User Experience Professionals are Here to Stay

I’ve decided to pour through my Gmail account to delete and archive old emails that I’ve been too busy to move from my inbox. Sure, I really don’t have to perform this task when I can just archive everything, but I’m pretty anal about categorizing my emails, even if I am not prompt at performing the task.

Today I stumbled across an email a colleague of mine sent out last July. He referred to a YouTube video that highlighted MS Vista’s speech recognition. All I can say is that while it performs admirably at times, quite a few times I found the video both painful and funny to watch (see below). It really confirms that the usability and user experience professions are here to stay.


Microsoft Vista Speech Recognition Tested - Perl Scripting

[Runtime: 10:33 | Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer to watch this video. To download it, please visit: http://www.adobe.com/]

- Hat Tip: Ari Weissman

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XP on a Mac

Joy of Tech - XP on a Mac

Well, it looks like there’s a relatively stable way to get Microsoft and Apple to play together on a Mac. Have you been successful?

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Best Buy Offering Windows OS on Apple Powerbooks

Apple Windows

It looks as though Best Buy is offering Apple Powerbooks with what looks like the Windows 98 OS! This post may get a lot of traffic, so let me stop the speculation now by saying that Best Buy is NOT offering Powerbooks with Windows. BB simply needs to work on their Photoshopping skills.

Product here and expanded image here.
Hat Tip to Durden2.0.

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Fair Access, Security, and Innovation

I came across a blog posting today with the title, “Federal Government Discriminates against Mac Users.” The author, a federally funded research professor, was finding difficulty applying for federal funding because he had to use the PureEdge Viewer to submit his application for grant funding to the Grants.gov site. His problem is that he is a Mac user and Macs are only supported if you don’t mind using a pc simulation program such as Virtual PC. I’ve used VPC, but IMHO it has not proven to be a viable solution for Mac users, particularly for something as important as conducting business with the federal government. Some Mac users have previously voiced their concerns at places such as the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP).

So, the question is, why does this federal site, which has the authority for consolidating the business of grant funding among a majority of federal agencies, have the authority to mandate a technology that can only be used by users of one operating system? There are federal mandates such as Section 508 that provide for equal access to web applications for handicapped individuals. Shouldn’t there be an equal access technology policy too?
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