Archive for the ‘News’ Category

It’s about time

Friday, February 9th, 2007

After having turnstiles with RF readers for quite a while, BART has started their EZRider program – essentially FasTrak for people on public transit.  I’ve been using it for a week, and it is substantially better than the ticket system.  Some other posts are focusing on BART’s decision to go it alone instead of working with the regional Translink system, and I think that is a valid point – but it is good that at least they are making some changes.  Kudos for a step in the right direction, BART.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

New Year, Old Problems

Sunday, January 7th, 2007

said best by Opus, on December 31st

Not Yet! WAIT!

I couldn’t say it better myself.

Tivo strays; audience sighs

Friday, November 24th, 2006

Another foray into interactivity on your television appears to have gone awry… TiVo’s attempt to branch into new functions has drawn some scorn from a well-publicized AP review.  The main challenge is really user interface:

The rest of TiVo’s online features struck me as spare, less
user-friendly imitations of tasks that seem better suited to a computer.

When you have a machine designed for a single purpose and stray from that task, your executives should be shouting “Danger! Danger!”  I understand the need for TiVo to add functions and revenue options, but why not aim more like Apple’s iTV possibilities and make your service something that leverages what you do best – television?  After all, you never want a user to say:

I soon found it pretty tedious to enter information like usernames and
passwords into an on-screen keyboard with the up-down, right-left
buttons on my TiVo remote.

That spells doom, no matter how you enter the text.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Voting machines didn’t claim headlines in elections

Monday, November 20th, 2006

For all nervous nellies like myself, it was a great relief when election results didn’t generate as many articles after the election than before it.  When you’re seeing severe usability issues leading up to the election, it sounded like the US was going to suffer another 2004.

Voting machine glitches may have determined a race or two, but nationally the results – news stories, agitations, protests – look pretty minor.  That’s really good news for all users.

Creativity to solve security issues

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

The Internet Storm Center had a growing problem with form spam but wanted to avoid using captchas, so they decided to use creativity.  Their solution is one great way to separate machines and humans when they fill out the forms – but their readers came up with a few more that also got posted that are even more interesting.

The common thread in all the solutions is that computers are very literal and find it hard to be flexible, and humans cannot help but be flexible.  I have dealt with enough captchas – and struggled with some, and failed some – that I think these ideas are wonderful from a user’s standpoint.  Plus, as the ISC post states:

http://www.kittenauth.com/ . Pictures of cute kittens! How can one NOT use that approach ;-) ?

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Apple’s Design Man

Monday, October 16th, 2006

A great story about Jonathan Ive from BusinessWeek.  The Apple team comes up with amazing things that I’ve raved (and ranted) about before, but they never come up with things that are boring.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the products trigger emotions.

Technorati Tags: ,

Living Room Videoconferences For All

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

I know Robert X. Cringley’s column is all about speculation, but his current description of a plan for Apple to introduce living-room-based videoconferencing gave me a moment of “Why didn’t I see that coming?”

Apple has already created the world’s easiest videoconferencing setup and built it into almost every computer they produce.  To make HDTVs with it built in, or even to enable it via the iTV, would make a tremendously compelling user experience… and for me, a tremendous reason to buy their equipment.

I have young kids.  I have brand-new baby cousins on the other coast.  I could spend a couple thousand dollars to travel and see them for one week, or I could spend half of that on Apple hardware and see them every week or even every day.

I have young kids that I hate leaving at home when I’m on a business trip.  What better family experience than a quick videoconference from a Mac laptop to the home living room before bed?

Apple has always been excellent at driving technology where the users need it, whether they know it or not, which has created incredible sales opportunities for them.  If this is real, I could be buying a new HDTV, a new Mac for the house, a new Mac laptop… and that doesn’t even start to cover the relatives’ purchases.

And, if the interface for calling is implemented correctly, it will feel like a steal.  Final pressure will be on the Apple dev team, but if they have even marginal attention to detail and follow the iTV interface already shown in Jobs’ presentation this could be an incredible hit.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Vista RC1 usability dissected

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

Paul Thurrott peeled back the covers of Windows Vista RC1 and found some problems with the user interface.  A very good read.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Domain names moving to be end-user unfriendly?

Monday, August 28th, 2006

News via CircleID – ICANN (the regulators who manage internet names) have proposed contracts that would allow pricing of domain names based on the perceived attractiveness of the name.  The article has a well-dissected example of how really popular names (the example always given is sex.com or sex.org) could be very expensive, but what it really means is that all names are at risk.  Any domain name that can be made popular (think of google.com or useradvocate.com :) ) could have their price raised to be painful, all so that the registrars’ monopolies can be more valuable.

This is bad for the average domain-name user (purchaser) but is really even worse for the average web browsing user.  What if you wanted to find that cute boutique you found online last year, only to discover that it is gone and someone else paid more money for the domain?  Would you realize it was another shop and not the same one with a web redesign?  Or would it only be after you paid for an item and found out the quality was nothing like it used to be?

This ‘trust us, they won’t do it’ is ridiculous and sounds like the Telco proposals where they promise not to overcharge us for internet access… I’m not so trusting.  In a scarce-supply, regulated, environment, the reason you have price caps and regulation is to protect the users. Maybe the regulators need a reminder.

Public comments can be sent using the addresses here.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Figuring out what is important

Friday, August 4th, 2006

Paul Thurrott doesn’t think Vista is ready yet but believes it could be by the deadline. However, the really important question he highlights – how do software companies figure out what is important? How do they balance the business need to launch, bugs and all, with the usability, or as he puts it balancing “when those smiles outnumber the screams”…

It’s a good read.

Technorati Tags: ,