Web developers ahoy - ajax usability

If you use Ajax loading, and especially if your content replaces the "load more" button, like Bitstrips, for frack's sake, replace the "load more" button with something that indicates that user clicked the button. You know, "tactile" response, that user doesn't click twice and end up selecting content from the loaded material. I'm looking at you Bitstrips on Facebook!

"Reset" -game got its Indiegogo funding!

With over 10 hours to spare, Alpo and the guys broke 65 000 euro goal!! First ever crowdsourced game from Finland is coming your way!



Merry Christmas guys!

I need your help - new game in development

Hi guys,

I need your help. My friend is raising funding for their indie game, single player co-op first person puzzle game. The development has been going on a while, and it has steady progress, and lot of gameplay trailers released. They have raised over 50% of 65 000€ goal, but with only four (4) days left, they could use your help.

Click to Indiegogo and check out other trailers, and help!

Gameplay teaser trailer:

First impressions: Google starts caching email image content - reporting suffers

Google announced yesterday of new feature in Gmail and Google Mail for Business, you can read it from their blog post http://gmailblog.blogspot.fi/2013/12/images-now-showing.html by Senior Product Manager John Rae-Grant.

What happened: Google started fetching all external images in emails, scan them for known viruses and malware (trojans). This has already started on desktop users, and it will be roll-out to mobile early 2014.

Good results: Most HTML-formatted email will look better, ie. email users don't have to "trust" the sender to see the pictures. User privacy is enhanced.

Bad results: Email marketeers will not be able to report how many Google users (recipients) opened the email, ie. viewed email with pictures, since Google will fetch all pictures, your reports will display 100% open rate for Google Gmail and Apps for Business users. It will mean that companies wanting to learn how to communicate better with their customers, are not getting all the relevant feedback anymore.

Software vendros, EDM and Marketing Automation dominantly, will be updated accordingly, maybe filtering Google users out of the reports pertaining open success indicators, so it doesn't skew the reports. You can still have an estimation of how effective your email sender / subject was, ie. how many have viewed the email with pictures.

Open indicator has never been a very accurate number, but Google just made it even less accurate.

Next eyes will be focusing to Microsoft (Hotmail, Outlook.com), Yahoo and AOL, will they follow suit?

Dopplr shut down by Nokia, four years after acquisition

Read more at Techcrunch... I wrote about the acquisition earlier, it has been slow ride to ramp up HERE services, but it's getting there. :)

Automotive industry ahoy! Here's a free tip for you.

Here's a free development idea for cars: add messaging functionality to cars, so family members and friends in different cars could communicate easier with each other. Add option to share metadata automatically: location, fuel gauge, speed etc. Maybe VoIP calls? Add Share-button to post it to Facebook. Add dashboard camera to share scenic location to Facebook with location and photo, from "xxx app" of course, giving you free promotion.

These are technically easy and relatively cheap to make, and they bring a lot of added value to the car. Make a deal with operators for EDGE/3G sims pre-installed, or have customers request clone sims. The manufacturer that leads the industry will brand itself as visionary.

Do you want to lead or play catch-up? Facebook has over a billion users, and next year it will celebrate it's 10th anniversary.

Imagine Connecting People and Think Different. Yes, that's you Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple. Innovation that excites, Nissan thank you for "Nissan Connect" photo. Maybe this is for You?

Mobile phone cloud storage have serious defects, learn more

In the past few years, I've used iPhone 4S and Lumia 920 phones. Apple and Microsoft have their clouds working quite well, and at first glance, it seems amazingly good and simple: you snap a photo with your phone, and bam, it syncs into cloud, and from there, to any device you so wish. Same works with new contacts, calendar, videos... no wait, it doesn't.

Apple does not support automatic syncing of videos to cloud from your device! You can publish them manually, see https://www.apple.com/icloud/icloud-photo-sharing.html

Microsoft SkyDrive doesn't sync 1080p videos, and with photos, it downscales them from 3552x2000 to lousy 1278x720 pixels, without notification! Before noticing this, I bought 100 gigs of space from Skydrive, and oh boy do I feel stupid now, I was ready to delete the photo originals! With world of 4G and fast Wi-Fi almost everywhere, this is just plain ridiculous. Well, ridiculous, as far as first world problems go.

You have to manually plug your Windows Phone (at least my Lumia) with USB-cable to PC, and copy your hi res photos and videos from there. With Apple, you can sync over local Wi-Fi but you have to start your iTunes first, or do the same USB-cable stuff as with Windows Phones.

Rant, rant, rant. Apple, Microsoft, is this the best you can do?

Free tip for map websites, especially for desktop use

Please show the street name when I hover the mouse over a road. It's driving me insane that I cannot make out the street name, and when I try to zoom in, you make the road name even smaller! I don't care if you have it in the driving instructions, I want to see the street names in the frigging map, is that too much to ask for a map?

Bing's mouse hover brings text "Drag to modify your route", yes, after thousand times using it, I know what it does. How about using that space to say "Street name: xxxxxxx. Drag to modify your route."?

Google Maps has done a bit better lately, they've enlarged the street names, but still, why not use the hover function? When I use it for navigation, it draws the blue line from point A to point B, and if you mouse over the street, it gives you instructions like Microsoft, please drag yaadidaa.

If you feel that most of the people wouldn't like this feature, please add it as an option I can change from the settings! Though I'm pretty sure no one would take offense if you could see the street name when you hover your mouse over it. Ngggh, sorry for the rant. At least it got me off my blog-hibernation.