notes on web strategy, design & digital marketing. » Uncategorized

Ovi Store Problems

Rajit — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:38:27 +0000

A few basic things that Nokia messed up:
1) The display of apps based on your phone type seems inefficient. There’s apps that I can use on my E71 that don’t show up. Surely it would make more sense to do it by OS version (e.g. Symbian S60 v.3)?
2) The “missing apps” issue. http://friendfeed.com/rjt/23c51fb9/on-ovistore-getting-few-sorry-this-item-is-no
3) The search doesn’t work. I know the Gravity twitter client is in there somewhere but I can’t find it by searching. Ditto the cricinfo app.

friendfeed on twitter

Rajit — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:31:00 +0000

For the beta launch of a relatively niche product, the new friendfeed is generating an extraordinary amount of noise on twitter. It’s taking on #gfail proportions and I’m sure there’s a massive numerical gap between the user base of these products. Well done friendfeed in getting the digital masses stoked about your product!

Registering for Sites – Informing Users

Rajit — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:50:09 +0000

Classic mistake at http://www.polarisindustries.com/ If you offer the option to build something online, inform the user registration is required at the START of the process or prominently on the site, not after they’ve begun the process by selecting an item. The registration page also fails to explain the benefits of registering – another practice that [...]

WordPress Plugins

Rajit — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:12:33 +0000

I really ought to start keeping a list of WordPress plugins that should be installed as standard on every client blog I help set up and configure. At the moment, it’s a bit haphazard, with me searching for plugins that fill these roles: a plugin for social media (bookmarking/ sharing a post), for SEO (adding meta data) and one to work with Google Analytics (if the site is using that).

I think one reason I haven’t done this to date is that I had not settled on my “favourite” plugins for each of these roles. However, I’ve been happy with All in One SEO Pack and that’s pretty much a default choice for me. On the last blog I worked with someone on (though I had limited input on the design itself – I’m working on the Social Media side), I’m trying out Ultimate Google Analytics and Social Bookmarks.

#twitter #uk #politics

Rajit — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:23:13 +0000

Politicians twitter while the country burns. MPs are trying to look in touch by using the latest webtools. But all they reveal is how insecure the political elite has become. (from The Times)

I haven’t read a sufficient numbers of tweets from UK politicians to make a judgment on what they tweet but found the thoughts of the writer muddled, which was exemplified by the psychologist she quoted – “Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”

I found that an astonishing quote. Twitter is a medium (an online, micro-messaging, networked service) and he appears to think of it as a specific lifestyle based on the way some people use it. I seem to recall people having the same attitude to blogging in its early days. I don’t the article makes a sufficient distinction how some people to use twitter and twitter as a communication tool.

#webdesign #techrigy

Rajit — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:59:37 +0000

http://techrigy.com/ makes my eyes hurt. I think it’s the way the name and tagline, the techcrunch article and the Sign Up all compete for the same space on top. Too much critical information lumped together without allowing for the proper spacing. Aside from that, the service looks very interesting.

#skittles #marketing #webdesign

Rajit — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:10:22 +0000

Seriously, how hard would it be for Skittles to design a page that mashes up all the social media related to their brand, filters it (manually or otherwise) and use that as their home page? Why point to other sites and/or rotate between them? I think it’s agency.com who does their marketing. I’m not sure all this messing around is a deliberate tactic to generate buzz or if there’s a lack of thought behind the process.

Rajit — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:41:48 +0000

http://www.highiqsociety.org/iq_tests/ That site guilty is of one of the most appalling online practices: having the user fill up a form before properly disclosing the payments needed to complete the process.

iPod Touch PDA

Rajit — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:28:07 +0000

I’ve had the idea that an iPod touch would make an excellent PDA for some time now but had never got around to exploring it properly. However, the opportunity to a 1st Gen 16GB Touch at a great price came my way and having grabbed it, I have been able to follow through with this.

As a web-worker my key requirements are to store, edit and synchronize my data, manage my time and have the best possible browsing experience. It was the latter that made the Touch my first option, given the performance of Safari as a mobile browser.

The other key consideration was the iStore apps and it was a selection of these that have made the experiment of using the Touch as a PDA a success.

The apps I use are:
Twitterific – To check on and send twits
Wordpress – To manage both my blog and client blogs I manage.
Free rss reader – Mostly for general news and current events.
File lite – For quick dumps of files from my macbook.
Evernote – Anything that I that I’ll need to access and sync from multiple sources or when I don’t have my notebook with me.
RTM – Managing my time by task.
Nuevasync – Allows to sync my Google calender to my touch calendar.

With the exception of the Remember The Milk app, all of these were free. The other functionality I needed was provided by the default apps such as the mail client, lists etc.

Assuming you can deal with the virtual keyboard, the iPod Touch can be configured to be an outstanding PDA that provides most of the functionality you can reasonably expect from a mobile device.

I need to do some concept maps for a pro …

Rajit — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:20:32 +0000

I need to draw some concept maps for a project and wanted to try out CmapTools as a means of accomplishing this. I landed on this page on their website and even after getting to the home page struggled to find the Download page link. That required a separate search on Google. Not very impressive.