So Microsoft has a new “viral” site out that hopes to dispel the myths around Windows Vista. They conducted several focus groups and asked participants their opinion about Windows Vista of which most were negative. Then they showed the participants the new Microsoft OS called “Mojave”. They see, and love the new version.

For full disclosure, I upgraded to Vista and have several likes and dislikes but overall am happy with the upgrade. But I’m more interested in the psychology at play.

There are several factors influencing the perceptions of the participants:

Negative press and full assault from Apple from day one.
The launch of Vista seemed to be mismanaged from the start. I remember the lines at the store when Windows 95 came out. This was nothing like that.

Past experience using Windows products (good or bad)
Windows has been such a strong part of our day-to-day lives. We expect really big things from upgrades.

The luxury of having someone explain all the new features to them
This is a big one. Users rarely every dig through documentation to figure out how all the features work. They slowly learn only the ones that are relevant to them.

The opportunity to see a “new product” before anyone else
Users who are asked to participate in “new” designs are more optimistic than those who are asked to provide feedback on a product they already know.

Overall I think it’s a great case study on perception versus reality.

One last point of criticism for Microsoft: If you are building a product called SilverLight to go head to head with Flash why in the world would you put this together in Flash?

According to several sources the mirror has been around since the 13th century (give or take). Just about everyone is familiar with it. You know, that shinny thing that looks back at you in the bathroom.

But leave it to the product designers at LG to turn it into a “feature”. I think we’ve officially run out of new features for the phone.

See commercial below:

Now if you’re really into cutting edge check out the Jitterbug:

Imagine that. All it does is make calls and keep track of your contacts! No games, no facebook, oh yea and no mirror.

So I’ve been playing this game with my blog. Trying to climb my way to the top of Google for the search “Sean Landry“. I was getting there, a little more SEO and I would be there right…Wrong!

I dropped off the Google listings completely. I flipped page after page and still no seanlandry.com listed. Huh weird. So I did a search which would definitely bring my site up. I typed “seanlandry.com” And it came up #1. Great right? Not.

Here’s what I saw:

YIKES! What is all that text underneath my site? I went to my blog and everything looked fine. I couldn’t figure it out. So I looked at what Google webbot sees using the Google Webmaster tools and the first 50 keywords for my site looked like this:

1. alcohol
2. credit
3. marijuana
4. loan
5. card
6. effects
7. ringtone
8. drug
9. cocaine
10. phentermine
11. ringtones
12. prescription
13. viagra
14. debt
15. instant
16. cards
17. score
18. generic
19. steroids
20. approval
21. student
22. tylenol
23. tramadol
24. nicotine
25. reporting
26. cialis
27. ortho
28. testosterone
29. vicodin
30. adderall
31. hydrocodone
32. xanax
33. zoloft
34. blood
35. prednisone
36. soma
37. ambien
38. canada
39. pharmacy
40. effexor
41. equity
42. application
43. heroin
44. lipitor
45. mortgage
46. wellbutrin
47. abuse
48. mp3
49. acid
50. interaction

So I looked at the source of my pages. And there it was. Several HUNDRED lines of code all right before the end of the page. All using the display: none CSS to hide it from me but not from the crawler.

Now I’m in the process of changing passwords, updating my site’s index and locking everything down. Nothing worse than a SPAMer/Hacker to ruin my day.

There’s a new product on the market called the Programmable Sky Ceiling. It’s intended to “lift your spirits” and provide enjoyment in an otherwise humdrum environment.

But I wonder if you were the kind of person who said: “Hey, why does the ceiling have to be so damn uplifting?” Why not one which reminds me of my own mortality? Maybe I’m the kind of person who wants something like this:

I was recently perusing my del.icio.us account and noticed a news item that was tagged with “wft”. I’m not sure what I find more interesting, the use of the term “wtf” to identify content or the fact that people want to save things that they consider “wtf”

Here are some recently popular wtf stories:

The Chronicle Herald - Killer confesses, gets out
Youth Killed By a Helicopter While Getting His Mail Sparks Debate About Headphone Safety
The Big Apple: Chicken Fried Bacon
Ninja - Motivational Posters
Animated GIF of that girl who doesnt close her mouth

Here’s a link to the most popular wtf stories in del.icio.us

A more and more users upgrade to browsers that support Alpha transparency, there are increased options for designers. A great way to get a visual effect on your images without manipulating the originals is through the use of overlays.

Say you have a picture of John Wayne:

Now this is great but you want it to look a bit older, weathered and aged. If you position an overlay on top of this image that contains some yellowness and some dust and scratches you can get that effect without changing the original.

Here’s the overlay:

What you need to do now is position the overlay over the top of the original picture of the Duke. It’s z-index needs to be higher and it’s position needs to be exactly over the top of the original. See example

Volia! that’s it. New style without changing the original.

If you use browser tabs as much as I do you’ll love this tip. Clicking the scroll wheel on your mouse will open a link in a new tab. I’ve been right-clicking > Open in new tab for years. This is a single action that does the same thing. Works in FireFox and IE7. Enjoy!

Give it a try!

Sliders are a common way for users to adjust elements with fine granularity. They can offer more choice with a smaller footprint than a drop down menu. They also offer absolute variables so the user never enters into an error state. The problem with sliders is their accessibility. They require decent dexterity since the target for the mouse is ofter small but recently I found this new method that has full keyboard support.

This method offer full keyboard capabilities as using unobtrusive JavaScript which is a method that separates the JavaScript behavior from the page markup.

Here are some other examples of unobtrusive Javascript

• Lightbox
• Calendar pop-up
• Star Rating
• Image Reflections
• Slide Show

I’m all for contextual advertising. I think it’s a great method of matching buyer and seller. Google’s sponsored links are a great way to target business. So you can understand why I got a little offended by the latest sponsored link in my Gmail account. I know it’s been a long winter and I’ve grown some additional “cold weather protection” but it’s a little disheartening when you see this:

I just got that extra push to get to the gym today

If you’re like me, you’ve got some version of iTunes running on your computer. And if you’re like me, you see a prompt to download a newer version of the software just about every time you launch the application.

I guess since all the other upgrades were pretty seamless, I pretty much just agree to upgrade. I click on the “Yes” button on go on my merry way.

But not so fast… I recently noticed a new icon on my desktop

Hmmm. I don’t remember installing Safari. I did a little searching and it turns out my latest agreement to install iTunes came with an addendum (Safari). I guess I missed the news on this but I found it a bit intrusive.

I’m going to keep Safari installed (I like to check my webapps in several browsers). But, I’ll be sure to read the Terms of Use a little more carefully before clicking “Yes” in the future.