After years of doing the remote control shuffle including some failed attempts at having one remote dominate the other, I picked up a Harmony 880.

To my astonishment, this thing actually works and I have put my tv remote, av remote, dvd remote, comcast remote, and apple tv remote all in a box on a shelf.

In my hand is one remote to rule them all.

Harmony has created an excellent web application to help you build up your remote around activites (e.g. watch tv, listen to the radio) and it has the nuance to handle even tricky stuff like getting apple tv on board and even including the 30 second skip for a comcast dvr.

A while back I griped about Yahoo! Mail beta. It was nice but oh so slow. It also didn’t handle multiple accounts. With the recent global release, I gave it another shot, and I pleased to say that this is the finest web mail app I have used (caveat: I have not tried the new upgrade to .Mac).

Better than Gmail? Yep. It has a much cleaner UI, nicer integration with chat/messenger, rss feeds and a notification of new feeds (could do better here — like bold instead of the wimpy explosion graphic). Gmail’s performance gains originally outweighed their design risks and clutter. Not anymore.

Yahoo! Mail represents forward progress. I’ll be honest though; email needs to be totally reinvented from interface to feature set. It has served its time and someone needs to take it up a whole new level. Business idea, hmm…

Tags: yahoomail, gmail, email, web2.0

Am I missing something or does Google not handle multiple email addresses per account? I have been invited to a few Google Groups recently and if it doesn’t go to my logged in gmail address then it tells me I have joined but won’t show me the group. WTF?

How can you have that many freaking engineers and not get the basics of usability down?

Tags: google, googlegroups, usability

All you WordPress users out there. Download the new Blog Timeline plugin from 30 Boxes. It lets you show off your blog (check out the View Timeline link above the post) on an embedded ajax calendar. It even scrolls with the mouse wheel. A brand new way for people to navigate your blog.

Tags: 30boxes, blogtimeline, plugin, wordpress, calendar, widget, mashup

[cross-posted at 30B]

Well, this might be more of a business lesson, but here goes. Entertainment news this week included the unfortunate news of Michael Richards’ (aka Kramer) deplorably racist tirade at a comedy club.

After the shock from watching it settled in, my initial reaction was that I don’t think that I would be able to watch any more episodes of Seinfeld. The next day I heard sports radio show host Jim Rome carve up (gratuitous Thanksgiving reference) Richards and Rome’s conclusion: he isn’t planning on watching Seinfeld either and can’t fathom how anyone else could either.

Extrapolate and your realize that one slip up can have a very substantial impact on a very trusted brand and franchise. Years after the show’s end, Richards’ bit is going to cost millions of dollars.

Brands are difficult to build and easily tainted. One of the refreshing things about the Web2.0 movement is a committment to the customer. It is a reaction to the rampant user abuses of the late nineties from companies desperate to “monetize.” Combine that with a wholesale neglect of the end consumer by large monoliths (think airlines, customer support from portals, and never-ending phone menus) and we are seeing the ability for small companies to build trusted brands in short order.

Is there a lesson here? Yes, respect your customer and think twice before you engage them or make use of their data in any way that you wouldn’t approve if it were your data. One slip up and your company could be the next Gator, errrrr…Claria.

Tags: usability, seinfeld, kramer, michaelrichards, gator, claria, web2.0, brands, branding

[also cross-posted at 30B]

Part two of dispensing unsolicited advice is our new usability column called Analog Lessons. Here’s the skinny, there’s lots of real world examples of design and usability that make for great discussions about how to and how not to implement things online!

Our first example deals with all those new fangled car keys that help you lock and unlock your car (among other things). Who hasn’t remotely popped the trunk of a rental car in a crowded parking lot to help your vehicle identify itself!

One of our big pet peeves is car locks that give audible feedback. Well, specifically those that use the car HORN to acknowledge that yes, “I JUST LOCKED THE CAR FOR YOU!” We imagine that some engineer somewhere had a good reason for the implementation and that there is most likely some arcane combination that prevents it in case you are one of those conscientious people who doesn’t want to irritate the crap out of everyone else in your vicinity or wake a sleeping family member.

So, how do we translate this into sound website design and application development?

It’s a lesson that has been around since the web got graphical and browsers started enabling sound. Simply put: no unwanted or unsolicited noise!

Sure it flies in the face of MySpace, but some surprisingly polished sights like espn.com and MLB team sites are guilty of launching blaring video clips. It is no secret that people use the web at work so respect your user and respect your user’s environment. The only exemption to this rule we are willing to allow is the new crop of video blogs where the focus is 100% video (e.g. Rocketboom).

Have a great weekend.

Tags: usability, espn, mlb, rocketboom