Obviously it is OK to hate your customers because so many companies clearly do, and they do so actively. Want proof? Test the limits of their "friendly customer service." Be a little bit annoying or high maintenance or disagreeable. You might want to be cautious and experiment with a company that sells a product or service you can live without. … Read more →
Category: General
Pay Attention: The World is Changing
A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native The world is changing and you need to pay attention to an important trend: digital natives are not very good at paying attention. Neither are those… Read more →
Writing for the Internet Generation
You won’t read most of what I write in this post. You will most likely skim it and at best read half of the content (on average). In May 2008, usability guru Jakob Nielson published his analysis of web usage data borrowed from a research study. I recommend you read it after this article. Here’s the big stunning quote: Obviously,… Read more →
When Does Quality Matter?
"A job worth doing is worth doing well" This past week I received a book of coupons in the mail from local businesses. I believe in supporting local business, especially locally owned and owner-operated businesses, so I flipped through it. One coupon caught my eye. It was for a business I had not heard of before and it looked like… Read more →
New Developer Comic – Enjoy
Here’s the first in the series of comics about developers coming from Microsoft: Read more →
Best Ice Cream Stand in Riverview / Moncton
This week I had the pleasure of telling my story as an entrepreneur to a class at Atlantic Baptist University here in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. The instructor and her husband are friends who also happen to own my favourite summertime ice cream destination (Ava’s Ice Cream). Afterward we were chatting about how to use the Internet in hyperlocal cases… Read more →
The Recurring Vendor No-Love-Fest
Have you ever dialed *611 (or some equivalent number) on your mobile phone to reach your mobile provider? Have you then been asked to enter your phone number? Don’t they already know that? Last week I was in Las Vegas for the seriously awesome MIX 2009 conference. Since I am from Canada, I went to the self-service site for my… Read more →
The Usability of No Results
Have you heard the expression "URLs are dead"? Web users don’t remember URLs anymore. We search for what we need. This is a boon for Google, Microsoft (Live), Yahoo, et al because they can sell advertising space beside the search results. Unfortunately the state of search on individual sites isn’t quite as evolved as the highly tuned general-purpose search engines.… Read more →
Starbucks Survivor
Lovin’ this commercial today: (Hat tip to Gair Maxwell) Read more →
The Netbook Resolution Conundrum
I just had my first conversation about accommodating netbook screen resolutions for a RIA (Rich Internet Application) prototype. Netbooks are those little laptops showing up in every electronics store on the planet (e.g., Lenovo IdeaPad, Asus Eee PC, Acer Aspire One, Dell Mini, HP Mini). According to The Channel Wire, the "netbook market grew by more than 160 percent quarter-on-quarter… Read more →