User Experience

As I alluded in a post a couple of weeks ago, I have been a bad blogger. And I have neglected my community of readers. However I would like to tell you what I have been doing in the last couple of months while I have been neglecting my blog. I recently got involved in creating a startup as the lead developer for an online classifieds site called Anything For Sale By Owner. From the ground up this was conceived as a middle-ground between craigslist and ebay where every listing would be charged at a static rate of $1.00/month. The $1.00 is a way to week out the crap from craigslist and the death-by-fees from ebay. ...

I found this great article about Con Kolivas on Slashdot today: Linux is burdened with ’enterprise crap’ that makes it run poorly on desktop PCs, says kernel developer Con Kolivas. Kolivas recently walked away from years of work on the kernel in despair. APCmag.com has a lengthy interview with Kolivas, who explains what he sees is wrong with Linux from a performance perspective and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computers. ...

Recently I read a post by Alex over at The Daily WTF… err… I mean Worse Than Failure. The article explained many of the tactics that the industry now uses to weed out candidates by giving them brain teasers during an interview. Alex explained in only a way that Alex can that, having a candidate that builds a water displacement scale for a Boeing 747 to measure its weight instead of just calling Boeing is probably not the guy that you want working on your project. The programmer that solved the riddle of how to find out the weight of a Boeing 747 probably fits in to the category of “A Complicator”. A complicator is basically a person that takes the most simplest problem and turns it in to an engineering disaster. ...

Google Maps Germany has a new feature: if you have a BMW car that includes a navigation system and you happen to live in Germany, it’s easy to send the address of a local business to your car’s navigation system. The “send” link from every Google Maps page will open a dialog that lets you fill your BMW account name and send an address plus some notes to your car. This service is free and it works only for businesses in Germany. Source

Well I finally figured out how to remove the Updater5 folder from your My Documents folder. I have written about this problem, as well as many other people, and now here is the solution for us anal retentive people that don’t like our My Documents folder cluttered with application artifacts. Follow the couple steps I have outlined below and the Updater5 folder will be out of your life forever. Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Updater5 Run AdobeUpdaterInstallMgr.exe and wait for the progress bar to finish and show you the following screen. Then click Browse button and change it to any directory you want as shown below. Now click the OK button and you are done. And now you should never see the Updater5 folder in your My Documents folder ever again. This solution has worked both on my Windows XP as well as Windows Vista boxes that I have tried it on. For Mac users you can try hunting down the same updater program and going through the steps however I don’t have a step-by-step guide for you. ...

I have recently run in to a couple websites which have a very annoying “feature”. Basically they have taken an internal policy applying to passwords and forced it externally on their loyal customers. This “feature” is to remember every password you have every previously had and not allow you to use it again. I don’t know what ‘Genius’ inside these linked companies thought this might be a good idea because this is how they run things with in the corporate walls, but out in the real world all that they are doing is forcing loyal customers to pull out their hair. ...

Recently I posted about the bad user experience that the Adobe Update Manager provided. On the same day that I posted that entry I also sent a note to Adobe about my disappointment in their product. I am happy to say I received a positive response from Adobe, and with the e-mail below, my respect for their QA team has gone up a couple notches. I say this because it takes a level of humility that is required in software development to admit you are wrong, something that not many companies have anymore. ...

Recently I upgraded Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0. I would first like to say that I found the new updated user interface a very nice experience. However there was one problem with the experience and it had nothing to do with the Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0, it had to do with the Adobe Update Manager. For some reason the Update Manager puts a folder called Updater5 in the My Documents folder. From what I can tell this folder is always empty at least it has been always empty on my laptop. You are all probably saying why not just delete the folder and stop whining about it. However it is not that easy, I delete the Updater5 folder and as soon as I open Adobe Acrobat Reader up, the folder reappears. This makes me furious because not only is this a bad experience for users, such as my self, that like to keep their document folders organized, but the folder isn’t called Adobe’s Documents or Adobe’s Temporary Directory it is called My Documents as in Nick’s Personal Documents. ...