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If your site / app / software does not have an “effortless” user experience, consider it a failure.  If it hasn’t failed yet, it will soon.  Now “effortless” is a subjective term and it’s got a lot of aliases out there.  Facebook likes to call it “frictionless” and Tony Hseih calls it “delivering happiness”, but it all refers back to the concept of converting a casual user into a power user by drawing them deep into a site or community [and this is the important part] without them even knowing it.

If you’ve launched it already and you’re making money, then you are lucky.  Pat yourself on the back.  Then quickly go into code red mode and keep reading, because you have a big target on your back.  The competition is gunning for you and they are actively building your app but with an effortless experience.  At the other end of the project spectrum … if you are pre-launch (beta, alpha, dev, or wireframe) and you’ve already got usability issues, you’re just plain dead in the water.  I’m involved in a couple of projects and competition analyses right now where these issues will undoubtedly kill the project before it ever goes live.  Or, if we are analyzing the competition, we know exactly how to hone UX to launch with a superior product.  Here are some flags that UX is “effort-full”:

• Unclear sign up (yes, some startups know “better” and still want to make it tough for users to pay them — entrepreneurial darwinism)
• Non-graphic workflow / too much text
• Inconsistent workflows as users hop from to different traffic paths (ex: reviewing final product before checkout has a diff interface than pulling old orders)
• Poor mobile strategy; today, users are web/app connoisseurs … you “afterthought” mobile strategy looks crayola; mobile should enhance the core app, not replace it
• If an app, no in-app purchases
• Inconsistent and random help (spotty help is worse than no help)
• Too many user types (adds $$$ to your project, too)
• Multi-screen checkout with a million options (like a two-year-old, you need to guide users down a path — give them options, they wander off)
• Irrelevant social components … if you don’t complement Facebook or Google+, you are missing the point
• Alerts — too many / not enough / inconsistent — it’s easy to annoy with these

Step back and look at your project with they eye of a skeptic.  Oh wait, you can’t do that — you are too emotionally / financially invested in your project (financial investment = emotional investment, right?).  Then hire a focus group.  If you can’t afford that, then ask all the techie jerks that you know (not your friends — they’ll only tell you what you want to hear) to use the product and don’t listen to what they say, just watch them use it.  When do they pause to talk to you? That’s the critical mass point when users are losing focus!  Remove those sticking points.  If the user completes an entire workflow without looking up, then you’re got a winner.  They can be talking the whole time, that means nothing.  It’s when a user looks away that they consider the current step “done” or annoying enough to pause.  It’s a mental comma.  By the way, when running your official or unofficial focus group, videotape them and replay later, over and over.

Usually, you need to launch with a simple Phase 1 to figure out what the Crowd needs for a real Phase 2.  Phase 2 is where the real work begins, eliminating the obstacles that get in the way of effortless user experience.

If you don’t know what an “.htaccess” file is, then count yourself lucky.  However, if you ever have the unenjoyable task of creating one (due to 301 redirects or a domain change), I’ve found a tool that ought to save you about 2 hours of awful work.

The “.htaccess generator” at this location allows you to type in variables and different conditions like error pages and password protection and get an htaccess file that you can upload to your server.  Super easy.

Or you could stay up to 2 am and write your own.

There’s been quite a bit of buzz around HTML5 and what it means for founders, project architects, and web developers. Relevance of HTML5 has be fueled by (1) rapid browser adoption of the as-yet-to-be-finalized standard and (2) the huge implications of media delivery through the video, audio, and object tags. HTML5 is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.
The revolutionary impact that HTML5 will make will be at the mobile browser level, especially for content delivery.  This goes way beyond having your YouTube videos and movie trailers load and render way faster.  No, this is a new application delivery system that moves us a little closer toward using the web as the OS.  It definitely moves apps off the device and into the cloud.

If you need industry reinforcement of this trend, look no further than Disney’s recent acquisition of Rocket Pack for the usual  20 million.  Rocket Pack is an platform for building and delivering games that is rendered through HTML5.  In fact, in that small arena, they are the massive industry leader.  It’s a real bleeding edge acquisition for a behemoth like Disney, but it’s a big picture move.  [The tech "behind" the tech, so to speak.]

All of a sudden you can play standard def graphic games (comparable to a Wii) directly in your phone’s browser without Flash!  Realtime and networked, no less.  Despite my reliance on sunblock to setp outdoors, I’m no gamer, but, on the tech level … wow.  So for all you biz people that are concerned with applications, there’s an under-exploited (for now) technology in HTML5 called Web Storage.  This will essentially allow instant data manipulation, similar to working with a local database, but over the web.  This is achieved by dynamically caching large chunks of data using a really huge cookie.

This caching serves the double purpose of speeding up your data interactions AND allowing you to use data-intensive apps across spotty mobile networks.  Imagine having a local copy of your entire Salesforce CRM sitting on your phone.  Oh, it’ll be encrypted, of course.  Now when you are at a client’s site just before a meeting searching for an old proposal, it’ll take a few seconds to view, rather than a couple of minutes.  This tech will greatly accelerate sort, indexing, and searching data on low power devices.  I really like the possibilities and I’ll expound more in the future.

Here’s a quickie …

Today, Nielsen released stats for the the mobile phone market.  From November of 2010 to January of 2011, Android represents 29% of market share with Apple and Blackberry each at 27% .  However, without time constraint, total market share for Android compared to all smartphones is at 19%.  That’s fairly rapid adoption.

Blatant opionion:  I don’t think any iPhone users are jumping ship to go to Android.  Former Blackberry users and first-time smartphone buyers are snapping up Androids (probably due to cheap price … and the fact that you aren’t forced into a draconian contract with AT&T’s sub-par service).  Windows Mobile will always have its little sliver of the market.

Blatant opinion 2:  If you’re considering building an iPhone app, you need to consider an Android version as well.

This one will be short & sweet.

Are you the CEO /CFO / Director of Some Department?  Then read on.

Last night, I talked with some bigwigs who had questions about “The Google” and “twittering”.  It occurred to me that these were people that were bigshots in business, but absolute Luddites in the world of tech.  These individuals are often responsible for making the final call on the web strategy for their corporations.  Why?  Because nobody dares tell them the truth:  (sir) you don’t understand this.

The best advice I had for these guys, especially in dicey economic times, was to stand the *bleep* back.  It takes a big man to realize that his opinion, though tremendously powerful in certain scenarios, is damaging in areas in which he is ignorant.  Yeah, your dumb ego could put you out of business — hence the picture.

I think I shocked one guy when I told him (a little too enthusiastically) “You don’t HAVE to have an opinion!”  Sometimes you just need to put the trust in the developers and marketing people.  Hell, you’re paying them to do the job.  They live & breathe this stuff.  Trust your experts.  These are the people that really know how to get the job done and they will.

When project milestones are delivered to your desk, feel free to give direction, but don’t let your opinion be mistaken as an order.  LISTEN to the WHY certain decisions were made on the project.  If the presenter is too wary to offer you the WHY, then maybe you’ve fostered an environment that is more of an dictatorship than a presidency.  So guess what, big man?  You need to ask these people WHY they made the decisions they did on the project.  Asking questions can even make you seem smarter than delivering orders.  Analyze, consider, and then offer your opinion if you think it will help.  Otherwise, nod quietly.

The stand back and be amazed at some of these people’s innovative genius.

A client recently needed some help on setting up video tutorials on her website. I realized that this info is probably of value to just about everybody, so here it is. Disclaimer: these are my opinions as to what constitutes an effective tutorial and this is by no means authoritative.

• Initial capture:
  1. Script out the mouse clicks and screens that you want to hit in order (sometimes I do this in PowerPoint)
  2. Capture that workflow in a video with Camtasia or Captivate (possibly run the PowerPoint in another window for visual queues OR just print it out)
  3. Edit LIBERALLY to get tutorial down to final runtime
  4. Play video and record VERY rough voice over to get the basic structure down
  5. Replay voiceover and transcribe into a script, editing for brevity
  6. Read your script while the final video is playing and capture audio
  7. In Captivate or Camtasia, marry the audio with the video
• Stay away from the post-it style popups that are so popular in Captivate … people are way too impatient to read in a video, so these are not effective (example: subtitled films don’t do well)
• Instead, to highlight content or actions, perform a ZOOM in the video editing software
• When doing the VO, keep a consistent distance from the mic. I’d say 12 – 14 inches if you have a standalone mic. If it’s clip on or headset, then ignore this.
• I like audible clicks and typing sound effects in tutorials.  In Camtasia, this is one click box.
• Make sure the volume is fairly loud, but not blaring on the final version … people always have their speakers wayyy too low
• If this is an intro-style of video, it should be really fast, like 30 – 45 seconds (you are telling your audience that your service or product is as easy as 1-2-3 … so REALLY make it as easy as 1-2-3)
• Unless you have an insanely complex form (and if you do, you might consider redeveloping it), when demoing a form being filled out, show the beginning of filling out a form, then do a blur transition to “fast-forward” to the completed form.  If you must, fast-forward blur to the challenging parts of the form and in your voiceover, give users clear, concise direction.  Or, like I said, redevelop.
• Break non-intro tutorials into 1 minute to 1:30 chunks
• Use an SEO-friendly player like Longtail

That’s a messy, incomplete set of guidelines to making an effective tutorial.

I may have figured out how  Lala works their licensing mystery.  When synching your music collection, the service somehow matches mp3 tags like artist, album, and song title.  I think song length may also have something to do with it.  If it finds an “approximate” match AND the song is licensed for Lala’s use, the song gets dropped into your online music collection.  I bet this is somewhere in the FAQ on their web site, but I never read that nonsense … do you?

Why did I only find this out 6 months after I started using Lala?  Very good question … glad I asked it.  It takes forever to upload songs, so I only uploaded the first 20 gigs of my music collection.  I never processed the whole collection because I have 500+ gigs of music.  Because of how I originally converted all my CDs, my music collection is organized in an odd manner.  It’s very complex, but let’s just say I uploaded the most mainstream music first.  All my music matched and so I blissfully used Lala for 6 months.  Now that I am so enamored of Lala, I’ve decided to upload the rest.   Much of this current music that I am uploading is eclectic and indie.  So it’s not really matching.  See, I may be uploading a live or demo or rare version, and Lala mismatches it with the production studio version of the tune!  If it doesn’t match, Lala omits it from the album entirely.  This isn’t so bad, except you don’t know until you go to play an album and the last track isn’t there or track 5 is not what you’d expect or way too loud compared to the rest of the album.  I’m obsessive about music and my spidey sense tingles when something is out of whack.  However, I breathe deeply. count to 10, and then move on.  Oh … the other issue is that on CDs with unnamed hidden tracks, I’ve edited out the silence and re-saved the track under a new name.  Green Day’s “Dookie” has that with the “All By Myself” song.  Lala doesn’t recognize this sort of thing.  Bummer.

So consequently, my Lala collection is incomplete and mismatched.  Probably 10% of my Lala collection is askew.  I have an enormous quantity of weird music, however.  So although my OCD has been tweaked a bit, I am willing to overlook the slight problems in favor of the enormous convenience.  For the great majority of the population for whom Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell 2″ (you know “I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that!” … you have it on your iPod and you LOVE it) is the weirdest thing in their iTunes, this won’t matter.  All the Kanye West, Christina Aguilera, and Black Eyed Peas that you need is covered with Lala’s library.  Enjoy it!

Aviary has an impressive suite of web-based software that is free to use.  They have built scaled-down versions of Photoshop, ImageReady, and Illustrator that run within a web browser in Flash (not Air, for the techies).  In addition, they have a multi-track sound editor that has the same core functionality as Apple’s Garage Band.  Although Aviary is pushing the limits of what Flash is capable of, their execution is outstanding.  This software suite works and works WELL!

Although these apps are lighter in features than their desktop counterparts, they are some of the most advanced web apps I’ve yet used.  All are incredible models of how web-based software should work.  These are the prefect tools if you have to do a little photo editing on an underpowered laptop or netbook.  If you’ve ever had to edit some photos when you’ve been on vacation with your old junky laptop, I’ve got the solution to your pain.  Photoshop on a crappy laptop just grinds your productivity to asnail’s pace.  But these apps fire up in about 30 seconds and you’re ready to go.  Working with large graphics files is nearly instantaneous because all the heavy lifting is being done on Aviary’s servers.

I highly, highly recommended Aviary as both a top-notch tool and an example of how to build web-based software.  Check it out here.

There’s a great music website called Lala which I have been using for about 6 months now.  It allows you to upload your music collection and listen to it anywhere that you have a computer (or iPhone) and an internet connection.  You can set up playlists and share them.  And, of course, you can sort your music collection any way you want.  [ Example:  Show me just the Heavy Metal albums ... yay!]   The web application is absolutely phenomenal.  It’s drag & drop and very, very visual — a model of “complex simplicity”.  It’s more or less a web-based iTunes before iTunes tried to do everything.  I’ve stopped liking iTunes because it’s doing too much — Genius, video, and now Facebook integration … why oh why?  Call me a curmudgeon, but I kinda tolerated it about 2 or 3 years ago when all it did was organize and play music.  It did that well.  Lala reminds me of the happy, friendly iTunes of 2006.

I’m not going to sit here and describe every aspect of Lala because honestly you should be using it right now.  I have not a single complaint after 6 months of daily use.  Normally I am very critical, but this just kicks ass.  Seriously, stop reading this crappy blog post and just sign up at http://www.lala.com.  Download the tiny desktop application.  Pick three or four albums to upload.  Although the upload process is automated, it takes a long time to upload all your albums (I have 180 gigs of music!!).  So at first, limit yourself to those few albums.  It took about a day to upload 9 gigs / 1800 songs, but it did all that nonsense in the background.  Anyway, if you like it, then endure the lengthy upload for the rest of your music.

One of the coolest features that I cannot get over is that I can be listening to some ridiculously long playlist here at work.  Then I turn off my computer at work, go home, boot up the home system (workaholics, unite!), and pick up the playlist right where I left off.  It’s awesome.  I giggle to myself every time I get to do that.

The big mystery that lingers over this whole utopian system is how Lala gets around licensing.  Will the RIAA axe fall as heavily as  it did with Pandora?  — By the way, Pandora, awesome bounce-back.  Y’all have a godlike CEO over there. –  Apparently, Lala gets around licensing issues by comparing your music files with albums that they already have legally in their library.  Then Lala uploads only the music that they don’t have.  Yeah, I know, if you do the math, it doesn’t really add up.  Shhhhh!

I’ve been using this FREE tool, DropBox, for about a year now (since they were in beta).  I use it on a daily basis and, at this point, could not live without it.  Whenever anything gets to that stage, I cannot help myself, I get a little excited about it, so bear with me.

DropBox is a web service for synching up files across one or more machines.  At it’s simplest, it’s a web-based service for backing up files.  There’s been tons of these services over the years (X-Drive, AllMyData, Mozy, and Box.net come to mind).  But DropBox takes this to a whole new level by adding a program that runs on your desktop, PC or Mac.  This creates a folder on your computer that is automatically synchronized with your web folder that is hosted by DropBox.  The service even allows you to roll back to previous versions of your documents.  Everything can be done from the web interface or, amazingly, right from the program that is running on your desktop.  How many web services have that level of desktop accessibility?  Only a handful.

Ok, cool, now you’ve got a backed-up versions of important files that you can access through the web from any computer.  But if you add the desktop app to another PC, then you’ve got AUTOMATED synching going on 24/7.  Next, you can set up a shared folder with any other DropBox user.  You drop files into it and they show up in the user’s folder on their desktop.  The other user even gets a popup alert after the synch completes.  No more fooling around with FTP just to get somebody a file that is too big for email attachments.  It’s also nice for dropping 500 megs of files into before I leave work, having them synch during the commute home, then having them all ready when I arrive home. Now I don’t have to shuffle through my man-purse for the USB memory stick, wait 10 min to copy files, work on files at home that night, and then forget the USB stick at home the next day .. ugh!  I just work directly off of the files in my local DropBox folder all the time.  Every PC I work has a copy.

DropBox has a couple of extremely minor issues.  I have limited experience with the Mac client, but from the 10 minutes that I played with it, it does not seem as polished.  However, with the rate at which DropBox is improving their features, I’m sure this will be addressed in short order.  Also, I’ve experimented with running my huge Outlook PST file from DropBox to get automated Outlook backups.  No dice.  But that is really pushing the envelope and nobody provides a good system for that yet.

DropBox keeps their site and application VERY simple.  Like crazy, google-level simple.  That makes it easy for the rushed, imaptient crowd and the oft-ignored low-tech crowd like my parents (who absolutely love it).  In fact, for a second, I just want to elaborate on my parents’ experience with DropBox.  My mom uses it to synch files between her laptop at work and her laptop in the house.  My dad, the single-finger typist, used to have a terrible time getting photos to me.  He used to Kodak’s fairly complex photo-sharing service … a good service, but lacking in ease of use for non-tech-savvy peeps.  Now we have a shared folder into which he can throw his photos and I get a little popup when they arrive OR even get updated.  Smooth.

All this for free!  It’s 3 gigs free, with paid options for up to 100 gigs … beautiful.  I’ve been using the free version without issue.

Use this link to signup and you’ll get an extra 250 megs of space for free.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961

Into the mosh… Everyone’s doing it: Email. Word Processing. Calendaring. Spreadsheets. Presentation slides.

But everyone’s doing it in a different pit: The office. The conference room. On a plane. In a hotel. Out in the field…

• Can’t access that blinkin !@#$%! email because it’s back on the desktop.
• Can’t pull up that stinking proposal because Word isn’t installed on the conference room PC.
• Can’t get a quick answer from a colleague because the Mac has Yahoo! Messenger and you need Windows IM.

Whaddaya use when you’re users are moshed all over the place?

In 2008, one smart answer is Google Apps for business. Available anywhere – online or off* – Google Apps lets companies achieve levels of office app sophistication previously available only to the very big guys. (*offline functions are limited as of now)

It provides collaborative access to documents in ways that PC office suites can’t – and takes care of all the attendant housekeeping and security so you don’t have to.

Businesses and employees will want the Premier Edition for $50 per user per year. This gives you branded, ad free screens – and enormous storage quotas that defy even the most neurotic email hoarders amongst us. Users get emails branded with @yourDomainName.com not @gmail.com, and 25gb of storage each. When you add up the annual cost of maintaining Word Processing, Calendaring, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and Email Apps for each user’s PC (desktop and laptop in some cases), $50 is a complete steal.

And just when you’re thinking this sounds cool, it gets better: Teams can collaborate on documents across the web, eliminating the need for emailing large attachments to each other and playing the “can you name the latest version” game. (Okay, we’re jumping up on stage now)

But in case this isn’t enough to get you downloading Google Apps right this instant, recently announced integration with SalesForce and the Google Apps Engine will surely stoke the fire.

Here it is. Check it out.

Now we’re on the stage, arms up over our heads, looking down at the undulating mosh, smiling wide… and now we’re diving in…

Hi! I’m a recovering .MP3aholic!

Endless gigagbytes later, I was buried like a collector with just too much damn stuff … then along came internet radio.

Originally it was MusicMatch, until Yahoo bought and buried them, now it’s all about Pandora.

A browser based, web 2.0 and absolutely FREE internet radio app, Pandora allows you to create a radio station and teach it preferences by selecting “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Then, over time, these preferences kick in and Pandora plays more of what you want to hear.

To quote the company “Pandora has a single mission: To play music you’ll love – and nothing else!”

www.Pandora.com

Used to be easier to be a pretender on the web. Just take the visitor counter off your site and voilà!: pretend you’re a “General” like Motors or Electric. Google Benchmarking bodes a new day.

Today it’s all about transparency. Smart companies from Google to Zillow to Kelly Blue Book are making – what used to be insider only – information readily available in the browser of your choice. Instead of hiding their nuts, the winners are working hard to lay them out in the open.

Google Analytics Benchmarking (in beta) is optional and free. Benchmarking shows how your stats compare with other industry verticals. Yours or another.

It’s not the total transparency that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wants to see, but it’s a step in the right direction. (psst, Michael, pass the cashews)

We’re not talking about the Carl’s Jr. chili burger mess on that guys face. We’re talking about how your visitors are going to find what they’re looking for on your web site.

Google offers a very low cost – $100 a year – custom edition search engine called the “Business Edition“. (50,000 page sites cost more).

The coolest thing is that you can fit Google Search Business Edition seamlessly into your site – sans the “Powered by Google” logo – and with no results page ads. To completely customize the look and feel around your core branding instead of theirs, Google offers an XML API.

So the topLingo tip for today is: Google Custom Search Business Edition with the XML API is the way to go if your site needs a commercial grade search that won’t detract from your core branding.

Now you got it. Now you’re good.

How many people are searching for iPhones versus Blackberries? IBM versus HP? Real Estate versus Jobs?

What if you could track how many people searched for your goods or services last month versus last year and the year before that? What if you could see how frequently your search topics showed up in Google News articles?

Google Trends does that. Free.

With Google Trends, you can compare up to five topics at a time and see how often they’ve been Googled over time… globally, nationally, or by state and region. It also shows you which geographic regions searched these terms the most.

Want to see the top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S.? They’re updated hourly.

In topLingo fashion, here’s another “tool you can use”.

Cool. Free. Useful.

Try it!