October 18, 2007 – 11:30 am
We have recently put the finishing touches on a web appliction for the New York State Department of Education. Developed in association with the Literacy Assistance Center in New York, the ASISTS site allows teachers to record the progress and history of students, and to be able to access this information and update it at any location. Being database driven, it can automatically prepare statistical analyses within any specified parameters, for reporting purposes.
For the technically minded, the site features:
- XHTML Strict compliance
- CSS Styled
- Cross browser compatibility
- Small bandwidth footprint
All of which means that it is state-of the-art, as well as having a clear graphic hierarchy to enable users to easily navigate and understand this otherwise complex and extensive site.
November 4, 2005 – 1:48 pm
What was the last book you bought?
Whatever it was, I have a hunch that it had either a distinctive or descriptive title…
(Catch 22 and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity are my last two and I would highly recommend both of them!)
In essence, every e-mail you send has a title too. it is called a subject line and should describe the contents of that e-mail as clearly and succinctly as possible. Yet often, subject lines end up being the most disregarded aspect of the communication. The Subject line is much like the spine of a book, describing the information it contains. I certainly would never pick up a book that had any of the following titles:
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October 7, 2005 – 1:17 pm
How many times do you check your e-mail every day?
If you are like most e-mail users, your e-mail program is set up to check for e-mails every 5-10 minutes. That’s a whopping 48-96 possible interruptions per day respectively! That’s like the mail person giving you letters every few minutes throughout the day. Oh! here’s another one.
This is a bad business and organizational practice.
- It is a sure way to get distracted from your tasks at hand.
- Answering e-mail throughout the day, instead of at a given time, can cause attention and focus deficits often resulting in poorly thought-out or rushed replies.
- Answering e-mail throughout the day will often create a “now or never” reply strategy.
- Constant interruptions can take their toll on your attitude and self-esteem.
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September 12, 2005 – 12:56 pm
Quark, makers of QuarkXpress just unveiled a new identity which is a really fresh departure from their old dusty 1980’s Quark logo.
Unfortunately, It seems that their new brand is almost identical to that of The Scottish Arts Council.
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August 15, 2005 – 9:00 am
Remember the days when you’d long to listen to music by the album? You went over to your shelves and looked at the album artwork to find the music you wanted to listen to. With the invention of MP3s and digital music players, the concept of album covers as navigational aids got lost (along with shelves full of records). Suddenly looking for a song meant you had to know the artist, album, or song name. As a visual thinker, I can easily tell you what any album in my music collection looks like from memory, but have a real problem with knowing what album a given song is on.
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August 11, 2005 – 3:42 pm
Netflix and the Netflix logo are copyright 1997-2005 Netflix, Inc. All rights reserved.
When you love Netflix, as much as we do, it can be a real nuisance when you arrive at work having forgotten to post your viewed Netflix DVD envelopes. You curse your eyes for missing the mail box and hope you remember the envelopes on your way home… but then you forget… again… and the cycle continues.
A vicious cycle.
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I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point, you visit a website that you registered with, maybe your company’s healthcare provider, but you’ve totally forgotten your username and password. If you’re anything like me, you have a few usernames you’ve used over the years and a few passwords you might have used, but which ones are they? A few minutes of trying and I usually give up and ask for my username and password to be e-mailed to me.
This scenario happens to me over and over again and I never seem to get used to it. Is there another way? Are usernames really the best method for registering users?
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