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Mark Cuban, The Donald, a rubber glove, and one million dollars

Posted on 2006/02/26 by richardykuo

In a fit of what must be either divine inspiration or complete lunacy, Mark Cuban has offered to donate a million dollars to charity if Donald Trump will put a rubber glove over his head and blow it up with his nose until it explodes. This would be, of course, on his next scheduled appearance on Let’s Make a Deal…aka national television.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be up for doing something like this, but it’s only the Donald that gets the opportunity. It’s odd how being rich and famous works…money just flies around you even if you aren’t necessarily doing anything to earn it. Take Paris Hilton, for instance. She’s rich and famous for being…rich and famous.

Someone just make sure to remind the Donald not to bring the glove down over his mouth too, or else he’ll suffocate and die. That might be amusing for some of us, but the charity won’t be pleased.

Last but not least, could this be an evil plot by Mark to tear off the Donald’s toupee on national TV? Can artificial hair withstand the rigors of a rubber glove descending over the head and then exploding under air pressure? Inquiring minds want to know.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Current events | Leave a comment

Touchpads vs trackballs vs trackpoints vs mice

Posted on 2006/02/26 by richardykuo

My very first laptop was an IBM Thinkpad 500. I won’t go into the specs except to say it was OLD. One spec I will mention is that it had a Trackpoint. You know, one of those eraserhead things that barely stick out of the middle of the keyboard. At the time, I thought it was pretty cool. Never really got much use out of the laptop, though.

My next laptop, and one I DID get a lot of use out of, was my Sony 505F. It had a touchpad. Upon purchasing the 505F, I quickly realized that I much preferred the touchpad to the trackpoint. And as far as pointing devices in notebooks go, that was the end of that. Trackpoint only laptops now get a big minus from me whenever I go laptop hunting.

This problem/preference came to light recently when I was shopping for a convertible notebook last month. The trackpoint only designs of the IBM ThinkPad X41 and the Acer Travelmate C204 almost instantly knocked them out of the running for me. Which is a real shame, because in most other respects those tablets were very desirable. Being a real fan of ultralight computers, I see trackpoints more often because one of the benefits of a trackpoint is the minimal amount of space it consumes.

I notice some people say that they much prefer the trackpoint to the touchpad, which to me, is very odd. Having tried both, I can’t fathom it any more than I suppose they can fathom my preference for the touchpad.

It occurs to me that what we need, in order to settle this, are some simple repeatable metrics for measuring our respective accuracy with our pointing devices. Since our tendency as human beings is to prefer our own choice to prevent a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance, a short test like this would serve to easily and objectively measure just how much better you are with a trackpoint than a touchpad. Or conversely, how much productivity you lose switching from mouse to touchpad. And then you’d know for sure which pointing device you really are best with. Such a test would also be useful for determining if different models of mice claiming incredible sampling rates or resolution are actually helping the user or hurting them due to factors besides just samping rate.

Well, lest I claim an original thought here, I’m not the only one to think of this. Check out this paper, for instance. Or Google for “Fitt’s law” and throw in some pointing device terms like “touchpad” and “trackpoint” while you’re at it. You’ll have enough reading material to occupy you for the weekend. Lots and lots of data has been collected on the issue.

Suffice it to say that different devices are good at different things, but the mouse is a strong performer all around, which is why it’s still a favorite when it comes to user input.

I’m still looking for whether the trackpoint is better than the touchpad. It seems everyone is too afraid to make a statement or else it’s just buried in the mounds of information out there. In the mean time, try taking this web based Fitt’s Law study. I’m sure this will turn up some nice data and maybe tell me what device I should be using once and for all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Gadgets, Usability | Leave a comment

On VPN’s and routing troubles

Posted on 2006/02/22 by richardykuo

VPN’s, or Virtual Private Networks, are a bit of a tricky beast. VPN’s allow remote clients or sites to join with your internal network as if they are right there in the building. Hence the “Virtual” part of the term. You can get complete connectivity and access to all the internal server resources you would normally have access to, albeit at a speed limited by your network connection. Still, it’s very effective. Being able to “VPN” into your network is essential for getting work done away from the office. And having a VPN server is essentially second nature for business nowadays…it’s a logical, broad, and secure line of defense against outside intrusions.

The problem with VPN’s is that there are apparently all sorts of different ways to set one up.

Microsoft implements PPTP (probably the most common) and L2TP VPN’s. These are very popular because you can do it all with just Windows workstations and servers.
There are a bunch of hardware VPN concentrators, which can do different flavors of VPN, many forms of which are often proprietary. Cisco is pretty well known for these. I’ve never had a desire to set one of these up until recently, nor do I understand the appeal in general, but I’m sure they exist for a reason.
And then there are some different alternatives, like Hamachi and OpenVPN.

VPN’s sound pretty simple in theory. Just point me at a VPN server and let me on the network…right?

In fact, it’s not really that easy. One trouble I’ve faced for a long time is the fact that routing VPN traffic through a firewall or NAT is nowhere near as transparent as it should be.

For example, my router at home can only have one Microsoft style VPN connection going through it at a time…which, obviously, is lame. If my computer at home is VPN’d out, I can’t VPN in. If someone was at my house with a laptop and wanted to VPN somewhere else…they couldn’t if I was VPN’d into work.

Another example of a problem is the internet service I get through my cellular plan. I use the $20 unlimited MediaNet plan from Cingular. The router behind which the phone’s internet connection sits is basically a NAT that won’t or can’t pass PPTP or L2TP VPN traffic. So if I try to connect with my laptop through my phone to the internet, I can do a lot of stuff pretty slowly…but connecting via VPN into the office is flat out not possible.

Both of these problems appear to be mostly due to the fact that someone, in their infinite wisdom, chose some completely different internet protocol for establishing VPN connections than good old UDP or TCP. Something called IP Protocol 47, or GRE, is used to negotiate the connections. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this was necessary, but the upshot is that numerous routers and other networking equipment have a horrible time routing this type of VPN traffic successfully. In fact, I’d like to lock whoever made the decision to use anything besides UDP and TCP in a room with nothing but Celine Dion records playing 24/7.

So here’s where I was at. I’m well aware that the odd protocol used in MS VPN solutions causes issues and, especially, prevents me from establishing a VPN to my home or office in particular cases. We’re not planning to buy a hardware VPN solution to solve this…we’re a small company and in most cases, VPN does work. It’s just that, me being me, I like a complete solution to my problems, and the inability to VPN into work via my wireless WAN service bugs the crap out of me.

I checked out Hamachi briefly. Didn’t seem like something particularly oriented towards serious use…running as a service appeared to be a bit of a hack job, and the options appear to be very limited…documentation is all in the form of forum posts. Hamachi seemed to be an application focused on working, but not necessarily working specifically how you needed it to work. In the end, I had to take a pass..

Luckily, next I stumbled across OpenVPN, which is, as you might have guessed from the name, an open source application for VPN servers and clients. I would never have bothered with something like this if it weren’t for all these silly VPN troubles I’ve had in the past and continue to have. But I have them, and I would like them solved.

After scanning through the OpenVPN website, I took special notice of the fact that OpenVPN supposedly runs completely over UDP or TCP. Ah yes, this showed promise…if such information was true, it would be free of the painful and yet avoidable troubles that plague standard MS VPN solutions. But I also noted that the extensive documentation on the site was both a blessing and a curse…everything was probably going to be tweakable, but getting it running correctly looked like it was going to be very tough.

Nevertheless, the capabilities were more important to me than the ease of setting it up in this case. I downloaded and started poring over the docs.

As expected, OpenVPN is rather painful to set up. I had to use what is known as a bridging configuration, which I only figured out after blundering through the routing configuration and hitting a dead end. And I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading all the different how-to’s and guides to absorb what I needed to know. Most of the configuration of OpenVPN takes place via creating text files and following text prompts from command line tools. Figuring out what options you must configure, generating all kinds of certificates and keys, and figuring out what options you can omit are, as with most open source applications, completely unclear.

But here’s the important part…after much fudging, it works. About a month ago, after experimenting all day, I got OpenVPN working over UDP on my home network over the standard UDP/1194 port. I rather carefully documented the procedure and server/client .ovpn files so that I could repeat the same process at work.

Fast forward. At work, I ran into several snags. The first being that I actually needed a separate Windows 2003 box and there was no such box ready. Windows 2000 doesn’t support bridging adapters, which I found to be necessary for letting the client appear on the server’s network. So I had to wait for our admin to get that box up and running.

The second snag was that our router was returning some of the UDP packets from the intial VPN negotiation on different ports than expected…apparently due to the port translations necessary. I couldn’t establish a connection this way.

My initial setup instructions weren’t working so well…it was clear at this point that this wasn’t going to be a straight adaptation of the setup I created at home. Luckily, I managed to work past the new problems I encountered anyway. By switching the clients and servers from UDP to TCP, I dodged around the UDP packet issues introduced by the router/gateway. Since TCP, unlike UDP, establishes a connection, not having the router mess up port translations looked like a promising way to deal with whatever was happening in the UDP approach…and as it turned out, it most definitely was. And in addition, the occasional timeout during key negotations I managed to deal with by raising the timeout to 120 seconds…apparently over a slow link this timeout really is an issue and it can stop you from ever completing a connection unless you pay attention.

Anyway, it took a while to put it all together, but the scary part is that it works, and without any of the unholy and completely unsolvable routing issues normally associated with VPN. I can have multi
ple VPN connections inbound and outbound through my router. And I can now VPN into my home or work through my cell phone’s internet plan.

So my short verdict on OpenVPN…complicated, but totally worth it if you’re hitting brick walls like I was. It’s now doing exactly what I needed it to do…making VPN connections and making the intervening junk on the network invisible instead of an obstacle. If you need to set up a VPN, I highly recommend trying OpenVPN. Once configured, it’s actually more capable of doing what it says it does than most regular VPN solutions…and at no cost except for your time and whatever box you put the server on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Mobile lifestyle, SnapStream | Leave a comment

Roomba – 1, Dirt – 0

Posted on 2006/02/19 by richardykuo

In my previous post on unwiring the house, I mentioned that one of the primary motivations came about because I wanted to give the Roomba clear berth to do its job. I promised to write more about the Roomba, so here it comes.

I’m all about cutting the drudgery and complexity out of my life, so owning a Roomba is in perfect keeping with that philosophy. I’ve wanted one of these suckers for a while. After all, unlike Monica from Friends, I think it’s safe to say most people don’t value the time they have to spend vacuuming. Or rather, it’s often more an issue of just how little time you spend vacuuming at all. If there’s something I want to be remembered for, vacuuming isn’t it. Have I said enough about vacuuming yet? Alright, good.

So the concept of some sort of inanimate object that vacuums for you is incredibly appealing. The Roomba is a little rotund robot that zips and zooms around your house, vacuuming for you while you recline in a gold encrusted lounge chair and gnosh on peeled grapes and exotic cheeses and crackers. Or at least, that’s what one hopes for.

Overall, I’d have to say the Roomba is a clear win…especially at the prices you can now get one for. I actually had an item in my someday/maybe list to buy a Roomba, so when someone at the office mentioned that you could get one of the higher end models refurbished for just 135 bucks, I jumped on it without a second thought. Well, yes, I stopped briefly by the Roomba Review to double check on what I was getting. But in the end I bought a refurbished Roomba Discovery from Amazon.com for 135 dollars.

Incidentally, I seem to find myself buying more things from Amazon due to the whole Amazon Prime free 2 day shipping thing, which I’m riding on from someone else’s invite. I guess that’s working out for Amazon.

Overview

Back to the Roomba. It arrived in the expected time…2 working days It supposedly had a high capacity battery installed and it came with two virtual wall units, a base station, two filters, and some other goodies like a remote which I’ll never use. I think it was supposed to come with three filters, but whatever, right?

All of the newer Roomba models are essentially the same. The
difference is the accessories.

The Discovery model has the very
important charging station which the Roomba can automatically return to
after a cleaning run.

The virtual wall units are also a nice extra ,and are basically directional infrared emitters that you place on the ground. The Roomba will “bounce” off the infrared wall like a real wall. As you might expect, the wall that gets created has some spread due to distance, so if you really want to pay attention, you have to do this thing where you angle the emitter slightly to compensate for the spread and straighten out the wall. However, in most cases you probably won’t need to worry about that.

The remote lets you drive the Roomba around like a glorified remote control car with a vacuum. I don’t find this useful at all.

Anyway, here’s the dope. After running the Roomba for a bit, my general impression is that I really like it.

You have to make some allowances for the thing…it’s not small enough to fit through tight areas, and it obviously can’t clean areas where you’ve piled your junk, so you’ll probably want to reorganize rooms a bit to accommodate. Still, it’s nothing you wouldn’t need to do with a big vacuum. In some ways, this is useful because you probably have a ton of crap lying around that you ought to have thrown away months ago and haven’t. Having a Roomba around kind of forces you to keep that part of your life under control. Is that good or bad? Well, I’ll leave that opinion up to you. I personally think it’s good.

So after cleaning up a room for the Roomba, which seems oddly ironic, you turn the Roomba on. While watching it, you realize that the Roomba is not a terribly smart device. I’m sure I could code something up smarter on a PC, but then again, the Roomba ain’t running Windows, so I guess that’s pretty impressive.

The way it works is that the Roomba has a front loaded hydraulic bumper of some sort, and what it does is it generally whirrs forward until the bumper hits something. At that point, it obviously knows something is in front of it, and then it backs off, or edges around the object, or whatever. Because the bumper gives very quickly when it contacts something, there’s really almost nothing to worry about in terms of scratching walls…the bumping seems to be very easy on objects. Just don’t leave any champagne glasses on the ground, OK?

What the Roomba doesn’t have is any sort of “seeing eye” that just lets it take the whole room in like a normal person could. It is one’s natural inclination, I think, to assume a cleaning robot would be built this way, but I think the makers knew it wasn’t completely necessary. The AI basically consists of blindly bumping off stuff in different ways. One way is the wall hugging way, which causes the Roomba to edge along the wall cleaning. Another mode is some sort of random bouncing mode, which seems intended to just get the Roomba to cover wide areas. And yet another mode is the stuck in a small space mode, where the Roomba makes small, tentative rotations and advances to work its way out of a tight area.

Presumably, the Roomba might have been able to incorporate mapping of rooms. But it does not do this, as far as I can tell. Bumping uglies with the walls and the furniture is the rule.

Of course, because it’s a robot, it can afford to be dumb and repetitive…it’s going to vacuum a whole lot more than you ever would and it can afford to do the same areas a few times as a result. Such is the beauty of these approaches…brute force works pretty well, thank you.

The Roomba has sensors to detect dropoffs, so it won’t fall down stairs. This works, I tried it out.

The Roomba has some sort of swiffing spinning brush located on its front right hand corner which helps to kick out crap on edges and walls. It catches some stuff, so it’s a good idea for sure, but there’s probably plenty of room here for improvement…it certainly doesn’t attack edges or corners as hard as it needs to. I think the Roomba actually needs some sort of air blasting nozzle to kick dirt out of the edges and corners…the brush simply doesn’t reach down into the carpet the way that it needs to.

The battery, in my estimation, probably lasts around 60 minutes. I suspect the battery is worn down, as I seem to recall reading estimates of two hours. Nevertheless, 60 minutes is plenty of vacuuming time.

There’s a scheduling accessory which you
can use to program the Roomba to head out at particular intervals. I
didn’t buy that yet, but I might.

Where things go wrong

One trip up is a narrow passageway. If your Roomba crosses through a door or some narrow area created by an arrangement of furniture, odds are naturally low that the Roomba will find its way back through that passageway on its own. I think this is why it’s called a Roomba and not a Houseba. It really does work best in a room. Anyway, if you let the Roomba navigate through doors, it starts to become very difficult for that Roomba to just randomly bounce back within range of the charging station it left behind.

Rugs can be trouble for a Roomba…especially if they are thick. The Roomba will bounce off them like walls, and therefore will often fail to clean the rugs at all. I’m very utilitarian so I’d just get rid of the rugs, but your significant other may not agree with that approach.

Oriental rugs with the frills on the ends are like Roomba kryptonite. The Roomba will get stuck vacuuming up the ends and has no way to recover. One thing you would like the Roomba to do is stop vacuuming and try to move its way off the rug, but it seems like the Roomba can’t move without vacuuming. So it gets stuck.

I’d have to imagine most pets will not like the Roomba. I don’t know how dogs will react, but the cat that saw the Roomba when we tested it at a friend’s house was in fight or flight mode the entire time that the Roomba was running. On the other hand, if you have a pet, you must be in dire need of a Roomba due to all the shedding of hair, so think about that for a bit.

Wires on the ground are also trouble. It’s not hard to keep wires off the ground, but most likely you had no reason to worry about it before, so that’s where they are. It takes a medium amount of effort to find off the ground spots and bundling strategies to stop the Roomba from sucking up wires in a similar fashion to the frills on a rug.

How I’d improve the Roomba

For starters, the Roomba needs to not get caught on rug frills. If it would try turning off the vacuum or reversing it somehow when stuck like that, it could probably recover. But you basically need to not have rugs that are too light or too thick with the Roomba around. Thick rugs or other areas also give the Roomba problems…it needs more of a monster truck suspension to cross small boundaries presented by thick rugs or carpet to tile dividers.

I’d add a air blaster where the swiffer is. The swiffing brush isn’t nearly as effective as it needs to be on edges and corners, especially since the dirt and junk tends to pile up down diagonally down into the carpet edge and the brush swings horizontally. Blasting with air would shoot a lot of that dust and dirt out somewhere where it could be cleaned.

Mapping seems like a really obvious way to improve the Roomba. Bouncing around is OK for a first shot, but moving past that needs to happen at some point. The Roomba, as I said before, is really only best on a single room due to this problem. Ignoring cost, I think this is the only way to turn the Roomba into a more viable whole floor cleaning machine, since narrow areas tend to trap the Roomba from crossing into other areas and returning to its home base becomes unreliable at that point.

Conclusion

And those are my notes. Overall…wow, it’s worth it. I normally can’t be bothered to vacuum, but pressing a button is A-OK with me. The Roomba, once you get through the one-time prep of a room to make it “Roomba friendly”, vacuums a room thoroughly, to the point where I can pretty much ignore the other few percent it didn’t get. It’s not totally hands-off and invisible, which is the ultimate goal…but it’s way better than life before, which essentially amounted to no vacuuming at all. Until they produce a Roomba ready house with Roomba alcoves, automatic cleaning schedules, and some sort of integrated bin dumping system, I can settle for pressing the Clean button on the Roomba every so often.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Gadgets | Leave a comment

Windows Live Messenger – a usability nightmare

Posted on 2006/02/15 by richardykuo

The other day, I had a chance to check out the Live Messenger beta on a fellow developer’s machine here at SnapStream. Sadly, we mostly just sat there making fun of it. There are so many things wrong with it I don’t really know where to begin.

Downloading

Well, actually, I do know where to begin, because it’s my job. Maybe we should start with downloading the program. Here’s what happens after you sign into Passport from the invite.

Actually, that text should say “Now all you need to do is open up Internet Explorer, and use THAT to download the program, and sign in.”

It is my opinion that creating a graphic and linking it to a file in this day and age is not that difficult. I have to hand it to the creator of this page…whatever it is you need to do to fudge a button to do nothing in Firefox and work only in Internet Explorer, this guy found it. I don’t think HTML has changed THAT much over the past few years.

Not an auspicious start.

1. Devoting space to everything but the reason why people use your product.

Some basics. In an instant messenging application, the contact list is the heart of the product. The application is open so that you can find and talk with other people. Without the contact list, there is no reason for the product to exist. With that said…

This is a screenshot of two IM windows side by side at a typical size. Live Messenger is on the left, and Windows Messenger, built into Windows, is on the right.

First things first. In the left image, see how that Messenger text at the top is all cut off and disappearing like? Yep, looks sloppy. Dude, not sure why you don’t just use text and an ellipsis instead of squashing images together.

Anyway, aside from that, I think it’s pretty self evident what’s wrong here. Live Messenger is hogging all the space for the contact list with useless junk. The names of my contacts occupy less than half of the window’s real estate. I see 5 contacts in Live Messenger…with Windows Messenger, I see 16 contacts. Even Windows Messenger could be just a tad smarter about using screen real estate, but for the sake of comparison, Windows Messenger is like Kobe Bryant, and Live Messenger is like the fat kid whose parents sent him to basketball camp so they could have some time to themselves during summer vacation.

Now let’s see what happens when we contract the window.

You would hope that since the application is for instant messaging, it would keep the contact list visible since without it, there IS no application. Sadly, this is not the case. The contact list is the first thing to go, rendering the application completely useless. I have to ask myself, “Self, do I really want an application that shows me an ad, web search, my own name, and nothing else”? I thought about that for 5 seconds before my brain dragged me out back and beat me senseless.

Now, for the sake of argument, if a developer wanted to force someone to keep looking at an ad, he might decide to do something similar to what happened here, where the main section of the application disappears before the ad does. But the idea of an ad in my instant messenging application doesn’t do a whole lot for me, and I suspect it doesn’t roll well with most other people either. There are plenty of non-ad driven alternatives out there.

In summary, your ads and your giant frigging title bar suck. I want to see my contact list.

2. Wasting real estate on infrequently accessed options.

Now I’m going to mark up all the options taking up top level space that people generally don’t use. Watch out folks, this isn’t going to be pretty.

Whew!

1. Sorting contacts. Well, this isn’t too bad. But I sure as hell don’t sort my contacts that often.
2. Add a contact. If anyone did this often to benefit from an add contact icon on the front of the app, their contact lists would quickly become unmanageable. Therefore you can infer that people don’t add contacts that frequently. Put this on a menu item where it belongs.
3. Contact card. The only people who want to look at their contact card all the time are vain people who you shouldn’t be friends with anyway.
4. Folder sharing. Don’t need it, don’t want it.
5. Personal message. Do people actually have a need to change this that often?
Well heck, let’s try this out.

Did I do that right? It always feels better sharing your misery with others.

Actually, a useful feature would be the ability to set an away message so that people who try to IM me when I’m not at the computer know how to contact me. Has that been added yet?

6. Create a blog. Yeah, so I don’t want to create another blog on MSN Spaces. But I still need to look at your damn button. Does this button change to manage my MSN space blog if I have one? Why would I want to manage my blog from my IM client if I did have one?
7. Change color. I change my clothes on a regular basis. IM client colors? Please. Maybe you can hard code this button in a special build for Paris Hilton and spare the rest of us peons.
8. Contact search. Hey, who has this many contacts? I think you think I have more contacts than you think I think you think. Or something. For the 0.001% of people that need to search their IM contact list, make this an option somewhere that is OFF by default.

To be fair, there’s usually a little room for fluff in an app. It’s the total dogpile of irrelevant options here you are forced to look at that violates basic principles of usability.

Suggestion: at the very least, they could have adhered to the paradigm of a toolbar that’s been established already. That allows the user to customize what they want to see in a fashion that’s optimal for THEM. Not all of the above options suck all the time, it’s just forcing the user to see them all the time that’s the problem. A toolbar is perfect for this scenario.

3. Assuming people want to do things in Messenger that rightfully belong to other parts of the system.

Then, of course, we get to some classic symptoms of bloatware. Like the addition of tangentially related features that serve mostly to make the primary function of the application less pleasant and more difficult to use.

Seriously man, what is this? A “Check my e-mail” button from MSN Messenger. You guys realize I have a Start Menu and a Quick Launch bar to handle this for me already, don’t you? It doesn’t get much faster for me than a single click.

People don’t use MSN Messenger to launch programs. They use it to talk to other people in real time.

Oh yeah, what about this search the web thing that I can’t get rid of?

Let’s come up with other cool things for MSN messenger to do that other programs are already doing.

1. Downloading programs
2. Playing MP3’s
3. Macroing characters in World of Warcraft and selling their junk on eBay, putting sweatshops in foreign countries out of business. Crazy Americans!

The most egregious thing, of course, is that you can’t get rid of any of this junk from the window. Not do you get inferior alternatives that are worse than existing options built into the OS, you don’t even get options to shut off this abuse of your window’s real estate.

4. What about this shared search thing?

You know what’s really great? When I try to IM a friend and I hit this Search button you put right next to the Send button instead. Gosh, it’s just the greatest thing ever! In fact, from the colors it actually looks like Search is a more important button than Send, since you’ve used orange in other parts of the application to color dead space like the title bar area and the contrast of the text on the Search button is higher.

Get that Search button away from the Send button and get the colors visually correct so that they cue the user properly.

5. Contacts that move as you try to click on them

You know that cool toolbar on Mac’s that grows icons and shrinks them as you pass the cursor over the bar? It’s really cool to look at. It makes some people feel good. But from a usability standpoint, it’s horrible.

Let’s state out loud a very simple concept…it’s a lot easier to aim for and hit a stationary target than it is to hit a moving target. In one case, you aim for an area and course correct a tiny bit at the end. In the latter case, you must constantly course correct more as the target moves around while you try to move your cursor towards it.

Now check out this neato and completely retarded feature they added to MSN Messenger.

I would like you to imagine the contacts expanding and repositioning other contacts when you move your mouse up and down the list. It sucks a lot, trust me. I guess aiming for a contact was too easy, so they decided to make it this little game where the list constantly shifts under you while you try to get to the person you want to talk to. Awwwwwesome!

At least you can turn this little gem of a feature off. Probably because someone else at MSN realized that the feature sucked. After the first developer/idiot wrote it, of course.

Turn the feature off by default, at least. Frankly, I think the option should be annihilated completely.

6. Tell me why I want to remove those tabs. Please.

So, let’s say you want to get rid of these annoying tabs on the side here. You know, because you never, ever click on them.

You go to Tools/Options, because from past experience with Microsoft applications, you know that’s where you go. Personally, I think it’s debatable what the Tools category even means, but whatever. You’re there.

You momentarily contemplate the fact that you may not even be allowed to turn off the tabs, because the people who designed this program are evil bastards. However, you forge on bravely. Scanning the categories before you, you spot…AHA…the Tabs section. You think briefly to yourself “Well, that was almost too easy. It must be here!” Oh, how wrong you are, foolish one. For a brief fleeting moment, you have hope. That hope quickly turns to despair once you click on the Tabs section and realize that you have nothing available to you but Up and Down buttons to rearrange the order of the tabs. Vainly, you right-click on the tabs in the list, hoping against hope that a right click menu might appear that will let you delete all the accursed tabs from your sight. Your attempt fails…you are now humbled in your defeat. The tabs will STAY.

What you missed, dear readers, is that you can, in fact, turn off the tabs. You just need to go here…

Yes, folks, that is EXACTLY why I want to turn off tabs. Because I share this computer with friends and they might see my tabs. I’m not sure what kind of dirty profane tabs I can add to MSN Messenger that would make me worry about this, but if you find any, let me know.

The odd thing is, there doesn’t even seem to be a way to change what tabs you have in the first place. Which means everyone has the same frigging tabs. Hey, as long as you let us hide the tabs, I’ll guess you think can whatever you want, smart guy. On the downside, hiding tabs means I end up missing out on this Oreo Cookie theme pack. S***!

7. Ask me if I want to share a folder again, please?

I’m just going to describe this concisely. Every time I send a file to a contact, it asks me if I want to start Sharing Folders with them. EVERY TIME. It rules.

Conclusion

To summarize, Windows Live Messenger breaks about a zillion common sense usability fundamentals. It also kicks puppies on weekends.

I recommend whoever is in charge of this product get a designer with a strong product vision on board and the nuts to say no to random developers or marketing folks trying to dump random features into the product. It’s clear to me that your product vision at this point consists of cramming random junk into the application. Probably a case of too many cooks spoiling the brew, or too many developers sitting around with nothing better to do…but that’s not the user’s problem.

Focus on one thing and one thing only…making a great instant messenging application. Treat your screen real estate like gold, because you’re in the special position of running all the time along side other applications. Users will forgive the other junk you put in, but they won’t forgive backslides in usability. In fact, at this point, you should cull top level buttons and items out of the product and make sure Live Messenger does IM really, really well before you add anything back.

That’s all for today, boys and girls. This markup and critique was brought to you by a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC and the Snipping Tool 2.0. Rock on.

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