Communiqué

The worst thing that has come from the mobile phone market is the "innovation" for what I hear when I call someone. There are two specific instances that I wouldn't miss if they suddenly disappeared:

The "Listen to My Music" Ring

I think it was Verizon that started this horrible trend. Instead of letting me hear a normal ringer like every other phone call, the person I'm calling can choose a musical selection for me to listen to instead.

Why It's Bad

There's a reason that there aren't more services where I can call up, choose a song to listen to and then go: the quality is awful. This, paired with today's Loudness War makes for a blaring of static-y, distorted blips and blops.

If I want to listen to music, I'll pick up my iPod, not my phone. I'm not great at casual phone conversation as it is, why are you making it harder for me?

Additionally, I'm very picky about the music I listen to, and most likely I'm not going to like whatever it is that you're trying to get me to hear. If anything, I should get to pick the song that I hear when I call someone.

The "On the Other Line" Ring

When you call and there's the standard ring that gets appending by a tiny "boop" sound. This means that the person you're calling is on the other line.

Why It's Bad

The extra half-ring puts me in an awkward position. I hate when people call me and I'm on the other line, I never know how to handle it. That said, I don't want to be the guy interrupting things. I'd rather just be sent to voicemail.

And if the person does pick up, there's a 50% chance that they can't talk to you, but they're clicking over to say that they're on the other line and then ask if they can call you right back. This leads me to believe that people don't have an understanding of how their phones work, which I supposed ends up meaning that it's user error striking again.

I'd expand the voicemail system to let you record two messages: an "I'm not here right now" message and an "on the other line" message. The interface for retrieving voicemail should be checking all messages in one place, but how they come in should be branched out to different methods (like the methods I just listed, and maybe an additional message for "Oh I'm here, I just don't want to talk to you right now").

The Solution

Make things work like touch-tone phones and answering machines used to back in the old days. If I'm on the phone, give a busy signal. If I'm not available, let them leave a message. If I'm interested, I'll pick up. I don't ever remember hearing anyone say, "the ability to call someone isn't good enough, I want to outright interrupt their conversation."

Earlier this week we launched a website for Buckley's Executive Sedan Service.

The site is tiny—only four pages.

It was fun to build.

If you ever need a limo ride to logo, check out Buckley.

Earlier today, Fred and I were talking about Secure Server Certificates. Somehow the conversation led to a debate of the 6 best names (or aliases) ever. My list included the following.

#6 – Barbara Steppins
#5 – Gritty McBoing-Boing Variation on Gerald McBoing-Boing
#4 – Bob James Not the jazz musician, just a beautiful mix of two first names.
#3 – Debby McFarken
#2 – Albert Pujols The only "real" name on the list.

#1 – Steve F. Grant

Any other good fake names, aliases, or great sounding "real" names?

Recently, while we were testing a new site, I noticed an enhancement filed in our issue-tracking system, suggesting that a form's buttons be styled to match the site's color scheme.

What do you think? I've whipped up a simple poll (courtesy of PollDaddy):

Over the past month or so our fifteen-month-old daughter, Audrey, has been picking up words like crazy. Pretty much anything you say she will try to repeat. She is really good about context and can identify many of the items in our home along with lots of animals and other things.

Last night my wife, Jess, and I were talking about looking for a co-sleeper for our upcoming baby. During the conversation Jess mentioned googling co-sleepers. Not a second later Audrey blurted out “g’ggle”. At our coaxing she repeated herself a few times and received some enthusiastic praise from her proud parents. Her first internet word!

Last Sunday's New York Times featured a beautiful example of information design.


View the full sized graphics »

The article, You Are What You Spend features two fantastic graphics by Nicholas Felton.

To me, the most impressive design feat happens in the second graphic, Consumption Spreads Faster Today. Felton uses only 3 colors and 3 line styles to plot how quickly 16 technologies were adopted. The obvious solution when plotting 16 items would be 4 colors and 4 styles, but Felton uses space to maintain simplicity. Even though the representation for auto, dishwasher, and internet are identical, they're not confused because of their placement. Equally impressive is his restraint in using a single typeface and font size throughout the entire second graphic.

For more beautiful information graphics check out Felton's personal site or his company, Megafone. Also worth viewing is Amanda Cox's NYT info graphic on volatility of the Dow Jones.

Tabbed browsing is an awesome thing. Websites that use the HTML title tag poorly tend to make it not so awesome. Some sites just kind of forget about the tag, others order the content incorrectly and don't even get me started about stuffing keywords. Anyway, let’s talk about making user-friendly title tag contents.

Probably the most frustrating patterns is when all of the pages on a site use the same title tag contents — usually the site’s name. It is not very frequently that you will see this, however sites built with frames usually exhibit this behavior. Imagine if this page’s title was iMarc. That would be awesome.

Second on the list is sites that don’t include the site name in the title. You’ll see pages with Contact Us and About. It gets real interesting when you have multiple tabs open with pages like that. Which About is the one I’m looking for again?

The most common mistake after sites get past the first two obstacles is incorrectly ordering the title. The most specific information in the title should be first. This matters much more once a user has drilled down into a site. Imagine a title like Example Site - About - Employees - John Smith. Most browsers will display the following in the tab: Example Site - About - Empol.... Which employee am I looking at again?

Here is the above example corrected, with most specific information to least: John Smith - Employees - About - Example Site. Browser tabs would tend to show John Smith - Employees - Abo.... Now I can figure out what tab I wanted to click on. I love it!

In closing, if you want to kick up the usability of your site when being viewed in a tabbed browser, be sure to add a favicon. Dan Cederholm will love it.

Last Saturday, my world turned upside down when my wife called the library. I was near the computer. She had the phone in her hand. She asked me to look up the library's phone number so she could call to find out when they closed and if her book was in.

We live in a tiny town with a tiny library. My expectations were low—visions of endless clicking through a crappy municipality website flashed through my mind.

What ensued was one of the most incredibly user friendly experiences of my life.


1. Type library's name into Google

2. Call library



Not even one click. The phone number is right there in the title tag. How perfectly appropriate.