Search

Recent

• Pledge to Download Firefox! (but use IE to do it)
• Making Changes
• This should have been the first sign…
• RIAA: “You’re a thief!”
• Learn Ruby on Rails: Free Book Giveaway
• If life were like YouTube…
• Apple Got This One Wrong
• Market Dominance: Amazon.com and the iPod
• They used my feature idea!
• BarCamp Orlando

Archives

• June 2008
• February 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007

Blogroll

• Eric.Weblog()
• Joel on Software
• Signal v. Noise
• TechCrunch
• Techdirt

Categories

• Admin
• Business of Software
• Development Management
• DMCA
• Geek Fun
• Great Design
• Intellectual Property
• Open Networks
• Passionate Users
• Pixar
• Product Evangelism
• Product Management
• Uncategorized
• Usability

Admin

• Login
• Wordpress
• XHTML

The fine folks at the Mozilla Foundation are encouraging everyone to pledge to download Firefox 3, when it’s released later today. If you’re interested, you can pledge at the Download Day 2008 web site. It’s a nice site, with a real-time map showing pledge totals per country, and it has a lot of juicy, AJAX-y […]

I’ve slowly come to realize that this blog template doesn’t reflect my views on usability. The text is too small, and low contrast. The column on the left creates a block that you have to consciously skip over when you start each line.
So as part of upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.1, I’ll be switching to a […]

…that there were usability problems with Vista. This is an illustrated tech support article explaining how to open the Vista box.
Others have written about the problems with the Vista (and Office 2007) box, as representative of Microsoft’s desire to do everything different this time around. What Microsoft has fogotten is, that if you are going […]

John Gruber at Daring Fireball has an excellent article about the implementation of the new ringtone service for the iPhone. Between the sporadic performance, the uninformative error messages, and the bizarre terms of service, it’s clear that Apple just got this one wrong.
To be fair, Apple is hamstrung by the limitations that the labels […]

This video has been making the rounds quite a bit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVULzm28M0o
The iPhone is getting quite a bit of “hype-backlash” lately. Many complain about the on-screen keyboard and some of the built-in limitations. But if I told you that I had a smart phone that could read email, browse photos, watch movies, access the web, play music, […]

I may be late to the party, but I see that Hillel Cooperman has left Microsoft and formed Jackson Fish Market. Best of luck to Hillel, Walter and Jenny on becoming the next 37signals.
I met Hillel about 4 years ago at a Microsoft partner preview for Windows “Longhorn,” which later became Vista. (I still have […]

While I prefer tactile buttons over flat touch screens, Apple may change my mind. The iPhone touch screen keyboard takes full advantage of the ability to change the behavior through software. Here are some of the key benefits:

The keys change depending on the context
The strike zone for a key gets bigger around the most likely […]

The fabled “One more thing…” in Steve Job’s keynote address at the WWDC yesterday was the announcement of Safari for Windows. Apple billed it as the “world’s fastest web browser.”
It needs work.
In its defense, it is just a beta. But it works more like an alpha in my opinion.
Its page rendering speed is fast, but […]

Joel Spolsky has a new article about developing commercial software. After a much-to-long introduction, “A game of inches” details the exacting level of attention to detail required to ship commercial software:
Dave Winer says, “To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get […]

The current issue of TIME profiles 37signals, their products and their philosophy.
 37signals isn’t shy about dispensing one thing without charge: advice to small-business owners. On the company blog, Signal vs. Noise, Fried shares what he’s learned about the art of streamlined teamwork with more than 65,000 readers. First, kill all your meetings; they waste employees’ […]

keep looking »

• Welcome

  
  • I'm Bob Crosley. Since 1995, I've been involved in the web and software development as a developer, project manager, program manager and product manager.
  • I'm obsessed with usability, interopability and great design. I want to build great software. Software that users LOVE!
  • These are my thoughts on everything great, and not-so-great, about this business.
  • Thanks for stopping by.
  • Contact me.
• 

• Disclaimer

  This site represents my own analysis, opinions and sarcastic rantings. In no way does it represent the official, unofficial, or even unintentional positions of any past or future employer.