin as great mentors of ours. Who Pops Your Popcorn?! Episode #13 Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Site Emphasis

Site Emphasis, Site Emphasis, Site Emphasis, say that three times fast. Your site needs to stay on topic to achieve the desired action. I learned that little tip from Jakob
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Beyond Borders Web Globalization Strategies VOICES

Beyond Borders Web Globalization Strategies VOICES Companies know that globalizing their web sites will produce exponential revenue growth - Web Globalization Strategies: Beyond Borders tells web developers how to do it. By 2003, the US will account for less than one-third of the worldwide Internet user-base of 602 million. This book illustrates step-by-step measures to take to globalize any web site for almost any country in the world, while presenting spotlights on real companies who h
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Web Usability: How to Take a Customer from the Net and Keep Them in Sigh

Web Usability: How to Take a Customer from the Net and Keep Them in Sigh October 12th, 2008
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Gostovanje Neo-Serv

Hosting (gostovanje) company with a AJAX-based order form. A great usability vs. design study.
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Usability Basics - Measuring Web Interaction

Usability Basics - Measuring Web Interaction Categories: usability Many times when I hear a person talk about
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Mobile 2.0 Business & Builder Tracks

The Mobile 2.0 Conference
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

In the world of ideas, to name something

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. —Thomas L. Friedman
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Hulu figures out how to bring TV online

Man, has Hulu nailed online TV viewing or what? First off, they have a huge library of content that people actually want (e.g. SNL, Family Guy, Daily Show, Colbert, Kitchen Nightmares, etc.). And then they really execute on having a usable, effective UI. You do have to watch ads with Hulu. But just one at a time. The timeline lets you fast forward to anywhere in the show and also displays where the commercial breaks are located. That means you can go to any part of the show you want as long as you watch one ad first. A timer lets you know exactly how long you’ve got to go when ads are displayed. Watching the single ads Hulu shows takes the same amount of time as fast forwarding through a whole normal commercial break on DVR. Result: You actually wind up watching more ads on Hulu than you do on a DVR but it takes the same amount of time.And there’s more typical UI stuff you expect from a video site but it’s all executed nicely… Sort through episodes by date, popularity, etc. Search snaps right to likely results. Go full screen, raise/lower the “lights” of surrounding area, etc. Kudos Hulu.
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Product blog update: Twitter inside Campfire, home organization with Backpack, Diabetes Hands Foundation/Basecamp case study, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Campfire See your team’s Twitter posts inside Campfire “Last week, Des suggested that it would be great if we could see things that team members were posting on Twitter from inside Campfire…A small script now runs every minute and pulls in the feed and posts new updates to Campfire. Now we can keep a track of the conversations we
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

It's not its.

It's not its. A single serving site for those wondering. (Now where’s “There not their”?)
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

It's the small touches that won me over.

It’s the small touches that won me over. Well designed, a bit of attitude, and useful. —App store reviewer Jragon on Sketches. Should good software have ‘a bit of attitude’?
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Contemporary Issues in Ethics and Information Technology: Robert A. Schultz

Editorial Reviews Product Description Information technology has produced new ethical challenges and concerns in dealing with issues about privacy, security, piracy and professional ethics. Contemporary Issues in Ethics and Information Technology discusses these issues as well as other important ethical issues such as the outsourcing of high-level jobs and the value of IT itself. The main framework for ethical problems used in Contemporary Issues in Ethics and Information Technology is deri
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Top 10 Twitter tools for a power user

October 11, 2008 The Twitter obsession (and addiction) continues, we are all hooked on to it, aren
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

What Google Engineers do for Fun: Computerized Lego Art Project

An example of what a bored Google engineer does during a slow weekend: He writes a Java application using an annealing algorithm that finds the most optimized layout and color to reproduce an image using nothing but Lego blocks.
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Picasa Microsoft ICE Button

I have been playing around with Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) some days and it
Publication date: 2008-10-12 more

Usability testing slows down launch but speeds up success

I hate hearing the term
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Episode #65: Explicit Knowledge

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers. This week's word is about a type of knowledge management: Explicit Knowledge. We want you to join the discussion. There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. The call
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Free Friday: Census Data and LEP Seminar

Free Friday: Census Data and LEP Seminar In October and November, the Federal Interagency Working Group on LEP is offering a free webinar series on
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Radiation Shields - Enabling Safe X-Ray Imaging

Radiation Shields - Enabling Safe X-Ray Imaging By Stephen Lamb Radiation shields are large barriers that are designed to block harmful x-ray radiation exposure. Despite many medical benefits that x-ray imaging provides, it is also a potentially dangerous process that can cause cancer or other medical complications unless the proper protection is utilized. Lead barriers are a useful tool in accomplishing radiation protection for many x-ray applications. Lead x-ray shields offer advanced prot
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Blog Usability

Congratulations!  You
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Where are the missing floors?

It is fairly standard practice in Hong Kong for buildings to have no thirteenth or fourteenth floors. They are considered unlucky numbers. Not sure what happened to the first, second and fifth floor here. And back-to-front button numbering that is neither in the telephone format nor the phone format. There
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Caiu na Net - Morena Deliciosa Mostrando o Corpo

Caiu na Net - Morena Deliciosa Mostrando o Corpo 0
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Affiliate Marketing Programs !

Affiliate marketing program is a wonderful and most popular way to make money online today. Simply bring your online visitors to the products or services they need and you earn
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Introduction to Different Types of Affiliate Programs

Many of today
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

How to Design for Ads in Blog Design

Introduction Anyone who has been reading blogs for than a few days will notice that there are two common types of ads in blogs. Those two types are Google adsense, which is essentially a bunch of text with links and banner ad blocks, which often comes in the size of 125 x 125. Then there are three places it often gets placed, the sidebar, inside of a post, or at the bottom of a post. Advertisements are a nice way of making money with blogs, but where it often goes wrong is the implementation
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Library Usability Links 10/10/08

iPhone users frustrated with mobile news website design The UKSG completed a 3-year study finding that link resolvers are driving article use among academic library patrons [doc] Southwester College student newspaper reports that single students hogging study rooms is impolite Michael Lascarides, the new usability analyst at NYPL, writes about the work of Willliam
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Study claims iPhone usability could be improved

Keynote Systems conducted a user satisfaction study on certain mobile Web sites being accessed via the iPhone and found that when asked to find a news story, read an article and search for a story on a specific topic, many iPhone users reported low satisfaction with the Web-surfing usability of the sites. The study tracked 75 iPhone users and used the Keynote WebEffective measurement product to measure the results. WebEffective is a software product that offers insight into a mobile Web site's
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Review: diNovo Mini

Many people (myself included) enjoy having a lovely home theatre experience. Many you have an expensive HDTV, perhaps with an expensive wall mount. Often this is accompanied by expensive audio hardware, game consoles, movie players, et cetera. One of the best additions you can make to your home theatre is an HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer) for all your music, movies, photographs, and PVR needs. These all in one solutions can be great and many are built to hide in plain sight, blending in
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Preview #25

Here's a sneak preview of our next SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series episode on Instructional Design Tips for e-Learning Development. Audio Preview Time: 35 Seconds Get the &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Shout List Icons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;am
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Pay-Per-Click Report Card: Loriswigsite.com

Pay-Per-Click Report Card: Loriswigsite.com October 10th, 2008 Lori
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Floating Menu in JavaScript

Today, I was searching for some glass scratch remover and came across this little web site. The web site in and of itself is OK, but the implementation of the floating menu is marvelous. Here
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

AT&T Hates the The Drop-Down List

There are many things that web designers can do to improve usability, but tampering with the Drop-Down List is not one of them. The only flaw of the Drop-Down List is that novice users may not know there is more than one option. The only visual cue to novice users have is the arrow. AT&T took it away at one of the most important parts of their website: It
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A List Apart turns 10

A List Apart turns 10 October 9th, 2008 Ten Years, by Jeffrey Zeldman, is the Article about A List Apart
Publication date: 2008-10-10 more

iPhone Web Surfers Click On Ads Not?

Here's a press release from Keynote Systems that got 75 people to complete assorted web-based tasks on their iPhones -- a fairly typical usability set-up. One of the top bullet points in the press release: "advertising on the mobile web not compelling for users to click through." But if you look further down, one of the company's findings is that "only four percent of users tapped into advertising; nearly a quarter noticed advertising but did not click through." What do they mean by "tapped
Publication date: 2008-10-10 more

How to Test Your Site Usability with Five Second Test and Twitter

How to Test Your Site Usability with Five Second Test and Twitter A few days ago I tested this blog homepage with one handy tool I recommend trying: Five Second Test. That was both fun and useful. Now what I did: got a screenshot of the blog home page; filled in the form; uploaded the screenshot there; posted the generated link at Twitter and asked my dear followers to take part in the experiment. The participants were offered to look at the picture for 5 seconds and list max. 5 things th
Publication date: 2008-10-10 more

Pay-per-click Report Card: Fauxpanels.com

Pay-per-click Report Card: Fauxpanels.com October 9th, 2008 Barron Designs Inc. owns and operates Fauxpanels.com. The site sells imitation wood, stone and brick paneling. FauxPanels asked Practical eCommerce to review its Google AdWords advertising campaign. Average monthly ad spend on this campaign is $11,000
Publication date: 2008-10-10 more

Imagine This: Users Are Unsatisfied with Mobile Websites

Keynote Systems has released a report that illustrates a big problem for those excited about mobile web adoption.  The problem (as we already know): mobile websites suck. Defining the Problem Keynote Systems queried iPhone users to gather their satisfaction rates when visiting mobile-optimized websites.  They found that mobile surfers are frustrated with the usability of web sites and very few click on advertisements.  In the study, participants were asked to find an entertainment news story,
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Proximity Based Notifications & Granular Settings

Is you feed overflowing with activity? Worried you might miss the chance to connect with someone nearby because there's just so much going on? Now you can choose to receive alerts from Whrrl based on where your friends are in relation to you. Configure your notification settings with any of these proximity levels: nearby (1/4 mi) in walking distance (1 mile) in your neighborhood (3 miles) everywhere Get Content You Care About Beyond being notified when a friend checks in nearby, you
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Just Increasing Traffic May Not Increase Sales on Your Business Website

Many business owners get caught up with the need to increase traffic to their business website in order to increase sales and/or revenue.  Increasing traffic to your website may or may not help increase sales depending on who the traffic is (whether they are potential customers). Sales from a website are based on the number of potential customers who come to the website (a lead) and the percentage that actually purchase something (a conversion). To increase sales from a website, there are thre
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Who is Xavier Espinosa?

I was poking around on Linked In the other day and noticed that a new EatonGolden colleague had appeared. Curious, I clicked the link and found that Xavier Espinosa is listed as an accountant for us. Further exploration indicated that he actually works for Eaton Ltd. in Madrid Spain. My first thought was, maybe I should set up a meeting at the
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Thou shall not

Earlier this week I found myself in the Koru lounge at Wellington airport waiting for a delayed flight. I was using the time to arrange an upcoming trip, and was quite surprised to see this brick wall when I tried to access TripIt.com:   The
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Mobile Commerce: 800 Million Untapped Users

Mobile Commerce: 800 Million Untapped Users October 10th, 2008 Web-capable mobile handsets and their nearly 800 million users worldwide represent a significant and largely untapped market for ecommerce retailers. Selling by phone is a concept almost as old as Alexander Graham Bell, but in the 21st century mobile commerce (m-commerce) might be more about ecommerce than telemarketing. Consider that nine million Americans have already made at least one m-commerce purchase and some 125 millio
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Building a House on Digital Ground | A Primer on New Media

New marketing is the creation of events, experiences, content, products, and services in collaboration with the consumer. It is the creation of products and services that fill an actual need while creating a community that shares that need. Google, Twitter and Facebook were initially created by people to fulfill a need. Google was created to manage information, Facebook demographics, data and connection, and Twitter, conversation. Software and hardware review sites emerged to protect consumers
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Usability Post: Fighting Perfection

If you
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3D Flash Websites that Work

Felix Turner at Airtight Interactive talks about how to make a great 3D Flash website with examples of websites that get it right as well as what to watch out for in order to create a compelling experience.
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Are Your Text and Background Colors Driving Prospects to Your Competition?

If you
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Permanent Link to Coffee Notes from All Over

Coffee Notes from All Over Nick Cho makes his debut this week as the Coffee Nazi
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Usability and search engine optimisation (SEO), or the big end of the funnel, part two

Successful websites are made when usability, SEO and design teams all work together.
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Usability really just means making sure that something works well

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Checklist user generated content and SEO

So you
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Designed: Senz aerodynamic umbrellas

The Senz aerodynamic umbrella turns itself to the best position in the wind and won a red dot award for its novel design. Even the shaft was rethought and redesigned (it’s oval, not cylindrical or square). I love reinventions of every day objects that are long taken for granted. And not that an umbrella matters in a hurricane, but…
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1970 Holden GTR-X

via Cartype.
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The Beauty of Ferdinand

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Nipple + Apple = Napple

Found this happy honeycrisp apple at the farmers market Saturday.
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37signals goes to Maine

Last week, the entire 37signals team went to York Harbor, Maine for three days. (We stayed at The York Harbor Inn.) So what happens at a 37signals company trip to Maine? We talk about what we’ve done and what we’re about to do. We have breakout sessions to work on projects in small teams. We eat lobster. David talks about racing cars. Joshua plays flamenco guitar. We watch SNL clips. Ryan teaches us how to meditate. Jamis explains how to use an abacus. Jamie shows some of his fave ‘80s skateboard art. Sarah gives us a lesson on banjos. And more. Plus, there’s rock balancing on the beach. Lots of rock balancing. Why the random subjects listed above? We decided to let everyone give two different talks. One on work stuff, one on whatever. Here was the setup: The first 15 minute talk will be on 37signals. What would you like to see us do next year? What sort of things would you like to work on next year? What do you think we can do a better job on? What’s good and what’s bad? Where are we failing? Where are we kicking ass? Everything is fair game. This is your chance to get good/bad/other off your mind. The second 15 minutes will be about something else entirely. You’ll teach or talk on something that has nothing to do with work. If you’re into butterflies, tell us something interesting about butterflies. If you’re into golf, what’s fascinating about golf? Got a hobby that you just love? Tell us about what you love about it. Share whatever you’re finding interesting these days. Let’s all expand our horizons a bit. During our typical one-day meetings, this sorta stuff isn’t possible. It was definitely nice to have the extra time to stretch out. Music in video: “Captain Bacardi” by Antonio Carlos Jobim (Album: Wave)
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Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas. —Warren E. Buffett on complex securities engineered by Wall Street mathematicians
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Why Smart People Do Dumb Things - Personal Lessons From The Financial Meltdown

Why Smart People Do Dumb Things - Personal Lessons From The Financial Meltdown As we deal with the fallout from so many executives making such terrible decisions, the simplest advice seems the most appropriate. Figure out what you care about and devote yourself to that purpose. Stay the course, even when your colleagues wander off course. And never forget that if something sounds too good to be true
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Quick posts

We’re experimenting with some new post styles here at Signal vs. Noise (quick quotes, links, photos, etc.) These will allow us to share quick bits that we find interesting without doing a full blown post. You can see a couple of examples in the two previous posts. These posts will show up indented and, for now, comments are disabled on them. Still tweaking so stay tuned.
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A "busman's holiday" is a holiday or vacation

A “busman’s holiday” is a holiday or vacation during which you do the same thing that you do for your usual work. —Wikitionary
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Ask 37signals: How did you come up with pricing for your products?

Mattijs asks: I am developing an internet product and I am rapidly approaching the point at which I will need to set a pricing scheme for this product. Problem: I have no idea what to shoot for! I have done some research which shows a wide range of similar products with varying pricing schemes. When 37signals was developing Basecamp, how did you come up with pricing? When we first priced Basecamp in Feburary 2004 the plans were $9, $19, $39, and $59. There wasn’t much science behind it. We asked ourselves a couple questions: 1. What would we pay? 2. What numbers feel right? What would you pay? I think this is the most important question. If you are designing a product that you are going to use then it’s fair to ask yourself what you would pay if you were buying it from someone else. The numbers we came up with seemed fair and reasonable. $9 seemed like a good toe-dip, and $59 seemed like a good top price. We have since changed our prices, but those numbers worked great for an unknown product for an unknown market. This line of questioning resulted in a course correction when we were designing and pricing Campfire. Originally we were going to price Campfire at $5/chat. The idea was that people would create a temporary Campfire chat room to coincide with a meeting or conference call. We felt $5/meeting/call was about right. But then we thought about it some more. We asked ourselves would we actually pull out of credit card and pay $5 for something we might only use for a few minutes? We decided no. That changed the entire product focus. Gone was the idea of temporary event chats and in was the idea of a persistent chat room that never closes. Then we adopted the Basecamp-like monthly recurring fee schedule. I’m confident that was the right choice. What numbers feel right There’s a big psychological and emotional side to pricing. A friend who worked at Wal-Mart once told me that Wal-Mart never prices anything ending in a 9. They always end in 8 (or 6 or 4) or something other than 9. They want the customer to know that Wal-Mart is always working hard to shave an extra penny off the price — hence the uncommon 8 not the familiar 9. We’re not that scientific about our prices. Maybe we should be, but we’re not. Our current pricing lineup for Basecamp is $12, $24, $49, $99, and $149. We’ve had these prices in place for a few years now and we like the mix. It feels right. Each tier is roughly double the previous tier, but we deliver more than double the benefits. For example, at Basecamp Basic ($24/month) you get 15 projects and 3GB of file storage. At Basecamp Plus ($49/month) you get 35 projects (more than double the Basic tier) and 10GB of file storage (more than three times the Basic tier). So the price is double but the benefits are more than double. This pattern continues throughout our pricing plans.You can change prices if you have to Remember, if you get your pricing wrong you can make corrections occasionally. We’ve made one major price change for Basecamp and one minor-ish price change for Backpack. The Backpack price change was when we launched the multi-user version. That price change actually reduced prices for the old higher tiers and offered a shorter step up from the first to second tier (it used to be $5 -> $9, but we changed it to $5 -> $7). Changing your pricing can be a little painful in the short term, but if you make your case, increase the benefits with the price, give people ample warning about the coming increase (90 days, let’s say), consider grandfathering longer-term customers in at the old prices, and keep your prices fair, it should work out just fine. Thanks for the question! We love answering people’s questions about business, design, programming, marketing, pricing, etc. If you’d like us to answer yours, please email svn @ 37signals (...you know the rest).
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Logbook: Keep your Backpack Journal up to date from your Mac menu bar

Logbook is the first product from “Transmission Apps”, a group that is building Mac OS companion apps for our products. Logbook allows you to keep your Backpack Journal updated from your Mac menu bar. You can update your status and log journal entries without having to log into Backpack. Logbook is $12.99. It’s slick and very well executed. I’ve been using it for a while and it’s really encouraged me to keep my journal updated. We’re excited to see what other apps they cook up that work with our products. Promotion They’re running an exclusive promotion for Signal vs. Noise readers: They will give away 10 licenses, chosen at random, for readers who email contest@transmissionapps.com with the subject “SvsN Contest”. Good luck!
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Be yourself

“4 artists paint 1 tree” was originally a segment in a 1958 episode of “Disneyland” on TV. This short film served as a promotional spot for their upcoming film at the time: Sleeping Beauty. However, it goes much deeper than that. With Walt Disney’s narration we get a glimpse of the creative philosophy at Disney and the legendary artists working there at the time. This philosophy can be applied to what you’re doing even if you’re not in the business of animation. If you design websites, develop software, or even run your own small business you might take away something that will help you find your own way of doing things. Advice to art students Walt begins the segment by telling us that the Studio frequently receives letters from art students asking how one should paint and what styles one should imitate. Walt says: Students become confused by honest admiration from one school of painting, mixed with the recognition of the success and popularity of another style, along with advice to follow a still different approach. Walt’s advice is what artist Robert Henri says: “Be yourself. Don’t imitate anyone.” 4 artists 1 tree Walt then shows us how the staff at Disney embodies this philosophy of Robert Henri. We meet a few of the artists working on Sleeping Beauty: Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle (my favorite), Josh Meador, and Walt Peregoy. Each artist has his own individual style and brought that when sketching out concepts for the main character Princess Aurora. Making an animated film is a cooperative effort, however, so each artist ultimately contributed to the final drawing of the Princess. The final result would not have been as great had it not been for each of the individual styles of the animation team. These 4 artists then go out into a field to paint the exact same tree. They each narrate aloud their thought process and approach to painting the tree. One artist sees the tree as architectural form. Another sees the tree trunk detail and wants to focus on that. And so on. The resulting paintings as you might expect are very different. Walt says that each painter didn’t simply paint a tree but his own response to what the tree represents. He ends the film with another quote by Robert Henri: The great painter has something to say. He (or she) does not paint men, landscapes or furniture, but an idea. I wish this clip was available on the Internet somewhere, but it isn’t! It is available on the out-of-print version of the Sleeping Beauty DVD in the bonus features section. I’m not sure if it is available on the newly released version that came out this week. If you have the new version can you comment below if it contains this short film?
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Photo: map319_1001339i.jpg

A map of the world that reflects casualties from war in the second half of the twentieth century. (via Re-Mapping The World)
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Do it yourself first

You should never hire anyone for something you haven’t first struggled to do on your own. It’ll teach you most of what you need to know to actually interview candidates, it’ll allow you to understand the nature of the work better (do I even need to hire or can we outsource?), and you’ll know exactly what a job well done will look like. It’ll also give you a sense of whether the job is big enough for a full-time hire yet or if you can skimp by on your own (the latter is preferable if possible). Jason didn’t hire me to help him program Singlefile (now defunct) before he had a sorta-just-barely-working prototype running off his own PHP skills. I didn’t hire Mark to do system administration before I had spent a whole Summer setting up a cluster. Jason didn’t get Sarah on board to do support before he had first done it for years on his own. The benefits of having done the work yourself before seeking help doesn’t stop at hiring either. You’ll be a much better manager of roles that you’ve already held than when you’re completely in the dark about what it takes to perform. You’ll have empathy available when the going gets tough and it’s not their fault — and a stern voice when it is. Don’t let big titles scare you off either. What does a business development person do? Find out by trying it on! Call people, make a few deals. Think you need a usability tester? Try a simple session on your own first with friends. No, it won’t be perfect. That’s okay. What you’re paying in initial execution will be repaid many times over by the benefits above.
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Rails tip: Use subdirectories to namespace

Rails tip: Use subdirectories to namespace images by resource. Eg. images/people/add.gif vs. images/companies/add.gif —Ryan
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Netbooks' High Return Rate Due to Linux

(Screenshot of Linux on the Asus Eee PC) The popular mini-notebooks, also called netbooks, suffer from a higher return rate than regular notebooks, mainly due to the fact that most netbooks run Linux, according to the director of U.S. sales of MSI, Andy Tung. Linux netbooks are returned 4 times as often as ones that run Windows XP. An excerpt from the interview with Laptopmag.You mention the return rates being high. Has that been the case with the Wind as well? We have done a lot of studies on
Publication date: 2008-10-09 more

The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things Binding: Paperback ASIN: 0465067107 Manufacturer: Basic Books Release Date: 2002-09-17 Average Customer Review: (From 147 total reviews) List Price: $16.95 Amazon Price: $8.15 (39 new 32 used available) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours (Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping) Read more Share This October 9, 2008 | Filed Under Paperback | Comments Off
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Flash Seo Experiments

The team from www.webdesignbeach.com has launched a new website where they are running some Flash SEO experiments. They want to discover how the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are indexing the content in Adobe Flash. They will offer a set of SEO friendly rules and share them with internet community. Some experiments running in the lab: How Google index text embedded in Adobe Flash? Does Google follow links embedded in Adobe Flash? Can Google index external content loaded in Adobe
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Spell Check All Text Fields in Firefox

What do you do about misspelling words in text boxes? Well, you use the built-in Firefox spell check feature. However, by default it does not work with ALL text fields. That can simply be rectified though your about:config settings. Just type in about:config into your address bar to get started. Next, into the filter text box, type in layout.spell. That should bring up the preference name layout.spellcheckDefault. Right-click it, and then select
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Lessons from an Etch-a-Sketch

Lessons from an Etch-a-Sketch
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A Word To Shopping Cart Developers

I have spent the last couple of days shopping for a shopping cart, Classic ASP or, preferrably, ASP.Net. After looking through many, I find some weird trends that perhaps some cart developers could change. I am not going to name names in this article, either for or against any given cart system, because pimping one over another isn't the point. Every cart I looked at has the obvious essentials,
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User Survey - results are in

We just closed our survey yesterday. Thanks a lot for participating. We had an overwhelming response both in terms of numbers and quantitative and qualitative input. We received 1,813 responses and lots of ideas on how to improve MindMeister and position it  successfully as a premier mind mapping application. It
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Date Formatting and Parsing for Humans in Java with HumanTime

For a programmer, the system time in milliseconds is the fastest and easiest way to work with time. The problem is that understanding and working with milliseconds is easy for computers, but not for humans. HumanTime changes this. HumanTime formats and parses time in a way that is easier to read and understand.
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Guest Post at SearchFuel.com:

The agency I work for runs a blog dedicated to the world of search marketing over at SearchFuel.com and today, I
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How Poor Usability Can Kill Your Copy and Conversions

The newest issue of High Rankings Advisor
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Talk to your users!

I am continually amazed at how valuable user testing can be. I am also amazed at how hard it can be to convince people to take the time to do it. The benefits far, far outweigh the costs. We just wrapped up a round of user testing for an intranet site we
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Interview: Pay-per-click Expert On 2nd Tier Ad Sites

Interview: Pay-per-click Expert On 2nd Tier Ad Sites October 8th, 2008 Recently I sat down with Jeremy Mayes, the author of PPCDiscussions.com. In addition to writing the PPCDiscussions.com blog, Mayes has used paid search to sell millions of dollars of products and has generated millions of leads for various industries. I asked him about 2nd tier pay-per-click opportunities and tips that he uses to run a successful paid search campaign. PeC: Many online retailers are focused on the big t
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The mistake many web

Posted by: Yorkali on: October 8, 2008 In: Branding| Design Comment! Making it look pretty for the sake of the current trend or style at the expense of not communicating the clients brand or not being usable at all. Web Design: On Essence | 8164
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Another Dumb Idea Out of Google

Here
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Vivat Newton:-)

OK one last post before bed... I've just been reviewing the impact my mucking about with the templates has had on old URLs and came across the old splorp post with the "powered by Newton" gif. I click on the link and ta-dah! the Splorp Newton server is still running, still reliably serving both static and dynamically generated pages - not sure why that makes me so happy but it does :-)
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Another tool to keep up with election news

TechCrunch posted a link to another tool to keep up with the flood of election-related news coming from news services and each of the presidential campaigns.  Dipity Election Center presents news items in a time-line format. The interface is very cluttered and not exactly intuitive (e.g., unclear what all the little icons below the timeline mean), but an interesting way to present news for news junkies like me.  It presents less at-a-glance information than the website everymomentnow. How do
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AJAX OnBlur Commits: Cool Vs Usability

I am not anti
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Cross Post: Toyota iPhone App doesn

My post at my other blog on what
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5 Steps for the Perfect Tabbed Navigation Menu

I
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National Do Not Call List a Big Web Success

Canada
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Choosing the Best Baby Name is Hard on your Server

We
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The Easiest ways to Create A Successful Blog

The concept of Web 2.0 has created a revolution over the Internet. It has single handedly created the new Internet, which caters to the businessman looking out for business as well as the individual who wishes to have clear, concise and factual information. If Web 2.0 is the heart of new and successful Internet, the power of Blogging is the very spine of this wonderful concept called Web 2.0. The interesting part is that you can create a blog about almost everything and anything in this world
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Usability Post

Usability Post is a great resource in providing information about design, browsers, html/css, photoshop, design resources, news, tutorials, design usability, user interfaces, and other design related tips. The aim of Usability Post is to provide relevant resources, tips and insights into good design in order to help you make great products. Among many interesting postings and topics, you will find a lot of useful information such as this guide on choosing colors for your brand and why color matt
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Web Design: How Important Is the Copy on Your Website?

I first saw this video on the blog of my friends at Future Now. As I was first watching it, I imagined the beggar as typical online business.  He is set up and occasionally some revenue trickles in. You can even imagine his business metrics (you have metrics for your online business too).  Possibly, 1 in 100 who passed dropped a coin in his can.  And for the sake of ease, let
Publication date: 2008-10-08 more

Remember Brainiac and Stuff?

Some days I
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Kublax: Social tool to manage your finance

Image via Wikipedia If you are following the news the words
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What Does Your Website Design Reveal About You?

Having been in the web design business for quite some time, I
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When To Learn More

Learn more, read more, you have probably seen it a million times. Those little links that allow you to read additional information. Those little links are great, and if you are not using them already, now may be the time to start. An Example Here is a classic example of the
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New in Gmail Labs: Stop sendin...

New in Gmail Labs: Stop sending email you later regret. This isn
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Neuro-Design: Where brain science and product design meet

In his terrific blog NeuroMarketing, Roger Dooley talks about how an understanding of neuroscience can help marketers. Such knowledge can also help product and user interface designers as well. One concept involves how mirrors can alter human behavior. By showing people what they look like will affect what they do. One study looked at kids
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Adobe Mobile and Device events at MAX 2008 (San Francisco)

I
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Interactivity Features in Flash..

E-learning interactions in Flash Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup D
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Between a rock and an interface

Designers and developers should be consulting their psychologists, says BBC columnist Bill Thompson.
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Drupal.org - Crowdsourcing Usability Testing - Get Involved!

Another day, another way to be involved in the Drupal.org redesign project, and this one
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IRC user interface idea

Don
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Drop Down Menus

I
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YouTube Rolls Out E-Commerce, Now You Can Buy

Eventually Google says it hopes to roll out e-commerce to support all kinds of industries, from music to movies to print to TV. TV, or course, knows how to sell advertisements; so even though TV is full of ads you still know you\
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Integrating Enterprise Applications with Ecommerce Systems: Free

Do you have a laundry-list of customer experience and usability features you want to implement but face challenges in how to pull it all together with your ecommerce systems and other business infrastructure?
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Know the best 6 Sublime Tips for Email List Building

One of the oldest methods in the world of selling products or services has been the venerable mailing list. From old time
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Confirmable Experience: What a Wideness Gains

Technorati Tags: confirmable experience, successful communication, dependable systems, usability, cybersmith [Here
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Kyocera cell phone charger

Kyocera Cell Phone Charger It looks so tempting that you can understand why it is often called as LG chocolate. Furthermore, these kyocera candid kx16 cell phone faceflips
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AussieMails Alertpay

AussieMails Alertpay[ 0 comments - 1 reads ] [ More in News Section ] Last 10 Forum Threads Been Paid by Dealswepay Been paid by Deal Barbie Pay! Painless PTC Question about phone number. Been paid by Kool Klickins BeenPaid by CoffeeClubEmails Just been paid by BeanyBux
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Pack half of what you think you need

The #1 piece of advice you hear from frequent travellers: Pack light. Lay out everything you think you need. Then put away half: You see that pile of stuff sitting on your bed, waiting to be stuffed into your suitcase? Take half of that stuff and put it back in your closet. Seriously. I know you think you
Publication date: 2008-10-07 more

Ryan speaking at Future of Web Design in NYC November 3-4

Once again I’ll be speaking and giving a three-hour workshop at Future of Web Design in NYC this November 3-4. The workshops especially are a lot of fun. What would you like to hear me talk about? Please post your ideas here or email ryan at you-know-where dot com. I’d love to see you in New York, and especially hear your questions and ideas.
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User Centered Design and Your Website

Are you familiar with User Centered Design?  If not, the concept is nearly as straight forward as it sounds.  A User Centered Design method strives to involve the users in the development of a product as early and as often as possible.  The goal is to produce something highly usable, ensuring a good user experience. The number of sites on the Internet continues to grow at a furious pace.  With this growth comes a host of competitors looking to entice your cu
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Using metadata in PDFs that are posted online

One often overlooked search engine optimization (SEO) tactic is metadata in PDF files. Metadata is the additional information inside a file that is meant to assist with the file's use -- either keywords for searching, the file size, authors, or additional properties. Metadata can be especially helpful if your company produces a large number of PDFs that are posted on your website, to help users find them through Google, but especially through your site's internal search. But even for the oc
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Amazon Payment Service Allows for Advanced Options

Amazon Payment Service Allows for Advanced Options October 7th, 2008 Amazon.com has been offering a beta version of its Flexible Payment Service (FPS) to merchants for almost a year now. With many developer-friendly features, some sellers could benefit from adding Amazon FPS to their payment options, especially if they
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Free Basic Usability and Design Analysis

It
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Links for October 7th

Preschool Express by Jean Warren: preschool activities, games, songs, crafts, art, music, learning, skills, stories and patterns - qliner hotkeys - The keyboard is back
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Skype 4.0 is smaller again

As promised in June, the second iteration of Skype 4.0 client is now available for download. If you got on to beta 1 and liked it or hated it, I highly recommend the upgrade to beta 2. The past quarter has really passed fast. I'm amazed how much the 4.0 research, design, product and project management, development and quality assurance teams got through. Especially given that you have to work under timeline pressure while at the same time being called an ignorant moron (best case) on blogs, fo
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InfoGin Sees 20%+ More Mobile Internet Usage Across Customer Carriers, Telefonica Mobile Announces InfoGin Deployment

InfoGin Sees 20%+ More Mobile Internet Usage Across Customer Carriers, Telefonica Mobile Announces InfoGin Deployment Author: Peggy Anne Salz As regular readers might recall, bnetTV and MSearchGroove joined up during CTIA to produce a hard-hitting series of interviews focusing on the mobile trends and mobile companies that matter. To provide you the proper context in which to understand and appreciate these companies and their impact on the mobile space, I have also signed on with bnetTV to pu
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Paper and pencil, not computer, boosts creativity

In a Ph.D. thesis called "The Paradox of the Guided User," a dutch researcher examined the productivity of users who were dependent on computers, and users who had a pen-and-paper alternative. The article doesn't link to the full dissertation, so it's risky to extrapolate beyond the quotes in the article, so I'll just repeat a few here: "Present-day software must be user-friendly. Indeed, train ticket machines at railway stations should be simple and provide us with a ticket quickly," van Nimwe
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Creating A Custom 404 "Page Not Found" Error Page

We've all seen them, we all get annoyed by them, even if we got there by our own actions. So, as a developer, how do you make a 404 error page as productive as possible? Well, let's take a look. A 404 page, often, is simply a static, boring, matter of fact page generated by the web server that pretty much just says "can't find that file" and nothing else. There is a way in any web server, to
Publication date: 2008-10-07 more

Google Street Maps Just Got a Whole Lot Better...

Today I was looking up some directions, and went to the "print" version of Google Maps. Normally I don't use the print version --- it's been buggy enough over the years printing from IE that I just learned to grab a screen shot. Today's directions were multi-stop and needed more than a screen shot. I discovered that Google has really, really improved the printing of directions. I can now choose either a mini-map (which I can zoom in and out) or a StreetView picture OR just text for each turn
Publication date: 2008-10-07 more

Facebook for dummies

Hey Facebook
Publication date: 2008-10-07 more

Writing Good Copy

Writing Good Copy October 7th, 2008 Dmitry explains the importance of writing good copy for your website in How Usable is Your Copy? Writing good copy is one of the under-appreciated areas of usability because, from experience, managers and business stakeholders somehow believe anyone who graduated highschool can write - so they like to do it. And it
Publication date: 2008-10-07 more

The future of computing and communications: random thoughts, part 4

Here's another example of where HCI is headed: multi-touch sensing. If you have seen an iPod touch or iPhone from Apple, or the Microsoft Surface coffee-table computer, you have seen early examples of what multi-touch computing is all about. Single-touch computing operates like a mouse: touching moves the mouse pointer, tapping is like clicking, tap-and-drag works like click-and-drag. These early commercial products in the multi-touch realm add a second recognized touch point, allowing you
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Product Recalls: Addressing Consumer Safety Fears On-Site

Last week I posted How to Find a Reputation Manager which was inspired by reading Andy Beal
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Groupthink by Any Other Name

I
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Block Reading: How We Read on the Web

We don't scan a webpage. Instead, we scan a particular block or section of it.
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Parralel processing in zypper

I have been on leave for a couple of days and today when I booted my laptop the openSUSE updater notified me of 4 security updates. While I was watching zypper updating the system (I prefer the command line client) I wondered if it would be possible for zypper to download and install patches/programs/etc asynchronously.  To explain better: instead of downloading a patch and then installing it, why can
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

The Best and Worst of Fonts

Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Pixel Sizing vs Relative Units

Here is an interesting tidbit I found out searching my rss feeds......Text sizing and accessibility by Kay Smoljak, Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning ac
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Carnival of the Mobilists #144

Carnival of the Mobilists #144 is now up at Xen Mendelsohn
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Product Website Highlight: Acne.org

Many product-selling websites include a lot of Web 2.0 tricks to convince the Internet surfer that the product is worth checking out. Heck, even Cheerios has a website which includes a flashy splash intro. Most product sites seem to be nothing more than an excuse to have a site, like a self-fulfilling prophecy of owning a company: "Well, if we have a product, we must have a website!" Certain consumer products have useful and inventive websites, such as this one I recently found: Acne.org.
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

How Usable is Your Copy?

When we talk about usability, we generally refer to the user interface (UI)
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Lotus Notes Tabs My Usability Problem

I have a bit of a usability problem with Lotus Notes tabs. It
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Elsewhere for October 6th

These are my delicious links for October 6th: When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods - Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases.
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Returning Linux

Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

registration now open for Mobile Mania- November 5th in Boston

Registration is now open for
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Not all Ajax goodness is good

Bloglines, long my RSS reader of choice, should either just adopt its long-running "new" beta service as its main production service, or fix up the "old" service it still offers as its default. The default Bloglines service seems increasingly buggy. Case in point: When trying to move feeds around among my folders today, I got thrown into some kind of error loop involving the Ajax implementation. This kind of thing happens way too often. The error dialog, as you can see, hardly helps. (If y
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

WYNTK on TBSM v4.2 Preparation: Architecture, Design, Implementation, Operationalization Part 1

These are critical key areas for preparing for your TBSM v4.2 deployment. I
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

PhoneTag Voicemail to Email Transcription SlashGear Review

- formerly SimulScribe - wants to take that chore away from you.  Unlike traditional voicemail, or even Visual Voicemail on the iPhone and other handsets, PhoneTag offers a truly visual alternative to dialling in.  SlashGear have been avoiding calls for the past few weeks, trying it out. The concept is simple: rather than missed or ignored calls going to your carrier
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

First Impression of the Wordpress 2.7 Wireframes

I
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Address bar usability

Despite having used the Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 for several weeks now, I am still annoyed about a usability problem with the address bar. I often use the dropdown list of most recently used addresses in an almost mechanical way: Click the dropdown arrow, move down to the scrollbar, find the suitable line, and move a tiny bit to the left to click that line. Then the desired page would be loaded. With IE8 beta2, nothing happened. Worse: When I tried to do it once more, I could not even find t
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

PowerPoint vs. Outlook

New mail notifications during a presentation could cause significant damage. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

An easy style-switcher for WordPress. How-to

Style switchers in web sites can serve various purposes: Accessibility Flexibility in general User choice Fun I wanted to add one to op111.net for all the above reasons. After looking at various solutions for WordPress, I decided to use a theme switcher instead. This one: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-switcher-reloaded You can try it here at op111.net (below the RSS links). See if you like it (the switcher, not the styles) and, if you do, keep reading! :-) In Internet Explorer
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

First result of Facebook

How are you with the new design so far? Tech-savvy users, needless to say, you must have loved Facebook
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Flip Ultra

The Flip video cameras had been making some waves last year and now that it
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Who Wants To Beat Google?

Google has been number one in search for quite some time. This article explains three things that an alternate search engine could do to take the search game to the next level. It proposes that Microsoft Live Search could be the next big search engine, however if Google implements these three key features, one would think they would be unstoppable.
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

First Look at Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" Beta

Although the desktop hasn't been reshaped, the features tweaked just a little bit, and most of the work focused on compatibility and usability there are still some neat new tools and tweaks that are worth checking out. Read on for our picture-filled take on the new Ubuntu.
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Blog of Ronnestam on iPhone

If you got an iPhone. If you every now and then visit Ronnestam.com. Then you
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Branding: the enemy of legibility?

A nationwide franchise operation has recently rebranded - strong visual, communicates core message well, distinctive, modern. The predominant colour is a shade between maroon and a deep pink. So what
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Research Aided by Twitter

I love Twitter, and I was already fully aware of the usefulness of the microblogging service in a personal and professional setting, but just now, in a very serendipitous way, I discovered how a combination of Google, Blog Posts, and Twitter can get you exactly the information you need in school research too.  I'm very inspired by this. I'm putting together one part of a presentation on Usability in Web Design for my Information Architecture class, my particular topic in this presentation is d
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Confirmable Experience: Consider the Real World

Technorati Tags: Clarke Ching, confirmable experience, successful communication, dependable systems, trustworthiness, cycle of learning and improvement, usability [cross-posted from Orcmid
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Life w/o Javascript: A look at Nokia vs. SonyEricsson

Have you looked at your site with Javascript disabled? Robert Nyman does just that with the Nokia and SonyEricsson UK sites and finds some surprising results. It
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Mango Blog Comment Form Replacement

Mango Blog uses the same default code for it's comment form as wordpress. Although I have seen worse offenders, the current form does pose a few accessibility chalenges that I would prefer to fix. So this evening I set out to rework the comment form and try to make it more accessible and customizable. This is an early prtotype of a new form that I hope would become the new standard for mango blogs comment forms. Let me explain the challenges that I have identified with the current format, and w
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Woo Themes Review - WooThemes.com

Review of Woo Themes It
Publication date: 2008-10-06 more

Usability testing

The dates are set for MPOW
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

Check Your External IP Via CLI With One Command!

I often find myself needing to know my external IP address. Instead of going to one of the many websites that do this for you, I
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

Microwave oven usability/design failures

I set out this morning to buy a new microwave oven. Long story short, I left empty-handed. Short story long, I left two stores ultimately frustrated with the design and user interface of the current crop of microwaves. Microwave 1 (Emerson) Look at your cell phone or your television
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

Google Chrome runs quickly: already more than 3% of the market share

Browser Statistics Month by Month   2008 IE7 IE6 Chrome Fx Moz S O September 26.3% 22.3% 3.1% 42.6% 0.5% 2.7% 2.0%   Google Chrome has been launched less than a month ago and has already reached 3.1% of the market share (source: w3school accessed on the 4th of October 2008). If this trend continues (and probably it will), in few months Google Chrome will be the leader of the market! I bet on it! Only [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

The Golden Rules of Usability

I came across this great list of usability rules in a presentation by Denise Stephen called "Enabled by Design meets Scripting Enabled" which was given as part of the Scripting Enabled event organized by Christian Heilmann. Here goes the list:Usability - The golden rules Simply presented information Content reduced to essentials Manageable logical structure Intuitive usability Uniform appearance, consistently designed Good design and appealing graphics Quick delivery of information There are
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

The Design of Everyday Things (Book Review)

One book that I truely believe anyone who is going to design interfaces should read is The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, a cognitive scientist who with Jakob Nielsen co-founded the Nielsen Norman Group. They are an executive consulting firm specialising in user centered products and services. I strongly doubt anyone who designs websites hasn
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

Three Ways to Improve External Search Engine Usability

Most diligent webmasters spend time on log analysis, analyzing server logs to determine where visitors are coming from, which pages they
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

The underestimated value of marching backwards into the future

For an interaction designer not using the potential of a medium is horrible. There is this new medium with new a paradigm, new possibilities and you are using it the same way as the old medium. Let
Publication date: 2008-10-05 more

A Smarter Way To Process Transactions

The US Department of Justice warns against the type of Internet fraud that results when an unsuspecting customer goes online to purchase goods or services and their credit card information is misused or stolen. However, another surprisingly common form of fraud results when an unscrupulous card holder goes online and defrauds a business. Most often [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Yahoo Launches Image Optimization Tool, Smush.it

Yahoo has come out with a Web-based smushing tool. Smush.it optimizes your imagery for you so you can minimize your page size and load time. Upload an image or input the image url and Smushit will smush it for you and provide the results of the smushing. You can then download the decreased file size image in a zip file. I tried it; you can see the results in the screenshot. You can also get a Firefox extension to optimize the images found on any Web page. As described on the site,
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Season of Usability 2008 Final Reports Available

Between May and September 2008, the second Season of Usability took place - all in all a great success! Ten students contributed to nine F/OSS projects by doing user research, usability analysis or UI mockups. All projects were finished successfully - in average, the teams fulfilled 80% of their initial project goals. Given the fact that [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Engineer Your Life

Engineer Your Life is an outreach initiative committed to sharing with college-bound young women the opportunities available to them in the world of engineering. Unfortunately they chose to use flash content and the website fails to follow simple usability guidelines (basic stuff like human readable urls, links that work without javascript
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Silly Saturdays: Technology Torment

Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Change and Persistence in Digital Media

October 4, 2008 I recently bought my first Mac, an iMac, after using Windows forever.  And I still have Windows machines for my home and office desktops.  And I
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Concepts versus Products: Usability is about Execution

"You can have a great plan for a User Experience Strategy, but you should really consider whether your company is able to execute that strategy. The same thing goes for product concepts, I believe. A groundbreaking, radical new product concept is inspiring, but if your company is currently not able to realize it and needs some time to live up to the strategy, by exposing your product concept to the public you have just told everyone in what direction you will be heading in the coming years." (Ja
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Instapaper should be ReadBag

Instapaper only came on my radar screen this morning when I read a post from Mark Evans, a blogger worth watching, who was extolling its virtues. As the FAQ says: Instapaper facilitates easy reading of long text content. We discover web content throughout the day, and sometimes, we don
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

25 Sure-fire Ways To Motivate Your Team Members

Of all the resources utilized during a project, the team working on the project is the most complex to manage. When motivated, your project team can take up Herculean tasks and not break a sweat but when things go wrong there is little saving the ship unless you find a way to change course in time. Motivation is a complex art, while the rule of the thumb is appreciation and reward, the same incentives do not work on all individuals.
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Why the Russian River Brewing Company is happy staying small

Vinnie Cilurzo is regarded as one of the most innovative microbrewers in the country. He explains why he’s happy keeping his brews local: Right now your beers are mainly available on the West Coast. How important is it to you to go national? Not at all. We expanded three months ago into this new brewery space, so now we’re brewing in both our brewpub and in this brewery. And we started bottling Pliny the Elder, which until six weeks ago we had never done before. It had only been available on draft. We could be [widely available] like Stone or Lagunitas, and I get calls from distributors all the time from all over the country. But we do this more for the lifestyle, my wife and I, and same with our employees. I can ride my bike to work. I live one to two miles from either brewery. I fill my gas tank once a week. I think you can get caught up way too much in growth. We don’t have any growth goals. [thanks MA]
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

beyond the Internet

Next week sees the World Hi-Tech Forum 2008 taking place here in London, with a particular focus on India. Stephen Timms MP (Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform) will be kicking off a session that I'm speaking at, entitled 'Beyond the Internet.' My focus is the theme of 'seamless global communication', looking beyond what is already happening in our interconnected world to what is likely to happen over the coming 3-5 year time period. I'll be picking up on themes I set out when I deliver
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Nokia launches FIRST touchscreen phone for the masses!

Nokia
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Quick Query: Pilot Identifies Niche With PDF Aviation Maps

Quick Query: Pilot Identifies Niche With PDF Aviation Maps October 4th, 2008 In the United States there will be 590,349 pilots collectively flying some 28 million hours in 228,000 different aircraft this year alone, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). To navigate, those pilots use altimeters, global positioning, and good old-fashioned maps, creating an opportunity for one ecommerce merchant. Aviation maps or charts are typically four-foot-by-six-foot rectangles th
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

I have a

Have you ever noticed how the word solution is bandied about by just about every business on the net? There are communication solutions, financial solutions and a gazillion website solutions for your business. The irritation I have with this new word is that it assumes you have a problem and you need someone else to fix it. It
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

The Secret Life of Machines - Word Processor part 2

Beautiful, beautiful 1980s introduction to "sophisticated word-processor" technology.
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Articulate

This was definitely a long time coming. Articulate, makers of Rapid eLearning Tools Presenter, Quizmaker and Engage, has launched the much anticipated
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Usability 101: How not to conduct a poll (CNN)

Just a fun little example of how even the big guys can still screw things up royally. This morning, CNN posted a little widget that displayed various grades for both Biden and Palin from the Vice Presidential Debate last night. At the bottom of the widget was an area for you to select your own grade for a particular candidate and a
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Use Contrast to Add Focus

Use Contrast to Add Focus October 4th, 2008 Dmitry has something to say about using contrast in your design to focus on the hierarchy of importance. Posted in usability, design
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Useit.com unusable?

Usability complaints regarding Jacob Neilson
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Got love the Thumbs :)

We like to do UI for thumbs, but this is way too cool for school :) Nice work by the Panasonic guys. I specially like the thumbs on the screen. It
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Nokia 5800 : The videos say it all

Nokia 5800 While It
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Ingenious Technique for Helping Your Child Learn to Ride a Bike

Last night my oldest daughter (who is seven years old) finally learned to ride a bike. After a few painful crashes learning the traditional way (where you just receive a push and try to go), Jane read a tip on one of her mommy blogs about a new method to teach children to ride a bike: Remove both pedals from the bike. Lower the seat all the way. Let the child scoot along with the bike using her feet for as long as she wants. This helps the child learn to balance and feel comfortable on the bik
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Designing

Long web forms could be scary for users and they could encourage clients to fly away from your site. Although that, it is difficult to make them shorter, specially if you need all that information you are requesting.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

If your game isn't fun, you have a bug

If your game isn't fun, you have a bug Fri, 03/10/2008 - 08:52
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

E-Commerce Usability Basics

E-Commerce Usability Basics October 3rd, 2008 This article takes a look at some of the basics of e-commerce usability that should be followed by all designers when coming up with an online shop prototype. If these are followed it should allow users of your e-commerce project to successfully arrive and pay for what they came for. Here is the original: E-Commerce Usability Basics Tags: ads-by-google, business, commerce-usability, conversion, design, disadvantages, ecommerce, india, in
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Prime Angus Cuts: Links of Week 10-3-2008

This week\
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

How to Choose Live Chat Software: 6 Vendors Compared

Do You Know How To Write An Ecommerce RFP? Sorting out the Build vs. Buy Conundrum - Get Elastic #8; Web Analytics for Online Retailers: Must-See Webinar; Sneak Peek at Elastic Path 6 Ecommerce Software; Spreading the Checkout Report
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Discover a Goldmine in Your City - Teach eCommerce to Local Businesses

A few weeks ago I interviewed my friend Willie Crawford and after I closed the recording Willie shared about how he is making money, lots of money, teaching Internet Marketing and eCommerce to local businesses in his city.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

I Need a Good Web Host For My Ecommerce Website

Ecommerce web hosting is the term used to describe hosting services that allow you or your business to promote and sell your products directly online. Ecommerce web hosting is a special breed and requires special attention to detail.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

WYNTK on TBSM v4.2 Preparation: The Importance of Events

TBSM v4.2 GA
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

HOWTO: Exclude songs when shuffling iTunes

I have a bunch of audio books and other non-music files in my iTunes library. When I set iTunes to shuffle through the songs in my library it naturally ends up playing one of those non-music files, causing me to stop whatever I
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Bloggers Digest 10/3/08

You can also find my article on holiday shipping in eCommerce+Marketing Magazine this month, or catch the online version: Get Your Site into Shipping Shape
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Quiznos Group Ordering

One of the cool things about working at Blend is lunch on Fridays. The company buys lunch for everyone, and we eat as a group. You
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

HTC PPC-6800 Mogul - Sprint: Review

The PPC-6800 Mogul is HTC
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

New Layout, new outlook.

New Layout, new outlook. Filed under: Design, geek stuff, wordpress
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Dexo Design

Interested in website and application design? Visit Dexo Design. Get the latest on usability news and advice from an expert. Check it out!
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan - Graduate Coaching Call

Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload. Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. Todays conference call will be focused on these topics:. Time Management; Beating Procrastination
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

EBay Conference Call: Making Your Auction Standout - Auction

Professional looking pictures: Now that you have some experience listing items for sell on eBay. Let
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

100 Keyboard shortcuts (Windows)

Microsoft windows keyboard shortcuts. You might know most of these shortcuts, but probably not all of them. If you have more keyboard shortcuts, please let me know :)
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Eye Candy vs. Informative Design

We
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Social Media Is The New Black of Social Interactions

Brian Haven writes an interesting post noting all media is social. He outlines that sharing, connecting, opining, broadcasting and creating are not new behaviors as a result of social media, but original behaviors that now have been influenced and enhanced technologically. What I like most about Haven's post is that he looks at how Social Media has influenced these behaviors to "make new again." Haven writes today's technologies have changed how people connect and communicate, particularly in t
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Wordpress begins to open up its redesign process

The ongoing documentation of Mark Boulton Design
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Formal usability testing of Drupal 7.x/8.x/9.x

As part of an ongoing effort to enhance user experience, the Drupal User Exeprience Team is submitting a grant proposal to the Knight Drupal Initiative to receive funding for several rounds of formal usability testing on Drupal. The working draft of the proposal is currently open to community discussion, and we encourage anyone who is interested to participate. KDI Usability Proposal About the Knight Foundation Since 1950, the Knight Foundation has invested more than $300 million to advance q
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

The Usability Problems of useit.com

Jakob Nielsen has written some damn smart things about usability, and his work has probably done great things for the web in general. You hate to beat up on a guy like that, but c
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Googlebot Relentlessly Using Bandwidth

When one of my hosting clients complained about continuously running out of bandwidth on his low-traffic site, I took a peek at the access logs and discovered that Googlebot was indexing every single possible day on a simple calendar addon for the phpBB2 forum software installed on the site. (Googlebot is the program that crawls the web indexing everything so you can search for it using Google.) A quick peek at the access logs showed thousands of Googlebot requests for a forum calendar: 66.2
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Kindle

Kindle
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Stroke it (Make XP work on your gestures)

October 2, 2008
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Pros and Cons of Feedly Add-on for Firefox

Is Feedly worth your time?  As a new type of article for Firefox Facts, I thought I would weigh in on both the pros and the cons of this add-on and give you my final thoughts on if it is a keeper or not.  Mind you
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

TBSM on the Blackberry

Our *initial* launch of *basic* support for showing *some* stuff from TBSM has been detailed on the developerWorks TBSM Wiki site. Check out the details here. I *hope* that we put much more investment into this and get it to a point that it provides real value to those who may use it. I
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Northern User Experience

Northern User Experience is an informal community for people interested in usability, HCI, information design and all aspects of the user experience. The membership is as diverse as the field itself, with developers, academics, usability specialists, accessibility experts and technical authors all represented. Whatever your interest in usability, we hope you will find something useful here. The group meet on the first Wednesday of the month to learn, debate and socialise. Usually there is a p
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Trigger-Based Email Marketing Improves Sales and Customer Experience

Trigger-Based Email Marketing Improves Sales and Customer Experience October 2nd, 2008 Trigger marketing is the next step for the critical ecommerce function of automated email communications. While traditional automated emails follow newsletter sign-ups and orders, trigger marketing sends emails for other events such as particular search patterns, customer birthdays, holidays, or related products.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

UIE Virtual Seminar - The Quick, the Cheap, and the Insightful: Conducting Usability Tests in the Wild

UIE Virtual Seminar - The Quick, the Cheap, and the Insightful: Conducting Usability Tests in the Wild With Dana Chisnell of Usabilityworks Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 Time: 1pm ET It
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Usability Basics: Help Prevent Errors

From error to error one discovers the entire truth. Sigmund Freud In my last posting (Usability Basics: Keep the User Informed) I talked about how the interaction with other humans differ from interactions online because of something called a feedback loop- the ability we have of constantly assessing the verbal and non-verbal communication that is happening. read more
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How to Search a Website Using ASP.NET 3.5

Learn some of the new features of ASP.NET 3.5 - including LINQ, Update Panels, Update Progress controls, etc.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Bad Economy, Business Creativity, CheeseCake Factory

We talk about what to do during the bad economic times, how to be creative when advertising, such as the Cheese Cake Factory, and how to reinvent a business! Who Pops Your Popcorn?! Episode #11 Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

World Usability Day 2008

My boss
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Manage Focus Effectively Using Contrast

Most written content online is split up into various elements. For example, a blog post has the text body of the post, the headline, the author, the date, the comments link and so on. Not all these elements are equal in importance and there is a tool we can use to give the key elements more weight. This tool is contrast. Here
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

Library Usability links: 10/2/08

Activity in the library increases at Wake Forest U. after Starbucks is added. Increased social opportunities cited. The Bibliocommons team describe some of the findings they
Publication date: 2008-10-03 more

[Screens Around Town] Anthropologie, Threadless, and Gawker

Anthropologie Interesting “walkthrough” metaphor at Anthropologie. You navigate through a room where everything’s for sale. Threadless Threadless adds some personality to the typically boring shopping-cart pattern. Sad cart. Happy cart.Gawker The Gawker network of sites moves to threaded comments (threads open with a click). Closed. Open.
Publication date: 2008-10-02 more

Carnegie 2.0: Chastise people in private, praise them in public

If you have a problem with someone on your team, have the conversation in private: IM, one-on-one email, face-to-face meeting, etc. But if you want to praise someone, do it in public so others can see it too: via a Basecamp/Backpack message, in your group’s Campfire chat room, in a blog post, an email that CC’s others, etc. It’s a modern way to apply the advice Dale Carnegie gives in “Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment”: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly…Let the other person save face…Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Related: A transaction makes a customer [SvN] discusses Carnegie’s suggestion that if you want to make someone your friend, you should ask them to do something for you.
Publication date: 2008-10-02 more

Stroll the White City

{via Coudal}
Publication date: 2008-10-02 more

Turning Ms Word Into writeroom

I love Writeroom on apple mac. It
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

4 Initial Keys to Internet Marketing Success

Now in our 10th year, eVision has been helping organizations improve results from search marketing and related areas of online promotion while helping our clients improve the conversion rates of the websites. Working with large and small companies in the U.S. and abroad over the past decade, I
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

How To Set Up Secure Download Delivery For Your Digital Products

Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Common Traits of Bad Web Design

Lately I have been writing a number of articles that I would consider to be more critical thinking based, so I thought that it may be interesting to do more of an opinion piece. In the past the article I wrote about bad blog design was successful, so I felt covering web design in general could be helpful as well. It is important to note that in this article I am referring to
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Elsewhere for September 30th

These are my delicious links for September 30th: About Us Information on Websites (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - Representing a company or organization on the Internet is one of a website's most important jobs. Effectively explaining the company's purpose and what it stands for provides essential support for all other website goals. Unfortunately, while most sites offer an About Us section, they often do a poor job of communicating the crucial information it should contain. Jakob now helps us f
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

The importance of being mobile

Website usability is constantly evolving.  As new browsers and platforms emerge and increase in popularity, we really need to adapt in terms of how we test websites. Now I have a useful mobile device, I am constantly surfing the web for information.  Sometimes I
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Web Widgets Come Of Age For Ecommerce Sites

Web Widgets Come Of Age For Ecommerce Sites September 30th, 2008 For executives like Braden Hoeppner, director of web sales for optical store Coastalcontacts.com, today
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Avoid GPS - Goofy Ports Syndrome

I
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

About Us Information on Websites

About Us Information on Websites:
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

You Can

How software is contributing to the current finacial crisis, and some pearls of wisdom from
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Privacy and Security Issues

by Stoney deGeyter This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series. What this is about: This list covers issues regarding site pages that outline your privacy and security policies as they relevant to the site visitor
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Site Maps

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Site Maps Filed Under (site map, Usability, Search Engine Optimization) by on September-30-2008 by Stoney deGeyter This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series. What this is about: This list covers issues related primarily to on-site site maps but can also be relevant for xml site maps. Why this is important: Site maps provide a one-click path to any destination withi
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

The New Schwab Customer Account Center

Two and one-half years ago Fluid began a design project for Charles Schwab to craft a whole new web experience and look-and-feel for their customer account management portal. The design project coincided with a significant effort on Schwab
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Bad Habits That Haven

A New Year
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Technology Answered Some Usability Concerns

Moore
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Add meaningful tooltips to your WordPress menu links with Page Menu Editor

By default, WordPress takes the title we give to a page and uses it in four different places: In the title element within the XHTML head. In the menu link as the link text. In the menu link as the title attribute. (The title attribute is generally recommended for better usability and accessibility. In graphical browsers, it is usually displayed as a toolip when the link is hovered over.) As the heading of the page text. The XHTML that produces the output seen on the screenshot: <
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Asking Participants to

On one of the member-only lists I hang out on, there
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Webdesign: Users vs. Experts

Idea published highly insightful findings (PDF) on the gap in webdesign between users and experts
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

How we read on the web (we don

How we read on the web (we don
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Recent jobs posted to the Job Board: NY Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, eBay/Kijiji, TechSmith, etc.

Programming/Tech Jobs New York University is looking for a Programmer/Analyst – Interface Designer in New York, NY. OpenCongress.org is looking for a Rails + MediaWiki Programmer located anywhere. ActiveRain is looking for a Rails Magician in Seattle, WA. NY Times is looking for a Ruby on Rails Developer in New York, NY. Connected Ventures is looking for a PHP / MySQL Developer in New York, NY. The Chronicle of Higher Education is looking for a Web Developer (LAMP) in Washington, DC. Crispin Porter and Bogusky is looking for an Interactive Developer (Flash) in Miami, FL or Boulder, CO. TheLadders.com is looking for a Software Engineer in New York, NY. The George Washington University Department of Health Policy is looking for a Web Communications Specialist (Research Associate) located in Washington, DC. Redpoint Technologies is looking for an Adobe Flex Senior Software Engineer in Chicago, IL. Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board. Design Jobs Songbird is looking for a Visual Designer in San Francisco, CA. eBay/Kijiji is looking for a Head of User Experience in San Jose, CA. Wall Street On Demand is looking for an Interface Designer in New York, NY. TechSmith Corporation is looking for a User Experience Designer in Okemos, MI. Crate and Barrel is looking for a Senior Internet Art Director in Northbrook, IL. Abcam is looking for a Web Designer in Cambridge, UK. Interactive Factory is looking for a Front-End Web Developer in Boston, MA. PARTNERS+simons is looking for an Information Architect/User Experience in Boston, MA. Zepinvest is looking for an Web Designer and UI specialist in New York, NY. Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board. More jobs! The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Food for thought: Usability and design for the social web

I have been thinking about usability a lot lately, and Lindy pointed me to an awesome blogger/web designer who specifically talks about this stuff, and has written a book on the subject. Joshua Porter writes about designing for the social web. I love his Five Principles to Design By: Technology Serves Humans. Design is not Art. The Experience Belongs to the User. Great Design is Invisible. Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication. You'll need to read this to get the full scoop on those,
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

How to Manage Out of Date Content

On the Web, nothing is more damaging to your organization's reputation and brand than out of date content.
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Across the Room UI

One important aspect of interaction design is determining typical usage patterns for your application. What many people overlook here, is that these patterns don't just happen inside your application, but may also be influenced by what happens outside, in the real world, in the user's home. As an example, let's take a feature that a friend of mine implemented in Toast 8
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Link Text: Where Does it Come From?

The Web wouldn
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Come Join Us at the 2008 Masters of Business Online Conference

Special thanks to Doug for allowing me to guest post on his blog! Indiana
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Companies and organizations sti...

"Companies and organizations still can
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

SEO Report Card: Icewraps.net

SEO Report Card: Icewraps.net September 29th, 2008 I went on a hike this weekend and it was a lot of fun
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

V550 Nano

Logitech
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Site Search

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Site Search Filed Under (site search, Usability) by on September-29-2008 by Stoney deGeyter This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series. What this is about: This list covers in-site search, what features should be included, what is expected by visitors and how the results should be laid out. Why this is important: Site search is an important element of on-site usabil
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Novelty Promotional Mouse Mats

Novelty Promotional Mouse Mats Category: 1178 Creating a promotional mouse mat in a novelty shape is a bit of a marketing gamble, because there is no guarantee that other people will view your novelty shaped promotional mouse mat in a positive light, or consider it user friendly. In fact if your design is too out there there is a good chance that people will reject using your promotional mouse mat and usability issues alone, let alone any adverse feelings they have towards your promotional mo
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Process Improvement : Reducing the Friction

An ongoing theme in our Blueprint releases has been making the user experience as easy as possible, or
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Using Usability and End-User research to create great software

Image via WikipediaIf you have ever wondered what the role of End User Research is all about or what tools and techniques are helping figure out what a user really thinks, then this is for you! We all want to create more succesful products, and getting your users on the bus will go a long way - if you know what to look for, how to get it and how it integrates in your release cycle. We're holding a seminar on October 1st from 1pm to 2pm eastern and it's free. Please join us to learn more about
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Remember Me

I recently had a need for a login system that needed a
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Map My Run

Due to an upcoming community bike ride, I was exposed today to mapmyrun.com. I
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Asking participants to

Jared Spool has written about the dangers of getting users to pretend during usability testing. To quote: One of the places we kept noticing this was when we watching people shop online. Asking a shopper to pretend to purchase (
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Recruiting Interested Participants for Usability Testing

Jared Spool recently wrote that pretending and roleplay in usability testing is not as effective as recruiting people with an actual need or real interest in a product or activity. We routinely ask participants in prototype testing to pretend they need to complete an action by creating a believable scenario for them (e.g., you just bought a new MP3 player and want to download some new music for it.) Jared Spool
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

User Research in the Design Process (Cleveland, OH, USA)

October 8, 20086:30 pmto9:30 pm Ever stared at a blank Photoshop screen and just needed to
Publication date: 2008-09-30 more

Apple Has Learned The Importance of Play. We Should Too

Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Native Instruments FM8 1.0.1.002.VSTi

Native Instruments FM8 1.0.1.002.VSTi posted by Anti 28th, 2008 A central aspect of FM8 is usability. The
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

jQuery Cheat sheet

I am not a jQuery expert even if now i can say that i am using it in almost every project. There are times though that i need a quick reference even for simple things and the jQuery documentation lately is not easily accessible from the place i live (I hear from other European countries as well, don
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

How WordPress Has Changed Her Life. A real life lesson on accessibility (Video)

When I read the title
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

QuickTip Sundays: Sharepoint Blogs

When a form has been completed, indicate status clearly and not just with a single line of text I
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Microspaces: The next GUI?

Microspaces: The next GUI? September 28th, 2008 by Davezilla Microspaces represent a new method of nesting content. The concept utilizes Microsoft
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Alphabetical and Random the Same?

Listening to one of Jared Spool
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Google Chrome: Four Weeks On

Thanks to our own Lauren Mattegat for writing the original drafts of this posting! When Google launched their new web browser, dubbed
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

CSS: Elastic Design

It can be difficult to move from a static, pixel-based design approach to an elastic, relative method. Properly implemented, however, elastic design can be a viable option that enhances usability and accessibility without mandating design sacrifices.read more | digg story
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Digsby Updated, Boasting Bug Fixes and New Features

Some of you know that one of the recent additions into my roll-your-own software suites for better productivity is Digsby. Their interface was killer, but it was also killer on system resources. Much like any young software application it needed additional feedback from users so they can improve it. I admit I haven
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Recession Proofing Your Web Site

If you Google
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

The Value Profit Chain : Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Leonard A. Schlesinger

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Serving employees well and knowing when to
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Recent Links: September 21 to September 28

Here are the most recent bookmarks that I have saved to Ma.gnolia. Amazon Windowshop
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Chrome - interviewing Ben Goodger

Ben Goodger was formerly known as the project lead behind the Mozilla Firefox Browser. Since 2005 he
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Fixing Sutton Council

Having dealt with the issue of broken links on Sutton Council
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

37signals Live: Today at 5:30PM CDT, tomorrow at 11:00AM CDT

We missed out on doing the promised 37signals Live event last week, so now we’re going to make it up by going double this week. Today, Jason will be speaking to the Milwaukee Area Technical College at 4:45PM CDT 5:30PM CDT. Tomorrow, we’ll both be doing a show from the office that’ll mix debates and the regular Q&A style at 11:00 AM CDT. Both shows will as always be available live from http://live.37signals.com/. Hope to see you there! Update on Milwaukee chat: Actual start time is 5:30PM CDT. Apologies for the confusion.
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Product Blog update: UK-India Basecamp case study, Backpack for travel planning, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp [Case Study] UK-India development team keeps the beat with Basecamp “We can all communicate in an efficient way and if we need to discuss or share something about a project, it goes on Basecamp. No longer are we searching our Inbox for Photoshop designs, snippets of source code or finding out what happened to a task. We all simply log onto Basecamp and there is everything we need, in one place. It’s that simple.” Just updated Project Recon lets Windows users bring Basecamp projects and to-dos to the desktop Project Recon, which gives Windows users browserless access to Basecamp projects and time, just released a major update with a completely redesigned interface (inspired by the iPhone). Backpack Backpack reminders can help you quit smoking “What the World
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

Sketchnotes from Jason Fried's talk at Discovery World

Photos of Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes captured from Jason Fried’s talk at Discovery World, Milwaukee, WI on September 24, 2008. This talk was sponsored by Milwaukee Area Technical College. View the archived live video from the event. Special thanks to Vicky Hennegan (MATC teacher and proprietor of Remarkable Parents) for making this event happen, Melissa Pierce (Life in Perpetual Beta Movie for keeping me company there and back, and to Matt (last name unknown) for his nighttime camera work for Melissa’s interview. Related: Links to more of Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes from 37signals events.
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

How to optimize your blog for code samples plus some cool widgets/tools

Recently I have been posting more and more code samples in my blog and wanted to optimize my blog for code snippets . After some searching I found these set of widgets/tools very useful. This post describes how to use Blogger Syntax Highlighter to make your code snippets look nice, how to change the width of your blog, How to post an image in its original size to your blog, how to add a Tag cloud, how to add social bookmarking links, how to ping search engines and other ping services, how to ad
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

5 Deadly Sins That Ruin A Trade Show Website

October in Hong Kong is the month for trade show. I
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

Permalinks

Sutton Council launched their long-awaited new website this week and it
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

Hospital Bracelets Face Hurdles as They Fix Hazard - NYTimes.com

New York
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

FfChrome is a Slimmer and Click-less Right Click Menu

From the creator of Colorful Tabs, we have yet another handy and helpful Firefox extension.  FfChrome, for Firefox, is an add-on that trims and slims your context menus.  After installing too many add-ons, your right click menu might get a little cluttered.  FfChrome is here to clean things up. The second part of this awesome addition to Firefox is that you never have to click on anything to get it going.  All you have to do is pause on the menu item you want, and that action is taken.  Fro
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

jQuery Hosting With Google Ajax Libraries API

Google Ajax Libraries API which hosts a few of the common open source frameworks like jQuery (and UI), Prototype, MooTools and others was launched earlier this year, and I was excited about the performance boost which it promised. Basically, the libraries are hosted on the Google infrastructure and common obstacles such as caching and gzipping of these Ajax libraries are handled by the Google engineers. The API is also kept up-to-date with the latest stable release of each Ajax library, and by
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

IVR Usability

When was the last time you faced an IVR (Interactive Voice Response Systems)
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

Infinite Scroll jQuery Plugin, and wordpress plugin

Essentially infinite scroll is pre-fetching content from a subsequent page and adding it directly to the user
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

How to Escape The Deadly Trap, Outsourcing, Avoiding Tasks, Strategizing, Google Documents and More!

Watch as Shahar and Nash show you how to escape the deadly trap that sneaks in on you as an entrepreneur. Learn to outsource, avoid tasks, use Google Documents, and spend your time strategizing your success! Who Pops Your Popcorn?! Episode #10 Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

Making Life Difficult for Customers

Companies seem to think technology is an excuse to provide bad service. Or maybe they don
Publication date: 2008-09-28 more

Library Usability Roundup 9/26/08

Here
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Back to Print

I
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Spacing helps readers more than big fonts

New York researchers have found a key factor in whether we recognise objects. It
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Quality Assurance Is Not Usability Testing

What may be obvious to some is not so clear to others.  Quality assurance and usability testing are not same. My current project work has placed me in the role of usability test participant rather than usability test moderator or usability test developer.  Much of this has been by choice because I think it is good for usability professionals to take a step back and place themselves in the shoes of the test participant.  There is much to learn from being a test participant.  The knowledge I've ga
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Bad and Good Design example in 2 pictures

Bad and Good Design examples just in two pictures. Design and usability Sucks: Usability sucks Design and usability OK: Usability OK Filed under: FYI | Tagged: bad good design, design, design example, usability, usability example
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Seven Tactics to Boost Online Banner-ad Response Rates

Seven Tactics to Boost Online Banner-ad Response Rates September 26th, 2008 Ecommerce has been the great equalizer for retailers
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Intuit Labs site usability test has users sketch new homepage

On September 15-17, 2008, we tested this web site with 10 users who came to the San Diego Intuit usability lab. We wanted to test the site for basic usability on finding an application and leaving feedback for it with a side focus of re-thinking the homepage. We showed users 2 new homepage designs as well as the NokiaLabs current homepage. We then asked each participant to sketch out a new homepage design for Intuit Labs. Please let us know what YOU think of the sketches that our testers came
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

JWL 2(2/3) due out next week

I am pleased to announce that the special double issue of JWL on library web sites: usability and evaluation, edited by Dr. Amanda Spink and Dr. Helen Partridge, is scheduled to be mailed out next week!
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

WWW or Non-WWW, That is the Question

WWW or Non-WWW, That is the Question A recent spate of questions in the office from clients on whether or not to use a URL with www in it prompted me to write on this topic.  Your website
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

Should you price IE6 support as a separate proposal item?

Along with every Web developer on Earth, I hate IE6. This thing is the cause for so much re-work and so much needless fiddling around. We had an internal debate here about when to stop supporting it. We didn
Publication date: 2008-09-27 more

5 tips for International Usability

It's been a busy summer for cxpartners. We've been user testing across Europe and the US and designing with teams based across the world. So what have we learnt?
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

ellioth: Desktop Linux Suckage

ellioth: Desktop Linux Suckage Fri, 2008-09-26 10:53
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Location services - must try harder

Location based services, another area where there is certainly a case to be made for someone to make it suck less and probably a number of successful application to build on it. Why it sucks Location services suck because it
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Blog Navigation Innovations

Innovations in blog design are now pretty few and far between. Blog design has pretty much settled into conventions that work. It
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

MS Office 2008 vs Apple iWork

I recently came across this post in internet satirising about the rejections from the Apple App Store of a couple of application because they were replicating functionality offered by other Apple products. For Mac users it makes sense to dump MSO straight away, iWork is mature and yet new enough to accomplish almost all the tasks that you would do with Office. Pages is easier to use, it is powerful and fun to use. I know people who has been using Word for 20 years and they don
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Did You Know About These Firefox Mouse Shortcuts?

Want to make your mouse work for you in Firefox?  There are several handy keyboard and mouse combinations you might want to start memorizing.  For those of us who spend our day with one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Usability and return on investment

Have been doing some research into return on investment and usability and user experience work and I thought I
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

NING UX Groups of Groups

NING UX Groups of Groups http://uxwatercooler.ning.com/ http://uxpros.ning.com/ http://usabilitylab.ning.com/ http://usabilitymatters.ning.com/ Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

HIG 2.2

I just bumped the stable version of the HIG to v2.2.   Really it
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

A new blog post over at cxpartners

I
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #65: Collaborative Filtering

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Collaborative Filtering ". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the M
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

PictoSense

In my previous post I had mused about adding sense to the media library. I was considering how one could make a media libary - tagged for people, locations and time - available in an entertaining way. The departure point for this thought process was the growing number of family and personal pictures that I currently have and manage but for which the tools are so arcane that my family would not enjoy using them. Since then the idea has continued to pop into my thoughts demanding refinement. As
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

A Conversation, Not a Monologue - Digital Marketing for Colleges

I just finished giving a speech at the western region meeting of the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations in Sedona, Arizona.  NCMPR is the association of community and technical college marketers. A really interesting group that needs to harness social media and work with prospective students on an individual, relevant, highly personal basis.  While this presentation was specifically for NCMPR, there is a lot of material that will be valuable to anyone looking to launch and
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

How to convert selenium test cases to Tellurium test cases

The Tellurium Automated Testing Framework (Tellurium) is a test framework built on top of the Selenium test framework and it abstracts UI components to Java objects and does object to locator mapping (OLM) automatically at run time so that you can define UI objects simply by their attributes and write your selenium tests just like writing JUnit or TestNG tests. Since the framework constructs the actual locator automatically at run-time and it uses the Group Locating Concept (GLC) to exploit inf
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Simple English

There are 400 million native English speakers, but over a billion people who speak English as a second language.
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Federated Login: We

There
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Top Menu : an Endangered Species?

While benchmarking top B2C e-commerce sites recently, I noticed that more and more online retailers are removing their top horizontal menus (browsing navigation) in favor of search-based navigation, like eBay did several years ago. But what is happening (or has to happen) behind the scenes for this change to take place? Is this approach well-suited [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Typography as texture of a Web page design

"Type dances on the page, which is why I think of type as a gazelle: always swift, capable of running at high speeds and jumping high." Dr Mario R. Garcia, Sept. 2008 Go check this typos basics video from The Mario blog. Found on the new PoynterOnline Beta.
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Episode 65: Collaborative Filtering

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers. This week's word is about a type of e-Learning methodology: Collaborative Filtering. We want you to join the discussion. There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. Th
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

What's In It For Me? "Care" Maps vs. "Competency" Maps or "Learning Objective" Maps

"Care Maps" in Instructional Design by Neil LaChapelle Excerpt: "It strikes me that care-mapping would bring course design and game design closer together as design disciplines. This is not to say that instructional designers would necessarily produce more games than before. Rather, they would be thinking at each turn in the course about the motivation of the learner to make the next move in the course. They would concern themselves with the "gameplay" aspect of the course, even if there wer
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

How accessible are your membership website

How accessible are your membership website
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

YouTube Geo-targeting Local Video

It was back in June when YouTube started testing geo video search
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

don gimme ads gimme stuff init

Don gimme ads gimme stuff init Speaking at Ad Tech this week, I feel the shape of new media agencies is changing again. I love this business. Because no sooner have you sorted out your organisation to cope with the client demands as is, you need to reorganise because the industry has changed again. Brand utility is the latest trend (or one of them anyhow)
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

An Open Letter to You, Webmaster

I
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Black is the new black (for an airline website)

Two new airline website launches this week have caught my attention. First we have FlyBmi (London Heathrow
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

New Electronic Resource Review Blog from Nina Platt

Nina Platt is a U.S.-based consultant who, like me and Steve Matthews, has a law librarian/knowledge management background and started a consultancy last year in the form of Nina Platt Consulting Inc. Congratulations to Nina who has just added a third blog to her fold, the Electronic Resource Review. So far it covers research and knowledge management electronic products. I thought the September 19th write-up of KM products from West, Lexis Nexis, and Interwoven to be of particular interest. H
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Tips for Working in CMYK for Print - Computer Arts

Print design isn
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Media Slap Free Photoshop Brushes Download

Media Slap sent me an email to giveaway some of there finest brushes
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Help Needed!

PC Enclosures needed my help. They were not making conversions. They sell pc enclosures, and industrial pc enclosures. As with most companies, budgets  are limited, especially for testing websites, so I agreed to help them out in exchange for posting a few of the obvious ones here. Where to Start Two things are obviously important while trying to sell a product or service. A professional appearance, and an easy method to buy. PC Enclosures, unfortunately had neither. I wonder if the site made
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Previous and Next Actions in Web Forms

Luke Wroblewski
Publication date: 2008-09-26 more

Tips For Designing Excellent Web Forms

Good web form design consistently accomplishes: End User Convenience Data Validation This web-to-contact form in the i-Dialogue Developer's Sandbox looks pretty simple on the surface, but it implements several subtle best practices that often get overlooked. How to Make Web Forms Convenient The "First Name" textbox incorporates use of the "HasFocus" attribute to ensure the user does not have to click on the textbox to begin data entry. They simply start typing.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Top 20 Greasemonkey Scripts to Boost Your Google Experience

Top 20 Google related Greasemonkey scripts for faster and more fun Gmail, Google Reader and Google search experience.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Rockbox brings portable music to blind

iPod powered by Free Software You gotta love the Free Software community, you have to.  The crowds of the Rockbox project make the Archos Jukebox and other common mp3/ogg players (including iPods)
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Dateline

I
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Persuasion, Trust, Emotion and Usability

While browsing for Usability training seminars in the US, I encountered Human Factor
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Uncovering the Hidden Profit Treasures of Your Company

This is a guest post by Maxim Mironov of OptimaLogica. Are you an adventurous person? Have you ever dreamed of finding a pirate chest full of treasure? Well, I
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Is Magento Commerce a good eCommerce solution for you?

The open source eCommerce arena has been a crowded one in the last 5 years. The big names are popular still (including stores like X-Cart, osCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded and there are more). But Magento was mentioned to me by a
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Top 5 CRM Selection Criteria

I have now been working with CRM systems for 5 years. It is only recently that I have seen the industry  (finally) mature to a stage where it is no longer engaged in a straight up feature war. This has been driven by two things; a maturity of product offerings and a recognition by customers that they should be making decisions based on an analysis of their own requirements, rather than a feature comparison matrix. To this end, here are my top 5 criteria for selecting a CRM system: Usability -
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Ajax

Ajax, or AJAX, is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Google Chrome: Winners and Losers

Right now I know as much about Google's new Chrome browser as everyone else - which is to say, I've read the comic book and the relevant blog postings. Our own Sam Dean has a good roundup of the facts as they are known so far, and when the code actually ships, we'll bring you coverage of how it works. But let's assume for the moment that Google delivers everything they promise: what effect will this have on the wider market?
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

You may be interrupting

From a UI perspective, Google got this right: How thoughtful can you get? I mean, in a regular IM client, statuses mean next to nothing to many folk. They will still ping you anyway. Google
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast #24: "Data Exchange Interfaces Used with a Learning Management System"

Here is our latest press release and e-Learning Series podcast: Press Release: SyberWorks e-Learning Podcasts: Episode #24:"Data Exchange Interfaces Used with a Learning Management System". Podcast: Episode 24: "Data Exchange Interfaces Used with a Learning Management System" Dave Boggs, CEO of SyberWorks, states,
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Wednesday morning at Design for Mobile

Torrential rains slowed me down (I have to drive in from Kansas City), but despite a pretty long night of drinking and eating, everyone was still energized this morning. This morning we set up sessions about the people side
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Bits from Scripting Enabled

It was encouraging to see plenty of enthusiastic professionals together at the Scripting Enabled conference last Friday. The aim of this two days event was breaking down barriers between disabled users and the social web. It was based on talks on the first day, and a geeky hacking code day on the second. I was slightly afraid the speakers were going to mainly focus on script bits and accessibility "basics", but luckily, there was a much stronger usable approach. Nowadays accessibility and usab
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Creating Usable Website Navigation

A guest post by Nathan Beck on creating usable website navigation
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

2008 ILA Annual Conference

The Annual Conference of the Illinois Library Association is in Chicago this year. It runs the whole week and is located at Navy Pier. Here's a shot of the entrance to the exhibits.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

The Function of Rounded Corners

Igor Asselbergs of Livelygrey has written a very interesting post about rounded corners a while back
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Google stomps on the idea of dynamic URL rewrites

Google just recently posted an article talking about their opinion on dynamic vs. static URLs. In short, Google is saying that dynamically created URLs from a content management system, i.e. URLs that contain information talking to a database such as: /media_review.php?user_id=25&article_id=315 should be left as is instead of rewriting them to look cleaner (static): /media-review/bruce/dnc-ratm-concert/ Here
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Use Whitespace to Indicate Relationships Between Content Elements

One of the most important tools in a designer
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Jeff on Data Design

Jeff Veen
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Find the link

I
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

The Power of Stories in Business, Super You Costumes, Walt Disney, Marriott Hotels, MindMaps with WiseMapping and More!

Join in as Shahar and Nash talk about The Power of Stories in Business, Super Your Costumes, Walt Disney, Marriott Hotels, MindMaps with WiseMapping and much more! Who Pops Your Popcorn?! Episode #09 Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Issues Involved with Website Communication

Regardless of what type of website you
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Usability Basics: Keep the User Informed

read more
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

GPS Films - great innovation!

Isabella shares an uber nice technology with us on CNET Asia. I dig it so much I
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

SEO starter: Good usability means good search engine optimization

SEO starter: Good usability means good search engine optimization SEO, Search, User Experience Design No Comments
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Making money twice

A good portion of this industry is still trying to figure out how to make money for the first time (hint: charge people). But for those who’ve mastered that, I want to talk about the next step: making money twice (or three or four times). Making money off original content isn’t hard as long as you aren’t afraid of making money. You can sell it, you can offer subscriptions to it, you can talk about it, etc. But what’s more interesting — and easier — is making money again of something that already made you money before. Repackaging Repackaging allows you to earn money multiple times on the same content. It’s a great way to grow your revenues without significant marginal cost. Money One: A lot of our ideas originate on this blog. We post articles which generate traffic. We make money off the traffic by running Deck ads in the sidebar. We make a few thousand a month off The Deck ads. Money Two: We bundled up the best blog posts about our software development philosophy and turned it into a PDF book called Getting Real. We sell the PDF for $19. We’ve made a few hundred thousand dollars from the PDF. Money Three: We take the Getting Real PDF and turn it into a paperback at Lulu.com. We sell the paperback for $25 and we make a few thousand a month on royalties. The paperback is currently ranked the 4th best seller on Lulu. Money Four: We took the content from Getting Real and produced a Getting Real conference series. We held a few conferences a year and made about $50K per conference. We’ve produced about 5 of these conferences. It adds up So if we add this all up, we made about $100K on The Deck ads (The Deck has been around about two years and we are a founding partner), $350K on the Getting Real PDF, about $65K on the Getting Real paperback, and about $250K on the Getting Real conferences (before that they were called Building of Basecamp). That’s roughly $765,000 over a few years off roughly the same content. Insight and ideas about how we run our business. Blog entries, PDF, paperback, and conferences. We probably could have done a few more things and pushed that total over a million. Regardless, making a little extra here and there over something you’ve already produced is a great way to grow revenues.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

The traditional workplace is broken

“Want to attract and retain Gen Y? Better rethink everything” [The Arizona Republic] explains how employers can attract younger workers and discusses 37signals (including some quotes from Jason). In order to appeal to us, employers need to rethink their rules a bit. Forget rigid 40-hour workweeks. Forget traditional company hierarchy… One company that has led the charge in shifting the work-life paradigm, especially when it comes to employee relations, is 37signals. Headquartered in Chicago, it’s a multi-million dollar organization deeply committed to maintaining a work-life balance for its employees. President Jason Fried says today’s employers present the biggest roadblock. “Simply put, employees are treated like children. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and there are too many layers of approval, just too much insulation that prevents anyone from doing anything. The traditional workplace is broken, and until someone realizes that, there’s always going to be conflict.” This suffocation by protocol is dead on and will never allow an employee to “go beyond” or achieve something extra for the company. This is a critical link that most organizations continually fail to acknowledge. They are too focused on ensuring employees do no wrong that they actually prevent them from achieving anything beyond status quo. But there is hope, and a solution that is more common sense than radical procedural change. To counter the “traditional workplace,” Fried had this to offer: “We challenge them. We give them different, interesting projects. We encourage them to do something outside of work and teach us what they’ve learned. It’s no help to our company to hire someone based on a skill or to get stuff done.” It is a simple, no-brainer solution, but one that is too often lost.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Form Follows Email

In my past experience, I did not like designing and producing HTML email marketing campaigns. The emails that I created had their conceptual birth in another medium altogether: a Catalog, an Advertisement, or the Website. The concept and strategy was already finalized before it had gotten to me. At that point it was all about production. How I see email working for 37signals I want to take a different approach with 37signals email. Because we are not ready to start redesigning the marketing sites, I see an opportunity to use email as a means to experiment with concepts in anticipation of the redesign. That’s right. I am reversing that conceptual flow often practiced at many online retailers. Email isn’t going to follow what’s already been laid out. It’s going to lead the way. This is email as an inexpensive design and content testing platform. Here’s the original design for the first Highrise email test: I am hoping to address some marketing site issues with this email. There is no place currently on the Highrise site where customer stories or tips can be found. We have a great Product Blog with stories and tips, but you can’t sign up for Highrise there. It is also difficult to know that we have Basecamp and other products if you’ve come to the Highrise site directly. Maybe Basecamp will suit your needs better. This is how we did it with this particular email. A few emails down the line might take a different direction altogether. One caveat about using emails as a design and concept testing ground is that email clients are not perfect. The original design had to be adjusted slightly. You can see what we finally ended up with here: http://www.highrisehq.com/newsletters/090908/ Design compromises aside: Email becomes the perfect platform to perform this synthesis experiment. Elements and concepts from the design above may or may not make it into the final site design. That is still a ways away. We’ll cut our concepts for a site redesign over a span of several emails in the coming months. Would you like to see how it comes along? Sign up for our newsletters to see where these emails take us.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

What we like lately

Even though we don’t see each other everyday, our team still manages to trade normal water cooler conversation. Part of that is recommending products we use each day and trading our reviews in Campfire. Here’s a few we’ve all been enjoying: Jason and Sam love their Jiffy clothes steamer because it makes them feel like they work in a very small dry cleaner. If we’re in the office, we can’t avoid a walk over to Sip for a coffee fix. The rest of the time Jason and I consume large quantities of Sprite Zero. After David and Jason got their AppleTV’s, I was convinced. Then I convinced Jeff, and we’re all quite happy. Jeremy loves his masticating juicer and says it works better than any centrifugal juicer. Jason loves his Omega juicer, too. Jamis and Mark are on the fence in their juicer quest. A few of us are excited about the release of Fitbit in a few months! Now that Jeremy is working while standing up just like Jamis, he picked up an anti-fatigue mat after I recommended one. Unfortunately, he hates it. (Whoops!) We all have company cards, but most of us are also using American Express for our personal accounts. Jamis. Loves. His. Bandsaw! Jason bought this simple sound machine after I mentioned how obsessed with it I am. Jason, Jeremy and I are big Calexico fans. Sam and I are loving an album by Beruit and the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack. (Though my favorite work music is the soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine!) Big up to our friends at West Loop Gym where a few Signals and Coudals are happy members. We’re also customers of the awesome Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks. Highly recommended if you’re in the Chicagoland area.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

37signals Live: Today at 5:30PM CDT, tomorrow at 11:00PM CDT

We missed out on doing the promised 37signals Live event last week, so now we’re going to make it up by going double this week. Today, Jason will be speaking to the Milwaukee Area Technical College at 4:45PM CDT 5:30PM CDT. Tomorrow, we’ll both be doing a show from the office that’ll mix debates and the regular Q&A style at 11:00 AM CDT. Both shows will as always be available live from http://live.37signals.com/. Hope to see you there! Update on Milwaukee chat: Actual start time is 5:30PM CDT. Apologies for the confusion.
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Hand Shadows

My wife recently ordered Henry Bursill’s classic Hand Shadows and More Hand Shadows. It was first published in 1859 and 1860 (in two parts), but what’s best about it is that, aside from the name of each pattern, the book is simply a book of pictures. No text. No preface by a famous hand shadow practitioner. No page of text describing the history and variations of each pattern. Just pictures. Each page is a single picture, drawn in mid-19th century style, demonstrating how to position your hands, and showing the resulting shadow. No text is needed; the book explains itself. Obviously, this extremely minimalist style wouldn’t work for every book, but how many books could be improved by including less than they have? How much do you really have to say about a hand shadow, when a picture says it all?
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

And now I Twitter too @jasonfried

I’ve been randomly Twittering from our 37signals Twitter account for a few months now, but it’s time for me to go out on my own. You can follow my personal thoughts on design, innovation, business, and other general daily observations at my jasonfried Twitter account. Follow me!
Publication date: 2008-09-24 more

The NO!SPEC campaign vs. crowdSPRING

A recent Screens Around Town post prompted a healthy debate about crowdSPRING and designers working on spec. We invited crowdSPRING’s Ross Kimbarovsky to write more about the issue. Below is his response. For those who haven’t heard about us: crowdSPRING is the creative marketplace, where buyers post creative projects (logos, websites, print design, illustrations, marketing materials, etc.) and instead of receiving bids and proposals, designers from around the world submit actual designs. Buyers choose the design they like. Since our launch in May 2008, 700 buyers from 30 countries have posted creative projects. Today over 6,100 designers from 130+ countries work on crowdSPRING. We’re in Chicago, a few blocks from 37signals. We make products we like (we used our own marketplace to design our site
Publication date: 2008-09-24 more

Behind the scenes: Getting Real with free Campfire accounts

My first project here at 37signals was to evolve our email marketing and triggered messaging design. I want to share some thoughts about my first Getting Real experience and the design decisions we made to highlight “free Campfire accounts” for Basecamp Max plan customers. I get it now! Jason asked me to design our Welcome to Basecamp sign-up emails. The emails were being sent out as plain text only. Important messages like the “free Campfire account offer” were difficult to highlight in plain text. Max plan customers were confused as to how to get their free Campfire account. I started designing and producing the email last week while Jason was at the Web 2.0 Expo. We use Campfire here at 37signals nonstop to communicate with each other. I knew Jason was out, but he checks the Campfire transcripts regularly to keep updated with the day-to-day. I made sure to upload the design showing the “free Campfire” conditional block so that he could give me some feedback. Sam started integrating the HTML template while I was waiting for feedback from Jason. After all, what would he have a problem with? It was looking great and we were hoping to deploy it before the week was over. Sam was nearly finished with integration when I finally received feedback from Jason: We should break out that free Campfire message into a separate email. Fuck really? OK I agree. But really? I mean I was hoping to get this out soon. Like today! I checked with Sam. “I have to rework that email.” Sam says, “That’s OK. I’ll deploy this. Just get me the free Campfire email next week.”“Deploy it? Wait but Jason wants that message broken out into a separate email.” “Sure, but this is better than what we have now.” So he deployed it. This is when I realized how trained I was in the processes at my former workplaces. This email would have been delayed until it was perfect at Crate and Barrel, and I had trouble releasing the design when there was a way to further improve it. After fixing this there would be another thing and then another thing. A 2-day project would drag on for a week of redesign, approval, and development. Instead we deployed what we had because it is better than what we have now. Done. I finally got Real. It’s one thing to read Getting Real and say, “Yes! I agree with that!” It’s another thing to actually practice the principles of Getting Real. That part is trickier than you think. That stand-alone free Campfire accounts email This morning I got a chance to hammer out that Campfire email. I started out by adapting what I had done with the part in the Basecamp Welcome email. The problem was it looked like a big blob of text that no one would read. Why am I getting this Campfire account? What exactly are the steps to activate it? I made some adjustments. The steps to activate the account still needed some visual weight. Let’s separate them a bit from the rest of the copy. Yes, that’s much better. Now I’ll be working with Sam to get this deployed. After that we’ll see how it does and keep on improving it!
Publication date: 2008-09-24 more

Product Blog update: Researching ancient texts with Backpack, leading martial arts site and Basecamp, writing a successful to-do list, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Backpack Backpack helps researcher working in imaging of ancient texts “Where Backpack really shines is in its ability to share data. It lets me pull together notes, images, and lists to quickly share results with colleagues in a clean, professional layout. Since I work in imaging and visualization, galleries let me easily share images of all sizes with a small preview and some optional descriptive text, on the same page with any other information I want to get across. It’s only a short step up from there to have a page other people can readily collaborate on.” Basecamp [Case Study] Leading martial arts site: “Basecamp is a complete necessity for us” “As a start-up business (growing from nothing last year to being now one of the leading online martial arts communities) our team of 4 constantly sing the praises of Basecamp. The fact we are not yet office based and are all working remotely (often odd hours) has made Basecamp a complete necessity for us. The days of a disorganised million emails flying back and forth are gone thankfully!” Further clarification on the IE 6 phase out “It’s unlikely that anyone using IE 6 with Basecamp will run into any problems in the near future, but it’s important to keep in mind that any future upgrades might not work with IE 6.” Video: One Year of Using Basecamp “I can’t imagine managing web projects without it. I want to share with you a fun video he did showcasing the power of messaging through Basecamp. We exploited the tool as much as it would let us, to stay on the same page with designers, developers, project managers and representatives from several different departments throughout the school.”Campus Technology reports on Carnegie Mellon’s use of Basecamp Carnegie Mellon University is using Basecamp to manage centralized information technology projects. Highrise Jolt Magazine: Highrise is “a jewel of an application” “If what you need is simple contact & task management, this is a jewel of an application. The workflow is seamless.” Getting Real Getting Real: Not just for software developers Jim Semple, Vice President of Brandt Engineered Products: “Getting Real is jam packed with sound business advice that could apply to a service business, a manufacturing operation or running an airline just as easily as it applies to building a successful web application. It’s all about people and leading them toward optimum effectiveness. We manufacture heavy equipment for customers around the world. In addition to sound engineering, good communications and effective decision making makes the difference between hitting the target and missing the mark. Getting people to perform at optimum levels on a continuous basis is the challenge. Getting Real tells you why it’s important and how to do it. Great book! Read this book and you’ll dodge a lot of potholes on the road to success. I can’t wait for the sequel. I’ll need copies for all my managers.” Multiple products The Daily Netizen: Basecamp, Backpack, and Highrise are “must-have” web tools for telecommuters Jessica Merritt of The Daily Netizen just published a list of the 100 Must-Have Web Tools for Telecommuters. We’re proud to say a few 37signals apps made the list. The secret to writing a successful to-do list Gina Trapani, the founding editor and lead blogger for Lifehacker: “There are lots of ways you can make a to-do list into something that actually gets done. Often when people get to the point when they are writing it, they are doing a brain dump. They just have to just get things down on paper. But to get to the point where you
Publication date: 2008-09-19 more

Summaries of 37signals presentations at Web 2.0 Expo

Kris Jordan published detailed summaries of 37signals’ presentations at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC yesterday: 1) Jason Fried: Keynote: Be a Software Curator Think of yourself as a curator. You want to be a curator. You have to decide what comes in and what goes out. Curator
Publication date: 2008-09-19 more

I liked Microsoft better when they were assholes

Apparently there’s something worse than being despised and that is to be utterly irrelevant. Gruber hits it spot on in his commentary on Microsoft’s panic response to the mixed reception of the Seinfeld ads. A company that stands for nothing can not market themselves out of that position. I actually liked Microsoft better when they stood for something. Even when that something was being a ruthless corporation hell-bent on world domination. Batman needs the Joker too. It’s hard to imagine that the once mighty 800-pound gorilla in the room has been reduced to a mere monkey. A monkey with a $230B market cap, but a monkey no less. I pity the marketers working the Microsoft account. There’s no way to win. If they go vague, they get people_ready. If they go edgy, they get panic and push back. Talk about a set of golden handcuffs.
Publication date: 2008-09-19 more

Web 2.0 NYC reminder

If you’re at Web 2.0 tomorrow (Wednesday, September 16) I hope you’ll come to our sessions: 10:05am in room 1A23 & 24: “10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals” (Jason Fried) 11:10am in room 1A08 & 10: “Go REST with Rails” (David Heinemeier Hansson) 3:20pm in the Special Events Hall: Keynote (Jason Fried) We hope to see you there!
Publication date: 2008-09-18 more

JetBlue's riddle of a coupon

Jeesh JetBlue. Is this a coupon or some sort of chronological date riddle?
Publication date: 2008-09-18 more

There's no shame in looking good

Aesthetics have a bad rap in geek circles. CmdrTaco infamously slammed the original iPod with “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame”. In other words, it’s all about the features and the functionality. If you don’t do more than the other guy, you’re useless. I don’t agree, but I accept. It’s when the argument is raised from the “I” and to the “them” that it starts getting ridiculous. In arguing some new, ugly IBM laptop over the MacBook Air, I read the following and thought this is exactly where it goes wrong: “If you’re buying a laptop to impress girls at Starbucks (in which case, you might want to do some serious self-evaluation), this ain’t the one for you”. In other words, people only buy beautiful products to impress other people (and that’s a shallow thing to do). It’s actually not so much that this position is ridiculous, it’s more that I feel sorry for someone holding it. I get so much enjoyment out of surrounding myself with beautiful things that I feel sad for anyone missing out on that. Aesthetics is a feature in itself. One that I — and most the rest of the human race — is perfectly willing to let trump other functionality. I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood why people buy beautiful products, if you think it’s all about projection. While there’s certainly something to that (and I see absolutely no shame in that either!), it’s at the core about people feeling good about that which is pretty. That doesn’t make us shallow, that just makes us human.
Publication date: 2008-09-18 more

Defining the problem of elevator waiting times

Below is an interesting story about a building where tenants were complaining about long elevator waiting times. The solution shows how the key to solving a problem is often defining the problem correctly in the first place. A classic story illustrates very well the potential cost of placing a problem in a disciplinary box. It involves a multistoried office building in New York. Occupants began complaining about the poor elevator service provided in the building. Waiting times for elevators at peak hours, they said, were excessively long. Several of the tenants threatened to break their leases and move out of the building because of this… Management authorized a study to determine what would be the best solution. The study revealed that because of the age of the building no engineering solution could be justified economically. The engineers said that management would just have to live with the problem permanently. The desperate manager called a meeting of his staff, which included a young recently hired graduate in personnel psychology…The young man had not focused on elevator performance but on the fact that people complained about waiting only a few minutes. Why, he asked himself, were they complaining about waiting for only a very short time? He concluded that the complaints were a consequence of boredom. Therefore, he took the problem to be one of giving those waiting something to occupy their time pleasantly. He suggested installing mirrors in the elevator boarding areas so that those waiting could look at each other or themselves without appearing to do so. The manager took up his suggestion. The installation of mirrors was made quickly and at a relatively low cost. The complaints about waiting stopped. Today, mirrors in elevator lobbies and even on elevators in tall buildings are commonplace. Excerpted from “Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track” [Amazon].
Publication date: 2008-09-18 more

The Vice Fund: The ultimate investment for today's financial environment

The Vice Fund invests in companies, both domestic and foreign, engaged in the aerospace and defense industries, owners and operators of casinos and gaming facilities, manufacturers of gaming equipment such as slot machines, manufacturers of cigarettes and other tobacco products, and brewers, distillers, vintners and producers of other alcoholic beverages. For good measure be sure to also pick up McDonalds, Yum (they own Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC), and some pharmaceuticals that specialize in blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity drugs, and you might just get rich in this new “we’re fucked” economy.
Publication date: 2008-09-16 more

Turning aeroelastic flutter into third world power

Neat thinking: “Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative, Set to Power Third World” [Popular Mechanics] tells the story of Humdinger, the world
Publication date: 2008-09-16 more

Big new Basecamp feature: Attach files and post comments on to-dos and milestones

Today we’re thrilled to be able to announce a big new addition to Basecamp: You can now attach files and post comments on to-dos and milestones. Previously this functionality was only available on messages. Watch a bigger version of this video on the 37signals Product Blog. A quick look at how it works A green comment icon after a to-do or milestone means there are new comments on that item. A dark grey comment icon means there are comments on that item, but you’ve already read them. And if an item doesn’t have any comments, you’ll see an empty comment icon when you hover over that item. Clicking the comment icon will take you to the comments view for that to-do or milestone. Deeplinking: A happy side effect This new feature comes with a great side effect: You can now deep link to individual to-do items or milestones. Previously you could only link to a to-do list or the milestones section, but now you can link directly to individual to-dos or specific milestones. Project management is communication This new feature is directly in-line with Basecamp’s core premise: Project management is communication. Before you had to keep all your discussions in the messages section. That worked, but it required you to discuss one part of your project in another part of your project. Now you can have discussions about to-dos and milestones right on top of those to-dos and milestones. We hope you love it We’re really excited about this new feature. We think it’s going to help you get a lot more more out of Basecamp. Thanks again for your continued support!
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

[Screens Around Town] Four Travel Deals, crowdSPRING, Foodzie, etc.

Four Travel Deals Like Woot for travel: Fourtraveldeals.com cuts out the noise. Foodzie Like Etsy for food: Foodzie is an online marketplace where you can discover and buy food from small artisan producers and growers.crowdSPRING crowdSPRING brings crowdsourcing to design projects: 1. Post a creative project. 2. Watch the world submit ideas. 3. Choose the one you like. Crumpler Ian Hall writes in about Crumpler: At the bottom of the page a turtle says “You are viewing the lo-fi version of the site.” This is nice as it allows you to know you aren’t seeing everything you might otherwise, but does not restrict you to viewing only in Flash. Bandsaw Jamis ♥ his bandsaw.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

British Airways: Don't make me fail

Dear British Airways, I have all this money here, and I’m wanting to spend it on you. Why, oh why, are you making this so difficult? Why are you allowing me to choose a city for my departure when you don’t even fly out of that city? If you don’t fly there, and your route map clearly shows you do not fly there, don’t let me choose it as my departure city!
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

Universal currency sign

So, we’re working on this new Highrise feature that requires currency icons. We’ve been making icons for some popular currencies: During our currency research we stumbled upon the universal currency sign which is used to denote a currency when the symbol for a particular currency is unavailable. The currency symbol was invented in 1972. I want to invent a symbol! Armed with this knowledge, we made an icon to represent the other currencies that may not have custom icons: The currency sign was news to us so we thought it might be news to you. If you already knew, lucky you. If you didn’t, maybe this can fill your “learn something new everyday” quota.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

37signals Live: Thursday, September 11 at 11:00am central time

Please join us this Thursday, September 11 at 11am central for the next edition of 37signals Live. This show’s topic will be “The Starting Line: From Idea to Execution”. How do you start your business? How do you take that idea you had and actually do something with it? How do you get from thought to action? How do you deal with business plans and projections and all that stuff you’re supposed to do when you get started. Do you hire people? Do you design business cards? All that good stuff. We look forward to seeing you for 37signals Live this Thursday!
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

Swype keyboard for touchscreens

Very clever new input concept from one of the guys who brought you T9. I was just simulating this on my keyboard and it’s surprisingly easy to do. Of course I don’t have anything to measure my accuracy, but I think the concept is fascinating. Full story at CNET.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

Basecamp comment improvements: 72-hours later

Earlier this week we launched a big Basecamp update that allows people to attach files and leave comments on to-dos and milestones. Since we launched the new feature 72-hours ago: 220,568 comments have been posted 197,003 (89.03%) comments were posted on messages 18,481 (8.35%) comments were posted on to-dos 5088 (2.3%) comments were posted on milestones (You may notice that the numbers don’t add up — that’s because new comments were added between the database queries) We’re really happy that about 10.5% of the comments posted in the past 72 hours were comments posted on to-dos and milestones. That’s great uptake on a new feature in just 3 days. We’re thrilled that people are loving the new feature! Thanks for your continued support.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

Plastic Logic Reader: Get to the wow

Check out the amazing Plastic Logic Reader: Very cool shit. But there’s a demo lesson to be had here: When you’ve got a product that does something amazing, don’t waste 40 seconds talking about it. Just show it! The best demo is a usage demo, especially if you’ve got wow factor. Explain it later (...or maybe you won’t have to explain it at all). Surely, the demo at the Plastic Logic site doesn’t make the same mistake. Nope. It’s even worse! Two minutes until the good stuff. Hey guys, we know what paper looks like. Get on with the show.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

37maze: First to solve it saves $50

(bigger version) First person to solve the maze and link up the solution in the comments section gets $50 off their 37signals product of choice.
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

PleaseDressMe meets a niche need

Our good friends AJ and Gary Vaynerchuk launched PleaseDressMe recently, a search engine for tshirts. Kind of a brilliant idea over there. How many times have you been looking for a shirt you saw on someone by Googling the phrase, or browsing through every tshirt site out there. Do you know how many tshirt sites are out there?? This is a great example of meeting a need in a very niche market doing something incredibly simple: Give people a box to type in and return what they’re looking for. Slap on an API and some very simple widgets and you’ve got a way for vendors and retailers to integrate your site into theirs, and everyone wins. I really love these simple solutions people have been building lately to meet very simple and obvious needs. It’ll be interesting to see how PleaseDressMe develops over the next few months. Well done, guys!
Publication date: 2008-09-12 more

A 36:1 ratio is actually pretty good

Labor Day recently passed. That means you may have received a shared photo album from a friend or relative. You know the type: It’s usually dozens (or hundreds) of shots of vacation fun. But you’re not into it. Now, it’s not that you don’t care; It’s fun to peek in and see what happened. But who wants to sort through a glut of 200 photos of someone else’s vacation (or baby photos or whatever)? What actually happens: You wind up deleting the email with the link and don’t even bother seeing any of them. The power of editing It’s about the power of editing. What if these people picked out the five best shots instead? The five photos that are the cream of the crop. The five that undeniably kick ass. Then the whole thing shifts. Instead of it being a chore to see how their vacation went, it becomes a pleasure. It only takes a few seconds. Plus, that means they can just attach the photos to the email, instead of forcing you to visit (and sometimes register) at some random photo site. It’s only five photos, no big deal. 36:1 I had a photography teacher (Richard Stromberg at The Chicago Photography Center) tell me once that if you get one good shot on a roll of 36, you were doing good. That’s the ratio: 36:1. When you edit ruthlessly like that, you come out with great results. People think you’re better than you are. It’s not that you became a brilliant photographer, it’s just that you started exercising taste and restraint. It’s one of the biggest challenges in the digital age: When you can bombard people with everything, it’s tempting to do so. That’s why taste, restraint, and editing are so important. Sometimes it’s about throwing out the 35 bad shots and revelling in the one great shot. Omit, then submit What you leave out is often what turns good into great. What you leave out is the difference between something that is either 1) never seen or used or 2) simple, clear, and actually digestable. It’s true for photography. It’s true for features in software. And it’s true for plenty more too. P.S. Fun bit about Stromberg, the photography teacher I mentioned: He required all students to purchase a fixed 50mm lens for their camera. Students would invariably ask if they could use a zoom lens instead. His response: Every lens is a zoom lens. Just walk closer or further away to zoom. I always loved that. Related Eureka: We
Publication date: 2008-09-06 more

How to manage long breaks in your software side projects

Pablo Corral wrote me an email after I posted this tweet about managing on-again-off-again side projects. I’m very curious about how to use Backpack to have a better experience on braindumps for side projects. I switch a lot, and my side project sometimes is off for many days, and some weeks. Can you explain more about this? It’s hard to find steady uninterrupted time for software side projects. Maybe you only have time on weekends or the occasional free night for your project, and sometimes weeks or months go by where you are too busy to sit down and make some progress. When you finally do find time to work, you can waste half of it just catching up on where you left off. This has been a big challenge for me because one of my projects is a Rails app that supports registration and administration for a biannual retreat course. Four or five months may go by before I return to the app for another course, and with each course there are new bugs to fix or feature requests to implement. A couple years in this situation have helped me develop a system to manage my side projects with a minimum of headaches and wasted time. My system is a one-two punch: Hosted version control plus a single Backpack page. These two are all you need to keep the state of your project off your brain and at the ready. First punch: Hosted version control Sign up with a hosted version control service like GitHub for Git or Beanstalk for Subversion. I advise using version control even for static websites. There are two key benefits to hosting your source with these services. First, your source is independent of your work machine. If your machine crashes, you replace it, or even if you space out and delete some things you shouldn’t (that would be me), your code will always be safe and secure in the online repository. The second benefit is an easy-to-read commit log. With one click you can visit a bookmark and see a timeline of changes you’ve made to the code in chronological order and in your own words. Just glancing at the commit log can be enough to jog your brain after a long absence and bring you right back into the project. Second punch: A single Backpack page I make a single Backpack page for each project with two lists and some notes. The two lists are ‘To-Do’ and ‘Debt.’ The ‘To-Do’ list is for things I really, truly, honestly plan to do next. I keep it very short, always less than five items. If it gets any longer, I’m probably fantasizing instead of actually planning to do those things. Whenever I return to a project, the top item on the To-Do list tells me what I should work on. The ‘Debt’ list is for things I should have done but didn’t bother to do. The Debt list is partly a psychological trick. It helps me cut corners without feeling too guilty. Should’ve added validations to that model? Add it to the Debt list. Wrote a condition without thinking too deeply about the edge cases? Just add it to the Debt list. But it’s also more than a band-aid for laziness. If something breaks or I run into some unexpected behavior, chances are a quick glance at the Debt list will point me to a corner that I cut or a step I skipped and lead to a direct solution instead of an hour of head-scratching. Lastly my Backpack account is SSL protected, so I feel safe storing information about my production environment. I can never remember where a project is hosted, what the username and password are or if there are particularities with the configuration I should know about. I keep all this server info on a note at the top of the page, so each time I need to log in I don’t have to go digging for passwords or welcome emails from my host. A powerful combo—when you hold up your end All the lists and logs in the world won’t help if you don’t create some good habits. Commit frequently, and whenever possible write commit messages about your intention, not your implementation. Say “Fix the broken sidebar layout” instead of “Fix a typo in the class name.” The former will be a sharper hook to your memory later. For the Backpack lists, try to be brutally honest. A mile long To-Do list is proof of time wasted, not time saved. Focus your To-Do list on the next few things you need done, and limit your Debt list to Debt that actually matters. This system has helped me organized my side projects and optimize the short slices of free time I can dedicate to them. I hope it works for you too. Let us know in the comments if you have any systems of your own for managing side projects over time.
Publication date: 2008-09-05 more

Nuts & Bolts: HAproxy

A common request we get from readers is to describe in more detail how our server infrastructure is setup. That question is so incredibly broad that it’s hard to answer it in any kind of comprehensive way, so I’m not going to try to. Instead, I’m keeping the general desire for more technical details in mind as I work through day-to-day issues with our configuration, and I’ll try to occasionally write about things that I think might be of interest. The topic for today is HAproxy. HAproxy is a load balancing proxy server that we use between our front-end web servers (Apache) and our back-end application servers (Mongrel). It allows us to spread the traffic for dynamic content among a number of application servers and deals with things like failover if any of the individual Mongel instances happen to be down. There are a lot of software load balancers out there and we’ve tried a number of them. Some of the reasons we finally ended up going with HAproxy include: Speed. It’s really, really fast. It’s efficient. One of our instances is handling around 700 requests per second and using less than 5% CPU and only around 40MB of RAM on the Xen instance that it’s running on. It allows us to make configuration changes gracefully, without breaking any existing connections. It allows us to queue requests up if all of our Mongrels are busy. Of these, the last item is the killer feature for our purposes. I’ll let you in on a secret—this post has been hanging around for a couple of months now and I’ve tried several times to come up with a good way to describe how the queueing works, but I’ve never been satisfied with the results. With that in mind, I decided to take a page from the 37signals Live playbook and do a brief screencast to illustrate the power of this feature. I plan to write more about our infrastructure as time permits. If there are particular topics that you’d like to see covered in a future installment, please email svn@37signals.com.
Publication date: 2008-09-05 more

Preaching to the choir is a waste of time

Activist, poet, and musician Saul Williams is catching gruff from fans for allowing Nike to use his song “List of Demands” in commercials. Williams wrote an open letter defending the use of the song. I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’. I think there
Publication date: 2008-09-05 more

[Quotable] Robert Stephens, David Pogue, Abraham Maslow, and more

Training and marketing as taxes
Publication date: 2008-09-05 more

Just words

Some great writing by Jeffrey Zeldman. Brief moments artfully exposed though concise, colorful stories.
Publication date: 2008-09-02 more

37signals Affiliate Program Update

Just a quick update on our new 37signals Affiliate Program. We launched it about 90 days ago and so far we’ve seen about 1000 new product signups referred by 37signals Affiliates. Basecamp leads referrals, Backpack is second and Highrise a very close third. Some people are working harder than others. The top affiliate has potential earnings of over $1300 already! If you’re an affiliate, thanks for representing our product to your clients, colleagues, friends, and family. If you’re not, please consider becoming a 37signals Affiliate today. It only takes 30 seconds to get started and there’s no cost to you.
Publication date: 2008-08-30 more

Listen to Mark on the SA Pro podcast

Our awesome systems administrator Mark Imbriaco participated in the first episode of the SA Pro podcast recently. You’ll hear Mark talk about how formal education is the only way to become a good sys admin and that Perl is better than Rails. Just kidding, but still check it out! (P.S. Mark’s using the awesome Blue Snowball mic to get that clear, Fraiser Crane sound.)
Publication date: 2008-08-30 more

The danger of laughing at your customers

The other day I went to sell some books at The Strand bookstore. They have a separate desk in the back for selling books. I brought in a bag and two clerks started sorting through them. Then another guy lined up behind me. One of the clerks said to him, “You here to sell books?” He said, “Yes.” The clerk responded, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy went outside. Thirty seconds later he was back. The clerk repeated, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy said meekly, “There is no line outside.” The clerk sighed, looked at the other clerk, and sarcastically said, “There is no line outside.” The other clerk said gruffly, “If you can’t figure out the line, then you can’t sell books here.” The potential seller walked back outside meekly. A minute later, a girl walked up with books. “Wait in the line outside,” said the clerk again. She walked outside. A few moments later, she was back. “What are you doing?” She said, “Selling books.” He said, “The line is outside.” She walked outside again. The clerks laughed. “Let’s see if the Mensa society out there can figure out how the line works!” And they laughed some more. As if both these customers were complete morons. Lucky for me, I had arrived moments before these other two. Because I sure had no idea there was a place outside to wait in line. Or that “there’s a line outside” actually means “form a line outside.” I think a lot of people who work in customer service make a similar mistake in laughing at customers or making fun of them behind their backs (PEBKAC comes to mind). It can be a dangerous trap. Sure, any one customer might be stupid. But if multiple customers are repeatedly making the same mistake, maybe it’s not a mistake on their part. Maybe it’s a mistake on your part. If no one can figure out where to wait in line, maybe that’s a sign that you’re not doing a good enough job explaining it.
Publication date: 2008-08-28 more

Product Blog update: Highrise boosts magic site, flooring company uses Backpack, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Highrise Top magic site thrives due to Highrise and Getting Real “The real crux of our system is Highrise. We use it in managing projects, production, post-production, and marketing. We use it to stay organized. We use it to manage our authorized retailer clients around the world. And we couldn’t breathe as well or sleep as well without it.” Backpack All about tags in Backpack A tag is a simple label or keyword you can use to categorize your Backpack pages any way you want. Then when you click a tag you can see all the other pages that have that tag. It
Publication date: 2008-08-28 more

Activation fees are obscene

Wanna feel ripped off today? Sign up for an online virtual service that charges a one-time activation fee. It’s a special feeling to hand over $35 for nothing. I’d almost understand if there was actual work involved. Or hardware was manually set up. Or someone had to climb some stairs and walk down a few halls to flip something on. But to charge me $35 to “activate” my account by adding a few records to a few databases, well, that feels like… You know what that feels like.
Publication date: 2008-08-28 more

Behind the scenes: Redesigning and coding the Highrise sidebar modules

I’ve wanted to redesign the Highrise sidebars for a long time. They’ve felt cluttered and messy to me, and as we add more features to Highrise the mess will only multiply. So I was glad to have the chance this week to redesign the sidebar modules. The visual side of the redesign was straightforward, but implementing the design in code required a few tricks. Here’s a look behind the scenes at the coding decisions we made for the new Highrise sidebars. “Subjects” in Highrise Which sidebar modules am I talking about? In Highrise you can keep track of People, Companies, and Cases. These all have the same basic code and UI. You can keep notes about them, set tasks for the future, and manage some common types of metadata. Since People, Companies and Cases share so much plumbing, we’ve abstracted them as subjects. A subject is anything in Highrise that you can attach notes and tasks to. When you look at a subject’s page, you see a sidebar with some modules for adding or editing metadata such as contact information, background information (a kind of static text description), dates to remember for that subject, and more. The screenshot below shows a subject page with the sidebar modules highlighted. Redesigning the modules Each module has a header like “Contact Bob” or “Dates to remember” and data below. In the original design, modules can be either “active” or “empty” based on whether they have any data in them. Empty modules have a grey header and an “add” link floated right. Active modules have a light blue header and an “edit” link on the right. We made this distinction so your eye would more easily catch active modules when you’re looking for information. The idea was good, but the original implementation looked messy with its mix of grey and blue, scattered red action links, and lack of separation between modules. For the first redesign (above) we cleaned up the modules. Active modules are now wrapped entirely in a light grey box with a tiny drop shadow. We killed the blue header style, relying instead on the space between modules to separate them. Empty modules no longer have a header. They are grey boxes collapsed down to a single link to add the content relevant to that module. Finally we replaced all the red links with grey links in order to put the focus on the data within active modules rather than all the possible actions. One last tweak: we changed the text for “About [subject’s name]” to “Add background information.” We’ve gone back and forth a number of times on the language for this feature, and at this stage we decided to try “background info” on for size again. The first redesign was a big improvement. But we didn’t like the way active and empty modules looked mixed together. The dim bar in between those two active modules creates a kind of striped look that we want to avoid. The problem was worse on subjects with more sidebar modules, like companies or cases. So we decided to group all the active modules together on the top, and then group the empty modules on the bottom. The result is much cleaner, and it’s easier to scan when you load up a subject in order to quickly grab some info like an email address or birthday. The re-ordered sidebar was a winner. But it came at a price. We couldn’t just change the CSS and call it a day. Now we also had to write code to re-order the sidebar modules dynamically based on whether they were empty or active. Ruby’s power and flexibility really came in handy for this job. The code I said earlier that people, companies, and cases are handled by the same plumbing because we abstracted them as subjects. The result of this abstraction is that whether you are looking at a person, a company or a case, the sidebar is rendered by the same template: subjects/_sidebar.rhtml. (This kind of “view polymorphism” has been subject to a lot of internal debate since we first released the app. It makes maintenance both easier and harder because the code has less repetition on one hand but on the other it is less intention-revealing due to the abstractions and indirection.) This is what the original template code looked like to render the subject sidebars: in app/views/subjects/_sidebar.rhtml: <% if @subject.is_a?(Party) %> <%= render(:partial => 'parties/contact_info') %> <% end %> <% if show_company_contact_info?(@subject) %> <%= render(:partial => 'parties/contact_info', :object => @subject.company) %> <% end %> <%= render :partial => 'backgrounds/show' %> <%= render :partial => 'contact_dates/index' %> <% if @subject.is_a?(Kase) %> <%= render :partial => 'kases/parties' %> <% end %> <% if @subject.is_a?(Company) %> <%= render :partial => 'companies/people' %> <% end %> Don’t worry too much about the individual partials and conditions. The key point is that each partial is a sidebar module, and each module is conditioned based on the particular subject we are rendering. A different mixture of partials will be rendered depending on whether the subject is a person, a company or a case, but they’ll always render in the same order. We want to re-order these partials dynamically based on whether each module is active or empty. That means we need to represent the possible partials, the conditions for displaying them, and also the conditions for determining whether they are active or empty within some kind of data structure. So we popped open our Rails subjects_helper.rb and represented this information in an array. in app/views/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_modules_to_sort returning [] do |m| # partial to render module_is_active? options render the module for this subject? m << ['parties/contact_info' , show_contact_info_module_on_top?, {} ] if @subject.is_a?(Party) m << ['parties/contact_info' , true , {:object => @subject.company} ] if show_company_contact_info?(@subject) #necessarily true per the condition at right m << ['backgrounds/show' , !@subject.background.blank? , {} ] m << ['contact_dates/index' , @contact_dates.any? , {} ] m << ['collections/parties' , @subject.parties.any? , {} ] if looking_at_collection? m << ['companies/people' , @subject.people.any? , {} ] if @subject.is_a?(Company) end end The helper method sidebar_modules_to_sort returns a parent array full of child arrays, one for each module with an element for the template path, a true/false value to show if it is active, and an options hash for the render method. The conditions that used to determine whether each partial should be rendered now determine whether each child array should be included in the parent array. Thanks to that boolean in the second element of each child array, we can partition the parent array into two groups: those where the second element which represents that the module is ‘active’ are true, and those were that element is false. We use another helper method to partition and reassemble the array into groups. in app/views/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_modules_in_order active_group, empty_group = sidebar_modules_to_sort.partition {|m| m[1]} active_group.concat empty_group end Finally we return to our sidebar template to do the actual rendering. in app/views/subjects/_sidebar.rhtml: <%= sidebar_modules_in_order.map {|m| render sidebar_module_partial(m)}.join %> This line in the template takes the sorted array of sidebar modules and replaces each element in the array with the rendered partial. Then the join method converts each element to a string and concatenates them. sidebar_module_partial is a call to one more helper. This helper assembles the arguments for render out of the elements provided in the array. It looks like this: in app/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_module_partial(m) m[2].merge({:partial => m[0]}) end In the snippet above, sidebar_module_partial takes the third element of each module array, which is either an empty hash or some special options for render, and merges a key specifying the template path onto that hash. We definitely could’ve hidden these rendering gymnastics behind a helper, perhaps called render_sidebar_modules or something similar. However we’ve decided for style reasons to avoid calling render from within our helpers. Therefore we decided to use a helper to merely fill in the arguments to the call to render within the template itself. In the end, we have a new sidebar design and some clean and intention-revealing code. This was a fun chance for me to expand my Ruby knowledge by dipping into the nuts and bolts of arrays and hashes. Thanks to Jamis for reviews and advice when I knew there had to be “a better way.” We hope you enjoy the new sidebar modules in Highrise. Related: What belongs in a helper method?
Publication date: 2008-08-28 more

Architects: 1998 called and it wants its web sites back

I’ve been poking around a lot of architects’ web sites lately and I’m thoroughly surprised at how bad they are. It seems almost without fail that they are either blowing my browser window up full size, asking me to read light grey 9px text, overflowing with obfuscatory flashterbation, teasing me with custom designed scrollbars that don’t behave as you’d expect, or asking me to evaluate their work based on postage stamp sized photographs. It really feels like 1998. I see I’m not alone in this observation. Architects have so much to gain from the web. Big huge photographs of their work, clear statements of who they are and what they believe in, easily linkable and sharable portfolio pages, daily links of interest. As it stands today, if you want to show someone an interesting piece of work you usually have to give them a step-by-step guide on how to get there: First go to the home page, wait for the countdown timer to expire, then hover over the logo, then grab a magnifying glass, then squint, then click the 4th tiny icon on the left (I can’t really tell what it is), then use that custom scrollbar that looks like an elevator, then take a screenshot, then pull that screenshot into Photoshop, then zoom in about 8 times so it’s all nice and big on your screen, then take about 10 steps back from your computer, then look. I’m only half kidding. Come on, architects, get with it! Anyone got any links to a great architect’s site that bucks this trend?
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Click here to update your life to those who you care about and receive updates from them in one flick with Plurk

Update quicker, more conveniently and more centralizedly First of all, you want to stay updated with your family, friends and other networks. Conventionally, you can use phones, emails, IMs or face-to-face to communicate. But there are 2 issues with the conventional channels: The updates are scattered through everywhere You only update significant events. How about other every little stuffs you do that matter to your beloved and make you an interesting person? One solution has come: Plurk A
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

The Kids Are iAlright

The Kids Are iAlright Posted by Kent Anderson under Education, Experimentation, Marketing, Research, Sociology, Technology, Tools, Usability
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Your data submission contains illegal characters

Slap. From Shutterfly. I had just typed the name of a project to save in a text field and pressed the
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Embedded JavaScript

Havoc, I totally agree that embeddable languages is the way to go.  I
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Design matters

Design matters August 26th, 2008 Just read an article today on how people go about finding the best deals on travel sites. One self-proclaimed road warrior says he starts with Orbitz.com, because he
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Understanding context in your New Tab

Aza Raskin and the Mozilla Labs team looks like they are having a lot of fun. They have been putting up proposals for new UIs and the latest involves a smarter new tab screen. Aza discusses how opening a blank screen doesn
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Registration Now Open- Understanding Human Information Interaction

Registration is now open for Gary Marchionini: Understanding Human Information Interaction Monday, September 15, 2008 Kotzen Center, Simmmons College, Boston, MA Understanding how people interact with information is a fundamental problem of information science. Interaction includes finding information in libraries and the WWW, consuming and evaluating what is found, and using this information to transform personal and global knowledge. Today, most human information interaction (HII) is media
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

What Desktop Applications can Learn from Web Applications

Writing web applications is hard. But it doesn't mean that web applications is a worse class of applications compared to desktop apps. With the advent of RIAs, it's important we don't accidentally throw out the good characteristics of web applications.
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

How Do We Know That? (#1: The Search Box)

It
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Another Article On e-Learning Accessibility - A Look At Various Types of Disabilities As They Impact Accessibility..

Here is another article on accessibility and design. Nothing new here, but a good article on the subject just the same........Accessibility Equals Good Design By Cheryl Johnson Excerpt: "With an increasing number of aging people remain in the workforce, the definitions of
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Client Summit Success!

A big public
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Blogging is the hardest

Yesterday, after writing my post in reply to Atul, Aza, and co., I was thinking about how much work it is to put together a post like that. You often hear people refer to blogs as a
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Search terms instead of URLs

Web addresses are horrible. They
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Something surprising

The other day I watched my four-year-old niece show exactly how conversant she is with the web. She is conversant to the degree that she can input in her own name and password into a site, and knows what the major web conventions are, and can play games with relative ease. Kinda makes you wonder what else she knows. I feel I should run u-tests with her now.
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business

Many web companies forget the cardinal rule of e-commerce: Web shoppers want as little hassle as possible. Instead of hopping in the car and driving to the store to buy a DVD, it
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

New Search Engine - the future of Search

No, I not talking about Cuil - I find it disappointing and although the format is interesting, the search results don't satisfy my needs. ReadWriteWeb identifies 3 new search engines, Viewzi, Rollyo, and SearchMe. I want to focus on the first, Viewzi, which has a great variety of interfaces to choose from: news viewweb shot view - my personal favorite to see screen shots of the results in a slide show formattimeline3D cloud viewvideo x3weatherAmazon booksrecipe?Lots of fun to explore. Is it use
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

ThanhNien Online

Following VnExpress & VTC, ThanhNien Online - currently ranking 12th in Vietnam on Alexa - has rolled out a new design. This new portal is built on Microsoft SharePoint 2007. Media is built on Microsoft Silverlight. Overall, the blue theme is more pleasant to the eyes than VnExpress is. Since content is right on the left, it is easier to zoom in than with VTC. What do you think of this design?
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

novaurora: First look usability video at the new Mint page by...

novaurora: First look usability video at the new Mint page by Patrick Sullivan Jr. Patrick did a great breakdown of the last version of the Mint site, I
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Ubiquity - Mashing the Web Naturally

Now when you hear mashing or mashups of services, you think of wacky combinations like Yahoogle or Microdigg. A web site or service that awkwardly brings two or more services together. Ubiquity, a new Firefox add-on from Mozilla wants to turn mashing on it
Publication date: 2008-08-27 more

Designing a better ballot

“How Design Can Save Democracy” is AIGA’s attempt to identify common design problems in election ballots and offer improvements. Problem (excerpt) Solution (excerpt) More details. Is it an improvement? Sure. But the real crime here is how terrible the original one is. Looks like a bunch of lawyers trying to figure out Quark. It’s tough to have much faith in your government’s ability to solve truly complicated challenges when it seems so inept at dealing with relatively simple issues. Hasn’t this been a known problem for eight years now?! It’d also be interesting to see what ballots look like in other parts of the world. Update: Julien links to this can’t miss ballot used in Quebec.
Publication date: 2008-08-26 more

37signals Live: Tuesday, August 26 at 11:00am central time

The next 37signals Live will be tomorrow, August 26th at 11am central time. The first two Live shows were general Q&As. This time we’re going to narrow down the focus to chapter 13 of Getting Real: Promotion. Generating buzz, getting press, promotion without a budget, launch, etc. Come armed with questions and we’ll fire back answers. We’ll see you tomorrow at 37signals Live!
Publication date: 2008-08-26 more

WYNTK on TBSM v4.2 Preparation: Planning for Upgrade/Migration

With Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) v4.2 planned for general availability within the next few months, I feel that it
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Website usability: optimise the experience by no asking users again for data you've already got

Clicking an online advertising banner for Nike ID recently, I noted something interesting: Nike already knew where I was and my language preference (supplied by either Google AdWords page context or Geolocation), yet they required me to take the time to give them the same information again in order to progress to their site. [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

I canna do eet

Sometimes, in my life, I come upon websites so horrible, so complicated, so unreasonably buggy, that they literally reduce me to screaming the strongest profanities I know at the monitor. Tonight we dealt with one. CarolinaPerformingArts.org you suck. Words fail to describe the hell. Suffice to say, that in order to buy tickets for 8 shows, it required 2 computers, 3 browsers, logging in 5 times, dumping the cart 3 times, 2 accounts, and 2 separate purchases. If it had not been the last sea
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Every Touch Point Matters: Optimizing Error Messages

This post is a continuation of a topic I began a few weeks back, about the cumulative impact that small, often overlooked interactions can have on the relationship between a company and their audience. Earlier I discussed Thank You pages (see Optimizing the Thank You Page). Today I
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Close-Up On Mobile Browsers & Cloud Four; How To Optimize Web Pages For Mobile

Close-Up On Mobile Browsers & Cloud Four; How To Optimize Web Pages For Mobile Author: Peggy Anne Salz Kudos to Peggy Albright for her insightful analysis of the mobile browser battle for control over our mobile Internet experiences. Email comments that have since filled the MSG inbox have provided more than valuable feedback. They confirm a growing frustration among developers with fragmentation and a lack of best practices to follow. As I have developed MSG to be a knowledge resource at th
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Google's custom 404 widget

I've just found out that Google has released a custom 404 widget. The idea is to improve the experience of 404 pages and instead of telling the user that he or she is lost, provide him with something he could really use. Google's custom 404 widget resembles other Google technology like search. All you need to do to integrate it in your website is to copy & paste an HTML snippet. Check out the Google custom 404 widget at Google Webmaster Tools. Unfortunately it's impossible to provide a
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Ask for Action

On my quest for improving my new visitors time on site I found yet another site that really asks for action. Check out this site, Round Table Insurance. On this site, the author, Ronald Belham offers free unbiased answers in regards to life insurance. The format of the site is a simple question answer type site. The problem with most sites like this is though, is that its hard to get people to ask. Well it shouldn
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

The Product Guy

[IMG reading_w_TPG_thumb5_thumb2_thumb2_t[1]] Every week I read tens of thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you. On Starting Up
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Alan Cooper

Agile programming is big now, and I know several programmers who subscribe to it. But how does usability and user experience design fit in an agile world? Many usability experts couldn
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Ambient News

As some people know, it
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Interview: Comodo Exec On Extended Validation SSL Certificates

Interview: Comodo Exec On Extended Validation SSL Certificates August 23rd, 2008 Like its SSL precursor, EV SSL certification encrypts customer inputted information and marks the page with a yellow padlock icon. Unlike SSL, this new form of certification comes with much more vetting and a bonus
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Usability on the Mobile

Das hier ist ein guter, recht langer, Artikel zum Thema Mobile Webdesign: A Three Step Guide to Usability on the Mobile Web. Designing mobile sites is a different kind of web design. Much like your first experience of designing for the desktop web, it can be both exhilarating and daunting in equal measures. So many possibilities, yet so many usability restrictions. Den Beitrag gibt es auch als PDF (1MB, 16 Seiten). TheHotStrudel The Hot Strudel Informationsarchitektur IA Informationsarchi
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Every picture tells a story

Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Liveblogging the POCC meeting on Usability

I
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Help, my earphones are entangled! Again!

Ever since my phone decided to go quiet and I became dependent on my earphones, I end up being frustrated every single time I have to attend or make a call! No matter what I do, however neatly I fold the wires, every time I take the earphones out from my pocket, they are horribly messed up, with the wires entangled into such complicated knots, that untangling them is, I
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

State Of the Art in User Experience Feedback

Here are some great ideas collected from over the web. The main theme found is being wordy and explicit in the user interface. Instead of old world tedious help files, the UI explains itself as much as possible (click on the pictures to see them in actual size). In Experts Exchange, when you sign-up, the form checks the user name as-you-type to validate that
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

[CARTOON STRIP] The WebCredibles!

The usual suspects This is a great little Webcomic devoted to informing web designers on the concepts of usability and accessiblity!
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Cool looking WPF application on dnrTV

Billy Hollis on Getting Smart with WPF I didn
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Are you focused enough with your Blog or Website?

In my last post, I was discussing about the habits of using widgets in a blog. That post has nothing to do with this post as far as topic is concerned. So why am I mentioning that post here! In that post, I was talking about staying focused with your blog or website. While developing a new website from scratch, good SEOs and marketers try to focus on a single topic or a single purpose at a time for each page. Though there might different options or possibilities, the focus should be into a sin
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

[Screens Around Town] Darden Studio, ShoeGuru, and Cymbolism

Darden Studio Even though it works like typical lightboxes, the lightbox at Darden Studio (example) feels different due to design choices the firm makes. The loading screen has custom typography centered on a black bezel: And then check how using a non-browser typeface, including the x on the upper right, and the arrows in the lower right spice up the design of the lightbox itself. ShoeGuru ShoeGuru makes shoe shopping elegant. Cymbolism Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words. You can search for a word and see what colors people associate with it. The goal is to “make it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect.” Here are the results for the word spring.
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

37signals on Github

For the unenlightened, Git is a distributed version control system that’s recently taken the software development world by storm. It’s what we use to manage all of our source code at 37signals. GitHub is an online service providing Git repository hosting and collaboration tools (we featured them recently on the Product Blog). Rails, Capistrano, and Prototype are already hosted on Github, and we’re going to be releasing some of our internal libraries and plugins there as well. Feel free to follow, fork, clone, and contribute!
Publication date: 2008-08-24 more

Cup of Fries

Here
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Mobile Browsers Makes Waves & Bitstream Makes Comeback; Are Browsers The New Application Framework?

The advance of the mobile Web and the growing popularity of Internet destinations on mobile phones give importance to the mobile browser and anticipate another impending battle for the control of the user experience.Are browsers the new application framework, as this post from GigaOm suggests? It argues - in my view, quite convincingly - that
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Maximizing Marketing Automation ROI

It's amazing how much ROI (definition:return on investment) can be achieved from the skillful placement of a single web page in the funnel of a campaign. Elena, WebMaster at Configuresoft, shares this experience with using a piece of CampaignResponder script in an event registration campaign (and only 3 weeks after the feature was released!). "The campaign was a success. Since the Campaign Response script allowed us to provide customers with a one-click registration (without filling out
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Want a Sticky Website? Here

Want a Sticky Website? Here
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Usability Guru Jakob Nielsen

There was a post recently on how
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Brightkite suggests Twitter instead of 404

I thought this was a nice usability feature of Brightkite: This happened when I followed a link from someone pointing to a Brightkite user, but turns out that user doesn't exist on Brightkite. With the abundance of social networks, it's easy to confuse users from one with another. Rather than plopping out a confusing 404 page, sites should take this next step which possibly saves the user time and misdirection. Nothing wrong with helping the user out.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

NYC

Mobile Train Schedule (mobiletrainschedule.com) is an interactive schedule for New York City's three major commuter rail lines; The Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit and Metro-North.  This isn't an official site, it seems to be an ad supported service from Actuan Mobile. The main feature is "Point to Point Train Times", a simple schedule lookup (top image), where you pick the start and end stations from dropdowns, choose the time of departure and day of the week and get a list of the nex
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

The Mojave Experiment

For those that haven
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Ask 37signals: Voting with your wallet?

Bret asks: I often see people on forums telling complainers to shut up with the “vote with your wallet” line. How does 37signals feel on the matter? Is it better to have a vocal customer who’s willing to stick with the product despite a perceived shortcoming or would you prefer that such a customer move on? The first thing I’d say is this: It’s tough to be 100% happy with anything. Sacrifices rule the day — each person needs to figure out where their limits are. So if it’s one thing that’s really bothering someone, maybe they can find a way to adapt (or we can find a way to improve). But if it’s one thing after another, maybe that product just isn’t a good fit for that customer. The second thing I’d say is this: You can learn a lot from a vocal customer. Even customers who continually bash your company or your product have value. So the goal shouldn’t be silencing them, it should be listening to them. You don’t have to do anything they say, but being aware of what they’re saying can give you insight into a perspective that you may otherwise not have had. We hope you’re happy here What’s most important to us is that people who use our products are happy using our products. If someone is unhappy with our products, we’d love to hear why. Maybe we can make them happy. But maybe we can’t — that’s certainly possible too. So if we don’t think we’ll be able to make them happy, and they’ve found another product that makes them happier, we encourage them to use the other product. Sometimes we’ll even recommend an alternative if we can. Don’t fight a losing battle At a certain point there’s no sense in trying to make someone happy who you can’t keep happy, and there’s no sense in someone suffering endlessly when they constantly run into things that don’t work for them. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. Luckily there are a lot of choices, different approaches, and alternatives out there. Choice is on the side of the consumer. Be honest up front This sometimes comes up in pre-sales emails. People will ask us why our product is better than this or that product. We may riff on the fundamental advantage of simple, focused tools like ours, but then we’ll say something like: “There’s really no way for us to tell you what’s best for you. We encourage you to try all the products you’re considering. That’s the only way you’ll ever know for sure which product feels right. We hope it’s our product, but if it’s not we understand.” Some salespeople may say that’s a terrible strategy, but we prefer to give the most realistic answer, not the “obviously we’re the best no matter what” answer. Because in the end, what feels right is what works best. Comparing products by comparing features isn’t really an effective way of making a decision. You have to compare the experience and you can only compare the experience by trying the products. So yes and no So, yes, I do encourage people to vote with their wallet, but at the same time I don’t encourage companies to chase all wallets either. Every wallet isn’t going to be a good fit in your pocket.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Forbes misses the point of the 4-day work week

There’s a piece in Forbes called Why A Four-Day Work Week Doesn’t Work that suggests: But there are serious drawbacks. Packing 40 hours into four days isn’t necessarily an efficient way to work. Many people find that eight hours are tough enough; requiring them to stay for an extra two could cause morale and productivity to decrease. As for saving on the cost of commuting, it likely isn’t true. The article is right: More hours in fewer days is not an efficient way to work. That’s why this article misses the point. The point of the 4-day work week is about doing less work. It’s not about 4 10-hour days for the magical 40-hour work week. It’s about 4 normalish 8-hour days for the new and improved 32-hour work week. The numbers are just used to illustrate a point. Results, not hours, are what matter, but working longer hours doesn’t translate to better results. The law of diminishing returns kicks in quick when you’re overworked. Besides, very few people work even 8 hours a day. You’re lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeates typical work day. Fewer official working hours help squeeze the fat out of the typical work week. Once everyone has less time to get their stuff done, they respect that time even more. People become stingy with their time and that’s a good thing. They don’t waste it on things that just don’t matter. When you have fewer hours you usually spend them more wisely. So don’t think 4 days means cramming the same amount of time a shorter week. Longer days isn’t the goal. Think 4 days means a shorter week with less time to get things done. And that’s actually what you want.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Introducing our new designer: Jamie Dihiansan

After wading through over 500 applications, meeting some great people, discovering some serious talent, and evaluating people on a variety of levels, we can finally announce our new designer. He’s Jamie Dihiansan. Who’s Jamie? First off, Jamie is a great guy. Kind, generous, curious, honest. We all get along well. He’s a good cultural fit. Without that nothing else matters. He’s also local which will be handy. I’ve actually tried to hire Jamie a couple times before. Once about nine years ago when we first started 37signals (he didn’t want to leave the cushy confines of Big Agency life at Organic) and once a few years ago (we couldn’t afford him). This time the stars aligned. For the past 7 years Jamie has been working at Crate & Barrel Online. First as a senior designer, later moving to the Senior Art Director role. He’s well steeped in designs that sell, clear communication, and understanding consumer behavior. Why did we pick Jamie? Part of the hiring process involved asking the leading candidates to redesign the Backpack home page in one week with no direction (we paid them for their time). We really liked Jamie’s take on it. It was the biggest departure from how we design our marketing sites today. It introduced some elements that we were hoping to see and surprised us with things we hadn’t thought of before. Down the road we plan on sharing all the designs submitted by the leading candidates. We also picked Jamie because of his background, his artistic abilities (as much as I don’t like graffiti, I can see the art in Jamie’s work back in the day), and his approach to problem solving through design. He’s a clear thinker and an objective player. Good icon designer too. We liked all of those things. We’re really excited Jamie starts in September. We’re really excited to see his influence seep into our marketing sites and product UIs. The first major project will be reviewing our existing marketing/public sites and working on a universal redesign. So, everyone say hi to Jamie Dihiansan!
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Small Redux

American Bungalow magazine (my current favorite periodical) has republished my post on their article “Bringing Back Stinesville.” Since reading that article and posting about it here, I’ve visited Stinesville, and even started on a quest to buy a historic property in my hometown of Placerville, CA. I’m far, far away from ever being able to buy a home of my own there, but it’s become a goal I’m tacking to the top of my list. Being the change you want to see goes far beyond politics and societal pressures, it starts with our consumption and our landscape and our luxuries. The folks at American Bungalow were also kind enough to send over a PDF of the article for everyone to read. (Although you should still pick up your own copy!) Find it at Whole Foods or a Borders near you.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

UI Sighting: Clear over clever on MobileMe

I just noticed Apple changed the logout feature in the MobileMe app UI. It used to be a power button icon. Now it just says “logout.” Another triumph of clarity over cleverness.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Profanity works

I’m a big fan of swearing. Not in the derogatory, directed-at-you kind of way (“hey, fuck you!”), but as verbal marker to underline key concepts, create emphasis, and express passion. It certainly doesn’t work in every environment nor should it, but there are plenty were it does. The first place where I’ve found it to be useful is between coworkers (“fuck, that’s awesome”). A team of British researchers found a while ago that profanity at work can help build solidarity and release stress. Couldn’t agree more. When people feel comfortable enough to let their emotions bare with the use of profanity, I’ve found the resulting atmosphere to be so much more relaxed and pleasurable. It’s not the profanity itself (although I adore “fuck” as one of the most versatile words in the English language), but what it says about the knitting of the culture. The second place I’ve used profanity to great effect is at conferences where you feel you know the audience enough to loosen your tie and want to create a mental dog ear for an idea. Of all the presentations I’ve given, I’ve generally had the most positive feedback from the ones that carried enough passion to warrant profanity and it’s been very effective in making people remember key ideas (“they sell fucking shoes”). It seems that profanity can work as a record button for the brain. It brings people to the edge of their attention as they’re trying to figure out whether they’re supposed to be offended or inspired. And then the content warrants the emphasis, the idea seems to stick better and longer and with more affection. As with any tool, it can certainly be misused and applied to the wrong audience. But you can cut yourself with a great steak knife too. Use profanity with care and in the right context and it can be fucking amazing.
Publication date: 2008-08-21 more

Trust customers over VCs

Venture capitalists are glorified gamblers in the Ace-from-Casino sense of the word. They try their best to collect intel on the players, but ultimately still just place bets. Bets that usually fail more often than they succeed. It’s the 1-in-10 blowout payoff that makes sure the piano keeps playing for them while the tune goes mum for the rest of their bets. Those are potentially good-enough odds for a VC to make a decent return for their investors. Lots of VC’s can’t even pass that bar, though, and end up net-negative for their backers. But let’s just take the guys who do make it. What’s their seal of approval worth? According to Adam from Heroku, it’s much more valuable to get the peg from these gamblers than actually having sales in the shop: When you’re doing your own thing, you have very little feedback on whether your path makes sense. You’ve got users/customers, sure. But for any random thing you might build, you’ll always be able to find some weirdos that want it, and maybe are even willing to pay for it. Whether those people represent the vanguard of a sustainable customer base, or whether they are a niche too tiny to build a real business on, is impossible to tell early on. But convincing investors of the viability of your idea – enough to place a monetary wager on it – provides early confirmation that you’re on a viable path. It may even provide some course-corrective feedback. This is why VC-backed companies tend to get more respect than non, all other things being equal. A firm whose sole purpose is predicting technology trends believes that there is a reasonable chance that this company’s product will be the next big thing. It’s funny, I have the exact opposite take from the same indicators. Real customers who use their own money to pay for your products seem like a much better, much more real confirmation that you’re doing something right than getting pegged by a VC using other people’s money to fish for 1-in-10 chances of a monster trout. To me, convincing a VC to give you money only confirms that they think your outfit is capable of having a long shot of making a big sale down the line. And that they can dilute you successfully enough that they’ll get the lion’s share of the spoils. As a confirmation of a real business? Meh. Separate users from customers to determine success I think the confusion comes from how callously users and customers are conflated. I absolutely agree that if you’re just giving away your shit for free, then interest is only an indirect indicator for possible success at best. Who knows if these freeloaders can actually be made to turn a profit? Better take the money upfront and run for the exit before you have to find out! But if you stop thinking so much about users (or eyeballs if we’re talking early 2000s) and start focusing on customers, the game opens up. Real customers not only confirm directly that you have a compelling product (rather than the by-proxy way of a VC), they also help fund your operation from the get-go. You don’t need outside bets to launch a web business Most web startups don’t have high costs outside of labor that can’t be linked at least linearly (and preferably better than that!) to the growth in customers. If you need lots of servers, it’s presumably because lots of people like your product and if you’re treating your users as customers, that means you’ll be having plenty of dough to bake a profitable cake. All that being said, it’s certainly possible that being on the receiving end of a VC bet can lead you to the jackpot. The wheels in Vegas wouldn’t keep turning if some people didn’t see a big bucks ringing of cha-ching sometimes. So if the idea of trusting VCs over customers appeals to you, just roll your dice and hope you don’t roll seven!
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

On the cover: Adrian Holovaty and Everyblock

Fellow Chicagoan, great programmer/journalist, creator of the Django framework, talented guitarist, and genuinely nice guy Adrian Holovaty and his Everyblock hyperlocal news and information site grace the cover of this Sunday’s Chicago Tribune Magazine. Adrian, his site, and his crew deserve all the ink they can get.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Domenico DeMarco and pizza as art

The pizza at Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn is amazing (among the best in NYC). Owner Domenico DeMarco has run the place for over 40 years and makes each pie by hand. The place is a restaurant consultant’s nightmare though: The wait for food is over an hour. Sometimes two. You can’t call up and order a pie either. You have to do it in person. Ask how long your order will take and you get a shrug. There’s a permanent line all the way out the door yet the only person allowed to touch the pizzas is DeMarco. He grows his own spices on the windowsill and cuts the basil right onto the pies with a pair of shears. Prices are double what other neighborhood pizzerias charge: A regular pie costs $20. A slice costs $5 (but you can only get one of those when DeMarco feels like it). Also, the place is a mess. No one wipes the tables after meals. Stacks of used bottles line the walls. Smoke from the ovens clogs the whole room. I’m sure if you asked restaurant business experts, they’d say he should take phone orders and reservations. He should expand to a bigger location and hire others to work with him in the kitchen. He should clean the place up and buy some nicer tables. But it’s pretty clear that DeMarco doesn’t give a shit. The freedom of small businesses DeMarco doesn’t care about experts, franchising, or expansion because he doesn’t have to. That’s what you can do when you run your own small business. You can stay small. You can create your own thing and keep it the way you want it. You can take pride in what you’re creating and oversee everything that comes out of your oven. If people don’t like the wait, they can go somewhere else. If they don’t want to pay extra for the ingredients you grow yourself or import from Italy, that’s fine. You can be a perfectionist and take as long as you want. And the customers that care about what you care about will flock to you. The reward: You get to satisfy customers and make money. But beyond that, you get to love what you do. Your work doesn’t feel like a job. It feels like art. You get to feel passion. Instead of counting the days to retirement, you keep working. Because you’re already doing what you love. “There
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Compass Bank and Backpack

Compass Bank is currently running a special promotion that gives you 3 months free of Backpack Plus (normally $49/month) when you open a new Compass Business checking account. If you’re interested in offering Backpack (or Basecamp or Highrise) to your customers or members as a value-add, please email me direct at jason@37signals dot com.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Recent jobs posted to the Job Board: Obama for America, Apple, Best Buy, Zillow, Rockstar Games, etc.

Design Jobs Obama for America is looking for a Web Designer/Developer in Chicago, IL. Apple Inc. is looking for a UI Engineer in Cupertino, CA. Best Buy Co., Inc. is looking for a Front End Web Developer in Richfield, MN. Crain Communications is looking for an Interactive Designer in New York, NY. Zillow.com is looking for a UX Designer in Seattle, WA. TripAdvisor is looking for Web Developer in Boston, MA. Flirtomatic is looking for a Interaction designer/architect in Soho, London. HUGE is looking for a Art Director in Brooklyn, NY. Business.com is looking for an Web Designer in Santa Monica, CA. Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board. Programming/Tech Jobs Brandissimo is looking for a Senior Web Developer / Internet Jedi in Los Angeles. Teehan+Lax is looking for a Senior Front-End Developer in Toronto, Canada. Janus Health, Inc. is looking for a Web Developer Extraordinaire in San Diego, CA. Serious Business is looking for a Rails Engineer located in San Francisco, CA. OHSU is looking for a Web Applications Developer in Portland, Oregon. Leapfrog Online is looking for a Ruby/Rails Software Engineer in Evanston, IL. Rockstar Games is looking for a Web Developer in New York. Auditude is looking for a Front-end Web Engineer in Palo Alto, CA. Polar News Company is looking for a Front-end Developer in Soho, New York City. Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board. More jobs! The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Product Blog update: Litmus and Basecamp, bulk mailing lists in Highrise, Less Accounting integration, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp [Case Study] Marketing firm BKWLD loves Basecamp because it’s “intuitive, easy to use, and easy on the eyes” “Private messages and to-do lists were a godsend for one client. This was a particularly challenging project for an extremely difficult client. Private messaging in Basecamp gives us control of our client’s perception of their project, while still allowing us to be explicit with its nitty-gritty parts all in one convenient place. Sometimes the work gets a little ugly, but keeping a professional facade is extremely important to some clients. Basecamp accommodates this nicely.” BKWLD’s Dashboard. How Blutique uses Litmus and Basecamp to deliver page and test results to clients Silas Peterson of Blutique, an interactive consultancy located in New Orleans, Louisiana, writes in to tell us about how his team uses LitmusApp inside of Basecamp to deliver page and email platform test results to their clients. Litmus and Basecamp. Backpack “Backpack has changed my life” “I’m able to use this extremely affordable system to manage small projects, allow people to collaborate, image files, create lists, assign tasks, edit and share calendars and more…I think this is an excellent solution for small companies and start ups.” Highrise How do I build a bulk mailing list in Highrise? You can do this by giving each contact you want on the mailing list the same tag and then exporting the list…Click the “Tags” tab and click that specific tag to bring up all contacts on your list. Then click the “Export” link in the sidebar. Choose the format you want and save the list. You can then import this list into the application that you use to send group emails, create mailing labels, etc. Multiple products Less Accounting, more Basecamp and Highrise “Accounting sucks. Less Everything makes it suck less. Our flagship product, LessAccounting.com was built with ease-of-use at the core of the accounting software, which caters to small businesses and freelancers. The app just got even better by integrating with Basecamp and Highrise to make importing contacts ridiculously simple.” Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Oz-IA, only a month away

Now in its third year, the Oz-IA conference 20-21 September 2008 is a weekend full of insight, ideas and camaraderie for information architects, usability specialists, content developers, web and application developers, and others with an interest in design, human factors, search, Web2.0 and related topics. Plus it
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Conversion: Seven Variables That Affect Sales

Most online merchants want to increase sales, grow their business and increase profits, but few know the secrets to doing so. For many merchants, the dollar amount of a sale is the only metric they track. But successful merchants track many more variables than just sales. Here are seven such variables, in fact, that directly affect revenue and profits. Merchants should carefully monitor these with their web analytics software. Rank. Your rank is how well your site is positioned on search engine
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Agile Development in Training

Many firms are giving Agile Development a go, and it
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Learn How To Develop For The iPhone

I'm going to show you how to build an alternate page and style sheet for the iPhone and iTouch. We will cover how to detect if the user is using an iPhone to view your page as well as the orientation of the device - whether it be landscape or portrait.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

3 More Ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate

Conversion rates can be improved through a variety of factors including copywriting. Following are three more ways to improve your conversion rate. Method #1: Usability of your website. This is highly overlooked. This is how user friendly your website is when your visitors view it. Too many websites have error messages and are confusing or cumbersome. People will abandon your shopping cart or website if they can
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Factories, Builders and Fluent Interfaces

Last week I started working on very short proof of concept with a team that I am currently coaching at a short term insurance company. We hit a very common design decision: when do we use a factory pattern and when do we use a builder pattern.
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

New SSL policy in Firefox hurting tens of thousands of sites

With Firefox 3, Mozilla has changed the way Firefox handles SSL certificates. This change could scare away visitors from tens of thousands of websites that have expired or self-signed SSL certificates. If you visit a website with either an expired or a self-signed SSL certificate, Firefox 3 will not show that page at all. Instead it will display an error message, similar to any other browser error (for example a
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Windows based programmers... Stop hating CLIs (Command Line Interfaces)

If you are a unix/linux lover, this article may not be of interest to you, because you should be knowing the power of CLIs in *nix operating systems. But, for a windows programmer CLIs are kind of a derogatory thing. They usually have the perception that, "If you don't have a nice looking, user-friendly GUI, then it's not for me".
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

The Super Essential Ultimate Unofficial MySpace Toolbar

How is that for a Firefox add-on name? Alright, truth be told I might have added a little to it. The toolbar
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Charting from Zignals

Zignals is a rather new site that I came across recently. They provide charting and alerts services for individuals looking to analyze stock price movement. One of their supposed highlights is their interactive charting
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Bad usability

Stupid developers. Why did they put Username there instead of Email?
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Consider the deaf

Yes, that's a lowercase deaf, as the Deaf community uses in relation to it's 'members.' The online user experience for a deaf person is sometimes sidetracked and simplified by developers. The status quo says to put captioning on videos and audio files need transcriptions. But to a deaf person, these devices can be less than desirable as an alternative vehicle for communication with the hearing impaired, as chronicled by Lisa Herrod in her article: Deafness and the User Experience. Herrod inclu
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Web design for different monitors

Having been a Mac user for slightly more than a year, and working on several different monitors with quite different specs has opened my eyes to the absolute necessity to test your design on a variety of monitors before rolling it out (leaving aside the challenges posed by designing for mobile web devices). I
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

CBA Conflicts Report

Well Saturday saw the unveiling of the Canadian Bar Association Task Force Report on Conflict of Interest which was adopted virtually unanimously by Council on Sunday morning. While implementation of the reforms will be up to the Law Societies, and the acceptability of our analysis awaits the judgment
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Photos from An Event Apart San Francisco

19 August 2008 9 am eastern Photos from An Event Apart San Francisco Take a dip in the Flickr photo pool from An Event Apart San Francisco 2008. Day Two is about to begin. Tags: aeasf08, aneventapart, webdesign, conference, sanfrancisco Filed under: A List Apart, An Event Apart, CSS, Code, Design, Happy Cog
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

A Flaw in Apple

John Gruber nails it: Apple
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Don't Label Me

I hate labels. More specifically, I hate people looking at me and deciding what I can or can't do based on what they believe someone with that label can do. Like it or not, though, labels are powerful, and we'd best acknowledge the benefits of getting them right and the drawbacks of getting them wrong. The importance of labels Either explicitly or implicitly, labels guide us. They give us directions. They help us make decisions. They keep us from making mistakes. They help us define our bo
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

New Android SDK finally given to developers

New Android SDK finally given to developers Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:56 pm Categories: Google Phone, Usability Tags: Developer, SDK, Garett Rogers It
Publication date: 2008-08-20 more

Disolving Usability Problems

A lot of usability work focuses on solving interface problems, making it easier for users to achieve a certain outcome or complete a task. This can involve user observations, iterative design changes, traffic analysis and other tools in pursuit of improvement. It is often not cheap in terms of time and effort, let alone when outside help is brought in. A solved usability problem is one where both the user and the publisher get precisely what they want from the interaction. The user has an eff
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Merchant 404 Pages - Get Creative and Increase sales

Time and time again I come across pages on online retailers (merchants) websites where the product has been removed, these pages often appear in search engines, and links to them appear on other websites and in product feeds. The point of this article is the quality of the page that visitors are met with, how many times have you come across this scenario? 404 Page not found The page you requested cannot be found on the server Basically its an invite to the user to hit the back button and
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

What do we want from our judges? To be the

Michael Kirby, Mr. Justice Kirby of the High Court is known to love the limelight and he doubtless was tickled when the latest issue of Australian Business described him as the Rock star of the bench. In a wide ranging account drawn from a speech to university students he talked about the organization of judgments:
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Neat Windows Tip: No To All

Yes To All This Windows dialog box offers buttons for
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

iCal Events

I love attention to detail and progressive disclosure, especially in interface design. I was amazed to see that Mac OS X
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Named anchor doesn't work

Hello everyone, I was a little embarrassed today as I was presenting my portfolio to a potential client I took him a site I created which contains a named anchor. When I pressed it it didn't go "back to top"; it stayed put. After further investigation it furns out that it works in IE but not in Firefox. I have FF2 on my laptop since it's an older P3, and I have FF3 on my desktop. It doesn't work in either version. If I go to IE, however, it takes "back to top". Any reason why? Here is the
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Straits Times New Look

After the experience gained from the navigation menu fiasco of ST701, I expected the people at SPH could do better with the Straits Times new look. Today, by accident, I read SimplyJean
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

When is it okay to lose browsability?

One of the things I struggled with in the redesign
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Business To Buttons Conference: Presentations Online

The organizers of the 2008 From Business To Buttons conference have put video recordings of a considerable number of presentations online, including Donald Norman's 'Cautious Cars and Cantankerous Kitchens' and Patrick Jordan's 'Four Pleasures'. They also provide the opportunity to download the slides of even more presentations. This must be one of the best post-conference sites I have ever seen. [Found through: The Hot Strudel]
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk from wine Library

This is an interview I taped between Wanda Loskot and Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library. There is some background noise but the content is really good.
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

How these Firefox 3-compatible addons save me one hour per day

I
Publication date: 2008-08-18 more

Ten ways OS X rocks

Smashing Magazine does a good old-fashioned
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Build a Killer Online Portfolio in 9 Easy Steps

Every freelancer should have an online portfolio. You
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Deafness and the User Experience

Deafness and the User Experience An excellent article by Lisa Herrod on A LIst Apart, which discusses the challenges and provides some solutions for delivering better user experiences for the Deaf. -M
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Web Design Mistakes

http://e-consultancy.com/publications/ Dr Dave Chaffey, author of E-consultancy
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

7 Sources for UI-Patters

When I
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Designing Information Dashboards

Information Dashboards could be defined as the interface for information systems, for example, displaying quality control measurments and the result of procesess. Here I am talking about the dashboards displayed on computer monitors, but keep in mind that dashboards could also be mechanical.
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Clicktale

Clicktale seems like it
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Why is Web Accessibility important?

There are over 10 million people with disabilities in the UK with an estimated annual spending power of
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Do you need a blogging platform? Do you only need a blogging platform?

I was reading this post on the definition of a blog and it got me thinking of a conversation that I have with many of my clients. Often companies that are interested in replacing their content management systems have resorted to an intermediate solution of side-stepping their difficult to use, rigid web content management system by using a blogging platform to power a section of their site. They are attracted to the immediacy and ease of use of the blogging platform and conclude that they lo
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

8 Mistakes in Usability

I can't take credit for this post, but I found it very useful and interesting nevertheless. The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it) When companies create products, especially technology products, the intentions are well placed but often fall short of being useful. The reason they fail is some companies don't do the right amount or the right kind of research in the early stages of design and development. The things that stood out to me in the linked post are the
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #59: Situated Learning

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Situated Learning". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Ce
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

The new London crime mapping website

The Metropolitan Police Authority has released a beta version of their new Crime Mapping application, showing the generalised level of crime (burglary, robbery and vehicle) for Lower-level Super Output Areas (LSOAs). The application uses generalised boundaries of LSOAs , and use a clear classification of the level of crime. Interestingly, the Show Us a Better Way website includes several suggestions for crime mapping
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Microsoft doesn

Microsoft doesn
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

40 CSS Web Form Style Tutorials For Web Developers

When developing a project it's important to have a good form input structure throughout, most commonly used forms will tend to be Login, Register and user Profiles. If you have taken the time to develop a custom template for your project more often than not the default appearance of forms you have created are not ideally suited to you designs overall look and feel. We have gathered together a great list of tutorials that should have your new forms looking great or breath life into your existing
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

A Conference Apart - where Dean gets to meet Zeldman, Meyer & Fried!

You bet I
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

How to Vote for The Best Little SxSW Panel in Texas

1. Go to this page. 2. Sign in or create an account. 3. Look for this: 4. Click on the star on the right. 5. Attend SxSW to attend The Best Little SxSW Panel in Texas. What Smart People are Saying: Alan Wolk - "'Your Brand Is Not My Friend' is all about the critical mistake too many brands make when entering the social media space. They assume that every brand has the following of a Nike or an Apple. But those two brands, and no more than a dozen others, are 'Prom King Brands' who h
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

The Future of the Internet?

The Future of the Internet? In a post the other day at the International Industrial SEO blog, I mentioned that in South Korea, home internet connection speeds of 20mbps are the norm, and 100mbps is possible in newer developments.  When watching the Olympics last night, I saw a commercial for a new fiber optic internet service, finally bringing speeds of up to 20mpbs to homes in the US.  Of course, this isn
Publication date: 2008-08-17 more

Gearheads don't get it

Years ago I read a book about guitar effects pedals. Something the author wrote in the intro stuck with me: “Tone is in your fingers.” He went on to explain: You can buy the same guitar, effects pedals, and amplifier that Eddie Van Halen uses. But when you play that rig, it’s still going to sound like you. Likewise, Eddie could plug into a crappy Strat/Pignose setup at a pawn shop and you’d still be able to recognize that it’s Eddie Van Halen playing. Sure, fancy gear can help. But the truth is that your tone comes from you. I often think of this story when people fixate on gear over content. You know the type: Wannabe designers who want an avalanche of fancy typefaces and Photoshop filters but don’t have anything to say. Amateur photographers who want to debate film vs. digital instead of what actually makes for a great photo. Startup folks that worry more about software and scaling issues then how to actually get customers and make money. They all miss the point. Aspiring podcasters consantly ask Gary V about the tools he uses. He responds: It’s not the camera that I use, it’s not the blogging software, it’s not the widgets, it’s not the SEO. It’s the two C’s: content and community…There are so many crap podcasts out there with billion dollar cameras and editing tools for days. It’s about giving from your heart with content you really understand and, more importantly, giving back to the community that supports your show. Figure out what you have to say that’s interesting and then unleash it. Use whatever tools you’ve got already or what you can afford cheaply. Then go. It’s not the gear that matters. It’s you and your ideas that matter. Tone is in your fingers.
Publication date: 2008-08-15 more

Sivers/Ferriss interview that will make you think

CD Baby founder Derek Sivers interviews Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. Fascinating stuff. Below are some of the most interesting Ferriss bits from the interview. Why you shouldn’t view changes as permanent: So what would happen if you eliminated this? Let
Publication date: 2008-08-15 more

Big companies are where small companies go to die

Farhad Manjoo (who wrote a cover story on 37signals for Salon.com a few years back) is now writing for Slate. This time he wonders about the Google Black Hole. Farhad plays “Where Are They Now?” with some of Google’s recent higher-profile tech acquisitions. He focuses on mojo-heavy companies and products like Jaiku, Jotspot (Sites), Dodgeball, Measure Map, and Grand Central. Some of these died, some of these slowed down, some of them were still not open for new customers a year after the acquisition. Some people are wondering if Feedburner (Google), Upcoming (Yahoo), and Delicious (Yahoo) might belong on this list. The astute Dare Obasanjo wrote about this phenomenon in detail a few days ago. His Application Rewrites after Acquisitions: How Large Software Companies Destroy Startup Value article is well worth a read. Of course there have been success stories. Innovation at big companies often comes from the small companies and teams they swallow whole. But with the odds of a big-co buyout nearing lottery proportions, a good chance of neglect awaiting your product on the other side, and a “I can’t wait until my employment contract is up,” feeling lingering your every work day, I hope entrepreneurs think twice about building to flip. Related: David’s The secret to making money online talk at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2008.
Publication date: 2008-08-15 more

Beautiful disassembled appliances

An electric knife: A juicer: An iron: More disassembled appliances in this Flickr set.
Publication date: 2008-08-15 more

What I

You may have noticed that this blog has gone pretty quiet over the past few months. This is because that
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Can Flash Websites Now Be Optimized For Search Engines?

By: Dale Knauss, Show Producer On June 30th, 2008 Google announced that Flash websites, a previously taboo subject among Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals, could now be easily indexed and ranked by Google
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Work-flow-like e-Learning Systems Support Double-loop Learning..

Bridging the Gap between Instructional Design and Double Loop Learning By Howard Spoelstra, Maristella Matera, Ellen Rusman, Jan van Bruggen, and Rob Koper Abstract: "The implementation of double loop learning based educational scenarios in instructional designs in workflow-like e-learning systems appears to be showing a gap; whereas the former assumes that processes can be reflected upon and can be modified or amended by the learners, the latter only predefines a limited set of rigid instr
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Better tactile feedback for touchscreen devices.

I
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

DCamp Bangalore rocked again(part 2)

Contd from here (I am sorry but I am really drowning in work right now ) Ok after lunch it was time for another round of sessions. This time there were supposed to be some parallel session. This meant you win some, you loose some. But its fine with barcamps. To make sure people are awake, alive and kicking, Anil, COO, Aditi Technologies, dumped his usual upper level management fundas and let loose a volley of Shayaris, with a twist. I sorry I dont recall any(Ya its been a long time too )
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Saving Money on Improving Your Blog Design by Reading Skellies

This post is my interpretation of Skellies ebook, The Simple web. Click this link to learn more. People oft try to cram as much information into the sidebars as possible. They assume the reader will only stay on the main page thus try to add as much
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Standards-based corporate web development

My last project for my previous employers has gone live so here
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Why cant I add this page/pic to my website?

Hello I hope this is the right forum - if not, please advise. I am trying to create a simple website to get donations to send people to help out those that are still suffering from Hurricane Katrina. The document we are using is attached. I am particularly interested in the box with the pics. We would like to use the whole thing the way it is even if it has to be pieced together. There will be a paypal button at the bottom, and I would like to know where I can find a meter or something tha
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

I just watched an ad before an ad

I know TV is all about advertising, and what with DVRs all the rage these days, TV studios are scrambling to figure out how to make money. Hulu.com seems to be getting it right, with totally unobtrusive ads that don
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Great Service Shoutout: Blurb, Nielsen Norman Group

Complaints are too easy - I have to blog raves as well as rants. I
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Reviews of the Pownce app on the iPhone app store on Flickr

Reviews of the Pownce app on the iPhone app store on Flickr. I had to stitch together a screenshot because you can
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Free Insider Knowledge from Yahoo!

I have expressed my concern with Yahoo's Search Marketing platform more than once but this time, I have to send some praise over to Yahoo's Developers' Center. If you are a web developer (or a website conversion specialist or even just want to create a stronger customer experience so you'll ideally make more money) you have to visit: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns. This incredible resource is available for free and it spreads open the gates to Yahoo's vast, time-tested knowledge of user e
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Table of Contents: Creative and Beautiful Examples

Smashing Magazine published an article, Table of Contents: Creative and Beautiful Examples, with a gallery of TOC images from various publication. Great images and examples of how creative you can be when creating table of contents! Unfortunately, I
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Is open source really unusable?

Randall Kennedy
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

WPtouch: WordPress theme for iPhone

I
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Ten Best Application UIs of 2008

Ten Best Application UIs of 2008 Year
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Mobile Web Usability - Font Size

If you use an advanced full-web browser like S60WebKit or Opera Mobile you have probably noticed that text size varies widely from site to site. It's not unusual to encounter sites where the text is quite hard to read when the browser is set to it's default zoom level. A good example is the NBC Olympics site (top image). The text in the screenshot is probably readable if you are viewing this on a PC, but try using your browser's zoom function to re-size the image to the N95's 2.6 inch (7.5 cm)
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Flickr and the iPhone

According to Flickr Camera Finder, the iPhone is the most popular cameraphone users use to post photos to their Flickr accounts. Not that a surprise given the iPhone
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Transit sites: Go mobile, please!

If ANY web site should have a mobile-friendly layout that automatically loads when accessed by a mobile device, it
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Root @ 37S license plate

Mark’s new license plate! Who knew you could get an @ sign on a license plate?
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Olympic Inspiration

How’s this for tenacity? John Dane is 58 years old and has been trying out for the Olympic sailing team for 40 years. He finally made it this year with his son-in-law, Austin Sperry. Dane missed qualifying for the Olympics 4 separate times, each by a few minutes. He didn’t give up after each loss, he just improved his sailing skills. It would have been too easy to give up after losing one or two qualifying races. John Dane took the more difficult route and persevered. You can watch him sail with his son-in-law to hopeful victory August 15-20. (Here’s a fun video of their team practicing.)
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

The next 37signals Live: Wednesday, August 13 at 11:00am central

We had a blast last week answering Q&A for about an hour during the first 37signals Live session. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Thanks to all 1000+ people who stopped by to watch or participate. Next Show: Wednesday, August 13 at 11:00am central time We’re ready for the second show. Down the road we’re going to do more focused Q&As around specific topics, but we want to do another round of general Q&A this time. So please join us at http://www.37signals.com/live at 11am central on Wednesday, August 13th. We’re going for the morning so more of Europe can join us. We’re excited to see you there! 37signals Live: New and improved We got a lot of feedback during and after the last show. We’ve taken some of this feedback and made some improvements. There were a few issues with the first show: Spammers cluttered the chat window. The chat flew by so fast that we missed a lot of questions. The chat itself was distracting. We thought a lot about how to resolve these issues. We liked the spontaneity of real-time question asking via chat, but the spamming and general noise hurt that experience. A lot of people suggested an option to pre-submit questions. We could even have digg-style voting to move questions up or down on the list. This sounded like a good solution on the surface, but if we just had a list of questions ahead of time it would kill the “live” part of 37signals Live. Questions in advance kill spontaneity. It kills the magic. We might as well just record the answers on video ahead of time and play the video later. What you’ll see: Video & question submission Here’s what the new on-air screen looks like: Live video on the left. No more chat, but question submission on the right. Enter your name, location, and your question. A few of the questions we recently answered will be listed below. What we’ll see: Review, approve (or reject), and answer Behind the scenes we’ll see: On the left we have the approved queue. On the right we have the incoming queue. As questions come in, someone else from 37signals (generally Matt) can approve, reject, or edit (fix misspellings, edit so it’s easier to read, etc.) the question. We can also ban the questioner if they’re just spamming. We’ll approve just about anything as long as it’s above the waist. Once a question is approved it shoots over to the left side in big type so we can see it on a second screen positioned at the other side of the desk. After we answer a question on the left we just click it and it turns dark grey and moves to the bottom of the screen so it’s out of the way. Excited to give it a go We’re pumped to give the new system a go. We hope you’ll join us at 11am central on Wednesday, August 13th at http://www.37signals.com/live.
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Product Blog update: Zendesk integration, graph Campfire usage, Periscope, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: 37signals suite Zendesk integrates with Highrise and Campfire “You can now lookup customer information in your Highrise CRM application directly from a Zendesk support ticket. Say you receive a support ticket from a Michael Johnson. This may be the first time Michael has contacted your help desk, but if he is a customer of yours you probably have some information on him in your CRM system already. With this new integration you can populate the ticket page with that information.” Branding agency uses 37signals tools to stay small and stay connected “The benefits are that they allow us to manage our clients and their work, and our time and our
Publication date: 2008-08-13 more

Review: Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski

The primary goal of any web form, says Wroblewski, is
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

Design Patterns - State Pattern

It's been a while again, but it's time for another pattern. Today we'll look at the State Pattern. First of all, the definition: "Allow an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes. The object will appear to change its class."
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

Multiple Currencies Facilitate International Sales

Multiple Currencies Facilitate International Sales August 9th, 2008 To cater to an international clientele, multi-currency processing is the way to go.
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

User Experience Bits #1: Messaging Sparkle And Fade

I admire more and more the interface subtleties of the Wordpress admin interface. Overall, I would simplify the pages for faster management of posts and comments, but I
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

Bookmarks for August 9th 2008

Sites that I found interesting for August 9th 2008 The Top 5 Web Site Home Page Mistakes - Bookmarks for August 9th 2008
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

The Internet of Surfaces? Microsoft's Pete Thomson discusses screens and surfaces of all sizes.

I came across this video of Microsoft Surface's general manager, Pete Thompson, on the GottaBeMobile website. According to Thompson, the people who worked with TouchWall discussed in the video, were also involved with Microsoft Surface. Apparently, the Surface and Wall folks at Microsoft aren't sure of what they are doing with screens of all sizes. (If you are interested in surface form factors, see my previous blog post, Emerging Interactive Technologies, Emerging Interactions, and Emerging
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

To Acrobat or Not?

Linking to Acrobat documents can create unforeseen problems. Using Acrobat may create create significant usability problems and prevent visitors from accessing the very information you want them to have. If the visitor has Acrobat installed, there still may be compatibility, versioning, and document size issues that can cause the visitor
Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

Tudo aqui é ao vivo

Publication date: 2008-08-10 more

From A-Z to Organization2.0: U - Usability = Higher Motiviation

C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Let
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #58: Usability

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Usability". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center of
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Minty Fresh Theme for Firefox 3

Time for another TwisterMC original that has gotten updated for Firefox 3. This time around it is Mint. Mint is a flat, small, green and gray Firefox theme. It is very simple, but does a good job a looking different from the rest of the Firefox theme pack. If you like
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Always be testing (and learning!)

Bryan Eisenberg's latest book, "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer", is now shipping at Amazon. I had the chance to view an earlier draft and I'm awaiting my copy within days. Bryan posted about the book and the upcoming seminars. About the bookFor years companies have tried to develop THE best website, even shamelessly copying from the so called "best of breed". The reality is although technology can be copied, although business processes can be inspired from bes
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Olympics event tracker from NYT

Olympics event tracker from NYT Friday, August 8, 2008 (9:36 am) Aimed at letting people find events they like and manage a personal viewing schedule, the Times
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Nielsen Norman Group: The First Decade

"Started in 1998, the company is now 10 years old and has a long list of accomplishments. (...) Whatever the general outlook, I think the future is extremely bright for usability, for the simple reason that it works and has hugely profitable ROI for companies that embrace it." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Web 2.D

The latest sweepings from the factory floor of Web 2.0. . . The Roamin
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Poka-yoke example

Prevent the user from triggering an error by designing error out of the application: Disable the Accept box until the user accepts the agreement, and don
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

&403/ The State of User Experience (Design)

... continued from &400/. Let us start with usefulness, usability, and desirability. Useful. "As practitioners, we can't be content to paint within the lines drawn by managers. We must have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products and systems are useful, and to apply our deep knowledge of craft and medium to define innovative solutions that are more useful." Our take on worst and best practices: Not useful: A product/ service catalog mirrored into the digital channel without guida
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

A quote from John Dowdell

Download size has been an issue in the past. [...] In the early days Macromedia did studies adding null kilobytes to Player downloads and measuring the dropoff rate in completed installations. The more time people have to hit that
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Mystery of the Duplicate Tumblr Link = Solved!

  Apparently, in the initial set-up of my Tumblr blog (which is essentially the RSS from this blog), I had either encountered a less than ideal UX. One of the following (or both) scenarios had occurred: 1. I clicked twice on the
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Cooper + Agile

I
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Polling: empirical or anecdotal?

Over the years, as we move further and further into a one-considered-surreal society of online omnipresence, people have grown accustomed to the art and practice of polling. Where once pollsters were the insidious people you ran away from in malls and shopping centers, they are now comprised of slews of bloggers and other online mavens, becoming welcome aggregators of data who show us public
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Mint.com it

Mint.com is a financial site that allows you to log into one system to see all of your finances. Basically, it is as if you were able to take all your separate accounts and move them to one bank view. It
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Bookmarks for August 8th through August 9th

These are my links for August 8th through August 9th: User Interaction 101 - A good, straightforward introduction to the topic. Ping.fm / Update all of your social networks at once! - Lets you update your status once and have it propagated through a variety of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Clever Signage

This car park signage blew me away (the original web site seems to be down). Similar to those crazy 3d chalk drawings by Julian Beever.
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Survey: IA for agencies

I
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

APNG

APNG: Those of you using Mozilla will enjoy this page. The Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG) file format is an unofficial extension to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) specification. It allows for animated PNG files that work similarly to animated GIF files, while supporting 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency not available for GIFs.
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

Sour Apple: How an Apple ad sets the wrong expectations

As much as I respect Apple, Unslow, one of their new iPhone 3G television ads, has me wondering how they kept a straight face when they put this on the air. Try to follow along with your own iPhone 3G: Web pages load immediately. GPS picks up instantly. Files download about 3x faster than I’ve ever seen a file download — even over wi-fi. I don’t think standing on top of a 3G tower antenna would even deliver such an experience. This ad borders on bait-and-switch and it’s disappointing to see Apple go there. If the ad wasn’t about speed it might be a different story. If they were just showing off as many features as they could in a 30 second spot it would be understandable. If they exercised poetic license and cut out a few frames to make a different point we’d understand. But Unslow is about selling speed. Speed that isn’t for sale at any price. It sets the wrong expectations. It leads to a disconnect between the iPhone in the guy’s hand on TV and the iPhone in your hand. When they don’t deliver what they demonstrate people end up disappointed.
Publication date: 2008-08-09 more

"No, but..." instead of "No"

We asked our new payroll service if they could mail paystubs to employees. The company rep’s response: No, but each stub is stuffed in an envelope and sealed. If you put a stamp on it, it could be mailed easily. That is what most of my clients do, when they payroll reports and envelopes arrive, they just stick a stamp on them and drop em in the mail, pretty easy. Great tone to that reply. Friendly and personal. And, best of all, it’s a “No, but…” When it comes to customer service, a “No, but you could…” is miles better than just a flat “No.” Update: Jud from Paychex explains why the stubs are mailed.
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

The need for speed: Making Basecamp faster

Some new features are sexy. They come with shiny new interfaces, extra buttons, more power. These are obvious and easy to spot. They are fun to develop and fun to release. However, there’s another side to improving a product that doesn’t get as much respect. It’s the optimization. Nothing new, but everything better. Small tweaks here, hardware upgrades there. Everything runs more smoothly but you don’t really notice it. You feel it, but there’s nothing pretty to point to as evidence of the hard work. The speed initiative We want to treat speed as a feature. It should be one of our best features. So, for the past few months Jeremy and Mark have been working hard on speeding up our apps through software optimizations, caching, and network and hardware improvements. They deserve a huge round of applause for the results. They’ve made a big difference. Let’s talk about Basecamp We’re rolling these optimizations out to different 37signals products at different times, but let’s start with Basecamp, our most popular product. Basecamp gets used a lot by a lot of people. It’s also the type of product that people are in and out of all day long so speed is a critical factor. We rolled out a series of optimizations this week. Some data Here are some charts generated by New Relic that shine a light on the results of the hard work. These charts compare an hour of traffic this morning with the same hour last week. As you can see, the changes we’ve implemented have made a dramatic difference. Our overall response time was cut very nearly in half, meaning that pages are loading roughly twice as fast as they were for the same time period last week. At the same time, we’ve managed to cut CPU usage by about a third and database time by about half. How we did it These gains were achieved using a variety of techniques including: Analysis: We relied heavily on New Relic’s outstanding RPM performance management suite to give us insight about the parts of Basecamp that were accessed the most as well as those that were most in need of improvement. Caching: We’ve begun using Memcached in a variety of spots. Caching can be tricky with dynamic apps like Basecamp since different people often see different things, but we’ve implemented it carefully where it could be used to its best advantage. MySQL optimizations: We’ve been working with a MySQL performance consultant to help us optimize our database calls and queries. We’re still early in the process but we’ve learned a lot so far. Hardware upgrades: We recently made some significant upgrades to our database servers. We went from servers with 2 x Dual Core 2GHz processors, 32GB of RAM, and 6×73GB 15,000 RPM SAS drives to servers with 2 x Quad Core 3GHz processors, 128GB of RAM, and 8×73GB 15,000 RPM SAS drives. We’ve also upgraded our load balancers and have new switches coming soon as well. Change you can feel While you may not immediately notice speed increases like you’d notice a big new feature, we think that over time you’ll see your productivity increase due to these speed increases. Less time for pages to load, less waiting for results. Everything’s just smoother. It’s change you can feel. The more you use Basecamp the more you’ll feel it.
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Don't be so quick to embrace your own ignorance

I never liked the idea of the “for Dummies” or the “complete idiot’s guide to” book series’, but their sales success have certainly demonstrated that plenty of people identify with being a dummy or a complete idiot. Self-deprecation is fine, just realize that there’s a dear line between embracing your own ignorance and ensuring a prophesy of certainty. This extends well beyond the kind of books you’re buying. I’ve met far too many people who seem so certain of their lack of abilities that they curb their chances of success before they’ve walked the first step. While there are probably plenty of geniuses out there, most of the interesting people I’ve talked to are of average intelligence, but above-average aspiration. Stop believing in the myth of triple-A people as a different kind. Just because you don’t know how to program or design or lead or do anything doesn’t make you a dummy or an idiot. Mastery is probably closer than you think. I didn’t start programming for real until I was 20-something. Rails was my first project in Ruby. Jason didn’t train to be a designer, but got a degree in finance. The world is filled with people who didn’t know jack not too long ago about whatever it is that they’re doing and are now highly regarded in their fields. If there’s something you don’t currently know how to do, please decide not to be a dummy or an idiot. You’re as smart as you always were, you’re just looking to learn something new. Set your ambition to that of equality: There’s no reason I couldn’t be as good as that guy or girl doing what I want.
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

The new computing

The game has changed. Ben Schneiderman coined this era as "the new computing." Our expectations of technology are not based on what's under the hood. They're now based on what the technology can do for us. Instead of trying to replace us with robots, we now using technology to help us do our jobs better. But with this shift, we have a new set of expectations, and I think the iPhone is a great example of this. We want for our technology to be intuitive, easy to use. We want for it to be beautiful
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

The web to come

Adaptive Path has posted the second video in their Aurora concept. Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

SyberWorks Partners with MedSenses, Inc.

Here is our latest press release... SyberWorks Partners with MedSenses to Provide Nursing and Healthcare e-Learning to the Medical and Healthcare Industries through their Hospital Learning Management System Get the &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Shout List Icons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; widget and many other &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;http://www.wi
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

My Tumblr experiment: Exploring options for fast, easy posts

People contribute more when contributing is easy. That
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Episode #58: Usability

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers. This week's word is about a theory used in e-Learning: Usability. We want you to join the discussion. There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. The call in number i
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Calls to Action

Tracy
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

The State of SOA Monitoring and Management?

What
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

create a life-ism

create a life-ism Published by Shannon August 7th, 2008 in Creativity, Usability and flash. 0 Comments since starting my path to a
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

My Productivity Level Just Hit an All-Time Low

My Productivity Level Just Hit an All-Time Low August 7th, 2008   MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONKEY ISLAND!!!! Posted in Gaming, Usability | No Comments
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Speedy-ness

The iPhone has been a catalyst for a number of mobile versions of popular sites, including many I use most days: Xero, NZ Herald (*), TripIt, Kiwibank, Google Reader. (*) if you haven
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Posting to wordpress from my iphone

I
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Reach Out to the World for Less with Vopium

This is not an endorsement yet, but an introduction to a new international mobile calling service from Denmark you can find at Vopium.com. The Vopium Software download is free, but the service is not. Once installed on your mobile phone, Vopium will route an international call as a local call through the Vopium Gateway, using global [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Julie on the Art of Hiding Navigation

My friend Julie over at Experience Planner posted a funny, albeit brief, piece on how to hide navigation. Now, I normally don
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Usabilty and Web Professional Education-Interview with Cia Romano, Founder and Usability Researcher at InterfaceGuru.com

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. For today
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

eMusic Redesigned Some of Their Site. The Login Page is Still Annoying

eMusic, the cheaper (by a factor of four or five) and DRM-free alternative to iTunes that I use recently redesigned parts of their site. The biggest change came on the album pages, which now truly focus on the album. A prominent rating, track listing and album cover now dominate the screen. The former design [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Aurora - the future of webbrowsing? ( i hope not)

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios. While that certainly sounds great, and i [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

P is not for telephone

There
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Wonderful ZuiPrezi presentation

Recently, a GeekUp message rekindled my long-standing appreciation of all things zoomable. One of the problems with many zooming demos is just that, they
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

Is ui design art?

john gruber writes in his blog a pointed reply to statements eric s. raymond, an open source and linux evangelist made regarding user interface design and usability. well, that may be an understatement - he basically rips the guy apart: UI development is the hard part. And it
Publication date: 2008-08-08 more

37signals Live debuting tomorrow (Tues) at 3pm CDT

Over the years we’ve received hundreds (thousands?) of emails asking us our opinion on this, how we’d do that, what we think of this idea or that idea. People ask about Getting Real, entrepreneurship, business models, hiring, collaboration, design decisions, tech-related stuff, questions about our products, etc. We also really enjoy the Q&A sessions at the end of our talks whenever we present at a conference or workshop. We always try to leave ample time to answer as many questions as we can. We’ve always believed live Q&A is the best part of any talk (and unfortunately there never seems to be enough time left over at the end to get to everyone’s questions). So we’ve been thinking: How can we make Q&A more a part of our business? We enjoy it, people seem to get a lot of value from it, so we should do it more often. We could certainly write more “Ask 37signals” blog entries, but it’s hard to find the time to write ‘em all up. We also seem to give better answers when we talk them through rather than when we write them down. So we’ve decided to take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuck’s book and do a 37signals Live Q&A session on the web. We don’t know how well it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a shot. The first session will be tomorrow (August 5th) at 3pm CDT (what’s that in my time zone?). We’ll plan for an hour but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have a live video feed and people can ask us questions via a live text chat that’ll run alongside the video. We’re excited to see what happens. If it works out we’d love to do them on a regular basis. If not, we’ll chalk it up to experience. So, ask us anything tomorrow at 3! We’ll see you there!
Publication date: 2008-08-07 more

Product Blog update: Wedding planning (Backpack), tracking miles (Basecamp), Getting Real one of the 77 best business books, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Keeping track of miles with Basecamp time tracking “What we are doing now is using a project folder called mileage log and instead of recording time, we record miles. As a manager, it is easier for me to generate reports per person and date range and attach those to the accounting department for reimbursement purposes.” Basecamp helps barn converters “For me, the cornerstone of project management isn
Publication date: 2008-08-07 more

Chicago Thunderstorm

We had a pretty wicked line of thunderstorms roll through Chicago last night. I propped my Flip video camera up on the windowsill to capture the hot lightning action. It gets worse as time goes on. Close strike around 3:58.
Publication date: 2008-08-07 more

Enough with the USB-key swag already!

It seems that every conference I go to some company thinks it hip to use USB keys for swag. I’m sure it was hip. In 2001. Now it’s just such a waste. Especially because the keys usually aren’t even a remotely useful size. If you’re going to splurge the marketing budget on a swag key, then 256MB is just not going to cut it. I’d rather have a squeeze ball or a yoyo!
Publication date: 2008-08-07 more

Getting Real 2 update: First draft done, publisher search continues

Lots of questions in yesterday’s 37signals Live chat about what’s going on with the new version of Getting Real. So here’s the deal: The book is well underway. First draft done actually, but there’s still plenty of revising to go. (Rewriting is key after all.) We’re drawing ideas from internal conversations, posts here at SvN, presentations we’ve given, Q&A sessions like yesterday’s chat, press coverage (it’s always interesting to see how an objective party tells our story), etc. It’s a great read already and is sure to get better! The new version is quite different than the original. Most of the content is new and the focus is different too. The first edition was for a web technology audience. This new version broadens the scope to small businesses and entrepreneurs of all kinds. Inventors, restauranteurs, clothing manufacturers, MBA students, IT workers, retailers, designers, artists, crafts makers, and tons of other people will all find value in the book. (Note: Someone asked yesterday if people who bought the original book will get a free copy of the new one. Due to the volume of new content in this edition, the answer is no. The name may stay the same, but it’s really a different book.) We’ve hired a literary agent to represent us and hope to finalize a deal with a publisher soon. We’re looking forward to partnering with a company that really gets it and can help bring the book to a mass audience. If you’re an interested publisher, drop Jason a note at jason at 37signals dot com (subject line: Publish Getting Real). We’ll forward your interest on to our agent. Also, a big shoutout to Seth Godin for his help and advice re: traditional publishers and agents. His advice for authors is a great read too. (Also worth reading for aspiring authors: Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known by Mark Hurst.) We’ll keep you posted as things progress. Stay tuned.
Publication date: 2008-08-07 more

On link usability - the art of keeping call to actions consistent

Not so long ago I was asked by a client, if it was possible to change a couple of sections within their site as they just updated their product structure: the client was expanding their products to list two more categories. To make them stand out, their marketing team was thinking of using different colours throughout the main content area so that is looks much more consistent, which included changing all link colours and buttons to these new colours. As a designer you have probably faced a s
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Design of a Java Application Framework Part 1 - Model Layer

I have been using AppFuse in several projects. It is a excellent framework which implemented a proper MVC architecture. In order to better understand the framework, I spent sometime browsing through the source code. In Part I of this articles I am going to show you the model layer.
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

My del.icio.us...

h1 a:hover {background-color:#888;color:#fff ! important;} div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div ul { list-style-type:square; padding-left:1em; } div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div blockquote { padding-left:6px; border-left: 6px solid #dadada; margin-left:1em; } div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div li { margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:1em; } table#itemcontentlist tr td a:link, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:visited, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:active { color:#000099;
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Good UI design is humble

Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

(Remote) e-Learning Product Tester

Given that my teen
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Using YUI to provide help for web forms

Users are more likely to complete your web forms if you provide a simple help system to answer common questions to complete each input. There are a couple of common techniques to provide help for individual form inputs and I've included a simple YUI class that I use to provide help for form inputs.
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Firefox

We have covered a lot keyboard shortcuts thus far, but today I wanted to cover some of the default tasks
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

when the boss parachutes in

Here is something that I both do, and hate, depending on which side of the org chart I happen to be on at the time: the parachute mission. I haven
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Usability of Open Source Software

I'm a big fan of open source software. Almost all of our client projects are written in PHP and use the standard LAMP architecure. I love open source products such as Wordpress, which despite some flaws is very usable -- especially more recent versions. Unfortunately, that's not the case for most open source software. Moodle is a case in point. With great functionality, and used by millions of people across the world, Moodle sounds like the perfect open source LMS (learning management system
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Mistakes to Avoid in Web Design

Music. When was the last time you found a site that contained music and actually enjoyed the experience? If you can think of any, it's probably the exception rather than the rule. In general, the only time music should play on a site is when you are visiting a music related website. Your favorite band can play their latest song on their site, for example. But that's pretty much it. If you have to have music on your site, let the visitor have complete control over it. This cannot be overemphasiz
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

A Strategy Framework for eHealth

By Eric Engelmann, President & CEO There
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Silverback is Released

Silverback is Released I
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Resizing layout before loading...

If this is found somewhere else, I'm sorry for bring it back up, I just could not find it anywhere. My problem is that I have a webpage that is setup using and is designed at 1024. I recently had someone tell me that it does not look good on their machine, which is set and 800. So, I redesigned to 800 and it checked it. OK. Went back to 1024, and yes it was visible an it would work, but I didn't like how the layout looked. I have seen where java can resize a pop-up window by the re
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Usability of Presidential Candidate Sites

So much has been made of the role of the Internet in this year
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Implementing usability without UI standards

Have you ever tried to implement some basic usability principles in an application that was developed without a set of UI standards or guidelines? It
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 6

Welcome to the sixth edition of email marketing tips on August 06, 2008. Today we have only one post per category (almost). I purposefully assembled this carnival edition in order to eliminate unnecessary choices for you and get you to read the tips. But don't stop there, actually go out there, do it, and make more money from your efforts. My absolute favorites are Gavin Ingham's and John Carlton's posts. Regarding John Carlton I have to confess I found his post. It's not that he found my
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Zing

6 August 2008 3 pm eastern Zing John Gruber is right: his four-year-old Daring Fireball essay, Ronco Spray-on Usability, still holds up nicely indeed. Alas, the notion that usability is the easy part
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Photoshop vs. Fireworks

I've been partial to Photoshop since using version 2.5 back in 1993. Photoshop has everything an image editor can ever need. But does it stand up to all things web? It was easier to say that a few versions back when ImageReady was around. ImageReady was Adobe's web graphics package. It did everything a web designer needed to do to create web graphics, optimization, image maps, rollovers, animations, etc. Macromedia came out with a nifty little web graphics app to tie into to Dreamweaver called
Publication date: 2008-08-06 more

Big business learning that smaller teams can rekindle the creative spark

Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small [NY Times] talks about how smaller teams are more agile and creative. The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams. By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all,
Publication date: 2008-08-05 more

37signals Live debuting tomorrow at 3pm CDT

Over the years we’ve received hundreds (thousands?) of emails asking us our opinion on this, how we’d do that, what we think of this idea or that idea. People ask about Getting Real, entrepreneurship, business models, hiring, collaboration, design decisions, tech-related stuff, questions about our products, etc. We also really enjoy the Q&A sessions at the end of our talks whenever we present at a conference or workshop. We always try to leave ample time to answer as many questions as we can. We’ve always believed live Q&A is the best part of any talk (and unfortunately there never seems to be enough time left over at the end to get to everyone’s questions). So we’ve been thinking: How can we make Q&A more a part of our business? We enjoy it, people seem to get a lot of value from it, so we should do it more often. We could certainly write more “Ask 37signals” blog entries, but it’s hard to find the time to write ‘em all up. We also seem to give better answers when we talk them through rather than when we write them down. So we’ve decided to take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuck’s book and do a 37signals Live Q&A session on the web. We don’t know how well it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a shot. The first session will be tomorrow August 5th at 3pm CDT (what’s that in my time zone?). We’ll plan for an hour but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have a live video feed and people can ask us questions via a live text chat that’ll run alongside the video. We’re excited to see what happens. If it works out we’d love to do them on a regular basis. If not, we’ll chalk it up to experience. So, ask us anything tomorrow at 3! We’ll see you there!
Publication date: 2008-08-05 more

Paper prototyping leads to perfection

As a professional you are possibly involved in the design, implementation or support of a product that works as a software, website, or handheld device applications. As an individual you might be an interface designer, developer, usability specialist, [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

For purpose of reference: command history based auto-completion in Bash

A rather long time ago, I came across a Bash configuration that gave me an immediate command history search by doing nothing but using the arrow up/down keys in a Bash shell. Examples: Let
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Powerful But Free Ways To Make Money From Adsense

Powerful But Free Ways To Make Money From Adsense August 3rd, 2008 by HitMan AdSense gives website operators the ability to make money from their websites by displaying Google Ads. When website visitors click on a Google Ad, the website owner gains income from that click. Providing high quality, relative content to attract visitors is key to making money with AdSense. Many in the Internet marketing scene are making handsome income from Google Adsense. This include not only established well
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Fast Dial - Quick Check Your Favorite Sites

There are a number of add-ons for Firefox that clone Opera
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

On the Road Again

I haven
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

My 2008 Usability Challenge: So Simple it's Stupid

August 1st, for folks outside the usability world I live in, was deemed the day for Usability Challenge 2008, a day when usability folks around the world would unite to make the world a better place in which to function! Or something like that. I admit, I had several ideas, but have been busy today, so I chose the simplest issue that bothers me to work with. We were to: 1. Find a usability problem 2. Design a solution 3. Share it with a person who can solve the problem by implementing your
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

40+ Hand-picked Photoshop Icon Designs

Creating your own icon not only overcome above mentioned problem, at the same time you gain and brush up your Photoshop skills. Nothing beats the satisfaction of creating things on your own. We
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Usability and elegance: who decides?

John Gruber on who influences design decisions, lessons learned from open source software: the usability and elegance of any product, software or hardware, tends to reach, and seldom surpasses, the level that satisfies the taste of whoever is in charge of the product. The people in charge of most free and open source software products tend to have poor taste in user interfaces; people with good taste in user interface design are seldom in charge of open source software projects. This ties in
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it

Many of these problems are with volunteer software in general, not Free Software in particular. But the easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. So it
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Needed: Simple Technology

Needed: Simple Technology August 3rd, 2008 Technological solutions need to be simple - drop-dead simple - to be successful. If we want to make our apps accessibile to everybody, then we need to eliminate the learning curve. Let
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Are your ASP.NET MVC URLs consistent?

Are controller names plural or singular? What order do I put the URL parameters? How do I name my controller actions?
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

This should be on the post About Usability and OpenSource/Free Software

But it was written after, and it
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

My New Laptop Computer is an iPod Touch - Part 4 - Purchase and Out-of-the-Box Experience

Here's the next installment in my multi-part series on my decision to buy an iPod Touch as my new laptop computer. The focus of this part is on my actual experience making the purchase and my first day with the iPod Touch. As I mentioned, I had essentially made my decision to buy an iPod Touch as my new laptop computer as I drove home from the Missouri Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference and then cemented my decision after talking in great detail with an employee at my local Apple Store. Howev
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

Daily Sucker for Monday, August 4, 2008

Daily Sucker for Monday, August 4, 2008 August 3rd, 2008 11:11 pm by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: The home page for zumba.com is bad enough, but then I went to find a Zumba class near me, and the moving graphic was so *#@% distracting I could hardly type my zip code. What were they THINKING? Vincent Flanders
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

MobileTechRoundup 142: smartphones, feature phones becoming the same?

MobileTechRoundup 142: smartphones, feature phones becoming the same? August 4th 2008 CLICK HERE to download the file and listen directly. MoTR 142 is 34 minutes long and is a 31.2 MB file in MP3 format. INTRO: Based on
Publication date: 2008-08-04 more

The Other Sense Of Touch

I tried the new iPhone in a store the other day. I have not been its fan since its birth, for reasons I cannot lay my finger on. However, one thing I realized that I perhaps was using the sense of touch in a different way. And maybe this is the reason I do not like the multi-touch quality of iPhone. I do a lot of things without looking at the phone I use. I know the keypad, there are speed dials, re-dialled numbers, receiving calls, listening to music, activating the silent mode - none of thes
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Flickr: It

This one must have slipped by the tech writers
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Usability Testing Suite In Beta, Google Summer of Code

The Usability Testing Suite is in Beta! Google Summer of Code student Jimmy "boombatower" Berry has been coding hard and fast all this great usability testing tool. The Usability Testing Suite is intended to be used for remote 'guerilla' usability testing. Currently it allows a usability test designer/engineer to create a study with a bunch of tasks, and invite participants to attempt the task, whilst remotely capturing data about the pages / urls the participant visited, the forms they submit
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

The Annual A List Apart Web Survey

If you are involved in the web then head over to A List Apart and fill out. their second annual survey of web professionals. If you are interested in last years results then look here for a nice pdf. There is also raw data for further analysis for if you want to do a Flowing Data and produce some reconstructed graphs.
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Re-designing a Parking Garage

Axel Peemoeller developed a new wayfinding system for a parking garage in Melbourne. Words like UP, DOWN, IN, and OUT appear from certain angles. From other angles, it just looks like nonsensical lines. With cities expanding very fast these days (e.g. Raleigh or a better example: Dubai), it seems like this attention to detail will always be overlooked. Ironically, this usability improvement comes from one of the worst websites I have ever seen. I think Axel needs to design a system to wayfin
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Facebook Redesign: It

Popular social networking site Facebook is gradually rolling out its spiffy new design to its users and from what I could see, the site is all about more efficient use of screen real estate. For those who have not yet seen the Facebook make-over, here
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Practical eCommerce Launches eCommerce Job Board

Practical eCommerce Launches eCommerce Job Board August 2nd, 2008 Until Practicalecommerce.com launched its Job Board, people in the ecommerce industry had no one site to go to see what ecommerce-related jobs were available. Now companies can post their available jobs, along with contact information and links to inquiry forms for users to see.
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Creative Team Field Trip

A couple of weeks ago, I followed through on a brilliant idea of my friend and colleague, Patrick DiMichele. We bumped into local artist Nick Butcher of Sonnenzimmer Studio while grabbing lunch and Patrick suggested that we might organize a field trip for the mStoner creative team to visit Nick
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

TBSM v4.1.1 IF 007 Available

A new IF is available for TBSM v4.1.1 addressing a few new areas (don
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

[Swing] Application Wide Hotkeys

I'm working on a Swing application and I need the ability to have application wide hotkeys. Basically that means no matter what I am currently doing in my app specific keystrokes always do the same thing. For example I am mimicing IDEA's CTRL+N functionallity. When CTRL+N is pressed a dialog opens with a textfield that allows me to type in a search string. As I type a list below the textfield populates with what my app thinks I am looking for.
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Searching Microsoft? Microsoft Calls Firefox Competitor To Windows..

[ Yahoo! News Search Results for Microsoft ] Microsoft Calls Firefox Competitor To Windows (TechWeb via Yahoo! News) InformationWeek - The report shows that Microsoft is aware of its own important balancing act as the company strives to maintain its relevance and dominance in the services era. [ Digg RSS Videos Search for Microsoft ] Windows 7 seven First Official Video http://msn.techguru.com.br Published by Phelipe Hamoui - Microsoft has been investing in many forms of natural input to
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Microsoft Again: Terminator 3: Rise of.. Report: Microsoft could release..

[ Yahoo! News Search Results for microsoft xbox ] Report: Microsoft could release $200 Xbox this September (CNET) If it
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Software In World

[ Yahoo! News Search Results for Computer Program ] Bal Seal Outreach Program Prepares Engineering Hopefuls for the Future (Centre Daily Times) Aspiring Southern California engineers are honing their computer design skills and getting a jump on college studies with the help of a new program launched by Bal Seal Engineering, Inc. [ YouTube : Tag // Computer Program ] First Flight | A Resort for the Personal Aviator Vacationers aspire to rejuvenate their souls through learning, relaxati
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Interested In Software? AML Free

[ Yahoo! News Search Results for Software ] Profit Rises at CA, a Software Maker (New York Times) CA Inc., a business software maker, reported higher quarterly profit on strong bookings and lower costs. [ YouTube : Tag // Software ] Video 25 I created this video using my Logitech QuickCam software Author: youngbby1994 Keywords: Video 25 Logitech QuickCam Added: August 2, 2008 [ Software - Google Blog Search ] Free Software Usability Why Free Software is hard to use, and how to i
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Usability for sweet toothed adults

A lot of people mess with good designs and just wind up with something gimmicky. But I might actually use this coffee mug. From the Galloping Beaver
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Four Common Blogging Blunders

If you
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

LugRadio Live and Silverback

Yesterday
Publication date: 2008-08-03 more

Follow 37signals on Twitter

We’re going to start using Twitter a lot more to announce news, new features, special offers, live Q&A sessions, events, and more. If you want to be one of the first ones to know, make sure to follow us on Twitter!
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Foxmarks Gets the Bookmark Syncing Right

It took me a long time to give Foxmarks a second shot. All I remember from the first time around I used it was I didn
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Top Screencast Sites for Open-Source Developers

While I appreciate (and read) many books and blogs, and even listen to several podcasts having to do with my favorite open-source technologies, I have become an increasing fan of "screencasts" -- tutorials that combine someone's voice with a snapshot of their computer screen. Watching a good screencast gives you the feeling that you are looking over the shoulder of a master programmer. The best screencasts are structured around a small project, and incrementally improve the project such that yo
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Law Librarian Podcast - Margie Maes is Today

Law library podcast The Law Librarian is set to continue recording next Friday, August 8th at 3 pm CST. The show is hosted by Richard Leiter and Brian Striman, and we first made note of it back in May. Today
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

SEO is Not The Only Solution

Search engine optimization is not the only solution, SEO, like a tool, serves a very specific purpose and function, which is to increase exposure for your website. However, just because you gain exposure and drive traffic to a page or a website, does not ensure success alone. Factors such as usability (navigation, image placement, font selection, color choice), having a clear call to action, having impeccable content and using the right triggers to engage your target audience are all part of
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

A Small Study Of Big Blogs: Further Findings

Last week we presented the first results of our study of top blogs. As promised, this week we publish the second part of the survey, including further findings and problem solutions we have found out during the study. In the first part we discussed layout design and typographic settings. What remains to be covered are the navigation design, information architecture, advertisements and functionality (RSS-feeds, tag clouds, pagination etc.).......
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

The Realities of Virtual Space: Lessons from Observing Library Users

The Realities of Virtual Space: Lessons from Observing Library Users John Law, ProQuest
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Something to make Analysts Wet Their Pants

I
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Back to front usability

Maybe I
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Event: Northern User Experience group, 6 August 2008

Northern User Experience is an informal community for people interested in usability, HCI (human-computer interaction), information design and all aspects of the user experience. The group is based in Manchester, but are also planning sessions in Leeds, and looking for venues in Liverpool. Their membership includes developers, academics, usability specialists, accessibility experts and technical authors. Whatever your interest in usability, you
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

KDE HCI Workshop @ Akademy 2008

The KDE Usability Project will be hosting an HCI Workshop during the 2008 Akademy. The workshop will take place on Wednesday, August 13. There will be many sessions covering all types of HCI topics as well as an interactive workshop at the end of the day. Agenda: Welcome to KDE HCI Day Lead by Celeste Lyn Paul and Ellen Reitmayr A welcome to KDE HCI Day and review of the day
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Where

I was reviewing a web hosting company today, and liked what I saw. Clean layout, side by side comparisons, easy to scan text, but they were missing out on one thing. They didn
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Create a Spectacular Photo Gallery with MooTools

JavaScript libraries such as MooTools can save a lot of time when developing a site. In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to combine many of MooTools's functions to create a spectacular photo gallery.
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

1,000 users in less than 3 months

Mumboe recently passed the 1,000 user mark - what we hope is the first of many milestones! In fact, as of today, Mumboe already has 1,500+ users. Of course, we
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Online Merchandising Recap Available

Hi Everyone I wanted to let everyone know that the recap from our very successful online merchandising workshop is now live for members and workshop attendees only.  Take a look at some photos from beautiful Huntington Beach and you can download many of the presentations from the workshop.  Thanks again to the Board of Directors, content committee, speakers, and everyone who made this one of the best Shop.org events in recent memory. Larry Joseloff and The Shop.org Team
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Why The Mojave Experiment is Bad Science, Bad Marketing

Wil Shipley, one of the leading independent Mac developers, goes in to detail about why Microsoft's latest campaign promoting Windows Vista is "Bad Science, Bad Marketing", well worth reading if you design programs or interfaces and need to test them out on users (which you will). He sums up: Microsoft has managed to prove that if you have a friendly expert on a controlled machine (with Vista pre-installed) showing a carefully selected subset of Vista features to an ignorant XP user for a few
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Congratulations to George School on Site Launch

Congratulations to George School, whose new site launched yesterday! George School is an independent, coed, Quaker boarding and day high school located in Newtown, Pa. The site launch was the culmination of 22 months of, first, imagining what a new website for George School could be and then realizing that vision on the screen. Work on the site began in earnest in May 2007 with a series of meetings with a Website Design Town Meeting on the first night of Alumni Weekend, when about 60 stakeh
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Wow, that looks different!

Change keeps life interesting, and Ka and I have had our share. She now works as a principal in the financial services practice at The IQ Business Group. She says she'll still post to her blog here at SI as time allows. We both are nearing the halfway point in our MBA studies, and just completed final exams for summer term. That means a bit of time off from classwork, which gave me just enough time to: Upgrade the system that runs the SI site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. Lay in a new design wh
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

Keep Visitors on Your Site with a Customized 404 Error Page!

Keep Visitors on Your Site with a Customized 404 Error Page! There are many reasons why a visitor may find their way to your 404 error page
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

37signals is looking to hire a second system administrator

37signals is looking to hire a second system administrator to help manage our growing infrastructure. We are looking for someone who has solid experience running production web applications and good all around system administration skills. In particular, you should have strong experience with Apache, MySQL and the HTTP protocol. Some of the other software we rely on includes HAproxy, Mongrel, memcached, and Xen primarily running on RedHat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 5, with a handful of FreeBSD machines. Experience with Cisco hardware and Ruby programming are a big plus, but attitude and enthusiasm are an even bigger one. Details on how to apply at the Job Board.
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

What you expect from clients is what you will get

“We get it. But our clients would never understand.” It’s a frequent rebuttal to our Getting Real philosophy. Read between the lines and there’s a disturbing undercurrent to that message. It’s really saying, “I get it but these other people could never understand. They don’t have the wisdom and the understanding that I do.” It’s like the way some LA or NYC people sound when they talk down about the masses in the flyover states. It’s insulting. The truth is folks can usually handle a lot more than these wizards think. Are their clients really imbeciles who couldn’t possibly understand why they’re foregoing a spec to build something real ASAP? I doubt it. A lot of times people are just stuck in patterns. Process gets done a certain way because that’s the way it’s been done in the past. Sometimes the arteries of work get clogged up simply because no one stops it from happening. Inertia happens. Set a new course Instead of looking down at your clients, look for ways to convince, educate, and guide them. That’s part of your job. Start off by agreeing on your common goal: to create the best final product possible. Agreeing on a common goal is an old Dale Carnegie technique that works well because it gets everyone to realize they’re on the same team and fighting for the same thing. You start getting “yes” immediately. Then steer them in what you think is the best direction. Take the initiative. Set expectations. Explain why you want to do it a new way. Tell them how you think the project should go. Will this approach lose you the job? If it does, maybe it’s a bad fit in the first place. But you may be surprised by the results. This kind of effort shows you’re someone who genuinely cares about the final outcome. And a lot of clients would love to work with someone like that. They’d love for you to tell them there’s a better way. They’d love to know that you want to do more than just phone it in. Don’t assume ignorance. People live up to the expectations placed upon them. If you assume intelligence and flexibility from your clients, you just might get it.
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Are you finding the root cause?

We circle the on-call responsibility between all the programmers at 37signals. Every day is someone’s day to take care of the technical issues that bubble up from support but can’t be resolved there. And that seemed to work pretty well in the beginning, but we’re starting to think that we need a more systematic approach. The problem with passing the support monkey around is that everyone just wants to get rid of him as soon as possible. There’s not a whole lot of vested interested in dealing with the root cause of the issues, so you solve one-off problems for individual customers and get on with your day. For the individual programmer, that approach will appear to work reasonably well because the feedback cycle is so long. You forget next week that you’ve actually already dealt with this problem before. And you certainly don’t get the feedback of knowing that the issue caused three other incidents for other people during the week. So your personal incentive to fix the true cause isn’t building naturally. I’ve found that to ever get anything done, you really need to align personal incentives with the task at hand. That’s why we’ve been thinking about doing support weeks. A single programmer gets assigned to work the support monkey all week and have to solve the root cause for every issue he encounters. No I’ll-just-deal-with-this-guy one-offs. But not just because of the directive that it’s what you’re supposed to do, but because it’ll come ever so natural when you’ve solved the same problem three days in a row. Are you finding the root causes for your daily grind or do the wheels just keep spinning on the same issues?
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Microsoft using Beijing Olympics to boost Silverlight takeup

Webcasting of the Bejing 2008 Olympic Games by NBC and MSN could be the Trojan Horse that gets Microsoft
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Advancing Advanced Search

Advancing Advanced Search Published by Shelton July 31st, 2008 in Best Practices, Information Architecture, Insights & Analytics and Usability. 0 Comments A good article on how the site search functionality has changed and recommendations on execution. After reviewing the article and seeing the recommendations put forth by the author, I have to say that they missed one final step. I agree with the search filters that users can add to narrow down search results, however, the executio
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Are SatNavs dangerous?

The Daily Mirror recently put out a summer story on the risks of using SatNavs. While I would question the statistics and the reliability of the information, as it is probably based on a quick phone survey of 2000 people and then extrapolated in some unclear manner, I do think that we need to understand more about the tunnel vision that SatNav devices create in user
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

So what?

So, after two months of tinkering with the site, we have it online. Originally, when we agreed to work on the project, my idea for a website was dumb simple - to create a single html page with graphics listed one by one, no descriptions, no nothing. The simplest portfolio ever. Then I thought
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Brands don

I
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Demystifying JFormattedTextField: A Step by Step tutorial

JFormattedTextField is a very useful Swing component, that let
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Finally, A Second Life Cheatsheet!

SL resident Kippie Friedkin has produced a lovely cheatsheet to all the SL keyboard shortcuts. It
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

The Importance of Context in Content

I
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Episode #57: Metadata

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers. This week's word is about a theory used in e-Learning: Metadata. We want you to join the discussion. There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. The call in number is
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #57: Metadata

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Metadata". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center of t
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Role of Psychology in Assistive Technology and Device Discontinuance: Article from the American Psychological Association

Susanne Croasdaile, from the VCU Assistive Technology Blog, posted a link to an article from APA about the role of psychology in AT. According to the article, the input of psychology can lead to a better "goodness of fit" between the person and the technology, and decrease the phenomenon of device discontinuance. It should be noted that the traditional terminology used for device discontinuance is device abandonment. Unfortunately, this asigns blame for the discontinuance on the user of the te
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

iPhone 3G hassles

Shame on me. I spent eight hours at the Apple Store waiting to get an iPhone 3G. Karl and I got there at 8am, and I thought I could make it out by 10am. No chance. But once you've waited somewhere two hours, you've got a strong incentive to stay. What kind of materialistic, selfish, foolhardy, spendthrift, oafish, uber-trendy halfwit am I? I am so embarrassed. Shame on AT&T. From my perspective, their red tape is the reason there are such long waits for these phones. Once Karl and I got to
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Delicious Finally Fixes Most Blatent Usability Issue

It
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Revealed: Why So Many Web Sites Are Lousy

Spend a lot of time on the web, and you begin to wonder: Why are so many sites baffling, annoying, incoherent or in some other way just plain bad? A new report from Idea, a non-profit group dedicated to using technology effectively in education, is based on a survey of designers, operators and users of websites. [The report, "Finding Information: Factors that improve online experiences," focuses mainly on what it calls "information" sites, including those of non-profit groups, but not shoppin
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Incorporating web standards into your design brief or RFP

Working on a design brief for a radical makeover of the website at work, and have been doing a bit of digging around into how people specify web standards in their project specs. Came across this post from quite a while ago, and ended up using it as sort of a template, with some modifications: Usability, accessibility and standards The website will conform to the following standards: Validation to either the W3C XHTML 1.0 transitional or strict document type Validation to the W3C
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

How Alive is Your Website?

If a visitor came to your website today, would they know if your site is current? Would they be able to guess at how many visits you get on a daily basis? Would they know they aren't alone? I've talked at length in the past about growing traffic through search and email, improving your site experience through optimization, and I realized I haven't really talked about the personality of your site. I'm not talking about the tone of the content or the design of the pages. I'm asking does a ne
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Congratulations to William and Mary on Site Launch!

Congratulations to the College of William and Mary on the official launch of its new site this morning! The redesign was initiated by Provost P. Geoffrey Feiss and announced in February of 2007. Susan Evans, director of web and communication services, led the redesign, dubbed re.web, working with a campus-wide team of stakeholders as well as staff members in IT, university relations, and admission. mStoner is pleased to have been selected to work with William and Mary on this project. Evans
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Is this what you get for half a billion?

Microsoft has published a "White Paper" on speeding up (sorry, "tuning") Vista. Condensed, here are the main points.Turn off visual effects (which are a major selling point of the Vista Experience)Turn off search indexing (a major selling point of the Vista Experience)Use a flash drive as a cache (huh?) or buy a special hard disk with flash already fitted to itDon't reboot if you can avoid it because it's very slowUninstall stuff(Can't uninstall it? Treat it as a virus or spyware and block it)
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

2008 in review - revisiting annual predictions

At the turn of the year, we asked a number of industry insiders to opine on upcoming trends for 2008. Below is the summary of survey. Full results here. Perhaps, it is time to revisit. Updated comments in italics. 1. Will Google introduce a Google Branded Phone in 2008? Will it? Won
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Building your own Twitter client with Fluid and jQuery

Like many before me, I was searching (unsuccessfully) for a decent twitter client. There are many, but most seem to be ad sponsored or based on a rather hefty framework like AIR (which by now, I guess, has been silently installed on my computer anyhow). Custom apps have major implications for usability so I decided to roll my own. I wanted to try out Fluid, the Prism-like app to contain web apps in their own process/window, to see if it is possible to build a complete twitter client in a singl
Publication date: 2008-08-01 more

Chef David Chang on failure, Thoreau, and vegetarians

Charlie Rose talks with David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ko and Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York City. Some choice bits excerpted below. He describes what you don’t get at his restaurant: We wanted to strip away all the nonsense. Do we really need a sommelier? Do we really need all the other accoutrements that you see at a 3 star or 4 star restaurant? Our goal was not to be a three star. Our goal was to serve the best food we can. Our goal was to try and make the best food in New York City regardless of anything else, regardless of the environment. On how Henry David Thoreau has influenced him: There’s a great line in Walden: “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” And that’s always stuck with me. That basically means if you really try and you want to do something, then go for broke. At the restaurant, that’s something we go for. On how he feels about vegetarians: I respect them, just not in our restaurants…You don’t go to a BBQ restaurant and be like, “I want everything vegetarian.” You don’t go to a sushi restaurant and say, “Please remove the fish, I just want the rice.” Our restaurants are what we serve. And if you don’t like it you can go eat somewhere else. On avoiding the fear of losing what you have: I want to be sure we don’t lose that recklessness. And I think that was the catalyst for a lot of the things that happened when we first started. No one cared about us. When you have nothing to lose, you can be as reckless as possible. Related David Chang’s recipe for sustaining food/business mojo [SvN] David Chang Is So Stressed Out [Serious Eats]
Publication date: 2008-07-30 more

Average environments beget average work

Grady Booch delivered the following axiom at BrainstormTECH last week: “The average work of the average worker is average”. At first, it sounded perfectly rational. But on second take, I got really bothered by this. It’s based on an assumption of bad, average, and good as being static attributes of a person that I find whole fully offensive and narrow minded. In my experience, we’re all capable of bad, average, and good work. I’ve certainly done bad work at times and plenty of average work. What I’ve realized is that the good and the exceptional work is at least as much about my environment as it is about me. Average environments begets average work. Good people do bad work or worse all the time Just think of all the great people and startups that have disappeared into some big borg of a company, only to come out after a few years on the other side with little to show for the trip. Even so-called exceptional people can do unmemorable work when they’re placed in inept environments. Or think of how easily good people can be made to do bad things when put under the right circumstances. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good example of the banality of evil. That’s not to say that we’re all created equal and that star power can be unlocked with hippie music and sandals alone. Just that there’s a ton of untapped potential trapped under crappy policies, poor direction, and stifling bureaucracies. People waiting to do great work if given the chance. No one can be a rock star without a great scene So if you want your team to excel, quit thinking about how you can land a room full of rock stars and ninjas (note to recruiters: even if these terms weren’t just misguided, they’d be tired by now anyway). Start thinking about the room instead! Here are three questions to think about as you begin to self-diagnose your environment: Do you value effort over effect?Someone who stays up all night working is a hero, but getting the work done and leaving early marks someone who isn’t a “team player”. Do you trust people to do the right thing?We don’t count vacation days and we give everyone a company credit card but require no real expense reports. Do you encourage questioning?Ending discussions with “because I want it like that” or explaining policies with “because that’s the way it is”. But most importantly, stop using the perceived quality of your team as an excuse for why you can’t try or follow new ideas. That’s a self fulfilling prophesy that’ll never fail to disappoint. Humans are incredibly eager to live down to low expectations. P.S.: You’ll know you’re committing this fallacy when you start your comment to a Getting Real post with “but that would never work here” (it probably would, you just need the courage to try), “sure, you can do that because you have a team full of star players” (we have star players because we do it like that), or “we can’t all just do it like that” (don’t worry about all, just worry about you — and you probably could).
Publication date: 2008-07-30 more

Philip Toledano's Days with My Father

An always beautiful, sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting site documenting the daily life of Philip’s 98 year-old father after his mother passed away. It’ll tug at you. Aside from the personal story, the site’s navigation is worth exploring. Move your mouse to the bottom of a photo to partially expose the next one. Click it to move forward. Same thing goes for the top of an image, except that you move backwards. Move your mouse all the way to the left to reveal thumbnails. It’s not obvious, but when you can’t figure out what to do next you begin to explore. Then your mouse will eventually discover the system. You can also keep your mouse fixed at the bottom of an image and just click-click-click to move through.
Publication date: 2008-07-30 more

[Quotable] NetNewsWire, JotSpot, Git, Google, old Texas sayings, etc.

Avoid the middle of the road “As a company, you have to be the most of something
Publication date: 2008-07-30 more

Space Shuttle launch as seen from a plane (Air Canada flight)

Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

External link disclaimers

Some corporate sites use lengthy (and wordy) disclaimers to let readers know when they
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Simple RSS Reader

Maybe your not a RSS feed junkie like I am, but you do like to do some occasional headline tracking from time to time. Simple RSS Reader might be the extension for you, as it does exactly what you would think. It is a simple little RSS reader (minus the geeky complications). The hardest part about Simple RSS Reader is adding the RSS feeds. Just click on the blue RSS icon and give a name and URL to each. That is it. The thing I like most about this add-on is the fast forward, rewind, pau
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Backup your LAMP with rsync

Continuing with the backup theme of my last post, I've needed to back up our local LAMP server because its starting to hold some important data. Maybe I'm getting paranoid because of my first hard drive failure in 10 years (the last one was a 2GB HDD that got progressively larger areas of dead sectors, so it was a nice gradual death). Maybe I've just been taught a lesson and am starting to do what I always should have done anyway. In any case, here is the little script I wrote:
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

This Little Fishy Ate Roast Beef

When we swam in the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee to you English-speakers), little fish swam around our feet, nibbling and tickling our toes. Laura Ingalls Wilder describes the same phenomenon (along with a snapping crab) in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Who knew it was a luxury spa treatment? Ready for the latest in spa pampering? Prepare to dunk your tootsies in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away. Fish pedicures are creating something of a splash in the D.C. area, where a northern Vi
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Silverback: Making Usability Testing That Much Cooler

Usability testing is important. I
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Home Page Design: Applying The Dont Make Me Think Test

If you
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

The new "Cuil" search

Searching for Silverlight games
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Silverback - Usability Testing for the Rest of Us

If you
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Experience Files: Seamless Web's Recipe for Success

I got a tweet from Steve Rubel about Seamless Web giving away $100 worth of free food to bloggers who mention the company in a blog post. My first reaction was
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Silverback 1.0

Silverback 1.0 July 28, 2008 | Filed in: usability New $50 usability testing application from Clearleft. Interesting. This seems incredibly useful, and I
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Using Wordpress PHP Conditional Tags to Create Variability

Looking for a way to create sidebars that look one way on the main blog page, another way on the individual posts, and perhaps a third way on the individual pages? Here
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Why you are not to blame when technology fails

Donald A. Norman makes an interesting point in his book The Design of Everyday Things - that people tend to blame themselves when technology lets them down. How often do hear people taking the blame when the printer decides to quit? Or feeling guilty because they made the computer crash? Norman suggests we should not blame ourselves - we should blame the designer. If something goes wrong because we haven
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

SatNav usability soon to be improved?

Something is clearly not working right: About 300,000 motorists have crashed because of a satnav, the [UK] Mirror [newspaper] has found. Around 1.5 million drivers have suddenly veered dangerously or illegally in busy traffic while following its directions. And five million have been sent the wrong way down a one-way street. I have no idea how one can actually get hold of such data, but yes, there seems to be a problem. Now TomTom, a Dutch manufacturer of automotive navigation systems,
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

The lost art of user experience

A web developer musings about his favorite part of the development process - user interaction design.
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Usability Testing Tools: Morae and Silverback

In the past, I
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

SEC

THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is slated to consider publishing long-awaited new guidance governing how companies can use their websites to communicate with investors. According to a notice, the commission will meet Wednesday to consider publishing the
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

What is Silverlight?

Microsoft
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Placing an Adsense Banner On Your Blog

A website versus a blog in terms of web usability. Web usability refers to how to increase the conversion rate with the user-friendliness of an application. Usability-wise, a blog may not differ that much from a website. However, due to the ease of use of a blog and since it
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

Pause at the Pump

My fuel gauge is on empty.I don't want to stop, but pull into the gas station.I tell the children to stay in the car.I get out of the car.The children are asking me questions from inside the car that I can't hear well enough to understand.I swipe my credit card in the pump's card reader. The pump responds by prompting me to "SELECT WINDOW OR OUTSIDE".The children are still talking to me. I still don't understand.I pause and stare at the keypad. Is there a problem here? I pause to think for
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Radio got it right

As that so-called
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Lament of A Mobile Web User

You unleashed a blog post on Twitter So compelling, I had to click On a cell phone I was, but t
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Word(s) of the Day

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24 Great Wood Texture Websites Designs

The beginning of this month my friend start a new website project for the client, the client required 2008 trend graphics styles like woody texture or some old paper type graphics touch for unique look. My friend starts searching
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Painting the Town (Red)

Some thoughts on Fashion and Mobile Phones
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&395/ Watch to Be Inspired: Design 6 Years Ago. Outdated?

You are interested in state-of-the-art design? Then watch this video to learn about product design, experience design, user centered design, human centered design. The video is 6 years old. State-of-the-art? Definitely! IDEO again. TED introduces The talk: "IDEO
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Usability Challenge 2008

uc2008_promote What
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Setup your own usability lab for 50$ only :Web site usability testing application, Silverback for Mac Users

A Real good news for the Usability Testing and Usabilty Professionals. gorilla UK web development team Clearleft has released its web site usability testing application, Silverback. In short, Silverback turns a Mac into a portable usability testing laboratory. What used to require a complicated and cumbersome set up involving several computers, a video camera, and lots of time, can now be done much faster and with less hassle. You only need a Mac with a built-in or attached camera, and a
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Need to design your mobile website - Refer to these tips

I recently read this very interesting article on designing websites for mobile phones. The article focuses on usability aspects of mobile websites with some snippets of HTML and CSS code. The good point about the article is that it does not focus on any particular mobile OS or technology making the tips are completely neutral in description. Some more supporting links that I came across about designing mobile web experiences and thought I could share - http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/wi
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Making readers' opinions work

Readers and commenters at the McClatchy Next wiki are abuzz about anonymous comments at newspaper web sites and blogs. Don't click away -- I know this subject has been done to death. I promise a different approach. Many of the comments have been fueled by the vitriolic name-calling recently in comments at Etaoin Shrdlu, the blog of McClatchy's vice president for news, Howard Weaver. Let's face it: Weaver's public blog and position make him an easy target these days, much like Tony and Peter a
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Facebook vs. Orkut in Photo sharing

I admit that what kept me on Facebook for so long is its ability to host photos. I
Publication date: 2008-07-28 more

DCamp Bangalore rocked again(part 1)

It was time again DCamp or Design Camp Bangalore.  Amit Pande, Sarit, Muthu, Anil Gupta among others worked hard to get this event going. I must tell you that I had an awesome time there. The presentations there were truly awesome. Let give a short summary of the things as they happened at the DCamp, though Vinodhn already has kind of everything on twitter. So heres how the event unfolded for me. I happily landed and Mekhri Circle expecting Aditi's office to be close by. So I begin walking fr
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Mercurial Woes

Over the past few days my friends Ben Collins-Sussman and Jim Blandy and I have been having an interesting conversation about the use of Mercurial for development collaboration. Eventually one of my email responses got so long-winded that I figured it
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Silverbacking

It
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Giving Users a Stairway into your Web Page Content

Giving Users a Stairway into your Web Page Content Posted by Peter Johnson on July 27th, 2008 CopyBlogger has an interesting article, The Deceptively Simple Steps to Persuasive Writing That Works by Sonia Simone that compares illustrates how useful it is to use subheads in your web copy: it is like adding steps to your page, helping the reader
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Daily Sucker for Monday, July 28, 2008

Daily Sucker for Monday, July 28, 2008 July 28th, 2008 1:01 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: Here is a bad site I recently came across
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Webcasting software for the Mac?

We’ve been wanting to offer regularly scheduled webcast tours (or is it a webinar??) of our products for a while now, but we’ve been unable to find the right piece of software on the Mac to get it done. Here’s what we want: We want to be able to share our screen and our voice and allow up to 100 (?) people at a time to follow along in their web browsers. People who wanted to participate would go to a URL to watch the presentation. Voice could be handled via the net or via a coordinated conference call. At the end we could do a Q&A session. We’d need some way to moderate the questions so everyone doesn’t jump in at once. We could ultimately just take questions via text/email and then pick a few to answer. We’re aware of services like GoToMeeting, but you can’t initiate the webcast from a Mac. You can watch along on a Mac, but you can’t seem to broadcast from a Mac. Adobe Captivate looks interesting too, but you can only have a max of 5 people on the webcast. Anyone have any ideas? Anything I’m overlooking? Thanks for your help.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

[Screens Around Town] Thsrs, Posterous, Lohse, and T-26

Thsrs Thsrs helps you get briefer. If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you
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iPhone 2.0: The glory wore off in wash

I can’t even begin to imagine the complexity of rolling out something as big as the iPhone 3G/2.0. You have to coordinate retail, marketing, web services, support, manufacturing, shipping, and many of other business and tech units months in advance. They all have to be ready by a a date determined by guesswork, pressure, and wishful thinking. Which means that you essentially have to make the call that the product is going to be done long before it actually is. For the iPhone 1.0 launch, that bet paid off. The software for the phone felt solid. Everything just worked well. Fondling with the phone for the first time was intoxicating. It just tasted so incredibly Apple. With the iPhone 2.0 launch, not so much. I’ve been using the phone every day for about a week now and it just isn’t up to the great expectations set by the first version. Everything feels so incredibly fragile. Here are just a few of the griefs I’ve felt: Annoying delays all over the place. Changing to the SMS view can take more than 10 seconds at times. Transitions between apps are being dropped entirely or cut short (the latter looks like a UI stutter). It some times requires 3 clicks on the fast-forward button in iTunes to get a response. The screen will freeze for 4-5 seconds not accepting any input, then replay ALL your feverous tapping when it finally returns. Some times the keyboard will not keep up with your input (and I’m not that fast of a typer). I’ve had applications crash numerous times. The entire phone has crashed twice. Restarting the phone kinda helps some of these problems, but not for long and it feels so dirty and Windows-like to do. Now all of this could probably have been overlooked and forgiven if the payback from the new features was immense, but to me, it just isn’t. I have two screens of applications installed, but don’t really use them that much. 3rd party apps doesn’t make up for it Twitterific is nice, but not much of a step up from just using the iPhone-optimized web version. I like WeatherBug too to get a doppler radar reading, but nothing a bookmark to weather.com didn’t do almost as well. I’ve installed but not actually used AIM, NetNewsWire, Yelp, Movies.app, Facebook, PayPal, NYTimes, Light, Sketches, and VNC yet. It seems like the biggest new thing is the games. I’ve been playing some Tetris, some Super Monkey Ball, and a few others. And they’re really impressive! The graphics are great and controlling with the accelerometer often works better than you’d think. 3G is bliss and bastard all in one The hardware features are also a nice improvement. The built-in GPS is fast and accurate. The 3G is a lot more mixed bag, though. When it works, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s so much faster than Edge and really takes the experience that 2.0-like step up. The voice quality is also significantly up. But it’s just so incredibly unreliable. Getting a 3G signal in central Chicago is like playing the corner on roulette. And when it drops back to edge, you lose all your chips of joy. I actually kinda like getting ultra fast just 20% of time and slowpoke speeds 80% of the time less than just being slow always. As to double down on the insult, the battery life is absolutely terrible with 3G turned on. You’re absolutely required to recharge every day and it’s not unlikely that you’ll flame out in the middle of a day either with heavy use. The cumulative effect of small problems is exponential Combined, it’s a rather big disappointment. I’m surprised just how much impact the small griefs have when they add up to a lack of confidence in the system. It’s a great example of the cumulative effects of problems. They have an exponential damage on the experience. And I haven’t even gone into much detail on how ridiculously bad the buying experience is compared to the first time around. Jason and I bought a EVDO card in a Sprint store the other day and we spent probably 30 minutes there. We joked about how lame that experience was. Buying the iPhone 3G took almost as long and felt almost as bad. That’s not to say that the iPhone isn’t the best phone I’ve ever had. It is. By a wide margin. But the 2.0 launch itself has been a big disappointment and that’s too bad. It feels a little like Apple got swept up in knocking down every single detraction point from 1.0 that they lost sight of what everyone loved about the first version. Yes, it got cheaper (not really), faster (some times), installable apps, and GPS, but it lost a bit of Apple soul in the process.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Picasso: Getting from here to there in twelve strokes

Artyfactory has a great piece on Picasso’s reduction of a detailed drawing of a bull into an abstract basic shape using just twelve pen strokes. It starts here: And ends here: The interesting stuff is what comes in-between.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Why are modern sneakers so ugly?

I can’t get over how ugly my new running shoes are (click for larger versions): So comfortable inside, why so ugly outside? Unfortunately, few of the other choices were much better. Apparently sneakers must be FUTURISTIC and have 593 different elements in order to prove they were DESIGNED. So I went ahead and bought them anyway. Function over form + I didn’t want to spend all day shopping for shoes that I’m just going to use when I run. Too bad. I’d prefer the minimalist look of a pair of Stan Smiths over this overproduced crap any day. Hmm…I do want to run away from them every time I look down. So maybe it’s a motivational technique.
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New in Backpack: Share pages via email even if the other person doesn't have a Backpack account

Backpack has always allowed you to share pages via email, but the person on the receiving end had to have a Backpack account before they could view the page. We were never really happy about how that worked. We finally did something about it. Big thanks to Jeremy for making this happen. Now you can share Backpack pages with anyone in the world via email — even if they don’t have a Backpack account. They don’t even need to know what Backpack is. It’s the quickest and best way we know to share a functional web page or informational page with someone (or some people). Share to-dos, photos, notes, whatever. Pages you share via email are fully functional. Multiple people can collaborate on the page together by adding new list items, checking them off, adding a note, a file, a photo, etc. And if they do decide to sign up for Backpack, they page will be pulled right into their account as a shared page. It’s all automatic. We hope you find this enhancement useful. If you don’t already have a Backpack account, sign up for one today.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Nature is amazing: Trap-Jaw Ants

Another natural wonder. This time brought to you by ants. Trap-jaw ants use their jaws to propel themselves into the air to evade predators. They can achieve heights of just over 8cm. That translates into a 40ft vertical for an average size human. Link stolen from Kottke.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

New color picker in Basecamp

Creating color schemes in Basecamp just got easier. Before, you had to understand complicated hex codes to customize your colors. Now anybody can choose colors with a shiny new color picker. Kudos to Sam for the extra attention to detail on the color picker. We think it’s solid and it’s the best color picker we’ve used on any web application. Picking colors in Basecamp is a lot of fun thanks to the live feedback, so load up your Settings tab, click “Color Scheme” and take it for a spin.
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[On Writing] "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a crappy title for a great book

“Fast Food Nation” was revealing. “Kitchen Confidential” was juicy. But wow, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is something else. The best book on food I’ve ever read. In the book, Pollan shoots a pig, hunts for mushrooms, slaughters a chicken, works as a farmhand, examines industrial and local farms in person, explains how we’ve come to be dominated by corn, shows how grass is the key to life on a farm, explores the connection between oil and food, and much more (PDF of the introduction and first chapter). But as I was reading it, something kept gnawing at me: how terrible the title of the book is. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” Yawn. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” part sounds like a math problem. Plus, omnivore is a word that most people won’t even get. And “A Natural History of Four Meals” isn’t any better. Sounds like a biology textbook. The book is thrilling to read, intensely scary, and a real call to arms. So why is the title so lame? (Sure, it sold well, but that’s because the content is so strong. I’d argue those sales came despite the title, not because of it.) Moving to simple and strong Perhaps Pollan felt similarly, because the title of his latest book packs a lot more of a punch: “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Simple and strong. He even comes up with a short, tight call to action: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” No way to miss the point there. He explains it in this article. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. Great to see a title and call to action that are as clear and cogent as the rest of what Pollan writes. There’s a lesson here for all writers: Spend as much time on your titles, subtitles, headlines, summaries, and calls to action as you do on the bulk of your content. If you don’t hook readers upfront, they may never dive in and get to the rest of your message.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Modal overlays beyond the dialog box

Aza recently posted on modal overlays, those dialogs that pop up and disable the background behind them. You can click anywhere inside modal overlays, but you can’t click anything in background until the dialog goes away. Usually when we think of modals, we think of dialog boxes like the one below from Google Documents. Aza’s critique applies to this kind of modal. After you call up the find/replace box, you can’t click anywhere but inside the dialog. That means you can’t scroll the document underneath the dialog or copy and paste a word from the document into the dialog box while the dialog box is displayed. But that’s not the only kind of modal overlay. Check out this Preference pane from Apple’s Me.com. It has nothing to do with modifying the content behind it. It could just as well be a separate screen. Actually, this fact that it could be a separate screen caught my interest. At 37 we never use modal overlays. All our settings screens are completely independent from the other screens in the app. In order to explore the difference between these two approaches, I mocked up an alternate version of Apple’s preference screen that fills the entire window like a typical web app might. It’s interesting to compare these two versions. I have to admit I like the modal one a lot better. On the one hand it has more visual interest and depth. On the other, it raises some interesting questions about navigation. Modals as alternatives to navigation Two questions that often float in our minds when we use software are “Where am I?” and “How do I get back?” There are common techniques we use to ease these concerns like tabbed interfaces, breadcrumbs and “Cancel” links. We should think of the modal overlay as a tool in the same family. It is uniquely powerful at quieting these nervous questions. “Where am I?” is a non-starter because you never left the original screen. And “How do I get back?” is trivial when the original screen remains visible in the background. Screen size as a reflection of importance Another thing I like about the modal approach to Preferences is that the preference screen doesn’t feel equal to the other application screens. You get the feeling it didn’t deserve its own browser window’s worth of real estate. When we design the UI for a particular screen we always try to make the important and frequently-used elements larger and more prominent than the lesser-used elements. It’s a good rule of thumb to think that if elements in the same context all have the same size, then they must be equally important. Apple’s Preferences modal applies the same principle to the scale of entire screens. The preferences screen is itself smaller than the browser window that plays host to the more important screens full of real data. Modals aren’t all bad While Aza’s critique still holds for modals like the Google docs example above, Me.com demonstrates that modal overlays do have a place as an alternative to navigating between independent screens. It’s also very interesting to consider which screens really deserve their own browserful of real estate and which should be reduced to substates of other screens. I suspect that when people praise applications for being particularly “Ajaxed” or “Desktop” in style, this lack of navigation between separate screens is a big part of the appeal. Apple has shown that it’s possible to bring desktop-style interactions into web apps without falling into the extreme of a desktop clone. It should be fun to see where other designers take the inspiration.
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UI Candy: Audi's new MMI

Audi is set to release the next version of their MMI (Multi Media Interface). The MMI powers their nav, radio, and car systems. While I prefer Garmin’s UI simplicity, Audi’s Nav UI is my aesthetic favorite. They pay attention to type, proportions, opacity, shapes and shading in a way that says “we really care about how this looks.” From an information design perspective, I’ve always been a fan of how they present and combine distance and time. I’ve used lots of nav systems and somehow, for me, Audi’s is the one that presents the right information at the right time in the right way. I do like Honda’s too. Here are some screenshots from Audi’s latest effort: And here’s part of their lab where they test the designs. The different dashes are from different models. Read more about the new MMI at Fourtitude or Audiworld.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Separate pleasure and pain

Seth Godin has a great bit of insight at the end of a post today about how smart companies separate pleasure and pain. He cites Disney as a good example: Disney charges a fortune for the theme park, but they do it a week before you get there, or at a booth far far away from the rides. By the time you get to the rides, you’re over it. The pain isn’t associated with the fun part. And airlines as a bad example: Airlines, on the other hand, surround the very thing they sell (getting you home) with armed guards, untrained TSA agents, long lines and sneering gate agents eager to take your money when you have absolutely no expectation or choice and when your stress is at its highest. This is a problem in the long run. Obviously some of the security measures are out of the airlines’ control, but the insight is still a great one. It’s similar to the best advice I’ve heard on PR: Blast the bad news out quickly (to get it out of the way) and trickle the good news out slowly (to keep in the way).
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

You don't have to sell your company to have financial security and the freedom to do what you want

Paul Graham thinks that startup founders need to sell their companies to get freedom and security: They want enough money that (a) they don’t have to worry about running out of money and (b) they can spend their time how they want. Running your own business offers neither. You certainly don’t have freedom: no boss is so demanding. Nor do you have security, because if you stop paying attention to the company, its revenues go away, and with them your income. I think he’s wrong in general and I know he’s wrong for me personally. Fallacy #1: Owning a profitable company is like earning a salary Getting your company to the point where you can pay yourself a decent salary is a great milestone. You created something sustainable that doesn’t rely on spending other people’s money. You deserve to pop a bottle and celebrate! You certainly shouldn’t curb your ambitions because of that, though. The real economic pay-off for taking the risk of starting a business is what comes after this. That the company starts making enough money that you can take some and put away. After a while, that coveted financial independence you thought would make your life perfect should be achieved (and you’ll realize that it didn’t make it perfect). But I can see how this line of thought would arise. If you’re building to flip, then profits aren’t really that interesting. If you can just get to break-even, you’re probably doing better than the majority of other companies in your made-to-flip space. So instead you focus on getting more eyeballs, more sign ups, or more of whatever you think an acquirer would place the highest premium on. I would want to sell a company built like this too. But there are other ways to build companies. Lots of self-made millionaires made their money selling products for a profit. So let’s strike out the security claim. Most successful business owners could walk away from their business tomorrow and still live very comfortable lives off the money they put away. Fallacy #2: There’s always something you’d much rather do You don’t have to work 60, 80, or 100 hours per week just because you run your own business. Many business owners do that, but if they’re successful, it’s usually because there’s nothing they’d rather be doing. Look at the top tech CEOs. None of them need to work, many of them are billionaires, but still Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and others continue to helm their companies for decades because they love what they’re doing. I don’t personally like to work 60 or more hours per week. Even 40 hours is pushing it. At 37signals, we all try to work just four days a week. That’s a perk in addition to the fact that we don’t count vacation days (I probably spent 4 weeks last year) and many of us often attend conferences and other out-of-the-daily-rhythm activities. But when I actually do sit down to work, it’s very often that there’s nothing else I’d rather do. And I don’t think that’s really an uncommon phenomenon. I think lots of people really like what they do and for bursts of the time consider it the most interesting thing they could be working on. If you’re building a company to flip, though, and feel like you have to put in endless hours to please investors and potential acquirers, I can certainly appreciate that there’ll often be something you’d much rather do. And that it can feel like you’re trapped trying to chase a prize that keeps moving. I don’t personally think that’s a rewarding way to live, but to each his own. For me, the secret has been to do many other things besides work on 37signals. I enjoy working on Ruby on Rails and pursue a lot of hobbies. When you work less than 40 hours per week on something you actually like doing, it doesn’t feel very much like work at all. It feels like I’ve already retired and get to do a little of many things that I like so none of them really gets boring. There’s what I perceive to be healthy balance instead of a constant sprint. This comes back to the earlier topic of early retirement as a false idol. I’ve talked to many entrepeneurs who’ve thought that they could just sit back and live the sweet life of no work after selling out. Most of them were right back working another idea after six months. Often times, the second idea wasn’t as good as the first one. Bottom line is that you really should try to find something to work on that at least for substantial amounts of time constitutes that “nothing I’d rather do” feeling. I think it’s hard to be truly happy if the only reason you work is to win a paycheck. Whether it’s as an employee or a business owner.
Publication date: 2008-07-27 more

Why would you want to call me?

I spent almost 45 minutes on the phone with my bank today because of an error with their online banking. I didn’t want to, I had to, after their email support told me my issue couldn’t be handled online. It was such a mind-numbing, protracted, time wasting experience that it made me ask myself, “How can anyone ever ask us why we don’t offer phone support?” In a perfect world, calling a business for help would be quick, painless, productive, and human. But it’s not and it’s not going to be. That old time ideal of calling the local retailer or company and talking with someone after two rings was demolished by the call centers and overseas help desks that sprung up in the information age. It’s time to stop thinking that phone support is so essential. We’re lucky that we have an email support system that works and is incredibly efficient considering the volume of customers we interact with daily. It works because we’re committed to making it work, and if we can do it every company with a mailserver can do it too. Now, I know people want to pick up a phone and talk to a live human being. We all want assurance that our money is being spent on something maintained by human beings who speak our language and hopefully live in our same country. I get that instinct, because I share it at times. I also totally and completely understand some people’s experience with email tech support is way too techy, unreliable or frustrating and dialing an 800 number is an escape from that. What I don’t get it is why a person would rather sit on the phone for however long it takes – maybe 45 minutes!!! – rather than send an email and go about their life while it’s read and replied to. Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate. It requires waiting on the line, listening to hold music, being transferred and possibly having the call lost, all so you have to start over again. You can’t share a phone call with your colleagues, you can’t get someone else’s input or feedback. Emails can be printed out and saved. They can be sent to someone else who can chime in on the thread. They’re a historical document you don’t have to copy down hurriedly while information is spewed out to you. They can be sent quickly, tagged, labeled, archived. You can send an email whenever you want, there’s no business hours to abide by or schedule to confer with. We get requests every day from people who don’t think email support will cut it and demand a phone number to call us. Their worries are assuaged when they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes that is informative, helpful and obviously written by a human being. It’s absolutely 100% possible to provide excellent customer care without a phone or phone number, and our company proves that daily.
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Product Blog update: Interior design firm uses Highrise, Backpack Journal and Twitter, attach files to Basecamp email replies, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Highrise [Case Study] Interior design firm: “I cannot tell you how much Highrise is helping me work” “I create a case for each mini-project or design project. Then I assign the contacts I usually require for that type of case and begin assigning tasks. I like using the next week or later choice when I don
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A User Study of Off-the-Record Messaging

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2008/proceedings/p95Stedman.pdf Instant messaging has become a common form of information on the Internet, but most of the available services are not secure. There are available solutions, such as SecureIM, Pidgin-Encryption, and SILC, but they all have shortcomings compared to OTR (Off-The-Record). The goal of OTR is to make conversations online as private and secure as face-to-face conversations. OTR was recently redesigned to be more easily used by non-techni
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

The Secret to Painless Google Website Optimizer

For me, Google Website Optimizer (GWO) has been the best new tool or service launched in the last three years.  It has literally created tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue for my company and my freelance clients.  That said, I initially found GWO very difficult to implement. Essentially, GWO works through code such as this: utmx_section(
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The Challenges of Using an Intrusion Detection System: Is It Worth the Effort?

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2008/proceedings/p107Werlinger.pdf This paper sought to examine, as it
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Silverback lauched

Today I received an email informing that Silverback is up and running, for us to try it for a 30 day period. I took noticed about Silverback through a blog witch I sincerely don
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

Analyzing Websites for User-Visible Security Design Flaws

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2008/proceedings/p117Falk.pdf Media buzz about this paper: * Information Week: Most Bank Sites Are Insecure * Slashdot: Most Bank Websites Are Insecure * Network World: Bank Web sites full of security holes, University of Michigan survey finds * Ars.Technica: Study: websites of financial institutions insecure by design The study was highly motivated by personal experiences dealing with banks and banking. Online banking tends to have login boxes on insecure pa
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Blog Update

It has been a few weeks since I have written an entry into the blog. I felt that I wanted to simplify my theme and bring more attention to the writing. (What a concept). My business has been going well and I am thankful for the work I have gotten recently as well as the continued business from previous clients. A few notices to those who are in the user experience/HCI industry: Google has made http://knol.google.com live. it is a kind of Wikipedia that may give Wikipedia a run for their mone
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Silverback - Simple Usability Testing Software

Clearleft has officially released Silverback. Silverback is a Mac desktop application designed to make website and application usability testing easy to manage. It captures everything that is happening on the screen and uses your web cam and microphone to record users
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Silverback, The New

Silverback, The New
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Live Search for Facebook

Microsoft announced it
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Knol thy enemies?

Walk through one Cnet blog writer
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Architects: Your Websites Suck!

Architects: Your Websites Suck! July 25th, 2008 5:05 pm by Vincent Flanders I
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A Masterpiece in Usability and Design: Onehub

As a b-list blogger, you often become the target of business authors, software developers, and search engine opportunists who want you to promote their wares. I love being the target of this attention, though, because I love reading books and I love seeing applications out on the market. As a product manager, I recognize how difficult it is to take an able application and turn it into a wondrous application. It
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

ISO 20282

Auf uselog.com ist eine kurze Zusammenfassung des neuen ISO Standards 20282 erschienen: ISO 20282: Ease of Use of Everyday Products. If I sum it up, the standard is relevant for physical interactive products for personal (and not professional) use or in the public domain... Zu weiteren Artikeln wird verlinkt. TheHotStrudel The Hot Strudel Informationsarchitektur IA Informationsarchitekt
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

Vicious garlic press designed to slice your palm

This garlic press pinches your palm when you squeeze it, making it painful to use. Did they try using the damned thing even once before they started manufacturing it? So much for German engineering.
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

Home page intro

A succesfull site should be a well combination of a good design, simplicity, quality content and easy logical navigation. 1) The most important content or the first thing you want to place infront of your visitors should always get a prominent place in your site. Try to keep site's intro text within 20 words . Most visitors read this much only on any home page, the Web design guru Jakob Nielsen says here. Where as some studies also say that in an average a minimum of 5 lines are read by the view
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

New usability program available

Software and website developers might be interested in this new program. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has the details: UK web development team Clearleft has released its web site usability testing application, Silverback. In short, Silverback turns a Mac into a portable usability testing laboratory. What used to require a complicated and cumbersome set up involving several computers, a video camera, and lots of time, can now be done much faster and with less hassle. You only need a Mac with a
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

Submit a CSS site

You
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

PC Growth Boosted by Portable Adoption

Worldwide PC shipments continued to grow at a healthy pace in the second quarter of 2008 (2Q08), according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Shipments were up 15.3 percent from a year ago -- slightly more than second quarter projections and first quarter growth of 14.9 percent. Solid growth in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region helped offset slower growth in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ). "Despite the economic headwinds, the PC market continued to show its resilience,"
Publication date: 2008-07-26 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #56: Netiquette

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Netiquette". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center of
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

WYSIWYG Editors

Everyone wants a WYSIWYG editor, and why shouldn
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Don't treat Underscore as a word separator character on double-click

In just about all modern text-reading and text-writing applications, a double-left-click with the mouse on a word in the text causes that word to become selected. Double-clicking a word in this manner is handy for quickly selecting a word in order to copy-and-paste or cut-and-paste it elsewhere, or to just delete the word. (If you've never used double-click in this way before, go ahead and give it a try on one of the words in this post, right here in your web browser.) I've recently noticed
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Usability of CAPTCHAs Or

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2008/proceedings/p44Yan.pdf CAPTCHAs were originally invented at CMU. The goal of a CAPTCHA is to allow humans through but block automated scripts. They are now widely deployed as a method of preventing spam. Text-based schemes typically require the use to complete a text recognition tasks. Some sites offer a sound-based scheme, typically for accessibility reasons. There have also been some image-based schemes, such as Microsoft
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Mobile Banking Launch at CFE Credit Union Includes "Live" Demo on Cellphone Emulator

While the launch of a mobile optimized version of your online banking site is no longer news on the national level, it's still important for your customers. And the launch will generate many questions starting with, "how much?," then "is it secure," followed by "how tricky is it to use." That's why I love Central Florida Educators' Federal Credit Union's landing page for its new mobile service (thanks to Brandon McGee for the link, see note 1). The CU makes it easy for users to get questions
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

iPhone 3G Bluetooth

It takes four actions to enable Bluetooth on the new iPhone. Click
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

User Experience: Context, Context, Context

Yesterday, I wrote about two new redesigns launched and realized I failed to really address the pros and cons of "context" included within the designs. ReadWriteWeb has a great article today on Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms, which places context (and what the user's value most") at the center of the user experience framework. A long-standing mantra on the Web has been "Content is King." For most working in user experience, however, we've had to
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Sometimes the neighbor picks up the package

Sometimes the neighbor picks up the package If there is one web company that gets their clients, it is Amazon. I ordered a book yesterday and the email confirmation includes the following hint:
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

10 things about CleanCruising.com.au [Cruise travel agent]

Time for another detailed review. Last one for a while (I will explain why in another post on Friday). This time lets look at CleanCruising.com.au - a cruise travel agency serving the Australian market. 5 things I like Slider based filter search Yeah - I know - sometimes us web people can get excited about small things like AJAX sliders - but I personally like them. [Although I haven
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

iPhone Tip: Enable Caps Lock

Here
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Ratings and Reviews Engage Your Visitors

Trust in word-of-mouth recommendations is at an all-time high. Public relations firm Edleman says in its 2008 Trust Barometer study that
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Slow Load Times Affect Users

Don
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

The case against splash pages

From time to time, clients ask me if I
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Advanced Charts and Reporting In Next Release

Here it is July and I feel like a kid on Christmas knowing that the next release of SmarterStats includes advanced charts and graphs using Silverlight. Very cool! SmarterStats is one of many applications included with every i-Dialogue subscription.
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Yahoo Champions Internet Accessibility for the Disabled

by Ross Dunn At Yahoo Anecdotal today Yahoo announced that they had recently opened the Yahoo Accessibility Lab; a place where only Yahoo employees (for now) can experience the world of the Internet as a disabled web surfer would. The blog posting also states: "In addition to simulating the disabled experience, the Accessibility Lab also provides a growing collection of books and videos that we hope will help visitors become more comfortable with the culture of disability. And help Yahoos
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

To Snapper or not to Snapper

So for those who aren
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

Make Sites Easier to Read on Mobile Screens

I
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Dangerously confused

I wanted to look into Google Spreadsheet Gadgets, which are quite exciting, and I can
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

7 Steps to Good Quality Website Design

7 Steps to Good Quality Website Design Category: Web Design In website design, your job is to reduce the amount of ambiguity in your web pages. Before visual aesthetics, studies have shown that usability and utility are the most important aspects of website design that will determine a site
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Web Page Construction for the Rest of Us

Roxer Remember that name - it
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Rich Clients and S+S Model Gaining Traction

I found it interesting that Entellium, a CRM software company, is abandoning its browser based CRM application in favor of it's rich client CRM application. This is one of several recent events that signals (to me) that a larger "Software + Services" (S+S) inflection point is now underway. Looking at Gen Y office workers as a leading indicator, I'm often amazed at how many actually *prefer* to use rich Windows applications. The browser is just an alternative interface, much like a mobile
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Excel Hack For e-Learning Project Management

I found this up on the Uxmatters.com blog and thought it could be applied to e-learning project management.... Excel Hacks for Help Writers By Mike Hughes Excerpt: "Looking for a better way, I discovered Excel and the power of managing by task inventories and check-off lists. Project management boils down to just three essential requirements: scoping the size of the project bundling the tasks into manageable and assignable chunks, or components tracking progress I have found that working w
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Trusting Functionality

One of the major challenges we face with the design of our new linguistic command-line project is that of trust. As Zittrain mentions in The Future of the Internet, this is really the fundamental problem of generative systems, and also their most valuable asset: the ability for a user to run arbitrary code is simultaneously what gives the personal computer its revolutionary power, but it
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

The

After many months of speculation and veilled warnings issued to application developers, Facebook looks like they are ready to start rolling out their new layout for their social network. Personally, the changes don
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Good Websites are like a Good Cup of Coffee

I moved to Australia almost eight years ago. Since then I have become somewhat of a coffee connoisseur (or snob, depends on who you talk to) and no longer sit in ignorant bliss sipping back on Tim Horton
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content

After writing Effective Use of Blog Sidebars a couple of weeks ago I decided to look into the topic of dynamic sidebars. Typically, most blogs will us a standard sidebar for the entire site. WordPress users have a lot of potential functionality that is rarely used in terms of creating various sidebars and displaying them in different situations. For example, when I was creating the theme for DesignM.ag I needed to have slightly different sidebars according to the category of the post. You can
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

The Best Use of Flash I

My colleague Kurt has been working on some flash-related stuff that he just shared with me. As part of his work, he researched the history of Flash. I
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Ecommerce Top Level Navigation

Most websites do not pay close attention to the design of their top navigation bar. Yet simple changes made on this location of the page can make huge differences in conversion optimization. Prior to going bankrupt, Tower reported that they were able to double their conversion rates by adding a new navigational feature to their site. While there are no concrete rules on what elements you should include on your top bar, there are several elements you should consider. Should you use a top le
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Get $30: Usability Specialist looking for a few good people

Usability Specialist, Alison Kather, is looking for people who work with design documents from designers/engineers but are not the actual designer or drafter of these documents. They can be users of DWF and Design Review, but we ideally would like them to not be familiar with AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, or any other design application. We are running an activity called a usability study online Monday August 4th, 2008 through Friday August 15th. All those who participate will interact with a p
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

How are Focus Groups different from Usability Testing?

How are Focus Groups different from Usability Testing? Sowdamini , July 24th, 2008 In today
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

ISO 20282: Ease of Use of Everyday Products

After some years of drafting it's finally there: ISO 20282, the ISO standard for the ease of use of everyday products. It contains the following elements: - Design requirements for context of use and user characteristics - Test method for walk-up-and-use products - Test method for consumer products - Test method for the installation of consumer products If I sum it up, the standard is relevant for physical interactive products for personal (and not professional) use or in the public domain, but
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

ISO 20282 Ease of Operation of Every Day Products

A new Iso norm has been published to extend the scope of the old Iso norm 9241-11 (the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use) to the user interfaces of everyday products. The following article gives a clear understanding of the new ISO norm: ISO have released a new standard for measuring the usability of every day products, like ticket machines, mobile phones and digita
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Wordpress v. Movable Type

Disclamer: We've had a bit of an ongoing debate on this one with Anil fanning the flames as he tries to support the MT cause. I should disclose that I'm a member of the Six Apart Professional Network and also a 6A partner for the Paris office just so's you know... While I'm a long-time Movable Type fan and user, I remember the first time time I installed Wordpress. What a treat, the thing was completely painless and took no time at all. I was way impressed and have been since. Added to functio
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Silverback has launched!

Silverback has launched! posted 1 hour ago Clearleft
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

One Page Web Site

One Page Web Site Puremedia Brisbane : Web Design, Development, New Marketing and Media: This is a very interesting Web site, and I maintain quite effective for the right kind of company. It
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Facebook facelift - 5 things I like vs. 5 things I dislike

The new.facebook.com is out, and with it comes a cleaner and leaner interface that is not only more configurable, but addresses the growing needs of its of an audience that is stretching well past the niche of the college students. Here are 5 things I like, and 5 things I dislike about the upgrade based on what I see on my own Facebook page. What I like: A trimmer, slimmer menu bar that now includes the search facility where it belongs, in the upper right hand corner as opposed to half-way d
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Quick Paste - Quickly Share Blocks of Text

A few weeks back, I posted about a new service named TinyPaste over on Mitchelaneous, which made it easy to copy blocks of text, paste them into a box and then get a short URL so you could share that text with your friends. What makes this service even cooler, is they have a Firefox extension to help you speed up the link generating process. Using the Quick Paste add-on, you can highlight text then grab your URL. Not much rocket science behind it. Here is a little more about the Firef
Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Facebook Gets a Facelift

Announced yesterday on the Facebook blog, the redesign of Facebook has finally arrived. After several delays to the new aesthetic, the developers have finally released the new platform to the masses. More AJAX, tab-centric, and a more versatile API
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Tips for Using Video in PowerPoint

Found this surfing my RSS feeds.....Video for PowerPoint by Craig Myers Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS F
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

The "smart" in smartphone defined

The "smart" in smartphone defined July 22, 2008 - 10:11am Companies are only just understanding what a smartphone means in today
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Writing for the Web

To write effective text for the web, it helps to think about how people read on the web. People on the web are busy trying to complete some task
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Usability FAIL - Brian Moon

I can
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Arrested Development

Arrested Development By Micha | July 22, 2008 I
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Resolutions Be Gone!

(Haha! Thanks to the wonderful internet, I
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Usability is maitre d'

Have you ever walked into a restaurant or shop where you didn
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Pattern Tap

I got a mail from Matthew Smith this morning advising me to take a look at his new site Pattern Tap. Pattern tap is a inspiration site for web designers with a unique twist. Instead of the usual pretty site gallery Pattern tap allows you to look for inspiration on certain elements. So whether it
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Online Merchandising Workshop

Hi  We just wrapped up a very successful Online Merchandising Workshop in beautiful Huntington...
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Begin making improvements on SDK documentations before losing your developers

SDK documentation is the most official documentation and support material for developers to learn how to use the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) the platform provides. The quality of SDK documentation directly affects the willingness and difficulty of the developers to create applications on that certain platform. However, in the current market, it's just so hard to find perfect SDK documentations. Most developers have to rely on extra information such as books and technical commun
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Hiring Bloggers is More Than Hiring Content - It

I have been getting a number of calls and emails recently from a large number of companies that are wanting to hire a blogger to get that needed content on their website, but a few savvy companies are also asking about community outreach. Community outreach is a part of the professional blogger
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

VIDEO: How to switch from a V4 to a V5 template

Hey there Squarespacers. Amidst the version 5 upgrade on monday, we have gotten a lot of emails wondering how you actually make the switch from V4 to V5. Quite simply, everyone is already on V5, the entire system is now V5, but in order to use ALL the features, you will need to choose a new, V5 template. Thats it. Nothing else to do, just choose a new template, and you have all the V5 goodies. That being said, you DO NOT have to switch templates, you can stick with your V4 template, edit and
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Bad Usability vs. Goog Usability

Bad Usability Representing the destructive option as big shinny button, representing the desired option, in most cases at least, as a smallish link. Good Usability Asking for a confirmation on critical and irreversible operations.
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

Wordle.net is a fun little Java utility that turns any block of text (or, as in the case above, my RSS feed) into a beautifully rendered word cloud. Lots of fun to play with and coincidentally adjacent to some work I've been doing lately with my new project (more on that later.) Wordle gives the best result if you tell it to block out common words in the language you're submitting (for English, "if, and, but... etc."). [via The Morning News]
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Lijit's Value-Added Search Offends Great Blogger, Mack Collier

Mack Collier hates the blogging search tool, Lijit. And when Mack talks, everyone listens. At least the smart ones. Mack is one of the brightest, most generous bloggers I know, and I know a lot of bright, generous bloggers. However, try as I might to understand his objection to Lijit, I hit a stumbling block. The problem stems from a feature Lijit calls "re-search." Here's how it works: If you come to this site through a search engine, that means you were looking for something in particular
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

check out the new facebook layout

I have been wondering why the url had subdomain called
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Elevator Talk

I don
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Urban Usability - How walkable is your city?

I have a little project called Localographer, which you can use to create heat maps and find a house or apartment near your workplace, friends and relatives, or other place you
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Stats

Dreamhost collects the access and error logs for the web site domains they host for me. The stats are crunched by Analog. The numbers are okay. I much prefer Google Analytics. (Even AWStats is better.) Analog is good enough. While at Bbworld, Nicole asked me about the hits to her wedding web site. She made it sound like then she and Ashley had the data but just needed to know how to interpret the data? Now a couple days later they didn
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Use Of Behavioral Targeting In Online Advertising

The advertisers have to really slog and spend whopping bucks to generate quality response. None can underestimate the need of advertising in the business world. This is why it has found a prominent position in the promotional mix. Seeing the popularity of Internet, many advertisers have advanced towards the web for promotions. This is the reason behind the increased use of online advertising in the ad campaign planning. Right from media planning to targeting the right audience, everything have
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

The Truth about Web Navigation

The Truth about Web Navigation. Jeremy Zawodny on regular users understanding the browser address bar:
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

RE[3]: sorry but there are no NEW "bits"

"SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is an all-in-one solution that contains technology innovations and usability breakthroughs including integrated desktop search, accelerated graphical interfaces and numerous ...
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

CAPTCHA: a barrier to entry

When a customer starts completing an application or registration form it demonstrates they are committed.  It therefore makes sense to pay attention to the usability of that form.  But how often is the content of the form considered?  Are there content barriers in the form that prevent customers from completing it? Marcelo Calbucci (Via Luke Wroblewski) describes a barrier that everyone assumes just has to be there so it is not tested: The CAPTCHA.    When the team removed the CAPTCHA from the
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

E-commerce Usability - Add to Cart Buttons

E-commerce Usability - Add to Cart ButtonsPosted By Adam In order to achieve a greater rate of conversions, a bold and clear
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

New look for Designfeedr!

I
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Dozen fundamental web design tips for affordable creative website design

Dozen fundamental web design tips for affordable creative website design Posted by admin Websites are very crucial for any kind of small business and helps in interacting with clients. Thus you need to concentrate while designing it. This article describing dozen web designing tips can help you to design your profitable website in all aspects. A website is an unseen face of any business towards its business market area. This will determine the growth of any business who wishes to pr
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Browser Check!

I
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

4Poyntz Dezign: The hierarchy of customer-centered design

I
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Simplicity - an example

NYTimes published this interactive chart showing statewide voting trends of democratic primary. Just plain simple and easy chart - allowing information to dice and slice; form individual opinion and navigate the trend. Consider the amount of multi-dimensional data that this chart shows. It consists of 16 dimensions; 50 data points; each data point suggesting additional attribute of %age point gain; etc. times 2 - one for each candidate. This easily require decent amount of data crunching to
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Jason Santa Maria {24} design inspiration

duration 28:27 In issue #24, we speak with Jason Santa Maria, designer to the stars. Jason {from Twitter} Be sure to take the CreativeXpert Survey. Thanks! What I know of Jason is that I envy the work he does. He
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Expert Review of KNetworkManager 0.7

Although I didn
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Cute error messages are not any more usable

Cute error messages are not any more usable July 20th, 2008 by Jamie I have noticed a trend in error messaging in those oh-so-hip Web 2.0 socially networked applications like Facebook and Google Docs. Error messages - feedback from the system telling you that something has gone wrong - are written in
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Daily Sucker for Monday, July 21, 2008

Daily Sucker for Monday, July 21, 2008 July 21st, 2008 2:02 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: You
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

That

How many spam messages did you get in your inbox today? Ars Technica reports a new study by MessageLabs that found 81.5 percent of all June
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Worst Web Sites of 2008

Worst Web Sites of 2008 July 18th, 2008 4:04 pm by Vincent Flanders I
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

my microwave is [nearly] perfect by design

In all other respects, it is pretty much a piece of crap: low cooking power, an annoying beep marking that it has finished its job, and I would bet it has a radiation leak. The colour I could do without, it is not white but one feels it should be (and so it is just dirty.) But when it comes to its design
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Daily Digest

5 Twitter Tactics for Building a Stellar Brand Assuming that you
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Me so sorry

Apple apologizes and compensates for MobileMe downtime and their loose definition of “push.”
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Western Spaghetti

When I see stuff like this I’m 1. filled with envy, 2. filled with envy, 3. hungry. More wonderfulness can be found at eatPES.
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Watch out for everyone or no one

I was in a three-hour meeting yesterday. I’m meeting averse, you know that. But one of the things I liked about this meeting was when the guy in charge stopped someone mid-sentence and said “Don’t say everyone or no one. It doesn’t mean anything.” We all do this. We try to justify our position by saying “No one knows…” or “Everyone knows…” or some derivative thereof. When you throw around these extremes you weaken your point. There is no such thing as everyone or no one. Don’t justify your position by putting an unjustifiable abstraction at the core. Even “Most people” is a bad one. “Many people” isn’t as bad, but it’s still loaded. I find myself saying it all the time. “Some people” is better. A clear “these people” is best. So when you’re making a point or taking a position, watch out everyone or no one — they aren’t really there.
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Soundcloud expands the audio player

Most embedded audio players offer a tiny player with the basics: play/pause and a progress bar. While this design works great for the casual listener, Soundcloud has another audience in mind. Musicians, producers and sound engineers want to do more than listen to a track. They want to provide feedback on specific details. The bass at 2:36 needs more compression. There’s a mic out of phase at 4:01. Can we try another patch for this one chord in the bridge? In order to allow this kind of collaboration, Alex and the guys at Soundcloud could have used a standard player and tossed a comment stream below it. Instead they decided to expand the player and allow commenters to add notes directly inside on the waveform itself. The result is pretty cool. People can post tracks and receive a flurry of comments attached directly to the waves. The player spans the full width of the screen, so it’s easier to set the playhead at the exact spot you want. Commentor’s avatars appear in the bottom of the player, and their comments pop up on hover. I like how these guys set out to build a collaboration site for music makers, and what did they concentrate on? The music player. It cuts straight to the epicenter (more). They also scratched my persistant itch for larger link targets in their “Actions” section of the sidebar: Soundcloud is still in private beta, but Signal vs. Noise readers can check it out with this link: http://soundcloud.com/guestlist/signalvsnoise .
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Advice for entrepreneurs: Throw out that five-year plan, build something now, and don't take any money

A couple of Getting Realish ideas spotted in Best Life magazine: Greg Gianforte is the author of “Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money.” In Follow Your Dream, he advises throwing out your five-year plan and focusing on building something now instead. Gianforte describes how to build a company from sales rather than enlisting professional financiers. The secret is to stop sweating your five-year plan and start moving the product from day one. If your business idea requires more money than you have at hand, then shrink the idea. “An entrepreneur getting started doesn’t need a $100 million idea,” says Gianforte. “A $1 million idea is enough. The beauty of a $1 million idea is that big companies don’t care about it. Find a niche within a niche.” The same issue of the magazine also includes Mark Cuban’s Three Rules for Building a Company. He writes, “Do everything you can to avoid taking money.” Sweat equity is the best equity. “Taking money from someone else kills more start-ups than anything else does. Do everything you can to avoid taking money. If you must, your best prospects are potential customers. You have something they want, so if they invest in you, it can be a win-win situation.” Related Getting Real essays: Don’t Do Dead Documents Race to Running Software Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope Fund Yourself
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

New in Basecamp: Updated People and Permission screens

Today we released some improvements to the People and Permission screens in Basecamp. We’ve improved the process for adding new people to a company within a project and we redesigned the Permissions screen with a number of subtle usability improvements. You’ll also find a new Administrators screen to easily control which people in the account holder’s company have Administrator powers. Check out the video below to see the changes. The redesigned Permissions screen wasn’t really a redesign. 90% of the screen looks and works the same. We worked a lot with subtle changes in text size, positioning, and color in order to bring more clarity and spaciousness to the screen. Here’s the old version: And the new redesign: Some quick highlights: The old screen has red links scattered all over. It made the page feel messy. The new design only uses red for the “Add a new person” links. We replaced the red “Add a company” link with a graphic button. We reused some code from Highrise to smoothly transition between the button and the “Add a company” form. The old screen loosely employed a tab metaphor in the blue header. The phrases “People on this project” and “Change permissions” always appeared in the header, and one phrase would be linked while the other was regular black text depending on the page you were viewing. In the redesign, we decided to think of “Change permissions” as a process you enter and leave. We renamed that action to “Add people, remove people, and change permissions.” Now the entire blue header is devoted to this action, and there is a blue “Go back” link below the header to return to “People on this project.” We bumped up the font size on peoples’ names and wrapped them in <label> tags. Now each name is a generous mouse target. We did the same for the radio buttons that appear to the right of people with access to the project. Clicking around is much nicer now. We played with a number of wilder revisions before settling on these very subtle changes. Sometimes the hardest part of redesigning something is realizing where you had it right in the first place. We hope you like the changes.
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Upcoming 37signals speaking engagements

Jason Fried July 31, Denver: New Denver Ad Club Keynote (register online) September 2-5, Boston: Business of Software Conference September 16-19, NYC: Web 2.0 Expo September 23, Chicago: Illinois ITA Speaking of Success Series October 7-8, Chicago: IDEA Conference October 13, Chicago: An Event Apart October 14-17, Providence RI: BIF-4 David Heinemeier Hansson July 21-23, Half Moon Bay California: Fortune Brainstorm Tech September 2-4, Berlin: RailsConf Europe September 16-19, NYC: Web 2.0 Expo September 20, Chicago: WindyCityRails October 20-22, Barcelona: European Ecommerce Conference Ryan Singer November 3-4, NYC: Future of Web Design
Publication date: 2008-07-19 more

Null-Terminated Argument Lists

I was using +[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:] to make a new dictionary, but one of the objects in the dictionary was the result of a call to a method that was returning nil, so the dictionary was incomplete. This got me thinking about NULL/nil terminated argument lists. I don
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

iPhone 3G and firmware 2.0: one week later

Filed under: Cellphones We know it's been a maelstrom week of either: a) patiently sitting outside your local Apple store, losing touch with family, friends, and eloquent others while buried knee-deep in your new phone / firmware, or c) desperately trying to ignore the iPhone. But it's time to come up for air and take stock. We're all aware that things didn't go quite as planned with Apple's trifecta (iPhone 3G, firmware 2.0, MobileMe) launch last week, and we're just open gate to see the f
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

iPhone 3G

We understand it is kept on a whirlwind week of either: a) patiently sitting outside your local Apple store, b) costing touch in family, friends, and substantial others additonally buried knee-deep in your new phone / firmware, or c) desperately attempting to ignore the iPhone. But it is age to appear up for air and take stock. We
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

USID2008: Forum NOKIA-USID Design Challenge 2008 , India

Design a Mobile Application to Empower the Farming Community of India! Link: http://www.usidfoundation.org/ Design Challenge 2008 THE BACKGROUND The spread of mobile phones in India is growing rapidly and the number of subscribers had reached 166 million at the end of March 2008. By 2010 India will have 250 million people having mobiles with Internet capabilities & built-in cameras. 60 million people can watch video on their phones. 100 million can listen to music and 200 millio
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Love Your Home with IKEA

Ikea Malaysia doesn
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Daily Sucker for Friday, July 18, 2008

Daily Sucker for Friday, July 18, 2008 July 18th, 2008 2:02 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: I
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Back or Front?

Be nimble, start small, get traction, generate revenues, (then profits), IPO, face analyst stares, get sold to Banker
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

There is no excuse for... back buttons that don't work

The back button is one of the strongest and most pervasive conventions available to developers, yet some fail to use it correctly and see it as a burden rather than a resource. The fact of the matter is all users great and small know it's there. From novice to expert they quickly learn to know and use the back button and taking that away from them in your application, well there is no excuse for it. The back button has become a usability must by convention; no matter how obvious your navigati
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

50 Firefox 3 Add-ons That Will Change the Way You Surf the Web

Out of the box, Firefox 3 is already an incredible web browser. But when you consider all of the power tools that can be added to it, it's even better. Check out these add-ons for Firefox 3, and you'll take your browser to the next level.
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Does your website say anything about you at all?

One of the great things about my job is that you're asked to look at lots of different types of websites and suggest what can be done to them to help their search engine performance and their marketing performance. it's not as simple as one might hope.  I've seen some really awful looking websites that have been performing really well in the search engines and I've seen sites that look fantastic but just don't perform in the search engines. Of course, an effective website really needs all
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Enable Automatic Start Up for Guest OS on VMware ESX 3.5

This one had me tearing my hair out. We needed to enable auto startup on some of our Virtual Machines on the VMware ESX server, but I couldn
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

A comprehensive guide to application testing

Usability testing is not just a nice step for web developers anymore; it
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Friendliest console installer EVER!

Friendliest console installer EVER! Shows a snippet of the Phusion Passenger installer for Ruby on Rails.
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

School Websites

I
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Meet the 23andMe Team: Iram Mirza

We want to ensure that we always present our users with a delightful and empowering experience as they explore their genomes. We are continuously improving the design of all dimensions of our service because they all converge to influence the user experience (UX) of 23andMe - the experience a user will have while interacting with our service. This is where User Experience Designer Iram Mirza comes in.
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

How many friends have you added? What do you do when you hit the cap?

In Vietnam where I
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Adobe Installer Madness Continues

I
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Things I would like in my next Browser upgrade

Well there has been a lot hoola hoo over the recent releases of Firefox and Opera. But here are certain things that still suck and would like them to be removed. 1. Better plugins and make them such that they dont hang that tab or window. 2. Download accelerator be integrated in the download manager of the browser itself. Hardly makes sense keeping them dumb. 3. Super fast start is not possible for various technical reasons but a preloader program would definitely be kind of must have.
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

new Xbox 360 Dashboard

Microsoft revealed the new and revamped UI for the X-Box 360 last week on E3 and it was about time. The current dashboard although not being too bad, has a few problems which sucessive update haven
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Do You Notice Your User Experience?

Do You Notice Your User Experience? As with most things that people do, we all tend to focus on what we do and think that it's some measure of the center of what happens, but truthfully we're not. I am curious. How much do you notice your user experience as your navigating through the web? For instance, on the AT&T Order Status website (https://www.wireless.att.com/order_status/order_status (Not that I would have any reason to be checking it every couple of hours or anything...)), in ord
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

KDE Updates (

First off, I need to catch up on my day job work so I can get back to KDE. I don
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

My Top Ten Pet Page Peeves

David Walsh recently published a list of "6 Ways to Subliminally Tell Users "Don't Come Back." Here are my ten favorite ways of telling me not to come back, or as I prefer to call them, my "Pet Page Peeves."
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Episode #55: Reductionism

Here is the next episode of the weekly e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series where we explore the jargon used by e-Learning professionals and training managers. This week's word is about a theory used in e-Learning: Reductionism. We want you to join the discussion. There are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. The call in numbe
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Moodle Open Source E-Learning Heads for the Cloud

Moodle is one of the biggest players in software and platforms for e-learning (online seminars, webinars and the like) and it's also free and open source. Now, Infinity Learning Solutions has announced a cloud computing solution for Moodle leveraging the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. The move may let interested parties--such as the many universities that use Moodle--deliver high-end e-learning content, such as streaming video classes. They're also likely to be able to deliver such content
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

ChannelAdvisor Announces Acquisition of RichFX

CHANNELADVISOR ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF RICHFX Acquisition Helps Internet Retailers Offer Increased Usability, Improve Conversion Rates with Fewer Clicks via Rich Media Applications Research Triangle Park, NC
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Infrastructure Update Caveats for Cost Resources

While reviewing the white paper that describes the recent Project 2007 Infrastructure Update in detail, I came upon some interesting information at the end of the document. Before I start, I first want to thank and congratulate Microsoft on a job well done with the quality and quantity of documentation they
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Project and Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update

For those of you that haven
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

OpenID: fail.

[ Do you know what - I'm a bit nervous about this blog post. The reason I'm nervous is that I'm writing about something I really don't understand too well. I've tried - I really, really have - I've watched videos and slideshows, looked at diagrams, read explanations. But I still don't really understand how OpenID works. And for a long while that put me off writing this. I know that OpenID has a lot of people gunning for it. And I know that support is gaining, at least in numbers of service pro
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Daily Sucker for Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Daily Sucker for Wednesday, July 16, 2008 July 16th, 2008 2:02 pm by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: None. Vincent Flanders
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

An Introduction to Persuasive Design

On June 16th I wrote a blog entry about my time at UPA 2008. When I was there I had the opportunity to attend several presentations. The best one was Take the Next Steps to Persuasive Design. It was done by Spencer Gerrol (Human Factors International) and Kim Snedaker (AAA). Spencer and Kim explained the difference [...]
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

What is Usability?

What is Usability? July 16th, 2008 Here
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Scrabulous vs. EA/Hasbro Scrabble

So EA and Hasbro have finally released SCRABBLE for Facebook. Not surprising, pretty much all of my Facebook friends who play Scrabulous ran to check it out. After playing a few rounds in several games, I think it's time for a mash-up with the ever-popular Scrabulous Facebook application. Look & Feel Scrabulous Clean, bright, no-frills, all-business. Static display is a little boring but is
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Problems I face with laptop keyboards

When working on different laptops, I have faced different challenges to my habits. Below are for the Toshiba, Dell and Lenovo models: My habit is It requires However, the Toshiba
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Great Quote - Straight from the TweetDeck

From Ross Hill - Cyberguru 26 very important words.
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Blog Navigation and the Ongoing Challenges that Arise

Navigation is obviously one of the most critical aspects of usability. Developing effective navigation is a challenge for most websites, but it
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #55: Reductionism

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Reductionism". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Center
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Quick site performance improvement

I have been playing with YSlow, Yahoo
Publication date: 2008-07-17 more

Product Blog update: Switching from Salesforce to Highrise, Outpost to bring Basecamp to iPhone, Backpack Journal is "fan-frickin-tastic," etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Highrise Why The Demo Coach switched from Salesforce to Highrise “To my surprise, Highrise turned out to be an amazing SAAS, which allows us to have basically the same functionality as Salesforce. The biggest differences to me is that the user interface is much more enjoyable to work with and the cost is a fraction of what I am used to paying for CRM.” Basecamp Coming soon: Outpost will let you manage Basecamp projects on your iPhone Outpost (coming in August 2008 from Morfunk) promises to let you manage your Basecamp projects on your iPhone: “Take notes away from the office. Delegate tasks from the train. Check on deadlines. Upload photos to projects. Anywhere.” Entrepreneur/Author at CNNMoney.com: “Basecamp brought a ‘best practices’ rigor to my business” “Basecamp brought a ‘best practices’ rigor to my business. It gave us a common nomenclature for projects and allowed us to organize our content workflow into headings like Overview, Messages, To-Do’s, Milestones and more, tied to each project.” Backpack Blue Flavor thinks the Backpack Journal is “fan-frickin-tastic” “About a month ago I read about Backpack
Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

Nature is amazing: Gordian worms

Gordian worms live inside crickets. Once fully grown, they inject chemicals into the cricket’s brain, brainwashing it and forcing it to kill itself by jumping into water. Once in water, the worm wriggles out of the writhing body and swims off in search of a mate. [Thanks: JD]
Publication date: 2008-07-15 more

The early days: How 37signals built buzz out of the gate

When 37signals first started out, we didn’t make products. We did client work. From the beginning, we allotted plenty of time for side projects. Things that would get us attention (eNormicom), experiments with new ways of selling our services (37express), ways to show off our design thinking (37Better Project), etc. Here are a few of the key non-client projects that enabled us to build up an audience before we launched Basecamp: The 37signals manifesto We started with a philosophy. The 37signals manifesto, which explained our approach to design, was our original site from 1999-2001. This collection of 37 nuggets of online philosophy and design wisdom was our initial “declaration of intent.” We’ve changed a lot over the years. But the manifesto set the table for what followed. Usability, valuing people over org-charts, simplicity, speed, anti-jargon, small teams, emphasis on copywriting, eliminating bells and whistles, etc. It was all there, in the manifesto, back in 1999. The 37Better Project In “The 37Better Project,” we’d take frustrating online experiences and show how we thought they could be better. Complaining is easy. Offering solutions is the tough part. When we have an idea about how to improve a specific web site or concept, we post our pro bono “better” design comp here. The 37Better Project included: 37BetterBank, 37BetterFedEx, 37BetterPayPal, 37BetterMotors, 37BetterGoogle. Some examples (click image for full size version): eNormicom eNormicom was a parody site we made mocking the new media branding foolishness that was all the rage during the web bubble. It takes a lot to differentiate your brand in today’s “me too” world of electronic business solutions. At eNormicom, we create and develop campaigns that break through the chatter clearly and consistently. “Homing In on ‘Intelligent’ Web Design” is an article in the NY Times about the site.Design Not Found We also started collecting good and bad error messages at our site “Design Not Found.” The site’s no longer around but it eventually evolved into our book on the same topic: “Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points.” 37express With 37express, we offered quick, effective, subtle revisions done for a fixed price in one week. It was our way of getting work done quickly without having to deal with all the back and forth headaches that typically accompany client work. Research We also published this E-Commerce Search Report (1.2 MB PDF) which analyzed, reviewed, and rated the search engines and search results at 25 popular e-commerce sites. (Originally sold for $79.) There was also the Holiday E-Commerce Ideas and another report titled “Sites that Don’t Click” (now out of print). Signal vs. Noise And of course there was Signal vs. Noise too. We would trade lots of interesting emails or have conversations over lunch that seemed like they would be interesting to others too. So we converted these emails and topics into blog posts. I remember thinking we were a little late to the blog party but, in retrospect, we were fortunate to get a blog up and running still relatively early. (Lesson: Technology that’s a year or two old may seem like old hat to us web freaks, but there’s still a while to go before saturation.) Building an audience Since we didn’t advertise and relied on word of mouth, projects like these were essential. They kept us in people’s heads. They also freed us from the restrictions inherent in client work. We were able to play and experiment which, in turn, kept us happy/sane. We built up an audience that turned out to be an invaluable headstart when we eventually launched Basecamp. It’s a lot easier to market a product when you already have thousands of fans — ones who are the perfect target market for what you’re trying to sell. It’s also worth reemphasizing one thing that’s been there from the beginning: Our philosophy. By knowing what we stood for, we always had an internal compass to guide us. We knew which clients were right/wrong for us. We knew which projects we wanted to spend time on. And we knew what we stood for. P.S. A big shoutout to early members of the 37signals team who have moved on: Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura, and Scott Upton. They’re all brilliant.
Publication date: 2008-07-15 more

Nice login and signup panel Newsvine like using CSS

This tutorial explains how to design a simple Newsvine-like panel which includes both options (register and log-in) and appears/disappears cliking on a link in the navigation bar.
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Is Stream-oriented a better UI paradigm than Document-oriented for today's knowledge workers?

Really, what I mostly do today is stream management. And I suspect this is true for the vast majority of people. I don
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Great Documentation: Ten Tips

This article shows you ten really helpful ways to make your documentation better. Quality documentation is a great way to help software projects in all aspects from architecture to coding to testing and implementation. Many projects have been saved because of great documentation at both the user and system levels.
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Oxymoron: Emergency Room Fast Track

Oxymoron (ooh, that should have been Word of the Day): a figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas, such as
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Customer support on the march

13 July 2008 6 pm eastern Customer support on the march You know that new thing where you call customer support and a robot tells you that there
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Custom Data Attributes in HTML 5

Custom Data Attributes in HTML 5 HTML 5 data- Attributes: HTML and XML begin to merge. Simply, the specification for custom data attributes states that any attribute that starts with
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Recent Links: July 06 to July 13

Here are the most recent bookmarks that I have saved to Ma.gnolia. Anxiety - Lightweight To-do Management Anxiety is a super-lightweight To-do list application for Mac OS X Leopard that synchronizes with iCal and Mail. Its aim is to provide a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice. Rating:
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Daily Sucker for Monday, July 14, 2008

Daily Sucker for Monday, July 14, 2008 July 14th, 2008 3:03 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: I hope you don
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Launch Plurk in a Floating Sidebar of Productivity

I have made not secret that I am a big fan of Plurk, one of the newer social status micro blogging services out there. I needed a way to keep tabs on it without taking over any of my current browser real estate though. The solution? Another bookmarklet! This one I call mini plurk. After you have clicked, it will launch a popup window you can move around to where you need it so you can both browse the web and Plurk about it at the same time. Just drag and drop this bookmarklet to your b
Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Clothing designer site adds style with Flash

37Signals
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Tab frenzy

Tab frenzy July 11th, 2008 by calum Have to admit I cringe every time somebody adds tabs to an application. Not because I have anything against appropriate use of tabs (and I
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

HOWTO: Use the p2 director to control where you install

HOWTO: Use the p2 director to control where you install July 11th, 2008 by Nick Boldt A number of people have remarked to me that there
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Where Web sites fail

Where Web sites fail Look at your Web site and ask yourself: Is the text legible? Is the task flow efficient? Does the site help users avoid and recover from errors? No, we didn't think so.
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Extract and Compress Right Click Menu on KDE4

One of the functional menu that make my life more easier with KDE 3 are the Compress and Extract Menu. With this function, I could make an archive or extract zip file with Konqueror without opening Ark for manually extract or compress the file. Now, I enjoy the KDE 4 on openSUSE 11.0, with Kwin desktop effect and a lot improvement in various area, but I still missing the above menu. How to add the similar function to KDE 4 so we could compress some file or folder, or extract a zip file both in
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

PlanetEye: Plan your Trip using Virtual Exploration

Yesterday, travel site PlanetEye opened its beta to the public and I took some time to review it. This innovative travel site lets users plan their trip by exploring the location they are going to visit. The core of the user experience happens on a map where hotels, restaurants, attractions, photos can be displayed and collected in the Travel Pack(s), that
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

SlashGear iPhone 3G review

It hardly seems like a year since the first-gen iPhone stormed the cellphone market, grabbing Apple a coveted spot in the top ranks of handset manufacturers and redefining the sort of usability people could expect from a touchscreen device. Now, however, the iPhone gets its first significant upgrade; you
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Banners and The Right Click

Do banners that allow standard right-click navigation options -- "open in new window" and "open in new tab" -- have higher click-throughs, other things being equal? ---------------- Useful: a wireless mouse that doubles as a PowerPoint remote control.
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

The SKINNY on Perez Hilton!

The SKINNY on Perez Hilton! It's about time Yankee's star Alex Rodriguez received some good news. Madonna's alleged secret lover will finally be able to see his kids. Soon to be ex-wife Cynthia has agreed to let A-Rod see the kids tomorrow, Friday, in Toronto for 0
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Designing the fun out of games

Designing the fun out of games July 12th, 2008 Okay, this is going to be a bit of a rant. I suspect that it also might make me look a bit sad, playing computer games on a Saturday afternoon, but here goes
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Wireframing in the real world

Whenever I
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Google Notebook Add-on (without the add-on)

Like the idea of the Google Notebook add-on but you don
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Ubuntu in Action: Oh My Bleeding Eyes!

Ubuntu in Action: Oh My Bleeding Eyes! I
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Testing Is Overrated

Article about why user testing by itself is overrated. To produce high quality code, several quality review techniques are needed.
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Choice in Colors

It
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Really Simple Notepad for Firefox

Need to jot something down real quick before you forget, and don
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Usability and accessibility

I have a certain reputation with my gaming friends - I am known as Jurie
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Book Review: Designing the Obvious, Designing the Moment

User Experience Designer Robert Hoekman Jr has written a pair of wonderfully lucid books that examine best practices in interaction design. In Designing the Obvious, and Designing the Moment, Hoekman extolls the virtues of understanding specific user tasks rather than generalized user personas. It
Publication date: 2008-07-13 more

Fashion label Madewell uses Flash and video smartly

Fashion label Madewell has a really cool site. 90% of it is photos of the products and each piece in the collection has a video showing a person moving in it. Overall it’s a beautiful example of minimal nav and total focus on the content. Also, Flash is used in a refined way. There’s a lot of hovers and interactivity, but it’s not too much. Just enough to make things interesting. And the deeper you dig, the more neat stuff you’ll find: This scrapbook-style nav is fun and this calendar is really fresh too. Kudos Madewell! [FYI: J. Crew launched Madewell as “a hipper, little sister” of the brand.]
Publication date: 2008-07-12 more

Enter the iPhone apps

Some iPhone apps we’ve been discussing in our Campfire chat room: Mobile AIM lets you chat via your phone. TypePad for iPhone lets you blog directly from your iPhone. PayPal lets you check your PayPal balance, send money or request payment. OmniFocus does location aware to-do lists. When you are near the grocery store your grocery list pops up. Neat. Remote turns iPod touch and iPhone into a remote control for iTunes and Apple TV. Which app(s) are you excited about? Related: iPhone SDK, Apple’s Touch Platform, and The Next Two Decades [SvN]
Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

Can iPhone developers make a living just developing iPhone software?

Two huge disclaimers: 1. It’s early. iPhone 2.0 and the App Store are just hours old. Everything below is pure conjecture. 2. “A living” is subjective. Where’s the market? Pinch Media just released an initial price distribution chart for the initial 500 or so iPhone apps in the App Store. There are always going to be more free apps than pay apps, but what’s telling is the initial distribution of prices. Most are $10 or less with the bulk at under $5. If that’s where the market settles out, developers who planned on making a living selling iPhone software may be in for market whiplash. It is certainly possible to make money selling software at $5 or $10 a pop, but you have to do significant volume to make it pay. $20-$49/pop can add up pretty quickly (as many successful shareware authors can attest to), but $5-$10/pop requires real volume. OmniFocus Outlier So far OmiFocus is the only app priced higher than $10 in the top 35 downloaded iPhone apps. There are only four other apps in the top 100 that are priced at higher than $9.99. However, a closer look at OmniFocus shows that the entry price for the desktop app is already $79 so their customers are used to paying higher prices for their software. It will be very interesting to see how many new players without established products will be able to command prices over $9.99. I suspect there may be some seriously vertical apps (like ForeFlight that will command top dollar. Are iPhone apps just supporting cast members? It’s way too early to tell, but besides games, might the big winners be the hybridizers? Salesforce.com makes their money selling web-based software — the iPhone app is just a gateway to their core service. OmniFocus will make the bulk of their money on their desktop app. Will iPhone-only developers build profitable companies or will a combination strategy (web, desktop, or both) be required to justify developing for the platform? Of course an ad supported model is a possibility too. Twitterific, for example, already runs ads from The Deck (or you can pay $10-15 to get rid of the ads). Another option is the Tap Tap Tap model which is to release a pile of apps for $2.99 each and make the dollars on aggregate volume. Time will tell I’m bullish on the iPhone and App Store. I still believe the iTouch platform will ultimately dominate the mobile space for the next 20 years. The next 3 months should set the market for iPhone app prices. I wonder where it will all settle out and where people’s pricing expectations will settle in.
Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

There's more than one way to skin the revenue cat

Are you exhausting all your potential revenue streams? We stalled launching our Job Board for a while because we felt we had bigger fish to fry. Once we got around to it, we couldn’t believe we had waited so long. It was easy to set up, a great resource for our community, and has generated lots of cash for the company. There’s more than one way to skin the revenue cat: If you sell web software, you can also write a book. Or put on a conference. If you’re a design firm, you can also sell jewel case packaging. Or start an ad network. If you’re a site that collects funny videos, you can also sell tee shirts. If you’re a popular local blog, you can operate a flea market. If you’re a computer company, you can reinvent the music business. Etc. Your self-imposed limitations on how to make money are often just that: self-imposed. Seek out other routes to your destination. It’s one of the big advantages that small, agile companies have. They can experiment and change directions quickly. Plus, multiple revenue streams help you diversify so all your eggs aren’t in one basket. Do you have an example of a company that has come up with an interesting or unorthodox way to make money on the side? Tell us about it in the comments.
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

The human side of Pixar's robot

This story is hilariously, beautifully, far-fetchedly awesome and heart warming. See also the MeFi thread. Pixar proves it’s one of those great companies that is run by unabashedly human people, and it’s no wonder why their work is so personal and touching. When you engage yourself with your customers and your audience on a level that reminds them you are the same, the experience is far greater than just using a product or just seeing a movie. Humanity is desperately missing in our age of megacorporations and big box stores. People love robots, but they’ll love you if you’re human, too.
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Product Blog update: Backpack "How to" pages, ProofHQ integration with Basecamp, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp ProofHQ and Basecamp: Offer your project team richer review and approval tools “ProofHQ integration with Basecamp” explains how to add ProofHQ proofs to your Basecamp projects. (ProofHQ is a web-based design collaboration, proofing and approval tool for brands, agencies, designers, print and production.) Backpack One of our favorite uses for Backpack: “How to” pages One way we love to use Backpack is for “how to” pages that guide us through confusing tech waters. These tutorial pages mean we don’t have to waste time relearning processes from scratch. CSS tip for customizing the appearance of Backpack pages “If you use Backpack, the organizing web tool and intranet from 37signals, you may sometimes wish you could modify the text on a page to fit a little more information on it. I have a page where I collect code snippets and terminal commands and the default font seems a bit large with so much content. Turns out there’s an easy solution to this: simply add a small amount of CSS to the page in the form of a note and you can change the formatting to meet your needs.” Highrise Web consultant touts forwarding email into Highrise “With Highrise, you blind-carbon copy a special drop box, something like dropbox@999999997.rkg.highrisehq.com. The app does all the hard work, determining who you are from the dropbox subdomain, parsing the email to determine where to file it it the CRM system, and associating the message with the right people and companies and dates.” Getting Real Getting Real reader now “living in passion and designing a product that is actually useful” “I decided start my own software company with a friend from college. The idea we have is great (I think) and I’m finally having fun writing software again, because I’m writing it under constraints—the constraints of my day job, and of real life. Gone are my class diagrams, design documents, and long-winded e-mails. I have arrived at a happy place of producing features and code, living in passion, and designing a product that is actually useful (or will be, I hope)!” Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Pixar's tightknit culture is its edge

More on why Pixar’s movies are so much better than the competition: According to “Pixar Rules
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Recent jobs posted to the Job Board: Montreal, San Diego, Hamburg, London, Iowa City, etc.

Programming/Tech Jobs Shopify is looking for a Senior System Administrator in Ottawa, Canada (or telecommute from anywhere). CloudRaker is looking for a Web developer in Montreal, Canada. LinkedIn is looking for a Sr. Software Engineer in Mountain View, CA. Naughty America is looking for a Rails developer in San Diego, CA. Janus Health, Inc. is looking for a Quality Assurance Cowboy in San Diego, CA. Airlock is looking for a Creative developer in London, UK. Goldstar is looking for a Rails Developer With RJS, AJAX focus in Pasadena, CA (or telecommute from anywhere). Gx5 is looking for a Support/QA Guru located anywhere. Houseparty is looking for a Junior Web Developer located anywhere. Auburn Quad, Inc. is looking for a Web Engineer in Cambridge, MA. Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board. Design Jobs Digital Publishing Startup is looking for a Creative Director in Los Angeles, CA (Venice). massify is looking for a Senior Designer in New York, NY. The Open Planning Project is looking for a Standards-aware Web Designer in New York, NY. Usable Security Systems is looking for a Lead Front-End Developer / Web Developer in San Francisco, CA (near South Park). New York University is looking for a Web Administrator in New York, NY. DailyStrength is looking for a Senior Designer in Santa Cruz, CA. The University of Iowa is looking for a Web Designer in Iowa City, IA. Fork Unstable Media GmbH is looking for a Senior Web Designer in Hamburg, Germany. Lockheed Martin is looking for an Information Architect/User Experience Specialist (IA/UX) in Rockville, MD. Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board. More jobs! The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Learning from "bad" UI

When Gruber first linked the TripLog/1040 UI by Stevens Creek, I wasn’t kind either. Bright colors, controls seemingly placed at random. It was the opposite of what designers strive for in our circles. A mess. Soon the Flickr page was a schoolyard of insults. And then something interesting happened. TripLog’s designer Steve Patt posted a comment amidst the bile to share the rationale behind his design. The many who chose not to listen to him won’t learn anything, but the rest of us may find fruit in Mr. Patt’s thoughtful explanation and twenty years of software experience. The first charge against TripLog is “clutter,” that there’s too much on the screen at once. We’ll get to clutter, but first we have to talk about speed. Patt explains that the #1 purpose of TripLog is to help people track their deductible or reimbursable mileage. If people can’t enter their trips very quickly, the friction of entering data will overpower the motivation to track. For customers, untracked data means miles that aren’t reimbursed. So speed is Patt’s top priority. What does speed have to do with clutter? I once saw Tufte give a workshop in Chicago where he introduced a valuable concept. He said information may be displayed adjacent in space or stacked in time. Take a book for example. If two dots are on the same spread, they are adjacent in space. All it takes to switch between them is movement of your eye. Compare that to a dot on one page stacked above a dot on another page. You can’t see them at once. You have to flip back and forth between pages to see one dot versus the other. The trade-offs between elements adjacent in space versus stacked in time are always in the mind of a UI designer. Placing many elements on the same screen reduces the need for navigation and gives users a comprehensive feeling of “it’s all at my command.” Moving focus from one element to another is instant and seamless. On the flip side, separating elements onto different screens slows things down with navigation while increasing clarity. There is more room for explanation and luxurious space when fewer elements occupy the page. The eye has less to filter through. The course of action is more obvious. So did Patt put too many elements adjacent in space on one screen when he should have separated them out in time? Is his UI “cluttered?” To answer that we should pull ourselves out of the computer and sink our feet firmly in the customer’s shoes. Patt explains that customers load the application for two reasons: They want to log miles they just drove They want to double-check that they logged a recent trip The first is obvious. Patt explains the second: There’s a very simple reason, which we know because we’ve been selling our Athlete’s Diary software for logging a different kind of mileage for nearly 20 years. It’s because when you start up the software, half the time you’ll be scratching your head saying, “Did I remember to enter yesterday’s ride (or run)?” ... You want to be able to answer that question immediately, with just a quick glance down to the bottom of the screen. Half the time people want to add new entries. Another half of the time, people want to verify a recent entry. On top of that, people also like to confirm the accuracy of data after they submit it. These factors together form a motivation to place the “add an entry” and “verify recent entries” features adjacent in space. It’s a decision to optimize for instant access to both features at the cost of showing more elements on screen at one time. Beyond first impressions When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user. The idea is an interface is easy to use if new users can figure it out and get running quickly. Or an interface is “clear” if all the parts and functions can be immediately parsed upon eye contact. Typically this means stacking features in time so that each screen has fewer elements and is easier to digest. TripLog, while far from perfect, has a different focus. Rather than first-impressions, Patt is thinking about repetition. Spatial memory and adjacency play a major role in repetitive tasks. How many of you keep an assortment of pens, papers, and peripherals on your desk in specific positions instead of moving them in and out of drawers every day? Patt’s bias for adjacency and speed continues inside the “Add an entry” block. There are two ways to log a trip: manually enter data in the fields or choose user-defined presets called “Frequent Trips.” Both methods are exposed. However everything can’t be exposed all the times. There are some features stacked in time too. Choosing a date “Other” than Today or Yesterday, selecting a different Car (for IRS purposes), and editing the Frequent Trips list are all behind the time wall and require navigation. So what did we learn? The fact that a screen is “cluttered” doesn’t automatically mean it is poorly designed or ill-conceived. To many of us, screens thick with adjacent elements are like cold water we prefer not to step into. The very fact that TripLog is no feast for the eyes attests to the difficulty of bringing clarity and order to a screen relying too heavily on adjacent features. It would be a fun exercise to redesign TripLog for more visual clarity without removing any elements. However before we criticize we should look for successes. Where TripLog fails on style it may well win on speed and pragmatics. Patt has thought about his work and designed a product intentionally. Following fashion and the status quo is easy. Thinking about your users’ lives and creating something practical is much harder. Patt can work on his colors and alignment, and hopefully please his user base with a helpful tool. Meanwhile the rest of us would be wise to work on the quality and value of our criticism.
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Tips to Help You Read This Later

Too many web sites and not enough time, right? I
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

iTxt a bad MXit clone going nowhere slowly

At the end of 2006 I was contacted about a new mobile message company iTXT that claimed to launch safer chat rooms on cellphones. This was at the height of MXit
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Why Tags Are Better Than Categories

Most blogs put their posts into various categories, and then list the categories in the sidebar. It's the done thing. But how useful are categories really? Would tags be more helpful for your readers? Few Categories vs. Many Tags Categories are most effective when there's a small number of them. The small list is easily digestible by a reader and organizes your blog into its major sections. A longer list is more confusing for a reader. e.g. If you came here looking for a post on adding Grav
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Adobe make Flash more Searchable

Adobe has joined forces with Google and Yahoo to make Flash content more searchable. Nothing will need to be done by the developer community in order to 'optimize' Flash files for search, according to Google. Text, links, and other interactive elements will now be indexed by the popular search engines. Macromedia had made great efforts in this area with the aid of Jakob Nielsen's group, but met with skepticism by the developer community. Since acquiring Macromedia, Adobe has made a continual
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

NH UPA July Meeting: 10 Marketing Myths Usability Experts Need to Know

July 23, 20086:00 pmto8:00 pm Topic: 10 Marketing Myths Usability Experts Need to Know Speaker: Aileen Cahill, Customer Connections When: Wednesday, July 23rd Refreshments & Networking: 6-7:00 PM
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Suzanne Sells

Well, if you read my last post I hope you see the relation in this one, Suzanne Sells. This Suzanne Somers site is another online store using the basic concept of putting products for sale on the home page. I really am shocked when I find sites that either hide store products below the fold, or even worse, deep in a directory. This sites owner gets it, and they have all their best content right on the home page where it is easy to see. One thing this online store did a little better than the f
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Usability and a

Sound advice from my colleague Rob Enslin to our teams. Hope they will follow it!
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Media type and the Social network

What is a media type in context to the internet? I would say images, video, text, would be the basic ones. Now say someone wants to create a web application which supports uploading and display of images. On top of that also wants to create a social network which helps the uploader share and comment on images. Now this is not a  new idea and many people have done this. The formost 3 which come to mind are Flickr, Picasa and jpgMag. All three support uploading of images. All three have support
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

The site map

When you are creating a web site, the first thing you need is a site map.  This is the plan for the pages, how they connect with each other and how you arrange your information to lead your visitor through the site. With a basic web site it
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

The Pain and Gain of Taxonomy User Testing

As a taxonomy consultant, I always recommend (rather, urge with great gravitas) to my clients that they reserve some time and budget for adequate user testing. As they say, the proof is in the pudding: there
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Tips for Website Redesigns in the Web 2.0 World

Tips for Website Redesigns in the Web 2.0 World July 8th, 2008 by Jody Nimetz Previously, we have talked about improving website usability and SEO with a website redesign. Key issues we discussed: the importance of carefully planning out your site redesign the needs of your target audience determining if you actually need to do a full blown website redesign defining your SEO needs Establishing a website redesign checklist can go a long ways to helping you address all of the SEO
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Burning Down the House: What

So you
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Tips for a Website Redesign in the Web 2.0 World

Tips for a Website Redesign in the Web 2.0 World July 8th, 2008 by Jody Nimetz Previously, we have talked about improving website usability and SEO with a website redesign. Key issues we discussed: the importance of carefully planning out your site redesign the needs of your target audience determining if you actually need to do a full blown website redesign defining your SEO needs Establishing a website redesign checklist can go a long ways to helping you address all of the S
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Avatars break out

Wouldn
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

To Captcha Or Not To Captcha

To Captcha Or Not To Captcha July 9th, 2008 Like many businesses we have online forms on our website to make it easy for prospects to get in touch with us. Unfortunately like many businesses this means we also get a lot of spam. Did I say a lot? I mean a ton. It
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

my computer is promoting a healthy lifestyle

The hardest part of staying in shape is often staying motivated. Your significant other might drop a comment here or there, or maybe a winter trip to Mexico might do it, but I discovered that my computer (and a couple of accessories) actually does a far better job. I read about it a while ago, but just recently made the purchase. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit. For around $30 your runs can be monitored (pace, distance, calories burned) and you can turn on a voice to chime in each mile, provide mo
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

bit.ly

bit.ly (that
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Make it easy to navigate

A couple months back I heard a good talk by Steven Krug. The talk was entertaining and had a simple core point. Let people know where they are on your site so they don
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Developing your Descriptions - Part 2, The Solution

In my last article, Developing your Descriptions (Part 1, The Problem), I discuss the importance of meta-data descriptions for all websites depending on any organic traffic through search engines. I also briefly discussed some of the obstacles in getting this data implemented correctly on larger websites. These obstacles include: Not understanding the negative impact of not including description meta-data on each page. Populating this data can be tedious, causing many people to avoid it like
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

Selling Through Content: What

Dell
Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

I had that idea years ago!

So somebody else built a successful business on that idea you had three years ago. What does that mean? That if you would just have pursued that idea, you would now automatically be enjoying their spoils? Sorry to burst your bubble, but I really don’t think so. Ideas on their own are just not that important. It’s incredibly rare that someone comes up with an idea so unique, so protectable that the success story writes itself. Most ideas are nothing without execution. Just because you thought of a site to share photos with friends wouldn’t have made you Flickr. But I can see how fooling yourself into thinking otherwise is attractive. When someone else is having success with an idea similar to yours, it’s almost like you’re having that success, if only you would have pulled the trigger on it. It inflates the sense that your brilliant idea really was brilliant and that success was just a binary switch away (pursue/don’t). On the other hand, it means that you don’t need divine inspiration to start a successful business. Doing well is not restricted only to those who can have paradigm-shifting ideas. You just need to do it better, or actually merely even good enough, to please enough paying customers that income can exceed expense and you’re off to a great start. You’re probably too young to wear nostalgia gracefully, anyway.
Publication date: 2008-07-06 more

What's Your Least Favorite Form???

I'm doing a presentation on form design in a few weeks. What's a form you think stinks? Where's the link? What about a form that's brilliant? Where's the link? Happy 3 Day Weekend!
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

37Signals is Dropping IE6

37Signals is Dropping IE6 Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products on August 15, 2008: This is so necessary. Someone had to step up and kick the snowball off the hill. On August 15th, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser:
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Using urls efficiently

This example from the new (currently invite only) beta of Yahoo
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Five fails of Steam

Having spent over two hours fixing my Boot Camp drivers (and partially failing), I finally got around to trying to install Team Fortress 2. This involves setting up Steam, Valve
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Case Study: Comparing Design Alternatives

Last week, I spoke at the Boston IxDA night of Short Talks, where I gave a 10-minute (!) presentation called Case Study: A Discount Approach to Comparing Multiple Design Alternatives. Here
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Bill Gates on Usability of a Microsoft Product

Every one of us has at some point tried to do something on the computer, and could not complete the task because the software was not performing as expected. Did you eventually give up because after spending hours on the task, you felt angry and frustrated? Bill Gates sent this expressive email to several of his subordinates in 2003, after wasting hours trying to download Moviemaker. Enjoy.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Universal Design

Eine theoretische und recht lange Betrachtung von Universal Design (aka Inclusive Design) gibt es hier: Adopting the Universal Design Approach Instead of the Stigma That Creates Poorly Accessible Enviroments. The idea behind Universal Design is to create products and services that can be usable for people of all ages and physical abilities. As well as consumer products, this approach is also applied to industrial products, communications technology, buildings and the built environment
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

A Renaissance of awesome User Interfaces will start soon!

When somebody will ask me in a few years, what it was like to be on social networks sites like MySpace and Facebook in the early days, the first thing which would come into my mind is: they had ridiculous bad user interfaces and it was a real mess to use them - but everybody was there. The whole social media boom of the last years has pointed out an interesting thing: people use the platforms where their friends are and not the platforms which have the best set of design, features and usabili
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Add Some Color to the Awesome Bar

Is the awesome bar a little bland for you?  Firefox 3
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

What are Wireframes?

James Kelway wrote an excellent post appropriately called The what, when and why of wireframes and I can highly recommend you read, especially if you are wondering why you should use them in the first place.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Toolkit for Human Centered Design

As I have mentioned before, I have been working at the Kennis Kring (loosely translated as Knowledge Network) of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (where I am also studying) for the past few months. For the past months I have been working together with Bas Leurs, Joel Laumans and Rosalieke Verboom on a toolkit offering an overview of the methods and techniques which can be used throughout the Human Centered design process. We have spent months combing literature for definitions,
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

10 things about Cruise Prices Compared.com

So - another detailed review. This time let us take a look at a new cruise deal price-comparison / meta-agent site - CruisePricesCompared.com I say
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

iASummit 2008: Usability and IA Presentations

While doing research to be up-to-date on what
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms

If you want to maximize the revenue of your service you need to maximize completion rates of your web forms. Unless you have some revolutionary ideas to impress your visitors at first glance, it is not enough to simply enable users to sign up on your site. To make it possible for the service to reach a maximal exposure we, designers, need to provide users with a good user experience. We need to invite them, describe them how the service works, explain them why they should fill in the form and
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Fit to Width or Pinch To Zoom?

The iPhone has done so much to generate interest in using the web on phones with its big, beautiful screen and powerful browser with full JavaScript and CSS support.  But the iPhone feature that seems to excite people the most is "Pinch to Zoom".  Apple has given the  UI, including the browser, a multi-touch interface that lets you use two fingers to zoom; you slide your fingers apart to zoom in and see more details, slide them together to zoom out for an overview of the full page. The zoom is
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Comparing Multiple Design Alternatives

Comparing Multiple Design Alternatives July 5th, 2008 Jared Spool
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Awesome Portfolio: MCBD

Awesome Portfolio: MCBD Saturday, July 5, 2008 by Niek Dekker MCBD is a design company, or a self-proclaimed
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

WinClear Internet History Eraser the Review

Product: WinClear Class: Utility
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Visual Editor for Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede

There have been a number of questions in eclipse.newcomer lately about the availability of a visual editor for Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede. So, I thought I'd see if VE 1.3 can be installed into Ganymede using p2 -- and in fact it's pretty easy to do. As noted in VE Installation Guide, you can use the "Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers"... but because I usually run with the Eclipse SDK, rather than an EPP bundle, I wanted to know what the minimum requirements are for VE, so I unpacked VE into Eclip
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

What's your favorite Twitter feed to follow (and why)?

Link it up in the comments.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

[Screens Around Town] Google Maps, John Deere, EMS, etc.

Google Maps Links to Google Maps are shared all the time. So how come the URLs are so unwieldy? (For example: http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1st+ave+and+1st+st,+nyc&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=52.967233,67.763672&ie=UTF8&z=17&iwloc=addr.) If TinyURL can figure out how to make a URL in just a few characters, can’t the rocket surgeons at Google do it? Aaron Martin caption wrapper Aaron Martin’s blog features this interesting caption wrapper. John Deere Really nice integration of full motion video at the John Deere site. EMS Chris Sternal-Johnson writes, “Our local sports store EMS is doing a sale in which, instead of specific things being on sale, the most expensive item in your cart receives a set 20% discount and the second and third most expensive items receive 15%. Nifty idea.” Keane Creative Unorthodox left side nav from Keane Creative.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Features are a one-way street

Here’s another reason to double, triple, quadruple-check yourself when you want to add a new feature. A while back Netflix added a “Profiles” feature to their service. A couple weeks ago, they decided to pull the feature because it was too confusing and it wasn’t adding value. But it was too late. People were pissed. The blog post received 1286 comments. In the face of this reaction, Netflix had to turn 180 and keep the feature. Whether Netflix Profiles are good or bad, clear or confusing, they’re here to stay. The lesson: Once your user base has grown beyond a certain point, you cannot take features away from them. They will freak out. Whether the feature is good or bad, once you launch it you’ve married it. This changes the economics of feature additions. If you can’t destroy what you build, each addition holds the threat of clutter. Empty pixels and free space where a new feature could be added are the most valuable real estate on your app. Don’t be quick to sell it, because you can never get it back.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Play this!

The internet is full of vapid words and catch-less phrases, but one that I’ve long been particularly peeved about is the word “play”. As in this company is an “infrastructure play” or a “CPM play”. Blogger, please. Using “play” feels like it’s just pointing to how unsubstantial something is. Like that this is their third play. And oh hell, if that doesn’t work, we’ll just get more of other people’s money and try to play again. Or that it’s a play as in pulling the lever on a slot machine and if you’re lucky gold will flow. Do, or do not. There is no try.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

[Quotable] Andrew Stanton, Stefan Sagmeister, Joel Spolsky, Philip Johnson, etc.

“The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it served us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients.” -Stefan Sagmeister (link) “Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Early retirement is a false idol

The classic argument for enduring 80 to 100 hour work weeks for years on end — sacrificing relationships, hobbies, and anything else that doesn’t progress the mission — is that at the end of the rainbow lies early retirement. The reward for risking it all on a crazy startup idea. This wonderful place is filled with anything you want it to be. Never a dull moment again, all the flexibility and freedom in the world. I’m Jack’s sense of utter disbelief. Why does the idea of work have to be so bad that you want to sacrifice year’s worth of prime living to get away from it forever? The answer is that it doesn’t. Finding something you to love to work on seems to be a much more fruitful pursuit than trying to get away from the notion of work altogether. It’s much easier too! The likelihood that you’ll strike gold after year’s of death-march living is still pretty low. The chance of finding something you love doing? So much more achievable. Millions of dollars not required. If you come to the realization that work in itself isn’t evil, you can stop living your life as a waterfall-planned software project too. No need to divide your timeline on earth into the false dichotomies of Sucky Work Era and Blissful Retirement Era. Instead, you can just fill your life with a balanced mix of activities that you can sustain for decades.
Publication date: 2008-07-05 more

Power Up Searching with CyberSearch

Is Firefox 3
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

User research starts with Google

Anyone looking to do a usability analysis of their site should start with a simple search. There
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

My tips for web development and web design

My tips for web development and web design July 3rd, 2008 by Ahmet Gyger After nearly ten years creating web sites and web applications I have learned some lessons. Below are some points I chatted about with friends wondering about going into web development or web design and who asked me for some advice
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

The Notificator: What Twitter was like in 1935

The Notificator: What Twitter was like in 1935
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

T-Mobile Designs More Usable Phone Bills!

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

4th of July Holiday

We will not be posting on from July 3rd to July 6th because of the Independence Day Holiday! We will resume posting on Monday, July 7th. Get the <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons">Shout List Icons</a> widget and many other <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/galleryhome/">great free widgets</a> at <a href="http:
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

This gnome tab-rip thing is just killing me

Aargh, it's too bloody easy to rip off these tabs and there's no way to re-attach them from what I can tell. Something about the sensitivity pop-up menus and the tab drag thing has been tuned up. It's practically impossible to keep a pop-up menu open using a two-fingered click (touchpad). Every time I rip-off a tab it makes me want to throw gnome out the window. the UI seems to have become more and more of a crayon interface without actually improving. Tabs. A logical option for grouping works
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

UIEtips article: Avoiding Demographics When Recruiting Participants

User research is now a critical tool in the toolbox of design teams. However, it only works well if you involve the right participants in the study. Having the participants that match the design
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

How to Fix the Bloated (Tables and HTML) Code that is Jacking Up Your SEO

by Stoney deGeyter Yesterday I discussed code bloat by looking at how we can move style sheets and JavaScripts off the page in order to clean the coding up quite a bit. I this third post about cleaning up bloated code I wanted to address Tables and other typical causes of bloated HTML. Bloated Tables The most typical code bloat I find in sites I work with is created from an excessive use of tables on the page. Personally, I like working with tables over CSS. They are easy to understand and ma
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Pen and Paper Mockups

As we develop websites at The Bivings Group, our designers often sketch out concepts on pen and paper before creating more formal wire frames or draft design compositions.  Given the work we do, it was interesting to see these pen and paper mockups of some of my favorite websites, including Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo.  Check out the initial sketch for Twitter below: Interesting tidbit: the idea for Twitter originally came about in July of 2000.
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Website redesign: Fix the low-hanging fruit

I was reading Seth Godin
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

"Breadcrumb" Definition

Website Redesign Glossary - Entry 5 Breadcrumb: An element on a web page (usually directly below the page title) showing the click path a user traveled to arrive at the current page. For example: Home > About Us > Our Staff Usually the terms are active links, which enable the user to retrace their click path (or skip back several clicks). Breadcrumbs, especially in deep sites with multiple levels of navigation, improve usability because they help users understand where they are now as w
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Retro 1993: Bill Gates Demands Better Uability

This is a wonderful email uncovered by Seattle PI and Usability News
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Don't Forget Your Website

Don't Forget Your Website July 2, 2008 11:01 PM Posted by Mitch Joel Lately, I find myself thinking more and more about what Bryan Eisenberg (co-founder of Future Now Inc., Blogger over at GrokDotCom, and co-author of books like Call To Action and Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?) had to say during his keynote at Search Engine Strategies Toronto this year. When it comes to looking at what we're doing online and in the Digital Marketing channels, we tend to focus on either the current campaigns w
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Layout design !dea

For developer it
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Who Has the Holiday Spirit?

With consumer confidence diving, the banking industry reeling, and even Starbucks closing 600 stores, what we need is a national holiday! Well happy Fourth of July to U.S. readers, and happy Friday to everyone else. What are the big banks doing to celebrate the holiday online? Not much it seems. We are 25 hours away from the birthday and of the thirty largest banks, only ING Direct and WaMu (in the Seattle area at least) are showing the red, white and blue. Anyone else know of a financial i
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Usability, usability, and usability

Usability, usability, and usability The Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore and a team of eight graduate students have completed a usability study on Drupal. The result is a great report (PDF) and an incredibly valuable video which they shared on drupal.org. It is too important not to share, so the video is also embedded below. The results are consistent with the results from usability tests done at the University of Minnesota. The results
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Who needs usability? You do!

Recently I read an interesting bit of research conducted by E-consultancy which grabbed my attention. I was about the growth of the UK usability market. According to these guys the UK usability market will be worth more than
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Project Honey Pot Http:BL WordPress Plugin

Http:BL
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

MOTOFONE

The MOTOFONE handset redefines wireless communication with high design, smart features and easy functionality at a low price. (
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

The Dawn of a New Era at PRWD

It
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Bang & Olufsen design team avoids meetings/process and "sculpts" products little by little

David Lewis, Bang & Olufsen’s chief designer, discusses the company’s unusual approach to design with The Wall Street Journal. Along the way he reveals the pioneering B&O design team only spends 2-3 days a month at B&O headquarters and works externally the rest of the time, they never meet, they have no fixed process, and they build initial versions of products out of cardboard and paper. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: You spend just two or three days per month at B&O headquarters in Struer. Doesn’t this slow the design process? MR. LEWIS: It’s a great, concentrated way of working. I come fresh and clean every other Friday all the way from Copenhagen and see things in a different way, because I am not at all part of the system there. I sit down with the engineers and go through 10 or so projects in various stages. There are thousands of things to discuss — the minutiae of angles, coloring, buttons, graphics and more. This is not just my way of working. All designers for B&O — not just me and my team of six — are external. The company believes in it. My six-member team aside, designers for B&O don’t ever meet, we don’t have any cooperation with one another at all. WSJ: How does the design process work when you are rarely on-site? MR. LEWIS: Every time we design a new product, it’s like starting all over. Time frames, technology and demands are different each time. So we don’t have a process per se. My designers and I do have an approach, though. Whether we are given a brief for a new product or we come up with an idea on our own — and it’s a fair mix of the two — we don’t sketch it. We model it out of cardboard, pieces of paper, little bits of plastic, whatever’s on hand. We build it up little by little, the way a sculptor does. We stand around the object, have an open dialogue and modify it as we go along. Then, I bring that same model along when I go to Struer. That way all sides can see what the design is about and why it’s essential to do it this way and not another. WSJ: How much does the final product depart from that cardboard version? MR. LEWIS: Hardly. When it comes out unpacked at the shop, usually it’s exactly what was envisioned. One example: In 1993 B&O management said, “Make us a new speaker.” Just that. I had the idea to make something less present in a room, something that could offset the bulky television sets that still existed back then. Essentially, a loudspeaker that you could hear, not see. So we modeled ultra-slender column speakers with cardboard and plastic. Once it was in three dimensions that way, we could see all the details and really feel the design… WSJ: How do you get your inspiration, your crazy ideas? I often just sit and look out my office window for a long time, thinking. Why does this look so terrible, why can’t we do this or that? I also visit art galleries and museums as well as Danish antique dealers with architectural furniture and the like, from the 1930s to ‘50s. I have a lot of it at home. It interests and inspires me. Related Getting Real: Built-in seats in “A Pattern Language” [SvN] Meetings Are Toxic [Getting Real] Finding fresh inspiration [SvN]
Publication date: 2008-07-01 more

Fresh UI ideas from Songza and Algorithm Ink

Aza Raskin released a new project today called Algorithm Ink. For the full story check out his explanation and video. The app is basically a “grown up version of Logo”—a front-end to a simple programming language for creating fractal images. While the fractal art is the main attraction, I was more interested in the unconventional UI. Algorithm Ink continues the style that Aza demonstrated six months ago with Songza. His UI comes from another planet where Microsoft Windows never caught on and Hypercard rules the world. There are no native form widgets, no scroll bars, and nary a “ or Cancel” in sight. Normally this is a recipe for confusion, but in Aza’s case the results are often models of clarity and intentionality. On Songza, the most noticable break from convention was the mouse-flower. Traditionally, a web UI for playing a song would consist of the song’s title, a widget to play/pause, and some adjacent links to share, rate, etc. Instead Songza only shows the song title. When you click the title, a flower opens with an action on each petal like “Play” or “Share.” You can click a petal or mouse away from the flower to dissolve it. The jury’s still out on mouse-flowers, but the clutter-free UI they enabled should raise an eyebrow. On Algorithm Ink, the header is what interested me. Each of the grey buttons (Edit, Save, Browse, etc.) is actually a toggle between an “on” state and an “off” state. When a button is “on”, a panel appears on top of the canvas with the functionality for that button. The grey buttons toggle overlaying panels For example, when you click “Edit”, the button turns on and a panel is revealed with the code for the current artwork. You don’t “Save” or “Cancel” to leave edit mode. Instead you click the red “Draw” button to apply your changes, or click Edit again to hide the panel. The Edit button is on and the panel is visible Each of the buttons has its own custom panel. Edit displays a long narrow sidebar, while Save displays a thin horizontal strip. It’s note-worthy when different features of an app actually look different. We’re all guilty of leaning on our templates to the point that each screen in our apps looks a bit like the others. In Algorthim Ink, the Edit mode is tall and narrow. The Save mode is wide and thin. These differences give the app character and also help users develop a kind of “muscle memory.” They can remember the screens by shape as much as by name. The Save button is on and the panel is visible My favorite thing about these grey buttons is that they don’t just turn panels on and off. They also exclude each other, so that if you are using the Edit mode and you click the Save button, the Edit panel will disappear and the Save panel will replace it. You could say the buttons are “mutually-exclusive modes”. A simpler way is to say they act just like tabs. Look closely at how a typical tabbed interface works. You click a tab, and the whole screen reloads to a new screen. The tab bar on the new screen has the same options and position as the old screen, except the tab that you clicked changes appearance to indicate that you are “on” this tab to the exclusion of the other tabs. In Algorithm Ink, the buttons work in exactly the same way. Except there’s a twist. The “tabs” (grey buttons) don’t replace the screen, or even replace part of it. Instead they hide and reveal panels which overlay a single screen that never changes. Your art never goes anywhere, but the panels which allow you to perform actions come and go. These overlay tabs may not be as eye-catching as a mouse-flower, but I think they’re very interesting. It’s hard to put my finger on what exactly I like so much about Algorithm Ink, but it’s plain to see that the approach is different. And in our current UI climate, well-executed difference is itself enough to deserve some thought.
Publication date: 2008-07-01 more

10 Web Design books you probably missed but owe yourself to read

Believe it or not, despite the short lifespan of the industry; the web design community is actually well matured. We are to a point where we have a
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

NYT: Time to Renovate Windows?

So a few days after my post on the need to remake Windows from the ground up, this: "Painfully visible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight. Windows seems to move an inch for every time that Mac OS X or Linux laps it. The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now." NYT: Randal Strauss, "Why Windows Could Use a Rush of Fresh Air"
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Why Does the OK Button Say OK?

Words are critical to task completion on websites and in applications. Yet they are still chosen carelessly.
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Irish Times Website - irishtimes.com

Well given that I have a bit of an unfair timezone advantage right now (GMT+6) I may be one of the first folk to gaze on the new Irish Times website: IrishTimes.com - New Irish Times Website homepage So what do I think? So this is all subjective, and should be read in that light. The first thing I have to say is that this is a great improvement over old ireland.com site. It
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Browser uptake in enterprises

Salesforce.com has just released browser usage statistics for its service which is interesting in that the company's clients are enterprises. What this shows is a much more conservative picture than we are used to: 51.7% of users are still on IE 6 even though IE 7 was launched in October 2006. As web usability guru Jakob Nielsen points out in his Alertbox newsletter, web users are becoming more, not less conservative. The upgrade speed, which was 2% per week historically, has now dropped 1% p
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

How Top Retailers Show Product Images

We
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Henning Fischer {22} mission statements and objectives

duration 29:24 In issue #22, we speak with Henning Fischer, a design strategist for Adaptive Path, whose principal focus is on design research and strategy development. Have questions for the show? Contact us now. If you
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Next time you

Don
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

usability: Verification of Challenge Question and Challenge Answer

A website I use regularly requires me to verify my contact information annually. Today, I noticed that the last question on the verification page is for my
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Okay, fess up about how you read online

Bloggers, including me, can get carried away with using too many words in a post. And we can forget about the importance of doing certain things to encourage readers to get the point of what I right. Check out Michael Agger who writes in Slate about how he revisits the work of web usability pioneer Jakob Nielsen who describes most web readers as information foragers. How do you read what's on the web? Word for word or do you skim? Blogged with the Flock Browser Tags: reading, web usabi
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Silicon.Com goes .Mobi

CNET owned Silicon.com, a UK based news site targeted at corporate IT managers, now has a mobile edition.  The announcement is here and Silicon.com is promoting its .mobi with a link and a banner ad on the PC site's front page.  A word of warning though, the announcement says in a big bold green font that the mobile URL is www.silicon.mobi but that address just gives me a "Page Not Found" error.  The correct  address is siliconuk.mobi which appears elsewhere on the page in a smaller font.  You
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

The Future of Usability is Mobile

The Future of Usability is Mobile June 30th, 2008 The Future of Usability is Mobile is an article I wrote for Apogee.
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Past The Cloud And Into The Grid

I personally have always found tag clouds to be a mess. In fact, the seemingly random variation in font sizes to denote weight has made me avoid the tag cloud if possible. That is, until I stumbled upon a recent article by Anthony Zinni of Positive Space regarding a new technique which he dubs the
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Need Instant Amazon Review Summaries?

Using what they call cutting-edge artificial intelligence, the Pluribo add-on of Firefox promises to deliver you instant summaries of any Amazon.com web page you are viewing on the Web.  Why read the entire review, when you can get the proverbial cliff notes this way? How does Pluribo: Instant Summeries work?  Well, essentially Pluribo does exactly what you
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Daily Sucker for Monday, June 30, 2008

Daily Sucker for Monday, June 30, 2008 June 30th, 2008 9:09 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: You
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, July 1, 2008 June 30th, 2008 10:10 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: I always enjoy dropping by your site now and again and have been for at least the past decade or so. Now, this has gotta be the worst site I
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Tips for Performing Online Demonstrations...

Here is another post I found while surfing my rss feeds on giving great online demonstrations..... Delivering Great Online Demos Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivi
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Finger Pointing, Poor Usability, and Bill Gates

Bill Gates
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Amateur Radio Appropriate Technology

Surfin
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

After Dinner Usability

You know you
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

On online security and password policies

Writing the post on del.icio.us's password policy got me thinking about passwords and online security again. Having a strong password policy such as "passwords must be longer than six characters and must contain a number or a symbol and a mix of uppercase and lowercase characters" is great in theory but let's take a moment to follow Joe User as he encounters such a policy and chooses his password: Joe User: Ah, it won't let me use my normal password, I need to create a new one... ok, done! J
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Usability Testing Versus Expert Usability Review

Usability Testing Versus Expert Usability Review Sneha Nair, June 27th, 2008 Sometimes we want to do the right thing to increase our application
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

The confusion of new custom top level domains

Interesting ICANN announcement that anyone will be able to create their own custom top level domains (TLDs). So I would be able to buy a domain name like www.webdeveloper.chrispeters. I can see this... [Click through to read the full article.]
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

how content delegation and web-standards compliancy are reflected in your site stats

Read the rest of this guest article on Dr. Terry Etherton
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Site Clinic: Navigation Usability Can Make Or Break Your Website

by Jackie Baker When it comes to the front end of a website, there are two primary areas that can make or break your online success ... your content and your navigation. You need to have engaging content that speaks to your visitors and addresses their needs and questions. You also need to ensure that it is logically organized, easy to browse, and easy to search. Good navigation functions to both allow visitors to easily find information and to drive visitors to your goal. SmallShipCruises.co
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

HTML Reference

SitePoint, has published their new HTML reference. The author, Ian Lloyd, was recently featured on Boag World. This Beta reference is searchable and does have a table of contents listing. Entries include examples, definitions, usage, and compatibility. Get the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/shoutlist-icons&quot;&gt;Shout List Icons&lt;/a&gt; widget and many other &lt;a href=&quot;
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

REVIEW: Web Form Design - Filling in the Blanks

I just got done a great book on building usable forms - Luke Wroblewski
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Why I don't use Windows any more...

"I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." Bill Gates, "Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame" via SAI Encountering Uusability debacles like this are why I've stopped wasting my time even bothering to try Microsoft oper
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Facebook gets gender-specific

Facebook is tired of its bad grammar, so the online social networking site is making its members declare their gender. Previously, those who signed up weren
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Free

Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Cross post: Technology Supported Human World Interaction

Here is a link to two recent posts on the TSHWI blog: Why not adopt the Google User Experience Team's principles for off-the-desktop digital interactions? Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

iGoogle iMproves iTs Ui

Finally those difficult to use and awkward little buttons on iGoogle are about to be nixed. The problem with the UI is that the
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Bill Gates,

Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

UW Medical Center using surgical checklist to improve safety

Good article on the use of checklists in healthcare to reduce errors during surgery. Here
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

The New Windows Live Mobile Portal

Sometimes it's hard to understand Microsoft's Web and Mobile Web branding. There's MSN and there's Windows Live and I never know which one to use.  I think back in 2005 when Live was launched it was supposed to eventually replace MSN.  It was a full portal; Live Search, Live Spaces, Live HotMail, Live Messenger and a Live homepage with News and Sports. But Live as a replacement for MSN never really took off and it seems to be have been repositioned as  MIcrosoft's Search brand. On the mobile w
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Pimp my shell

When I switched over to Ruby development, I said goodbye to Eclipse and IDEA. I was never one to shy away from a terminal so the transition back to a text editor (I tend to use TextMate and ViM) and iTerm was an easy one. At ThoughtWorks I worked on one client project at a time, and maybe one or two open source ones. Now at Relevance there are weeks when I work on four client projects and a half dozen open source projects (thanks to open source Fridays). To make things more difficult, I've
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Making money with search: How conversion really works!

Making money with search: How conversion really works! June 29th, 2008 I haven
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Pelican Makes Rugged Laptop Travel Convenient

Forget Packing your rugged laptop or rugged notebook in you old overnight bag for business travel. Now you can turn things around and pack your clothes, personal effects, and other items in your laptop case when you travel. Pelican, famous for laptop hard-case designs, now has developed a computer case that looks and acts more like [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

The lack of enterprise short url services

Blogging about this problem in the open source Alfresco enterprise content management system, Dr Q writes: "There is an interesting but annoying issue with Alfresco document links. It is way too long and it looks particularly terrible in email messages... One quick solutions is to use the services to provide by vendors like TinyURL*. But is that really necessary? The answer is no. How about writing a simple webscript and assign it a short URL with a short unique ID?" This isn't just a proble
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Product Blog update: Fluid & 37signals, Jott & Backpack, YouTube & Campfire, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Backpack CSS tip for customizing the appearance of Backpack pages “You may sometimes wish you could modify the text on a page to fit a little more information on it. I have a page where I collect code snippets and terminal commands and the default font seems a bit large with so much content. Turns out there’s an easy solution to this: simply add a small amount of CSS to the page in the form of a note and you can change the formatting to meet your needs.” Use Jott to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage Jott converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments. You can even use it to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage. Highrise New Highrise Feature: Better contact filtering We recently launched an improved contact filter in Highrise: Campfire YouTube clips in Campfire Fun newish feature in Campfire: Post the URL to a YouTube clip into your chat and Campfire will automatically convert it so a still frame from the video shows up: Multiple products [Case Study] Trigger brings Los Angeles and Shanghai offices together with 37signals products “The best feature of Highrise, though, is the little line that appears after I’ve added a note, reminding me to add a follow-up task. I can’t think of how many times that’s prompted me to set a reminder for myself or schedule a follow-up with a client. When we’re busy, it’s so easy to forget to set a ‘next action’ that having it built-in is a lifesaver.” How to use Fluid to “create a kick ass intranet app using 37signals” “Create a Kick Ass Intranet App using 37signals” explains how to use Open Bar and Fluid to create “a stylish intranet app that lives in your dock, complete with all of your 37signals services.” Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-06-28 more

A pleasant failure

I just tried to buy something using my company AmEx card and accidentally entered the wrong security code. (AmEx has their code on the front of the card, not on the back like my personal check card.) Instead of a generic error message that told me the card was declined or couldn’t be accepted, I got this very specific error message that includes a detailed graphic. A graphic! What a pleasant failure message.
Publication date: 2008-06-28 more

Orchid mantis

Publication date: 2008-06-28 more

Mike Rohde's amazing sketchnotes from SEED 3

Mike Rohde did another great job drawing sketchnotes at the SEED 3 Conference on June 6th, 2008 (below). Sign up to get notified when we announce the next SEED. The Chicago Reader was also at SEED 3 and published this profile: “How to Make Money on the Internet: Do what you love, and other tips from the Web cowboys at the Seed Conference.” Includes this great quote from Gary V: Don
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

[Design Decisions] Basecamp support request form

We recently added a support request form to Basecamp (there used to be just a direct email link). The goal of this form: To prioritize support inquiries, reduce uncertainty, and get people the answers they need faster. It also reduces the number of back and forth information-gathering emails, which ultimately makes everyone more satisfied with the support experience. It’s worked really well so far too. But the last question in the original form was missing the mark: We wanted to know how important the problem was and gauge the emotional state of the person writing to us. But this pulldown just didn’t cut it. First off, it required too much reading for a pulldown menu. Who wants to process this much info when there’s a problem? Also bad: It’s a pulldown but the options aren’t mutually exclusive. Someone could very well be confused AND worried AND upset. This pulldown just muddies the waters. So we decided to change it to an actual scale. 1 = not a big deal, 4 = I need help ASAP. Much easier to process but it still wasn’t helping us learn whether or not this query was a top priority or not. Why? Because everyone’s problem is urgent. For example, let’s say someone’s having trouble uploading a file. If they can’t figure out how to upload a file, they’ll say it’s urgent. If file uploading is broken, they’ll still say it’s urgent. That’s no help to us. Of course, we’ll get back to them either way. But if file uploading is broken, we need to know that immediately so we can fix it. If it’s just confusing someone, that’s a different ballgame. We’ll still quickly resolve the issue, but it’s not a fire that has to be put out instantly. We thought about adding in a radio button question that asked “Is something broken?” But we didn’t want to make the form any longer. (No one likes feeling interrogated while seeking help.) So we went back to the drawing board and came up with this solution: This gets at what we really want to know here: What kind of problem is this? We lost the subjective nature of the original “give us your emotional state” question and replaced it with a clear question with a clear answer. It’s better to ask for facts than emotions. Now, if something’s broken, we can spot it and fix it right away. A system failure is much more important to us (and our customers) than a feature request or general feedback. This method lets us prioritize these queries accordingly, instead of treating them like they’re all the same. Update: Per feedback on this thread, we’ve adjusted the menu to the following (more consistent language, no more “general feedback” category since “other” is close enough). Thanks for your comments. Related: Copywriting is Interface Design [Getting Real]
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

The MBA myth

There’s a popular book on entrepreneurship called The E-Myth which claims that bakers shouldn’t run bakeries, plumbers shouldn’t run plumbing companies, and everyone else should think about how they could turn their small business into a franchise. On the face of it, there’s a lot of good advice about how you can’t just be a good baker if you don’t have a business bone in your body and expect commercial success. Problem is that the reverse is also often true. If you just put MBAs in place — or other professional managers without deep subject matter expertise — you’re equally likely to end up with an uninspiring business that fails to be passionate about the right things. To stay on the ball you need to know what’s a good pass and the best way to do that is to be able to make one yourself. Many of my favorite companies are driven by people at the top who intimately know how things should be because they could make them so. The obvious example is the detail-oriented nature of Steve Jobs at Apple. But a few other examples I like are Ulrich Bez at Aston Martin who’s not only the CEO but also part of the company racing team at places like Le Mans. Or Thierry Nataf at Zenith who’s CEO and head designer of their luxury watches as well. But what made me think about all this was Joel Spolsky’s tale of a technical review with Bill Gates back in the 90’s: Bill Gates was amazingly technical, and he knew more about the details of his company’s software than most of the people who worked on those details day in and day out. He understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables—and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date and time functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer. For people who love what they do, whether that’s programming, design, designing watches, or building cars, that’s a great motivation to not grow your company too quickly. Enjoy the time when you can actually be a full participant in the actual activities themselves, rather than just managing them.
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP

Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP humour, microsoft, usability | no comments yet Written by site admin Classic Clips: Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP From: Bill Gates To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH) Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Software is political, just like everything else

I came on to keep a system alive and rewrote it from the ground up, learning OO along the way. The system solved an office politics problem; this was intentional. If you're in your early 20s and you tell CEOs they fucked up their org chart, you'll never get anywhere, but if you just build a tool which requires a certain structure of social interaction, you can fix the problem the CEO caused without anyone ever seeing you do it. Designing social software is as much about social engineering as a
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Research: Getting to the Roots of Your Site Visitor

Understanding your visitor is the underlying answer to creating a successful website. However, gathering the required information can prove to be quite a task. There are a variety of ways to gather key information about site visitors and of course the more methods you utilize and implement the greater the results. As we
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Swedish 3G iPone prices released

The prices was just released from TeliaSonera for the new 3G iPhone. The phone will be released the 11th of july in 84 stores around the country. Good thing is that TeliaSonera are
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Usability? Check. Now try another hat...

Bill Gates' mail about his frustration with unfriendly MS usability. Often we assume many things about our own software - and while the above piece is more of a "Even Gates cannot stand MS software" one, it does highlight how easily software often ends up as a frustrating, non-intuitive piece of technology for the end user. The small things really really count, and developers need to keep putting themselves is users' shoes time and again to test with as little bias as possible. Or better stil
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Mobile Design Showcases

Nokia has just published a document with 10 examples of what they consider good mobile design. It is a mix of applications and mobile web sites. Many of the usual suspects, but also a couple of lesser knowns. I do not necessarily agree with everything. (Surprise, right? :-)) One of the criteria is "Visual WOW" and Jaiku Mobile is considered "stylish". To me Jaiku Mobile looks like its designed by a MySpace user high on banana peel and bad Klingon poetry. The application runs on top of wh
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Bill Gates finds Windows unusable.

Big surprise? Here's an internal Microsoft email written by Bill Gates, which allegedly came to public view due to a lawsuit. From this Seattle PI blog post. It's long, but definitely worth at least a skim: ---- Original Message ---- From: Bill Gates Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH) Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame I am quite
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Mission Ctrl? All the Ctrl Key Shortcuts for Firefox

Welcome to Mission Ctrl.  The task at hand?  Figure out what happens when you push "that button" along with the Ctrl key.  The result?  An awesome cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts for you to use and enjoy. Ctrl + 1 through 9 = Quick switch between 9 open tabs Ctrl + Page Up = Move left through your open tabs Ctrl + Page Down = Move right through your open tabs Ctrl + P = Print Screen Ctrl + O = Open File Ctrl + I = Open Bookmarks in Sidebar Ctrl + U = View Source Ctrl + T = Open an Em
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Write one of these memos about your own website

Write one of these memos about your own website June 26, 2008 - 9:05am
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

The Usability of Ratings

The Web 2.0 world we live in has been beneficial in creating a community of users that share their thoughts and opinions on the quality of just about anything ranging from websites, books and music, to services provided by vendors in their local. The power is in the hands of the end-user and they now have a voice. Even more powerful and more prevalent on the web is the power of groups. A fundamental paradigm has adapted itself online in the world of Web 2.0: People tend to buy, use, do and thin
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Security Screencast(s)

As Alix mentions, I recently put together a quick screencast of some of the new security features in Firefox 3. Of course, beltzner promptly scooped me with his own inimitable screencast, and what with the launch, it
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #53: Participative Design

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Participative Design". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

The PowerMac G5's power button

When I first got my PowerMac G5 several years ago, my first impression of the power button on it was bad. It's a clear example of form over function. It looks nice, but since the button is flat and level with the computer's front surface, it's difficult to find it by just feeling. I need to bend down to see the button to be able to find it. But then I realized that even though it's annoying that I find it difficult to find the button, this also means that my son can't find it either and put t
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Thursday, June 26, 2008

(We're away for the long weekend so no posts on Friday - we'll be back on Monday.) You need to read this: Icann relaxes top level domain and yes - it matters Even Bill Gates hates Microsoft's Usability. Hello Office 2007! Has WOW lost it's standing as the world's biggest MMO? 13 innovations in future transport and travel What are the best US cities by design? Can you really hack the power grid? The Chinese seem to think so Say hello to MySpace's data availability API This is a lovely inf
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

New White Paper Compares B.C. Legislation Tracking Services

One of my first efforts as Crosby Group has been evaluating the B.C. legislation tracking/research service Quickscribe. An excerpt of the press release is below. I hope you find this report useful. I would love to hear your comments! Quickscribe: A Comparison and Evaluation Report (White Paper) Released [June 26, 2008] A new white paper comparing British Columbia legislative tracking services was released today by Crosby Group Consulting. The report titled, Quickscribe: A Comparison and Eval
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Thou shalt make content king

Of the Ten Commandments of Web Design, they leave the most important one at the bottom of the list. At least in my humble opinion. Though the slogan is old, it still stands. Aesthetic design can only go so far in making a site successful. Beautiful can
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Server Room

Hilariously awkward...and allegedly true! Stalled Server Room (via The Daily WTF)
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Put it on paper

Thankfully someone out there agrees with me about the benefit of putting the idea on paper first.  Stop opening Photoshop or Illustrator when you
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Disable Blocked File Protection Control in Windows Vista

In my neverending quest to make Vista more usable, I finally caved and took the time to figure out how to disable Blocked File Protection Control. This
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

ZDNet

ZDNet, the online tech news, reviews and software download site, also hosts a network of around 45 blogs including several well known and popular ones like Mary Jo Foley's All about Microsoft and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes's Hardware 2.0. There's a list and links to all 45 on the Blogs tab of the ZdNet Homepage. I knew that at least one ZDNet Blog, Matthew Miller's The Mobile Gadgeteer, had a mobile edition and it turns out that all of them do. There's a mobile front end at m.zdnet.com which lists
Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Designers who also develop have more power

Alan Taylor of The Big Picture proves how designers who can also develop are able to get things done without jumping through hoops of approval, explanation, and cycles of review. In an interview at Waxy.org, Alan talks about how The Big Picture came to life within the Boston Globe. I have an advantage in that my main role is as a developer here, so I could build all my own templates, format my own style, and so on. I sort of bullldozed some things through though, like extra width, few ads, and I made it simple internally by doing it mostly on my own, no requests for development time, marketing or promotion. After the legal questions were settled, I was free to try it out. It took off fast. This is another example of why I strongly advocate that designers build development skills into their kit. When you’re able to do things yourself, you can just do them. You don’t need anybody’s approval or anyone else’s time. And sometimes that makes the crucial difference between an unimplemented idea or a great success like The Big Picture.
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

Two very different takes on public sculpture and art

Last week I was in Seattle for a couple days. A friend suggested I check out the new Olympic Sculpture Park. It was near my hotel so I walked over there to see what was up. Seattle Nice landscaping, nice setting, nice sculpture, but the lasting impression wasn’t made by the art, it was made by a sign (actually, about 10 signs): They even had an extra specific warning in one spot that “Even the lightest touch harms the art… Help the art survive… PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.” Public art in a public outdoor space in the middle of public paths and public lawns yet you can’t touch it. The only interaction is visual. It’s standoffish. It feels like a missed opportunity. Chicago Contrast this with Chicago’s Millennium Park. Public art and architecture that is entirely interactive. A fountain that spits on you: Or a snaking bridge that you can walk or hang out on: Or reflect in public: Chicago understands public art in a public space. The public will only be interested if they can engage with it. Walk on it, play it in, look into it, touch it, brush up against it. If you go to Millennium Park you’ll actually see and hear kids playing over the place. I don’t think you’d see a single kid at the Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park having a good time. I didn’t see any adults who were particularly interested either.
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

Generous link targets in the library

I love me some padded link targets and today’s provider is a Working Library. The site is about books and their connections. Each post references one or more books and the referenced books are aggregated in the right-hand sidebar. When you hover over a book title, the crisp tiny type is immediately enveloped in a big cozy hover block. I particularly like how the hover reinforces the column dimensions. It’s a sudden punch of structure to the otherwise airy layout. (Found via JSM’s oddities)
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

The new Cartype

Our friend, and former 37signals-founder, Carlos Segura has redesigned Cartype: “A museum of automobile typography”. Very nice redesign (here’s the old site for comparison). But it’s really so much more than that. Take his museum of gauge clusters: Or his obsessive collection of brand emblems: If you dig cars, you really outta check out the new Cartype.
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

Choosing the right things to say no to

Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

What belongs in a helper method?

I’m working on some improvements to Basecamp, specifically the screens where you manage which people have access to a project. There’s an area on our new template with checkboxes beside peoples’ names so you can check which people should be added to your project. I want to apply a class name to the label tag around the checkbox for each person. So I pulled up the template and searched for “label” to find where I might add the class name. There were no matches. So I dug deeper, and saw that the HTML for the label, checkbox, and person name is being generated by a Rails helper method. This is the template code that calls the helper method. <% people_without_access_from(company).each do |person| %> <%= add_person_to_project_check_box(person, company) %> <% end %> Next I pulled up the helper method to see if it really is responsible for producing a chunk of HTML with the label and checkbox. def add_person_to_project_check_box(person, company) content_tag(:label, check_box_tag("people_ids[]", person.id, false, { :class => "company_#{company.id}_person" }) + " " + person.name ) + tag(:br) end Yup, it’s generating the HTML. Right away this smells bad to me. The helper is first generating a label tag. Inside that label, there is a checkbox followed by a space character and the person’s name. Finally a break is appended after the label. This smells bad for two reasons. First, it’s just not so nice for helpers to cook out HTML when they don’t have a good reason to. Second, it’s harder to locate and change HTML when it’s hidden inside a helper. Returning to my original goal, I wanted to add a class name to the label around this checkbox. If I add the class name to the existing helper, it’s going to get even more messy and complicated because I have to give content_tag an attribute with the class name I want. It would look like this: def add_person_to_project_check_box(person, company) content_tag(:label, (check_box_tag("people_ids[]", person.id, false, { :class => "company_#{company.id}_person" }) + " " + person.name ), :class => 'checkbox') + tag(:br) end To find a better solution, we should rethink what the helper should be responsible for. Helpers are useful when they hide complexity that isn’t relevant to the template. Looking at this helper method, I see that it’s useful to hide away check_box_tag with all those params. But the label, the break, and even the person’s name could all be in the HTML and the template would be clearer. Let’s do that. Here’s the new helper. Now it only produces the checkbox. def add_person_to_project_check_box(person, company) check_box_tag("people_ids[]", person.id, false, { :class => "company_#{company.id}_person" }) end And here’s the updated template code, with the label, person name, and break moved over. <% people_without_access_from(company).each do |person| %> <label class="checkbox"> <%= add_person_to_project_check_box(person, company) %> <%= person.name %> </label><br /> <% end %> Now that’s a lot easier to read. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to keep your HTML in your templates and out of your helpers. Helpers are useful when they hide implementation details that are irrelevant to your template, or when they allow you to abstract common template code to avoid repetition. If you find yourself generating a lot of HTML in a helper, think twice and try to keep as much HTML in your template as possible.
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

The Five Rings of Usability

The Five Rings of Usability When you look at the usability of an entire Web site, I want to propose that there are five levels of it. From widest to narrowest, here is what I dub
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

Lorraine Ball {21} branding for clients

duration 17:46 In episode #21, we speak to Lorraine Ball from Roundpeg, based in Carmel, Indiana. Roundpeg helps small businesses become big businesses. Lorraine believes that the only way to be successful is for a brand to stand for something, and to own that position in a consumer
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

Announcing Emailtoid: mapping email addresses to OpenIDs

The other night at Beer and Blog in Portland, fellow Vidooper Michael T Richardson announced and launched a new service that I
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

Does bigger screens on mobile phones lead to better usability?

Screens on mobile phones is getting bigger. That is good because Jakob Nielsen says bigger screens leads to better usability. One reason mobile phones is getting bigger screens is that mobile phones just isn
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

Poster Designs

Poster Designs Posted by Mr.Norsted at June 23, 2008 Designreviver.com has collected 30 inspiring poster designs, not all that good, but some of them are really nice designs.   Se the full list of posters by cliking here - DesignReviver Tags:Design & Usability 0
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

What is the Role of Government on the Web? (Part 3 of 3)

Shouldn't there be a law against having politicians' pictures on websites, particularly on homepages? Taxpayer money pays for these websites. So what gives politicians the right to take taxpayer money and hijack government websites and turn them into campaign websites?
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

Web 2.Overwhelming: 22 Ways to Frustrate Your Site Visitors

By Kalena Jordan Damian Conway is known as the "Mad Scientist of Perl" and he was my favorite speaker at Webstock 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and until recently was an honorary Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University Australia. A popular speaker and trainer, he is a former columnist for The Perl Journal and author of
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

A more human search engine

Wouldn
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

Reaching each individual customer

E-tailers are adding more personalized features to their sites to retain customers. These include the concepts behind Amazon
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

Writing for the Web or the Stupid?

What is the rule for writing for the Web and is it making use dumber? Are you stupid or do you just have an attention span of a flea? If you listen to the usability experts, then you are probably just scanning this article, looking for keywords that pop out of the text. You might just look for Headings Links Words that standout in a sentence. And of course lists! Last week, I found an interesting link thanks to Brian Lamb's del.icio.us bookmarkings. The link was to an article from "
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

why software need never hang

Over 20 years ago I wrote
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

For Want of a %s...

For Want of a %s... Today's post involves a three-way grudge match among usability, security, and inertia. One of the basic tenets of usability is to answer user questions clearly and concisely. One concrete technique is to use placeholder strings liberally in messages (typically coded in C-like languages as "%s" for strings or "%d" for numbers). This notion pops into my head whenever I'm doing anything significant in SQL*Plus. Here's a condensed excerpt from a typical log file of mine. The
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

Will finally carriers detect the PoC opportunities?

After several posts talking about us, new products, mentions, come back to evangelist task :-) Carriers are worried about still 80% voice and 20% data mobile revenue not being balanced (and even the difference is wider if taking in count SMS is carried to CS - voice domain). At the same time most markets are mature in terms of subscribers reaching 90-120% market penetration (more than 1 linea per citizen) and the ARPU is being stable around 28-40
Publication date: 2008-06-22 more

A clever solution to a critical problem

The Ivanhoe Reservoir in LA holds millions of gallons of drinking water. It’s also contaminated with cancer-causing bromate — caused by a reaction between sunlight, chlorine, and naturally occurring bromide. So what to do? They came up with a really clever solution: Keep sunlight away from the water by covering the water with millions of black balls (called bird balls). Watch a video to see how it went down. More photos at Curbed.
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Alaska Airlines saves millions by rethinking check-in flow

Hustle & Flow [Fast Company] takes a look at Alaska Airlines’ effort to design a better way to get customers through airport check-in. The airline studied theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to see how they handled similar situations. Then, the team built mock-ups in a warehouse using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts in order to find ways to increase efficiency. The resulting makeover at the Seattle airport is likely to save almost $8 million a year (and means they won’t have to spend $500 million building a new terminal). Ed White, Alaska’s VP of corporate real estate, assembled a team of employees from across the company to design a better system. It visited theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to see what it could learn. It found less confusion and shorter waits at places where employees were available to direct customers. “Disneyland is great at this,” says Jeff Anderson, a member of White’s skunk works. “They have their people in all the right places.” The team began brainstorming lobby ideas. At a Seattle warehouse, it built mock-ups, using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts. It tested a curved design, one resembling a fishbone, and one with counters placed at 90-degree angles to each other. It built a small prototype in Anchorage to test systems with real passengers and Alaska employees. The resulting minor changes, such as moving the button that sends a bag down the conveyor belt, “increased agents’ efficiency and prevented them from straining themselves,” says Gordon Edberg, a principal at ECH Architecture who helped implement the adjustments. The Seattle design begins with a deep lobby where 50 kiosks are pushed to the front and concentrated in banks. “You need to cluster kiosks in the ‘decision zones’ where passengers decide what to do within 15 seconds,” says airline technology expert Kevin Peterson. Alaska placed “lobby coordinators” out front,
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

[Screens Around Town] Login screens at Apple, Acrobat, and Vimeo

Apple MobileMe’s login screen is more than just an empty box. The depth charge approach gives you a peek at what’s behind the login and makes you want to “unwrap” it and get inside. It’s not surprising that a company that famously does a great job with product packaging would have an online product wrapper that stands out too. Acrobat Acrobat.com offers a login screen that lets you select from a variety of options. The focus shifts depending on which tool you select. And though the page doesn’t reload, there’s a distinct URL so you can link to a specific tool’s login. Vimeo Vimeo offers this playful login screen. Not really related to video sharing at all, but it does hint at the vibe of the community that uses Vimeo. Any other login screens that you feel stand out from the pack?
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Windows Me vs. MobileMe

A couple of commenters in yesterday’s Screens Around Town thread mentioned this “me too” similarity: 2000 2008
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

[Fly on the Wall] Garbage collection

David H. it’s pretty incredible how much time is spent in GC Jeremy K. David – memcaching recordings gave 28% speedup on the dash Jeremy K. probably bigger in production Jeremy K. I think GC between requests will be a pretty decent speedup too Jeremy K. but it’s harder to tell without deploying it Jeremy K. since the next request isn’t paying the penalty for all the trash the previous request generated Jason F. i’m seeing GC thrown around a lot here. What does it mean? Jeremy K. garbage collection Jeremy K. everything we do generates garbage :) Jeremy K. and Ruby has to clean it up Jason F. Gotchya Jason F. 37green Jeremy K. we generate SO much garbage that Ruby’s little mom-and-pop garbage company is strained to its limits Jeremy K. For some pages, we’re spending half of the request just doing cleanup Jeremy K. So decreasing the collections we have to do is a huge boost Jason F. No kidding. Glad we noticed that. From our internal Campfire chat room.
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Product Blog update: AgileAgenda, Backpack Journal Dashboard widget, Kidmondo case study, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp AgileAgenda: a project scheduling application that integrates with Basecamp “AgileAgenda integrates with Basecamp by synchronizing its scheduled tasks with todo items in Basecamp so you can share what tasks people should be working on. When someone marks a todo item complete in Basecamp, AgileAgenda will take that information and update the schedule the next time it’s synced up. Basecamp can help get things done, AgileAgenda will tell you when that will happen.” Getting Real FuelFrog uses Getting Real to keep things ultra-simple “We built it by keeping things ultra-simple and released it with only the absolute necessary features. We even left out the ability to delete/edit your fuel records or the ability to recover your lost password. We launched the application three weeks ago and have spent nothing on marketing/advertising and currently have over 2,800 users. People really appreciate the simplicity and usefulness of the application.” Backpack Mac users: Create a Backpack Journal Dashboard widget using Safari’s webclip button “So I have grabbed the updating part of the page as per the widget described and also the team
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Her way

Edith Macefield, 1921-2008.
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Progressive Enhancement with Ajax

Progressive Enhancement with Ajax June 19th, 2008 Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax is Jeremy Keith
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Natural Mapping

Natural Mapping June 19th, 2008 Cameron Moll
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

DESIGN PATTERNS

For those designers who are out there designing some complex and not so complex websites and web-appliations, here are some useful design patterns to make your life just that little bit easier.- Welie- Patterns of interaction design Yahoo design pattern library Download a stencil kit
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

July starts the hands-free melee

In about 12 days, Californians are required to hang up the phone while driving, or at least switch on their Bluetooth. The state passed a law last year that requires drivers to talk on hands-free devices while driving or face a steep fine. What this means: Companies are going to crawl over themselves to offer products for customers that will allow them to legally chat while they drive. One Korean electronics company already has a soundproof plan: Give away 1,000 Bluetooth headsets. Tomorrow, LG
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Prototypes using Flash (Tutorial)

I was browsing through the articles of Boxes and Arrows when I came across this very interesting tutorial using Flash as a prototype tool. Definitely worth a read if you are tired of using Visio or some other tool.
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Tesco Direct come knocking for a UI Solution Architect

Tesco Direct come knocking for a UI Solution Architect Yesterday I was contacted by Sam Edwards, Senior Head-Hunter at Anson McCade Ltd. It
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Today

This morning, BallmerCorp published an application with the awkward title of
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast #52: Best Practices

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Best Practices". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media Cente
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

How to Create Effective Site Navigation that Leads Visitors to Your Most Important Content

by Stoney deGeyter When performing a site architectural review, one of the first things I look at is the site's main navigation elements. This includes top, side and footer navigation. Together, they all play an important role in both the ability of the search engines to properly spider your website, as well as allowing your visitors to find important areas and information quickly and efficiently. Site navigation can come in many different flavors. There isn't just ONE way to do it correctly.
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Booq Bag a Safe Bet for Lugging Around Rugged Laptops

I currently don
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Webinar Recap: Ecommerce Innovations

This month
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Transparent Image Compression

The Skinny The newest recipe for designing ecom sites (here at Fluid) require transparency. There is nothing better than to let the product images breath and take them out of the boxy limitations of current web design. Imagine having your product with a tasteful glow around it laying on top of a gorgeous backdrop. That is the general design aesthetic that I
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Doctors aren

There appears to be a health/technology gap, but it doesn
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

New domains open up email options

Shopping for a new email address? Yahoo just announced two new domain names that go live today: ymail and rocketmail. According to the company, people want an easy-to-remember email address, but as Yahoo has more than 260 million email users, people are having more trouble finding individualized names. (And no one wants the email sj35uJL9i_sl23jfi9a4u@yahoo.com.) The company has also made it easy to transfer your information from one account to another, a nice feature. Check it out at yahoo.com
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Usability Demystified and a chat with Steve Krug, Author

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. If you
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Firefox 3 Review, Robots, Add-ons and Tweaks

Firefox 3 Review, Robots, Add-ons and Tweaks Posted in Technology, Usability by Douglas Karr at 5:58 am There are 5 comments It
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast #21 Audio Preview

Here's a sneak preview of our next SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series episode about using flash in e-Learning development. Have a listen.... Audio Preview Time: 38 Seconds instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity learning activities elearning podcasts usability CSS Flash XHTML semantic markup Dave Boggs SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

OSX makes it easy to create a great website

I finally got around to trying out the local web server on my Mac today. At first I was quite impressed
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Urban Behavior & Slimy Kiosk Salesmen

I don
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

a quick tour of muziekweb.nl

One of the best things I saw during my trip to Spain and Holland was the Centrale Discotheek Rotterdam and their website, Muziekweb.nl. The library has about 400,000 CDs, 300,000 of which are unique. They also have an equal amount of vinyl in storage and 100,000 music DVDs. The place looks like a gigantic record shop but it also has a number of nice, big iMacs on which people can search the collection and listen to samples of many, many of the discs. Listen to song samples and download
Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Permanent link to Google Tosses Browser Sync in the Trash

Google Tosses Browser Sync in the Trash Comments (2)
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, June 17, 2008 June 17th, 2008 3:03 am by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: Guy Kawasaki just twittered this site
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

No takers for self service at the post office

The local Post Office just installed a new self service machine for mailing large packages. I was at the front of a short line when an office manager approached the older couple waiting behind me and asked if they'd like to use the new self service machine in the lobby. No, they hadn't seen it. No, they wouldn't like to try, they had to pay with a credit card. "It takes credit cards," said the manager. No, they didn't like using machines that took credit cards. The manager exhorted them for a li
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Pseudo-Filtered Lookup Dialog in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

One of the great unsupported customizations in Microsoft CRM 3.0 was the ability to apply a filter to a lookup with just a few lines of JavaScript. Ronald Lemmen had a nice post describing this approach that used a FetchXml query to filter the lookup values. However, in Microsoft CRM 4.0 this customization no longer works and when you attempt it you receive the following depressing error: CRM Parameter Filter - Invalid parameter 'fetchXml=...' in Request.QueryString on page /_controls/loo
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Accessibility - Why bother?

It
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Michael Keaton Stars In Multiplicity II - eCommerce Pagination

With Andy MacDowell playing the role of Googlebot
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

One Laptop Per Child Announces Next Addition of Their Laptop

One Laptop Per Child Frames Next Generation of Revolutionary XO Laptop Excerpt: "One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization focused on providing educational tools to help children in developing countries
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II

Dave Balter, from the clever word of mouth marketing agency BzzAgent, has a special treat for our Signal vs. Noise readers. His new book, The Word Of Mouth Manual, Volume II, which costs $45 at Amazon, can be downloaded for free in PDF format. I’m especially excited for this book because 1. Dave put everything he knows about the power of word of mouth onto the pages (and he knows a lot), 2. Dave is self publishing the book (you know we love that), and 3. Dave is walking the walk by initially promoting the book solely by word of mouth. If you want your customers to start talking about your products and services, this book is a must read. SvN readers: get your free copy in PDF right now.
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

How not to apply for a job

So far we’ve received about 80 applications to our call to hire a new web designer at 37signals. Thanks to everyone who’s applied. We’re beginning to get in touch with people we think may be a good fit. Unfortunately it’s not all coming up roses. It’s surprising how many people don’t proofread, spell check, or otherwise pay attention to the basics when applying for a job. It’s a minority, but it’s big enough that I was encouraged to write about it. We’ve received applications from people spelling 37signals as “37 Signals” and Backpack as “Backback” and Basecamp as “Basscamp” or “Base Camp”. We even got one email from someone calling Highrise “Hi Rise”. One said how much they liked “Packcamp”. Casual communications are one thing, but when you’re applying for a job you have to pay attention. Know how the company spells its name. Know the names of the products. Read what you wrote so you know what you said. It’s OK to be funny if you get the basics right. It’s OK to be irreverent if you get the basics right. It’s OK to take some liberties with language if you get the basics right. It’s OK (and encouraged) to have personality and be yourself if you get the basics right. I don’t want to be grumpy here. I just want to be helpful: Check your spelling, read your email, double-check everything. This is a job application, not an IM with a buddy. We appreciate when you take the time to apply, but it’s a waste of your time if you don’t nail the basics. That said, there have been a handful of absolutely wonderful applications. Some people clearly took the time to put together a special portfolio page (some wisely even used Backpack). Some were bold and clear in their advice. Some were really beautifully written. These are the people who deserve an employer’s full attention. They’ve got ours.
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

A great ad about Dutch simplicity

Thanks Nicolas.
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Cook like an engineer

This chart on Cooking for Engineers totally startled me, but once I got over my need for everything to be in lists and paragraphs, it made perfect sense. With some substitutions, I made a delicious ratatouille on my first try!
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Note to Self: Something Is Wrong Here

Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Tune Your Site Search to Sell: June Multichannel Merchant Column

My June
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Get Over Your Silly Dog Attitude!

This doesn
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Mozilla Firefox for Mobile Phones - Interesting Concept Video

Mozilla Firefox for Mobile Phones - Interesting Concept Video June 12th, 2008 | Category: Marketing, Web 2.0, Usability, Web Design I saw an interesting video from Lifehacker and TechCrunch today about a possible Mozilla/Firefox interface. Overall, it
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Informational Hygiene

A couple weeks ago, at RailsConf, I tweeted that I was skipping Joel Spolsky's keynote and why. Judging by the few responses I got, most people took this to be a joke. It's not. I try very hard to watch what I put into my head. To a greater or lesser degree of success. All kinds of research is out there that begins to explain what affect information has on our not-21st-century brains and there are many reasons to believe in a mental architecture that functions on the principle of shit-in/s
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

9 Things I Love About the Las Vegas Sun Website

9 Things I Love About the Las Vegas Sun Website Posted on June 13th, 2008 By Todd Zeigler in Media, Newspaper Study, Sites, Usability, Video, Web 2.0, Website review The Las Vegas Sun is known for having one of the best websites of any newspaper in the country. The reputation is warranted. In my experience as a web developer, I
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

The Importance of Internal Linking, and How to Do it Right

by Scott Allen One of the elements of site development and SEO that often gets overlooked is internal linking. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone, and improve both search rankings and usability. You may be familiar with the fact that when sites link to other sites, search engines pass value for the terms/phrases used in the link anchor text. (Anchor text is the highlighted text in the link.) When working on improving rankings for a site, people usually try to target links f
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Links for 04 June 2008 through 11 June 2008

Stilgherrian
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Usability by Celeste

I made it yesterday though it was late into the midnight, attending Kubuntu Tutorials Day at #kubuntu-devel. The session I was interested to catch up was the second one by Celeste Lyn Paul aka seele on Usability. I have heard about her, her work, KDE-HIG and openusability.org a few months ago after I attended the HCI workshop at IIT Bombay. The following are the brief notes from my scratch pad on what seele said during her session. Official logs from the Kubuntu Tutorials Day should be availab
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Quarterly Review is done

Some Quarterly Reviews for OOo are still running and some (i.e. the review for Calc) have already been finished. The report of such a review consists of different sections. One section lists issues the teams are already working on and another the most important issues (i.e. a Top 20 of the highest voted issues). So now the question is how to start working on these most important issues to get things done? I want to start the discussion on those issues as early as possible. If we have a goo
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Journalism In The Service of Democracy: A Summit Of Deans, Faculty, Students And Journalists

This morning in my mail I found an attractive printing of the proceedings from a January summit on journalism. All in all, this is a good print document that suffered when it was shoveled online. I have no idea what kind of time constraints or "it came to the boss in a dream so do it that way or else" loopiness might have been facing the webmaster at carnegie.org or whoever else was charged with putting this document online. Nevertheless, the journalists who shared their experience and insig
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

The Benefits of RIAs for Ecommerce Stores - Internet Retailer 2008

Interview on rich interfaces using Ajax and flex with Graeme Grant, COO of Allurent from the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago. Click to play See More IRCE 2008 Interviews
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Why Small Businesses Fail

We have a great interview with business consultant Rudy Ortiz on the main reasons why small business owners fail and what to do to avoid this kind of problem. Listen to Why Small Businesses fail.
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Sign Up and Ramp Up

Das hier ist ein sehr gutes und kostenloses Whitepaper zum Thema Patterns, von Adaptive Path: Patterns for Sign Up and Ramp Up . This detailed report shows the latest trends in usage and design guidelines for sign-up and ramp-up on Web 2.0 applications. By leveraging the patterns we identified across twenty applications, you'll learn how to get users to join and participate in your network or application. Absolut ausdruckenswert. TheHotStrudel The Hot Strudel Informationsarchitektur IA In
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

On constraints and users

We
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Everyday things

A few days ago, i borrowed some Norman series book from the library,  one of them is the design of everyday things. It was recommended by our lecturer to read the design of everyday things, because it has strong relation on interaction design concept. I should read the book because we will got exam on it, so need to read the concept deeply. The book was published in 1998 and 2000 (still don
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Six Figure Blogging Review

I was first alerted to the 6 Figure Blogging course by a tweet (Twitter) from Chris Brogan, a highly respected expert on social media, not to mention a friend and colleague after meeting briefly at PodCamp Boston 2. I have been blogging here on TroyRutter.com for many years, and I have always been interested, fascinated, irritated, frustrated at not having the ability to actual monetize the blog.  AKA - make money. After reading the course is presented by Darren Rowse of problogger.com and
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

User Interface Resource Center

Das hier ist eine gute Seite mit echt interessanten Links und Artikeln zum Thema User Interface. The User Interface Resource Center (UIRC) provides free articles and White Papers written by industry leaders about user interface design and rich Internet applications (RIAs). From business strategy and implementation to hands-on techniques, this site is packed with valuable content. Hier geht es direkt zu den Artikeln. TheHotStrudel The Hot Strudel Informationsarchitektur IA Informationsarch
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

The importance of having shadows Or: realism in virtual worlds

What is the difference between the two pictures above? Realism? Immersion? Fun? Success? Both are rendered from Virtual worlds. The left one is from Gaia a low end (and extremely successful) 2.5D world. The right picture is taking from Playstation Home, probably the most realistic virtual word of today, only accessible with a Sony Playstation 3. Hamlet Au, one of the most famous authors in the Second Life Blogospere recently posted an arcticle about a new experimental version of Second Life
Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

He could be President

A beautiful speech on Father’s Day in Chicago by Barack Obama. Wherever you fall politically, give this talk about family, responsibility, expectations, and ambition a listen. There’s a bit of politics and religion in the last few minutes, but the underlying message is universal. Happy Father’s Day.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

It doesn't have to be all or nothing with a startup

Startup mythology demands that to create something great, you need superhuman sacrifices. You need to work for no pay, you need to put in 120 hours/week, you need to preferably sleep under the desk and live off pizza as a sole form of nutrient. As a result, you need to abandon your family and risk life without insurance. Hogwash! We’ve repeated this story so many times that it’s starting to wear a little thin, but here it goes again: Basecamp was created with 10 hours/week of programming time and as a 3rd or 4th project alongside paying customers for the designers over the course of about 6 months. In other words, we didn’t drop everything we had to create Basecamp, and you don’t have to either. There are plenty of startup ideas that can be done without millions in funding, thousands of man hours, and dramatic risk. But I can excuse people from failing to see them when blinded by press and popular opinion. Everywhere you turn it’s stories about how ever-younger entrepreneurs with nothing to lose are defying all odds and making mortal sacrifices to reach their impossibly unlikely goals and succeeding. Did I say hogwash already? How about you turn your perceived weaknesses into strengths. Embrace your constraints, work with limited budget of your own money and write less software. That’s how we built Basecamp on the side, next to the every day obligations of paying the bills and having a life. It didn’t turn into a smash hit overnight either. We ran Basecamp for a year alongside our other obligations before it was doing well enough to pay all the bills and afford our full-time attention. Most good businesses didn’t become great ones within the 12-18 months that the poster boys of the startup lottery did. So don’t despair, just start small. Reserve a couple of nights per week, a Sunday morning here, and a day from vacation time there. It’s never been cheaper or faster to build a web startup, it’s never been more possible to do it as a side-business. That still doesn’t make it easy. Odds are you’ll fail. Just as odds are you’ll fail if you take millions of VC money, hire a staff of twenty, and spend 120 hours/week on it. But if lost opportunity is a risk when you try, it’s a guarantee if you don’t.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Talk about the best

Everyone is always talking about their bad customer service experience. We all have horror stories we can’t wait to tell our friends. I have about a bazillion, but frankly, I’m kind of sick of telling those stories (and hearing them). What’s been the best customer experience you’ve had lately, or ever? What company has surprised you with their hospitality, attentiveness, speediness, helpfulness, attitude? What company do you recommend to your friends with gusto?
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Git smart: How we're using Git to track our source code

What is Git? Git is a directory content tracker (i.e. it lets you keep track of the contacts of directories as they change over time). It was developed originally by Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) in 2005. What do we use it for? Until a couple of weeks ago, we were using Subversion for keeping track of our source code. We’re now about a third of the way into converting everything to git (a surprisingly straightforward process, thanks to the git-svn utility). So git is our source code manager of preference these days. Whenever someone makes a change to one of our applications or dependencies, they check the change into the central repository via git, and the other developers can then merge those changes into their own repositories. Git makes much of this insanely easy, compared to Subversion.Why do we like it? Branching and merging are the features we originally fell in love with. Whenever we start development on a new feature, we create a “branch” of the code. Work done in this branch will not affect the “main” branch (called “trunk” in subversion, and “master” in git), so it is a good way to make significant changes without affecting what our users actually see. Branching and merging in Subversion are painful. If you’ve never used it, you don’t know what I mean. If you have, you do. Branching and merging in git, though, are wonderfully, blissfully straightforward. For those two reasons alone git is worth the switch for us, though there are lots of other, more advanced, features we like about git, too (git-stash, git-bisect, etc.) How can people learn more? The learning curve is pretty hefty, especially if you start out thinking of it like “subversion-but-with-some-differences”. The best way to learn git is to forget everything you know about more traditional SCM’s and read through the various tutorials online. We’ve got a Backpack page where we’ve been accumulating various Git resources. Once you’re over the hump, though, it’s pretty amazing how easy it makes some tasks that are really hard in other systems.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

"You have to treat your employees like customers"

SvN reader Michelle posted this comment in the best customer experience you
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Product Blog update: Import RSS feeds into Basecamp, Virb can't imagine life without Campfire, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Import RSS feeds into Basecamp with telegraph Using telegraph you can import RSS or Atom information from other systems into your Basecamp account. fixx is a new bug tracking and issue tracking system for software teams that integrates with Basecamp “fixx integrates with Basecamp by allowing you to import your existing projects, milestones and users. This allows you to kick-start your usage of fixx and re-use existing project information, without having to spend your valuable time replicating data that you already have in use.” Variety Club of Great Britain uses Basecamp to help disadvantaged children For more than 50 years, Variety Club Children’s Charity has been helping sick, disabled and disadvantaged children in Great Britain. They recently began using Basecamp and Chairman Len Keighley wrote to tell us how much it’s helped. Campfire Virb can’t imagine life without Campfire “I honestly can’t see how our team ever did without it. Campfire is open in a browser tab all day long. It’s launched when the day begins on the east coast and isn’t closed until the last left coast’er signs off in the evening. We fire-up iChat for group audio chats several times a day, but otherwise, no project communication happens outside of ‘the campfire’.”Getting Real Budget tracking app creator: “I made a better product because of Getting Real” “Everything I did, every decision I made, every piece of code I wrote (or didn’t write) went automatically through the ‘Getting Real’ filter and I genuinely believe I made a better product because of it. And more fundamentally, I made something!” Timetoast: Getting Real was instrumental in our development process “I think if you want to start getting real, you need to redefine your concept of project success and go from there. You’ll begin to understand why the traditional ways of developing an application rely too heavily on the end product and not on how you’re actually going to get there. You’ll find yourself dropping features and watch in horror as your app turns into a jumbled-up mess that doesn’t do any one thing particularly well, but lots of things badly.” Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Patience as a design principle

One of my intellectual heroes, Ronald Langacker, recently released a new book which summarizes his 30-year-old program of Cognitive Grammar, a radical and insightful approach to understanding language. In the very beginning of the book, Langacker outlines three principles which guide his work. Integration means his explanations about language shouldn’t stand alone from our understanding of how the brain works or how psychology works. He wants his analyses to fit with neighboring disciplines instead of standing in their own tower. Naturalness is his second principle. It means that a really good explanation should be reasonable and understandable. If an explanation is arcane, artificial, or exotic, it’s probably wrong. Patience is an unexpected final principle. Being sure not to put the cart before the horse, it means withholding judgment on questions that are premature. As software designers, this means developing a “wait and see” approach that doesn’t indulge in too much speculation. Most feature ideas are speculative. “Wouldn’t it be cool if (x)” is very different from saying “for the last two weeks I’ve been frustrated by (y).” Having patience means putting speculative ideas on a shelf until actual life experience proves they have benefit. Launching a product with “too few” features is a kind of patience. Keeping your team small is a kind of patience. At 37signals, we focus on lean features, short iterations, quick wins, small improvements, and the satisfaction of “build and release.” Paradoxically, all this quick movement and quick satisfaction rests on a foundation of patience. Most of our ideas are never implemented. Our products are never finished. Doing what’s in front of your nose, doing smart work that makes an impact today and leaves space for changes tomorrow takes patience. I’m glad Langacker’s book pointed this out.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Made in...

A collection of “Made in…” clothing labels from around the world.
Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

WordPress Hack: Multiple Email Recipients for Contact Coldform

In the current version of my custom contact-form WordPress plugin, Contact Coldform, there is no built-in method of sending emails to multiple addresses. The thought of adding such functionality had not occurred to me until recently, when a Coldform user asked about enabling it. After a bit of investigation, it turns out that integrating multiple-recipient functionality into Contact Coldform is as easy as it is practical. I will definitely be adding this feature to the next release of the Coldf
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Notes on the Future of GNOME: The Great Achievements

Notes on the Future of GNOME: The Great Achievements June 9th, 2008 by lucasr I promissed myself to write this series of blog posts a long time ago but now that Andy talked about GNOME
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Give Me Something to Work With : Part One

 
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Accenture Analyses Product Returns, But Fails to Explain How

A recent study by Accenture estimates the costs of consumer electronics returns in 2007 at $13.8 billion in the United States alone, with return rates ranging from 11 percent to 20 percent, depending on the type of product. The distribution of reasons to return the product: - 68 percent: does not meet customer expectations - 27 percent: buyer's remorse - 5 percent: defects or malfunctions Accenture believes that the return rates for functional products would decline significantly if vendors and
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Sit up! You

It
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Developing your Descriptions - Part 1, The Problem

Developing your Descriptions - Part 1, The Problem June 10, 2008 I am currently doing some SEO work for a personal project, more specifically I am populating the description meta-data for this project. For this, I am making sure each page description is unique and presents an accurate description of what each page is about if a user were to click on a search result. Now this is no secret, descriptions do work and are still useful today, yet I am still amazed at some of the great companies a
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Information Architecture Television

Information Architecture Television is a weblog that contains quite an extensive collection of online videos concerning usability, information architecture, interaction design and user experience design. (via InfoDesign)
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Why I don

I often have ideas for good blog posts, but never get around to actually writing them. There are several reasons for this, but one stands above the rest. I hate large bodies of text. I hate reading them, and therefore I hate writing them for other people to read them.  There is nothing more annoying than trying to read a long block of text. Even in some of the blogs that I have followed in past, if they don
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

OpenID, my new favorite thing!

I
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Nicholas Carr, in The Atlantic: As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.... Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Social reputation patterns

I found a very interesting post on the Yahoo User Interface blog today discussing social reputation patterns. Reputation is a way to create engagement inside a community and plays an important part in many social networks and other action-driven sites. Some quick examples of reputation systems are LinkedIn's profile completeness and eBay seller ratings. Having these levels of reputation in the system give interactions an added value. In eBay, sellers are given the incentive to deliver what th
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Wordpress as a CMS

Most people recognize Wordpress as a world class blogging platform. What most people don
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Wireframes

A wireframe is a simple visual model of a website (or CD-ROM if you want!), It is produced by a very quick and cheap method so that it can be used early in a project, for example during requirements analysis It might be made using PowerPoint, Visio, or hand-drawn pages, or in HTML, Flash or a specialized wireframe software. Wireframes are excellent for discussions within the project team, and can also be used for paper prototyping and simple usability tests. They provide a model of the website
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Prediction - New Stress Injury for 21st Century -

Prediction - New Stress Injury for 21st Century -
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Thoughts on dynamic privacy

A highly touted aspect of Facebook Connect is the notion of
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

CSS3: Stay tuned

And by CSS3 I mean a recent project I
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Who

The stats for this blog show that most readers are using a feed reader of some kind (predominantly Google Reader). But, that
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Firefox 3 - Back Button UI Annoyance

I
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Why Usability Testing Should Never End

Many companies have realized the value of usability testing prior to a launch or redesign of a product or website, but what about as part of the post-launch maintenance? Continuing to test for usability can offer valuable insights that could improve overall customer satisfaction. I recently wrote about this topic as my first editorial for Usability Interface, the quarterly newsletter for the Usability and User Experience special interest group of the STC (Society for Technical Communication).
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Thinking Outside the Bottle

Somebody recently shared with me an article from Fast Company magazine about a winery that
Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Don't tackle your own good news

When we launched the new Backpack, we were going to increase the prices across the board. It was a big overhaul and we felt the improvements were worth it. But at the last minute, we changed our minds and decided to let old customers keep using Backpack the same way for the same price (or less). Why? We didn’t want the excitement of the new launch to be drowned out by customers upset by a rate hike. We feared the new Backpack’s good vibes would get hijacked by pricing naysayers. So we took that possibility off the table. The result: A decent number of people thanked us for grandfathering them at the same (or a lower) rate. But to most it was a non-story. And in this case, a non-story was a big win. It let the spotlight shine on the good news instead. Lesson learned: Don’t tackle your own good news. The blogosphere can be an unforgiving place. Take pains to eliminate any negative aspects that might overshadow a launch or other good news.
Publication date: 2008-06-11 more

BMW's fascinating GINA Light Visionary Model design study

BMW presents GINA, a new take on car design, materials, and flexibility. The GINA replaces the traditional metal/plastic skin with a textile fabric skin that’s pulled taut around a frame of metal and carbon fiber wires. Even the shape of the car can change. Fascinating and creative design study. The rear lights just shine through the skin: Here’s a video of the design in action.
Publication date: 2008-06-11 more

We're looking for a designer who wants to kick our ass and change our game

You read that right. We’re looking to hire a new designer that can kick our ass. We’re looking for our current aesthetic to be challenged and changed. Redesign 37signals. This is the chance to redefine the look and feel of 37signals. We’re going to start with the product marketing sites. We expect some of that influence to trickle down into the apps over time. But initially this is all about a new design language on our public-facing marketing sites. You’ll have virtual free reign. We want you to take the lead. You’ll have a lot of influence here and across the web design and software design world. We’re looking for someone who understands type, someone who understands color, someone who understands proportion, someone who understands what it takes to give something a distinct style all its own. Bring us a fine art angle. Bring us something hand drawn. Bring us great design. Bring us design that communicates a clear purpose. Design that’s friendly, warm, and inviting, yet elegant, modern, and fresh. Bring us design that feels good. If this is you, share your work and share your thoughts. Tell us why you’re the one for us. Email us at svn [at] 37signals dot com and include [Designer] in the subject. We won’t be able to get back to everyone, but we’ll be in touch if we think you may be the right fit. This is a full time position. Thanks much. We can’t wait to get started working with you. Reference: Posting on the 37signals Job Board.
Publication date: 2008-06-11 more

[On writing] Skybus, Slicehost, how to write good headlines, etc.

The Skybus Rules of Flying Before Skybus went out of business, it offered “The Skybus Rules of Flying” which used straight talk to explain how the airline kept prices low. Brave choice…perhaps too brave? 3. Bring a book. We
Publication date: 2008-06-10 more

Apple's MobileMe drops support for IE 6

Apple announced a rebranding of their .Mac service earlier this morning. It’s now called MobileMe and features online versions of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, so you can access your email, calendars, and contacts (watch a demo) from any PC. Any PC not running IE 6, that is. From the email sent out to .Mac subscribers just a few minutes ago: To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later. There’s still a significant number of PCs out there running IE 6, usually corporate machines that need to access intranets or other web apps that only work with that browser. A quick look at the stats for Basecamp’s marketing site shows that 31% of all IE users are using version 6. So it’s interesting that MobileMe is the first major web application (that I know of, at least) that’s dropped IE 6 support completely. It’s a gutsy move, since Apple’s billing it as a way to access your data from anywhere. And I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a trend. IE 6 is definitely the most painful browser for us to support – it’s seven years old and doesn’t even fully support the CSS 1.0 standard created in 1996. Microsoft’s done an incredibly poor job of getting users to upgrade. It looks like it’s going to take pressure from big apps like MobileMe to seal the deal.
Publication date: 2008-06-10 more

Lost bookings through usability issues - assorted rants!

I read with interest the news, via Travolution, that Thomson Holidays have
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Site Clinic: Basic Principles Of E-Commerce Design

by Jackie Baker Mary Beth is an independent distributor with Flint River Ranch, a company that sells all-natural dog and cat foods. She sent me a plea for help: her site, Pets Love Flint River, is only generating a sale every few months. She had some concern that her difficulty stems from having to compete against other distributors in the search engines. But when I did a quick search on the brand name, which gets a significant number of monthly searches, I found that she's ranking in the top
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

The Evolution of Gmail

Google has semi-released (lots of blurring) 21 images of Gmail from it's early, early prototypes to where it is now. I like the fish, myself. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/06/the-evolution-of-pre-launch-gmail-in-screenshots/
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Complexity in Japanese Phones

Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Home Net Users Need Simplicity, by Design

Consumers are moving beyond basic PC-to-PC digital home networks as they look to connect new devices to their network -- to access and share the growing array of digital content from the Internet, as well as from their own digital media devices. While just a few years ago most consumer networks had only PCs on them, the growth in non-PC devices on the network has been significant. In a survey of online households in the United States, ABI Research has found that over 26 percent had a game conso
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Campaign won by design, tech savvy

Now that Barack Obama looks to take the Democratic nod, you
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

bad ui, bad logic

A few things I came across today, during the daily grind: Trying to sign up for meetup.com is not as easy as I would like, especially since they do not allow valid e-mail addresses. Trying to save the previous screenshot, using an invalid filename on Windows (due to the
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

New summary feature from FriendFeed

FriendFeed has been innovating at a pretty rapid clip lately. It's indicative of a small, close knit, really smart team. Today they have released a feature that might change my mind about the service in general. I'm sure that I'm not an average web user. Most of my friends have several services setup in FriendFeed, and there are several hundred posts a day to wade through if I have more than a couple of friends setup in the service. A few weeks ago I talked about the fact that there was just t
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Get Jaiku and Twitter working in Twhirl

I normally don
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Mobile Social Networks for All Generations

Accessing social networks while mobile are quite popular with the Millennial generation, just as social networking at the desktop is, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. Blogging, photo and video sharing, location-based socialization services, games, SMS, and IM will eventually be combined to afford the mobile user the entire social networking experience from a handset application, the high-tech market research firm says. The mobile handset will simply become an extension of the
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Rockstars and decadence

Rockstars and decadence June 7th, 2008 by calum I started writing this as a comment on Andy
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Hello summer, bye bye class

On Wednesday
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Scrapbook clips catch up

The U.S. Embassy in London is running a series of forums about the election and held one May15th about the web impact: Digital Politics - Effects of the Information Age on the 2008 U.S. Election and Beyond. Unfortunately they worked with YouGov and ft.com and the implementation is awful. First, the video is an obvious add-on to a live event, the sound is terrible (smartcom:tv production), the sell is about watching live, not watching later. No links to speakers texts or speakers notes. And it'
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Regulation gone mad

A small town in Illinois devised these fabulous signs to tell car drivers something about .. lurve, and looking out for your pedestrian fellow human beings. Others added
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Gmail users test their future features

Google is putting its newest Gmail features to the test
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Search engines go toe-to-toe in student-style test

Over at ZDNet, one user puts Google and Live Search through the rigors of a typical college student
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Left Align Menus for Usability

Left Align Menus for Usability June 8th, 2008 Jakob Nielsen states the (almost) obvious, that right aligned text in menus is way less usable than left aligned text. This is because we track our eyes down that left edge to each new menu item, which in a right aligned menu is staggered. Posted in usability
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Friendster Mobile Workaround

A week ago I wrote bemoaning the fact the Friendster redirected all mobile browsers, even "full web" ones like Nokia Webkit and Opera to their limited mobile site. The next day the Opera Mini Team made a modification to their servers that allowed OM users to get to the full site. Friendster countered a couple days later with a change that again forced Opera Mini users back to the mobile site. For years there has been an ongoing argument in the web development world as to whether there should b
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Semantic web search comes of age -- iCognue

Semantic web search comes of age: by Kambam Deepak, The LMai algorithm; Sums up links. SEO Ahmedabad : Learn & Share Everything about SEO New Internet Search Engine Hi Friends, I came across a very good article about new upcoming search engine iCognue. Here it goes. Sobha Renaissance Information Technology (SRIT) announced the launch of iCognue, its much awaited internet search engine powered by LMai (Latent Metonymical Analysis and Indexing), an algorithm for deriving the contextual r
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Internet Power Successful for Business

Video as a Marketing Tool, Search Engines and a Surefire Way! Their most effective marketing tool to date has been their ads on Citysearch. Before that most of our business was very local - it was just people in the area that knew about us. There was some word-of-mouth but not outside our immediate area. Citysearch was fairly new at the time and I noticed they were doing advertising so I looked into it. We started out at a small level. Then people started leaving reviews about their experience w
Publication date: 2008-06-08 more

Product Blog update: Mailmanagr for Basecamp, Backpack dragging tips, Campfire "indispensable" for Gizmodo, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp Mailmanagr allows you to send e-mail messages to various categories within your Basecamp projects “Mailmanagr, in it’s current form, will allow you to send e-mail messages (complete with attachments) to various categories within your Basecamp projects. You can set up an e-mail address for each category, or just set up an “E-mail dropbox” category, and create an address for that.” Backpack Video: Backpack tips for dragging This video shows you how to use the Home/End and Page Up/Down keys for dragging items around a Backpack page quickly. Also, you’ll see how easy it is to drag an item to a page in the sidebar. Productivity blogger calls Backpack “insanely easy” “I
Publication date: 2008-06-07 more

Finding the natural size for your company

Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth. Not all companies are meant to have thousands of employees or a billion-dollar market cap. Some companies are meant to be just 10 people or 5 people or just one guy. That’s what their product, niche, or technique is capable of sustaining and there’s absolutely no shame in that. Finding your natural size should be a triumph, not a capitulation. We haven’t found the natural size for 37signals yet, but I can tell you that it’s not a thousand people. It’s highly unlike to be a hundred. Right now it’s 10 and it’s been in that vicinity for quite some time. Our revenues have been more than doubling every year since the beginning, but that probably won’t last forever either. That’s okay too! Chasing growth as an end in itself makes it all too easy to give up optimizing for today: “When we break 5 million dollars, we’ll start working less”, “when we’re 50 people, we’ll start giving more back to open source”. Bah. Growth begets growth and you’ll end up chasing even bigger numbers and never have the time to do what you really want. Don’t let growth be your primary yardstick of success. You only get to celebrate breaking 5 million dollars in revenue once, taking Fridays off will make every single week a better one. Stop making excuses for why you can’t do this or that in the name of growth. Just Do It.
Publication date: 2008-06-07 more

Will your next meeting pass the "blizzard goggles" test?

No Schedules, No Meetings talks about Best Buy
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Launch: Announcing the new 37signals Affiliate Program (with recurring income)!

We’ve got a very exciting announcement today. We’re launching a new 37signals Affiliate Program. This one pays cash. Plus there’s a twist we think you’ll really like. Now and Forever Many affiliate programs pay cash on new business referrals. Our new program does that too. However, we wanted to take this a big step further. We’ve found the recurring revenue model to be a great fit for our business. Customers pay us every month to use our products. We felt it was fitting that anyone who referred a customer our way should also earn a piece of that recurring revenue. So that’s what we’ve done. Earn 50% on sign-up and 5% of future recurring revenue When a customer signs up through your referrer link, you’ll earn 50% of their first month’s payment (after they make that first payment), then 5% of their future monthly payments for the life of their account. As you refer more and more customers, your automatic recurring revenue can really begin to add up. How much can I make? Review the commissions chart to see the initial and recurring payout per product. At this time Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack are part of the program. We may add additional products down the road. For example, if someone signs up for a Basecamp Max plan, you can earn $75 (50% of the first $149/month fee) from that signup. Then, if they pay for 8 months of Max, you’ll earn an additional $59.60 ($7.45/month x 8 months) for a total of $134.60 earned from that one customer. Check your earnings in real time Once you’ve signed up, you can check the “My Earnings” section to see your earnings in real time. You’ll see a chart that looks like this: Easy promotional tools We’ve started you out with a link you can share via email, IM, Twitter, etc., plus banners you can post on your site or blog. Get paid often Once you’ve earned over $100, you’ll begin to be paid roughly every 45 days. We’ll keep the payments coming every 45 days as long as you have over $100 in accrued earnings. Potential earnings from free signups too If someone signs up for a free account, and then upgrades to a pay account later on, you’ll earn the 5% recurring revenue from the upgrade. Didn’t you already have an Affiliate Program? Yes. We will be phasing that out over time. People who are already part of the old program (credit, not cash, and no recurring revenue) can remain in the old program. But new people who want to join our affiliate program will be joining the new program. Sign up today and get started promoting and earning! Signing up for the 37signals Affiliate Program takes just a few seconds. Then you’re off and running, promoting, and earning. We fully expect some motivated people will ultimately be able to make nice livings off referring 37signals products through the Affiliate Program. The income you can make off the recurring revenue model will really begin to add up. We have a lot of fun stuff planned for the new 37signals Affiliate Program. We’re excited to see where this goes. We wish you the best success and hope to hear your success stories! Special thanks Special thanks to Jeff Hardy for pulling the code strings to get the new 37signals Affiliate Program working. He did a great job.
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

The customer doesn't care whose fault it is

A lot of companies point fingers when something goes wrong. So it’s impressive when a company asks, “Even though it’s not our fault, what can we do to make this situation better?” “Believe It or Not, Someone
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Obama/Clinton support visualizer that rocks

Interactive NY Times graphic. See it in action. According to “You need this to get a job in journalism,” multimedia experience is becoming increasingly important in newsrooms. Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Bill Taylor visits 37signals

Bill Taylor, the original founder of Fast Company magazine, and author of the inspirational Mavericks at Work, came to our offices last week to grab some coffee and talk shop. Bill’s recent piece about how Zappos pays you a bonus to quit lit up the webwaves and got linked up in a billion places. Bill just posted an article he wrote about 37signals based on our meeting last week. Bill is a great guy. He’s full of energy and positively infectious. I first met him at the Business Innovation Factory conference last year. I look forward to being involved with BIF-4 this year. Its a wonderfully unique conference with a seriously diverse group of speakers. It’s one of the most interesting conferences I’ve ever attended. Highly recommended. Thanks again for coming by the office, Bill! And thanks for the article.
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS

The web is a world of constraints, the materials of HTML and CSS flex and give in ways that encourage particular styles. And being able to understand and bend within that scope is what makes a design feel native. Designers who work directly with the materials rather than through simulated environments like Photoshop are at a distinct advantage for making that happen. If you’re working on a Flash game or a media campaign to introduce a new watch, you can afford to disregard that advantage. That’s when the graphical prowess of a completely blank canvas, sky’s-the-limit approach is exactly what you want. You want dazzle and glitz. Making something that’s native to the web doesn’t really matter. But barring that niche, designing for the web is a lot less about making something dazzle and a lot more about making it work. The design decisions that matter pertain directly to the constraints of the materials. What form elements to use. What font sizes. What composition. What flow. Those decisions are poorly made at an arm’s length. I’ve worked with many web designers in the past who only did abstractions and then handed over pictures to be chopped and implemented by “HTML monkeys”. It never really gelled well. The things that got strong attention were all the things that Photoshop did well. Imagery, curvy lines, and the frame. All the around stuff, never the it stuff. That’s why all the designers at 37signals work directly with HTML and CSS. We simply don’t consider designers who don’t get their hands dirty with the materials relevant to the kind of work we do. If you’re a designer working with the web who still doesn’t do your own implementation, I strongly recommend that you pick up the skills to do so.
Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Amazon S3 Stats

There was a lot of interest in the Amazon S3 statistics that we posted a while back, so I thought I’d follow up with some more current data. Here’s a quick summary that I whipped up this morning showing our Amazon S3 usage stats since the beginning of the year.
Publication date: 2008-06-04 more

Ryan talks design on the Rails Podcast

I just got back from RailsConf in Portland. It was really fun to be a designer among a sea of programmers. I spent a lot of time talking to programmers about what designers do on a Rails team and how we should work together. A number of those ideas worked their way into an interview with Geoffrey Grosenbach of PeepCode. Listen to the podcast at Rails Podcast. UPDATE: Here are some quick video interviews with Ryan, Jeremy, and David from RailsConf 2008. Ryan Singer Jeremy Kemper David Heinemeier Hansson
Publication date: 2008-06-04 more

Why we skip Photoshop

When designing a UI we usually go right from a quick paper sketch to HTML/CSS. We skip the static Photoshop mockup. Here are a few reasons why we skip photoshop: You can’t click a Photoshop mockup. This is probably the number one reason we skip static mockups. They aren’t real. Paper isn’t real either, but paper doesn’t have that expectation. A Photoshop mockup is on your screen. If it’s on your screen it should work. You can’t pull down menus in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t enter text into a field in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t click a link in a Photoshop mockup. HTML/CSS, on the other hand, is the real experience. Photoshop gives you too many tools to focus on the details. When you use Photoshop you can’t help but pay attention to the details. The alignment, the specific colors, the exact shapes, the little details that may matter eventually but they certainly don’t matter now. The start is about the substance, not about the details. Details are for later. The text in Photoshop is not the text on the web. Once you’re looking at a static Photoshop mockup you can’t quickly change the text without going back into Photoshop, changing the text, saving the file, exporting it as a gif/png/jpg, etc. You can’t post it online and tell someone to “reload in 5 seconds” like you can when you quickly edit HTML. You have to say “Give me a few minutes…”. Also, type in Photoshop never seems to be the right size as type in HTML. It just never seems to feel the same. It doesn’t wrap the same, it doesn’t space out the same. Photoshop puts the focus on production, not productivity. Photoshop is about building something to look at, but about building something you can use. When you’re just worried about how it’s going to look, you spend too much time on production value. HTML/CSS lets you be productive. You’re constantly moving forward towards something more and more real with every change. Photoshop is repeating yourself. Ok, so you’ve spent 3 days on a mockup in Photoshop. Now what? Now I have to make it all over again in HTML/CSS. Wasted time. Just build it in HTML/CSS and spend that extra time iterating, not rebuilding. If you’re not fast enough in HTML/CSS, then spend the time learning how to create in HTML/CSS faster. It’s time well spent. Photoshop isn’t collaboration friendly. I sorta touched on this before, but let me hit this point again: HTML/CSS lets you make a change, save, and reload. That’s our collaboration flow. “Here, let me change this. Reload.” These changes take seconds. “Here, let me float this left instead of right. Reload.” Seconds. No selecting a tool, changing a few items around manually, saving, exporting, uploading, giving people the new file name, etc. HTML/CSS is build for rapid iterative prototyping while Photoshop… isn’t. Photoshop is awkward. You can’t help but know your way around Photoshop after working in it for 10 years, but I still find it awkward to get simple things done. Working with a pen feels so much more natural to me than going back to the toolbar over and over. A pen can draw anything, but in Photoshop you need to use the text tool to type, the shape tool to draw a shape, the menu bar to adjust this or that, etc. None of this is to say we think Photoshop is bad or a waste of money or time, but for us we’ve found that going straight into HTML/CSS affords us the best iterative and creative experience. HTML/CSS is real in a way Photoshop will never be.
Publication date: 2008-06-04 more

[Screens Around Town] Apple, FriendFeed, and Borders

Apple search Apple.com’s quick search pulldown is an innovative way to present online search results. FriendFeed Narendra Rocherolle writes: I don’t know if it actually works or on what interval, but [FriendFeed’s] idea of sending email for notifications if “I haven’t logged in recently” is pretty clever. Borders Magic Shelf Christopher Jobson writes: Borders launched their first ecommerce site in 7 years and they feature a new heavily-visual search tool called “Magic Shelf”. Other than an unfortunate name, it’s a fun little tool, reminiscent of Apple’s methods for searching through albums in iTunes. Once you create an account you can change the parameters used to propogate potential items. Though not good as a primary search tool, it’s engaging enough to pull me into the site for a bit.
Publication date: 2008-06-03 more

Mighty Helpful Links

Mighty Helpful Links Tools Help You Improve Your Website's Usability via Webgrrls. Offline Blog Promotion Techniques via Scribefire.com. List of 51 Ways to Make Your Blog Popular via Scopeformoney.com. 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site via Insidecrm.com. How to Evaluate Your Website's Keyword Density via eHow.com. Posted by Blogging Basics 101 on May 30, 2008 at 12:00 AM in Mighty Helpful Links |
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Guerilla Usability Testing

Guerilla Usability Testing June 1st, 2008 Clearleft
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Alt+e, g, a

This is the
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Wahre Worte: Apple vs. Nokia

On the iPhone I don
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Enso: A Progress Report

Since moving to Mozilla, I haven
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Usability peeve

I helped my in-laws with online NW Airlines check in. Turns out the resulting boarding passes don
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

You Can Put The Button in The Right Place But You Still Can

If you spend an unusual amount of time evaluating, testing and just plain using websites, at the end of a long day, almost anything can seem like a interface conundrum. On the way home from work, I stop by the store for milk and veggies. As I swipe my card, I raise an eyebrow when I reach for the display:
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Sitecore Redefines Usability for Content Management

Sitecore has announced that the latest version of their Web CMS
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

How not to customize the wordpress blog?

Check out Amitabh Bacchan's blog by BigAdda.com. They have biggest header I've ever seen (947pixel x 964pixel). This occupies whole of viewport (Not a good UE/UI guideline). User have to scroll down to get to the actual content (for which they are coming for). Such absurd approaches are ok with front page design in the name of "branding" or something similar . But surely avoidable on individual post pages.(which bigadda didn't do).
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

MSNBC Hates You

Dear MSNBC, I do not like being forced to click ten times to read a single article. In point of fact, it doesn't matter how interesting the article is, I won't do it. I've learned over time that if I want to read one of your stories that forces me to load six advertisements per paragraph in the first screen (I don't know how many are below the fold), I should go to the "print version." Except you either have the laziest web developers in the world, have decided "print version" means printin
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Late in the Online Arena: Financial Institutions

Banks and financial institutions in general are late starters when it comes to utilizing the internet as a means to generate new revenue and sales. The major role that most bank websites play is a supportive means to their existing clients. Let
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

A Little Favicon Goes a Long, Long Way

by Stoney deGeyter I remember when favicons first started to appear, it was like, hey, how cool is that. But now they are so common that I hardly notice them anymore. Well, no, that's not exactly true. I do notice them, and like them, it's just that I'm not surprised to see them anymore. But I AM surprised when I don't see them. Ok, let's back up. What is a favicon? If you're reading this post on Search Engine Guide, rather than a feed reader, then you need to do no more than look up to the
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Oracle

Although I try to maintain separation between e-Literate, which is my personal blog, and my life as an Oracle employee, I don
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

e-Learning Lingo Podcast Episode#49: Structural Capital

The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Structural Capital". On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the media c
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

ia/recon by Jesse James

Very interesting article on information architecture.
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Tweets from Mobile Content World

Check out a couple of the tweets from Mobile Content World yesterday. I spoke on the iPhone user experience and it was scary to realise how many people in the audience (at a mobile conference) hadn
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

FCKEditor vs. TinyMCE

I am preparing to add WYSIWYG editor to one of my project and looking for some library code to use. The selections narrowed down to FCKEditor and TinyMCE. Both of them look great and perform nicely in the demo. Now comes to the question which one to pick. This article has a nice comparison between the two.
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Martin + Osa Launches Shop-By-Outfit + Video

Our VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley has a key eye for new ecommerce trends and will be presenting a full hour
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

404 Not Found Pages: The Good, The Bad & The Funny

When a customer lands on a 404 Not Found page, he or she is caught off guard - confused at best and downright frustrated and ready to shop somewhere else at worst. A 404 page is a customer service touchpoint. It
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

MyHome is Gone

Major online Australian property portal MyHome is shutting down its website after burning cash for past 15 months. MyHome.com.au owners are Microsoft and PBL which shows that having money is just not enough in business. They have spent around 20 millions dollars in an attempt to capture a share of the $140 million online property advertising market. However MyHome found that it could not attract nearly enough online property searchers to at least break even. Unique visitors have reached half a m
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Daily Sucker for Friday, May 30, 2008

Daily Sucker for Friday, May 30, 2008 May 29th, 2008 11:11 pm by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: Start with a FlashSplash page that could be done in HTML, add automatic window resizing on the home page and then (in Firefox anyway) have a picture of a bag of popcorn hover over your text so you can
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Very quick chat with Luke Wroblewski

Luke is Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo!, Principal of LukeW Interface Designs, and the author of Web Form Design, a new book from Rosenfeld Media. From www.findability.org.
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Yellow Pages.com Rewrite

Lessons Learned: Freeze existing functionality Field small, co-located, talented team (4 developers) Dedicate long technology evaluation, prototyping, and planning period Assign technical decision maker and communicator to management Leverage UX team: all page design and HTML gen, then give to dev to slice up and wire Change only the obvious Deploy beta frequently and actively recruit feedback  
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Turning the lights on

After a week of CSS editing and experimentation, I
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Delicious is about to screw up with Firefox 3

I took the dive tonight and decided to give Firefox RC3 tonight. I
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Usefulness + Speed = Users

As a frontend developer I
Publication date: 2008-06-01 more

Retail politics in business

Retail politics – a type of political campaigning in which the candidate focuses on local events and meeting individual voters It always seems weird to see presidential candidates shaking hands, kissing babies, and working rope lines. But even when you’re running for the highest office in the country, you still have to get out there and press the flesh. As a business, it’s a good idea to recognize the value of retail politics too. There’s no match for meeting someone in the flesh. You can broadcast your message to a huge audience via the web, but you can’t replicate the interaction you get when you meet someone in person and explain to them exactly where you’re coming from. For example, 37signals is out in full force right now at RailsConf (David, Jeff, Jeremy, Mark, Ryan, and Sam are all there). Other recent appearances: Ryan spoke to a large agency in Germany and Jason spoke to AIGA/NY at Smart Models (a good summary here). Admittedly, RailsConf is speaking to the choir. But we also make an effort to talk to general business audiences, students, and other people who don’t normally get to hear our way of thinking. In fact, presenting new ideas to those sorts of crowds can lead to the most interesting conversations. Actually, that’s another benefit to retail politics: It’s a great way to present controversial ideas. A lot of our opinionated comments make people think we’re too arrogant or dogmatic. Yet their tone usually takes a 180-degree turn when they meet us in person. Eye contact has a way of diluting harsh views. In person, it’s a lot easier to separate the human being from his/her opinion. You get less of the animosity tone that reigns on blogs, etc. Bottom line: Don’t forget the power of retail politics. Sometimes getting out from behind the keyboard and attending a Meetup, conference, or similar gathering can do you, and your business, a world of good.
Publication date: 2008-05-30 more

Saving small

My favorite quarterly magazine is American Bungalow. It’s small, niche, and expensive, but it’s worth every penny for articles like the one in the summer 2008 edition titled “Brining Back Stinesville.” Nancy Hiller wrote this amazing piece on the town of Stinesville, IN and the preservation group Bloomington Restorations, Inc. In the 1990’s Stinesville’s population had dropped to around 200. The buildings were deteriorating, commerce was lacking. BRI is the patron saint of the dying small town, its chief goal to convert run down, abandoned and dilapidated buildings into affordable, historical housing. BRI came to Stinesville. BRI isn’t a housing developer. They aren’t making millions on tract homes in cookie-cutter developments. They are revitalizing small towns using the existing community and in turn preserving the history built by past residents. What’s old – in some cases very, very old – is quite new again indeed. I’m from a small town that gave into the need for housing by giving up hundreds of acres of land to developers. Where I once saw rolling green hills and long stretches of dirt road when I was a kid, I now find a Staples, a Wal-Mart and a thousand identical houses when I visit. It saddens me to no end that small towns across America suffer downsizing as residents flee to new shiny cities and developments, but I also understand the practicality of the decision. BRI understands it too, and a fantastic excerpt from Hiller’s article explains their motivations: “BRI completed its first Stinesville project with the restoration of the historic Hoadley House, which had been constructed near the end of the 19th century for the family whose limestone works had contributed so centrally to Stinesville’s one-time prosperity. “Guided by a 1912 photograph, the BRI team created a diminutive three-bedroom house that today, with its artfully rebuilt front porch, positively shines in the morning sun. “BRI also managed the restoration of the town’s old doctor’s office. A tiny frame structure with kicked eaves and a cozy front porch that once functioned as a waiting room, the office was built in the 1890’s. After being restored and made habitable, the 450-square foot cottage was sold to a local social-service worker in 2006 for $45,000.” The last few lines of the article sum up the story of Stinesville perfectly, and give new hope to a hundred other dying towns across the US: “In a world where claims of “New!” and “Better!” are almost deafening, Stinesville’s quiet renewal after nearly a century of decline is proof that new isn’t always better. Sometimes, old can work.” The article isn’t up online yet, but you can find the magazine in any Whole Foods or Borders. Check it out if you have a chance, and if you’re in the area, try to visit Stinesville.
Publication date: 2008-05-30 more

Luke: Dean Kamen's wonderful prosthetic robot arm

We’re lucky to live in the age of Dean Kamen.
Publication date: 2008-05-30 more

Christopher Alexander on the difference between a fifty-year-old carpenter and a novice

In this excerpt from “A Pattern Language,” architect Christopher Alexander explains that plans of buildings should be loose and fluid so they can adapt easily. Along the way, he compares the work of a fifty-year-old carpenter with the work of a novice. The difference: The experienced craftsman plans less because he has learned to do things in a way that lets him make small mistakes. This gives his work “unconcerned simplicity.” Why does the principle of gradual stiffening seem so sensible as a process of building? To begin with, such a structure allows the actual building process to be a creative act. It allows the building to be built up gradually. Members can be moved around before they are firmly in place. All those detailed design decisions which can never be worked out in advance on paper, can be made during the building process. And it allows you to see the space in three dimensions as a whole, each step of the way, as more material is added… The essence of this process is very fundamental indeed. We may understand it best by comparing the work of a fifty-year-old carpenter with the work of a novice. The experienced carpenter keeps going. He doesn’t have to keep stopping, because every action he performs, is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter never takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can keep working, confidently, steadily. The novice by comparison, spends a great deal of his time trying to figure out what to do. He does this essentially because he knows that an action he takes now may cause unretractable problems a little further down the line; and if he is not careful, he will find himself with a joint that requires the shortening of some crucial member – at a stage when it is too late to shorten that member. The fear of these kinds of mistakes forces him to spend hours trying to figure ahead: and it forces him to work as far as possible to exact drawings because they will guarantee that he avoids these kinds of mistakes. The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity. Related An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design Getting Real: Built-in seats in “A Pattern Language” [SvN]
Publication date: 2008-05-29 more

Ask 37signals: How do you say no?

Greg asks: When your product just launched and the user base is starting to grow, you’re happy about any positive feedback you receive from your first users. But just as soon, you start receiving feature requests from the same users. While it’s easy to say “No” to a feature as a team internally, I found it less easy to tell a customer that their suggestion won’t see the light of day anytime soon (for any number of reasons). How do you respond to such requests — especially when the feature “makes sense” as an extension but might be too much of a niche (a power-user feature) or not a top priority right now. The answer might be to just say it, but I thought I’d ask anyway to see what your experience has been and how users responded. We say no to a lot of ideas — including most of our own ideas. But it’s important to remember that no can be temporary. No now may be yes later. Or it may be no forever. The trick is to figure out which camp a certain no falls into and then respond appropriately. For example, if someone asks you to add something to your product that you absolutely know you won’t be adding (Gantt charts to Basecamp, for example), you can be clear. “We appreciate the suggestion, but we will not be adding Gantt charts to Basecamp. We’ve taken an entirely different approach to project management with Basecamp…” And so on. If you are going to give an absolute no, it’s nice to briefly explain the thinking behind that decision. It helps people understand that you’ve thought about the no. However, if the idea sounds reasonable and interesting, but you just don’t have plans for it right now, you can turn that no into a thank you. “Thanks for sending the suggestion over. While we can’t guarantee we’ll be adding this feature, we can promise you we’ll review it and possibly consider it for a future version.” Even though we say no to just about everything by default, we do read and consider every suggestion. Some make it in, some don’t. Some show up in weeks, some may take years. Plans change, markets change, products change. But most of all, being clear, direct, and honest is the best policy. Don’t string a potential customer along. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just be clear and set realistic expectations. Telling someone yes when you really mean no is a recipe for a bad experience down the road.
Publication date: 2008-05-28 more

Product Blog update: Journal widget, bulk tagging in Highrise, eduFire case study, Washington Post on Highrise, etc.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Extras Dashboard widget for Backpack Journal You can post your status and create new journal entries right from your Dashboard thanks to Roobasoft.com’s Dashboard widget. Case studies How eduFire operates as a virtual company using Basecamp, Campfire, and Highrise “We needed a piece of CRM software that would allow our team members to add contact information, make notes and share contacts remotely…We needed it to require as little training as possible (many of the people inputting data on the tutors were part-time workers or interns). Before Highrise, there wasn’t anything that would have worked (I know…we looked!). Using Highrise we were able to recruit hundreds of tutors and manage their information very efficiently.” Buzz/press Washington Post: Highrise “does nearly everything a personal secretary might do except go out for coffee and pick up our dry cleaning” “We can’t afford to hire an administrative assistant, which is why we use Highrise. Nominally an online CRM tool, 37signals’ clever Web app does nearly everything a personal secretary might do except go out for coffee and pick up our dry cleaning…Highrise makes the job easy: Just bcc e-mail messages to a special ‘dropbox’ address, and your recipient’s address joins your contacts database automatically. You can then copy and paste their phone number, physical address, and other info at your leisure.”Web marketing strategist uses 37signals products to replace spreadsheets, email, an address book, folders and sticky notes “How do you keep track of your contacts, project notes, files, status updates, and sign-offs? For many years I relied on a combination of tools such as an Excel spreadsheet, my email, an address book, folders and sticky notes. As my business has grown and become more mobile (meaning some days I work from Panera Bread, some days from the patio, and others in my main office) I have found these tools just aren
Publication date: 2008-05-28 more

Is the Eurovision song contest rigged?

There has been a lot of moaning in the UK press that the Eurovision song contest is rigged. Specifically that countries are voting for each other in geographical blocs, with little regard for the merit of the songs. But are they? It is hard to see any patterns from looking at a table of voting results: 2008 results from Eurovision.tv, click to enlarge. So I created a simple visualisation of the data[1], similar to one of the approaches I use in my table planner software, PerfectTablePlan.
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Clive Grinyer: Lipstick On A Pig

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of arranging and attending an evening talk by one of the mobile industry
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Classic Compact Theme and Add-on

The tiny little theme we all know and love is now ready for Firefox 3.  Classic Compact might be my favorite out of all the
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Usability: Affordable Focus Groups

You asked your usability questions, and Mike has answered! We invite you to ask more questions Hi Mike, I really want to do focus groups for my sites, but I
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

Did you know that ever since the days of Netscape Navigator 3.0, there is a technology that allows you to securely sign on without using passwords allow for non-annoying two-factor authentication uniquely identify yourself to third-party websites without giving the second party any account information All of this can be done using SSL client certificates. You know: Whenever you visit an SSL protected page, what usually happens is that your browser checks the identity of the remote site by c
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

My Facebook wish list

Dear Facebook, Before you launch your new redesign, consider the following improvements. They shouldn
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

User interface design for the 'hospital information system'

User interface design for the 'hospital information system' May 26 Submitted by Daan on Mon, 05/26/2008 - 20:29 HIS Software development Usability The last few days I was very busy 'designing' user interfaces for our Hospital Information System. The system will be used by health clinics, not really computer experts. A nice challenge to create a usable system that does not stand in the way of it's users. After all, less work means more fun! The designs are very simple and mainly meant to vi
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Smashing designs

Smashing Magazine has gathered some amazing and innovative product designs. Check out the phone that can bend into any shape; instead of shoving your cell in your pocket, you can wear it as a bracelet. The peanut butter jar with two lids helps guarantee you get every last bit without scraping your knuckles on the top. There
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Web users

Web users
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Daily Sucker for Tuesday, May 27, 2008 May 26th, 2008 5:05 pm by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: For bad web design, this site tops the chart on Mystery Meat Navigation. It
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Daily Sucker for Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Daily Sucker for Wednesday, May 28, 2008 May 26th, 2008 5:05 pm by Vincent Flanders Submitter comments: I find the checkerboard background to be overwhelming and more like an optical illusion. This site is so busy that it
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Scrollbar Improvements

I think I saw this on Digg a few weeks ago
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Back To The Future: TFM

In 2001 and 2002 I wrote a monthly
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Interactive is a Meaningless Word

Making your websites more interactive is a meaningless strategy. Make your website more useful instead.
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Website Iterations

Every web company will update its website from time to time. These iterations range in scale and scope, and often only require small tweaks. Other times, an entire revamp is in store. Evolution is necessary but not at the expense of the experience. (more
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

BEST & BRIGHTEST: The Carnival Of Mobilists #124 At Symbiano-Tek; Transcoding Controversy Rages, Web Aggregators To Watch Out For, LBS Made Simple & More

BEST & BRIGHTEST: The Carnival Of Mobilists #124 At Symbiano-Tek; Transcoding Controversy Rages, Web Aggregators To Watch Out For, LBS Made Simple & More Author: Peggy Anne Salz Back after the three-day weekend break and catching up on the CoM posts - which always make for worthwhile reading. This last week the CoM was hosted by Tarek El Ghazali over at Symbiano-Tek. (If you are getting a sea of black lines running through this post, then you can also check it out at an alternative page Tarek
Publication date: 2008-05-27 more

Replace Ads with Art

Any Firefox user worth his weight in add-ons can block advertisements, using tools like AdBlock Plus but few can block the ads can replace them with something to give your Web browsing experience a little more class.  How about replacing all those punch the monkey ads with art? It this entices your cultural taste buds, then you might want to add the Add-Art extension to your own Firefox install.  Add-Art replaces advertising images on web pages with contemporary art from a curated database.  I
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Ultra Mobile Devices Find Market Demand

As personal computer (PC) manufacturers adjust to the macro-economic effects of tightened credit, 2008 looks to be a year where Ultra Mobile Devices (UMD) continue to grow their ecosystems, and notebooks and emerging markets assert themselves on the PC side, according to In-Stat. Sales growth for UMDs is expected to be 72.6 percent in 2008, the high-tech market research firm says. UMDs are ultra mobile PCs, mobile Internet devices, a percentage of high-end smartphones, and a percentage of high
Publication date: 2008-05-26 more

The science of keyboard design

The science of keyboard design In depth article by Amar Sagoo which examines keyboard design. As Amar points out many people spend
Publication date: 2008-05-26 more

Padded link targets for better mousing

This isn
Publication date: 2008-05-26 more

Memorial Day Holiday

We will not be posting on Monday May 26th because of the Memorial Day Holiday! We will resume posting on Tuesday, May 27th. Get the Shout List Icons widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! instructional design online training content development accessibility section 508 interactivity lear
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Caching PHP objects: how to do it in 4 easy steps

This week, my work for our top secret web app, has mainly revolved around caching. This is work I really enjoy. I can sense the user experience of future customers improving each time I create a useful cache of information that speeds up a page
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Site Clinic: Professional Looking Design Drives Conversions

by Jackie Baker So often, companies want to jump headlong into search engine optimization, link building, social media campaigns, and pay per click advertising for a quick way to boost website performance. But there are two main problems with this approach: to see real change, website marketing takes time, effort, and patience. If you want lasting results, you're in it for the long haul. You may see immediate results from your efforts, but it's not likely they'll last more than a month or two w
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Changing Color by Time & Frequency

I
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Times Reader - A Different Approach

As we previously posted in a study on American newspapers and their use of the internet, the formatting of newspapers and the internet don't really go hand in hand. It has been a struggle for the folks at McClatchy and the New York Times Company to develop profitable methods as the internet sprawl continues its onward march. Let me introduce the NY Times Reader, a desktop-based web application designed for reading the times on your laptop or tablet PC. It made its initial windows release in 20
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

The one-page wonder

Simple websites which can get all of the information on one page without compromising on usablity should put all their stuff on one page. Spreading information across many different pages has become an accepted and expected convention of websites. But I feel it
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

How Little Do Users Read on an Average Web Page?

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. The web is mostly visual I guess. My most popular posts on CR are those with a high visual content. And on those you agree to pages
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Tutorials need to teach

I just came across a certain article on some drupal theming techniques that called itself a tutorial. What
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

The usability for historical educational resources

Some time ago we at Historia i Media have described two new polish historical internet projects: A Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures and the online version of Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. These two initiatives can have a very strong impact for the nextcomming big historical presentations in polish internet by showing how to use new multimedia technologies in the case of history. Interfaces of both described here projects are developed on the Macromedia Flash technology. It gives a wide rang
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Nissan spins us right round

Nissan has developed a car that has no need for reverse; the cabin rotates 360 degrees. While the designer acknowledges the version will probably never set foot in the market, he does say some of the car
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

News orbit at MSNBC

Now this is pretty cool: MSNBC is experimenting with a
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Passing The Mom Test

How many times have you excitedly tried to show your parents some project you
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Human Experience

Yves Behar takes us on an amazing journey from carpets to condoms in his extempore at TED. The line that sticks with me is "the design is never done..." the ellipsis being the most important word in the sentence. BTW, Aditi is part of OLPC and proud of it....
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Website Redesign Purgatory: Usability and CivicActions' "As Is" Site

I WANT YOU TO READ MORE The CivicActions team is in the process of redesigning our website at this very moment. In my role as information architect, I am helping to design the site's navigation and page structure so that users can meet their goals. Here are some sample scenarios: A potential client wants to find a savvy web consulting firm to transform their site and increase their audience and fundraising base. A job-seeker wants to find a cool place to work. A CivicActions team member wants
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Top 80+ Images, Graphics , Icon etc resources that you should not miss.

A great list of Web graphics, images, Icons, buttons , banners, Photo editing sites etc. Checkout all the links on this page, you may discover something new.
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Ruthless Web Users

When people go online they know what they want and how to do it, says Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru. The annual report into web habits by Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online. Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention. Look at the observation here : "In 2004, about 40% of people v
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

wipa usability and eyetracking seminar

Last year, I was elected to the Committee of Web Industry Professionals Association. WIPA is an organisation that brings Australian web professionals together to exchange ideas, participate in debate, advance education and promote ethical practice. One of WIPA
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Roundup of the weekend

Well interesting few days. I spent Friday and Saturday in London attending the Nielsen Norman Group conference on Intranet Usability. Really interesting, best thing I've been to in a very long time. Hopefully I'll get to apply some of what I learnt to my job. Still it was exhausting, lack of sleep the night before, and staying up late talking to my best friend, all but did me in. Today I've done a mad dash to find puppy food (as she's stopped eating the food for older dogs we were told to
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

Visualizing Risk

I really like this picture from Jack Jones, "Communicating about risk - part 2:" Using frequency, we can account for events that occur many times within the defined timeframe as well as those that occur fewer than once in the timeframe (e.g., .01 times per year, or once in one hundred years). Of course, this raises the question of how we determine frequency, particularly for infrequent events. In the interest of keeping this post to a reasonable length, I
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

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