12 reasons Chrome OS will fail
Yesterday, Google held a press conference at its Mountain View headquarters to provide the world with an update on its new operating system, Chrome OS.
A lot of new details were forthcoming, which have have been well-covered by others. The questions on everyone's mind: is Chrome OS the real deal? Where does it fit in? How will it impact the OS market. My answers: it isn't, nowhere, it won't. Here are 12 reasons why Chrome OS is going to fail.
Load time: coming soon as a Google ranking factor?
Google's algorithm looks at a significant number of ranking factors when it decides where a site should be in the SERPs. These ranking factors, and the weight they're each given, change over time.
Last week at PubCon, Google's Matt Cutts revealed a new ranking factor that may debut in 2010: page load time.
Site review: Virgin Trains revamp
Virgin Trains relaunched its website yesterday with an updated look and feel for the site, which apparently aims to 'convey the brand's new positioning of train travel as superior to other modes of transport'.
I'm not sure whether it does that, but it does look a lot better than the previous version. I've been comparing the site with the old version...
Site review: Whistles.co.uk
Fashion retailer Whistles relaunched its website last week, and the resulting Flash heavy site is certainly different.
According to Whistles' Jane Sheperdson, 'We spent a lot of time researching best practice online. We then threw out everything we had learned, and just designed something that pleased us visually.'
This is an interesting way to approach the design of an e-commerce site, but what will the result be for the user experience?
American Airlines fires an employee for...customer engagement
Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of American Airlines (AA). A customer named
Dustin Curtis comes to the conclusion that your website sucks after
booking a flight on it and finding the process to be a "horrific
displeasure".
A UX designer by trade, Curtis takes it upon himself to redesign your website's homepage and provide some suggestions. All at no cost, of course. He publishes this as a blog post that begins, "Dear AmericanAirlines". Shortly thereafter, the UX designer receives an email from an AA employee who does UX design for your company.
Is NDA culture hurting developers?
Ars Technica has an interesting post revealing some sordid tales from the world of iPhone development. The tales center on iPhone app developers who claim to have developed apps that they really didn't develop. And they're getting away with it because of an NDA culture that permeates much of the development world.
NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, of course, are those pesky little agreements that you've probably asked been asked to sign a million times if you work in the world of technology. In some markets, just about everyone asks that an NDA be signed for the smallest of things. Sometimes I half expect to be asked to sign an NDA if I ask where the bathroom is when working on-site with a client.
30+ Twitter Lists and 5000+ Twitter accounts worth following
Twitter Lists are now officially available to all of Twitter's users. And there are plenty of them. While it remains to be seen whether Twitter Lists will help Twitter boost user engagement, Lists offer a no-hassle means to discovering and following people who you might find interesting.
Here are 30+ Twitter Lists that collectively follow more than 5,000 interesting Twitter accounts.
Site review: BBC Democracy Live
The BBC yesterday launched a new political website, Democracy Live, which enables the public to keep up with TV coverage of political debates.
The site offers live and on demand coverage of the Commons, the House of Lords, the European Parliament, Scottish Assembly and more, so you can keep up with debates on a variety of issues that may effect you.
The new CNN.com: the good, the bad, the ugly
CNN is one of the world's leading news organizations and it's website is arguably one of its most valuable assets today. In an effort to make it even more valuable, CNN has launched a new design for CNN.com over the weekend for both its U.S. and International versions.
According to Nick Wrenn, Vice President of Digital Services for CNN International, "We had a look on how our users use the site, and put a lot of thought and research behind it". The finding: "Breaking news is our core brand and will continue to have a prominent spot. But we wanted to showcase a lot more of the deep, rich content we have. It was falling off the main page too quickly and people couldn't find it".
Q&A: Rob Colling on why online video needs subtitles
Launched earlier this year, internetsubtitling.com is a startup that, as the name suggests, provides captions and subtitles for online video.
The captions and subtitles, as shown in this example,
provide a potentially useful way to make online video more accessible.
I've been talking to founder Rob Colling about the company and
concept...
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
