I saw the following at the end of a Google Groups email:

…

Regards,

_name_

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “_group name_” group.
To post to this group, send email to _group abbreviation_@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to _group abbreviation_-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/_group abbreviation_?hl=en
-~———-~—-~—-~—-~——~—-~——~–~—

The contrast between the information shown above from Yahoo! and Google reminds me of one of the main reasons I stopped using Yahoo! Mail altogether: I don’t like serving as a billboard. Others have felt similarly for many years now. The message from Yahoo!, appended to the sender’s email because she uses Yahoo! Mail, is irrelevant to most recipients. Most web surfers are well aware of what yahoo.com has to offer. If they wanted to set it as their homepage, they would have long ago. In contrast, the message from Google contains information relevant to many recipients of the email (albeit probably more information than needed by most).

I realize I’m comparing email appendages to mailing list appendages. In the case of email, Google does not advertise to recipients at all. Don’t even get me started on the corruption of messages from Yahoo! Groups…

I’m curious: has Yahoo! reevaluated the decision to append advertisements to their members’ emails, or has improving existing services been lost in the (literal) shuffle? (I hope I get called out.) Has Yahoo! decided their target market doesn’t mind having the Yahoo! brand clutter up their email conversations and they’re willing to pass on people who care? Granted, maintaining an email platform may be a secondary concern as communication shifts to authenticated mediums like IM and other social networking tools.

I discovered an extremely sophisticated yet simple image editing tool called “PixelMator” for Mac. Compared to PhotoShop and other expensive tools, PixelMator provides great performance and usability or $59.99. Image editing and layering is simple drag and drop from your iPhoto and image libraries. You get incredible control in adjusting colors, hues and positioning. While I was using PixelMator my CPU load and memory usage was hardly above those of normal word processing. In fact running Parallels makes my MacBookPro run hotter than when it runs PixelMator.

The user interface is Mac like with great attention to detail. The image effects are quality are stunning. This may not be tool for the professionals who want to manage every pixel, but this is an excellent companion for your iPhoto and the image editing the mid 80% wants to do.

One downside is of course the branding. The name PixelMator seems to have been coned from Pixel (obvious) and Mac’s Automator. PixelMator allows most common tasks to be automated through Automator integration. Clever coinage but I would re-brand it.

Technorati Tags: imaging tools, digital image, pixelmator

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Market Place reports that Target is being sued for not making its website accessible to the blind. Target argues that the accessibility laws applies only to its brick and mortar stores not to its website. So why is this not possible? The idea lies in not thinking of website as the means for all to access services. People ant to access Target website not for its own sake but to make purchases.  So instead of focusing on making a web page audible, Target and others should provide a different portal to access services.

 People already consume their media in multiple formats, in their iPods, laptops, phones …
Why not let me consume your services through multiple channels? Let alone helping the blind, there is a bigger usage for making the services universal.

The lawsuit should be tossed out for this simple reason that it is focusing on the wrong solution. If you deliver solutions as a reaction to lawsuits you could end up with the equivalent of “faster horse” instead of the automobile.

I thoroughly enjoyed “attending” a match of Layer Tennis presented today by Coudal Partners. What is Layer Tennis you ask? Layer Tennis involves two designers facing off, lobbing designs back and forth in fifteen minute intervals, complete with a play-by-play commentator. The opening serve.

I do wonder, did the commentator miss something on this picture?

Are the lines separating the wolves from the sheep some sort of security measure? Why else would the scene have been labeled “wildlife refuge?” (See the previous volley to understand the source of the lines.)

(This is a post that’s been banging around in my head for some time. Tony’s well-titled post about his distaste for Quechup abusing access he gave to his online address book, served as inspiration to sit down and compose. As for Tony’s warning, I did not respond to the Quechup invitation, primarily because I am put off when I receive an email from a website I did not give my address for the reasons I will state below.)

I feel that websites hurt us all by training people to provide friends’ email addresses to third parties (e.g. websites). I consider the “email this to a friend” forms on websites the online equivalent of a stranger on the street asking me for a friend’s email address. Sure, the site will email the article to the friend, but I have no idea what will be done with my friend’s email address after that. Options include: nothing, send spam, sell it to a spammer, store it on a server to be hacked into at some point in the future, etc.

Even more dangerous are the “friend finder” tools offered by social web services (e.g. Facebook) that have people provide their authentication credentials for online address books and that identify their friends by email address. By allowing authentication through third-party servers, the major social mapping services (AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo!) facilitate third-party access to not only contacts’ email addresses, but also members’ authentication credentials (anyone who logged into Quechup: you may want to change your Gmail password).

In consideration of spam’s tremendous drain on productivity, I wish websites were designed to encourage better habits – social norms less prone to abuse by potential spammers. What’s so difficult about providing visitors with a link they can share with others through their own email client, authenticated channels (IM and other social networking tools), or their own website? Word-of-mouth will always be the most effective marketing. Not only because of the credibility lent by the mouth’s reputation, but also because sales often takes repeated pitches. I may wait to try a service until I’ve heard about several friends using it. After spamming invitees, sites like Friendster now provide the invitee the option of instructing the service to never email them again. Well, if invitees select that option upon the first invite, there goes a shot at repeated sales pitches!

Responding to my rhetorical question above, I realize that many people are not familiar with the technical details on how the internet works – including seemingly basic tasks like copy and pasting links into emails. I also understand the demand to recognize people you know using the same services as you. Unfortunately, the common solution to this second problem often includes handing over the contact information for everyone the person knows. I want to identify people I know using the service, but I don’t want to give websites access to the contact information of everyone I know. Fortunately, the social graph is portable and smart services allow their members to take their social mappings with them without exposing their authentication credentials or others’ contact information.

I do not think an open social graph is the answer – I will only map my social network when I can retain access control to the social mappings.

I admire user experience designers that take a broader view of the choices they make: thinking not just about the experience of using the product or service itself, but also how the offering fits into people’s lives and will affect society. Design in a way that enforces habits consistent with the social contract of respecting privacy and discourages habits leaving people susceptible to unintentionally jeopardizing the privacy of others for whom they care.

p.s. I’ve heard an argument that by forwarding an email address to Gmail, you may be violating a social contract not to share their personal conversations with The Google. (Again the whole “fear The Google” thing.)