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Alexa’s usability makes me cry

I am no usability expert nor do I try to pass myself off as one -- but Alexa's new tweaks have made the site even more unbearable. I have been using Alexa out of habit, but no more.

1. They pre-populate their fields. Why? Do they really think this adds to the user's experience? People are going there with a list of sites on their mind and don't care what Alexa thinks are interesting comparisons.

2. I was marginally able to handle their pre-populated list because they gave a "clear" button that removed them. That pesky convenience has been removed. Now I have to manually remove each field before continuing with my graph.

3. Check your major browsers! Their site displays a broken layout in firefox 3. I'm guilty of not checking every browser when I create something, but I at least have the common sense to check firefox 2/3, IE, and Safari. Both on Mac and PC. It usually ends up with me writing a ton of CSS and javascript that is special cased.

How all this stuff passed through the levels of Q/A, testing, and developers boggles my mind.

Starbucks challenge

In my post about the most expensive drink at starbucks, I challenged other people to make a more expensive drink (by using a free starbucks coupon), and Sherryl made a drink that was a $1.25 (pre-tax) more in L.A. Here is what she says:

"I ended up ordering a Venti White Chocolate Mocha with the following additions:

16 shot of espresso, 10 pumps of vanilla, x white mocha, x caramel, soy milk and an energy boost. My drink cost me a total of $13.95 (w/out tax in LA CA).Mine was more expensive than his. YAY!...

Oh wait.. I forgot to tell you how it tasted.. It wasn't the best. I took a few sips and it was very thick and you can taste the coffee and hints of sweetness. I didn't drink it all (no plans of bouncin off the walls today) and a couple of my co-workers took a sip as well. LOL! Good thing it was a free drink.. thank God for coupons!"

Her receipt:

Nice job Sherryl!!

LOST – in graph form

This pretty much sums up my feelings about the show LOST

My “webshots”-esc photo

I forgot to share this one. I took this photo in Kona, Hawaii and fits pretty nicely into the webshots genre of photos. I think the guy is holding a baby and it watching the sunset with his wife. Cheesy, yes -- but I didn't plan that detail.

Click the image for my full-res shot.

Switching servers

The site may go in and out as the DNS updates. I am bringing my blog over to the EC2. It's Amazon's amazing (and cheap) hosting solution (and also hosts all of my other projects).

If you still see this post in a few days -- please contact me.

New York Impatience

I think new yorkers can be defined by this one photo from an elevator I was in today.

cliqck lives!

My new site, cliqck is now online. It allows you to keep a log of the things you buy and why you bought it. You can also see what your friends are buying as well. It's got a lot of nice features to it and I have a few other enhancements coming up soon (such as popularity lists, etc).

So please go sign up and play around. I hope you guys like it

New website

New website hopefully opening up today. Check back soon.