user experience

Make it easy – Passwords

In general everything should be as easy as possible on the internet.  Since programmers and designers can control just about everything on a page, they should make it simple and easy.

So when I see a difficult sign up page, I get depressed.  I have abandoned signing up for plenty of services, just because their sign up page was so hard. 

For example this one. 
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It is a simple newsletter type thing.  Why should I have to pick a NSA quality password?  

Remember, if you design on the internet… Make it easy.
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iTunes Online Gifts on Facebook

Interesting.  Kind of a cool idea.  I love it when Apple does anything in the social media category.  

Available in the US only, you can now purchase iTunes Online Gifts through Facebook.  

You pick your theme, pick your amount from 5 to 50 dollars and an electronic gift card will be posted to your friends wall, and to their email.  

This is powered by Gift Card Mall, and of course, Facebook.  

Interesting idea.  I would love to get one, am it makes a lot of sense for friends and family that don’t live close.  

(edited) Apparently, they take 4 hours to deliver.  Not exactly instant, but close. 

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iTunes Online Gifts on Facebook

Interesting.  Kind of a cool idea.  I love it when Apple does anything in the social media category.  

Available in the US only, you can now purchase iTunes Online Gifts through Facebook.  

You pick your theme, pick your amount from 5 to 50 dollars and an electronic gift card will be posted to your friends wall, and to their email.  

This is powered by Gift Card Mall, and of course, Facebook.  

Interesting idea.  I would love to get one, am it makes a lot of sense for friends and family that don’t live close.  

(edited) Apparently, they take 4 hours to deliver.  Not exactly instant, but close. 

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Various Thoughts from the Interwebs

When systems work they are sweet.  I recently signed up for Gravatar.  It basically puts your picture onto comments and blogs that use the system.  Well I logged onto Animoto and found my picture in my profile!  I didn’t need to do anything.  It just worked.  Nice

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Why is it that facebook has such a hard time figuring out the difference between real people and spam bots? I have seen lots of spam wall posts and such, but when I am writing messages like crazy trying to find my friend a ticket to the football game in 2 hours I get this…

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And this was cool.  I downloaded an app, ran it and got this system message.  

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I have never seen this before.  How did they do that?  I wish all apps would be as smart.

And I recently got a beta invite to a sweet app that is very tight on security.  

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Do you think that is smart? I can see that they would not want old and outdated screenshots being judged and stored for ever on the internet, but it seems like it would be hard to build buzz with a lockdown.  
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Various Thoughts from the Interwebs

When systems work they are sweet.  I recently signed up for Gravatar.  It basically puts your picture onto comments and blogs that use the system.  Well I logged onto Animoto and found my picture in my profile!  I didn’t need to do anything.  It just worked.  Nice

Picture_6

Why is it that facebook has such a hard time figuring out the difference between real people and spam bots? I have seen lots of spam wall posts and such, but when I am writing messages like crazy trying to find my friend a ticket to the football game in 2 hours I get this…

Picture_1

And this was cool.  I downloaded an app, ran it and got this system message.  

Picture_7

I have never seen this before.  How did they do that?  I wish all apps would be as smart.

And I recently got a beta invite to a sweet app that is very tight on security.  

Picture_9

Do you think that is smart? I can see that they would not want old and outdated screenshots being judged and stored for ever on the internet, but it seems like it would be hard to build buzz with a lockdown.  
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Square – I love this already

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I saw someone talking about accepting credit cards from your phone on Twitter.  It’s already been done, I thought, and it stinks.  20 dollar monthly fee, problems, complicated etc.  Then I saw it again and finally clicked on the link.  

Wow.  So cool.  

I want this now, am I don’t even have to accept payments that often.  Also I loved their use of Twitter lists on the About Us Page.  

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Good luck to Square.  They have the 3rd Google link behind Wikipedia so they must be doing something right.  🙂
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Why am I a sucker for badges? – Listia

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I don’t know what it is, but I want the badges.  I don’t even know what some of them are (better explanation needed Listia) but I want them.  

Using a little bit of game theory in your business or process can really help.  People like to be things that they normally can’t.  Give someone a clear easy, slightly fun way to earn 10 badges and they will do it.  

Another company that has used this to great success is foursquare.  
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They have used the game edge to become quite successful in the more and more crowded field of location aware social networks.  

Also I really like how Listia makes it super simple to share a pre-supplied affiliate link.  When you ask someone to share you product or idea with their friends, you are asking a lot.  Make it as simple as possible.  

PS if you want to sign up, here’s my link. 🙂

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Why am I a sucker for badges? – Listia

Picture_1

I don’t know what it is, but I want the badges.  I don’t even know what some of them are (better explanation needed Listia) but I want them.  

Using a little bit of game theory in your business or process can really help.  People like to be things that they normally can’t.  Give someone a clear easy, slightly fun way to earn 10 badges and they will do it.  

Another company that has used this to great success is foursquare.  
Media_httpfoursquarecomhelpiphonebadgelesson1jpg_ljbceyjfoefijxi

They have used the game edge to become quite successful in the more and more crowded field of location aware social networks.  

Also I really like how Listia makes it super simple to share a pre-supplied affiliate link.  When you ask someone to share you product or idea with their friends, you are asking a lot.  Make it as simple as possible.  

PS if you want to sign up, here’s my link. 🙂

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iTunes Preview – Apple missed the boat

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So this really surprised me. This is a web based front end for iTunes. Of course it doesn’t do anything. Just redirects you to iTunes. I thought it was a way for Apple to get on the Google Juice list. Since Google doesn’t search iTunes, Apple will never even place in the search results. But then I found this post http://theappleblog.com/2009/11/13/apple-launches-itunes-preview/ from the apple blog, explaining that this is for the one person in the world who does not have iTunes installed already.

I am kinda disappointed in this. It seems like they could do so much more, than just display the text and links and pictures from iTunes. Apple has been horrendously week on all forms of social media, (see the Flickr album deleting problem in iPhoto for example) and this seems like a perfect opportunity to leverage a web front end for iTunes to get some sociableness going. But oh well. At least that one guy who doesn’t have iTunes installed yet is happy.

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Facebook Memorial

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Holy Cow.  I was just thinking about this and wondering what would be done.  

A student at BYU passed away last week.  This has unfortunately happened twice while I have been here at school.  I saw an invite to the memorial service on facebook and I clicked on the link to the students profile.  His wall was full of thoughts from friends and family.  An impromptu memorial to his memory.  I loved the idea.

But it got me thinking.  What will happen in the future?  How does Facebook deal with someone who has died?  Can the family ask for the profile to be taken down? or changed?

Then I saw this post from the facebook blog.  

I think it is a sensible solution.  Have the option to turn the profile into a memorial.  

However I think there is still some discomfort here.  Will facebook in 100 years (if it is even around in 100 years) become a huge collection of digital memorials? 

What do you think?
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