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BingTweets is a great idea that lacks a great user interface (UI). This – overall – hinders the user experience (UX). As design-obsessed as I am, I’ve taken the liberty to create a UI of what BingTweets “could” look like. If it were to look like this, then I believe people would take it a bit more seriously.
If you’re not aware of it by now, I’m a twitterholic. So, I wanted to know my followers’ opinions about Microsoft’s BingTweets. After the service was released, I asked my Twitter friends the following question: “What do you think of BingTweets?” I started to receive responses that didn’t make sense to me. One response stated “I don’t have a need for it. Twitter is a better mobile experience to me anyway. I prefer UberTwitter 4 BBerry.” This user isn’t even aware of what BingTweets really is! And that’s a problem. It’s obvious that the point of the site is not immediately clear to users upon first glance. Responding to my question on Twitter, another user stated “[I] Won’t be using it anytime soon.” If the purpose of BingTweets were made more clear, then these users would – obviously – have a different opinion about the product! When a user gets to bingtweets.com, things seem “a bit dizzy” – wrote another respondent.
To get to the chase, users do not see the sole purpose of BingTweets when they get to the site. The user does not see an area for a “call to action,” (except for “search results” – which is not the purpose of the site). Therefore, the site seems a little off and can have a dizzy look associated with it. Some may attribute the service and think that “it’s just Microsoft trying to ride off of Twitter’s coattails to promote Bing.” It’s truly upsetting to me that users think this, because BingTweets has incredible potential that is masked behind 5 content areas of “I’m not sure what the point is here.”
In order to help BingTweets out a bit, I decided to study the design and then mock up a design of my own – using seven key concepts that may help the user experience: Read more »
Now that at least one iPhone model (the 3G S) does video recording at a decent clip, we have two things to look forward to:
being able to capture that precious moment on video, and
waiting a few years to sync your iPhone 3G S
Okay, maybe it’s not really that long of a wait, but as I’m sitting here, typing this post, ready to walk out the door for by birthday trip with Lizette Gagné to Disney World, my iPhone has been syncing for the last half hour. And I’m not kidding – it’s been exactly 28 minutes, 40 seconds since iTunes let me know that it’s backing up my iPhone. And the bar still has a quarter of the way to go before it’s done!
Look, don’t get me wrong, I love my 3G S. One of my favorite features is its ability to capture video. I’m just asking for a little button in iTunes that would give me the option to bypass recorded video during the iPhone backup process to iTunes. This way, I can sync up my music, unplug, and get out the door – iPhone in hand. Can we give Apple a heads-up on this for the next update to iTunes?
YouTube has just released YouTube XL, which is YouTube – formatted for your big screen. Over the course of the last few months, competitors such as Boxee and Hulu have been increasing the quality of their videos, with Hulu on Boxee on Apple TV (did you get all that?) seen as the ultimate set-up in streaming on-demand web video. Today, YouTube has upped the ante with its aptly-named XL version. Read more »
Anyone who listens to the TNR Podcast knows that we tend to talk about cars here and there: autos are technology, after all. Think of all the innovation that has occurred in the automotive space: air bags, very fuel-efficient engines that are also peppy to drive, self-adjusting cruise control, lane departure warning systems, decreased emissions, and the ability to drive on pure electricity – just to name a few. But sometimes it’s the small innovations that make the huge difference. Enter the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid and its upmarket brother, the 2010 Mercury Milan Hybrid with a small but powerful innovation called SmartGauge. Read more »
