Who needs a computer?

Should I answer my own question? I should answer my own question.

http://now.sprint.com/widget/

Don’t spend all day on it.

I can even post photos…

Improve Your Semantics –– This plays a huge part in lifting rankings on Google. HTML tags used in the content are used by search engines to evaluate relevance and ranking. Establish a small group of words and terms you want to be searched on, and use them in the site as much as possible, making sure that as much content you produce can be: (a) written as HTML text; (b) used as ‘alt’ tags on images; and (c) found at a search-engine friendly URL. Unfortunately “http://yoursite.com/index.php?id=347″ is not a particularly friendly URL compared to “http://yoursite.com/products/”, nor is it as relevant to the content displayed on it.

Design Your Information Better ––Unless you’ve read around and designed your website with some forethought, you may have elements (whole pages even) that are not required or even important to the overall site. Ideally, Information Design should occur before you “make things pretty” and well before anyone starts coding anything.

Take some time to structure your content, removing irrelevant elements and widgets. Be brutal and perform this on every page as well as across the site as a whole. This doesn’t (necessarily) mean the site’s visual design needs to change, but it may highlight some changes required.

New Content –– One of the biggest issues with company sites is content decay. Fresh content leads to more visitors, and I recommend adding a blogging tool to your site, though I don’t think it needs to be called that. If that seems to be a tough ask, consider adding an RSS feed to a relevant news site. New content attracts both visitors and search engines.

I think it’s a gigabit connection.

For many decades now, there has been a well developed and understood paradigm by which we physically interact with mechanical and electronic devices. Regardless of the device, its size or shape, when you press a button, you receive feedback from the device from the action of pressing. The ‘press’ paradigm is the default method of interacting with almost any mechanical or electrical object you care to name that requires buttons to operate: a light switch, a typewriter, a push-button telephone, a calculator, a computer.

Further, it makes for an effective paradigm in interaction design within computer applications and on the web, since it mimics the action of real world objects, and it works excellently when combined with physical keys such as those found on a computer keyboard or a pointing device like a mouse.

A valid response to this could be: “Well, duh…”; but it is clear from Apple’s iPhone that their “multi-touch” interface has fundamentally altered the press paradigm permanently for touch screen devices.

This change has probably occurred out of necessity. Rather than using physical keys, multi-touch uses a virtual keyboard on an advanced LCD screen. Instead of a stylus for accuracy (to maintain the press paradigm), multi-touch has the required smarts to minimise the mistakes of human fingers.

Multi-touch employs a ‘hold and release’ paradigm

Instead of receiving feedback from the press of a virtual button on the iPhone, you receive feedback upon hold and release of its virtual buttons. Not a big change when selecting large buttons and controls, but absolutely essential when learning to do more accuracy-dependent tasks, such as typing.

This change requires unlearning the press paradigm to a degree. Since feedback must come from the pause between pressing and releasing a virtual button, users must learn to hold their finger on the screen momentarily until confirmation of the correct key is shown (below). On a regular computer keyboard, feedback is received by physically pressing the key. Not to mention that holding the key down on a regular keyboard would enter duplicate characters.

Typing Problems?

A number of articles made the rounds on the web last year proclaiming that the iPhone was ‘practically useless’ for people who are heavy users of text applications. Thinking from the press paradigm perspective that is a true statement.

By pecking at the virtual keys, even with some practice, users can still be highly error-prone. Once a user learns to slide their finger and release over the desired letter key, for example, they become faster and more accurate.

The Future of Touch Screens

As usual, Apple has looked to the future willing to jettison yesterday’s standards if required. The touch screens of tomorrow need a new interface. One that requires a new paradigm.

Microsoft have taken a beating over Vista since its debut last year. Seven options to shutdown/sleep. It’s even been called a chrome plated turd.

Why is this important? Usability should affect all facets of design, from the creation of the thing, to its packaging and even to the documentation supporting it.

When a retail box requires online help - even before you get to the thing inside the packaging, you may need to rethink your overall strategy.

Fantastic use of current technology to create three-dimensional content. Can’t wait to see a game that uses this!

Link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/205.

He also speaks briefly on the “democratisation of content”, where he discusses how technology has changed the game. Now anyone with knowledge of the digital tools can create on par with the best.

But while the technology levelled the playing field, the all important factor remains the story/content/message presented by the technology. Without that, what you get is Star Wars Episodes I through III.