This past weekend, I was in San Francisco for a client meeting, conference and some pre-sales work. As usual, I had forgotten to buy some music I wanted to listen to over the weekend, and my MacBook (the personal computer with all the music) was 400 miles away.

What did I do? Did what any self-respecting iPod Touch user would do: bought the music anyways through WiFi. It took me less than two minutes to go through the purchase process, truly an impulse buy that all music vendors aspire to.

Something so simple as buying music through thin air is another reason why Apple is so far ahead of the pack: the iPod experience connected to iTunes are clearly such a superior experience that other vendors are going to have a hard time catching up.

In other words, Apple has figured out how to sell out how to sell the razors and razorblades — clearly how usability and a superior user experience leads to a better bottom line.

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Need a disposable email address? GuerillaMail is for you. You can sign up for the service, and it will create email addresses that are good for 15 minutes, perfect for those online services that will eventually resell those email addresses and spam you.

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The good news — building applications and promoting them through MySpace is now live.

The bad news — most of them appear to be as spammy as many of the FaceBook applications.

Some of the better mainstays of Facebook seem to have made it over, so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly people adopt them. Look for reviews as I play with each of the applications of note.

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One of my favorite sites, Smashing Magazine, has this list of nightmares that’s pretty cool.

The summary is:

1. Hidden log-in link
2. Pop-ups for content presentation
3. Dragging instead of vertical navigation
4. Invisible links
5. Visual noise
6. Dead end
7. Content blocks layering upon each other
8. Dynamic navigation
9. Drop-Down Menus
10. Blinking images

It comes with great examples of high profile sites too!

Cheers.

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From Salon.com:

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

David Dixon

Everything is gone;
Your life’s work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

David Carlson

I’m sorry, there’s — um –
insufficient — what’s-it-called?
The term eludes me …

Owen Mathews

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Peter Rothman

Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again

Chris Walsh

The code was willing,
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.

Barry L. Brumitt

Printer not ready.
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?

Pat Davis

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

David J. Liszewski

Errors have occurred.
We won’t tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.

Charlie Gibbs

Server’s poor response
Not quick enough for browser.
Timed out, plum blossom.

Rik Jespersen

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You probably thought that it was going to stop at one part.

Clever Workarounds has published parts 2, 3 and 4 on their blog, and I’m sure it’s going to continue for some time. My favorite of the Part 4 is the square peg, round hole illustration.

Here’s the complete list:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

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How we deal with clients and how they view our professionalism is sometimes more important than what we know, especially in the field of User Experience where our knowledge is treated at about the same level as a fortune teller. I've told some of my reports that likable and professional is more billable than  knowledgeable.

I asked this question over at LinkedIn (I've grown to like the site, and it really is a powerful networking tool). I'm going to publish some of the answers every week, and you can respond to them, or not. Sometimes the answers will repeat – my apoligies. I will give credit where credit is due, and I'm going to try to live by some of these.

This was submitted by Chelsea Wyatt:

• Having no respect for the organization’s knowledge and expertise
  
• Applying typical solutions or software packages without accounting for each organization’s specifications, needs, hierarchy, culture, and business processes
• Not being ‘present’ at meetings (i.e. e-mailing, texting, and generally not paying attention, especially in front of the client)
• Having internal conflict or questioning a colleagues’ or project managers’ decisions in front of the client
• Extending a project (scope or timeline) and not telling the team or key organization representatives
• The all consuming cardinal sin: Inadequate resources! Especially not staffing a project correctly, as it’s truly all about the people.

Attached is a list of 12 cardinal sins in ERP Consulting, her prior field.

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Where do you get started if you want to learn SilverLight, but don’t know where to start? The Moth, a Microsoft Developer, has a good blog post that goes past “Hello World”. Give it a read.

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Browser Shots takes a screen shot of your website for quality assurance purposes in over 40 browsers available on the web — testing it across the board in PC, Mac, and Linux platforms. Excuse me while I fix some issues I found in Galeon 1.3.20.

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I have this standard joke because it’s my line of work, which really didn’t exist too long ago: “The internet’s a fad, it’s just going to go away.” While it might be dramatizing it, I do feel that it is if we don’t improve the user experience of applications and websites, like Facebook, so they aren’t just marketing spam. While end users may not be the brightest bulbs in the world, they’re not stupid, and they know when they are being fooled.

I like FaceBook. I’ve hired people off of FaceBook, and find it more useful from a profile standpoint (but less entertaining) than MySpace, but not as useful as LinkedIn. However, I had to do some housecleaning the other day, and I deleted over 100 applications.

Part of the problem is how most of these application developers design the applications, and nothing is a better illustration than what my online budy Andy Sternberg pointed out using an application on my own profile — that since I’ve installed an application, there’s this implicit “wow, Patrick must really like it.”

No, I don’t like it. My friends are selling me, and I’m not getting any of the profits.

A lot of these applications and even some websites, like Reunion.com (I’m not just bringing them up because I interviewed there years ago, but because I know the CEO knows better, and the David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times also brought it up) are using shady ways to promote themselves, like harvesting friend lists and so on.

Note to application developers — if the applications are usable, engaging, and cool, people will use it in droves. They’ll tell your friends. They won’t worry about being forced to tell 10, or 12, or 20 friends. Facebook probably doesn’t know how it’s damaging their reputation, or if they do know, how to fix it.

That Scrabbulous application is engaging.

Texas No-Hold ‘Em Poker is engaging.

FriendFeed is engaging.

Selling friends is not.

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