Yahoo allows the dot in email addresses

Have a name that is difficult to spell ? Yahoo is now allowing the dot in email addresses. Better yet the new email addresses will send messages to your current email in-box.

Some things to remember:

• Email sent to or from this new address will appear in your mailbox with the rest of your mail. You can send from this new address by selecting it from the pull-down menu when you compose.
  
• You can also sign in to your Yahoo! Mail (or anywhere else on Yahoo!) using [your new "dot" name] with your password.
  
• If you would like to set [your new "dot" name] as your default "from" address, you may do so in Mail Accounts
  

TECHNORATI TAGS :: Internet :: Yahoo :: Email :: Dot

Privacy for People Who Don't Show Their Navels?

"While the online world is full of those who happily post pictures of themselves and their navels for all to see," according to the New York Times, anonymous Internet browsing from such as Tor and Anonymizer is quietly on the upswing, although, amusingly enough, no one is quite sure to what extent since the anonymous browsers are, well, anonymous.

Aside from standard-fare 1990's era cuckolding housewives and executive assistant baiting husbands seeking to escape detection, divorce and possibly alimony; in addition to underage sexual stalker-types perusing or pursuing content of an explicitly youthful nature, it seems there are a few new additions to the cover your tracks crowd:

• Illegal Music swappers
  
• Bloggers in repressive regimes
  
• Safeguarders of spam-laden email in-boxes
  
• Those protecting sensitive financial and personal information from increasingly sophisticated phishers, hackers and online con men and women of every stripe.
  

Of note, the Times yet again proves its overtly liberal bias, leaving out all mention of terrorists who, presumably, desire anonymous surfing as well, but is partially redeemed by also neglecting to mention the many, many of us who increasingly feel the need to protect ourselves from the increasingly inquisitive eyes and ears of the Bush administration.

Read the Full article.

TECHNORATI TAGS :: Internet :: Privacy :: Security :: Trends :: Tor :: Anonymizer ::

Two Clue #1

Alexa
Site traffically speaking (as long as the website in question is one of the top million, that is), the grappling Account Executive, Project Manager, Marketing Executive or Media Planner is not going to come across a much better free resource. The "Traffic details" section of the site provides the inquiring mind with information regarding reach per million that day, that week, and averaged over a three month span, along with a list of related sites and sites linking in . Not only does Alexa offer site rankings for the top 1 million sites, but also indicates overall site ranking.

The Markle Foundation
Speaking of which, one one of my favorite non-profit Foundations, The Markle Foundation, which uses Information and Communication technologies for not against the plebiscite, specifically as those technologies relate to Health and National Security, comes in at #506, 245. A damn shame, actually, because while making the top 1000 X 1000 is nothing to scoff at, more people should take a stop by to download the Foundation's Digest, a compendium of IT & ICT trends put together, yes, weekly, in case you were wondering.

Amongst this week's headlines:

• Google Agrees to Censor Results in China
  
• Eavesdropping leaps into 21st century
  
• Internet Coalition Sets Up Anti-'Badware' Site
  
• 2005 Fraud Trends
  
• "Cyberspace" Is Dead
  
• Alternative Media Taking Off ... Again!

and, of course, Roe vs. Wade aside, the issue we've all been clamoring over:

• Privacy for People who Show their Navels.

TECHNORATI TAGS :: Internet :: Traffic :: Non-Profit :: Trends

Say It Again Sam, Don't Pay it Again

The case for usably stated usability

User-centered Design is not brain surgery. Noted usability specialist Steve Krug summed it up best in his well-regarded usability bible "Don’t Make Me Think!," the very title of which says it all as elegantly and eloquently as this website producer has ever heard it put. It’s not such a difficult concept. People want things to be easy. And that concept is at the very heart of user-centered design. "Make it easy for me. Don’t make me think. Life is hard enough already."

Yet to peruse usability literature out there on the web, one might be forgiven for thinking that user-centered website design is indeed brain surgery. That, to my way of thinking, is a big part of the problem bringing clients on board as partners willing to commit to a course of action so clearly in their company’s own best interest. Call it a failure to communicate. Quite the interesting failure when you consider that this failure is one being committed over and over again by communication professionals.

Far too often, discussions of User-centered Design employ such industry-specific, emotionally affectless terminology as "navigation," "information architecture," and ""Section 508 compliant." The net effect is to present User-Centered design as little more than the implementation of individual items on a checklist of discrete, disconnected components, rather than in a qualitative, unified manner that non-technically inclined business people might more readily connect with.

On one hand, perhaps, all the technical mumbo-jumbo is "necessary." It’s proof of expertise and a means by which to justify fair fees in an industry unfairly viewed as commoditized, no small thanks to ubiquitous out-of-the-can, out-of-the-box "Build a Website in 5 Minutes for $29.95" online offers. Still, such argot obscures rather than reveals. I’ve had highly placed, well-informed, highly educated executives ask me questions such as "Why do we have to pay to fix your bugs?" "What’s HTML," and "What does interactive mean?" Communicating to your prospective clients your knowledge of Fitt’s Law, which states that the time required to move a pointer from rest to a given location is a function of proximity and size of the target, may well impress them, but it will do little to convince them why they should care, much less why they should be willing to pay more for your services.

When I was a producer at swandivedigital, we constantly struggled with that issue. How do you tell your clients this or that about their online presence, things they need to hear and really ought to address, in language they can understand, especially when they will have to spend more money in the near term to implement your recommendations? In essence, how do you make usability easy?

In response, we developed a user-centered approach that allowed us to quantitatively measure website efficacy in terms of five easily understood qualitative concepts: usefulness,ease-of-use, efficiency, engagement and trustworthiness. This paradigm served as a contextual framework that allowed us to make the easy-as-pie, gentle but forceful, point to prospective clients that a severe deficiency of any one of those five inseperably interdependent components will drive your target audience away. Simple as that.

If the site is not useful and serves no purpose for your visitors, they’re thinking "what’s the point?" and, *bang*, they’re going to be gone. It’s not easy to use? Your visitors can’t figure out where to find your products? "Well, hey, there are other sites out there that are simpler." And this time the click elsewhere is so fast you can’t even rumple your stilsken. How about if the site doesn’t load quickly or properly, if it just doesn’t work? They’re thinking, "Oh, well, c’est la vie" and, boom-badda-bing, not even a chance to rumple.

And who can blame them? How about a case wherein the website is ugly and anything but engaging? Your site visitors are going to associate that negative perception with the brand and, as per Don Norman’s seminal essay "Emotion & Design: Attractive Thing Work Better," they will likely have less patience working through any obstacles they encounter upon your site. The shopping basket doesn’t work? Forget about it. Nothing need be said, because your visitors are already thinking "I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you now."

And sadly, once your site visitors leave for any one of the above-stated reasons, it’s a fact that there’s a good chance they won’t be coming back, at least not anytime soon. The choice is yours.

Take Excite, for example. That’s a portal that had and lost my loyalty somewhere along the way when I couldn't access my email or personal page for about two weeks. I was a grudging convert to Yahoo, but I’m now a Yahooer all the same because I trust them. Pay now once or pay later again and again and again and again. To paraphrase and extend an old comedy aphorism, "Pay it once and it’s sad. Pay it a third time and it’s funny. On the fourth time, though? You’d better get serious"

The prospect of losing one’s market or audience, a prospect with grave bottom line implications, is never an exciting one, and understanding the ramifications of that, well, that’s not brain surgery either. So, whether our potential clients were companies selling products or services, or organizations selling a message, increasingly, they have at least been willing to listen.

TECHNORATI TAGS :: Internet :: Usability :: Financial :: Online Marketing :: Steve Krug :: Don Norman

Dollars & Sense

Why User-Centered Design Matters

Imagine turning on your television to NBC and all you get is snowy fuzz. Better yet, imagine tuning in to NBC, but not only are stripes floating horizontally down the your snow fuzzy screen, but you also have to take discrete, active steps to access the desired program? In essence you have to ask to watch the show you want to watch. But, “golly darn,” you’re thinking, “this is just as hard as trying to get that damn VCR to record back in the old days.”

Eventually, even if it’s a show you really want to see, what’s going to happen is you’re going to get frustrated and turn the channel or even turn the TV off all together and watch a movie, listen to music, go online, or perhaps, even, read a book? A book? This must be serious.

Think of it this way and you’ll realize that when you get right fdown to the brass tacks of it, the Internet is on some level really little more than a very big, user controlled, interactive TV broadcasting system, except that instead of, say the 300 you may get with satellite TV, there are literally millions of channels along with literally tens of millions, if not more, permanent, infomercial/virtual stores.

That’s a lot of competition compared to the old days of three broadcast networks and AM radio.

And what that means if you’re a premium or ad-supported content provider is that not only do your visitors have to like your programming, a hard enough feat already to achieve, but they also have to be able to find it and seamlessly interact with it. If you’re the equivalent of TV commercial/offline shop, then challenge is that much greater. Not only need you get people to your site in the first place, but you have to compete on price, make yourself appealing enough for them to want to buy your product, enable them to trust you enough to be willing to buy it, make it easy for them to complete the transaction, actually deliver the goods, and do so in a timely manner. Fail anywhere along the way and you’ve just lost a customer, perhaps forever.

After all, no longer need you go one town over to get that same bar of soap. Now it’s about 3 feet feet away max, or roughly the distance your ten fingers need travel along your keyboard in toto to Google another soap outlet and click “Do I feel lucky?”.

That’s a lot of pressure.

Now, given all this, you’d think usable design as a concept would be an easy sell. Every visitor who can’t find what he or she is looking for, or can’t accomplish a task for whatever reason, is a visitor who may not visit your site again, because there are just too many companies out there doing the same thing. That’s just common sense.

Yet, small and medium sized businesses , in particular, especially ones not solely reliant on the web for survival. are still well behind the curve when it comes to understanding the simple premise that, within the online arena, every decision, from “look and feel”, to placement and size of buttons, to shopping cart intuitiveness and technical functionality, is one with decisive bottom line implications. Even when the site is merely informational, rather than functional, in nature, this fundamental truth remains.

Increasingly, the web is the first stop potential customers make before deciding in the first place if they want to do business with you, online or offline. An unpleasant or unimpressive online presence is, simply put, not a stimulating “call to action.” As such, a sub-standard online presence not only will not bring your company extra business, but may actually diminish it, a relative loss that a company may not even notice if its growing.

What’s more, the stakes have increased markedly. It used to be that a satisfied customer told two people and an unsatisfied customer told ten. That was daunting enough. Now the satisfied customer still tells two people but the unsatisfied one tells, what, perhaps a half a million? In the truly user-controlled medium of the Internet, when your target audience feels your company is really off-base, it now has unprecedented means by which to fight back . Blogs, comments on blogs, emails, review and ratings oriented websites, even virtual sit-ins… all these revolutionary feedback methods are at your customers’ disposal. It’s important that companies come to understand this sea change in consumer power.

To invite that kind of negative, corrosive publicity; to create negative brand impressions from the outset; to catalyze a million potential Ralph Naders trolling the Internet? You don’t need an MBA to know that’s just not good business. Better perhaps not to have a website at all in the first place.

Again, that’s just common sense, or rather, dollars and sense.

TECHNORATI TAGS :: Internet :: Usability :: Financial :: Online Marketing :: Branding :: Trust