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Usability testing is not a cure-all for fixing the design of a website. You need to figure out why you want to make changes and decide how best to achieve those changes, and then test if those changes are working through Usability Tests. This article has links to online services that allow you to test different aspects of Usability
Month: October 2009
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links for 2009-10-20
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Layar is in the iPhone App Store! « Layar
Layar now available on iPhone As reported in Wired.com for Thursday October 15 , 2009. Layar was originally developed in the Netherlands, and runs on Android based cell phones. The first cell phone manufacturer to pre-install it was Samsung who installed it on their Android based Galaxy sold in the Netherlands.
It has now been ported over to the iPhone and will now compete head to head with an early entrant into the AR market, Bionic Eye. Layar had garnered some early mindshare on O’Reilly’s technology blog Radar where I first noticed it. Others had whispered about it early on the cutting edge tech blogs. But this was the first concrete example showing what it could do.
Wired.com has been singing the praises of the cell phone Augmented Reality craze but somewhat later than O’Reilly tapped into it in early Summer. O’Reilly now has a correspondent fully engaged in covering things AR related: Christine Perey. And now let the battle begin Bionic Eye vs. Layar! But first consider the API’s which are already beginning to be examined by the folks over at Wired. One big complaint is the difficulty with which one can submit their own Point of Interest database that Layar can call up. Bionic Eye hasn’t really touted user generated POI content as much. It will take a while to see if it’s the consumers or the developers who determines the winner in the battle for Cellphone AR apps. Who knows? Maybe Google will enter the fray real soon now.
Layar is in the iPhone App Store!
We have waited a long time but it is finally there! Layar arrived in the App Store. It’s free and available globally. Below some screenshots of the App.
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links for 2009-10-15
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Ricky Gervais's send-up of white collar workers in the BBC show The Office has started a fire that no one can put out. In this article the author analyzes business organizations using the Office as a metaphor
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links for 2009-10-14
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I've been following all the press releases about fusion io on the UK website: The Register. They are hands down the fastest storage product on the market at any price level. Everything else is slower, and now they are entering the consumer market with the ioxtreme PCIe card
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Drain the carburetor bowl on your mower
There is no easier or more complete way to keep your mower in good shape than to remove the metal carburetor bowl. Let all that gas drip out, take the bowl off and look inside. I once did this for the first time on our snowblower the first season I was running it. To my shock and horror there was a small pile of black fragments sitting in there! It appeared to be bits of vulcanized rubber or a similar substance. I freaked out knowing that any debris in that area can affect a motor adversely (especially a small 3.5hp one). I cleaned it out and it helped a little. But what I really needed was a good new accurately gapped spark plug. Ultimately it was that spark plug that made a bigger performance difference than any other. But it never hurts to remove that bowl and wipe it out. For good measure I will leave a little bit of carburetor choke cleaner in the bottom of the bowl when I reattach it. That way anything that might form there will stay in solution until the following season when I first prime and start the motor. Doing this, I usually get one big puff of grey smoke out the exhaust until it warms up. Then everything is free and clear and runs great.
Even if you’ve run your equipment dry as part of your usual end-of-season maintenance steps, some fuel can remain in the bowl of the carburetor. If you don’t drain the bowl, you might see some of the telltale white residue and related corrosion associated with ethanol blends. Four-cycle engines in particular seem prone to the buildup, although two-cycle engines can also suffer from the problem.
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 