You’ll not only be able to watch every film, but also every TV program, news show, documentary, music video, and video blog, and all of it will be playable wherever you go. Great, you think: Thousands of channels, millions of choices, and still nothing worth watching. Nevertheless, “nonlinear TV”—watching the tube on our schedule, not…
Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes…
Links are now devalued. Page-rank is under attack and the attackers are winning. It won’t be long before Google itself is infested. Tim Bray is right, below, it’s time for Google to get on top of this. They’re both the victimizer and the victim. The spammers found a huge hole in Page-rank. You could drive…
So for instance, shows like Law and Order, CSI, and all their different versions can fetch more than 1mm dollars per episode. Most other shows fall in mid six figure price ranges and can go as low as 50k to 75k for hit reality shows like Survivor. The reality shows go for far less because…
Google is dumb: it places so much trust on its relevance ranking in its presentation of search results as a simple list of Web sites. Users don’t have access to suggestions of alternate concepts or terms or all the tools that other search engines provide. Our clients are placing too much reliance on the first…
Blogs are all the rage, and I encourage their use as part of the external – and internal – communications process. Unlike press releases, which tend to read as if they’d been composed by the mating of a computer and lawyer, good blogs have a distinctly human voice. They are conversational almost by definition. But…
We expect them to be able to follow us around the house, picking up after us, chattering with us like C-3PO, reading our emotions with the accuracy, if not the intent, of HAL. While robots have proved indispensable in narrow kinds of work, like assembly lines, when it comes to interactions with unpredictable, flesh-and-blood humans,…
There are some things that become so ubiquitous and familiar to us – so seemingly obvious – that we forget that they actually had to be invented. Here’s a case in point – the weblog post’s permalink. I mean – let’s think about it. The problem was that a weblog’s front page is by far…
The original handwritten manuscript of what became Alice in Wonderland has been put online using software to virtually turn the pages. Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, by Lewis Carroll, is the latest 3D addition to the British Library’s Turning the Pages collection of books. —Original Alice work in 3D online (BBC) I had to hunt on the…
It perfectly pulls together four important tools that no geek should ever be without (USB flash drive, LED light, Swiss Army knife, ballpoint pen). These functions have been skillfully integrated into this single super tool. Along with all these great features you also get the legendary construction quality and materials that Swiss Army knives have…
The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDA’s are to expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. —The PocketMod It is a folded-up piece of paper, but such a cool piece of…
Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editing. Nvu is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web…
In his pockets, Jefferson carried such a variety of portable instruments for making observations and measurements that he’s been dubbed a “traveling calculator.” Among his collection of pocket-sized devices were scales, drawing instruments, a thermometer, a surveying compass, a level, and even a globe. To record all these measurements, Jefferson carried a small ivory notebook…
User interface agents are increasingly used in software products; perhaps the best-known user interface agent is the Microsoft Office Assistant (“Clippy the Paperclip”). This thesis explores why many people have a negative response to the Office Assistant, using a combination of theoretical, qualitative, and quantitative studies. Among the findings were that labels–whether internal cognitive labels…
Like a zombie from a George Romero flick, the PointCast model refuses to die. The latest incarnation? Google Sidebar aggregrates news headlines, plus custom local weather reports and stock quotes in a desktop application window. Sidebar also adds new features, including the ability to read messages sent to a Gmail account and reader-selected RSS feeds…
On the first day of classes, the ritual has been the same for decades: Professors hand out copies of the syllabus and walk students through it. But in most courses at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh this fall, the only thing professors may hand out is a URL. That’s because the dean of the…
Terugkerend thema in onze gesprekken met klanten is de wijze waarop het internet als beste ingezet kan worden. Aandacht hierbij gaat vaak uit naar de wijze van communiceren. Vandaar dat wij graag u hierbij een overzicht van interessante artikelen over dit onderwerp willen presenteren: —Schrijven voor het web (”Writing for the web”) (Darwine Nieuwsbrief) A newsletter…
In my dream he wanted the bathroom. “What’s that smell?” he said. “A gift,” I said, and gave him cheap soap hugely wrapped in purple with a golden bow, no less. How thoughtful. How thoughtless. Not only splash, but flash. —Rachel McAlpine —Four Dreams about Jakob Nielsen (Quality Web Content) Jakob Nielsen is a web usability…
I sometimes wonder whether graphics wouldn’t be better off if graphics designers and developers had stayed with vector-based graphics. For all that pixels are wonderful (I have nearly two million of them in front of me right now), they sometimes make Web designers do really stupid things. —Peter Seebach —Oh, the Pixel Pickle (IBM DeveloperWorks) I’m…
—United States of America: Geography — Level 6 (Sheppard Software) This is a Flash game that asks you to place each of the states on a map. My average error was 14 miles. (Hint: look at the rivers.) If you put a state in the right location, it disappears — which means it’s not visible to…