(Comments added for week ending Sun 28 Jul 2002) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 48 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:48 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 28 Jul 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Blog Hot Or Not | Sat 27 Jul |
| BLOG HOT or NOT was designed to help weblog writers get traffic to their sites, and to help weblog readers to find interesting new weblogs to read. Of course, in true HOT or NOT fashion, readers rate the weblogs from 1 to 10, giving writers unbiased opinions on their weblogs. |
| Sun 28 Jul 07:10 | Matt Round | If you're tempted to submit your site for this, bear in mind it tells you (at the end of the registration process) you have to include a link to the site in your blog and get it verified before you're listed. I'm not keen on linking to the same thing as hundreds of other bloggers and so didn't bother! |
| Maxim Saves Journalism | Fri 26 Jul |
| Make no mistake about it: Our success has caused great consternation in the magazine universe—there is a disturbance in the force. Our competition has been vocal in their outrage, and who can blame them? It’s a humbling experience, after all, to have your underwear yanked up over your ears. |
| Fri 26 Jul 20:41 | John S. Rhodes | This is definitely the most interesting article I have read in a month. Call me shallow. Call me weak. Call me simple. I don't care. This guy is telling it like it is and his message is strong. Right or wrong, I'm impressed, very impressed. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the presentation style. The conviction. This guy is strong and bold; something not seen enough in web design and usability. Too many wimps. When Jakob Nielsen is the strongest force in usability, well, you know you have a marketing problem. Visualize usability and what do you get? The image of old, dry genitalia. Folks, we are stale but it doesn't need to be that way. Usability is hip. Usability is cool. It just isn't sold to people the right way. Instead of saying shit to describe the shit we see, we say stool or crap or turd because we are afraid to offend people. Damn. Many of us are young, but we are so freakin' crusty. What a shame. What a crying shame. I swear that I am going to do something about this. Usability is kick ass and I'm simply going to have to do something about it. It is time to rise to the occasion. It is time that usability is brought out of the shadows. If I need to dumb things down, if I need to shout, if I need to beat the shit out things, I'll do it. I'm going to rise. The rampage begins and I swear to you here that I am going to light some things on fire 'cause I am sick of the stick in the mud image, and the old, crusty, cranky portrayal of all things usability. Rise. |
| Fri 26 Jul 23:50 | Ron Zeno | Go John! |
| Sun 28 Jul 02:30 | MadMan | Many of us are young On what basis do you infer that, John? How old are you, for example? 'Old, dry genitalia' is something I'd never visualised, and I'm trying very hard not to. Drat! |
| Look Before You Ask | Sat 27 Jul |
| (Digital Web) One would like to assume, though, that there are alternatives to finding things other than by searching, especially within a single site, where serious effort is usually expended creating a site sensible enough for people to use. The sad truth is that few of them may use it. What brought about this reliance on search? |
| Sun 28 Jul 02:26 | MadMan | I disagree with this article, for reasons I will post later. (I just wanted to give the comments section some momentum.) :p |
| Dive Into Accessibility | Thu 25 Jul |
| This book answers two questions. The first question is Why should I make my web site more accessible? If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is How can I make my web site more accessible? If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second. |
| Fri 26 Jul 19:03 | Jack Schonchin | Ohhhhhh, an online book. I simply wouldn't call it a 'book' unless it has been published in print. Too confusing. My biggest gripe so far is that I can't duplex print, and so the dang thing is far too thick to succumb to the amorous advances of my mega-ultra-electric-power-stapler (with the kung-foo grip). I'm still saving up for my cherry red Swingline. |
| Sat 27 Jul 20:32 | Mark Olivares | It's the best thing on accessibility I've seen. |
| Trying to build a ‘smarter’ home | Sat 27 Jul |
| (MSNBC) The critical problem though is make the to make the technology easy-to-use and understand, so it doesn’t just remain the domain of the technology elite. |
| Sat 27 Jul 08:33 | John S. Rhodes | Ha ha ha. Like Kirk to Khan, I laugh at these technology companies. I'm laughing at their superior intellect! They think they know what people want, but they know not. They think gizmos will sell because they are gizmos. As if most people want gizmos. Very few people really want gizmos. Gizmos are expensive and often harder than hell to use. So I laugh at these companies. Fools! Only when they stoop to the level of Jerry Springer will their technology really be adapted by the masses. And to appeal to the Jerry Springer crowd, it has to be dead stupid easy to use. It is no small wonder that the article mentions the Clapper as the dominant force in home automation. |
| Sat 27 Jul 12:19 | Anonymous | Perhaps because 'clap recognition' technology actually works. |
| More Analysts can mean Less Effectiveness in Usability Testing | Fri 26 Jul |
| (Usability News) Their work, to be reported at HCI2002, shows that existing means of combining analysts responses often leads to a reduction in the accuracy of heuristic analysis as a predictor of user problems. |
| Fri 26 Jul 23:46 | Ron Zeno | The paper, once published, should prove interesting. We shouldn't be surprised by the results - heuristic analysis generates a huge amount of false positives. Without a means to reduce these false positives, most approaches to heuristic analysis are of questionable value. |
| Why Web Builders Must Move to XHTML | Thu 25 Jul |
| (Molly Holzschlag) Everybody has to make the transition if they expect to continue in the field and increase their opportunities from a career perspective—designer, developer, or any profession that requires document management. Not just Web designers and developers, but people who work in law, medicine, and even car manufacturing—anybody whos given the responsibility to update an intranet or the Internet. |
| Fri 26 Jul 19:29 | Jack Schonchin | 'Skills are for the long term.' Oh what a nasty little thing to say. What I learn today will not be an active standard 10 years from now. However, I guess there's an odd sense of comfort in the fact that the industry lags far behind standards. For example, web sites are still built with tables for layout today precisely because old dogs hate new tricks. |
| Fri 26 Jul 19:43 | Chad Lundgren | I object to the 'must' used here. I use XHTML for my blog Zen Haiku, but to say everyone must use it strikes me as the usual web standards overkill. Who's to say you can't make your HTML 4 more structural and use stylesheets? I talked on Zen Haiku recently about usability for programmers, but Molly specifically mentions non-professionals. As much as I like stylesheets and clean HTML, your average user will most likely use a visual editor, or do it the old-fashioned font tag way (shudder) because it's easier. It's only professionals that debate what CSS techniques to use: the rest of the world just wants to get that picture of their dog on their web page. |
| Traffick | Thu 25 Jul |
| Traffick covers portals, search engines, internet marketing, SEO, browsers & vortals. We offer feature articles, a portal directory, news, SEO & web design services & more! |
| Fri 26 Jul 19:22 | Jack Schonchin | The number one way to annoy Jack is to stick a text entry box in the middle of your page for the purpose of soliciting newsletter subscriptions. My first assumption will always be that it's a search box. ARRRRRRRRRRRGH! I don't care how many boxes you have on the page. Don't make me think. Only use one text entry box on the front page! I forgive John because he places text into the boxes on WebWord which make it damned obvious before I try typing into them. John is still going to hell, but with my good graces. |
| Evolution | Thu 25 Jul |
| (WebWord) If you are OK with 99% of your articles sucking, you can bet that I wont remain enrolled long. |
| Fri 26 Jul 00:26 | Ron Zeno | Did you not allow comments for the original article, John? |
| Fri 26 Jul 07:14 | John S. Rhodes | Not at the end of the article...but I did allow comments here. This particular comment was rather...intense...so I decided to post it out here for others to see. I want people to know that I am not afraid of taking heat for what I write. I appreciate alternate points of view and expect diversity. |
| Fri 26 Jul 08:46 | MadMan | Towards the end of that article is this line: 'Let your ideas have sex; you want offspring. ' That was very cheesy, John. Sorry to be so blunt, but it was. ;) |
| Fri 26 Jul 13:03 | Lydia | I find this perplexing. Plus, I am constantly amazed at the way people viciously attack others for ideas they have. Did constructive criticism die out with the popularization of the web? I'm not sure what he was trying to say, actually - it feels like he was looking at a different article than I was. |
| Fri 26 Jul 17:34 | JB | Ouch, I guess we are all entitled to our opinions, but like Lydia said this is not constructive. The comments are no more than a rant and do not offer any arguments against what you wrote. My only thought is that you may want to put the summary at the top of the document. |
| Fri 26 Jul 19:06 | Jack Schonchin | 'you can bet that I won't remain enrolled long.' Huh? Is John teaching a college course on the sly? If so, can I take it credit/no credit? |
| Book Review: Fast Food Nation | Sat 20 Jul |
| (WebWord) There is shit in the meat. (Comment: This is a book review that I recorded yesterday. Surprisingly, although it is only 8:31 in length, it took many hours to put together. I had to do a lot of post-production tweaking, converting, editing, and so forth. It is in MP3 format and is over 3.4 MB. If you want to copy this file to your hard drive and then share it with other people, you have my permission. Here is a link to Fast Food Nation on Amazon.) |
| Mon 22 Jul 01:19 | Wild Bill | A useful review, but you really need to speak slower (and dare I say it, perhaps in a deeper voice) - it sounded like a bit of a ramble or stream of consciousness, although there was a structure here. |
| Mon 22 Jul 13:46 | EdOC | I enjoyed your recorded review. However, on your home page you may want to make it very clear that the target of the headline link is an MP3 file. Many folks won't read the description text very carefully and then be surprised. The review was a tad long, and your delivery was a bit monotone and scholarly. ;^) You need to adapt to the medium-- liven it up, make it brief yet engaging. If the recording must be longer than 30 seconds, get a co-host to interject counterpoints rather than supplying your own. Anyway, you earn big bonus points for taking risks and experimenting with audio. You sound like a bright, likeable guy. PS I read Fast Food Nation back in January, and I was stunned to read in the news last week about the beef recall from the plant in... Greely Colorado. |
| Mon 22 Jul 20:55 | amm | I think it sounds pretty good for a first effort! For what it's worth, you have a voice that's easy to listen to. |
| Tue 23 Jul 03:46 | Mac | I read this book last year, and have not eaten a burger since! In the UK we have had mad cow disease and BSE recently and we are supposed to have higher standards than the US. You may like to find out more about the McLibel case that is mentioned briefly in the book. |
| Fri 26 Jul 15:44 | Joe | Would it be too much to ask for a text transcript? |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 25 Jul |
| Last night I sent off the WebWord Newsletter to over 6,400 people. One of the links is broken in the newsletter but not a single person wrote me about it. Why? |
| Thu 25 Jul 23:36 | Jack Schonchin | If they're like me, they subscribed when they first visited WebWord. Then when they realized the newsletter highlighted stuff on the web site they had already seen because they visit more frequently than the newsletter is published, they stopped reading the newsletter, but were too lazy to unsubscribe. |
| Thu 25 Jul 23:39 | Jack Schonchin | OK, I've looked at the screen capture now... I'm guessing the typo was so obvious people found it easier to let it go, rather than be one of many shooting off an e-mail to tell you something you already knew and was obviously a small thing. |
| Thu 25 Jul 23:52 | Eszter | I prefer to read book reviews rather than listen to them. I was very curious about what you had to say about this book since I'm in the middle of reading it right now, but I didn't want to do it via audio. You can't really skim an audio file whereas you can skim through an article to parts that are of interest. I didn't feel like I could devote 8 mins to it right then. So I would've preferred it in written form. Given that I wasn't interested in an audio format, I just glanced at the end of the URL to verify it was an mp3 and then moved on. I just assumed the front part was the usual and correct address. |
| Fri 26 Jul 04:18 | Mac | I tend to download my mail onto a PDA so I can read it during my working day in spare moments (fag breaks, toilet breaks and the like). As my PDA is not 'connected' I never click on links in mails that I read in this manner. |
| Fri 26 Jul 07:19 | John S. Rhodes | Interesting comments. Thank you. 1. Skim, so I missed it 2. Don't care enough 3. Not connected 4. Easier not to respond than to respond Others? |
| Fri 26 Jul 08:32 | MadMan | Yeah. Nobody wants to click on an MP3 link from an email. 3.4 MB? Bloody long time to download. People want instant gratification. Think about it. Here I am, with over 200 mails every day to deal with. I'm trying to get them out of my way as quickly as possible and then get working. Here's how a typical email reading session could go (thinking out loud): 1) What's this? A joke from my friend Bob. Quick scan. Nah, not funny. Press Delete. 2) Message from my boss asking for a status update on the new project. Oops, gotta reply to this. Type out a three line reply saying that the SRS is getting finalised. Done with that. Phew! 3) Hmmm... subject says 'the info you requested...' from Vince. Who's Vince. Open mail. Damn, it's more freaking spam. Delete. 3) Message from girlfriend asking if I'm free for dinner. Quick response saying I'll pick her up at 19:00 4) News.com newsletter. Quick scan through headlines. Couple of stories look interesting. Click on links and while the pages are loading in my browser, I get back to reading the rest of my mail. 5) Bah! 10% discount coupon from the e-commerce site I vowed never to buy from. Bugger that, press Delete. 6) Ah, the daily Webword newsletter. You know, that John Rhodes ought to consider sending weekly newsletters. Daily newsletters are such a pain in the butt. Let's see... what's he got? Book review... uh huh... Fast Food Nation... uh huh... where's the hyperlink? Waitamminit, it's an MP3 file. Wtf? How big is it? (scan through it again) Shit, it's 3.4 MB. Sorry, don't have time for it at the moment. Maybe some other time. Why didn't he just make it a regular article? These usability nuts, I tell ya'. 7) OK, so what do these News.com.com stories say? Hmmm... (go back to clearing out the rest of the email) -- end of session -- Now, did you find that insightful, John? You should consider that your newsletter is usually one of several mails that people get in a day. 3.4 MB is too much diversion. Give people instant gratification. |
| Fri 26 Jul 12:38 | Dusty Bottoms | You didn't give it enough time. People first scan the newsletter for anything critical or relevant to tasks at hand. Next they print the newsletter for offline reading, coming back to the PC at a later time to explore links of interest. |
| Fri 26 Jul 12:56 | Lydia | Two things: I figure 10 other people have let you know by the time I see it (overriding reason), and I usually don't click links from e-mail, but skim to see if something catches my interest right away, then I come to the site and click the link. The website is just more convenient because of the organization. I never print out the e-mail, but I do stick it in a separate folder in case I want to look up stuff from the past. |
| Fri 26 Jul 13:18 | JB | I use your newsletter as a summary of what is on your site. I have now got into the habit of coming to your site daily for the same reason and thus I have become an ad hoc email reader. |
| A good interviewer | Thu 25 Jul |
| Wait, youve got it wrong, its blurry. |
| Fri 26 Jul 04:20 | Mac | Just so you know we notice: This item appears twice (564 and 565). |
| Fri 26 Jul 07:21 | John S. Rhodes | Mac, it is now fixed. Thanks. |
| Fri 26 Jul 13:05 | Lydia | Wow, how incredibly smooth. Very impressive. |
| Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design | Tue 23 Jul |
| In this article we identify ten mistakes in shopping cart design, which we have seen, impact a user’s willingness to purchase. While these design flaws are not the sole reason why users leave their carts abandoned, fixing them can only improve a users’ willingness to stay online to purchase. |
| Wed 24 Jul 04:03 | Mac | Calling a shopping cart anything other than a shopping cart only causes confusion. .... if you know what a shopping cart is US UK |
| Wed 24 Jul 05:05 | Matt Round | Good point, over here 'basket' works much better (although 'trolley' is the direct equivalent of 'cart') |
| Wed 24 Jul 05:12 | Alan Fisher | Spot on, Mac. Shopping basket and shopping trolley are both in common usage in the UK, but no-one ever refers to a shopping cart. Think international, let's call it a shopping casket. Perhaps not... I think one of the reasons that punters abandon their shopping is that they were never serious about buying in the first place. Keeping a list of things you might buy is OK, but when it comes down to it, do you really want to spend that money? And how do we measure what proportion of abandoned trolleys (sorry, carts) fit into this category? In fact, the article makes reference to this under mistake number 2. |
| Wed 24 Jul 10:10 | Ron Zeno | Yes, they didn't take international issues into account, among other things. The article is definitely not up to the high quality levels I expect from SURL, though far better than most of what's printed elsewhere. |
| Wed 24 Jul 11:39 | Jack Schonchin | Abandoning shopping receptacles is not a question of whether the customer was ever 'serious' about buying. I routinely abandon my cart, for a boat load of reasons... 1) I want to see what the shipping and tax cost would be. 2) I am collecting a list of like items to compare. 3) I am undecided. I have a bunch of things in my Amazon cart that have been there for a month (I have gift certificates to use, otherwise I'd never shop there). 4) I'm interested, but want to come back later after I've seen whether I can get a better price. A recent pending DVD movie release was $25 on pre-order at BN.com, and $22 at Amazon. Later, Amazon's price dropped to $20, but it was not reflected in my cart. I waited until the day of the release and found the movie for $18 at a local chain store. That movie is still in my Amazon cart. The thing is, these nutty e-commerce guys can only conceive of a shopping cart as a device to complete a sale. So when they see abandoned carts they view it as a problem to be solved. Rubbish. We users use a cart like any other tool. Maybe it's required to complete a sale, but we can use it for all sorts of other things in the meantime. |
| Wed 24 Jul 12:19 | JB | Jack has hit the nail on the head. Abandonment is not a function of poor cart/basket design but more to do with overall poor cost structure communication to the consumer. What is the statistic: 66% of users abandon carts because they are only searching for tax and shipping information. |
| Wed 24 Jul 20:26 | Morris Cox | I use a shopping cart, not only to check what the shipping and tax cost is, but also to see if they'll allow me to pay with my savings account. Quite a few sites don't tell you exactly what methods of payments that they accept. I go for the sites that take the forms of payments that I can make use of. |
| Thu 25 Jul 03:39 | Omar | Ron, they're just being their usual American selves. To most Americans, there is no world outside their country. |
| Fri 26 Jul 05:07 | Alan Fisher | Jack - you're right, but so am I. I know that I've often put a few things in my cart at Amazon on the spur of the moment, but when it comes to spending the money I've decided that I didn't really need them. We do the same in bricks and mortar shops, don't we? Take things off the shelves, carry them around a bit and then decide not to bother. The problem here is that people feel that, just because we put things in the cart, there must be some design flaw which is leading us to not complete the transaction. That's not the case. As discussed above, we're using the cart for our own purposes, which don't necessarily equate to buying anything. |
| The EBay Way | Thu 25 Jul |
| (Robert Cringely) In terms of sales, the company is comparable in size to Amazon.com. But Amazons sales are primarily composed of goods while eBays sales are composed almost entirely of commissions commissions that average around five percent of the value of goods bought and sold. So while Amazon and eBay are both around a billion in sales, eBay actually represents more than $20 billion in economic activity. |
| Thu 25 Jul 20:29 | Anonymous | eBay rules! |
| The Red Shirt | Tue 23 Jul |
| (WebWord) A young boy heads off to sea with a ship of strong men. The ship remains at sea for several weeks, unmolested, untouched. No pirates are in sight. But their luck runs out. Off, in the distance, there is a pirate ship! |
| Tue 23 Jul 08:10 | Anonymous | The way I read this page is I CTRL+click the headline link text to open the story in a new browser tab, and then read the intro. The end of the intro tells me it's a 1.6Mb MP3 file, just as the browser crashes. D'oh. |
| Tue 23 Jul 08:27 | John S. Rhodes | Sorry for the crash! Just after the link I should include information that tells people it is a 1.64 MB file. Putting it at the end, even with a warning, is not good enough. The reason I did not do it the 'correct' way is that it breaks with my convention. I almost never include file or link information just after the link -- that is where I cite the resource, if appropriate. On the other hand, I usually place comments at the end of the blurb I post, so that is where I put the warning. In any event, I am curious what people think about the posting. You'll need to listen to the whole thing to get it. I won't post any more information about it yet since I don't want to ruin the surprise at the end. Hopefully people get a kick out of it. |
| Tue 23 Jul 09:46 | Ron Zeno | You should also give play time. |
| Tue 23 Jul 10:06 | John S. Rhodes | Ron, you are right. I meant to do that. In case you want to know, it is just over 4 minutes long. |
| Tue 23 Jul 11:22 | Jack Schonchin | For those of us who cannot be overheard listening to pirate tales at work, could someone tell me what this MP3 is about? |
| Tue 23 Jul 18:10 | Jack Schonchin | Damn, you guys are going to make me wait until I get home? |
| Tue 23 Jul 18:17 | John S. Rhodes | Yes Jack, you will have to wait until you get home. [Begin sinister laughter] Bwaaaaaa ha ha ha! [End sinister laughter] |
| Wed 24 Jul 01:05 | Joshua Kaufman | Cute story, John. You have a great pirate voice, however it may be more effective if you don't use it throughout the entire story. I would recommend using the rough pirate voice for character dialog only. In between, use your regular speaking voice. Then when you get to the dialog, it will all the more dramatic. I'm interested to know what you use to create these audio files? What software do you use? What's happening whenever we hear that clicking noise in the background? Did you rehearse much before recording? |
| Wed 24 Jul 03:25 | Livia Labate | Why is John suddenly going nuts with the sound recording? Changing from the usability business John? On a related matter, it would be nice if you put up case studies of your usability business - who you worked for, what you learned, what work you did, etc. Your corporate side is not represented well on this site. |
| Wed 24 Jul 19:29 | Lydia | Cute story. :) Have you ever heard Nilsson's The Point? (The CD, not the movie.) He had a good reading style that would be a good model for this type of story. |
| Sights unseen | Tue 23 Jul |
| This research is showing us something that we didnt think was the casethat we can fail to perceive very major things going on right in front of our eyes. |
| Tue 23 Jul 20:39 | John S. Rhodes | Thanks Jack. |
| Tue 23 Jul 20:46 | Ron Zeno | Nice article. Though there was quite a bit of research done by perceptual psychologists in the 80s and 90s that links the change blindness research of the 70s with the recent research into inattentional blindness. |
| Wed 24 Jul 12:46 | Jack Schonchin | This helps explain why I drive much better at night. Ok, maybe not, but I want to talk, so... On a long car trip (e.g., 6 hours), I prefer to drive at night because my eyes get tired driving in daylight. In fact, I get sleepier during the day. Why? Because during the day I have to try to process everything within my field of vision. At night there's only shiny objects and whatever else is illuminated by my headlights. I can focus my attention on a small area and ignore everything else. |
| f2o.org | Tue 23 Jul |
| f2o.org is a user-centric organization, providing an assortment of web services to its members. We offer free subdomain hosting, complete domain name hosting services, and several other database, reporting, and data storage options. |
| Wed 24 Jul 12:14 | Mishka | Of course we will!!! There's lots of great things to come .. all of us are in it for the long haul. |
| Pirated-Sites.com | Tue 23 Jul |
| Pirated-Sites.com showcases side-by-side comparisons of web sites that are suspected of borrowing, copying or stealing copyright-protected content, design or code without permission. |
| Tue 23 Jul 21:57 | Jack Schonchin | I use this site when talking about the difference between stealing a design and making your site similar to other sites in your genre (ex: bn.com and amazon.com are similar, but not identical). |
| No-frills procurement site planned | Wed 17 Jul |
| Were more interested in it working than it being particularly fancy. Efficiency is going to be more important to them than fancy interfaces. |
| Tue 23 Jul 17:04 | Matt Haas | Sounds like another doomed project to me. I've been through to many 'we don't know what we want but build it anyway' projects not to see where this one is heaing. |
| Web sites: Usable can still be useless | Mon 22 Jul |
| (ZDNet Australia) Despite its ubiquity, “Web usability” is a very loosely defined concept and its relevance is still hotly debated in discussions between business executives and Web developers around the world. To add to the confusion, aficionados like Nielsen charge in the vicinity of US$35,000 for a site usability review, whilst books that retail for less than US$20 claim to offer a do-it-yourself alternative. |
| Mon 22 Jul 10:01 | MadMan | While I agree that usability cannot be divorced from business strategy, I direct your attention to the last paragraph: Dr. Adir Shiffman is Founding Director of online research and strategy company Global Reviews. Global Reviews uses its set of quantitative benchmarks to evaluate the online customer experience provided in various industries, and then works with companies to guide improvements. Aha! In other words, 'don't hire Nielsen! Hire us!' |
| Mon 22 Jul 10:09 | Ron Zeno | Please do not critically analyze this article! |
| Mon 22 Jul 13:13 | (the other) JS | Usability works well ...when complemented with a compelling reason to buy. Business people are too quick to lose an insight into what drives a customer in a flurry of abstract analytics. |
| Mon 22 Jul 17:13 | JB | Think about this seriously for a second... Jakob swans into town, damning everything he sees and then says, 'Oh I have a company that will set you on the straight and narrow'. The local guys, not wanting to be outsold, retaliate by saying JN is all talk and that they are doing a good job. Two things...One JN is not doing the industry as a whole any good by kicking every local operator when he enters a town. Two, I as a web site manager think who is right, who is wrong...why does JN cost so much when others promise the same thing for less? Until you can all learn to love each other, us folks outside the industry will just continue to scratch our heads and wonder |
| Mon 22 Jul 19:32 | Ron Zeno | 'why does JN cost so much when others promise the same thing for less?' Maybe because Nielsen is the most widely known and respected person in usability. Maybe because many people are gullible enough to believe empty promises when it suits them... |
| Tue 23 Jul 06:41 | (the other) JS | Have you noticed the anti-JN forces hardly ever reply with a methodology or examples -- only pointless whining. Come up with a coherent alternative exploiting the basic fallacies, then market that. Oh sorry, said that bad word -- marketing. This is like the communists trying their hand at the free market. |
| Where Art Thou, Attention Span? | Mon 22 Jul |
| (Gamegrene) Its no secret that technology has evolved and video games consoles are vastly superior to what they were when I was a child. So why cant I play them for days on end like I used to? Just like when I was a kid, Ive got no homework to do so let the virtual marathon commence, right? Wrong. |
| Mon 22 Jul 19:49 | Jack Schonchin | Simple answer: This guy is not playing the right games. When you're 5-years-old you are easily captivated by simple games. When you're an adult you need ones that provide more challenges and meet your specific needs. If you are still playing within the same genre as you did when you were a kid, perhaps it's time to expand your horizons. Playing human opponents over the 'net helps too, because then each game is guaranteed to be unique -- avoiding predictable computer opponents, and getting greater satisfaction from out manuevering or out thinking your counterpart. |
| Mon 22 Jul 20:20 | Morris Cox | He could try something like Everquest, where he created a character that can be used whenever he wants to and that exists in a persistent world/reality. A single server tends to have about 1000 to 2000 players on it and you can have multiple characters on each server. |
| Mon 22 Jul 20:23 | Morris Cox | Arrghhh... I meant 'where he can create a character'. |
| Improving Usability with a Website Index | Thu 18 Jul |
| (Boxes and Arrows) Although great strides have been made with the technology, automatic classification tools come nowhere near the human brain in terms of accuracy in evaluating text. |
| Mon 22 Jul 11:46 | Mac | John, I spoke too soon regarding Usability Professionals. I now know that there are about 5 Professionals around at the moment, but there will be another half a million joining them in the not too distant future. |