Andrew Wirtanen » Websites

Learning from Amazon.com

Andrew Wirtanen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:37:41 +0000

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 of the main points that stuck with me were: customer reviews are only helpful if you have the customers to drive them, users hate redesigns so roll out designs slowly, and sometimes making one small change to meet user goals can have a large impact on sales (e.g. Amazon’s most helpful favorable and critical reviews).

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Amazon.com and I place orders nearly every month. I’ve loved the tab-free design ever since I first encountered it in 2007.

One of the most recent oddities on Amazon.com is the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, which inspired this Pocahontas parody video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Web 2.0 Holiday Card

Andrew Wirtanen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:00:04 +0000

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).

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via Laughing Squid]

If the World Could Vote?

Andrew Wirtanen — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:51:43 +0000

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

Andrew Wirtanen — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:25:37 +0000

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

Click here to view the embedded 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)

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:30:01 +0000

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 privacy settings that originally bugged most users).

Today, while browsing my News Feed, I noticed this (image altered with sensitive info removed):

I’m pretty sure I read that Facebook was going to start doing this, but I did not think I would ever see it. Who possibly could have thought this would be a good idea?

Facebook’s “Pages” features allows users to become a fan of certain products, celebrities, etc. Somewhere in Facebook’s Terms and Conditions (I couldn’t find the clause when I looked), Facebook must have a condition that allows a user’s image and name to be used to promote a product to their friends on the site.

I am really amazed that Facebook continues to do things like this. They are pushing the limits of privacy, and are sure to see another backlash.

Firefox 3 Download Day 2008

Andrew Wirtanen — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:12:31 +0000

Firefox is going for the world record for most downloads in one day! Go to SpreadFirefox.com to pledge your download. There’s no set date for the download yet, but if you pledge they will send you an email reminder.

I’ve recommended grabbing a copy of the beta in my Firefox 3 UI Review, but it’s perfectly ok if you want to wait for Download Day.

UPDATE: Download Day is June 17, 2008.

Most Popular Social Networks Around the World

Andrew Wirtanen — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:48:57 +0000

This (French) visualization shows what the most popular social networks are around the world. I’ve always found it interesting how some regions will rally around a certain social network, even though others have clear benefits.

(larger image on Le Monde.fr; via Neatorama via Geek Like Me)

Gmail Labels – New Features

Andrew Wirtanen — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:39:04 +0000

Google has rolled out some new features for labels in Gmail. Personally, I am a heavy user of labels, with almost 30 different labels. I have some filters that automatically assign labels (e.g. Newbury Comics weekly deals get assigned the “Shopping” label and skip my inbox) and I assign some labels on-the-fly.

Now, you can choose from 24 different colors for your labels. Associating a color to a label makes it more salient, and it is a lot easier to visually recognize what an email is (e.g. is it from your work life or a personal email?). Another great feature Google added was the ability to remove labels with ease without having to use any drop-down menus:

This simple feature will probably save me a lot of time because I am always accidentally assigning a label to something. Previously, you had to go the particular label’s emails and then find the email you wanted to remove.

Google says that these features are only available in Firefox 2 and IE7. They only work in the latest version of Gmail (with IMAP and the re-organized contacts section).

New Amazon.com Design

Andrew Wirtanen — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:52:08 +0000

To my surprise, I was greeted with a new Amazon.com design this morning. Apparently, Amazon is pushing the new design out very slowly. I have only been able to get to the new design in Firefox, and not all computers with Firefox get it. You don’t have to be signed in to see it.

Here it is:

The tabs are gone! Tabs were a great idea when Amazon was smaller. Since expanding to allow for a wide array of products and now the new DRM-free MP3 store, Amazon has overgrown the tabs–they were overwhelming. The new design is like a breath of fresh air, and hopefully it will prove useful and usable.

Jing Project (Verdict: Useful and Usable)

Andrew Wirtanen — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:56:50 +0000

The guys at TechSmith are up to it again. They have created a product called Jing (Mac or PC). Once installed, the software allows you to create SWF (Flash) movies and PNG images. Basic image editing tools are provided, and you can choose to upload your files to Techsmith’s Screencast.com or download them to your computer (and upload them to your own site).

The one feature I would like in the software is the ability to choose which microphone you want to use when you are making a video like you can in other software. As a test, I created a video showing other writers at CodBall how to insert an image into a post in Wordpress. It came out pretty well.

TechSmith hopes that Jing will evolve into more complex software that they can add to their product line. To me, it really seems like a lightweight Camtasia that also works on Macs. For now, it’s free. So, if you need to make a quick video tutorial (or “screencast” as TechSmith calls it) or need basic screenshot software, this is a good tool.

(Thanks to commandN #99 for the tip.)