Web Analyst » Concepts

Plunge into history – online

Gaston — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:46:18 +0000

Microsoft has released a technical preview of streetside photos, a Bing service which will overlay Flickr photos into Bing Streetview – including historical photos.

For all lovers of history, this means that you’ll soon be able to enter 3D renditions of historical landscapes, and walk through them – like a Star Trek holodeck without the characters (yet).

Try it: visit Seattle’s Pioneer Square

Think of the possibilities: Stroll through the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; visit Dresden before the bombing; follow Allied troops landing on Omaha Beach. This will be yet another way to make history relevant.

Amazon’s amazing remodel

Gaston — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:01:30 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/gp/events/gno/002-8547268-6055232

Sweet, sweet UI from the UI gnomes at Amazon

Weirdest licensing deal award: Disney French Cheese?

Gaston — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:12:24 +0000

Costco is now carrying Disney/Ratatouille branded “Abondance” cheese – see Mariannes Motifs: Abondance Cheese and Armagnac. The cheese is a fine hard chesse, somewhat reminiscent of Raclette (but stringy when melted, like Emmental). Someone at Disney but be smiling about that deal…

Deeper, Juicer Analytics

Gaston — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:09:30 +0000

The good folks at Juice Analytics maintain a blog rich with analytical hints and tips.

See for instance the “Top Resources for Analysts: Excel, Data Analysis and Business Intelligence, and Charting, Visualization and Presentation“

Live from: User Experience 2006, Seattle – John Boyd

Gaston — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:08:36 +0000

(this is a review of just one of many sessions of User Experience 2006 in Seattle)

As Smorgasbord-design noted, “with NN/g you have to pay for the privilege of dealing with the (experts)”. After almost a day with John Boyd of Yahoo!, there’s no doubt he is an expert, but he seems constrained by how he interpreted his topic. Boyd followed his outline faithfully, even contributed a last-minute “application” addendum to the handout, but nevertheless failed to practically tie social pyschology experiments with Web experiments. There was a glimpse of hope from 11.45 to noon when he really had the audience engaged, but the momentum was lost after lunch and never regained. The handout itself was a dissapointment, never reflecting the richness of the talk. It lacked sentences and verbs and made few lasting points beyond the referenced outline.

Quick process modeling reference

Gaston — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:23:30 +0000

http://www.agilemodeling.com/style/activityDiagram.htm

Provides a great simple reference to process modeling with key themes and examples. The specialist can dig deeper into UML, and the beginner can quickly grasp essential concepts.

Why do so-called Web 2.0 sites all look like they came from the same style class?

Gaston — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:46:38 +0000

Why do so-called Web 2.0 sites all look like they came from the same style school? This came to mind as I was reviewing some of the entries in the Solutionwatch blog.

The evidence:

1. Zurpy
2. Flock
3. Ning
4. del.icio.us
5. Flickr
6. Even Microsoft…

My top candidate reasons:

1. All Web 2.0 sites/projects/users are controlled by Google, and they’re all using the style sheet they get from the mother ship
2. Allright, Microsoft doesn’t belong to Google yet, so all these other sites are run by great developers with bright ideas, but are too cheap to hire a designer, so they just copy each other.
3. We’re headed for a world where everything is so meshed-up that sites become indistinguishable and blandness rules the day.

What do you think?