I was just watching Demogirl’s screencast about user friendly websites below.
What is so compelling screencast is that it is really short and about really obvious usability issues.
Often I head off blogging about stuff that is just too complex and will appeal to a small percentage of net users who are in the usability industry.
If I want to promote usability to the broader population I need to Keep It Simple… Stupid!
Mine is full!
I have just updated my UsableWorld Netvibes Universe with all my blogs (RSS) that I read. Please check it out!
I excitedly searched my Facebook friends with Netvibes to see who else was one. Quite a few of you have signed up, but NOBODY has any content in their Universe 
These are my tabs - full o stuff.
As of yesterday I use Netvibes regularly again. It was easy for me to send my private stuff public, but I can only work out how to surf my friends stuff. And my friends, you have no stuff…
If you visit leave us a Wall message! Please update your Universe too!
Chuck’s new e-book Mind Mapping Manifesto is out. 
I haven’t got my copy yet, but his last one Power tips for Mind Mapping - was an excellent read for the budding mind mapper (and I’m in it).
Happy reading! Review to follow!
Here’s a great article from Webcredible about the web accessibility of AJAX. It also covers what AJAX is generally.
From the article:
To make AJAX accessible you need to:
Obviously there quite a bit more to this! Check out more info and links on The Web Standards Project website
As with all technology developments, your target market must be considered first. If people who fit into the accessibility category are included (or legislation says you must conform) then you better make sure you consider how it will be built before you start coding.
It’s interesting how software can completely change your daily habits. Sometimes for the worse!
When I got my new Mac recently, I installed session manager for Firefox. Yesterday, at the AIMIA Experience Web3 - Embracing the Semantic Web function, I realised that one decision during the session manager install (with just one click of the mouse) had changed my daily behaviour dramatically.
I was chatting to a friend about how I had stopped using Netvibes. He asked ‘why? It’s so cool!’ And I said, ‘well it’s not set as my homepage any more.’ ‘Yeh, but you’re missing out James’, he said.
Then I realised that I had set Firefox to recover my previous browsing session upon start up. See below:
This meant that I had :
And most importantly:
In fact, every now and then I accidentally closed off the previous days efforts and thought to myself ‘Mmm - what am I missing out on?’
‘Nothing you idiot! That was yesterday.’
This morning I changed it back to this.
And set my homepage tabs to:
The untitled one on the right makes it easy to open a new url quickly.
My digestion (of information) has already improved and I am living more in the moment. 
Are you ’stuck’ in a place your shouldn’t be with any of your apps?
P.S. I love Skitch for Mac… How easy is it to upload retouched images to ur blog! Thanks Mick!
‘With the varied fields in technology, as we strive to look forward into the future - our minds are still attempting to literally un-boggle themselves simultaneously - while somehow keeping up with the future advancements in technologies that are being introduced into our lives endlessly… right now.’ Write on - Hubpages‘.
Will some web guru Help Me please!
I’ve started using SocialMarker.com lately and I feel like I am ‘missing out’, all the tagging requirements are different on all the sites it reaches!
I chose the 6 ‘Best’ Bookmarking sites in SocialMarker.com. And tags look like this:
tags on Propeller.com
At least they have clear guidelines. Should there be a space after the comma? What if there is, does it get recorded?
tags on Slashdot
Do whatever you like. Am I missing out?
tags on Digg
We have no tags sorry
tags on Technorati
We like to be Technoratically different. Yeh! Double word tags work here, what about the others?
tags on del.icio.us
We do spaces at del.icio.us. At least they showed me which ones of my tags worked. and I can select from a list - doesn’t help me that social marker automatically put them up with commas and they are not correct. When I went through and removed all the commas, look what happens!
UsableWorld was highlighted in the list of tags I have used before.
tags on StumbleUpon
We use commas so you can stumble over them. Enough t,t t "t" tagging talk - I think you get the picture!
We need some guidelines and some poor person has to go through and rationalise all the tags that are actually the same, please...
With SocialMarker.com make sure that you go all the way through to the confirm listing page on the sites it bookmarks with. A number of times I have stopped short and not got my bookmark.
I found this quote on mmajers hubpage.
Mike Kuniavsky, a website usability expert, said:
“Your customers are not you. They don’t look like you, they don’t think like you, they don’t do the things that you do, they don’t have your expectations or assumptions. If they did, they wouldn’t be your customers; they’d be your competitors.”
Chuck Frey has done some survey research on how 149 people use online mind mapping tools.
In particular people think:
When I got an email from Chuck about this I actually thought I would see a comparison of the tools. So…
Here’s my initial comparison of Comapping and MindMeister, the ones I use.
I am actually using them a lot at the moment because I can’t get Parallels working on my Mac (my preferred Mind Map tool is PC based) It is actually very useful. All my maps are always there and I can share them instantly with others.
Comapping
MindMeister
| Feature | Comapping | MindMeister |
| Look and feel | Comapping has a very funky look and feel, Has an Office 2007 style. Nice to use. | Mindmeister is throwback from a few years back. A bit primary in it’s colours. |
| Notes | Easy note insertion. Notes are visible directly below an arm on the map - Good for association |
Easy note insertion. Notes pop up on screen and are listed on right hand panel |
| Login | Easy | I always seem to have trouble? |
| Printing | Intelligent printing option | I had a whole lot of trouble getting the map to print in the centre of the page |
| Help | Contexual help pop up on lower left hand side | Help pages |
| Emphasis tools | Text formatting, some icons | Text formatting, lots of icons |
| Keyboard shortcuts | In contextual help tips at bottom of screen. Takes a while to load though. | Only on help pages |
| Encouraging brainstorming | A little too organised (created by a left brainer?) and right expanding only. Hard to make clear visual groupings of content and can not change format of arms | Radially formatted great for association and separation of topics. Can move arms of map anywhere on screen |
| Social networking | Apparently not! Some template maps |
Fantastic, large and obvious public sharing. Maps are tagged and search friendly |
| Export |  Free for allAlso has presentation functionality |
 Not free for some |
| Offline usage |
Supported
|
Requires Google gears |
So there’s pluses and minus to both of them. Comapping has a more similar smooth execution to a desktop app (easier for quick writing) with great printing and use of notes. MindMeister is better for creative work and certainly for leveraging other people’s maps!
So, MindMeister gets my nod, not as nice to use but, if the primary job of mapping is creativity, it wins hands down.
Thanks to Diane Sieger for sending me this list of other online mindmap tools by mindmapsearch!
And latest to Vic at Mindmapping.org for this summary diagram of where they all fit!
Don’t forget to answer the Poll at the bottom of this article!!
At Cebit in Hannover recently Tobii claimed that eye tracking will replace the humble mouse!
Here’s the article - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/175629/cebit-in-your-words-turbo-eye-tracking-and-tomtom.html
Eye tracking is pretty accurate and I know that Tobii has received considerable investment to further develop its optical accuracy. But do you think it will replace the mouse?
I reckon it will. Heck, we didn’t know what a mouse was all that long ago! Plus, don’t forget that many disabled people who use MyTobii eye trackers (see example here) to control a computer never used a mouse in the first place.
There are a number of considerations:
1) What things could we directly control with our eyes? Check out this video of an eye control game!
2) What’s the additional cognitive effort required to look at specific points on the screen?
3) How will skill uptake differ between those who touch type and those who type like I do (with one finger?)
4) How will the eye tracker distinguish between intention and staring into space?
There are a lot more questions. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
This post is also in the Facebook eye tracking group. As I hear new ideas I will let you know on my blog.
Please contribute! WHAT DO YOU THINK?