Why Time Travel is Impossible

Of course this cartoon can be deconstructed but it's meant to be funny and thought-provoking - and it is.

Google Includes Site Speed in Search Ranking

Give 3 cheers to Google. They are trying to take account of how fast a page loads when determining their search results. This is a tremendous advancement: advancing properly coded pages over poorly coded ones. The devil is in the details but including page load and rendering speed in their ranking algorithms will only make things better for all of us.

Now, if only they can determine the original content writer and rank the site higher than copycats. I suppose it will become practical in a few years as Google increases their indexing and computer/database speed increases.

Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that's why we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.

Using site speed in web search ranking

Facebook and Privacy

Once again Facebook has added a feature which will share information beyond what most people will expect. There is a new privacy setting called "Instant Personalization" that shares data with non-Facebook websites and is automatically set to "Allow."

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kurt Opsahl notes, Facebook introduced this concept using the innocuous topic of "cooking." Who wouldn't want to be known as a fan of cooking? Unfortunately, the same rules apply to more controversial pages you might also like:

"Previously, you could list "cooking" as an activity you liked on your profile, but your name would not be added to any formal "Cooking" page. (Under the old system, you could become a "fan" of cooking if you wanted). But now, the new Cooking page will publicly display all of the millions of people who list cooking as an activity.

"Cooking is not very controversial or privacy-sensitive, and thus makes for a good example from Facebook's perspective. Who would want to conceal their interest in cooking? Of course, the new program will also create public lists for controversial issues, such as an interest in abortion rights, gay marriage, marijuana, tea parties and so on."
PC WORLD: Facebook Gets a Little Too Personal

Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > Instant Personalization and uncheck "Allow".

When you uncheck the box the following pop-up appears:

FWIW if your friends don't do this they will be sharing information about you.

YouTube and Usability, Again

As a follow-up to an earlier post I read the following in Google User Groups:

YouTube's "product team" is not about functionality.

In fact, their prime directive seems to be to remove as much function as possible, while making every remaining operation as non-intuitive, cumbersome, and fugly as possible.

Their complete destruction of the video watch page is the latest prime example.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Google has an amazing product line (YouTube) but every action it seems to take baffles me.

End Users in Action

I was working with a client setting up a YouTube channel and had an interesting learning experience. The client wanted to change the name of one of his newly created playlists and was unable to do so.

He tried clicking on the list on the left, then right clicked on the name in that list[1]; clicked on the name of playlist [2]; then searched the buttons above the videos -- with the mouse moving back and forth [red box], left and right over the buttons; then clicked the drop-down arrow next to the ADD TO [3]; went to change screen icons on the right [4]; went back up to his Channel Name and chose the dropdown from there. [5] Came back this screen and gave up.

A co-worker spent at least 15 minutes looking around the Google YouTube help pages without able to find it. Both the client and the co-worker are experienced "expert" computer users. Both missed where they were supposed to go. Both assumed -- because of YouTubes low functionality -- that they would have to delete their playlist and create a new one.

Both couldn't believe it when I showed them the link.

How illuminating it is to watch users in action.

So, how does one edit the name of the playlist?

If you're on your "My Channel" screen (not on this screen) you have to:

1. Select the drop down by your channel name
2. Select Favorites
3. On the left column select "Playlists"

You are then at "this" screen.

4. Select the drop down by "Edit Playlist Info"
5. Edit the title (should be clear at this point)

Digital Photocopies and Identity Theft

Just in case you haven't seen this article:

Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets
Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.

Daniel Kahneman: On Remembered Happiness

Daniel Kahneman had a fascinating presentation at the TED 2010 conference on experiential vs remembered happiness. One of the illogical quirks of humans, according to Kahneman, is that we make future decisions based on how happy we remember an experience and not on how happy we actually were while experiencing the actual event. This is an interesting and useful conclusion for everyone in business who wants return customers.

Kahneman presents an interesting example contrasting the "experiencing" self versus the "remembering" self with patients who underwent colonoscopies. I would recommend seeing the presentation, but cutting the example to its core: people whose entire experience was painful and short would have a better "rememberance" if the experience was a little longer and the pain and discomfort at the end was bearable. This would hold true even if the technician doing the colonoscopy would "continue" with the proceedure simply for show for a few momements.

How does this apply to customer experience, to your role as a business person or IA? Pay attention to your customers remembered happiness as well as the experiential.

Speakers from TED 2010