How can a multibillion dollar company be so far gone when it comes to understanding how people interact with websites?

What am I talking about?

adCenter, popfly, and adLab!

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Google’s simple interfaces but every time I visit a Microsoft owned property, I want to tear my hair out trying to figure out how to navigate it.

I just logged into adCenter to get an itemized report about one of our accounts. Default reports do not allow you to set a specific date range, so you’re forced to go to billing. In the billing interface, you have to click on “specific date range” and are forced to use the calendar (cant’ just specify the dates). Then after all that you get an error message. Ugh. It’s not the first time I’ve been frustrated by adCenter.

A few months ago I was fortunate enough to be invited to alpha test Microsoft Popfly – I logged in, tried to look around – to this day I have no idea what the purpose of popfly is or what it’s supposed to do for me.

The third (but definately not last) example is Microsoft adLabs. Click over there and take a look at the interface. I’ll wait… You back? Good. Mystery meat navigation coupled with “double click to enter”?! When’s the last time you have EVER doubled clicked on anything online. Even when I was at FOOA, the adCenter rep who was presenting was frustrated with the navigation and laughed about how bad it was. It’s shame too because they have a few really great tools in there, but who will use them if they’re hard to find?

C’mon Microsoft. Google has been eating your lunch online for as long as I can remember. Make your websites like they were designed to be consumed by people, not engineers who are creating them. I’m rooting for you – someone needs to challenge Google. Hire some UI experts for crissake!

/ end of rant

No related posts.

Forbes seems to have discovered the very cutting edge of web unusability. Check out the following page:

In Pictures: Google + Apple = ?

I saw this in my Gmail (as a web clip) and clicked through to find the most ridiculous concept in web browsing: an auto-refreshing slideshow that consists of entire-page reloads every 15 seconds with no user input.

Instead of having the decency to split a normal article up into 4 parts (like the New York Times does to inflate their pageview count), they split this slideshow up into 9 “slides”. Each slide is its very own bloated page with a new photo, a few blocks of text, and a whole lot of ads.

Forbes assumes they know your optimal reading spead better than you do and refreshes to the next slide every 15,000 milliseconds. Often times a page and its ads actually take longer to load than the refresh interval so you get to play a fun little game of “try to catch the first sentence”.

The slideshow controls are tiny and get lost in the visual cacophony of the page, but you better learn where they are because your browser’s “Stop” function doesn’t actually work to stop these pages from reloading every 15 seconds.

Since I’ve started writing this piece, the site has reloaded over 20 times and has eaten up over 10MB worth of bandwidth (according to firebug).

Now some of you astute readers might be asking, “wait, 20 times? Didn’t you say there were only 9 slides?” You see Forbes assumes that you liked the ride so much that it doesn’t just stop at the end of the current slideshow – it just keeps going with any other stories it has in the ‘ole merrygoround – The Web Celeb 25 (27 slides worth), Hottest Cellphones 2006, and on and on until you are driven completely insane, your computer crashes, or Forbes run out of ads (the least likely scenario).

After a little while I noticed that there is a 1-page version of this story that you can click to. So I did. And I got this page:

The page was mocking my previous agony by telling me that “The worst is yet to come!”. After this page was done advertising to me it replaced the slideshow-from-hell version of the article with the find-the-actual-article version of the article.

The Hyperion man throws a blackberry in your face and if you happen to find the tiny [close x] button, he turns into a ghost and keeps walking around his ad staring at you while he drinks his coffee. Taunting you. It’s really quite surreal.

I’m just so amazed that a website for such a known brand could be so ridiculously out of touch with any basic concept of usability? Who the hell is responsible for this monstrosity? How can the old-paper dinosaurs expect to compete on the new web with something like this? And why the hell is this page still under their domain? (Yes, I have to put a link condom on it).

So for all the reasons above, Forbes.com wins the first (and last) annual “World Wide Web’s Worst Usability Award” presented by AU Interactive. Steve, you can email me to find out where to pick up the prize.

No related posts.

Early last week my girlfriend’s laptop was stolen from her car right in front of my house. (Friendly reminder: always lock everything, never leave stuff in plain sight, and always password protect EVERYTHING).

A Mac was not an option – those laptops are expensive! For all the hype they get, they’re a tough pill to swallow at such a premium (compared to a Windows box) and not all of us have the bankroll to swing $600 differences. So last Friday she bought a new HP laptop with Vista preinstalled, which led to my first real experience with this little beast called Windows Vista.

Right after getting the machine, we installed MS Money 2002, then found a Money 2005 disk (from the previous laptop) that we wanted to install instead.

Well, every time we tried to install Money 2005, it told us that we needed to uninstall Money 2002 first. The problem was that every time we tried to uninstall 2002, we were told we needed to put in the old disk (which is sooooo stupid). Even after we put in the disk and the laptop digested it for a while, we got some funky error that some file was not found. Then the process reversed itself and we were left stharing at the programs list with Money 2002 still on there. Oh, and I love how Microsoft tells me that Microsoft Money is from an “unknown publisher”. We repeated this futile task several times – 2005 would not install while 2002 (which wouldn’t uninstall) was still in the system.

Since installation of Money 2005 didn’t work, we decided to install the trial version of Money Essentials (even though we’d have to buy this later for $20, which is sort of like giving Bill an extra $20 after he rapes you.)

Now, keep in mind that throughout this process we went through roughly 12,347 popup screens with “cancel or allow”, “you don’t have enough permission to do this” (even though I was logged in as the only user and administrator), and “we’re just f*cking with you, press this button” messages. The whole “cancel or allow” thing that those Mac commercials make fun of – it’s very real.

We looked up the official “How to uninstall Microsoft Money” knowledge base article on Microsoft’s site. Went through all the (in retrospect unnecessary) steps, and came to the “install a registry cleaner” part. Downloaded it. Tried to install it and got a “Hey administrator, you don’t have enough administrative privileges to install (this unverified publisher’s) program”.

After several hours, my girlfriend accidentally pressed the “repair” button in the programs list and somehow the damn program figured out a way to remove itself. Ahhh, a simple, nonsensical fix! Now all would be well…

Not so fast!

After installing Microsoft Money 2005, she was prompted to login using her Passport ID. In case you didn’t know “passport” was the 500 B.C. Microsoft version of Open ID, but not open, not a real ID, and actually a total piece of crap. But they still use it apparently.

Well, apparently the program didn’t like the username and password combination (even though she verified it with the passport service online) and would repeatedly give her the “uh, uh, uhhhh” message (kind of like Newman’s program in Jurrasic Park). She was stuck. She couldn’t go back, she couldn’t go forward, and the (correct) password was rejected like a Slashdot reader on prom night.

I had to find the .mny file and delete it. Only then would the program give us the option to start a new account.

So given this 3 hour WOW experience, as well as the fact that lots of stuff you might have might not be supported by Vista (yes, even stuff previously made by Microsoft itself), I’m going to stick with Windows XP until a comparable open source OS comes out or Macs start dropping to non-elitist prices.

Microsoft should have made 2 versions of Vista:

1. Vista 2007 Moron edition: asks you everytime you click anything (current version), great for SEFILS, and
2. Vista 2007 “I know What I’m doing” edition: assumes you’re not a complete dolt.

(End of Rant)

No related posts.

Do yourself a favor. Make this the last post you read today. I came to a very important realization recently that I’d like to share; maybe it will hit close to home.

How much time do you spend reading blogs? Of that time, how much is spent learning truly useful or actionable information? Furthermore, how much time do you spend APPLYING what you’ve read? All the intentions in the world won’t matter as much as one tangible action.

Here are some examples of garbage. Blog reviews: I think John Chow had a hand in creating this monstrosity – they are so useless it hurts. I’m getting really sick of seeing these. There are faceoffs, blog fights, 2000 bloggers, and tons of other stuff out there taking up your time. There are pointless catfights, blogger drama, and soap opera-esque MyBlogLog v. Shoemoney type of stunts that garner loads of attention. This is no different than watching Access Hollywood – you might as well plop on a couch and eat greasy potato chips, glued to your laptop screen while your life spirals into a pathetic pool of mediocrity.

Some of this is ok as long as you’re allocating time for it and count it as “off-time” but don’t kid yourself by thinking it’s contributing anything to your life or helping you reach your goals.

Wasting time on these things are keeping you from becoming great – it could be spent creating something great. I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of getting caught up in BS, wasting time reading too much filler, but today I’m making an effort to change.

Contrary to what I said above, you should read two more posts (and make them the last two posts for the day).

Find your inner Jerry Maguire, and DIFN!

No related posts.

Yesterday I lost a domain name auction at SnapNames (I refuse to link to them).

For those who don’t know, Snap Names is the exclusive domain name expiration dropper for Network Solutions. If you’re monitoring a domain name that’s due to expire and see that it was registered at Network Solutions, you have to use Snap to try to acquire it.

If you want the domain name, you need to put in a binding bid for $60. If anyone else wants that domain name, then you go into an auction and (s)he who wins the ensuing bidding war gets the domain.

In May of last year I picked up 1 domain name that no one else bid on. In August, I was going after floridaphotos.com but was outbid – there were a few people in the race and somebody ended up snagging it for $1,155.

Yesterday was the auction day for floridajewelry.com and I received an email that I was outbid. When I clicked the link to raise my bid, I kept getting a “can’t find snapnames” message, then a “undergoing scheduled downtime” message. I checked back a few more times, but it wouldn’t load up. So I couldn’t log on to raise my bid before I got out of work. Grrrrrrrr.

This morning I found out the winning bid was $130 at the expiration. Luckily I didn’t care THAT much about the domain name, otherwise I’d be reeling.

No related posts.

Over the past few months we played around with a number of online collaboration suites. We were searching for a way to organize everything and have a central dashboard to keep track of projects, tasks, and timelines for multiple users.

Some of the tools we tried were Jotspot, PBwiki, Zoho, and Basecamp.

As much as Michael Arrington gets excited about Zoho (they’re a TechCrunch sponsor), I just don’t get it. They have Zoho Office, which comes in a hosted and a self-install version. Then there are subsets of office as well as a whole slew of “services” some of which are part of office, some of which are separate but can be integrated. Here’s a list of what Zoho offers:

Zoho Chat
Zoho Planner
Zoho Creator
Zoho CRM
Zoho Projects
Zoho Writer
Zoho Sheet
Zoho Show
Zoho Wiki
Zoho Notebook
Zoho Virtual Office
Zoho Challenge
Zoho Polls

Zoho was kind enough to extend us a beta invite, but after spending hours on trying to figure out the system, we gave up. Zoho (in its current state anyway) has massive usability issues. The systems are complex and capable, but very user-unfriendly. We spent hours to try to figure out where the different services were and how the modules fit together (and how they could even be enabled). We tried to add team members and give them permissions, but at one point even our own account was locked out from making admin changes.

Zoho is just a mess overall. I don’t get the hype (other than them paying for it).

We ended up settling with Basecamp, which is pretty decent, but there’s still a lot of room to grow in the online collaboration space. Maybe Google will make Jotspot into a real contender, but I really want someone else to do it. Google gets usability more than any other company, but  I’m just getting sick of feeding the Google beast.

No related posts.

The other night I went downtown to take a photo of this sign:

This is Infinium’s sign that (for now) still graces a building in downtown Sarasota, Florida. The company moved to Seattle some time ago.

Infinium Labs was the former name of Phantom Entertainment Inc., the company behind the Phantom Game System. Aptly named, it was one of the biggest examples of vapourware anyone has ever seen.

The company burned through $75 MILLION dollars of investment capital with nothing to show for it, except a laptop keyboard that to this day has not materialized.

The company was supposed to produce a gaming system that let user pay for and play for games online. Aside from 3D renderings, the hardware never even saw a prototype. The company did, however, produce a working version of a gaming keyboard and mouse.

The Phantom website (they’re not worthy of a link) has been taking orders for this miserable piece of hardware for many many months now, but I wouldn’t recommend trusting them with your credit card number. Dell’s Alienware also placed a large order with the company several months ago, but shipment has once again been “delayed“.

Fun Infinium Trivia:

• Infinium sued HardOcp for running a very damning investigative article about the company and its CEO, but were forced to pay over $200,000 in legal fees once the facts cited in the story were all proven to be true.
• The SEC charged the former CEO with securities fraud for running a pump and dump scheme with the company’s stock.
• The company was investigated for fax spamming and email spamming designed to bring on more investors.
• The sign pictured above is very slick and changes colors from white to red to green and blue (which it hasn’t done in a while). It’s really unnecessarily extravagant considering its surroundings, but a very good representation of the company’s fiscal responsibility.

I remember reading a story in 2005 about the company securing another $11 million of venture capital, having burned through $60 million already, still with nothing to show. The CEO must have been one hell of a salesman.

To me – the picture above is a great reminder of the power of salesmanship. If Infinium can sell $75 million dollars worth of nothing, surely YOU can do better with something of actual value.

No related posts.

I’m just amazed at how bad MSN’s AdCenter is – even after having all this time to grow and improve? . Without ado, here are some reasons why MSN AdCenter is a flaming pile of poo:

1. Retro Beta. This might be the first time I’ve ever seen a product launch THEN regress into beta a year afterwards. The “new” version that just came out just got a “beta” sticker attached to it. I thought the natural sequence of events was “beta -> lots of testing -> not beta”. I’m just waiting for the announcement: “Coming in 3Q, 2007: MSN AdCenter Alpha.”

2. Charging $281 per click. This issue of severe overcharging surfaced today (via SEORoundTable) – it seems that a number of accounts are seeing these wild errors. It’s likely just a reporting issue, but scary nonetheless.

3. 30 emails for the price of 1. See Shoemoney’s rant. He also laments the lack of an API and the really bad user interface.

4. Security Warnings. This only seems to happen in Firefox for me so maybe there’s a Firefox conspiracy at play here – feel free to investigate this yourself. This is annoying enough when it happens as you’re trying to login to AdCenter. But here’s the kicker. This pops up on a client’s website if you have conversion tracking installed. So if you fill out a contact form on a website that has adcenter tracking, you get this giant error after submitting. To less-savvy visitors this makes your site look really bad and suspicious. I can just hear them, “what the hell? is this a phishing site or something? what’s this about ‘site not trusted’?”

(click for the large version of this security warning)

5. All kids of fun errors. To be fair, this only happens while you’re doing stuff – like runing a report or navigating the AdCenter site. Below are a few examples: “your report is failed” and “incorrect or unexpected message”:

I guess we Windows users should be used to this from Microsoft. But c’mon, it’s 2000 friggin 7 and you need this to work, Microsoft! Else Google is going to beat the ever living bejeezus out of you on all fronts, even ones you are completely used to dominating.

P.S. This post doesn’t even get into other MSN AdCenter problems that I’ve ranted about previously.

No related posts.

seriously

No related posts.

Jason Calacanis really doesn’t get it. I don’t know why I got such a visceral reaction to his post, but I don’t think I was the only one. He basically said that it was “unconscionable” for Wikipedia not to monetize the Wikipedia project.

He called on Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) to put up a leaderboard ad on the site. He claimed it would produce $100M that could help fund other projects. He then suggested that the site have a 25×25 px “Hosting donated by AOL” banner.

Wow. I’m simply stunned at how somebody can be so blinded by his own hubris. Last month I enjoyed hearing Kevin Rose’s speech in which he talked about his stance against paying top Digg contributors. I agree 100% that once you introduce money into the equation, it can undermine the entire community.

People smarter than myself have torn the Calcanis post apart, and rightly so. There are just so many problems with his assumptions. He also doesn’t seem to understand that not everything is about money – that people might value community and a shared purpose. And maybe this lack of understanding is what makes for such an interesting chart (comparing the traffic between Netscape and Digg):

And moreover, this:

It looks like the Calacanis camp (AOL and Netscape) needs more advice than the people behind Wikipedia and Digg.

No related posts.