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This Week in Twitter
- Looking at family photos, live seemingly consists only from parties, sun, scenery, laughing, romance and success. And then, a funeral. #
- This is how Internet is making our society post-democratic RT @TechCrunch http://tcrn.ch/cUzBxa #
- Average == beautiful http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average #
- Душа заплакала, сидя у него на руках. http://j.mp/cKJcsI #
- Learned useful ChildWindow control in Silverlight (thanks, Agu). Technology should be all like that: intuitive and just working. #
- breaking news: bobuk увольняется из Яндекса и переходит на работу в Старлайт RT @bobuk: Еду в Старлайт, работать. #
- Very good news: Microsoft is open-sourcing U-Prove, the framework behind "Geneva". Go use it! http://arst.ch/g1n #
- I rated a YouTube video (5 out of 5 stars) — Мульт — Моя жизнь.Стёбно http://youtu.be/Tm90UJHFWg4?a #
- PlayReady finally comes to Smooth Streaming RT @XaocCPS IIS Smooth Streaming Format SDK Beta 1 released http://tinyurl.com/yb7mpm5 #
- "Hello dear God, what's up, how is your health? Zhenya, 2nd grade" M.Dymov, Children write to God #
- "People grieve so much on the Earth, can it be worse in your Hell? Radik, 4th grade" M.Dymov, Children write to God #
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Five Web Design Mistakes
I’m not a web designer myself.
That’s why I’ll tell you which design mistakes
are repeated over and over again.
Making a cute web site
Don’t make the web site just cute. You main goal should be to influence users with the power of arts. Listen to the business people carefully — they want their users to be persuaded doing exactly what? In a web shop, think about what can motivate users to buy things in your shop, not in the neighbour one. In an ad-based revenue model, ensure the users would come back over and over again. Send an emotional message, if you need. Build trust, if you must. Charm them with elegance. Overwhelm them with power and energy. Disarm them. Inspire them. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Embarrass them. Soothe them. Praise them. Make them curious. Make them feel your respect. Manipulate users to help achieving your business goals.
Not owning design
Late change requests tend to be placed in any free area, without re-thinking and re-evaluating the overall impression of the site. Protect your site from scars of change requests. Insist on a new composition to incorporate the new feature in the optimal way. Educate decision makers about negative consequences not doing so. Fight for your baby, own your design.
Ignoring real data
Dummy screens always look so harmonious. Colors fit together, texts fit to their areas, no part is pulling the picture to a side, the focus is flowing perfectly. The only problem is that your users won’t ever see the dummy screen, but the real app filled with the ugly, chaotic, dirty real content. Ensure to get the real random content examples and create your design with them. Test your design with extremes (absence of content, too much content, bad content quality).
Not reusing controls
The app looks fine in the minimized mode. But let’s look at it in fullscreen. Well… not bad at all, but let’s just spread the controls a couple of pixels apart, for a little better look… Stop. You’re doubling development efforts here, achieving another 2% improvement of design quality. Better pay attention to other areas.
Reusing controls
Coverflow looks cool. We’re using it to select from products. Fine. But we also have another item lists: site navigation; selecting day, month and year of the birth date on the registration form; choosing credit card in checkout… Reuse the coverflow control? Obviously not. While it would undoubtedly save development efforts (unless you change a couple of pixels from usage to usage, see the point above), it would often ruin the overall web site impact.
This Week in Twitter
- RT @rands A good program manager has a calm professional ambivalence acquired by constantly discovering worst case scenarios. #
- When exposing a class with auto-generated properties to WTF (sorry, WCF), you have to put [DataMember] above each of them. #
- Lege einen Deutschtest ab. Die Unterlagen sind als confidential gekennzeichnet. o.O #
- What can biking in the city be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o #
- Cute error message http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/201001/errord/Processing-WTF.jpg #
- Probiere Joghurt mit Mais. Klingt komisch, schmeckt aber überraschend harmonisch. #
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This Week in Twitter
- Strategies dealing with Legacy Systems: http://j.mp/avR3LS #
- Unfair!!! I've ordered Hero yesterday. RT @TechCrunch: There's A New Hero In Town: HTC Announces The Legend http://tcrn.ch/9skcIT #
- Visual Studio shortcuts remain big mystery to me. In C#, place the cursor to a class member and press Shift-Ctrl-Alt. Did you know that? #
- WCF is unable to serialize SyndicationFeed out of the box. I think, we should rename WCF into WTF. #
- If Java is the modern COBOL, then C++ is for sure the modern Fortran. #
- To allow Icecast on Windows to send crossdomain.xml with proper mime type, put the file mime.types in its folder with text/xml entry inside #
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This Week in Twitter
- Word of the day: Faceboog #
- Radeln heute ist nicht mehr die Frage, ob man stürzt, sondern wann. #
- WOW, advanced tabs: http://www.engkoo.com, search "white", then "black", then drop one tab onto another #cool #UX #concept #
- Google decided to employ Microsoft's strategy: repeat other's inventions, only better? RT @Damir: connecting buzz to twitter … #
- Reading http://www.saatchi.be/ #
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Chinese New Year Wishes
February 14 is the first day of the new Chinese year, so this Saturday all Chinese (and also many non-Chinese) in the world will get together with their families to celebrate Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival, 春节).
In this post, I’ve gathered some traditional (and untraditional) spring festival wishes. By clicking on the links, you can easily send the wish to your beloved ones, parents, children, friends, collegues or actually anybody.
万事如意 all best wishes
心想事成 may your wishes come true
幸福安康 happiness and good health
平安快乐 safety and happiness
一帆风顺 single sail, gentle wind
恭喜发财 prosperious new year
笑口常开 life full of happiness and smiles
工作顺利 job to go smoothly
事业有成 success in all projects
无条件爱 unconditional love
自由 freedom
儿童 children
尊重 respect
理解 understanding
友谊 friendship
欣赏 appreciation
Or, you can see them all. This gallery is powered by silverhd.net, a new beta created by my collegues. The wishes are best viewed with Microsoft Silverlight. I thank 于海婷 for the wishes and translating.
This Week in Twitter
- Having hangover? Soy sauce's antioxidant activity is ten times that of wine: http://j.mp/aaMROJ Next time Chinese instead of a bar
# - I bet every Russian is immediately fascinated hearing the 他妈 curse first time. #
- @weiss_heiko Je mehr du entwickelst, desto mehr musst du debuggen. in reply to weiss_heiko #
- Sometimes, Fluent API is used as an euphemism for Demeter Law violation. #
- Try to stick with these fonts when designing for Silverlight: http://is.gd/7BUzm #
- Yes another US-only site http://is.gd/7GczI. But I like the idea. #
- Had to come to the customs office, to pay for zombies hate fast food from snorgtees.com. The seasoned officer wasn't impressed. #
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This Week in Twitter
- You have developed web sites for too long… if you have Fiddler installed on your home PC. #
- @bobuk жгет прямо сейчас на http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bobuk-meets-new-year успевайте #
- RT Bewegung bei Deezer http://bit.ly/8×57bN via @TCEurope #
- BrowserHttp streams, but has no headers. ClientHttp has headers, but doesn't stream #Silverlight #networking #from #hell #
- @umputun NYSE isn't going to send their data using twits yet, is it ? http://tcrn.ch/4DnHit by @arrington #
- Got an invitation on a #Smalltalk con: "Are you ready for web2.0?". Web2.0 is out, @cincom. Please wake up and try with iPhone, Android. #
- -8 degrees today, and I biked. But that's nothing. My mum has also biked. #
- Going to Riga until the end of the week #
- Riga today: cold, nothing to eat, nothing to buy, and two churches instead of sightseeing. #
- Sitting in cold Riga in hotel with no water and hearing podcast about why ipad is the new world of computing. #
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Software process summary
I believe, I could show how software processes can be avoided in the company. And it will not only not compromize, but indeed improve its efficiency, manageability, and structure. To achieve it,
- Create a common vocabulary of artifacts and activities instead of a common process
- Ensure presence and motivation of competent professionals
- Learn how and where to trust them
Just to be sure, I’ll provide a couple of examples what is process and what’s not.
