Month: November 2008
Mobuzz (the Spanish videoblogging company) is closing down.
Lou Rosenfeld is getting started with his new webinars series. Top UX people (and authors of books with him) give in-depth seminars on a specific UX topic (like webforms). It’s a geat learning opportunity, and you save an airfare to a conference. Plus, you get access to a edited version of the lesson online so you can review it later.
This code will get you a 25% discount: DIJCKWBNR
Go check it out: http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/webinars/
Arrington is right, the new Google stuff sucks, I’ve been trying my hardest not to click any of the bazillion new little buttons on the search results page.
Cultural localization
It’s always hard to customize your technology for a specific culture. Customize your features and UI too much, and you loose the advantages of scalability (speed, cost, …), customize too little and you’re open for local competition that is focused more on how the local market is different.
Here’s a good example: Google India now has a specific cricket item showing when you search for cricket (India is cricket-crazy). (A regular Google search just shows the Wikipedia result for cricket first).
I like it. It’s subtle, culturally-specific and non-intrusive.
Here we go, http://prezelect.com
Obama is the prezelect (383 hits on a Google search for prezelect)?
A multilingual forum (4 languages are mixed within threads) about Belgium & Europe. I am a big fan of mixing languages in forums, poorbuthappy.com does it too. Many people speak more than 1 language. There are plenty of language-related UI tricks you can use when the forums get really busy or the amount of languages gets out of hand.
Some findings of the digital youth project:
- On social networks they mostly hang out with their real-life friends (Facebook, Myspace), not with people they don’t know. They pick up social and technical skills while hanging out, it’s a good thing.
- On niche content sites, a much smaller number hangs out with other people they didn’t know before around specific interests. They get all geeky, which, contrary to popular belief, is actually a very social activity. This is where adults can also be part of the group, functioning as role models and experienced peers.
Gmail looks slightly more blue today and it’s really freaking me out.
Lou signed some great writers for a book on remote user research. Looking forward to it!
Amazon now exands its S3 storage service with a content delivery network. That means that you can make your site (especially images and videos and stuff) much faster, using the same techniques that the big boys use, very cheaply.
I didn’t know this, the first iteration of Wikipedia was called Newpedia, and was based on a custom CMS with a 7-step review process ;)
Lou Rosenfeld is planning a book salon tour – passionate discussion about UX books. If someone knows UX, books and their intersection, it’s Lou. And if someone can organize an interesting meetup, it’s lots of people, but definitely also Lou. So go check out the blogpost and sign up for updates.
Anders explains how Twitter gets a UI bit wrong (the “reply” feature), I agree with him.
The Google Appengine team is doing some contextual-inquiry style studies :)
“Why don’t you arrange separate planes for terrorists?”
“So you claim.” Brilliant as always (although I thought Ali G was funnier in England, where class is a bigger deal than race. I figure Borat came out of Sasha working in the US where immigration is a major theme).
Tagged.com was always a bit spammy, now they send emails with the subject line “Peter, please respond to your alerts…”. Not friendly at all, pushy if anything. Tagged is like the pushy friend of an acquaintance that you’d rather not invite to your parties.
Some CSS tricks for smoothly resizing images away from their native sizes, from Flickr.
I didn’t know you could do video chat in Gmail.
I made a Google moderator page where you can ask questions and vote on questions of others about IA. I’m gonna try to discuss the questions on this blog then, and perhaps others can do the same on their blogs. Go check out some IA questions.
Rocketboom, the original daily videblog, is still going strong and hiring developers in New York. Send a resume to jobs at. It’s a fun team, so if you’re looking to work at a startup, check it out.
- Expert knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and (unobtrusive) javascript
- Proficient in PHP, Ruby, MySQL, and building and working with web services
- At least 1 year of experience working with an MVC framework (we mostly use Merb) and 4 years of web programming experience
- Versed in open source software development and experienced with version control
- Graphic design and system administration skills a plus
- Strong analytical and logical skills to creatively solve complex problems
- Enjoys working with a small team
- Passionate about technology and life in general
- Excited to show us some code they have written!
Luke Wroblewski’s Modern Web Form Design webinar is this Thursday, November 13, 1-2pm EST.
I tried to install disqus but no luck, got some strange errors.
Belgian usability day
I was going to speak at the Belgian usability day event in Brussels this Thursday, but I had to cancel unfortunately. The talk was an evolved and adjusted version of the global social networks talk I gave at the IA Summit in Amsterdam. I’m gonna post the slides anyway, perhaps someone will be interested in them.
Meanwhile, registration is free, and seats are limited, so hurry if you plan on coming. Joannes Vandermeulen and Audrey Benoit will also give talks, the program sounds pretty good.
