OPENING THANG Two websites in

OPENING THANG

Two websites in a row today gave me the “Rate This Page” DHTML doo-hickey found here:
If you haven’t seen it around, it’s an OpinionLab rate-this system graphic that literally follows you through a site, such as Business 2.0 or the TED site, and garners user feedback based on a system of pluses and minuses. The basic instructional copy: “use the scale to rate the page.” But unfortunately they’re not asking you/me/us what to rate. Design? Content? Relevance? Utility? Hmm, I’m not sure — just click a plus or minus. Seems specious. Can I rate the tool that’s doing the rating?

IA & USABILITY MATTERS

The Role of Flow in Web Design (Noise Between Stations)
“I’ve always liked the concept of Flow, which is when your skills are balanced with your challenges so that you are neither bored nor stressed. Now Scott Berkun has published The Role of Flow in Web Design”

More on flow.
Book:
Reader notes:

How a blind person will “see” your Web page (WebWord Usability Blog)
“How you construct the pages can mean the difference between a tedious and obscure rendering of the information in the page, and one that gets the message across.”

Where’d It Go? It Was Just Here! Managing Assets for the Next Age of Real-Time Strategy Games. (Captain Cursor)
Content management is not just a problem faced by us Web developers.”

WIRELESS MATTERS

Could Microsoft be on to something with its Stinger phones? They promise that all-in-one solution we’ve all been waiting for — cell phone, PC, GPS, WOPR, etc., and I’m sure they’re spending heavily on R&D, but I’ve little faith that a useful solution will come from a company that, when it comes to handhelds, never met a feature it didn’t like.

Microsoft invades the airwaves
“Imagine taking a Pocket PC with all the features crammed inside and shrinking it down to a size slightly smaller than a modern-day cellular phone – and then you can begin to have an idea of what Microsoft is previewing at the 3GSM World Congress wireless show in Cannes, France.”

Meantime, HP wants in on the action as they show off their new Journada cell-phone/PDA combo in Cannes.

OmniSky Releases Preliminary Results of Wireless Usability Study (Hanna Hodge UX Blog)
“The results of a the first major usability study conducted by Telephia for OmniSky. The results seem to be that handheld PDAs are superior to handheld phones in terms of time-on-task and click count. Hmmmm, not a big surprise!”

WORK MATTERS

>From the SIGIA list: wanna work in Italy?

APROPOS OF NOTHING

I can’t stop listening to Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate. Neither should you.
Notes (with samples):
Buy (with samples):
Email Taj Mahal: taj@hawaiian.net

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