Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox just gave me the heads up on the 10 Best Application User Interfaces of 2008.
Nice to see Eyeblaster’s Campaign Monitor leading the charge for the Online Advertising Industry!
The article describes why and what makes a good design interface and what I found interesting was Jakob calls out Microsoft Office’s “Menu Ribbon” as a factor in these great design examples.
“Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.”
Although a caveat is, “Microsoft user interfaces have not always been shining examples of good usability; the company has embraced usability in a big way only in recent years. About 10 years ago, the main design criterion was to pass a Bill Gates review, and Billg’s definitely not an average user.”
I think we’ve all come along way in the last 10 years!
Don’t you?
Just wrote a piece on the adCenter Blog about the adCenter Community Team updating Twitter followers about news, tips, tricks and online marketing best practices that we publish on the Advertiser Blog, API Blog and Web Analytics Blog
Follow adCenter at: http://twitter.com/adcenterblog
Follow me at: http://twitter.com/melcarson
Last week I talked about the new Live Search home page images. Some of the coverage from around the web asked if the pictures would change and the answer is yes they will!
The above is the latest pic. Very cool (literally) and inspirational if you ask me 🙂
One of the Hotspots leads to an aerial shot of Langjokull Glacier in Iceland.
Wonder if Kristjan’s been there?
People often ask me what happened to Photosynth!
Well it’s still live on the Live Labs Site and new synths are being added all the time.
The above is just one application of the technology which was used in an episode of CSI New York.
Check out also the technology being used at the Hard Rock Cafe and Renault!
Not seen the film yet? Let this Microsoft Advertising feature help you decide!
Find videos, downloads, a photo gallery and a competition…
Staff here at Microsoft Advertising have got together to take some time out from the rigours of daily life in online advertising and decided to put a bit back into society.
Over the next few months, groups of us will be going down to the Sunrise Children’s Centre in Kent (part of Barnardo’s )to help revamp their facilities including their sensory garden, games room and outside play area.
No XBox? We might have to do something about that!
In order for us to complete the work we need about £10k!
I’ve kicked off the donations with £150 on behalf of Dave Naylor who I did a deal with to revamp this blog, and what a great job he and his guys did!
If you can spare some cash, the children at Sunrise could do with all the help you can give.
For more information, please check out our Microsoft Advertising Community Project Site!
The Live Search guys have announced a new homepage design on the Live Search Blog!
The above design is just the first in a number they’ll be rolling out. I’ve seen a couple and I can only describe them as gorgeous.
What makes them better is the inclusion of “hotspots” that pop up on hover with different facts, or possible searches that can take the user to services on Live Search that they may not know about.
This hotspot clicks through to:
And this one:
Leads to:
It’s only being released in the US right now with other countries to follow.
If you want to see, just change your Live Search country setting to United States here:
Like it? I do 🙂
Actually no! It isn’t a re-brand or anything, but a little test to see what people would think of Windows Vista if it wasn’t called Windows Vista.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a letter from Bill Veghte with the official word on the OS.
I often get asked about Vista by family and friends who’ve “heard” it’s bad news or that it “crashes all the time”. It’s funny how these myths carry on well past the point when any issues there may have been have been fixed.
The Mojave Experiment is quite well done. Their faces are a picture when they realise the truth of what they’ve been seeing!
The long anticipated deal with Facebook to provide its users with Live Search functionality has happened.
In an announcement this morning Satya Nadella has announced the extension to the deal in the US to provide search tools powered by Live Search and Ads powered by Microsoft adCenter.
No news on them looking to evolve the deal internationally, but with 45% of the UK market it’ll do very nicely over here thankyou very much!
This is great, great news!!!
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