SOUTH ASIA EARTHQUAKE RELIEF
I've decided to add this to the blog for two reasons. First, the UN and charitable organizations report poor donor response to the South Asia earthquake relief appeal. Second, to help raise awareness and motivate people to donate generously.
All proceeds from reader clicks on ads will be donated to relief efforts for the victims of the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck South Asia on Oct. 8, killing at least 80,000 people, injuring 80,000 and leaving 3 million people homeless at the beginning of winter in the Himalayan mountains and foothills.
Alternatively, please donate to UNICEF or the Red Cross/Red Crescent and specify the South Asia Earthquake relief fund.
Thank you.
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Wednesday, June 15
MSDN Canada starts Internet podcasts ... sort of
by
Kaleem
on Wed 15 Jun 2005 09:59 PM EDT
 Mark Relph over at Microsoft Canada is getting into the podcasting game ... using Windows Media Audio files (WMA). Sure, Microsoft has a vested interest in promoting the WMA file format but would it hurt to provide the show encoded in the MP3 format? MP3 is the de facto standard and deeply entrenched as the king of the hill, despite numerous competing audio formats that have come and gone over the years. MP3 is familiar to everyone, every digital music player out there supports it and people want it. So why not provide it, as ... more »
Monday, April 4
Microsoft, Ethnography, Strategy and User Experience Research
by
Kaleem
on Mon 04 Apr 2005 05:15 PM EDT
 Normally I wouldn't link to what is primarily a public relations exercise from Microsoft, or any other company for that matter. But this time Microsoft's PR team has focused on usability by profiling a member of its user experience research group, ethnographer Tracy Lovejoy.
Two of the most common issues that I come across when speaking to clients are:
- a fundamental lack of understanding of the value that good user experience (UX) design brings to a product or service and
- ignorance of the work that goes into the process.
It's not surprising considering ... more »
Saturday, April 2
Mobile Phone Complexity: Usability vs. Features -- Who is the customer?
by
Kaleem
on Sat 02 Apr 2005 12:00 AM EST
The New York Times ran an article yesterday (Mar. 31) about feature creep: the growing number of features in modern cell phones and the corresponding inability of end-users to access those functions as the device become more complex. Increasing complexity, especially for a mass market device, is an enemy of a good user experience (UX). It's a difficult problem to solve because of the limited size of display screens on mobiles and the limited input interface. More features do not mean a better mobile phone... more »
Friday, April 1
Google Gmail adds rich text formatting and another gigabyte, increases storage to 2GB
by
Kaleem
on Fri 01 Apr 2005 11:23 PM EST
 A year after it launched its Gmail beta on April Fool's day, Google has released some significant upgrades to its Gmail e-mail service (no joke). The most notable of these new features is the addition of a rich text formatting tool that effectively transforms Gmail into a simple word processor. The features match or best those Microsoft offers with the WordPad software included in Windows. One very nice feature of the rich text formatter is the Remove Formatting button. You can remove some or all text formatting with one click. The feature is a little buggy as it doesn't always remove all of the formatting of heavily-styled text on the first attempt but it's an excellent feature from a usability standpoint. It sounds so simple and logical that a user should be able to select any or all text and remove the formatting with a click but, as far as I have been able to determine, Google is the first to implement it.... more »
Wednesday, March 30
Norway: Interaction Design Seminar April 12, 2005
by
Kaleem
on Wed 30 Mar 2005 04:09 PM EST
Bergen University (UiB) and Bergen's National Academy of Arts (KHiB) are hosting a free one-day seminar on interaction design. I'd be particularly interested in hearing what Interaction Designer & Experience Architect Priya Prakash of the BBC's Mobile & Streaming Group has to say about the state of user experience and design when it comes to mobile devices because I constantly hear -- and make -- complaints about the limitations of cell phones. Too bad I'll be on the wrong side of the ocean. Bergen University (UiB) and Bergen's National Academy of ... more »
Thursday, October 14
What do women game designers want? The same thing everyone else does
by
Kaleem
on Thu 14 Oct 2004 11:22 PM EDT
 The New York Times published a feature about women in the computer and video games industry, including programmers, game designers, and producers. Among the women interviewed for the article are Ion Storm's Denise Fulton, executive producer of the next Deus Ex sequel; Nicky Robinson, a veteran programmer with 21 years in the games industry; Sheri Graner Ray, a senior game designer at Sony Online Entertainment; and Laura Fryer, Director of the Advanced Technology Group and an executive producer with Microsoft's Xbox division.
Unfortunately the article is incredibly shallow and therefore all-too-typical of many of Katie Hafner's reports.
Beyond the usual platitudes about ... more »
Google Desktop Search beta released
by
Kaleem
on Thu 14 Oct 2004 12:29 PM EDT
 Google launched its new Google Desktop beta search tool today, providing a feature that Microsoft has long promised in the "next version" of the Windows operating system.
Google has risen from obscurity a few, short years ago to become the king of Internet search.
Now it's going to invade Microsoft's territory -- the desktop -- by delivering something to Windows users that Microsoft has been promising its customers for about 10 years: an easy way to find the files that they're looking for. Google says that its free application indexes your computer hard drive to let you find e-mail, Web pages, instant messaging... more »
Saturday, October 9
Gmail Drive add-on for Windows / Internet Explorer
by
Kaleem
on Sat 09 Oct 2004 02:27 PM EDT
Someone has come up with neat little utility that effectively turns your Gmail account into a virtual hard drive on your Windows PC. The author explains:
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.
The application was inspired by the Linux-based GmailFS by Richard Jones. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect... more »
Tuesday, October 5
Gmail new features, usability, design & business strategy
by
Kaleem
on Tue 05 Oct 2004 07:26 PM EDT
New features
I logged into my Gmail account yesterday -- yes, it's still in beta -- and noticed a couple of changes that were trumpeted by a link which exclaimed "New Features!" in bright red letters, like so.
I now regret that I didn't take some screenshots the first time I logged in. That would have made it easier to track the evolution of the interface and make it easier to illustrate what I will now attempt to describe with words.... more »
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