Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Chrome certainly makes that idea manifest. And sure, maybe somethings were taken away that I’d want, like the ability to have a color theme different from the a-bit-too-dark Bloogle blue, or access to all my favorite FireFox add-ons. Oh, and somewhat ironically, I do miss my Google toolbar, particularly the autofill feature. But I expect that will all come in time.

On the lighter side, I just love how Microsoft came out with a statement today saying they weren’t worried about Chrome competing with IE8 - the only thing preventing that from happening is the default install base on Windows PCs - if IE weren’t installed by default on so many machines, their market share would fade away so fast - IE feels like an old jalopy compared to FireFox, and I hate to say this, but FireFox, while still an amazing browser, just feels slow and tired compared to Chrome (though maybe I should give it some time and open up a gazillion tabs and get umpteen applications running and see if Chrome’s garbage collection really is as great as they sat it is) - and one reason it hurts to say that is because so much of what makes Chrome great is thanks to the sweat and hard work and dedication of the people over at Mozilla - Google even made of point saying so in their super cool comic strip about the new browser. I love how they call it a ‘book’ - hey Googlers, did you know that there also are these books out there with, like, text and stuff :)

I love his raw style. I also love how there is this sense that the same characters (or their cousins) re-appear in different art pieces. Hard to explain, but it’s weirdly sort of Stockholmish Swedish, culturally - well, that’s just my opinion - I’m sure he’d disagree :)

Well, almost. One thing that I find quite strange is the location of the control for jumping back several pages:

I remember the first time I needed to go back several pages and saw this and sort of looked at it like “hmm, seems like you can jump ahead several pages, but how do I jump back several pages?” But after clicking on the little control, it turns out that to go back several pages at once, you click on the control next to the forward link:

Unintuitive indeed. Would it not make sense to have this control be next to the back button, maybe something like this?

Here, the location of the control maps to our mental model of where we want to go, as in backwards.

First off, I was pretty confused when I saw this, since seeing that g out of context doesn’t remind me at all of the Google brand. The old favicon was much better:

While that lowercase g could be pretty much anything, it’s hard to confuse this with anything other than Google. But worse, and this was the case with their previous favicons as well, they have the same favicon for several different services, such as search, maps, and news.  So why is this a big deal (or a small-big deal)?  Well, I use favicons as buttons in my bookmarks toolbar…

This is a great way to conserve space.  The only requirement is that the people who are designing the website are thinking about how favicons might be used.  (Ok, in addition to the requirement of having a favicon in the first place.) Maybe what I’m doing is a bit unusual - basically turning favicons into buttons by removing the text description, but it seems to make sense, no?  So, if you happen to be someone who designs favicons or has any say about it, if you’re working on a suite of services, don’t use the same favicon for all of them.  Even if users aren’t being nerdy like me, it still makes it easier to target the right app if it has distinct visual mark or brand.

Dear Anders,

As a previous Wimbledon LIVE customer we are contacting you about your preferences. If you would like to be notified about the 2008 Wimbledon LIVE service, please take the following steps to update your preferences:

1) Go to www.wimbledon.org/LIVE.
2) Click “My Account/Login” on the left navigation bar.
3) Login with your email address and password.
4) Click “Change preferences”.
5) Check the box to sign up for the “MediaZone mailing list”.
6) Click “Save changes”.

We thank you for your continued interest in Wimbledon LIVE.

Sincerely,
MediaZone

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I feel so sorry for the people who run the Wimbledon Live site, who are stuck with this horribly inept solution to something that should be very simple, such as

As a previous Wimbledon LIVE customer we are contacting you about your preferences. Please click on the link below if you would like to be notified about the 2008 Wimbledon LIVE service.

[here, there would be a link the user can click on which takes them to a web page where they can click on a button to confirm their preference - in other words, take the user directly to the last step above]

So what is the cost of those 5 extra unnecessary steps? Probably that a lot of people, such as myself, couldn’t be bothered to deal with them, which in turn means that less people will be notified about the 2008 service, which in turn means lost business.

This is just such a great example of designing without thinking holistically. In other words, just looking at the design of the individual web page or whatever as if it were its own little island, when the reality is that its part of a larger flow, a larger context.

On the brighter side, really looking forward to Wimbledon as always - though I don’t think he’ll do it, would be incredible if Federer pulled of six in a row.

(watch the 2nd part at Olga’s site)

In this interview, Olga gave me an opportunity to vent a little bit about the bane of my existence, and probably that of a few million other fellow New Yorkers, the MTA. Officially, the acronym stands for the Metro Transit Authority, though I think a more accurate meaning of is Mysterious Train Activity.

Anyhoo, one of the many many many stupid things that our beloved MTA did was to install ‘Emergency Exits’ at all of the several hundred subway stations. Problem is, these exits used to be normal exits, except they were bigger and wider than subway turnstyle exits, so that people with bikes and baby carriages could use them. The thing was, though, you had to press a tiny button next to the door and then wait for a subway attendant to buzz you through. And if there was no nearby attendant booth, well then there was no large exit door, so you’d have to trek to the opposite end of the station to be able to exit with your bike or whatever.

To address this problem, the MTA came up with a brilliant, brilliant!, solution. Y’know those doors with the big horizontal bar on the insider of the door that you push to exit? Well, they replaced all the old doors and installed additional doors at unattended areas with that *huuuge* button just begging to be pushed, which allows people to exit even if there is no attendant around. Oh, one small detail, there is a very noisy alarm that goes off when you push that huge irresistible button. But what do you care, you’re long gone up the stair and out of the subway, while the people on the platform have to contend with a sharp whining sound that seems like it’s never going to stop. Well, there’s more to the story, but check out Olga’s page for the rest of it.

Thanks Olga!

Oh, and she’s got lots of other great interviews with people a lot smarter than me at UX Social.

At first, I thought this was two guys in something akin to one of those two-person horse costumes, but then as the video kept playing, I eventually had to accept that this in fact is a machine. Be sure to continue watching until a guy kicks the robot really hard in the side - the way that it regains it’s balance is incredible. Then, when they show it trudging through deep snow, t just appears to struggling so much, I almost started feeling bad for the thing - won’t be too long now before somebody starts PETR - People for the Ethical Treatment of Robots :)

Anyway, bottom line is that Google Sites will probably be a worthwhile Wiki, Team Tool, whatever, eventually, but for now, it’s still a bit rough around the edges.

Can also be found at www.yeswecansong.com