How much of your page goes unnoticed?

You’ll find a lot of literature and best practices when searching for answers on what goes beneath the fold of your website, so Google came to the rescue and just released the Google Browser Size, a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google, which you can customize to see how does this measurements fit you own website, pretty much as I did for the above screenshot.

Thankfully I’m working on the redesign of my own website for a couple of days otherwise much of what goes in here would go unnoticed

Why newspapers won’t die…

Today, I’ve picked this image on Igor’s Posterous:

first I smiled, but then it came to me, that although this is certainly true for many journals, the reality also reminds me that as everything else, it depends where you stand and on what you’re aware of…

The thing is that the NEW media loves to write about the OLD media, which in turn loves to write about NEW media, funny isn’t it?

I read most of my news online, but from time to time I do LOVE to read what I’ve been calling Slow News (and i’ll promise that I’ll cover this in my next post), meaning that I do read paper magazines and newspapers. I am in fact paying subscriptions for those when available (yes living in Germany has it’s drawbacks if we depend on international press).

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Is Apple becoming the new Evil?

I just bought a new 27″ iMac a couple days ago. It’s fabulous. The screen’s too shiny, and the disk is surprisingly loud (…) So I bought it, but I bought it, for the first time, with misgivings. I felt the way I’d feel buying something made in a country with a bad human rights record. That was new. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Oh boy! They make such great stuff. This time it felt like a Faustian bargain. They make such great stuff, but they’re such assholes. Do I really want to support this company?

Sooner or later this had to happen, it’s striking the resemblance’s with the fact that we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of wall in Germany. Apple has been building a walled garden with the iPhone/iTunes AppStore, but as any bridged wall, it will come down eventually, one thing it’s for certain it will fall by the hands of those that helped build it, it may take a while, but you can’t really ignore the signs..

Apple is great! I love it as I’m sure a whole lot more people does! But things aren’t looking good and it feels as if they’re becoming those that they used to criticizes in way more front’s that they should.. Apple needs to correct their path, otherwise in a decade or less, they might see themselves in a rather ackward position, if for now they still sell the best, shiniest and prettiest of them all…

Sounds a crazy idea? Read Paul Grahams latest essay about Apple and his commentary to the bashing on the broken app store approval process…

Google Chrome OS

Trillions

World Usability Day Charter

Today it’s the World Usability Day, this year’s theme is ‘Designing for a Sustainable World’, a theme that’s particular personal to me, not only refering to the usability factor, but also to this year’s topic! As founder of SHiFT – Social and Human Ideas for Tecnology, I personally recommend that all that agree with me that a lot need to be done to improve the way we experience and design technology to please read and sign the World Usability Day Charter:

Human error is a misnomer. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy-to-use as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, government, communication, entertainment, work, and other areas, we must agree to develop technologies in a way that serves people first.

Technology should enhance our lives, not add to our stress or cause danger through poor design or poor quality. It is our duty to ensure that this technology is effective, efficient, satisfying and reliable, and that it is usable by all people. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, because technology can enhance their lives, letting them fully participate in work, social and civic experiences. Human error is a misnomer. Technology should be developed knowing that human beings have certain limitations. Human error will occur if technology is not both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand. We need to reduce human error that results from bad design. We believe a united, coordinated effort is needed to develop reliable, easy-to- use technology to serve people in all aspects of their lives, including education, health, government, privacy, communications, work and entertainment. We must put people at the center of design, beginning with their needs and wants, and resulting in technology that benefits all of us. Therefore, we, the undersigned, agree to work together to design technology that helps human beings truly realize their potential, so that we can create a better world for ourselves and future generations.

We agree to observe World Usability Day each year, to provide a single worldwide day of events around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen and governmental groups for our common objective: to ensure that technology helps people live to their full potential and helps create a better world for all citizens everywhere.

Article 1: Education

Wired and wireless schools are appearing everywhere. Students around the world benefit from low-cost, easy-to-use, reliable computing, Internet access, and telecommunication. Educational technology must be not only affordable and available, but must be usable by teachers, students and parents.

Article 2: Health

Healthcare must be available to everyone around the world. Medical technology can improve health, but it must be easy-to-use: error in this arena is costly. Because we are what we eat, we need healthier food supplies that will improve the well being of people everywhere. Technology that produces better food for all must be built on research that keeps the whole person in mind.

Article 3: Government

Governments around the globe seek to use new technology to better serve their citizens and increase participation in the civic experience. Citizens can pay taxes and take care of business online in many countries in the world; this same capability should be available to all, eliminating the digital divide that separates rich from poor or isolates social groups. Voting systems must ensure trust and confidence in elections. Technology that supports civic engagement must give all citizens equal access and opportunity, and must be easy to use and easy to understand by all citizens, including those with disabilities of any kind.

Article 4: Communication
People need to connect with each other. We have more means than ever to communicate: phones, Internet, messaging and the printed medium. Technology that facilitates communication between people must be intuitive to use. It should have instructions that are easy to understand, and knobs, dials and buttons that do not require constant tuning.

Article 5: Privacy and Security
As the use of technology grows, so do concerns about new forms of e-commerce, e-government and e-communication. We must build in appropriate safeguards to ensure that our interaction is secure, that children and others are protected, and that our systems are trustworthy.

Article 6: Entertainment

Entertainment is not just for our spare time. People use entertainment for many reasons throughout their daily lives. The world of entertainment has embraced technology to give us photos, movies, music and games in new ways and on new devices. But, even amusement benefits from usability! Incomprehensible remote controls, confusing instructions and blinking VCR clocks speak to the need for improvement in our media. Usable entertainment systems will make the experience less tiring and frustrating.

Sign the Charter

Open Government Data Poster

Ton and James Burke created the Open Government Data Poster to help civil servants decide if and how it is ok to open up data sets they have available.

Also available in PDF (English) version.

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Red Head’s Unite :)

I was actually born red headed, so was my brother… time has managed to ‘almost’ take that away from us.. so it’s just about time we get it back

Posted via email from pedrocustodio’s posterous