LAS VEGAS (October) and BERLIN (November): venues for our biggest usability conference ever http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
The Perfect Tweet • So designed by five rounds of Jakob Nielsen and his usability nerds. With this tweet, Nielsen considered everything: Wording, timing, the capitalization of letters, the number of characters, the visual impact of the line of text, the use of a bit.ly URL, and so on. We think he’s crazy and needs to throw in some hashtags. • source
Could we have a less vapid free speech hero, please? When NYC fashion school grad student Rosemary Port anonymously posted her harsh diatribes against model Liskula Cohen, she broke the law. The obscure cyberstalking law she broke says she could be sentenced to up to two years in jail and fined for using the internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person.” It’s the kind of law that angers bloggers like us because it completely goes against free speech. We can’t imagine the idea of Port fighting this law up to the Supreme Court over calling some girl she didn’t like a “ho.” It makes our brain hurt. source
And good for them. Really. OK, we’re kinda sad because it appears they’ve stolen our idea to some degree, but Slate’s newest site, The Slatest, is a news aggregator that doesn’t get bogged down by lots and lots (and lots) of links, like, say, Digg, Reddit, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, and … we could go on. A handful of really good news stories, linked in such a way that you know what you’re clicking, with a giant freaking ad that doesn’t get in the way. We approve. Good show, Slate. source
Not really a Netbook, not really a full-fledged laptop, Nokia’s 10.1″ attempt to stretch beyond mobile phones, the Booklet 3G, is pretty hawt if you can give yourself a reason to buy a machine that runs Windows 7.source
Clever. And scary. Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that Facebook quizzes can essentially take any information they want about you and your friends for purposes of a stupid, useless quiz. To prove a point, someone developed a quiz based on the ACLU’s article – one that actually takes said information. Keep this in mind next time you take a stupid quiz, guys. source
They say it might confuse users. Despite the fact that 1) It’s already being used elsewhere, 2) It’s a Google app and 3) There’s extreme criticism from end users over the app’s denial, Apple is still debating the Google Voice app. It wrote in its letter to the FCC that the app replaces “the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail.” Duh. One other note: Apple apparently doesn’t discuss apps with AT&T, as was feared, but agreed not to allow VOIP apps like Skype. The FCC’s looking into that, too. source