Initially, I was really excited by this.

Social media commentators have for ages been labouring the point that brands are made or broken by the public, not by the company. You should thus be listening and engaging wherever conversations about your brand are taking place away from your own website.

On the surface, the implementation of Hyundai Momentum is very attractive, using a CoolIris (formerly PicLens) style wall of thumbnails. The panel of site representations extends seemingly infinitely both left and right and the huge numbers cycling in the top left corner reinforce the message that all these external websites say good things about Hyundai.

Unfortunately, once you dig a bit deeper, it turns out this is nothing more than your standard marketing exercise:

• The seemingly millions of thumbnails repeat. A lot. I could only find 30 actual different pages from maybe a dozen websites
• All stories linked are suspiciously gushing. No dissenting voices allowed
• There is no way to filter stories. If this were really pitched as a resource for car buyers, shouldn’t you give them an option to only see stories about a particular model?

Such a good premise. Such a letdown.

There are two ways to pay. One is with coins, the other with a credit or pre-pay card. Arranged around the liquid crystal display (which is completely illegible at night despite the faint LED lighting) are four buttons: minus, plus, cancel and P.

To pay by credit card, you press the plus button until you have the desired end time, then press the P button and insert your card to pay. Because each parking spot is priced differently in Sydney this is a very handy function. It helps you get an idea of what the parking will cost before committing to it.

Naturally, when you want to pay cash you want to use the same function, for instance to find out whether the shrapnel in your wallet will suffice.

The problem is that once you’ve used the plus and minus buttons to set a time and are happy (well, not happy as such) with the cost, you cannot enter coins into the slot. It is simply blocked. No explanation why, you just can’t put any cash in the machine. To do so, you’ll first have to hit the cancel button, but the machine doesn’t tell you that.

Why block the coin slot in the first place?

Nothing much, just one of life’s little UX annoyances.

You know when you stumble upon a tiny aspect of an experience with a product or service that is so delightful or so annoying that you instantly turn around to point it out to the person next to you? This (hopefully) series will highlight some of them and thus give a little shout out to some designer who has clearly put some thought into the user experience of their product – or hasn’t.

In iCal on Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard in this case), try to create an event sometime between 2am and 3am Australian Eastern Standard Time on Sunday 4 October. Regardless of whether you try to drag and drop it there or use the (dreadful – but that’s for another post) editing interface, iCal won’t let you. Why? Because the hour from 2am to 3am does not exist on that day, thanks to Daylight Saving Time.

Strangely, when you create an event between 2am and 3am on 4 April 2010, iCal does not ask you whether you want that to be old time or new time.

Disclaimer: This is the second post in a series on Internet Explorer 8 and what it means for the browser world. Read more about how this came to be.

Disclaimer: I am currently doing paid work for a subsidiary of Microsoft. This was not the case when I wrote this post.

With the release of Internet Explorer 6 and the demise of Netscape, Microsoft deemed the Browser Wars over. Development effectively ceased and the era of the standalone browser was over, according to the IE program manager.

As any web developer can attest Internet Explorer 6, despite its crushing dominance of the browser market, was a dog. While Microsoft might have thought the end of history had arrived as far as browsers are concerned, others realised there was still room for improvement.

IE6 suffered from three major problems:

1. It was not standards compliant

Your average punter couldn’t really care less about this one. As far as they are concerned, if a website is broken it is the webmaster’s problem. Thousands of web developers developed grey hairs (or lost them altogether) over the inconsistencies in IE6.

2. It underestimated users and how they interact with the web

At one point Microsoft even went down the path of making the desktop background a webpage (Active Desktop, anyone). A single one. But of course, as we transferred more and more of our work and personal activities onto the web, most of us had several browser windows open, some dozens. Tabbed browsing was clearly needed, but Microsoft was in no rush to provide it.

3. It was not extensible

As the online world started shifting from a web of published information to a web of interaction and transaction, the browser provided no support for simple, client side programs that would allow to make sites even more powerful. While nobody can expect a browser maker to provide all these features, opening an application programming interface (API) allows thousands of developers to do this work for it.

So in came the Mozilla Foundation with Firefox and sold its new browser on points 2 (tabbed browsing) and 3 (extensions), and through its spread improved point 1 almost by stealth.

When the market share of IE started dipping, Microsoft quickly developed and released Internet Explorer 7, delivering on point 2 above.

Now, with IE8 and its accelerators and web slices features delivering on point 3, is there really anything left that your average web user would defect to Firefox, Safari or Chrome for?

Certainly, Chrome is super secure and stable through its isolated processes and Safari is fast and pretty, but will this be enough to get Joe Bloggs to ignore what came with his computer and go through the process of downloading and installing an alternative browser?

(Photo by Garrett LeSage)

Disclaimer: I have been invited by Microsoft’s digital agency to postulate statements about Internet Explorer 8, post them on my blog and get a discussion happening. This is the first of these posts.

Disclaimer: I am currently doing paid work for a subsidiary of Microsoft. This was not the case when I wrote this post.

Microsoft’s new browser has been eagerly awaited by many. Most hopes were centered around Internet Explorer finally catching up to the rest of the browser world in terms of standards compliance. See, IE7 finally introduced tabbed browsing, but failed the Acid2 test as abysmally as did IE6. So the hopes for IE8 were palpable.

Why IE6 needs to die

The Acid tests are a series of pages which test the adherence of browsers to web standards. There are now three of these tests and they validate a browser’s handling of various technologies used for modern web applications.

Why is this important?

When browser makers ignore web standards, both builders and users of the web suffer. The former because rather than concentrate on functionality and benefits they have to find workarounds to deal with the various browsers’ quirks, effectively building the site multiple times. The latter because sites and online applications break.

The Acid2 test has been around for more than four years now. As of today, the latest versions of all major browsers pass that test.

Acid3 specifically tests scripting and AJAX-related functionality, so the higher a browser’s score, the better it is equipped to handle today’s web interactions. While still lagging behind Safari and Firefox, IE8 seems to be catching up.

Internet Explorer 6 however, still used by 20%-35% of web users, is continuing to be the bane of every web developer’s existence, so the sooner we can get rid of it, the better.

How can IE8 replace IE6?

So replacing IE6, a horrid old piece of broken code, with IE8, a relatively modern browser on the right development track, is a good thing. But how is it going to happen?

1. Users buy a new computer with IE8 preinstalled

This will happen eventually, but bear in mind that computers purchased as late as October 2006 still shipped with IE6. Some of these purchasers are likely to hold on to these machines for many more years.

2. Windows Update will nudge users into upgrading to IE8

Windows Update has begun to automatically request users to accept an upgrade. Unfortunately, this is opt-in and not very convincing for non-technical users. I can foresee many answering this dialog in the negative.

3. Users actively and manually download and install IE8

This is something only more advanced computer users would do and, in all likeliness, already have. If they haven’t already defected to Firefox or Chrome, that is.

So how can we finally dump IE6 on the rubbish tip of browser history?

Yahoo! and eBay

Shortly after the release of Internet Explorer 8, both Yahoo! and eBay have made available branded versions of the browser bundled with specific enhancements aimed at users of their respective sites.

Both eBay and Yahoo! reach deep into pockets of non-technical web users who are unlikely to upgrade their own browser and by offering them a better way to manage their Yahoo! email or their eBay buying and selling compel them to go with IE8.

Is this going to be enough to finally push IE6 over the edge? Or is Kate Carruthers right and it is really the corporates who are holding back the elimination of IE6?

According to an article on ReadWriteWeb, Yelp.com – a restaurant review site sadly unavailable outside the US and UK – is now allowing owners of establishments to comment on reviews.

RWW withholds judgement on the new feature, stating simply that “Yelp will have to tread carefully with this as its user base, although fiercely loyal and protective of the service, is also usually very pro-consumer as well, and any move that looks like a concession or sellout to business interests might end up being harmful to its image down the road.“

They are being overly cautious. Allowing owners to reply to comments is a long overdue feature. Sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and even eBay are places for public conversations. In the spirit of the social web, their purpose is to level the playing field between providers and consumers, sellers and buyers, owners and visitors.

Level it, that is, not tilt it the other way. This is not 1917. We do not have to overthrow the tyrants of businesses and corporations, we simply want to have conversations on equal footing.

Both the websites mentioned above have recognised this. TripAdvisor lets hotel owners reply to each review posted about their establishment and eBay allows sellers to reply (once) to feedback left by buyers. In both cases these talkback options are invaluable to me as a user in assessing whether I want to stay at a particular guesthouse or purchase from a specific eBay seller.

On our honeymoon we had a shortlist of three resorts in Vanuatu and all looked attractive. What tipped the scales in one’s favour was that the manager actively replied to most reviews, taking ownership of problems, promising rectification and genuinely seeming to care. The actual visit bore this impression out.

Similarly, a key criterion for whether I want to buy from a specific seller on eBay is not so much whether they have a 98.6% or a 99.2% feedback score but rather how they deal with criticism. Do I want to buy from someone who responds to “Not happy. Money sent but never received item” with “YOU LIAR!!! LEARN TO READ BE4 LEAVING FEEDBACK MORON!!!” or “My fault, item was already sold elsewhere. Offered refund but got not response.”?

Authentic conversations give us an insight into how a potential partner in a transaction deals with difficult situations and help us make more informed decisions. And those conversations necessarily have two sides.

There are undoubtedly advantages to storing your content online. You can access it from any computer, you don’t have to worry about loss or deterioration of the physical media it is stored on and it can be quite cheap if not free.

What does “in the cloud” really mean?  

But is your content really “stored in the cloud”? The metaphor implies distribution, redundancy, anonymity.

In actual fact, you have handed over your emails, documents, company records, photos, and videos to Google, Facebook, Saasu and Vimeo. These companies may or may not treat your content the way you would like them to.

Will you ever get it back?

Now I am not insinuating that these companies are likely to do evil things with your beloved content, although the Facebook new Terms of Use disaster (despite the subsequent retraction) made me think twice. I am simply suggesting that they are companies and as such can be purchased or go broke. I Want Sandy was purchased by Twitter and shut down. Deepmetrix was acquired by Microsoft and Livestats discontinued. Even Microsoft’s MSN Groups were killed off. And perhaps most prominently Ma.gnolia, which lost all of the data stored on it and with it possibly hundreds of thousands of hours of work by its users.

I have digital photos going back to 1996. Thinking back to that year, almost none of the websites that were big at the time are still around. Had I entrusted all my digital memories to them, who knows what would have become of them. Sharing is only one aspect of the digitisation of our lives and in our pursuit of it we often forget the other important aspect, that of keeping.

What about privacy protection?

Surely these web-only companies with impressive privacy statements which nobody reads have measures in place to safeguard our data? Turns out even the biggest player in the market has problems with that. In early March a bug in Google Docs caused widespread unwanted sharing of documents and required users to re-enter who they wanted to share them with.

Gary Barber has concerns about trust which I find very well thought-out and hard to brush aside. Others worry about what happens to their content once they die.

High availability?

There is a real accumulation of risk in a handful of big players. The GFail epidemic of late February has left millions of users without their emails, and it wasn’t the first GMail outage by a long shot. It demonstrated that even the 800 pound gorilla is far from perfect when it comes to availability.

While the introduction of Google Gears has alleviated the problem somewhat (you may not be able to send or receive email, but you can access your email history while the service is down), its introduction could be considered an admission by Google that the cloud and the browser cannot replace locally stored and processed content just yet.

As Kate Carruthers writes, it might be time to make a backup of some of that info that you’ve got floating around in the cloud.

Now what?
I’m a big fan of using the cloud to share my digital life and interact with those who matter to me, but I take care to

• Keep a local copy of everything
• Do local and off-site backups
• Put on the web only what I want to share

and wait with bated breath for the semantic web and redundant storage of content in the cloud.

Finally, that Larry Ellison calls cloud computing gibberish can safely be filed under simplistic knee-jerk (emphasis on the last word), but when Richard Stallman, creator of GNU and all-round guru says that cloud computing is a trap, it might pay to sit up and listen.

(Photo by Allan Henderson)

A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation to the March Sydney meeting of the Web Standards Group. Its – somewhat deliberately controversial – title was “Wireframes considered harmful”.

After the presentation, a healthy debate ensued over drinks and nibblies at the Australian Museum. This was a good indicator for me that it got at least some of the participants thinking about how and when to use wireframes.

I was also delighted that News Digital Media’s USiT blog picked up the subject. I intend to take this discussion further and will be meeting with a handful of interested parties for a debate lunch this week.

This post is to give people access to the presentation slides on Slideshare and open the comments for discussion.

For those of you who know me personally – relax! I haven’t taken up singing, thank heavens.

This is a little blog meme started by Warlach in his excellent blog post where he also collects the efforts of others. Here are the rules if you want to play:

1. Go to Wikipedia, hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band
2. Go to The Quotations Page or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover

Now that Facebook is asking “What’s on your mind?“, will it leverage its vastly bigger user base and squeeze Twitter out of the market just as the latter was poised to launch into the mainstream?

I believe the question is a valid one. For starters, Facebook’s question is of course a much better one than Twitter’s tired “what are you doing?”, a legacy which defines the service and at the same time has been holding it back. The question as it is being asked now invites countless “having breakfast” and, more recently “watching Rove” tweets and is single-handedly responsible for the high abandon rate of new twitterers.

Only once new users realise that they shouldn’t answer the question “what are you doing”, but rather “what do you find interesting” or, as it were, “what’s on your mind?”, do they begin to find value in their use of Twitter.

Now superficially the signs look good for Facebook’s fending off of Twitter: It has a much broader user base and it is already an integral part of many people’s days.

But there is one crucial difference: Facebook is built around friend connections – people you know in real life. You can stay connected with them and know what’s on their mind. But if you’re anything like me, your Facebook friend list contains many a long-forgotten acquaintance or high school mate whose opinions or preoccupations you don’t really care that much about.

Twitter goes much further than this. Its connections are asymmetrical and non-reciprocal. You do not have to ask people permission to read their Twitter streams. And you can easily follow new people whose thoughts you find interesting and worthwhile.

Facebook may be here to strengthen your real-life relationships, but Twitter is here to extend them.

What do you think? Is the broaden-your-network effect important enough to let Twitter survive? Is it something else that will help it fend off the assault? Or is Twitter doomed to succumb to the Facebook juggernaut?