Pre-release “blogger-bashers” are terrible predictors of a product’s success
David Pogue: “Every now and then, a couple of messages come in that really irk me. These messages tell me how wrong I am about something I reviewed, which is fine — but they come from people who have never even tried the product. It was that way with the iPhone, in the time after it was announced but before it was available. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube,” went the critics. “No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing.” Etc. The blogs were full of this stuff. As it turns out, they were massively, humiliatingly wrong. Four million iPhones were sold in the first 200 days. Its sales surpassed Treos, Windows Mobile phones — everybody but BlackBerry. So what’s the lesson here? Simple enough: those vocal pre-release blogger-bashers are terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure.”
Cordell Ratzlaff discusses ux management at Cisco
“One of my pet peeves is with the specialized labels that have evolved within our profession. We have user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience specialists, visual designers, interaction designers, etc. The distinction between these many roles is fuzzy and confusing to those both inside and outside the design profession…I encourage designers to get as broad a range of experience as possible. Design products for as many markets, demographics, product types, and technology platforms as you can. Don’t be afraid to take on tasks outside your traditional role. The best designers I know are good at many facets of design. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know about branding, marketing, business models, and technology as well.”
How to disagree
“If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy…”
Sign up forms must die
“When planning a customer’s initial experience for your web service, think about how you can avoid sign-up forms in favor of gradual engagement.”
JetBlue on Twitter
“I learned that Morgan is behind JetBlue’s tweets, and not a bot, and that Morgan is very well informed on social media ethics and aware that corporate use of Twitter can be tricky. I am impressed that Morgan was watching Twitter closely enough to sense an issue, responded quickly, apologized, and removed the two of us from @JetBlue’s list. This served as a demonstration of the company’s active participation in the Twitter conversation, its willingness to course-correct, and of the new speed of social media with which corporations have to contend.”
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
“The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a businessman (at the esteem level) who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.”
Earth Hour shows how difficult it is to get even a tiny cut in energy consumption
“Earth Hour, hysterically promoted by The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, SBS, Sky News and the federal and state governments, resulted in no significant fall in power usage…The organisers will say never mind, this was about raising awareness (although not of raising awareness of the facts). But here’s the awareness it should raise: how difficult it is to get even a tiny cut in just electricity use for one lousy hour, in a country responsible for just 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions.”
Asaph Microblog
“Over the past few weeks I developed Asaph – a small blogging system, that allows you to instantly post links and images directly from any page on the web. This makes Asaph the most fun to use application if you want to collect and show all the cool things you found elsewhere. Asaph is not a full blown blog and it does not aim to be one – it just does this one task, but it’s pretty good at it.”
“Thriving Office” audio
“Thriving Office contains the sounds of voices, phones, computers, and much more. One 39-minute track is ‘Busy’ and the other is ‘Very Busy’. Click below to hear a sample and then start benefiting from this exciting new product!”