Consumer Software

Go to Start to End

Yow-Hann Lee — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:17:39 GMT

A picture is worth a thousand words. So in honor of a technology icon, I present the following picture:

What does the above image represent?

Of course, one can point out the irony in the image itself. The fact that the Start button is where you go to "Shut Down" your machine. But we'll let Andy Rooney's flame take care of that. Speaking of that, Andy represents a good portion of typical users. For other BillG videos over the years, you can check out the Microsoft collection.

Bill Gate's vision was to bring PCs and the power of computing to the masses. Obviously, this is an extreme nutshell of all the epiphanies on his credit list. But this was a double edged sword and generated the love/hate relationship you see today. Having a plate so full already, the polish became secondary. Yet the audience always craves more...

What is the polish?

The polish was in the UI and interaction design. One needs to look no further than the fanboy mentalities of Mac users. As an engineer and particularly non-UI centric developers, it becomes easy to forget that "polish" and the intended audience. After all, for a long time and even today, the interface has been treated as an afterthought or beneath a "real" engineer to work on.

Who are our users?

For typical consumer software and web applications, they are our grandmothers, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters.

And on the day BillG's exit, we are inspired by all his contributions and are reminded of the "polish" for your own software initiatives. Love him or hate him, he does inspire others either way.

Usability, Availability, Accessibility and Intuitiveness

Recent Outages

Yow-Hann Lee — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:53:54 GMT

A bit of a coincidence recently to witness a slew of recent outages/scalability issues on high profile sites. First it was the well-publicized Amazon outage, followed by Mozilla's Outage on Firefox 3 Launch Day, Google Apps outage and now Facebook's logged-in HomePage:

One of the publicized outages from last year was due to a site update. This spotted the last hour (perhaps a lot earlier than this) and the root cause release should be interesting.

Microsoft Download Center Beta on Silverlight

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:54:44 GMT

Well, Microsoft Download Center Beta was launched recently. I only came across this today while I was uninstalling very early bits of ASP.NET MVC bits and went to download the new ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP.

Their new download center is powered on Silverlight. Note that the Detailed Download pages are still typical ASP.NET pages. It's the Search results and the Quick Details Download views that are new (i.e. http://preview.microsoft.com/downloads/Search.aspx?SearchText=entity+framework).

My early impressions leave me undecided on the new search results behavior. Since it is now done in Silverlight, you lose the ability to page back through your history. Granted, their results page provides a more seamless experience without entire page loads; however, this is duplicated with AJAX. I was really looking forward to seeing more innovation, interactivity and a showcase of Silverlight power.

In any case, this will be a big step for Microsoft's quest into Flash territory. When Microsoft Download Center is brought out of Beta, you should see a dramatic increase in the Silverlight adoption rate.

Safari 3 Beta (for Windows) Released

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:31:19 GMT

Earlier today (or technically yesterday now), a coworker pointed out the release of Safari 3 Beta for Windows. You can download it at: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/. It claims to render pages twice as quickly as IE 7 and is nearly twice as fast in executing JavaScript as Firefox. The recurring theme in Apple's metrics is that IE 7 is behind others.

The official announcement can be read at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11safari.html. I've downloaded this new release on my home machine and will be seeing if it is as advertised over the next few days. Hopefully, Windows users don't experience similar types of horrors as with the iTunes software (referencing an iTunes update disaster from a yearor so back). Great on a Mac, not so much on Windows.

(NOTE: Don't let the screenshot fool you. Yes, they chose to display the classic WinXP background but the downloads are available for Vista and XP)

Disclaimer: So far, within a minute of installing Safari, there were problems with window resizing and automatically minimizing after refocusing. This coupled with odd behavior when using dual monitors. Albeit, this is a "Beta" afterall =)
But nevertheless, having Safari crash on you when you start using it on Windows does not give you that warm fuzzy feeling...

And unfortunately, it does not have the nice "Restore Session" option that you see in Firefox.

New Windows Live Writer Beta Released!

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:12:22 GMT

Windows Live Writer Beta has just been released. You can download it at: http://writer.live.com/. You can also read about the release here: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/.

If you were a fan of Beta 1, the Beta 2 Live Writer release is a richer experience for bloggers.

Video Filter in MySpace - Where is GoogTube's?

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:22:00 GMT

There is a recent New York Times article titled "The Old Guard Flexes Its Muscles (While It Still Can)". While the article touches on several topics in the realm of DRM (Digital Rights Management) or more specifically video copyrights, there was one paragraph that stuck.

"Google’s media partner-rivals are also now asking why Google won’t just voluntarily use its technical prowess to ferret out copyrighted material. (After all, they say, the company seems to keep pornography off YouTube rather effectively.) To drive home the point, MySpace trumpeted just such a copyright filtering feature for videos on its popular social networking site last week."

This is a question that Richard Siklos posed in his article. While it is always easy to critique from the outside, it is a question that has undoubtedly crossed most people's minds after Google's purchase of YouTube.

Yet, just last week, MySpace announced that they would be rolling out a video filtering system to prevent copyrighted videos from appearing in their service. The announcement can be read here and here. If Google isn't willing to throw their army of developers at this problem (and granted, it may not make the most business sense to do so), why aren't they at least licensing products from organizations that specialize in filtering copyright material?

Instead, as shown in the PR statements, you see Google trying to convince others of a symbiosis.

(update 2007-2-28: Spotted this article about GoogTube's antipiracy software policies (i.e. only for corps with distribution deals)http://news.com.com/YouTube+antipiracy+software+policy+draws+fire/2100-1030_3-6160405.html)

(In light of all these legal issues and in a small attempt at bringing out many of the positives in video sharing sites (i.e. as a medium of expression, etc), I thought I would link to more light-hearted and original content. It is Web 2.0 as seen and defined by an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. Enjoy!)

Usability Issue in Google Maps Affects The Output of Decent Search Results

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:34:00 GMT

In the sequel of my examination into online maps services. I will highlight a major usability issue in Google Maps which affects its ability to produce decent location results. In this entry, I will not be pointing out other little amusing quirks (as there are probably a few floating around) and will instead focus on USABILITY. Google Search is highly touted for producing good relevant search results; unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Google Maps.

Once again, the following problem exists in other map services. I don't want to be calling them out explicitly. However, Google is the one most well-known for its great algorithms, great search results and ability to simplify things for consumers. It is hard to deny these attributes in the search space.

So what is the scenario at hand?

Google cannot recognize the location without the "th" in an Avenue.

First, try typing in "148 ave ne, Redmond, WA" into maps.google.com. Now, type in "148th ave ne, Redmond, WA". Try this out on other numerical streets or avenues.

SEARCH RESULT FOR: 148 ave ne, Redmond, WA

SEARCH RESULT FOR: 148th ave ne, Redmond, WA

Some people may question whether this is a usability issue at all. But just consider the following points:

In Google Search, if you mispell something, it will even produce a Search Result that suggests an alternate Search (with corrected Spelling) at the top. In this scenario, nothing was misspelled. In fact, it was only missing a suffix. And even that is questionable. If on the other hand, the Avenue was literally called "First Avenue", that may be a different story.
When you type a URL into your browser, do you always type "http://" as the prefix? What happens if you don't (NOTE: you still get your desired behavior of seeing a web page). Would you have been annoyed if in this day and age, you received an error when you attempted to navigate to a site without providing the entire URL? This is something we have come to expect out of browsers.

If Google Maps cannot produce the correct location, it should at least provide a decent suggested result (aka "Did you mean:"). Perhaps at Google, the engineers have already labeled this as "By Design". While this is a minor design issue, it is definitely something that affects the entire user experience. They did not simplify things for consumers on this one.

Google Maps vs. Windows Live Virtual Earth - An Amusing GMap Bug & A Programmability Comparison

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:27:00 GMT

This was brought to my attention and was quite an amusing little bug. Try Google Maps Directions from "19020" to "1579 US-1 (S), North Brunswick, NJ. 08902". U will be in for a nice sUrprise.

a. Google Maps Directions Search Result (Incorrect)

b. Windows Live Virtual Earth Map Direction Search Result (Correct)

In all fairness, hiccups like these exist in other map services as well. This one was just particularly amusing and too hard to pass up.

Anyhow, onto more serious issues...

Google Mashup Consumers Get TeleAtlas instead of NavTeq Provider

While the following topic does not directly affect end users of both Maps sites, it does have a significant impact on mashup developers. (NOTE: one end user feature I will point out is the fact that Virtual Earth automatically readjusts to highlight your map route or center your location when you resize your browser window. Nice attention to detail)

You will notice that while Google Maps has Navteq as their provider for maps.google.com, mashups built with Google Maps API have TeleAtlas as their provider.

Meanwhile, Live Virtual Earth has Navteq as the provider for both its site and for mashup developers.

One of the most notable turnovers in the consumption of mashup services has been that of Redfin from Google Maps to Virtual Earth. It remains to be seen whether this tiered data provider approach will cause others to switch away from Google Maps API. While these may be cost driven strategies, ever since Blake Ross spoke out on "Don't Be Evil", it is difficult not to be sensitive to these user experiences or to any web security issues out of Google (today's being: Google's anti-phishing plugin leaked passwords). (reference: also see blog entry on security in software as a service.)

Skype TouchTone Recognition Issues & A Suggestion for a Neat Feature

Yow-Hann Lee — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:20:00 GMT

On the eve before Skype begins to charge for PC-to-Phone calls, I would like to highlight one particular issue in Skype. For the most part, the user experience has been satisfactory; however, the lower voice quality and latency experienced in PC-to-Phone calls is evidentlly greater than PC-to-PC calls. Nevertheless, I will not focus my attention on these areas.

Instead, this is more of a disclaimer for people who are interested in using Skype to contact centers with automated touchtone response systems. A long time ago, the telecom industry came up with the standard tones for touchtone telephones. Prior to that, there were rotary phones where signals are identified by the length of each dial. Today, both standards are supported. If you still use a rotary phone, however, you will be unable to contact those automated centers.

Unfortunately, Skype currently behaves more similarly to a rotary phone due to problems with automated centers being able to recognize the touchtones. I came across this entry back in 2005 highlighting the touchtone issues. A year later, I am somewhat surprised as it seems that this problem still exists as I have experienced it first hand on several ocassions. I have attempted different setups with components that are within my own control. I came across a forum post at the Skype site highlighting a bug with the touchtones in Skype versions prior to 2.5.0.82. However, my version of Skype is newer than this.

In any case, I assume this problem will be addressed with enough feedback to Skype on this.

FEATURE:

In the meantime, I would like to make a suggestion for a feature. Currently, you will only hear tones in Skype during your call if you click on one of the dial numbers in the "Dial" tab. However, I would like to suggest that it also be possible to generate the tones based on keyboard inputs. Additionally, the textbox in the "Dial" tab currently does not map letters to numbers (i.e. wyz = 9). It would be helpful to handle for this scenario where numbers are represented by letters.

Both of these are minor UI features/usability issues that would demonstrate attention to detail in a product.

COMPETITION

As an aside, I am interested in checking out Gizmo Project to compare the quality. If you've had experience with these or any other voice chat systems, feel free to post your comments.

Happy New Year! Hope it will be a great 2007 for you.

Multiple Mouse Cursors with Microsoft Multipoint

Yow-Hann Lee — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:21:00 GMT