THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[March 31, 2003]
Human Factors International: Web Credibility - "What are the characteristics of a Web site that make a person decide the information at the site is credible? Recent research indicates that not all people make the decision of credibility using the same criteria. Domain experts (e.g., Doctors on a health site or Certified Financial Planners on a financial information site) focus on brand, company reputation, information sources, and internal fact-checking to evaluate the credibility of an information site. In contrast, consumers use characteristics such as look-and-feel and information design to evaluate credibility."
[March 29, 2003]
Eric A. Meyer (DevEdge): An Interview With Mike Davidson of ESPN - "By embracing standards as we have done, and dropping support for those who choose not to support standards, we are free to produce pages with leaner code, better advertising opportunities, and an overall better user experience. To the extent that we can put our limited resources to work producing a greater quantity of pages, which load faster, and look better to 98% of our viewers, we feel we have the right to make that choice."
Kamen Offers Suggestions On How Companies Can Spur Innovation - "...he made the point that the time to take chances and experiment is early in a project when there's time to recover from missteps, not later when specifications are set, customer expectations are high, and correcting problems carries a higher price."
[March 28, 2003]
Philippe Randour (SitePoint): Top 7 Usability Blunders Of The Big Players - "The bottom line is that it's important to understand and respect your audience. If you don't, and don't help them fulfil their goals for using your site, they might stop seeing the Internet as a medium of choice for information. Or, more likely, they'll click away to the more usable site of one of your competitors."
[March 25, 2003]
SAP Design Guild: Narrative User Interfaces - "Narrative user interfaces attempt to mimic the communication behavior of humans. [...] For achieving a more human-like communication, narrative interfaces may utilize humanoid representations, such as avatars, which have realistic facial expressions, lip-synch speech and can express emotions. That is, narrative interfaces may also include ingredients taken from social and affective computing, which are presented below. They may also include 'natural' physical devices for people to interact with the system as known from the tangible media research field."
InfoVis.net: What the Net says - "Elaborating information extracted from the Net and presenting it in graphical form is what 'dicelared' (whatthenetsays) is trying to do, an interesting initiative in the Spanish language."
[March 21, 2003]
NewsFactor: Forgotten or Lost Passwords Are a Common Problem for Web Surfers - "Forgetting a password comes with a cost. Forrester Research estimates that password problems account for 40 percent to 80 percent of all calls to company IT departments. The estimated annual cost for password administration per user is between $340 and $800. In large companies, employees may need passwords for five to 15 computer applications -- not including personal accounts."
GrokDotCom: Beyond Usability II: Is Your Web Site a Tool? - "One of the biggest problems affecting most Web sites we see is that they are designed to function as tools - software applications. But the art of persuasion is a dialog. There's a big difference in the metaphor of Web site as tool and Web site as dialog - and it's a difference that will affect your online success."
[March 20, 2003]
Digital Physiognomy presents a detailed character analysis of Saddam Hussein. - "It is important to notice that Digital Physiognomy not so much allows you to determine possible behavior of Saddam Hussein, as it allows you to understand how others see this personality."
Update - Wired News: Is This the Face of a Terrorist? - "Face-scanning technology works best with photographs that have been taken in controlled circumstances -- such as passport or ID photos -- where the subject is looking directly at the camera and the lighting is adequate. Tests using face-scanning systems to analyze a live video feed have been spotty at best -- the systems are frequently confounded by shadows, head motion and headgear such as eyeglasses."
[March 18, 2003]
OSNews.com: The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison (via slashdot) - "This article is a comparison of the UI and usability of several Desktop Environments (DEs), that have been widely used, admired and reviled: Windows XP Luna, BeOS 6 (Dano/Zeta), Mac OS X Aqua and Unix's KDE and Gnome."
Use of Law Firm Intranets Is Growing (via Column Two) - "The breadth of knowledge that can be placed on an intranet is staggering. It may encompass the whole of the intellectual property generated by the law firm as well as selected information from the Internet."
Prospect: Computer fictions - "What we see in computer games now is like the stuttering images of early cinema, and their future development will come to dominate the culture in ways that we can hardly anticipate, particularly as the computing environment becomes more pervasive and less associated with screens, keyboards and mice."
[March 17, 2003]
YesterdayPaper.com: A father talks to his son about war - "[...] when you get over there in the thick of it, son, you won't have time to think about the fancy ideals you're supposed to be fighting for. You'll be interested mostly in shooting straight, and shooting first." Vintage Ad: Old Joe - Young Joe, 1940's
Michael Oh, President/CEO, Tech Superpowers, Inc., Boston, MA US - "The best marketing ideas have nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with showing an innovative company at work."
[March 15, 2003]
Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path): Conducting International Usability - "This essay draws from my experience leading an international user testing project, and I hope you can learn from my mistakes and successes. [...] Maintaining global consistency requires centralizing these Web efforts (usually within corporate headquarters), yet this must accommodate distinct approaches to working which vary from region to region."
NewsFactor: Digital Vaccine May Make Computer Networks Tolerant to a Fault
[March 12, 2003]
Today's Front Pages - "Online version of one of the Newseum's most popular exhibits. Every morning, more than 200 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet."
The Christian Science Monitor: Educators debate whether computer use for young students makes them better learners or not.
USA TODAY: Technology eroding the wall between disabled, non-disabled
[March 11, 2003]
Salon: Unleashing the dogs of cyber-war on Iraq! - "Saddam Hussein could lose Internet access at the flip of a switch, and there's not much his geeks can do about it."
ACM (Ubiquity): Interview with Robert Kahn - "The co-founder of the Internet recalls the non-commercial early days and looks at today's issues of fair use, privacy and the need for security."
Wired News: 3-D Face Scan Distinguishes Twins - "The technology records the surface of a person's face by scanning it with a series of light patterns and stores the data as a 3-D image in a computer. Employing mathematical algorithms similar to those used in Internet searches, the computer measures the distances between a number of sample points on the facial surface. [...] The advantage of the system is its ability to compare facial structures as they appear in different poses or light conditions, variables that could distort a face seen as a two-dimensional image."
InfoVis.net: Interview with Jacques Bertin - "Jacques Bertin is one of the fundamental gurus of Information Visualisation since he was the first in articulating a coherent and reasoned theory for the analysis of quantitative graphic representation."
[March 10, 2003]
Whitney Quesenbery (via Daniel Szuc): The Research Triangle - "When you combine market research, usability and user research, and expert design practice, you have a way to listen to both the mass market and individual users; to suggest design solutions and to test whether they work."
InformationWeek: Microsoft's Adjusted 'Product Lifecycle' Plans
[March 9, 2003]
Timothy L. Thomas: Al Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of "Cyberplanning"
[March 8, 2003]
Betterhumans: Neural Interfaces - "A neural interface is any type of data link between the human nervous system and an external device, such as a computer or a remote-controlled machine. Such a link can allow information transmission to the nervous system, from the nervous system or in both directions. [...] Keyboards, computer mice and touch screens greatly limit the ways in which people can interface with electronic devices and benefit from them. Neural interfaces promise to improve the link between humans and machines, empowering people in the process. The devices extend human abilities by allowing people to benefit from what machines are good at -- such as brute computation -- without sacrificing human control."
Cooper: Design Research: Why you need it - "What is design research? A body of knowledge assembled by a small team dedicated full-time to the creation of the product in question, design research is used as the foundation for
- Creating models (such as personas and representative workflows) that are used during the design phase
- Obtaining an objective understanding of technical development constraints and opportunities
- Articulating business goals that may affect features and product deployment strategies
- Understanding user needs."
Salon: Linux does Windows - "The best thing about the rise of Linux, though, is that Microsoft may be starting to recognize the legitimacy of open-source software. The company has long used legal and P.R. efforts to try to convince others in the tech industry that there was something faddish -- or, worse, 'un-American' -- about open-source software. Maybe an open-source threat to its desktop line will change that attitude and force it to take rivals seriously."
Jerry Knight: The Design of the New macromedia.com Beta - "We made a number of important changes to the general design of the site. The site uses a limited, neutral color palette so that important interface elements and feedback are not lost in a sea of color. Site areas that are product specific are highlighted with the product's color, reinforcing their purpose. Subtle beveling techniques and gradients help differentiate user interface components from nonfunctional elements. A series of icons is used throughout the site to represent key functionality in a consistent manner."
[March 7, 2003]
Doc Searls and David Weinberger: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. - "Because all the Internet does is throw bits from one end to another, innovators can build whatever they can imagine, counting on the Internet to move data for them. You don't have to get permission from the Internet's owner or systems administrator or the Vice President of Service Prioritization. You have an idea? Do it. And every time you do, the value of the Internet goes up. The Internet has created a free market for innovation. That's the key to the Internet's value."
NewsFactor: After years of worrying about viruses and trojans, users have a new nemesis: spyware.
[March 6, 2003]
James Robertson (Step Two Designs): Worlds apart: the difference between intranets and websites - "Beyond a common use of HTML, intranets and corporate websites (internet sites) are very different animals. The needs they meet, the content they contain, and the users that access them are all very distinct. These differences need to be understood by site designers, and reflected both in the design process and the final product. This article summarises some of the key differences between intranets and websites."
Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. (Human Factors International): Reading Text Online - "Don't be afraid of vertical scrolling, in fact it is better to put more text on a page and have users scroll than to break text up into a lot of pages with no scrolling. Balance is always preferred [...]"
Mark Hurst (Good Experience): Google and Branding - "The user experience, customer experience, searcher experience, whatever you want to call it - Google knows that online, the brand is the EXPERIENCE. Good experience, good brand. Bad experience, out of business."
Spammer's Technology Secrets Exposed
[March 4, 2003]
Design Elements for Great Web Pages: Readability, Browsability, Searchability Plus Assistance - "This essay outlines these qualities so you, as an information system manager, can incorporate them into your products and services. An information system, in the present context, is any organized collection of information. In our culture, information systems abound. The dash board of our cars are information systems. Maps are information systems. World Wide Web servers are no exception."
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