Preamble In my opinion, Twitter is a powerful vehicle for synchronous communication (Asychronous = e-mail; Synchronous = AIM). It’s happening in real-time, and while it’s often called a micro-blogging platform, I think that’s a misnomer. It’s quite different than a blog — a centralized stream of content curated by one or many people. By contrast, [Keep Reading…]
My Beef with the NYC Taxicab Touchscreens
If you’ve ridden in a NYC taxicab in the past 6 months, you’ve likely noticed the touchscreen TV in the back seat. At first I thought this was a great innovation — GPS-powered maps to show the distance between me and my destination, real-time local news, restaurant reviews and events listings. Then I tried using [Keep Reading…]
Social Feed Aggregators
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of powerful social networking platforms out there, with new ones launching every week. Send 140-character messages with Twitter. Save links with del.icio.us. Promote content with Digg. Share music with Last.fm. It’s endless. Lifestreaming — recording your daily activities through text, links, photos, music and video — is quickly becoming the [Keep Reading…]
Group Video Chat: A Usability Evaluation
Back in January when I started this whole “getting to know the community” thing, I met a couple guys named @matto and @snook, a.k.a. Matthew Oliphant and Jonathan Snook respectively. Matthew had been following me based on David Armano‘s recommendation, and I had followed him back because, well, I basically didn’t know anybody on Twitter. [Keep Reading…]
Text message your order to Amazon
Amazon launched a new service yesterday called TextBuyIt in which you can look up and compare product info via SMS and purchase with your pre-existing account. I tried it out this morning by texting “Purple cow” to short code 262966 (“Amazon” on the keypad). A moment later I got a response that read: Reply w/1 [Keep Reading…]
WordPress 2.5 is released
Two days ago WordPress released a sneak peek of their latest version, 2.5. Redesigned from the ground up by the team at Happy Cog Studios, the WordPress Admin area now has improved navigation, organization and integration. The visual design looks pretty sleek, too. The folks at WordPress included a lot of screenshots in their post [Keep Reading…]
My BlackBerry Wishlist
RIM, Mike Lazaridis, if you’re out there, listen up. Here are my recommendations for improving the BlackBerry user experience: 1- Provide the ability to “Add To Existing Contact.” I don’t want to have to copy a new phone number or e-mail address from a message and paste it into the entry in my address book. [Keep Reading…]
(In)Consistency in keyboard shortcuts
More and more I’ve been using web apps in lieu of the traditional desktop applications I used for years. Primarily it’s because, like many of you, I have a home computer and a work computer; storing information online makes it far easier to access from both locations, particularly when one’s a Mac and one’s a [Keep Reading…]
Firefox 3 Beta 3 vs. Firefox 2.0
On February 12, Mozilla made Firefox 3 Beta 3 available for download. They call this a developer release for testing purposes only, but with all the cool features I’ve been hearing about I just couldn’t resist. For those of you who aren’t as willing to ignore small bugs and usability flaws — I work on [Keep Reading…]
Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation
Howard Rheingold recently asked his Twitter followers if he should switch from Bloglines to Google Reader — both web-based RSS readers. Joshua Porter responded that he should. I piped in to say that I’ve been using the new Bloglines Beta and I love it. They both asked about the benefits of Bloglines over Google Reader, [Keep Reading…]
