• Huey Long Book Review

    I woke up early this morning.  I didn’t want to wake up early.  I have no idea why it happened, but once I am up, there is no going back.  So I did some chores.  I cleaned the fish tank.  I added one additive that I am hoping doesn’t kill…

  • Wierd Firefox Cursor in PHP Admin

    What is this? It’s like a little cursor nose. [image lost – sorry] UPDATE: John Resig of Mozilla and jQuery fame has provided the answer. To Firefox this is a feature when you mix right-to-left or left-to-right text-directions. The little tick tells the user which direction the text should go.…

  • Does it have to be perfect?

    I just read a blog post by Ben Nadel stating “Don’t let great be the enemy of good”. At work, I am constantly struggling with “What can we do quickly and what would be perfect?” As a UX Designer, I know that even the slightest flaw can be a pimple…

  • I am not a usability professional.

    Katie printed out an article for me, from the New York Times entited: Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work. There are several misconceptions here. Ones that I think are fairly widespread. For the record, I am NOT a usability professional. I am a UX Architect. If you prefer UI…

  • Fantastico Upgrade of WordPress

    Since switching to Lunarpages.com, I have been pretty happy.  Speed is good.  However, they just allowed something to happen which kind of annoyed me. I had installed the latest version of WordPress when I switched over and imported my blog.  After a while, Lunarpages got the upgraded version of WordPress…

  • The UX of Farecast.com (Sliders)

    I was looking for a site that used a particular UI element called a “slider”. Sliders are horizontal or vertical bars with an indicator on top. You slide the indicator back and forth to tell the system a particular range or value. These are useful in specific circumstances, but don’t…

  • Speed Tests

    There are alot of speed tests on the web that look at javascript libraries like jQuery.  All of them have been getting faster and faster.  I used a MooTools template, which was actually pretty easy to set up.  I pointed it at my blog rather than the typical Shakespeare script. …

  • The UX of Blackberry Enterprise Server

    I had never installed a blackberry (crackberry) server before and really hadn’t thought much about it. Apparently, it’s a pretty complex architecture. The software, which installs on the exchange server, has a zillion options. From a UX standpoint, this thing is a disaster. I imagine this is because there are…

  • Crime and Punishment

    The New York Times reported that the senior official in charge of their Food and Drug oversight was sentenced to death for corruption. In America, Scooter Libby was sentenced to 3 years in prison for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to the press, a treasonable offense. He was then…

  • Veoh and GrandCentral

    Recently I was looking at Veoh. It seems to be a YouTube competitor.  It has a nice UI and works pretty much the same way as YouTube.  However, they allow you to download any of the videos, if you register.  They also have a Veoh Player, but as far as…

  • Creative block

    Having trouble getting past a certain point in my presentation for AjaxExperience 2007.  In the presentation, I have ranted and raved about the creative process and interaction design.  I have nice illustrations and fancy transitions.  All is well.  Now, I want to transition to the part where there is jQuery. …

  • jQuery 1.1.3 and beyond

    jQuery 1.1.3 just got released. It’s 800% faster on average than 1.1.2 and still 20k. It also hase a few bells and whistles which will make my life easier. One thing I wish I had last month is a negative selector like $(“div[@id!=test]”). The exclamation point helps because I can…

  • The UX of iStockPhoto.com

    I just finished buying my first photograph from iStockPhoto.com. I am totally impressed with their user interface.  The entire experience was solid.  The information architecture seemed coherent.  Everything about it has subtlety and grace.  Compared to the competition, it head and shoulders above the rest.  Plus the pricing strategy was…

  • The UX of Netflix Drag & Drop Queue

    Netflix, a few weeks ago, finally introduced Drag and Drop on their Queue page.  I have already used it a bunch of times.  Bravo, Netflix.  It works very well for what it does.  It has a nice transparency when a row is in motion.  Plus several visual cues to know…