On-hands demo (Cycling computers and more)

A year ago I bought myself a new cycling computer (I wanted one where I could see altitude meters as I've begun bringing my bike to some mountains around Europe and riding up these mountains). I ended up buying a Sigma BC 2600 (price was a factor too - otherwise I would probably have gotten myself a Garmin, which would - in theory - ensure that I didn't get lost). Anyway - Sigma has this cool feature where you can "try" the computer in your browser - click various buttons and see what happens. Pretty nifty.

So I'm wondering - given that many of the mobile devices we use are built on some sort of platform, how hard is it to port this to the web for us common folks to try out before to see if we like it? I'm thinking mostly of the plethora of new touch screen devices. It would be so cool to actually try out how it works before buying it (and not in some store with a sales clerk breathing down your neck). I realize that some of the more quirky motions would be hard to emulate using a mouse (e.g. "pinching" an image), but just to give the general idea it would be great.

What I'd like from my real estate agent ...

Wouldn't it be cool if I could check out which houses where on sale when I passed through a nice neighborhood? Maybe I can (but my phone does not have GPS). Oh! And on that note until recently I had a Palm with a GPS built in. Pretty cool. I was cycling in Italy up this really nasty mountain and wanted to find out how far from the top I was. All I got was a grey map with a dot on because the darn thing used the mobile coverage to download the maps (and there was no mobile coverage at that particular point). Pretty un-cool. What if the phone downloaded the maps needed for say a 20 km radius when I last checked the maps and used those if no there's coverage? Now I just use my cheap Nokia (without GPS) and Google Maps. Works for me ... :-)

PS: Blackberry sucks. Big time. I never got used to the strange operating system (what's with the two options when reading mail: "More ..." and "More All ..."? - btw. normally "..." after a menu item indicates that a separate window opens up :-)). Also I can type faster on my Nokia with spelling turned on than on the crummy keyboard on the Blackberry.

Twitter etc.

I'm not sure what I think of this. Although I've become hooked on lancearmstong. Not that it's particualry interesting, but I keep coming back ... strange. I suspect it's the same reason we love to read gossip about the VIP's of the world (Oh! And don't deny it - you do it too).

From a usability point of view there isn't all that much to remark. It works - even though tinyurls suck without a title (but that's not twitters fault).

Futurize your enterprise in Denmark (10 years late)

Today in the daily paper Berlingske (in Danish) there was an article of how business is losing control over their communications. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it online - but here's the "low-down": Kirsten Dinesen (whom I've never heard of before - but that's probably due to my own negligence) has written a book: Pull Society. From the article in the paper it seems that the book is basically a revisit of the eminent book Futurize you enterprise by David Siegel written 9 years ago. Back then it was very visionary, today it's reality. I don't really know what to say - why re-write a book (except of course to make some money)?

Update: Culture may not be in such grave danger after all

I now finally(!!) finished "The Cult of the Amateur" mentioned in the previous entry (it was quite a hard read and I finished up 5 other books before this one was done). Anyway: I am pleased to announce that while I was rather annoyed by Andrew Keens writing (because his doomsday approach turned me off, and I thought most of his examples (especially the economic ones) were ridiculous), the book turned out to be OK in the end.

After all the hubbub about web 2.0 and no one respecting copy-rights anymore the book turned more sombre and looked at the internet in general and some of the effects of what can happen to our kids. As a parent to a 7 year old who is now enjoying web 2.0 through Club Penguin and a 5 year old who is sleeping in a card board box on the floor in her room next to her perfectly good bed, and who before she goes to bed (card board box), almost always seems to manage to get my PC infected with malicious spyware and stuff, I pay attention when someone warns me how my kids can get in trouble.

After all the gloom Mr. Keen actually lets us know that it may not be so bad after all. There is still hope he claims (and I agree), because even though there will always be criminals and pundits, there are also sensible people (and most of us belong to that category) which will legislate, agree, and veto what is good for our common good.

Our culture in ruins?

I'm in the proces of reading "The cult of the amateur" by Andrew Keen, and I know that I should probably finish it before commenting, but this guy is really depressing me. He comes across as a really grumpy old guy. His basic claim (which isn't all that far of) is that the coming of Web 2.0 is killing or culture, because basically anyone can become (and soon is) a voice on the internet. The first half of the book is filled with examples. Of how everyone cheats and lies and how we can't distinguish facts from fiction anymore. Well, here's my take: Cheats and liars have existed since we crawled out of the slime quite some time ago. Some time later, in the early days of the telegraph elaborate ways to use this new medium to cheat were not uncommon as Tom Standage explains in "the Victorian Internet".

Another example of how Web 2.0 is undermining our community is the claim that our economy is crippled by having amateurs doing the jobs of professionals. In one example he calculates that $331.000 were sucked out of the economy because a company choose to have amateurs compete to create their Super Bowl Ad. Somehow I don't really feel sorry for the Ad professionals being cheated this way. Also, could it be that the $331.000 were spent on something else, or maybe even given to shareholders? And finally - I do believe that the marketing people will have made a decent cost benefit analysis of this before going this way.

I really feel insulted that I should not be able to distinguish between what's good and what's bad. I'm a normal person - but that doesn't mean that I'm naive and don't question the validity of any source of information I come across. And even if I can't tell right from wrong, I hope that they will teach my kids more thorough source criticism, than I was taught.

The most ironic thing is that Andrew Keen has his own blog!

Sorry that there were no user focus in this entry - but I just had to get this of my chest. I'll get back when I've finished the book - I might just end up being positive after all.

Banner blindness revisited

Once again Jakob Nielsen concludes that banner blindness is a de facto phenomenon. Not really surprising for those of us working in the user experience field. But why, then, do they keep using banner ads? If they don't work? Well, the thing is they DO work. People actually click on the things (especially younger ones). The thing is this: only a very small percentage of visitors click on an add. But if the total number of visitors is large enough that small percentage will add up.

Also, don't tell me that marketing people are so studpid that the don't want bang for their bucks. Especially as it is so easy to track and measure. You can actually pay for what you get (i.e. number of click-throughs).

Why Invest in Social Features for Your Web Site?

UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » Why Invest in Social Features for Your Web Site? This is a great article by Joshua Porter. Funny thing that just struck me: Isn't this exactly what David Siegel said would happen back in 1997 when he wrote "Futurize your Enterprise" (and Seth Godin in "Permission Marketing")? Pretty smart guys - those two. Only thing is: How much is media hype and how much actually converts to revenue? (And how do you measure the amount attributed to social features? But then again: how do you measure the effect of billboard marketing - what without considering general ecomic factors as unemployment rate etc?)

The effects of online advertising

ACM: Digital Library: Communications of the ACM: The effects of online advertising.

Interesting article but hardly news - just proof that this is the way it is. I do believe that while it is annoying - it will not go away (because some marketing people must believe that it works) - just like TV commercials (also mentioned in the article). My take on it is this: If site content is sufficiently good/relevant for you, you will return despite the annoyance from ads (there's a reason why Super Bowl ads are so high priced - there ARE viewers). Case to prove my point (well just as seen from inside my head): http://www.edbpriser.dk/ has this enormously annoying ad that scrolls down over my main navigation (the category index), however the content of the site is so good that I will bear with them and re-visit again and again.