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More Google

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:16:16 +0000

The Google Bar has one fundamental flaw: the “more” option. It’s just lazy IA. Might as well label it “crap I will rarely use”.

More Smartness

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:48:00 +0000

Yesterday, Berg launched a teaser video about a mini-printer that would print a tailored feed of items you set on your smartphone. It’s a clever little device, looks awesome, but prints static feed info. It’s like a digital butler sending you a customized newspaper everyday. Then, talking about it with Teppo, I realized it could be so much more.

On this day and age, it baffles me that we don’t have smarter apps acting as digital assistants. Yes, there’s Siri. But Siri is an assistant you have to bug to fetch bits of info for you. Why don’t we have proactive digital assistants. The following scenario is entirely possible today using several different services. We just don’t have anything to mix and match all of this. Let’s call this assistant Digi.

7:00: Digi wakes you up: “Good Morning! It’s 7 o’clock and it’s a beautiful automn day outside. Better use a sweater or light jacket today”.
7:02: You go to the bathroom and weigh yourself on the scale. The scale then sends the info to Digi: “Seems like you dropped another 200g! Good for you. You’re on track with your goal to loose 10kg by year end.”
7:05: Senses you moving about and figures you went into the kitchen. Digi then advises: “For breakfast, why don’t you try this quick an easy recipe? It will fit your diet.” Digi supposedly should know what ingredients I have based on what I’ve been adding and ticking off the shopping list.
7:10: Digi: “While you eat breakfast, here are the main news of the day”.
7:20: “Shall we go for a bit of a jog? You have about 25min, so here’s a good route to follow. Grab your sneakers!”
7:45: “Congratulations! You ran 2 miles and dropped 400 calories. Great work!”
8:00: Senses you leaving the house (no longer connected to the home wifi network): “Here’s how your day is looking: you have a meeting at 10 at BigCorps, then lunch with Steve at Little Italy, then an afternoon in the office. Here’s your route to the BigCorps office (based on current traffic information).
8:40: As you drive, Digi gets a report about an accident ahead: “Accident ahead, changing course. You will arrive 10min later but still on time.”
9:45: As you approach BigCorps office, Digi kicks in: “BigCorps office is 500m ahead. Cheapest parking is 200m ahead. Turn right.”
10:00: “Time for your meeting. Here’s the meeting agenda.”
11:30: As the meeting is finished, Digi senses you move out. “Lunch with Steve in half an hour. There’s a machine to pay for your parking on Level 2. I’ll guide you there.”
11:50: Getting late. “You’re 10 minutes late. I’ll send a text to Steve to warn him.”
12:10: Arriving at the restaurant: “Michael has been here before. He recommends the Parma Pizza.”
13:40: After lunch, Digi senses you arrived at the office: “So, here’s what you have to deal with this afternoon.” And displays your to-do list.
18:10: “Time to leave. You have dinner with your parents at 20:00”.
18:25: As you drive home: “Since you’re early, Max Supermarket is on the day and you can pick up some groceries.”
18:35: As you enter the supermarket: “Don’t forget to pick up your dry cleaning”.
18:50: Once you tick off your last item in the shopping list: “You have two coupons to use.” It displays them on the screen.
19:50: “Your bottle of Douro Fab wine will go nicely with this recipe. Time to open it and let it rest”
22:20: After dinner: “Your favorite series is on on Channel 24. Do you want me to put in on or record it?”.

As you can see, there’s a way to link all sorts of different services we have today. All we need is someone willing to make us live in the future like we deserve.

Cashback? Yes, please!

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:38:18 +0100

One of the things I miss most from living in the UK is what they called cashback. Whenever you went into a store (mostly supermarkets), when you went to pay with your card, they would ask you if you wanted cashback. Basically it’s another way to withdraw money without having to use a cash machine. You would say “30 pounds, please” and that would be added to your account. It was great and a great time-saver too. I would love it if they did this in Portugal as well.

And it has loads of advantages for businesses: they free up money from the till, making it saver, since they’re exchanging hard cash for an electronic transaction, do its less money in the safe, less hassle to deposit. And it’s a great convenience for the costumer. It’s even easier for older customers.

I wish businesses could offer this in Portugal. Are you listening?

Carousels are lazy

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:44:12 +0100

The national Portuguese TV Channels website, RTP, just relaunched their website today and as many news based websites, they make extensive use of carousel widgets. This kind of widget was created to present a series of related visual content, like a photo album, in a space-saving fashion. However, it is now often abused as a lazy way to relinquish editorial power. Say that you have three possible news pieces to showcase. A proper content editor would look at them, and given his knowledge of the website audience would select one of them. Now there’s no need. Just throw them into a carousel widget and show all three. Let the user decide what he likes best.

Not only is this lazy editorials, it’s also a usability problem. Say you’re reading a newspaper and a news piece catches your eye. Later on, you might wanna show it to someone and you know where to find it relatively quick. Now take a website built with a lot of “boxes”, each box with its own tabs (which are fine to aggregate common themed content) and each tab with two or more carousel widget stops. You now have hundreds of different variations of the homepage. If something catched your attention in one of them, good luck finding it in 5 minutes time. It’s like having to sift through hundreds of newspapers to find the piece you’re interested in. Never mind the fact that in a few hours the news piece will be hidden forever into the dungeons of the content management system, but that’s a different war.

On top of this, most users won’t care to browse all these carousel stops. They’re often content with looking at the first page, so why use carousels at all for displaying news pieces?

The web might not constrained to the physical boundaries of a piece of paper, but that’s no reason to relinquish editorial control, so stop being lazy and embrace the constraints of your layout.

Font for people with dyslexia

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:04:27 +0100

Font for people with dyslexia:

“The study at the University of Twente showed that people with dyslexia made fewer reading errors when they use the Dyslexia font compared to using standard font.”

Diogo, a Great Loss for the World

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:49:00 +0100

It’s a really sad day when a great friend dies. It’s even sadder when he was one of the driving forces for innovation, entrepreneurship and social change in the world. He died yesterday at 43 years old and at this age he did much more than many people do in their whole lifetimes.

Diogo Vasconcelos was a great man. He always tried to push things forward, establish the connections, facilitate the interchanges. I had the good fortunate of meeting him while I was living in the UK and we became friends ever since. But my inspiration from him comes from way before.

I always had the entrepreneurship bug. At 11 I produced and published a small newspaper in order to earn some pocket cash to buy what I wanted and my parents couldn’t give me. When that wasn’t enought I started working “for real” at 15. But I always had the bug with me to start my own company. At the end of the 90s Diogo was one of the people behind a new entrepreneurial magazine called “Ideias & Negócios”. They had a campaign on “Fire yourself now” that really lifted my spirits and I read their guides on how to create a company lots of times. At 30 I finally made it and created my own company and haven’t looked back since. So I have to thank Diogo for that.

Then I went to live in the UK in 2006. In 2008 a brief exchange on Twitter led us to meet for lunch in London. Diogo wasn’t a stuck-up guy. He was pretty famous back then and a lot of people with that status would scoff at but he always find time for everyone no matter what. At that first lunch he incited me to create what became UXLx in 2009.

We met many more times after that. He was always available, always willing to lend a hand, introduced me to a lot of people. But most of all, he inspired me and everyone else. He sponsored numerous events about entrepreneurship and social change and his enthusiasm was contagious. He could have accomplished much more if life had let him.

Diogo, you will be sorely missed. Thank you for the inspiration and the drive.

The Anti-PowerPoint Party

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:51:38 +0100

The Anti-PowerPoint Party:

You know you’re deep into the silly season when you hear about an incoming Swiss political party solely focused on banning PowerPoint.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:15:00 +0100

First, a disclaimer: this post is mainly political and discusses the Portuguese and European economy, so if you’re not into that, feel free to skip ahead.

Yesterday, the Moody’s rating agency slashed the Portuguese rating by four points, leaving it at a “junk” level. It’s been a month since we had general elections and everyone is on board with the slashes and tax hikes the new government approved. For those of you unaware, the IMF is controlling Portugal’s finances and these new measures go beyond what the IMF demanded. So why the slashing? Everyone is baffled.

In the movie “Inside Job” there’s a part where we see the people responsible for these rating agencies (that I should remind you rated triple A a lot of American Banks just before they collapsed) excusing themselves by saying that they’re just opinion makers, that people are free to follow their advice or not. So, they’re not accountable. No one is. Once the US deregulated their banking industry, that led to the Credit crisis, the world has been facing economic hardship, but they were still left free to wreak havoc on international markets.

When the lucrative Credit Default Swap market collapsed, they were left looking for the next cash cow. And they turned their guns to Europe. A few European countries that were struggling to develop themselves into the general european level (often called the derogatory term PIIGS) were building infrastructure for the past 2 decades to prop themselves with the aid of their other European partners. Almost all of them had high stakes in state owned companies in Telcos and Utilities. They were fragile economics facing slow growth or growing on real estate alone so they were easy prey. Then the slashing began. They were barely making by, so a huge increase in lending rates, led them into red.

Now, these rating agencies are owned by investment banks. These investment banks advised some of their clients to buy into European debt. After all, it’s a huge return and the EU would surely help these failing countries to keep the Euro alive. And what happens when they’re out of the private lending market? They are forced to sell state owned companies at fire sale levels. And who will buy lots of stock? Those investment banks’ clients.

The only way out for Europe to stand its ground is to move tightly together into a Federalist state. A common currency, a common budget, a common fiscal policy. It’s now or never.

Oh wow! The Playbook is a crappy tablet that doesn’t even...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:53:07 +0100

Oh wow! The Playbook is a crappy tablet that doesn’t even have a mail client but hey, “unlike some other tablets they could mention, it runs Flash!”. Whoopee dee!

So pathetic.

Google bid "pi" for Nortel patents and lost

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:49:00 +0100

Google bid "pi" for Nortel patents and lost :

Looks like Google is geek at heart even when it comes to business. On the recent Nortel auction their bids were 1) Brun’s constant 2) Meissel-Mertens constant and 3) Pi.

The Dropbox Terms Kerfuffle

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:07:00 +0100

Seems like everybody got their panties in a twist the past few days, after Dropbox announced a revised Terms of Service. Everybody went berzerk when they read:

By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service.

By reading this, some people thought it meant that they now owned everything you posted to your Dropbox and that they could use your files as they please. Keep in mind that Dropbox is an american company and that they must cover their asses legally or the company would be put in jeopardy.

Now, let’s be clear about what this means, since a lot of other services have the same terms. Basically, what they’re saying is that they need the user to give them a license in order for them to manipulate the files you post there.

Worldwide: since a lot of Dropbox users are from abroad, the license must be granted worlwide.
Non-exclusive: other services may be able to use the same files.
Royalty-free: or you could ask them for a fee for them to manipulate your files.
Sublicenseable: they have to grant this license to 3rd parties that manage their services for instance.
Use, copy: in order for you to be able to copy the files to your iPad or iPhone app.
Prepare derivate works: when you use their file viewer they have to convert different file formats into a flash file. Or to generate thumbails of the files.
Publicly display: for when you put your files in a public folder.

As you can see, nothing dodgy here. People just have to realise that when they use services like this, they have to have the right to manipulate the files you put there in order for you to use the service. Almost every service who allows you to post files must have this kind of legalese in their terms of service.

So move along, nothing to see here.

Why I think Google+ will fail

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:32:00 +0100

Let’s be clear about this upfront. These are my initial impressions with the service. It doesn’t mean that they can’t change midway along with the evolution of the service. But as it stands, the path I see ahead is not promising. Let me break it to you then:

Stream
Stream has a pretty basic layout, very Facebook-esque and nothing to write home about. It’s competent and that’s it. Despite some minor usability quirks where it’s hard to figure it if it’s a control or a plain heading text, it’s good at what it is.

Photos
Visually it’s beautifully laid out but hard to split in chunks. It’s mixing every photo from every user I have listed as friend, so it’s hard to figure out who posted out. Yes, you can read the captions but that’s less than convenient. And the slideshow feature feels like an afterthought. Also, don’t get me started on instant upload. That’s scary as hell. I like to control which pictures get posted, thank you very much.

Circles
Circles are a gimmick. They’re basically buddy lists and the interface almost demands that you dump your friends into the right bucket. As anyone working in user profiling and segmentation could tell you, this is really hard to do. A bucket determines the kind of updates people see and some updates might be directed at more than one circle, but you can’t do that. You can add a friend to one or more circles, but then the nightmare of managing all of this starts. It kind of works if you have 30 buddies or so but it soon breaks apart. I just can’t see this working for the number of users people generally have on Facebook (+100). And I’m not even mentioning the hassle of having to add all your friends to a new social network yet again.

Hangout
Like pictures, this seems to be here just because they have a video chat feature and thought it was cool to add it. In real life, I doubt that a couple of friends would gather up online to talk to eachother via face chat at the same time. Yes, the novelty factor is there, but apart from a few tries at first, I see this dead at the water. Now, for business it makes sense, but this is a personal platform and doesn’t feel right to be using it for that.

Huddle
I’ve seen good comments about this, but I can’t figure out where this feature is hiding. So I’ll leave it for later.

So yes, a new social network built by Google. Is this their third try? Can’t blame them for trying? Is it going to replace Facebook? I don’t think so. Facebook is built around social and it’s going to be hard to mimic all its features. So, for now, I’ll see all the geeks and early adopters get really excited about the service, but if doesn’t change paths, it’s going into the dustbin like many others.