How Good Does Your Website Look on Paper?

"The best way to improve the effectiveness of your company's web site is to let your site's users lend you a hand (quite literally) through the process of paper prototyping.

Paper prototyping is a fast, low-cost method of testing web site designs. It involves creating rough sketches of a web site design and inviting some of your users to take the design for a test drive using their pen, instead of a mouse, to complete important tasks.

As users explore the site on paper, they are asked to describe their experience aloud to a facilitator who explains the tasks to be completed. Although a typical paper prototyping session takes less than an hour of a user's time, the amount of time it saves your company can be invaluable."

How many items should go in a menu?

"A lot of people think 7 ± 2 (i.e., between 5 and 9, with a preference for 7).
NO! It isn't! And here I will explain why. But first I have to give a very short history lesson"

Well, the thinking is that if a person can memorise 7 ± 2 items, then that is what should be in a menu. That’s the maximum amount that can be retained in short term memory without it being “processed” into long term memory.

Yup, people always get this wrong ...

Stock Icon Design

The development of an icon can be a deep process of applying personal knowledge, corporate context, and skilled labor towards the creation of something the user will see and interact with and that will drive her experience with an application.

The ubiquity of visual symbols associated with particular Web interactions or content has lead to a growth of stock icon offerings. Icon designers utilize icon semiotics to package common representations as ready-to-use sets for Web development and design teams. Some of the best examples include:

Stock Icons
Icon Base
Icon Buffet
Icon Kits

Orientation-sensitive clock radio and cuddly bear for snoozing

"Quattro alarm clock is housed in a translucent enclosure without button nor markings. Its functions depends on its position: orientating it on the side it's a radio, upright it becomes an alarm timer and placed horizontally it's a clock. As you come nearer to Quattro, it detects your presence and reveals illuminated touch-sensitive controls relevant to its current function."

E-mail and closed-caption television supplant deaf clubs as centers of the community

"At a recent gathering, middle-aged and elderly deaf members sat at long tables, eating egg-salad sandwiches and playing bingo. A strobe light signaled the winner.

Efforts to expand the club's membership have been futile. 'We tried for the last three years to pull the youth in here, but when they see the old people, it's not their thing. They can't relate,' said club historian Tim Wata, a 50-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer.

Schooley blames it on technology. Televisions come with closed-caption devices. Hollywood movies can be ordered with 'open caption' subtitles. There is e-mail and Internet chat rooms for the deaf. A hand-held text-messaging device is growing in popularity. And a new system called video relay allows a deaf person to communicate visually with another deaf person or interpreter through a TV set.

'Most of them stay home -- just like the hearing people,' said Schooley, 70, who worked in graphic arts."

Liquid Information vs Remembrance Augmentation

"Consider the concept of Liquid Information. Its a very simple idea .... index all the words and phrases in a body of text, and then allows you to click through to other sources. Producing what they call deep legibility. Its something I do manually already, highlighting a word or phrase and searching with a bookmarklet. This takes that idea a step forward. In their CNN demo you hover over any word and are given a menu as to how to use it. It relates also to the broad Remembrance Augmentation concept, previously discussed, which seeks to automate the same kind of process by simply going ahead and searching for any non-noise thing on the screen. The latter is ideal in that you dont have to take the initiative, but it requires screen real estate and some intelligence to choose words and phrases."

Mind reader

"By the end of 2005 the first biometric-enabled passports will be issued within the UK. Containing a biometric facial recognition image, the document will act as a precursor to the introduction of a compulsory national identity card, to be phased in from 2008.

The government hopes that a biometric facial image will help to counter identity fraud and verify the identity of the holder against the document. And if present policy is continued, along with facialinformation the card is also likely to contain both fingerprint and iris scan data."

New Yahoo Tool Sends Business Info to Mobile Phones

"Yahoo began offering on Thursday a new tool that allows users of its local search service to send restaurant or business information in the form of a text message from a computer to a mobile phone.

Yahoo said its new service is available across all the major wireless carriers at no charge for consumers. However, wireless carriers may charge fees for receiving text messages on a mobile handset. "

Sensitile - responsive material

"SensiTile is based on a patent pending set of new technologies that allows the material to become sensitive to changes in light intensity and color. Due to this ability a SensiTile system will respond to the movement around it by creating a dazzling set of ripples on its surface. The technology is completely passive in that it does not need to be powered but instead uses daylight and ambient light as its source of power."

OK, some interface designer should be able to think of a use for this technology ...

Audit Before You Redesign

"An audit (usually qualified as a 'site audit,' an 'e-mail marketing audit,' etc.) is a nonbiased look at your company's Web site, e-mail marketing, loyalty program, or any other part of your business that needs improvement. You know the better you design and plan a project, the easier that project will be to execute. That same logic holds true here.

Instead of jumping into a project because it's been on the backburner or is relentlessly internally championed, you must set priorities based on their anticipated lift to the business. Many companies spend millions of dollars based on the whims of executive management or on projects IT thought were 'cool,' though the projects' actual value was questionable.

In a nutshell, an audit should inventory what's good and bad with your current marketing efforts and Web site. Depending on the expertise involved, an audit should list problems with current initiatives and suggest solutions."

Functionality Is Dead

The name of the game in the 1990s was functionality and technology. The new game is ease of use and accessibility.

This wasn’t the first time I was wrong about the relative importance of functionality. I made such a mistake in the late 1980s when I believed that software startups Wonderware (shop-floor interface) and Parametric Technology (computer-aided design) would crash and burn because they did not have the requisite functionality needed to do all the jobs their marketing brochures claimed. And while I was correct about their lack of functionality, I was wrong about how an intuitive and almost fun user experience can make up for a lot of functional and technological shortcomings. (Obviously, they didn’t crash and burn.)

Companies should add the following considerations to their application evaluation process:
Be accessible to a wide variety of employees, suppliers, and customers.
Be simple and inexpensive to upgrade and maintain.
Require little training for diverse sets of users.
Coexist with complementary and competitive solutions.

This article is in PDF format ...

Designed to learn faster by better reading online

"Ever been obliged to read a complex sentence several times? After analysing how people stare at computer screens, a European team has developed some 20 guidelines for improving electronic-page layout and a new assessment methodology for e-learning systems.

Tracking where and for how long people look at a screen is popular today. Armed with this precious information, webmasters can improve their sites and attract people to spend longer exploring them. Such data is very important to website owners and advertisers. But it also has many implications for developers of education and e-learning systems.

If your eyes jump around a Web page, it's usually because you are struggling to absorb what you see and read, says eye-movement expert, Professor Daniela Zambarbieri. To learn and recall what you are reading, you need to see text in sequence."

Usable vs. Functional Reminders

"Many programs have the same kind of functionality, but they often differ greatly in terms of usability. The difference between just being able to do something and being able in a usable way is very important. A usable product is faster to use, gives you a higher user satisfaction and helps you keep focus.
A very real example of the difference, are the 'reminder' functionality from Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. Both programs allow you to create a task or an appointment and add a reminder to it. These reminders will then be displayed at a specific time using a dialog."

See the difference? Both programs are equally capable of handling and displaying reminders. But, there is a huge difference in usability. Outlook provides the information needed (and then some) so that you can get back to your work as quickly as possible.

Lotus Notes completely fails to be usable, by displaying a generic dialog - asking a non-informative question - "You missed one alarm. Do you wish to display it now?". How do I know? How can I answer that question without knowing what the alarm is about? If it is about an important meeting with my boss in 15 minutes, then I would surely want to see it. If it is that I am meeting some friends tomorrow evening - it can wait. But I do not know any of this!

Bluebroc is pleased to announce the coming release of the bluebroc C2

The C-Station is designed for comfort and relaxation. The C-shaped workspace wrapped around the ergonomically designed chair provides space for a remote control, mobile phone, book and drink.

They advertise it as ergonomic furniture ...

Information Visualization

In all honesty, we struggled a lot with the visualization of the data. Why? Simply because we wanted to address different issues at the same time — in retrospect probably too many issues. As mentioned we collected a number of attributes in the form, both quantitative and qualitative. Our initial approach was statistical, abstracted from emotion, a dry representation of data. It soon became apparent that such a visualization did not communicate the core of our project: it did not encompass the emotional or personal qualities inherent to the data set. Conclusion: back to the drawing board — hit it hard! Thus, going back to the core, and taking the stories as a starting point we sketched out different ways of accessing and displaying the content. How to browse the system? How to access the core of the data? What are essential attributes in this particular visualization? What is the essence of the user experience?

In the end we concluded that emotions, music (songs, artists) and memories (stories) are the main attributes, i.e. the essence of our visualization. Consequently we designed a 3 column interface that would reflect this approach, with a distinct focus on the memories. So what does it look like? I included a few screenshots, but I am not yet disclosing the full application. For the simple reason that we are building a public version that will launch sometime soon.

A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect: How To Measure Conversion Rates

"Conversion rate measures the number of visitors who took the action you wanted on your site divided by the total number of visitors. Every end-goal conversion (Macro-conversion), like a purchase, is composed of Micro-conversion points, like the click-through path in a shopping cart. In order to achieve the Macro-conversion a series of decisions has to be taken by the visitor, these clicks are measurable evidence of those decisions.

Only when you define and plan for Macro-conversions vs. Micro-conversions then you can understand why conversion rate is truly a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action(s) you want them to take. It's a reflection of your effectiveness in planning for every decision and the customer's satisfaction with your plan's implementation. Since every click represents a person making a decision then for you to achieve your goals, visitors must first achieve theirs first. "

The answer you're searching for... is "Browse"

"A recent memo released by the PEW/Internet and American Life Project reports that the use of search engines ranks second only to email as the most popular activity on-line. On any given day, they continue, roughly half of the 64 million American adults who are on-line will use a search engine."

Recent research suggests that users' decisions to search or browse depends as much on the site as on the users' disposition toward a given navigation strategy. For instance, Katz and Byrne (2004) report that navigation strategies selection on on-line shopping sites depends on menu breadth and information scent. Information scent derives from information foraging theory to describe how much and how confidently a user can predict remote information based on the design and labels used in an information structure (Pirolli and Card, 1995). Clear labels provide good scent. Breadth refers to the number of navigation options a user has on a given level of a site. Greater breadth means more choices.

Finding Trends in Customer Feedback

"Have you ever sent an email to Microsoft, asking a question, suggesting a new feature, telling them about how you use their products? Millions of people read Microsoft Web sites every day, and many of them send emails. Do you wonder if anyone reads those emails?

Since there are only so many hours in the day, Microsoft employees have to struggle to keep up with the flood. Even though they want to read every email so that they can help their customers, they can't always achieve this goal.

Ben Martin and Olivier Ribet, who both worked for different groups within Microsoft.com in areas of customer connection, wanted a tool to make it easier to find out what customers were saying. Martin sent an email to Microsoft Research, asking if anyone had done work in text mining. Hang Li, a researcher from MSR Asia, answered him, and six weeks later they had a working prototype of a tool that could analyze text, identifying customer pain points, issues, and trends."

By Suzanne Ross, Microsoft Research ...

What Makes Users Unhappy: Share-Point Team Services Web Server Security

"For more than 20 years we have written about user satisfaction, and it seems as if even with all the changes during this time, some things remain the same (See reference list). For example, our article about 'What Makes Users Happy' (COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY, Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986) shows that system response time is the single most important factor. But it seems that sometimes the design of software slows down the system response time to a level that can make users very unhappy. Such a case in point is the Microsoft IIS & SPTS - Internet Information Server and Share Point Team Services."

Self-destruct button for your PC

"A group of young Japanese liked the idea of a self-destruct button for PC desktop. They took up the idea, improved it by reducing it to a size of 5", and made it functional."

Now here is an idea ...

The alarm clock that physically drags you out of bed

"Hayat Benchenaa's hanging radio alarm clock physically drags you out of bed.

In the evening, after you've set the alarm, the glowing Sfera gradually dims and the music fades as you drift off to sleep. When the alarm chimes in the morning, you must reach up and tap the Sfera to silence it. Which triggers the snooze function and makes the alarm rise higher. As it slowly rises away from your reach, you must stretch higher each time to gain another ten minutes of snooze.

When Sfera finally reaches the ceiling, you have no option but to get up and drag it back down to your bed - an action which switches off the alarm. (the device was part of the Strangely Familiar exhibit, more to come about "

On the lighter side ...

Citroen adds a sense of smell to the new C4

"Its called Olfactory Marketing and started back in the 1980s when British supermarkets discovered that if they had a bakery in a supermarket, the smell of fresh baking bread helped them sell not just more bread, but more of everything else too. French car maker, Citroen, is now set to follow the bakers with the launch of the Citroen C4, offering as standard a scent-diffuser in the ventilation system and a range of nine different scents. The success of Olfactory Marketing and Citroen's decision to make it a feature of the C4 is based on the fact that smells can have a significant effect on mood and sense of well being and their effect is usually very subtle. As well as providing a very pleasant environment for users of the C4, the perfumes also have ability to inspire an environment that is conducive to safe driving."

Workshop on Improving the Interplay between Usability Evaluation and User Interface Design

"In connection with the NordiCHI conference, a workshop on Improving the Interplay between Usability Evaluation and User Interface Design was held on 24 October 2004. The goal of the workshop was to determine state-of-the-art in the interplay between usability evaluation and user interface design and to generate ideas for new and improved relations between these activities."

The proceedings are published here ...

Print using any Material

"Not sure if the VersaLaser can print 3-D but it can print out objects using any number of materials like wood, plastic, fabric, paper, glass, leather, stone, ceramic and even rubber. Also, the $10,000 price tag is considerably cheaper than most 3-d printers."

Hummm, an interesting idea ...

Creating playful users

"If you're a game developer, the things you're building are all aboutplay. But what if your product or service isn't inherently playful?

Brains love play. Find a way to bring more play (or at least a sense of playfulness) into someone's life, and you might just end up with a fan. Brains evolved to play, and apparently the bigger the brain, the more likely it is to play. Play turns the brain on."

Interesting concept ...

Modeling User Workflows for Rich Internet Applications

"As Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) become more advanced, the tasks, problems, and processes they address become increasingly complex, making it more important than ever to accurately model user workflows. Early Internet applications were often narrowly focused in scope, and the steps were relatively simple and sequential, for example, purchasing items through simple e-commerce, reserving hotel rooms, or renting cars. But as productivity applications move toward a web-based distribution model, the tasks become more complicated.

In these newer, more complex applications, the steps are typically nonsequential; some examples of these types of applications include educational online training content and applications that track customer public utility usage and payment. To build an effective, efficient, and useful application, an application designer must have a complete understanding of these complex workflows; the tasks, information, and processes necessary to complete them; and the needs of the people using the RIA."

A good article by David Hogue, Macromedia ...

Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works - Kelly Goto

"Our approach is a bit different. In addition to usability testing, we incorporate a more ethnographic-based methodology (observation and immersive research techniques) throughout the process. While these methods are also not new to the industry, they are generally not applicable to fast-paced project and product cycles. We've been working closely with outside research firms and getting into culture and lifestyle, which is important as we strive to create experiences that integrate into people's everyday lives, not just one-off experiences.

Integrated cycles of testing from the earliest stages of the development cycle are really key. Contextual inquiry, card sorting, prototype testing and final-assessment testing help shape the experience of new products and application-based services. What Jacob outlines is true, but I don't believe our method is a simple rehashing of old theories. Incorporating testing into the actual process - that is the most important.

In the book, we weave a careful balance between telling people what they should do versus what they can do. If I suggest something, I want to be sure people can do it. So, my mentioning usability in the book was not as detailed as the New Usability because it is difficult to incorporate one in the Core Process, much less several rounds of testing into the general process."




Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works

Uncovering Users In Your Own Organization

"This article is the first of a two-part series that recommends internal resources that you can assess. In Part One, we examine customer databases. In Part Two of the series, we will consider other internal resources, such as product managers, call support centers, field consultants, and corporate surveys."

"Like most of you, I can’t wait to get into the field to observe users working with my products. Yet, I’m going to pull on the reins, and do a 180-degree turn. Don’t worry - it’s still research, but from an internal perspective. There is a wealth of information at your fingertips in your own office, and surprisingly, some of it is usability-related. You can optimize your internal resources by understanding where and how you can find UI information about your users within your own company. To provide context and practical guidelines, this article presents examples of how to mine internal resources at a large enterprise software company."

Another great Boxes and Arrows article ...

Usability Tip: Explain Acronyms And Abbreviations

"Visitors get annoyed when Web sites use unfamiliar terms without adequate explanation, so keep them happy with these two HTML elements: ACRONYM and ABBR. They help you increase the accessibility and usability of your Web pages by adding additional information about technical or unusual terms. Both are easy to add and help all visitors better understand your content."

Mobile virus infects Lexus cars

"Lexus cars may be vulnerable to viruses that infect them via mobile phones. Landcruiser 100 models LX470 and LS430 have been discovered with infected operating systems that transfer within a range of 15 feet."

What is Navmo?

"navmo is a revolutionary product for delivering A to B route information to mobile phone users. Going beyond the limitations of static text or map directions, navmo actively guides users to their destination - simply using their mobile phone or PDA."

A simple Java application ...

MarketWatch Using Eyetools for Shopping Cart Optimization

"In an effort to improve the shopping experience for its visitors, MarketWatch is using Eyetools data to analyze consumer behavior within their Web site shopping cart. By testing the design of their current shopping cart, MarketWatch has been able to target specific elements in the purchase process and discover opportunities to enhance their visitors' overall experience.

MarketWatch invited actual site users to use the site and purchase products as their eye-movements were tracked. Study participants' comments were analyzed relative to what they had read and purchased, in order to quantify trends in what decisions they made.

'Using Eyetools technology along with their standard usability testing has given us very valuable data,' said Dan Silmore, Vice President of Marketing for MarketWatch. 'We were able to separate the importance of design from that of text copy. And, correlating visitor's opinions and decisions with what they actually looked at during their experience was immensely valuable.' "

Eyetools

Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training

"Assume that you are in charge of a development project and you have about $10,000 to spend on usability. What would you do? What is the best way to use the money? What will make the project a success? What is the right thing to do for the organization? What will be best for customers?

This line of questioning is important because it makes you think about how money should be invested in usability. It gives you a chance to think about what you really value. It forces you to think about usability as a process and a set of tools, as something that must be balanced against other business needs. Unfortunately, most people are too worried about getting money for usability in the first place, but not worried enough about how to spend that money once they get it.

In my experience, usability professionals use their budgets to run usability studies. That is, when given money, they immediately start setting up usability programs to solve particular problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone because many usability professionals think the value of usability is derived entirely from the results produced through usability tests.

Most people think usability is synonymous with usability testing. It isn't, and this misconception frustrates me."

Another great article by John Rhodes ...

Flexible displays finally a reality? Enter Bio-nanofibers

"Kyoto University, Pioneer Corporation, and Rohm Corporation announced on the 25th that they have developed new technologies intended for use in flexible displays. There are two new technologies: a 'bio-luminescent transistor,' an organic transistor with EL luminsense, and a 'low heat expanding transparent substrate,' through reinforcement of the original bio nanofibers.

An application for these results is that it is now possible to create display devices that are light, flexible, hard to break, and can display on curved surfaces. Some sample tangible applications include flexible displays for mobile devices, electronic paper/newspapers, and electronic posters."

SIMpill

"A local doctor has developed a pill bottle that uses cellphone technology to remind patients to take their medicines and warns them if they are about to take an extra dose by mistake"

The patented bottle contains an electronic chip that sends an SMS to a secure central server when the cap is removed. The SMS includes a unique pill box identification number.

If the SMS arrives too early or too late, the server sends a reminder to the patient's cellphone, or one belonging to a family member or health-care professional. "Unlike alarm clocks, which often sit on the shelf and beep unnoticed, cellphones tend to be carried around," said Green. The patients' pill-taking schedules were programmed into the tamper-proof pill bottles by the pharmacist who dispenses their medicines.

The first palm operated pointing device

"With the ErgoClick you use both hands in a completely relaxed manner - the right hand (palm only) is used to position the pointer on the screen and the left hand (palm only) to click.

People typically grip the common mouse too hard as it is required in order to maintain precision while performing clicking actions.
The ErgoClick will make any mouse of any design better by permitting the user to use a lighter grip on their mouse."

The ErgoClick has a unique feature which is not available in any other keyboard or traditional mouse currently on the market – an adjustable clicking force. You can adjust the actuation force of the button from 30 grams to 300 grams, creating as light or as strong a touch as required. Even at the lightest force setting of 30 grams, the click sensation provided is highly tactile and responsive.

Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata

"This paper examines user-?generated metadata as implemented and applied in two web services designed to share and organize digital media to better understand grassroots classification. Metadata - data about data - allows systems to collocate related information, and helps users find relevant information. The creation of metadata has generally been approached in two ways: professional creation and author creation. In libraries and other organizations, creating metadata, primarily in the form of catalog records, has traditionally been the domain of dedicated professionals working with complex, detailed rule sets and vocabularies. The primary problem with this approach is scalability and its impracticality for the vast amounts of content being produced and used, especially on the World Wide Web. The apparatus and tools built around professional cataloging systems are generally too complicated for anyone without specialized training and knowledge. A second approach is for metadata to be created by authors. The movement towards creator described documents was heralded by SGML, the WWW, and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. There are problems with this approach as well - often due to inadequate or inaccurate description, or outright deception. This paper examines a third approach: user-?created metadata, where users of the documents and media create metadata for their own individual use that is also shared throughout a community."

An excellent paper on Folksonomies ...

Folksonomy Schmolksonomy

"The tagging battles rage on, with a slew of posts by Clay Shirky provoking an unusually active discussion among the Many-to-Many blog readership. As a card-carrying acolyte of knowledge management who is deeply skeptical about current efforts to create a semantic web, I feel like I can sympathize with those on both sides of the debate.

On the one hand, Clay has a point. After years of effort by slews of brainy individuals, the semantic web is going nowhere. Then one day someone strikes upon the right balance of usability and utility to create a tagging system that is both simple enough for people actually to use and robust enough to be of value to a community of users, not just the one doing the tagging. The new Techorati Tags feature drives home the point raised by the brilliant-in-their-simplicity tagging systems used by del.icio.us and Flikr, showing how cool it is to unify them with each other and with blog tags (which have been around for a while in a non-folksonomy manifestion)."

A good discussion ...

Speed is in the Eye of the Beholder

"Often times, the perception of waiting less is just as effective as the actual fact of waiting less. For instance, an owner of a Porsche achieves the thrill of directness between translation of a slight tap on the acceleration pedal, to be manifest as an immediate burst of speed. Yet in any normal rush hour situation, a Porsche doesn't go any faster than a Hyundai. The Porsche owner, however, still derives pleasure from his or her perception that they are getting to work faster in a quantitatively faster machine. The visual and tactile semantics of the Porsche's cockpit all support the qualitative illusion that the driver is going faster than when he or she is sitting inside a Hyundai. We can say the same thing for computer case designs.

The voluptuous G3 and G4 desktop computers by Apple bore a kind of visual slippery-ness that pervaded their graphical user-interface dubbed 'Aqua.' With windows swooshing about like a magic genie, and with icons popping their heads all over the place like a broken game of Whack-A-Mole, you are introduced to a magical space of a perceived faster and better computer. Only thing is that Apple has gotten it completely wrong with their over-graphicized interfaces. Try running an older version of the Macintosh operating system on one of the newer computers and you can see real speed because less processor power is being used to theatricize a visual cast of too many overpaid extras."

Remember this? ...

Computer glasses can reduce strain

"Rollyn Trueblood of Hockessin had worn bifocals for years when he started noticing neck and back pain when he worked at his computer.
But since he started using specially designed computer glasses, Trueblood, 57, said his workdays have been pain-free.

'I wear bifocals ordinarily, and I had to tilt my head way back so I could see through the bifocals and see the screen,' he said. '[The computer glasses] worked real well. I have no headaches, no backaches, no neck pain, nothing like that. I'm much more relaxed.' "

SDK eases Windows CE user interface design

"Vibren Technologies has released a software development kit (SDK) for creating custom Windows CE user interface shells. ATOMS, an acronym for Advanced Task Oriented Mobility Suite, is an HTML-based tool utilizing a modular architecture that supports a wide range of technologies for input, communications, and messaging.

According to Vibren, ATOMS makes use of Vibren-developed technology modules that 'expose and enhance technologies already supported in the Windows CE operating system.' "

Meet the silent conversation

"What if you could carry on a telephone conversation while remaining perfectly silent? It sounds impossible, but it is a technology that is likely to come to your cell phone within the next few years.

The new technology will put an end to what has become a familiar scene - an embarrassed person answering his silent but vibrating cellphone in a meeting, lecture, or performance, and whispering loudly, 'I can't talk to you right now' - or, in the case of an urgent call, apologetically rushing out of the room in order to answer or call the person back. "

The Silent Communications solution that the company has dubbed 'Talking without Talking' (TWT) changes this. With TWT, the cell phone allows the user to prerecord messages that can be played by pushing the right buttons on a menu. Users can answer incoming calls that otherwise would have been missed and rejected - and converse freely while remaining silent. The cell phone user hears the speaker on the other end using the handset or with a headset, and can respond to the caller by selecting pre-recorded responses. The product would come with a list of pre-recorded responses, but owners would be able to customize and alter their own responses, and record the existing responses in their own voice if they wish.

Fingerprint Door Lock

"This innovative door lock combines a conventional cylinder lockset with sophisticated high precision fingerprint recognition technology. It can store up to 10 fingerprints, and has the unique ability to delete and enroll individual fingerprints from its memory without the need of a computer link."

Very easy to install, and even easier to operate. Constructed from durable zinc-alloy metal, this lock is suitable for home or office and requires no hard wiring or complicated door modifications.

Simple enough for everyday use ...

XML Smell language developed by university

"A RESEARCHER at Huelva University in Spain claims to have created a version of XML that can transmit smells. Or fragrances if you prefer. According to the university, the ability to transmit smells has applications in many fields, including tourism, gaming, marketing, medicine, and others. We can think of some of the others, but we guess you can too.

The university said that it's worked with researchers in both computing and chemistry to come up with the concept of the XML Smell language. It said the initial idea was to print smells on paper using laser and inkjet printers, but the fragrances degraded over a short period of time. And so the boffins claim to have developed a dual pass printing system, using two polymers which degrade by light and by touch, so that the niff only niffs when a document is read."

A new consideration for HCI ...

Computer scientists identify future IT challenges

A group of British computer scientists have proposed a number of "grand challenges" for IT that they hope will drive forward research, similar to the way the human genome project drove life sciences research through the 1990s. Ambitious goals include harnessing the power of quantum physics, building systems that can't go wrong, and simulating living creatures in every detail.

"The seven challenges are presented in seven chapters of the report, each one describing the ultimate goal, the kinds of research needed to reach that goal over a 15-year period, and the disciplines that would need to be involved. The suggestions -- quite detailed for the early years but vaguer and more conjectural as they look further ahead -- are intended to provoke discussion of the long-term aspirations for computing research.

The Grand Challenges report can be found on the BCS Web site

Google Scholar Focuses on Research-Quality Content

"Despite all the warnings from experienced information professionals, many scholars, researchers, and students continue to make Google their first stop for locating research information. Google has now introduced a beta service called Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) that segregates research quality sources and provides special search features and result displays to accommodate scholars' information needs. While not removing any sites from the main Google service, Google Scholar enables specific searches of scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, and technical reports. Content includes a range of publishers and aggregators with whom Google already has standing arrangements, e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, OCLC's Open WorldCat library locator service, etc. Result displays will show different version clusters, citation analysis, and library location (currently books only). Although claiming coverage from all broad areas of research, early evaluation seems to show a clear emphasis on science and technology, rather than the arts, humanities, or social sciences. "

They keep that interface clean ...

Search engine Google sets sights on video

"Monday night, Google introduced a test site that searches closed-caption TV show transcripts (www.google.com/video).

What the site won't let you do is locate specific video clips, even though some smaller video search engines offer that. Google says clips will come in the next version.

Rival Yahoo countered Google's Monday announcement by saying it would incorporate closed-caption transcripts at its test site video.search.yahoo.com by the end of February. Yahoo said it also will add searchable news video clips -- currently unavailable.
Google is working with transcripts from ABC, PBS, C-Span and Fox News.

As more video goes online, the ability to search for it is the next frontier, Internet search analysts say."

Another clean interface ...

Earthquake Resistant Desk

"The Yomiuri reports that Kokuyo is about to release a new earthquake resistant desk designed to withstand twice the weight of a ordinary school furniture. I imagine with it's protection panels and catching bars it can protect from all sorts of calamities."

A good idea but is this desk a stand-up model? ...

Treehugger: Q&A. Sustainable Snow Shoveling

" Well, I don't like putting salt out. Sand is bad for the storm drains. Both are bad for my floors. A couple of things, though: I need something more sustainable than a snow shovel. Oh, yes, the shovel will last a long time and can be made of fairly friendly materials... But the surgical materials needed to eventually repair my back or replace my heart will not be, and then there'll be my corpse to dispose of organically as well... I'm not getting any younger."

Interesting ergonomic implications ...