“The word website
is becoming a misnomer.”

-Ed Illig, Brainstorm

The Importance of a User-friendly Website

Brainstorm’s Ed Illig spoke on the importance of a user-friendly website at a recent Linking Indiana winter event.

He cited three very different market sector website case studies: Anderson University, a higher education site; Lumina Foundation, a non-profit; and RCA, a commerce site.

Using these examples, he described what user-friendly means in different spaces and where he sees things heading in terms of usability, user engagement, brand, metrics, and more.

You can view the talk on Blip.tv in full here:
The Importance of a User-friendly Website [32:21]

Or in three bite-size, lunch-ready segments here:
(Part 1 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [12:40]
(Part 2 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [11:45]
(Part 3 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [8:47]

UCI Irvine computer scientist Crista Lopes turned to Second Life in developing her rapid transit software called Skytran when access to real life high-end simulation technology proved prohibitive. Read the full Orange County article here.

[ via: Mal Burns ]

The Nokia N810 Internet tablet

iPhone/iTouch SDK

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced Apple’s embrace of third-party applications for Apple iPhone and iTouch today, promising the upcoming release of a Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable application development.

According to Wired, the news coincided with word that France is forcing Apple to unlock the iPhone over Apple’s deal with Orange, Apple’s French carrier partner.

Nokia N810 Released

On the heels of that announcement, Nokia released the new N810 to Engadget today in hopes of an early blessing. Engadget’s review was mixed: Looks good but you wouldn’t want to type on one.

We’ll take two of everything, please.

[via: scriptingnews]

“In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mails…,” says Phil Smith of Cisco Systems.

The world’s ever-increasing demand for bandwidth shows no sign of abating. And so the debate rages on. Could the internet buckle under demands for increased data transfer—or from shark bites?

Well it better not!

From fiber optics to routers this BBC piece explores some possibilities along those very lines.

If you’d like to significantly decrease your broadband load time in Firefox, follow these simple instructions to change defaults originally set to accommodate dial-up users.

Step 1: Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar where you normally type a web address.

Step 2: In the filter bar below the address bar type network.

Step 3: Double-click on network.http.pipelining to change the setting from false to true.

Step 4: On the line below network.http.pipelining double-click on network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change the number to 10.

Step 5: Two lines below network.http.pipelining.maxrequests double-click on network.http.proxy.pipelining to change the value from false to true.

Step 6: Several lines above network.http.proxy.pipelining you’ll see network.http.max-persistant-connections-per-proxy and network.http.max-persistant-connections-per-server. Double-click each line and change the value to 8.

Step 7: Two lines up locate and double-click on network.http.max-connections and set the value to 48.

Step 8: Now right-click (control-click on a Mac) anywhere in the configurator (the area where you’ve been making the changes). Select New then Integer. When prompted, copy and paste or type the following into the field provided: nglayout.initialpaint.delay.

When prompted to add a value, enter the number 0.

Step 9: Close all windows and tabs. The changes will take effect when you restart Firefox.

These changes allow Firefox to make multiple server connections and will speed up page downloads for better, more efficient use of your broadband connection.