Andrew Wirtanen » Microsoft

Usability Hits Mainstream

Andrew Wirtanen — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:06:37 +0000

Usability has come a long way since 1983 (the year I was born and the year this photo of Bill Gates was taken). The first Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference was held in 1982 and some of the major contributions to the field were published a decade later (e.g. Nielsen’s Usability Engineering and Dumas’s A Practical Guide to Usability Testing). For more on the birth of usability, see an earlier post.

This week is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and Bill Gates delivered his last CES keynote. He will step down to a part-time role at Microsoft in July (while maintaining the chairman title). When asked about the difference between Apple’s approach and Microsoft’s approach to product releases, Gates points to usability. Gates explains that Microsoft has a large number of researchers and there is a “renaissance of usability and prototyping” led by people like Bill Buxton (author of Sketching User Experiences). Gates notes the need to combine usability with the deep computer science work that Microsoft is good at. He claims success in usability with Office 2007 and XBox. He applauds Apple for focusing in on specific products and polishing them. See the full interview at Gizmodo.

If Bill Gates recognizing usability is not enough for you, then take a look at US News and World Report’s Top 31 Careers. The list includes “Usability/user experience specialist.”

The Best Free Anti-Virus: AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Free Edition

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:41:46 +0000

Do you have an expired copy of Norton or McAfee Anti-Virus? Get rid of them and download AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Free Edition immediately! Virus protection is the most important program you can have installed on a Windows computer. New viruses are created all the time, and it is crucial to have virus protection and to be behind a router (which acts as a firewall—to keep the bad guys out of your system).

Another tip: download Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 for safer, better Web browsing (given the choice, I would recommend Firefox, but the new Internet Explorer is certainly a step up from IE6).

eBooks: Almost Ready for Prime-Time

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:17:06 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that I am now convinced that the days of books printed on paper are numbered. This new eBook Reader from iRex Technologies (warning: PDF link) looks almost like something I would buy. I would certainly rather use it to read eBooks than a Microsoft Origami device. Was Ray Kurzweil a little cautious when he predicted that paper would be rarely used by 2019 in his 1999 effort The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence?

In other recent virtual paper news, the Universal Display Corporation unveiled a 4-inch prototype of a 100dpi flexible OLED display last month. At this time last year, Philips Polymer Vision promised paper-liked displays in two years, and seems to be on track since they showed off a grayscale 5″ rollable display at this year’s CES in January.

Google Pack and Video Store

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 18:01:15 +0000

Attention Windows XP users: with a few swift clicks you can now download most of the software that you will ever need, straight from Google. But, don’t just click “Download Google Pack”. Instead, you should click Add or remove software and check everything EXCEPT Norton AntiVirus 2005, RealPlayer, and Ad-Aware. Of course, you probably already have Adobe Acrobat. And, if you’re a techie you probably already have everything else too! So, this is pretty useless to me.

For free antispyware, you should use Microsoft Antispyware. For free virus protection, check out AVG, Avast 4, or Antivir. But, make sure to only have one of those installed at a time. Whatever you do, don’t install Norton AntiVirus or your computer. It will clog your machine up like a shower drain in a sorority house.

In other Google news, the company announced they will launch an online video store in the near future. The video store will complete directly with iTunes. Also, they are preparing a computer maintenance service.