I've worked on some big product launches. Every time there's a major update, developers have to think about which features to port over and which to drop. Sometimes it is easy. Analytics show no one is using this feature? Drop it. Sometimes it is hard. It's a moderately well used feature, but complicated to get running on a new environment. If you keep it - that's a huge extra cost, for marginal utility. If you drop it - die-hard users will complain. So we come to Philips Hue. I've long been …
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Here's an interesting user-hostile pattern which could easily be avoided if programmers and business-people thought like regular humans. I have a Pioneer / Onkyo sound system. It's pretty nice and comes with a (not too crappy) Android app to let me remote control it. One day, the app updated itself. The changelog was the usual bland "bug fixes and improvements" message, but when I opened it, this happened: Why does a remote control need to know my location? I assumed it was for some…
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I've been a big fan of Ovo Energy since switching to them last year. They email me a PDF statement, pay me 3% interest on any overpayments, and have their call centre waiting times displayed prominently on their homepage. So, when they announced their new app, I was expecting something a little bit special. And that's exactly what I've got. An automatic torch to help you when you're rooting around in dark cupboards trying to read your meter. Brilliant. So, not only does the app fulfil its …
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OAuth was designed to combat an anti-pattern. Typing your username and password into a third party site is bad idea. A really bad idea. I mean, you may think it's a bad idea to give your bank details to a Nigerian prince but that's just peanuts compared to giving away your password to an untrusted site! So, that's why we use OAuth. Rather than handing details to a random site, we authenticate against a trusted site which then redirects us back with an authentication token. That's all well…
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We live in a world of our own creation. This means we can find it inconceivable that outsiders don't know the acronyms we use daily. How can anyone possibly live without understanding what we do? Customers don't understand your company's acronyms, processes, or business model. It's worse than that, though - most users don't even recognise your company's name! Here's a great example. In Zinio's world, everyone knows who Zinio are. They live in Zinio town, drink Zinio coffee from the Zinio…
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It's been a while since I did a screenshot based review of a mobile app. I was gratified when QR Pal asked me to review their new app. First thing's first, this is a great idea for a QR Scanner. It saves all your scans - so you can retrieve them by category, it checks to see if links are safe to click on, it allows you to share scans with friends, and it also has a gameification element. But I really don't like it. It's slow to start up, has a UI which is only really suitable for iPhone…
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This is a really geeky app! You know USSD? They're the codes you can type in to your phone to send messages back and forth to the networks. You've probably seen something like *#147# to display the last caller. My second app presents a series of buttons which call the USSD commands - so you don't have to remember if it's the HLR or VLR which is queried by *#103#. Useful, I know.... You can download the app by scanning in this QR code. Android App - Vodafone UK USSD Commands The majority …
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Last night I went to the NESTA's "What's App?" discussion. You can watch the event at NESTA's website. .social-embed {all: unset;display: block;}.social-embed * {all: unset;display: revert;}.social-embed::after {all: unset;}.social-embed::before {all: unset;}blockquote:not(*) {all: unset;}.social-embed a {cursor: pointer;}blockquote.social-embed {box-sizing: border-box;border: .5px solid;width: 550px;max-width: 100%;font-family: sans-serif;margin: 0;margin-bottom: .5em;padding: …
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