currybetdotnet Application design archive
Real-time web provides real-time feedback on The Guardian's iPhone application
Real-time web gives real-time feedback on Guardian iPhone appTwitter is transforming the way that digital products are launched.
The curious case of the enterprise software design from the nineties that just would not die
Several presentations of enterprise software I've seen recently have made me wonder why we tolerate interfaces and interactions in this sphere which would never make it into production for web tools.
"Graceful Hacks" - UX, IA and interaction design tips for hack days
"Graceful Hacks"UX, IA and interaction design tips for hack days
Will last.fm ever ask for the last time?
I love last.fm. You love last.fm. Everybody loves last.fm. It is a cool poster child for the Web 2.0 generation, and the fact that they built their business model on avoiding paying streaming royalties in the UK as much as possible is neither here nor there to most people. But... ...installing the application on your Windows XP PC can be really sucky. The problem is that the Last.fm application seems to pay no attention to the account settings on the...
A painless way to file your tax return
Very often when I'm writing about some online application or web site or the other, I'm making a list of things that could be improved. It is always much nicer to be able to write something completely in praise of a system - in this case the HMRC's online tax self-assessment application. Well, I can't completely praise the system, since it is designed to part me with my hard-earned money. And you know they are only going to waste it...
Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona - Day 2
At the weekend I was in Barcelona for the Euro IA summit, and so, whilst trying not to blog my every move for a change, I thought I would post my key take-away facts and quotes from the conference. I covered day one yesterday. Stanisław Skórka I started the second day of the conference listening to Stanisław Skórka talking about the bridge between the librarian and information architect professions. I don't envy any of the speakers having to present in...
Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona - Day 1
Last weekend I was in Barcelona for the Euro IA Summit, and I made a solemn vow to my wife and myself that I was actually going to concentrate on doing stuff rather than spending my time and energy blogging about doing stuff. However, it did seem rather churlish not to at the very least post my favourite take-away facts and quotes from the conference itself. Ricardo Baeza-Yates Ricardo is the director of Yahoo! Research Labs in Spain and Chile,...
5 quick usability wins for the BBC iPlayer beta trial installation process
Having spent two of the last three weeks sitting very near to the iPlayer development team in the BBC's Future Media and Technology department in White City, I'm aware that there is no shortage of people telling them what they ought to have done with the product. And that is both outside and inside the BBC. From the Open Source Consortium's 'rip it up and use video codec DIRAC instead' vote, to Guardian journalists patiently explaining to commentators on their...
BBCi Toolbar for Internet Explorer - 2002 style
One of the things that has interested me in recently putting together OpenSearch plugins and Google Toolbar custom buttons for BBC and newspaper related searches, is the change in the nature of web development they represent over the last few years. I've been able to make all of these, with no official permission, in just a few hours, by stringing some XML together into a bunch of text files. They all seem to work fine so far. By contrast, one...
'Cancel' just doesn't seem to mean 'Cancel' for iTunes 7.2 on Windows
I've mentioned before that I haven't exactly been seeing eye-to-eye with iTunes 7.2 on my PC. It keeps getting upset and sparking Windows error dialogue messages if I run it without my iPod attached first, and won't quit without warning me every single time that iSproggler is using the iTunes scripting interface, am I sure I want to quit? More seriously though, I don't like the way that Apple do not follow the standard Windows OS conventions with some of...
Facebook could do with short nickname URLs
Updated 15/6/2009 - A mere two years after I wrote this, Facebook has introduced a usernames feature - you can find out more here. One of my friends in an IM conversation the other day pointed out that in barely three weeks Facebook has gone from being something you didn't want to join as it was full of spotty teensomethings, to something where the serious boss of your boss of your boss of your boss now has a profile. The...
The curse of annoying Windows XP speech bubble system alert pop-ups
Whenever I write complaining about some aspect of Microsoft's Windows OS, I usually get a couple of people pointing out that I should use something a bit more Linux-y. I have tried out a couple of flavours of Linux desktop, but so far I haven't found anything that does the trick for me. More importantly, the ubiquity of Windows in the business world means I'm pretty much stuck with it in order to do my work. Which doesn't stop me...
Google Talk's latest update doesn't behave gracefully offline
I've griped before about software programs silently updating themselves on my laptop, and then not behaving gracefully when they find I live in an almost always offline world at the moment, and yet again Google Talk is a prime culprit. Last time it updated itself without asking my consent, the Norton software and the Google software on my machine just would not play nicely until one of them got a chance to go online again. That time the honours were...
Living in an almost-always-off world
I'd like to think that if I've learned one thing from living in a house without an internet connection, it is that in the future any application designs I work upon will be more graceful about being offline than the set currently installed on my laptop. The thing that most grates is the way that going online alters the state of my laptop, as applications silently phone home and reconfigure themsleves, and then gripe at me when they can't get...
Engineering parallels at the Science Museum
I was in London's Science Museum yesterday, and couldn't help noticing that there some parallels and lessons to be learnt for our own times and developments in new media technologies. Throughout the modern debate on computer software patents we have been assured by those in support of them that patents allow companies to innovate and help technological development. That view doesn't seem to be shared by the Science Museum's caption writer for their energy section. Talking about the rise of...
Building my rebooted:bbc.co.uk homepage
During April and May 2006 the BBC ran a competition to redesign their web homepage, called reboot:bbc.co.uk. Accompanying the competition was a blog, which I was a guest contributor to. My main series of posts on the reboot:bbc.co.uk blog described the way I developed a theoretical entry into the competition, and compared it with how the BBC's New Media department develops new products and services. Here on currybetdotnet, rather than duplicating the whole thing, I have gathered together links to...
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move - part three
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East, which has meant me using all kinds of web applications from internet access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. On Monday I outlined some of the issues I encountered with browser compatibility, JavaScript and cookies. Yesterday I looked at some problems I experienced with one of the web's most talked about photo-sharing applications, Flickr which included the upload interface and the login process. I...
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move - part two
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East, which has meant me using all kinds of web applications from internet access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. Yesterday I outlined some of the issues I encountered with browser compatibility, JavaScript and cookies. Today I want to look at issues I had with one of the web's most talked about photo-sharing applications, Flickr. Internet session during travelling tend to have a very tight...
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East. This has meant me accessing my email, uploading photos, writing my blog, and making all kinds of forwarding travel arrangements over the internet at internet cafes, hotels and other access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. Over the course of my travels I have made some observations about which types of web application are particularly suited to being used by travellers, and the kind...
When Oyster Card fails think "Thanks for the uptime"
In Friday's Evening Standard there was a small article by Local Government Correspondent Ross Lydall about the Oyster card: "Oyster card users have been overcharged about £1 million because of delays in limiting fares, it was claimed today. The revelation came as pressure grew for an inquiry after a computer crash caused the £50 million smartcard system to collapse. Card readers across the 270 Tube stations and on 8,000 buses failed yesterday morning - taking five hours to repair and...
Microsoft Research Paper on software re-design
The Vanity Experiment on "designing task based interaction flow"
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"Journalism in the digital age"
I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
Posts of the moment
Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
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Contact: martin dot belam at currybet dot net. © Martin Belam where appropriate.
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