On Websites

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Webdesigner Depot, on Apple and Microsoft’s websites:

Which site is the winner? If you’re looking at usability alone, Apple comes out ahead. They have a better designed homepage that offers less choice, which means the user needs to think less.

They have consistent navigation across all of their pages. They use a lot of white space and sub-headings to make everything more readable, yet they keep things simple by not overusing too many different text treatments.

The Apple site is generally more user friendly and offers a much better experience to consumers who use it to check out Apple’s latest products.

Having said this, the Apple website is much smaller in scale than Microsoft’s site. Unlike Apple, Microsoft hosts many different sites and sections under the Microsoft.com brand, creating a whole ecosystem of sub-sites. Each site is packed with information and the Live powered search that Microsoft offers tends to yield good results. The biggest problem for Microsoft is consistency.

Microsoft just doesn’t have a consistent, coherent and unified brand. Every section looks and feels different. There is no global navigation and there are not many visual clues that tell the user that this is a Microsoft site — unlike Apple, where the whole site shares one unique aesthetic that mirrors that of their hardware and software, thus creating a powerful brand.

The Electric El Camino

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Wired:

Of all the cars he could have picked to convert, why did Leitschuh choose the mongrel offspring of a Chevrolet Caprice and a pickup truck? Simple. He needs to haul stuff. Besides, why not convert an El Camino?

“The Civic would have a bit more range,” he said. “But which would you rather drive?”

That question answered, Leitschuh, an electronics controls engineer and owner of TDL Electronics, got to work. The project went pretty quickly, taking about 200 hours of his time over the course of six weeks. He got some help with donations from QuickCable and some hired hands to help with welding and fabrication. The tab came to roughly $30,000, which included the cost of the car and a transmission rebuild. The lion’s share of the bill went to the 46 lithium-ferrite phosphate batteries that cost him $18,000. They’re located over the front and rear axles. Because Leitschuh yanked the engine, radiator and other archaic equipment, the weight penalty for the batteries is just 750 pounds. Total output is 33 kilowatt-hours.

Awesome.

On 10.6’s UI Changes

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Sebastiaan de With:

After a huge release like Leopard, which brought very radical change to the way our favorite OS looks, feels, and works, including a complete redesign of its icons and UI ‘theme’, Snow Leopard’s (incomplete) roundup of UI changes can only feel minor. Nevertheless, it shows some beautiful classroom examples of what composes true attention to detail.

10.6.1

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That was fast:

What’s included?

• Improves compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems

• Addresses an issue in which some printer compatibility drivers might not appear properly in the Add Printer browser

• Addresses an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly

• Addresses an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock

• Resolves an issue in which the Command-Option-T keyboard shortcut would sometimes bring up the special characters menu in applications such as Mail and TextEdit

• Addresses instances in which auto account setup in Mail might not work

• Resolves issues when sending mail with certain SMTP servers

• Addresses an issue in which Motion 4 could become unresponsive

• Includes an update to Adobe Flash Player plug-in version 10.0.32.18

Moto Goes Social with Android

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Wired:

The new Motorola phone’s biggest asset will be its custom-designed user interface, Moto Blur.

“The Blur makes text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter feeds and photos from sources like MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo and corporate e-mail appear in a single stream and sync them together with no different logins,” says Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola. “This means you can focus on what people have said instead of how and where they said it.”

Jobs, on the Touch

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Steve Jobs:

Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. Because a lot of the games were free on the store. Customers started to tell us, “You don’t know what you’ve got here — it’s a great game machine, with the multitouch screen, the accelerometer, and so on.”

We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff — we need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.

And on his health:

I feel great. I probably need to gain about 30 pounds, but I feel really good. I’m eating like crazy. A lot of ice cream.

The Difference Between News, Blogging and Bad Blogging

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Earlier today, the site MacJournals recommended TUAW’s coverage of Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” media event to their readers via Twitter. A few hours later, they followed up with this:

We wouldn’t have recommended TUAW liveblog coverage had we known how vicious it would be. We’ll know for the future.

This didn’t go over well with TUAW. Here’s the crux of MacJournal’s reasoning:

However, we found today’s coverage viciously unaware and unsympathetic of anything beyond TUAW’s own narrow view of the technology world. TUAW aggressively dismissed anything that wasn’t a new product announcement, said that Apple’s failure to meet false rumors were “legitimate complaints,” and provided no context for why anyone should have believed any of the rumors other than the fact that they were actual rumors.

Despite using the Flash-based CoverItLive service that made live updates flow smoothly to our (non-iPhone) browsers, it was not useful to our readers, nor to anyone who hadn’t spent time following and dissecting unsourced and unfounded gossip. We would not have recommended that readers follow the live coverage had we known this, and we will hesitate to recommend TUAW live coverage in the future because of it.

TUAW’s later published coverage of today’s events is more considered and useful, though it still maintains an unhealthy tone of wondering why rumors didn’t become reality, rather than ever asking why people believed rumors that turned out to be false. TUAW is far from alone in this myopia, but it’s not nearly at the level that permeated the live chat, and should not dissuade you from reading more if you seek more information about today’s announcements.

I reviewed the transcript of TUAW’s Liveblog, and I agree. It’s very, very hard to glean much information from all the chatter. There’s nothing wrong with chatter, but MacJournals was right in discouraging users from considering the site’s coverage a news source.

Blogging isn’t news. Bloggers aren’t reporters. Confusing banter between staff members isn’t news — it’s not even good blogging. Getting upset when the rumors you passed along isn’t good, either. The conversation that took place on TUAW’s liveblog belonged in a chat room, not on the front page of a major website.

Interestingly, bigger blogs like Engadget very often shine during large events, simply churning out updates as they break, without the useless babble the TUAW staff took part in this morning. They get their opinions out after the news — the way it should be.

Bloggers need to remember their place — TUAW isn’t a news outlet. Neither is Gizmodo or Daring Fireball or Engadget or ForkBombr. Yes, blogs can break news, sure. But they are no replacement for real news sources, and probably never will be. TUAW proved that today.

iPods, Cameras and No Common Sense

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Gruber:

Nano Gets Video Camera.

But — contrary to rumors, my own sources, and common sense — the iPod Touch does not.

Interesting to note how the Touch is now billed: “a great iPod, a great pocket computer, a great portable game player”.

The new FM tuner in the Nano has a TiVo-esque live pause feature, and lets you “tag” songs you hear for identification in iTunes when you’re back at your computer.

Remsastered

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Rolling Stone:

A crew of engineers at London’s Abbey Road Studios have spent four years working on the remasters using new technology and vintage equipment, the press release says, in an effort to preserve “the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings” and ensure “the highest fidelity the catalog has seen since its original release.”

You can pick the remastered collection up from Amazon. No word on if the Fab Four will end up on iTunes.