I know there’s a been a lot of anti-video ranting about this, but I think it’s brilliant. My camera takes both photos and videos. When I first started using a digital camera (in 1999), I took many photos and not too many videos. But as memory increased and video got easier to share, I’ve been taking more and more video. So for any event in my life, I have a mixture of photos and video. But there’s never been a single workflow for getting the memories of the event into the hands of my friends (and thus, I never really shared videos). Flickr is solving that, and I think it’s great. Good work Flickr.

Google screwed up and published a web page that was stolen from Yahoo’s own design. You can learn all about it on Yahoo employee Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. It’s not a big deal, and people seem to be missing the bigger tabloid headline that this underscores: That Google is playing follower to Yahoo.

But then Google employee Matt Cutts, in a left-handed compliment, pointed out how Yahoo had stolen the look and feel of Google’s sponsored links. Twice. Even Robert Scoble jumped in with some commentary about it.

But stealing good UI is different than stealing good art design.

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This is my second post in my Gmail UI rant series. I started this series to point out why I prefer Yahoo Mail over Gmail. I don’t think Yahoo Mail is perfect, but Gmail to me is just downright nutty, and has many-a-time left me feeling like a n00b, which is something that I really don’t think email should ever do to anyone except the elderly (that’s a joke, please no hate mail). This time I’m discussing the shortcomings in Google’s labels-instead-of-folders approach, and the difficulty in telling read messages from unread ones. Read the rest of this entry

A while back I wrote about the secret handshake. The idea is that websites that want to communicate with you could allow you to provide to them a keyword (not a password) that they would then include in all email correspondence. It would make phishing more obvious and allow you to set up filters to look for your handshakes to move them to priority folders.

Yahoo! has been using something similar for at least a few months now. It’s not for email, it’s for their log in page. Here’s how it works:

• Yahoo allows you to choose some words or upload an image. This image becomes your seal.
• Once you’ve done this, the seal will appear everywhere Yahoo asks you to sign in.
• Since it’s displayed before you sign in, it’s computer dependent -- go to a different computer and you’ll need to set up another seal.

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A few months ago I wrote a little rant about how none of the map websites accepted a single paste a of multi-line address, and how lame that was. I followed up with writing my own little hack to make it possible with Google Maps and Yahoo Maps.

Shortly after writing these blog posts, I was asked to do a User Interface presentation at one of the major search/maps companies in Sillicon Valley Read the rest of this entry

Gmail has some UI problems. Recently I blogged a bit about the bugs in Yahoo Mail Beta and in that entry I said that even with it’s slowness, Yahoo Mail Beta is still better than Gmail. A few people have chimed in to let me know their own thoughts, and one poster took issue with my Yahoo vs. Gmail comment:

your right about one thing: its antaganizingly slow. horribly slow.

your completely wrong about another: it is in no way shape or form, better than gmail. gmail is a MUCH better online email service. nothing really compares to gmail as of yet even with yahoo’s new offering..

I admit that Gmail does have Yahoo Mail Beta beat in the speed department. But I still feel that Yahoo Mail Beta is better than gmail. Read the rest of this entry

I’ve been using Yahoo Mail Beta for the last month or so, and it’s really starting to drive me buggy.

When I first started using it, I was quite impressed. It featured drag-and-drop folder operations, multiple tabs, and more. But a recenty a few aspects about it have really been bothering me.

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I’ve blogged about this before but it continues to get sillier and sillier. Want to keep track of What’s New With Yahoo Mail?! There’s now three different ways to get only part of the full picture:

• Use Yahoo Mail’s What’s New Page link at the top of the Mail Page (which I will call the “What’s New Page” from now on). If you subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus you’ll get a different page that looks broken to me.
• Look at the “What’s New” section of Yahoo Help (which I will call “What’s New Help” from now on). Hey, it’s got info about Avatars!
• Subscribe to the Yahoo Mail Beta Update Blog (which I will call the “Mail Blog” from now on) where you’ll get another set of info.

The problem with this is, of course, that none of these three-and-a-half sources provide all the info. The What’s New Page informs us of a Beta, Mobile Phone Alerts, and some sort of award they won. The What’s New Help section informs us of the new Avatar, the PhotoMail beta, and a change to saving copies of messages. And the Mail Blog informs us of the Blog itself and the new “dot” yahoo email addresses feature. There appears to be no crossover.

So, now I’ve got three places I need to look in order to find out what’s new with Yahoo Mail, and that’s still not full coverage. The Mail Blog is a bit confusing. I think it’s fine to have beta news in a different place because not everyone has the Beta. But parts of the blog claim “beta” while other parts claim “everything”. In fact it’s missing info on new beta features (RSS reading) and including info for non-beta-exclusive features (the “dot” email addresses). Which is it, Yahoo?

All of this gives me the impression that the Yahoo Mail group has a communication problem. They need to cut the marketing hype out of their What’s New Pages (Come on Yahoo, your PC Magazine award is not exactly “What’s New” material), they need to be inclusive of all that’s new (none of the News pages mentioned the addition of RSS which apparently was announced on the 29th of Nov. ) and they need to pick one place for all the news to go.

Come on Yahoo! I’m rooting for you!

I discovered that clicking the “subject” button in the compose tab of the new Yahoo Mail Beta will give you a random, silly subject line that reads like spam. Good work Yahoo.

I’ve been ranting for the last few weeks about the functionless and Yahoo Avatar and how to remove it.

Perhaps it’s dumb luck, or perhaps someone at Yahoo Mail has been reading my rants and decided to throw me a bone, because two days ago my Yahoo Mail Plus account got upgraded to the new Yahoo Mail Beta. I’ve been a huge fan of Oddpost and I’ve been waiting for this for a while.

And guess what? There’s no Yahoo Avatar in the new user interface. In fact, there’s not even a place for it since the old mail “home page” is gone, with the new UI defaulting to the Inbox view. This is good news. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the Yahoo Avatar won’t debut in the new UI at some point, but the professional feel of the Yahoo Mail beta makes me hopeful.

I’m not going to bother with a full review of Yahoo Mail Beta since it’s been convered by many other blogs. There are choices they made that I don’t agree with (that I’m going to blog about later) but my first impression is that it is extremely cool. Good job Yahoo, for both the great new UI and for not having the Avatar. I can now sleep again.