I don't think this is a terribly new idea, but one that has been used under the guise of “Typical user”, etc. Regardless, the philosophy behind personas is powerful and important: “Design with your users in mind.” Of course you might have several different personas to manage. A browser, an existing customer, a potential customer,…

This is the second of recent articles on RSS (webfeeds). The PC World article is longer and gives a good list of tools whereas this one focuses on just SharpReader and FeedReader. I think the moment IE supports webfeeds, this whole space is going to just explode. I don't think most home users are comfortable…

A good piece of opinion. I'm surprised, actually, at how many sites didn't break with scripting and ActiveX turned off, but having your banking site kack out on you because you're trying to keep from having your banking info phished out from under you isn't good. I'm still happy with Firefox and given how long…

I tried Furl, thought it looked interesting, but chickened out on doing some of the sign ups…now I'm going to try it again. Amy Gahran has been writing a good bit about Furl and it sounds pretty darn useful. This article, though, is about copyright and is a good read. All of us who write…

This feature is very much like Shinkuro. And it is powerful. Making sharing files easy and secure should be one of the core requirements of any good collaboration system. One of the exciting new capabilities within the soon-to-ship version 3.0 is Groove folder synchronization. Hugh Pyle, a Groove Networks developer, provides some background. [Groove.net Weblog]

Small, safe fuel cells are finally coming to pass. This is a fantastic development. This should decrease the size and weight of laptops and other devices while increasing the on-battery running time. TOBISHA TO MARKET THUMB-SIZE FUEL CELL: “TOKYO – Toshiba, one of the Japanese companies racing to develop electronic devices powered with a miniature…

Interesting snipets from an Internet with Groove's Ray Ozzie. Internetnews.com yesterday posted an interview with Ray Ozzie. Reporter Susan Kuchinskas caught up with Ray recently when he spoke at Kevin Werbach's Supernova Conference. Her first question to Ray: Is Groove Notes done right? Ray's reply: “The contrast mostly is that Notes, besides being e-mail, was…

This article could have gone in a lot of different directions. They talk about employee experimentation, changing HR practices, but only touch on an important point. I think people are overwhelmed with new technologies that IT thinks is cool or that a director or VP has heard is cool and wants to implement. Sure, I've…

“If you build it, they will come.” That was definitely the mantra of the online world for the first few years. Then, people became obsessed with building traffic to their sites. Which makes sense if you're revenue model depends on advertising, but for many of the sites I used to work on if we succeeded…

I think everyone who blogs and uses RSS to some degree knew this would be coming. But it really only makes good sense. If I want to know about the new widgets from Acme Co. Getting another e-mail in my inbox isn't going to help me much. A webfeed though, I would like. I know…