SensoryMetrics

FedEx, Apple, BMW and tons of other companies have created wonderful interfaces for you to track your order, manufacturing status and shipment of the product you ordered. Today, Dominos launches it’s “WTF, Where’s my Pizza”… Ok.. the ACTUAL trademark is PizzaTracker… If within a 30 minute span, you’re so obsessed to see where your pizza is, then this is for you! Dominos even claims it’s filed patent protection for this unique system. Insert industry analysis here:

“It’s technology in search of a problem,” says Brian Kardon, chief strategy officer at Forrester Research, a technology researcher. “I don’t know how many consumers are twisting and turning over the state of their delivery pizza.”
Domino’s says plenty are. “It’s an emotional roller coaster when you order,” McGlothlin says. “Customers wonder: Did they get my order? Are they taking care of me? Will it show up?”

[tags]GPS, pizza-tracking, Dominos[/tags]

Popularity: 24%

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Business, Patents, User Experience, Web 3.0 Dominos, gps, pizza-tracking

If you’ve ever suffered through a bad job experience and feel you need to rant about it but you also don’t want to be associated with that last awful job choice then JobDud might be just the thing for you. Here you can anonymously tell the world how much you hated (or loved) that job.

Disgruntled employees should keep in mind that you don’t want to get too carried away with your rant. For instance, you won’t want to be going into details that would give away who you are or who you worked with. You also don’t want to be revealing any company secrets, no matter how pissed you might be. If you’ve just been fired from a small startup then chances are your ex-boss will probably guess who added the company’s name to the site.

It seems to me that the posts on JobDud have mostly good things to say about the companies; perhaps it should have been called JobPraise. At any rate, your anonymity will have the same limitations it does everywhere on the web, writing something that is false, misleading, threatening, obscene, defamatory, or libelous can come back to bite you.

[tags]JobDud,anonymous-rant[/tags]

Popularity: 15%

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Bones, User Experience anonymous-rant, JobDud

As I understand it, the First Amendment will protect a person’s right to communicate anonymously unless the said communication makes a false claim that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation. Doing so is called defamation (a.k.a. vilification, slander, or libel) and you can be sued for that. So being anonymous will not protect you from the long arm of the law. In turn, this means that you have the right to anonymously write true statements, or statements that are made in good faith and reasonable belief to be true.

Unfortunately, anonymity on the internet almost always requires a certain trust in those that know who you are, such as your web host provider or any of your friends that know your secret identity.

This week, there’s an interesting story developing about a lawyer named Raymond Niro who has offered a $10,000 reward for the identity of the Troll Tracker who has criticized Mr. Niro’s aggressive enforcement of patents on his blog. Mr. Niro figures he deserves to know who this blogger is and argues that the Troll Tracker could be associated with the patent infringers that he is currently going after (so what?). But you have to love it, the Troll Tracker’s response is that for $50,000 he’ll identify himself. It seems to me that the publicity is in the Troll Tracker’s favour.

More on anonymity and the law..

[tags]blogger-anonymity,patent-troll-tracker[/tags]

Popularity: 26%

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Bones, Patents blogger-anonymity, patent-troll-tracker

A wonderful thing these social networks. Plaxo has been emailing me for the past week to remind me that it’s (SM Friend, iotum CEO)
Alec Saunders’ birthday tomorrow.
Happy birthday, Alec!

The strange thing about Plaxo, is their “zeal” in trying to monetize these birthday announcements. I can send Alec a FREE ecard (which would likely get caught in the spam filter!) Plaxo offers me other options to show our “AlecIsOlderToday” love…

For $4 – A printed card, mailed. Not a bad deal actually – but the notice was too late.

For $25 – A bouquet of fresh flowers… what do you say Alec, daisies? daffodils?? carnations??? LOL

For $unlimited – Plaxo redirects me to the RedEnvelope site to choose sexy gifts for “her” (Alec)… gee… maybe it’s just me… but that profiling algorithm isn’t working quite right!

[tags]Plaxo, Alec-Saunders, monetization, Social-Networks[/tags]

Popularity: 30%

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Events, User Experience, Web 3.0 Alec-Saunders, monetization, Plaxo, social-networks

This week, the US patent office published an application by Microsoft for “Lingtweight”.

What’s a lingtweight?? The new Zune? Vista – the Norwegian Edition?? Code name for IE9??? No.

Lingtweight: What happens when Microsoft patent lawyers think they’re too smart to be using spell checkers. Of course Google knows better. The intended patent is for a “Lightweight reference user interface”. It’s a method using XML to display additional information when a user rolls over certain keywords. This is used to provide additional material without the user having to navigate away from the current page. Of course, it’s not surprising that Microsoft is trying to patent the idea – dozen of versions are available now, including Snap, which we use here at SensoryMetrics.

[tags]Microsoft, Snapshot, spelling-counts[/tags]

Popularity: 26%

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Innovation, Patents, Pirates, Software, Web 3.0 Microsoft, snapshot, spelling-counts

Viral web FlareUps are entertaining to watch. This week’s FU began on Fox news. Supposed-psychologist Cooper Lawrence was being interviewed about video games, sex, and violence. She ranted on about the XBox game Mass Effect – claiming that “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex”. Turns out, Ms know-it-all hadn’t played the game, and (before you rush out to buy it) Mass Effect doesn’t have any graphic sex scenes…

The gaming community turned into a mob – attacking Amazon’s listing of Lawrence’s books and sending her ratings plummeting! It got so bad that Amazon intervened and removed all user reviews and ratings. Now the gaming mob is accusing Amazon of censorship, and threatening a boycott! The mob even sent Lawrence’s MySpace page into private hiding!

There’s one lasting effect left on Amazon: User-generated tags. The top tags for author Cooper Lawrence: ignorant, hypocrisy, garbage, hack, junk, biased, stupid, uninformed, unprofessional… the list goes on…and on… nothing too flattering.

There’s a few issues worth considering:

The profession of psychology is always degraded when pop-tart authors spew uninformed opinions.
Despite Lawrence’s lame-ass opinions, did the gamers over-react? I don’t think so. They are gamers after all, and this was just another combat zone.
Amazon should have pulled Lawrence’s book (at least temporarily) instead of simply deleting reviews and ratings.
For any “supposed experts” being interviewed anywhere, do your homework first!

This indeed had a Mass Effect. I just hope it doesn’t boost her sales of “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever”. Barf.
[tags]Cooper-Lawrence, Amazon, Fox-New, Electronic-Arts, Mass-Effect, Censorship, Being-Wrong, Pop-Psychology[/tags]

Popularity: 35%

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Business, Media, Pirates, Web 3.0 Amazon, Being-Wrong, Censorship, Cooper-Lawrence, Electronic-Arts, Fox-New, Mass-Effect, Pop-Psychology

I know there’s misery in the middle east, but at a “safe” distance of 9000 km, it’s difficult to imagine myself there. For 3o euros ($44. USD) I can put myself right on the border of Palestine and Israel.

This intriguing idea comes from ICCO – a dutch NGO that funds education and humanitarian projects in the West Bank. You send to their site, SendAMessage some text (up to 100 characters – can’t be offensive) and within a week the same text will be spraypainted on the huge 700 km wall dividing the two countries. You’ll be emailed some digital pictures.

It’s an interesting use of the web. I’m not sure why it’s leaving me queasy though…

For their part, SendAMessage claims that the project is well received in Palestine:

So what made the Palestinians join? They want to send you one single, simple message: we are human beings, just like you, with sense of humour, and lust for life.

[tags]Send-a-message, War2.0[/tags]

Popularity: 15%

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Innovation, Web 3.0 Send-a-message, War2.0

Those crazy folks at NetLifeResearch have launched this year’s version of the infamous Bad Usability Calendar. NetLife is a usability firm in Norway. The calendar features 12 humourous design tips, poking fun at the over-use of web 2.0 glitz, social net apps, and iTunes interfaces.

I’ve printed out copies for all my developers and ordered them to strictly follow the guidelines – month by month!
[tags]Facebook, web2.0, bad-usability-calendar[/tags]

Popularity: 33%

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Bones, Usability, User Experience, Web 3.0 bad-usability-calendar, Facebook, Web2.0

I was working from home yesterday, so I noticed these two dudes approaching my house. They quickly dropped off their load and ran off to the next house…. A Sears catalog. Sealed in plastic. Do I shop at Sears? no… There isn’t even one in Renfrew… Trust me, I’m NOT a tree-hugger… but – this unwanted catalog is now my responsibility to dispose of… It’s made of glossy paper… according to the scale nearly 3 quarter kilo (670 grams)… What’s in the catalog? Nearly 75% women’s wear… mmm not for me… When I was 15, this catalog would have had some use… But the waste. it’s wild! The irony? On the cover of the Sears catalog is “Virtually everything in this book and more is available on sears.ca” [tags]Sears, catalogs, waste[/tags]

Popularity: 23%

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Business, Environment, Media, User Experience catalogs, Sears, waste

I love Industrial Design competitions. DesignBoom is a european site offering online design courses. They also hold monthly design competitions.

This month, the theme is dinner. In 2015. They had nearly 5,000 participants worldwide. Here are some of my favourites:

One of the winners takes the lowly BIC pen to new culinary heights… Forget that the creator has branded them Dink… I’m wondering though – will there still be BIC pens in 2015?

By 2015, everyone on the planet will be on Facebook – and all direct human-2-human interaction will no longer be permitted. What’s a lonely girl to do but date dogs. This special people / dog placesettings will soon be available on the Bloomingdale wedding registry.

In another move to limit human interaction – check out these mobile table vehicles: WheelYouPassTheSalt does just that… and how about that classy Tooth-Pick-Up-Truck?

Finally, an idea that’s actually useful. It’s called dEAR. They’re rechargeable power plug-ins that connect to self-heating kitchen ware. When the charge is depleted, simply plug it into a wall socket for recharging.

[tags]industrial-design, dining, contest[/tags]

Popularity: 25%

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Events, Innovation, Usability contest, dining, Industrial-Design