Web Designers, graphic designers, and all designers are face with Design Challenges. Let's dive into the world of web design, graphic design, usability, information technology, and look at life and the work place. Come back often to see what I see. View my world and the Design Challenges that I'm face with
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Out with the new in with old...huh?
In a major redesign, MSNBC, announced this week that it was bringing back it's old fly out menus. I was a big fan of this menu and was disappointed to say the least when they took it away.
This menu provided so much stickyness to their site. I mean, I used to spend a long time reading all the stories here as they were so easily accessible. I stop visiting MSNBC because they took this feature away. I then thought that they were just trying to get page views from me as I kept getting hit with splash pages everytime I visited an article.
In an effort to keep everyone happy, they have now provided an added feature of not displaying the "fly-out" menu if the user does choose it.
In an effort to not lag behind, CNN, also redesig its homepage. Though not such a drastic redesign, and a lot of it resembling New York Times, they created a small buzz around the Web community.
The bottom line, is that in order to keep your visitors sometimes you have to please all of them. MSNBC has provided such capability with their new/old fly out menu, while CNN is showing signs of a good effort by improving its interface.
Microsoft Announce today that it's new operating system, Windows Vista, will no be ready for the holiday season as previously announce. Microsoft has discovered several security flaws and bugs which will delay the release date and push it into early next year.
Microsoft has promised though that this will only affect the consumer version of the product while the corporate version will be out mid November. Many computer retailers were disappointed by the news as this release would have push sales even higher during the holiday season.
The bottom line is that Microsoft has taken a lot of heat in the past by releasing products ahead of schedule full of bugs and flaws and it's good to see that they have learn from their past mistakes. It is best to delay a product or design than to release something that will disappoint and give you a bad rep.
Microsoft announced that it will not cut down on its advertising campaign and further is going to match IBM spending on the information technology market. Microsoft has devised a $500 million dollar marketing scheme geared to targeting its business customers.
Microsoft will continue to use its message that their software is familiar and easy to use. The message has done wonders in promoting their products and with the introduction of new products, Microsoft, can and will continue to promote that once you know one of its products, familiarity will carry on making it easy to use and learn the new one.
The bottom line is that an advertisement campaign has to be focus to a company's strength. This is the genius of Microsoft, they have identified their strength and have exploit it, with the new release of its Vista operating system, they are sure to get many to see that this is just an upgrade offering great features while maintaining the same functionality and friendliness that we all have come to embrace.
Microsoft has partnered with Epic Records to provide free music, videos and the chance to compete against top recording artists. The deal calls for Epic Records to provide features from 12 of their artist on a monthly basis via the popular XBox Live entertainment network.
Subscribers of the program will have access to all these downloads absolutely free. The first artist to participate in the promotion will be British singer Natasha Bedingfield. I personally never heard of her, but I'm out of the music scene, as I'm stock in the glorious 80's and decaying 90's.
The bottom line is that Microsoft has realize that with plummeting sales, they had to do something to attract a new crowd of gamers. They have tapped into a very popular market of music and videos. After all, is not by chance that companies like Verizon are offering products as Vcast, where subscribers can download music, videos, and TV programs onto their cellphones. I wonder how long before Sony taps into its own backyard of the Sony Music Label to offered a similar or even better deal.
After a big flop the Razr phones were pulled from store shelves. Apparently, their was a major glitch with the phones. The bug that causes some of the ultra-thin cell phones to drop calls. A spokesperson from Motorola explains "A handset that has this issue may disconnect calls, power down and then automatically restart." However, Motorola is not reveling the source of the problem or specifying what component of the Razr is responsible for the problem, nor what models of the popular phone is affected.
Though the bug didn't affect all Razr phones, the limited quantity was enough to make cingular and T-mobile temporarily stop selling or carrying the phones. Today, however, the two mobile giants had a change of hearts and decided to start selling the phones. Cingular distribution centers received a new batch of Razrs on Friday, and those phones were sent to some stores by Monday, according to a Cingular spokeswoman.
Because of this change, Motorola shares rose 58 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $21.48 in midday trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
The bottom line is that the world is rule and controlled by money. We have become such a capitalist society that although items like this one may be defective, the market continues to sells it. Worst, the consumers are still buying into this popular product, not because of its quality, but because of its popularity. Does size really matters?
I just read that NASA has discovered water in one of Saturn's moon. The Cassini spacecraft sent back photos of what appears to be yellowish colored water shooting out of geysers powered by liquid reservoirs that appear to extend tens of yards beneath the moon's icy surface.
This is a great discovery as it may show signs of life outside of Earth. Further it provides an atmospheric environment similar to that of Earth, so that when Earth becomes overpopulated some could migrate over to Saturn's moon.
What is incredibly puzzling to me is that mankind has always been seeking life outside of Earth, but if there was life don't you think they would have been seeking the same as us? We are sending spacecrafts into orbit, planets, and moons, but we don't have clear proof of others doing the same. Except for those who believe in UFO and the likes.
The bottom line is that even if there is no other intelligent being out there, at least we now have a place to go when we finish screwing up this planet.
Last Thursday Google accidentally posted an unedited powerpoint presentation on its corporate news site announcing a new program which would allow subscribers to create a backup of your pc onto their servers.
Many questions have been raised regarding how google would handle security and privacy. As well, how would google offer this service to the public and how the file transfer would take place.
The service would allow for remote searching via the popular google desktop search. However, allowing a company to hold your data, forces you to give up a lot of rights and privacy, and been that law enforcement agencies have already gone after google's data, your data can potentially be searched.
The bottom line is that though the service sounds like a great idea at first hand, there are just too many unanswered questions for me to jump on this wagon. The search engine giant has offered a lot of useful products and they are usually ahead of the curve, but being that they are yet to figure out how to offer google analytics to the general public, I fear that this service would also be on hold for a long, long time.
I said it before, and I'm saying again, you can all now truly relax and breath easier. RIM, the maker of blackberry, has come to a settlement with NTP. NTP had sued RIM over the protocols used in the blackberry because RIM had violated a patent NTP held which is currently being reviewed by the patent board.
As part of the resolution, NTP will grant RIM and its customers the right to continue its blackberry-related wireless business without further interference from NTP or its patents.
The bottom line is that this folks realized that they had violated a patent by stealing intellectual property and paid a dearly prize in the billions of dollars. I'm glad that RIM step up to the plate, whether it was for fears of loosing their customers or a crashing business or because they felt it was the right thing to do, either way you can now email a bit easier.
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