Category Archives: IT-Usability

Comparing US patent search engines

I quickly put together this short animoto-video showing the beta Google Patents, US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and new Xyggy patent search engines, entry page followed by advanced search page. How do they compare in your view, focusing on US granted patents from 1976 onwards?

You should notice a difference with the Xyggy engine. Why? [...]

Testing out a new Android app

Forgive this short post I just wanted to check out how easy it is to publish from the Denmark Arms watching Kilmarnock vs Celtic using the new Android app for WP. Once I’d got the xmlrpc.php trick sorted it seems fine!

Yes, I did add the image above from the comfort of my PC!

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User centred design

Bumped into a nice guy from Directgov (‘website of the UK government’) at the launch of Social Media Week in London last night, talking about plans to make it more relevant to its users. When I woke up this morning I recalled hearing an excellent presentation from Directgov’s Andrew Lamb at the BCS in late [...]

FT’s new look (beta) website

Check out the new Financial Times re-design, pretty nice and neat if you’re asking me.

Do you have a shy website?

Nice way of approaching the age-old question of making sites more engaging – make them less ’shy’.

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SEO using Images

People like me go on about SEO strategies revolving around keywords, and rightly so. But the top ranking content items on my blog are consistently reached through great Google Images search SEO. Works for me.

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Shift handover research gets

Just stumbled across the good news that

Shift handover research gets funding

Just stumbled across the good news that

Buttons & usability

Joking about lift button design with my colleagues today I recalled that internet usability guru Jakob Nielsen recently admitted to a contract for just such a task (though doubt he contributed to the Random Lift Button project from Chris Speed, where you press a button marked ‘R’ and it takes you to a random floor):

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Out of the box

Neat marketing phrase I came up with: “An out-of-the-box solution which works straight out-of-the-box.”

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