Fun is always better – Piano Stairs
Great experiment showing that you can encourage better behavior by making the experience more fun. (under 2 minutes) What else can be made fun that is good for you?
21st Century Business Model
Problem: Forever, the content business model has been to control access and force payment in advance. Then digital transfer (and the internet) arrived. Anything that could be digitized could be shared for free, blowing away the access controls and the pre-payments. Blowing away the business model. The problem in the…
Must See Software – Oct 6, 2009
This list is obviously subject to change over time. However, I was thinking about the software that I commonly recommend. This is the software that WOWs me. This is NOT in any particular order. They are all A+. I numbered them for easy reference 1. ExtJS – I suggest this one…
HTC Touch Pro 2 (Day 1)
I’m so nervous. My first smart phone. It feels so fragile. I am so afraid of dropping it. Ok, breathe…breathe….Go to my happy place….ahhh OK, the phone feels nice in my hand. Activating it was kind of a pain. Verizon’s website is so awful, I can’t even begin. I should…
What I love about Silicon Valley
I used to live in NYC. Greatest public transportation in the world. Tons of different kinds of businesses. It was a good city to live near. Now I live in San Mateo, Silicon Valley, California. I miss the great train systems. However, the profile of the companies here is very…
Rex Ryan: Twitter missed opportunity
After the Jets game, David Clowney, Wide Receiver NYJ, wrote a twitter message. “1 play in the 1st Half, 4 plays in the 2nd half . . . A bit disappointed about my playing time but very happy and satisfied about the win.” For this tweet, he was benched for…
Too much CO2 is bad
I just saw two sites that are incredibly disturbing. One claims that CO2 is not a pollutant and the other is claiming CO2 is the best thing in the world for plants. The ridiculousness of these websites is depressing, because I know that some people think that this point of view is…
The UX of buying my first Smart Phone
For the longest time, I have used a cheap flip phone. The only “feature” it had was the ability to drop it on the floor and it would continue to work. The main criteria I had for phones was that they had to not drop my calls. Thus, we have…
Microsoft 7 Party Video Disaster
Sometimes marketers (no offense) are ridiculous. Here is an example of the worst marketing I have ever seen. This video really makes me want to install Haiku. Microsoft, you are making me crazy. The Outlook-Word thing stinks, but this video made me throw up in my mouth.
UX and PRDs
PRDs (Product Requirement Documents) and MRDs (Marketing Requirement Documents) come in many flavors. My question today is, “What kind of requirements doc is the most conducive to creating great UX and great products?” Let’s assume for a minute that you have a Product Manager that knows their stuff backwards and forwards. The…
GMail and p.MsoNormal
Note: This post is from 2009. This is no longer applicable. I have one favor to ask of the GMail team. It will help millions of people and has zero bad side-effects. Please put the following line in your CSS. p.MsoNormal {margin: 0px} Why is this important? When Outlook sends…
The UX of Fax Machines
I am spoiled. I live in an age of cut and paste, email and attach. The fax machine, when I have to use it is a ridiculous anachronism. I just had to use it. To dial 9, or not? Do I dial 1 before the area code? What is this complicated UI?…
Jets 2009 Predictions
The Jets already had their first game. So I know I will predict that one correctly. Here are my predictions: Wk Date Game Win? 1 Sep 13 NYJ 24 @ HOU7 WIN 2 Sep 20 NE @ NYJ WIN 3 Sep 27 TEN @ NYJ WIN 4 Oct 04 NYJ…
The UX of BI Analytics (Demos)
Lately, I have been researching BI (business intelligence) tools and watching all their demos. Some of the demos were horrible and others great. I learned alot about business intelligence space. The tools are so open-ended. In the right hands, with the right data, tools like this are ridiculously cool. They can help…