I just included an automatic “Popular posts” list in my sidebar.
It is a very efficient way to show your visitors other popular content on your site. It is automatic and does not need you to do any manual work after you have installed it.
This is what you do:
Continue reading “How to include “Popular posts” in your sidebar in wordpress”
I always have to google this when my phone needs a complete reset, so for future reference, here it is.
You simply enter the numbers mentioned here like they where a phone number.
Continue reading “How to completely reset your series 60 Nokia Mobile”
After travelling between Oslo and Stockholm several times I started making note of an interesting example of good and bad usability.
When you arrive at the platform where you wait for the airport express train in Oslo you meet the following board:
It clearly states that the next train will leave at 17:45
And, I ask you: is this really the information you want?
If you say “yes, of course I want to know when the train leaves when I am at the station“. Think again.
I don’t think so. This is what you do:
You look at the sign:
“Okay, the train leaves at 17:45…”
Then you find the nearest watch:
“…right, it’s now 17:39..”
Then you do some calculations:
“…let me see.. the train will leave in 6 minutes… okay, I have time for a coffee!”
Is this good usability design? Is this following basic rules like “give the user the right information”, “make it fast and simple for the user to find the answer”?
So, what you want to know when you are at the station is how many minutes you have before the train leaves.
When you plan your trip the day before is something else. At that point you want to know at what time the different trains leave. But, at the station you want to know how many minutes will I have to wait?
An interface that consist of one single line of information and they got it wrong. Usability design is hard.
So, arriving at Stockholm Airport Arlanda I go for the Airport Express train, and meet this sign:
Yepp, the Swedes got it right…
Continue reading “An example of good and bad usability design”
In an article called I’m Leah, Norwegian princess Märtha reveals that the name of her daughter was partly inspired by Princess Leia in StarWars. A big acknowledgement of all StarWars geeks out there.
Read the rest of the details on brilliantdays.com
A nice website in Holland has linked to this article here at eirikso.com. It must be hugely popular, because my traffic just went nuts!
However, I am not fluent in Dutch, so maybe someone can throw a comment on this post with a translation of the post over at www.flabber.nl?
On my quest to build the perfect home theatre PC I have stumbled upon several interesting areas of perfection. And on my way, one thing suddenly became very clear: there are two quite obvious similarities between cars and computers.
1. Trimming cars and overclocking computers.
The art of making something go faster without actually buying a bigger engine or processor.
2. Styling cars and modding computers
The art of adding huge amounts of stuff that is supposed to make something look better.
In addition to this, you have some not so obvious similarities:
3. The fanatic and passionate Alfa Romeo owner and the fanatic and passionate Apple owner
4. The idealistic electric car owner and the idealistic linux user
5. The safety freak driving a Volvo and the safety freak running two hardware and three software firewalls
More suggestions? Comments are welcome!
I recently reinstalled WinXP on my box and was about to install QuickTime when I realized that I also had to install iTunes.
Well, I don’t want iTunes. I want QuickTime. After a little searching I evetually found the link. I find it strange that Apple, the company known for good usability and design makes the worlds most crappy design on their own web page for download of one of their most popular products…
Of course you could also conclude that Apple actually want to force iTunes down your throat if you want to install quicktime…? In that case they will RealPlay* themselves out quite fast.
But, for those of you that do not want iTunes, here is the solution: QuickTime Standalone installer
Update: They just moved it:
Quicktime Standalone Installer
*To RealPlay yourself out of the market = include horrible amounts of extras that the customer would never want and force it onto their computer when they install your product. Much like what Real systems did with their RealPlayer.
A couple of days ago I had a true WOW-experience after installing a free piece of software on my mediaserver at home. I have been talking about SlimServer and how you can stream your music out of your house using that software.
Guess what, I have found something that is easier and more powerful.
Meet ORB:
– Free
– Stream music, video and photos
– No need for a fixed IP
– No need to open extra ports in your firewall
– Streams to your laptop, PC, PDA and mobile
This is what you do:
Continue reading “Checking out ORB!”
TVNorge have done reasearch that shows a loss of about 10% of the viewers on the series “Lost” to filesharing and bittorrent. I am puzzled by the fact that the big studios don’t get the point. If they have a look at the music industry they can see parts of the solution. One of them is called iTunes Music Store. Or, to be very precise: legal and user friendly alternatives.
The reason why so many people downloaded Lost here in Norway is the fact that we got the episodes months behind the US. So, the brilliant story telling in Lost became the biggest motivation for download of new episodes from the net. The people in the movie and television industry are wizards at visual communication. In a hope that they might get the point I have taken up the art of comic drawing. Something that I have not done since the age of 14. You can clearly see that in my story about Bob the Millionaire, but the message is the important stuff here. The strip about Bob the Millionaire is based on a true story. And, Bob the Millionaire is in for a very pleasant surprise:
Do-you-get-it? Bob could not resist. And as a bonus he gets the episodes in a quality that no Norwegian television stations can give you today. Related post: Help for the left behind Yes, they will release Lost on DVD in Norway, but what quality? Probably standard definition. So, even if it was possible to buy Lost you would get better quality through BitTorrent… Hello? Anybody home? And, here’s a list of simple hints for the movie industry: 1. As already mentioned: make user friendly, high quality alternatives to illegal download 2. Remember: the world is connected! : The system of different regions on DVD was a bad idea even at the point where DVD was born back in 1996 : To even think about dividing the planet into something other than 6 billion potential viewers is utterly ridiculous 3. Availability! People want to play their content on all their devices Feel free to add more hints to the movie industry here by adding comments.
Edit: I have just tried a product called ORB. And, my first impression: truly amazing! Register at Orb, install a free application on your media server and Orb lets you access your music, video, TV-Stations and pictures from wherever you are. No hassle. No opening of extra ports in your FW. No need for a static IP. If you want access to your media through streaming then Orb is something that you should consider. Not as flexible as SlimServer, but extremely easy to set up, and it gives you access to all your media.
Edit2: You can now read more about my ORB experiments here: Checking out ORB!
I am still amazed over the power of SlimServer. It is a very stable and user friendly tool that lets you stream your music to wherever you want. It is multi platform and it is free!
It works very well together with different standalone harware players, but can be used to stream your music to any networked computer as well.
So, here is a short guide to encourage you to try it out.
My attempt on an illustration to describe how it works (click the image to enlarge):
The concept:
Continue reading “Setting up SlimServer”
eirikso 
