Apps
Contact
Seminars
RSS FeedJune 20th, 2012
Google Groups – Old UI, New UI and Why do I
I recently set up (or tried to set up) a Google group for the CS 6212 (analysis and design of algorithms) class that I am teaching over the summer at GWU. The idea of a group is simple, and egroups have been around for a loooong time now. (Remember egroups.com?) I used to be a user of egroups.com, and if my memory serves me right, it was bought by Yahoo! during the dot com era, and yahoogroups works pretty much the same way. This time though, I decided to try Google Groups.
Google is an engineering marvel, and the advances in their engineering are exceeded only by the abstruseness of their user interface.
I do not enjoy setting up a group and then not having the least bit of idea on where to post, how to invite people etc. I am sure I will eventually figure it out, but this is a great example of poor user interface.
August 30th, 2010
Modal windows are oh so out of mode (Yahoo messenger team take note)
The brainchild of 1990s was called “ineffective” in 2000s and should be considered plainly out of mode in the 10s. Why does the software bring up a modal window and wait for the user to do something, rather than doing something about it itself? Well, I should classify that as “bad software”. Good software simply doesn’t do that.
Example bad software – Yahoo Messenger. Consider this stupid piece of software that tells us of a broken connection, but blocks itself from rechecking the connection by bringing up a modal window and thus blocking for user input. Very likely the network connection has resolved and if it was simply able to try again, it would likely get through.
Guess Yahoo engineers should be going through the user interface basics again rather than spending all their time on messing up the users’ browser settings.
Considering that this is my 3rd post on Yahoo’s user interface deficiencies, I expect to be getting a big fat check from their product manager – though I might just settle for a word of thanks.
NR42AHWXTKBF
August 11th, 2010
New desperate measures by Yahoo – despicable and shameful
The new Yahoo messenger snidely messes up the user’s browser settings, and almost your entire computer. As I installed the new Yahoo messenger 10 (I am now running 10.0.0.1270-us), it automatically installed the Yahoo toolbar in my firefox and IE8. It changed the search provider to Yahoo and changed my home page to Yahoo.
Normally I try to put some weakly funny comments in my blog, but not when I am this upset. Despicable, shameful behavior from Yahoo – may its demise be quick and painless.
December 10th, 2009
One catch block = wrong diagnosis + bad error messages + bad reports
As I signed out of my KPN@NL account at Amsterdam Schiphol, after a couple of minutes, Yahoo gave this friendly warning.
Thats it!! Yah
oo!! Your servers may really be busy, but I should say that I switched off my wireless connection about 6 minutes back!!
Now, it could be either (a) Yahoo is being extremely modest, taking on blame even when it knows the user doesn’t know a hoot about networking, or (b) Yahoo is just trying to show off that its servers are really busy, implying that it is really popular! But I suspect that the answer is (c) Yahoo has a network application developer who likes a single catch clause. try { a bunch of things } catch (Exception e) { server_busy();}
The problems that this kind of code creates fall basically in 3 groups:
(i) Wrong Diagnosis – this could imply wrong attempts at fixing it
(ii) Wrong error messages – as in this case, although in some cases, it could be really bad for the user
(iii) Wrong reports. When Yahoo checks its reports at the end of the month/year, it will observe that a staggering 27% of time Yahoo’s servers were really busy. That day, the procurement office at Yahoo will be scrambling to place orders with its hardware vendors. Dells and Sunacles of the world will have a field day.
November 21st, 2008
Well played Steve Ballmer
Exactly as I mentioned on Nov 11th, 2008, Microsoft has denied any suggestions that it is going to acquire Yahoo, and voila, now the price is sub 10$, and only heading south. I think from here, the script may differ from what I thought. Perhaps Microsoft will not buy Yahoo after all, and simply buy the Yahoo search. That would definitely be favored by people who are looking just at improving search.
However, I continue to believe that Microsoft should buy Yahoo entirely – lock, stock and barrel. The reason is this – Yahoo gets millions and millions of visitors, and to market the Live search to them would be much easier there. The browser war has been lost, and with that, the search button from browser has been lost to Google. How many people are going to be able to change their default search engine in the Firefox search box (and install a Live engine in the process)? The answer – not very many.
The place to attack Google exists, only from messengers. MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger, if they were to combine their forces to promote the “new” Live search (basically Yahoo search merged with some niceties from Live search), they might have a shot. Especially, when you can have the users (when upgrading their messenger software) to also install a new search engine on Firefox, and change the default search engine.
As you note, there is no technological element in this game now – it is all business.
I cannot say what will happen tomorrow. But I do believe that buying Yahoo is in Microsoft’s favor. Certainly, first it was Yang’s ego that stopped this deal. Now, it shouldn’t be Ballmer’s ego after all. Don’t you think so?