Posts filed under “Technology”
Big Ass Fans & Big Ass Batteries
I was at a great talk yesterday by Professor Donald Sadoway who spoke about his Liquid Metal Battery technology. I’m grossly oversimplifying but Prof. Sadoway is trying to use the technology use in Aluminium smelting to create a huge, cheap battery that can store energy to help smooth out renewable power contribution to the smart [...]
On Being Google's B*tch
Last night, I attended a panel discussion on Web 2.0 marketing where Derek Gordon (VP Marketing, Technorati) had this awesome sound bite: “Our ad server, Doubleclick, just got bought by Google; our most popular content, YouTube, is owned by Google; most of our referrers come from Google; Wow, I’m Google’s…you know. Doesn’t feel so good [...]
Got Digg? (Community Powered Sites aren't always easy)
Digg users are reacting negatively to stories about the HD-DVD code being buried as you can see by the Top 10 screenshot below. Community-powered sites are not always fun and games. In my earlier post on community sites, Nik pointed me to a great post called When Communities Attack. This isn’t about Digg specifically, but [...]
Google's Ad Targeting Quality is Damned Impressive
I noticed the ad below in Gmail today. This may seem unremarkable until I tell you that my office is on Eastlake Avenue in Seattle. Wow. From Google’s perspective, the best part of this is that because the ad in unobtrusive and relevant, it’s actually a positive experience for me. download the new rabbit hole [...]
Search Shortcuts in Yahoo Mail
I noticed a small menu called “Search Shortcuts” in Yahoo Mail a couple of days ago. This is a great example of a simple feature addition that has a huge payoff. alice in wonderland download People send photos around all the time and having one-click access to all photos in your email account is awesome. [...]
Don't Lead Users Down Dead Ends
I mentioned in an earlier post about how Kayak provided alternatives for people who clicked off their site and then came back without finding what they were looking for. This is great in my opinion but shouldn’t be limited to off-site actions. Within your site, users should never hit a dead end. This means, for [...]
Setting Information Free
Fred Wilson gave a talk entitled “Does Information want to be Free?” in which he talks about the value shift from information to attention. He makes some great points and I would urge anyone in and around the content business to take a look at his presentation which is available on the web. Creating ways [...]
How to make your site better
The best way to figure out what works and doesn’t work in your product is to watch a member of your target audience using it. Prior to our recent release we conducted a number of simple focus groups at Judy’s Book where we had people come into the office for individual 30 minute sessions with [...]
Randomness in your product (via Creating Passionate Users)
Kathy Sierra’s post on putting some randomness in your product is a great one. I think she hits on some great ideas about putting something unexpected in the product to delight users while still striving to create a product that is largely predictable and therefore allows the user to focus on their task and not [...]
Kill Features You're Not Improving
If there’s a feature on your site that’s not constantly improving, you need to bury it. This is really hard to do because current users of the feature don’t want you to take it away and internally, you’ve probably got a lot invested in it. Common things that come up: “What about people who are [...]