Design Challenges

Travel Sites

With the holidays soon approaching, it seems I'm getting a lot of calls from relatives and friends about booking trips. Of course, these all comes about because of our recent relocation to sunny Florida.

I typically turn to the usual suspects when it comes to researching flights and tickets, Expedia and Travelocity. These sites are designed to be easy to use and with the user in mind. Their designs and architecture are always improving. The most recent of updates is the ability to quickly search nearby airports to the destination or departure cities.

A new travel search engine is, however, on the rise. Kayak.com is designed to allow the user to not only get the cheapest tickets, but to run comparison of nearby airports. The site also allows you to use its interface to compare prices on Expedia, Travelocity and Hotwire, all with the click of a three checkboxes. The site also remembers your previous searches in order to save time on future searches. As you type in the city or airport code in the search boxes, a drop down similar to that of the Google toolbar comes up to aid you in locating your departure or destination cities.

Kayak is also designed to present a very user friendly results page which quickly allows you to select if you prefer nonstop, one stop, or two stops flights. As well, you can narrow down via flight times and price.

The bottom line is that I can now understand why Kayak.com is such an up and coming site, after all they have now achieve an Alexa ranking of 1782. Competition promotes better features and alternatives, while providing the best prices for consumers. Kayak.com is also a great example of conveniences presented to users. It is amazing what great design and information architecture can do for a site. Expedia (Alexa of 542) and Travelocity (Alexa of 781), better get up to speed on the technology back end or they will loose their placing among the travel sites.

Labels: Alexa, American Airlines, Expedia, Google, Travelocity

Jax, Jaguars, DMV, and more.

So a few weeks ago the wife and I went down to check out the Jaguars. I never was into football as they don't play that where I come from. I have to admit it was very exciting seeing the live action.

I went to Yankee Stadium a bunch of times, but baseball is not quite as exciting. The Jaguars fans are die hard. The game is quite fast and time went by so quick. We were sitting at the fifty yard line, third row. It was so close you could smell the players' sweat.

Since I never had an affiliation with a football team, I think I'm going to adopt the Jaguars as my team. I even started participating in the office weekly football team. I was very close to wining last week, I tied with three other colleagues and lost on the tie breaker, but I feel like I'm getting a handle on this football thing.

Since attending the game I now have started to wear glasses for long distance viewing. I guess they call it nearsighted. I always get confused because the terms are the opposite of what you are. I didn't feel like I needed the glasses and enjoyed the game just the same. Florida, however, required me to get the eye test and now glasses before they would give me a driver's license. It took me five trips to DMV to finally get the license, but hey is Florida, with the exception of this morning, all trips took a maximum of 10 minutes and is only a 1/4 mile down the street from work. I would have been really annoyed if it was CT or NY where a trip to the DMV meant a minimum of 3 hours. The first lady I dealt with was a total "Bitch," and it thought she was a bit racist, but turns out that she is just a grumpy old bat. This is only the second unfriendly individual I have encountered since our arrival in to the Jax Area.

The bottom line is that football is a lot of fun and I'm totally hooked. We even tuned in this past Monday to ESPN and Monday Night Football. If you don't mind rain everyday during the fall, but mostly beautiful afternoons, then you should consider Jacksonville, FL. If you do decide to make the move, make sure your eyes are set and you won't have to battle the DMV like I did. Get your eyesight regularly anyways, it can prevent a lot of trouble down the line. I can't envisioned anything worse than loosing your sight, but that's because I'm a designer and I wouldn't know what to do without my vision.

Labels: gadgets, Jacksonville

Joomla Day!

I was just visiting the Joomla site and found out that October 13, 2007 i now declared Joomla Day. The event will be held in Google's NYC headquarters.

Joomla! will be presented for the first time in Joomla!Day format for Joomla!Day USA (East) in New York, in October. So if you're a Joomla! devotee, this is an event not to be missed. Inspired by the incredible success of J!Days East Coast and Central, New York looks set to be even more successful.

The event is open to anyone, and will be taking place in the heart of New York City, at Google's East Coast headquarters on Saturday, October 13, 2007 — 9.30am-5pm ET. If you don't know Joomla! then this event is for you. If you do know Joomla! it's for you too! If you want to learn how to launch a website in minutes for a business or other endeavor, this event will provide you with the foundations of how to manage the world's most popular open source content management system.

In case you didn't know, the Web site states that, Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Joomla! is led by members of the Core Team who are responsible for the overall Project Management. All working together as a single team, committed to moving Joomla! forward in the true spirit of the Open Source movement.

Joomla is produced by the Core Team whose members come from different backgrounds, a diverse array of disciplines, with varied experiences. The Core Team is has members located in 11 countries throughout the globe.

Labels: cms, content management, Joomla