Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

Learning from Amazon.com

Jared Spool (UIE) is always fun to listen to, and his latest work of art, “Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon” is now on Slideshare. In the presentation, Spool introduces Amazon.com as a unique place on the Internet, where strange things happen, like the reviews for Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz. Some [...]

Web 2.0 Holiday Card

First Round Capital has put together an awesome holiday video in the Where the Hell is Matt? style. They feature 70 companies in their portfolio, many of which are Web 2.0 companies. A few of my favorite organizations in this video are Mint.com, Stumbleupon, and Ambient Devices (I love my Baseball ScoreCast).
[via Laughing Squid]

If the World Could Vote?

The President of the United States has a large global influence, yet the world has no say in who we elect president. If the world could vote? is a website that detects your location based on IP and let’s the whole world vote (albeit, entirely unofficially).
http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/

Google Reader in Plain English

If you don’t use Google Reader or don’t know what it is, then you should watch this video:

This video is by the people at Common Craft, who are experts at explaining technology. One of their best and most popular videos is Twitter in Plain English. I actually think that video helped increase Twitter usage!

Facebook Crosses the Line (Again)

Facebook is notorious for launching features seemingly without any user research. In 2006, Facebook launched the “News Feed”, which led to an unprecedented backlash in social networking. Ironically, two years later it seems that all Facebook users have gotten acclimated to the News Feed and now enjoy the feature. (It was actually the lack of [...]