Usability is not everything

This quote is brilliant and I tottaly agree with it!

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

It’s from Joel Spolsky’s book User Interface Design for Programmers.

March 31, 2003 | | Leave a Comment

E-mail Tyranny

Simple rules on how can you improve your productivity and ways to smart use your email are the raison d’etre of the article The Tyranny of Email. A great follow-up named Tyranny Revisited was built using readers feedback.

March 31, 2003 | Tags: productivity | Leave a Comment

PayPal wants less trouble

ebay is making paypal services harder to use. By modifying its rules so that some categories of products can no longer be sold using paypal, ebay is expanding its policy to other services. Acording to this wired article paypal can no longer be used to sell alcohol or adult-oriented items. The main problem is that sex related stuff can only be sold if the transaction is completed on eBay.
But some users say prohibitions against using PayPal to pay for anything violates their right to use their money as they please. What is paypal trying to do?

March 26, 2003 | Tags: e-commerce | Leave a Comment

How to get the most out of conferences

This article covers several interesting topics: Why conversations are more valuable than the sessions, how to spend your time for example in workshops or paper sessions, how to take advantage of the trip and the benefits and drawbacks of going with coworkers.

However the most interesting topic for me is How to justify going to conferences because it is usually harder to justify to the company attending why to attend these meetings:

- You are an asset to your company
- Offer to train others in what you learned when you return
- Make a trip report
- Connect the value of the conference to business goals
- Recruit
- develop professionaly
- Split the costs

March 24, 2003 | Tags: productivity | Leave a Comment

Amazon sub-�10 iPaq case: mistake or marketing

I’m still not sure whether amazon’s price mistake was really a mistake or another brilliant marketing idea. Last week Amazon offered an iPaq for �7.32. The Amazon UK website was temporarily closed. But before that and as expected multiple orders were made by several users trying to get their hands on if not two at least one iPaq. Unfortunatly what every one wanted (except Jeff Bezos!) there’s no legal recourse for buyers as Amazon rejects �7 iPaq pricing.
It not known whether this was really a mistake on another great move from those marketing experts at amazon. Here are some views:
- If it was a mistake it really compensated because of all the hype in the media. Even if it had to give away those iPaqs amazon would still be on the news
- If it was not a mistake Congratulations! You have made it again!

related articles:
Slashdot posted on this
BBC reports on amazon shutting down
Buy bag free camera amazon case in 2001
Kodak’s �100 camera error was a famous first among this type of mistakes

update:
Lawyers challenge Amazon over price blunder orders

March 24, 2003 | Tags: e-commerce | Leave a Comment

New weblog software

As you can see I am currently changing the weblog software. I am moving from blogger to b2. The main reason from this is the need for categories to organize myself and the blog. I did a quick check on some weblog software packages and among other features this are the ones that I looked for:
- categories for differente areas/posts
- XHTML 1.0 compliant
- automatic ping for weblogs.com and blo.gs.
- RSS feeds

I will do a full review when I finish installing everything.

March 20, 2003 | Tags: day to day | Leave a Comment

YDreams and Outsystems

Software means innovation and quality in these companies. YDreams and Outsystems are two examples of a new breed of portuguese companys that have innovating products and are taking big steps into the global market. YDreams develops mobile games. They also do R&D in other mobile applications as maps and traffic monitoring. Outsystems is another ground breaking company that provides a multi-channel platform designed to enable the fast development of applications that combine the SMS, WAP, Web and Email channels. Another worth-mentioning company is Critical Software which develops customized software solutions. The company assures outstanding quality levels by using software engineering standards and methodologies in its software development process, including NASA SEL standards. Among other things they do: business/mission critical system planning, disaster recovery planning, implementation, software fault-tolerance design. They got first know from their first contract with NASA in 2000.

March 14, 2003 | Tags: day to day | Leave a Comment

McDonald’s Wireless and HotSpot

High-speed wireless Internet access is available at McDonald’s restaurants in New York. It’s a big step towards large coverage for wi/Fi networks. If it proves to be a sucess they’ll probably expand the idea to other country’s. It’s kind of funny to see business man carrying around laptops and Big Macs. You can see some pictures from the big opening day.
I’m also looking forward to the Hotspot program that will provide high-speed Wi-Fi wireless Internet access in convenient public locations.

March 14, 2003 | Tags: wireless | Leave a Comment

IKEA in Lisboa

Finally! IKEA is going to open its first store in Portugal. In ~~december 2003~~ March 2004 a new IKEA warehouse that is being built in Alfragide will open its doors to the portuguese. It’s been a long wait. For many years portuguese have traveled to Madrid to buy their products. I really like their quality vs price compromise, their very friendly stores and of course the famous swedish meatballs!

Also important for all people living the Algarve you may care to know that IKEA will also open a new store in Sevilla near summer’s end.

new! new article (in Portuguese) on the newspaper Publico regarding IKEA in Portugal.

new! new jobs posted on jornal Expresso!

Jobs at IKEA in Portugal:
For all of you who have asked here are the contacts regarding Jobs

Ikea Lisboa LTD. (as in yellow pages)
Rua Beatriz Costa, 6 A
2610-195 Alfragide, Amadora
Portugal

or e-mail: valy@memo.ikea.com. This is the e-mail that came with the Jornal Expresso advert a few weeks ago.

Related Stuff:
You can read The History of the world’s most famous Swedish company
or take a look at their 2003 Catalogs: IKEA online Catalog, IKEA kitchen Catalog and IKEA Office Catalog

March 12, 2003 | Tags: day to day | 67 Comments

Career in User Experience and Resources

Marcus Haid has written an essay on Starting a Career In User Experience. It is a very good reading to all of those interested not only wishing to work on user experience but also on user centered design and related areas. Since you are going to adaptive path’s website take a look at their reading list. Another good IA resource is Jesse James Garret information architecture resources.

March 3, 2003 | | Leave a Comment

about

My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
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Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.

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