Confusability

Google Connections

Google Trends Connections for usability, information architecture, user experience, interaction design

I have also added this search to Simply Google.

Baby Blaine Spoon Stunt Failure

Gaby "Baby Blaine" McEvoy has failed in his latest attempt to balance a spoon on the top of a yoghurt pot.

Twenty month old Gabriel had managed to lay the green plastic spoon on the top of the peach and mango "thick and creamy" yoghurt with the practised dexterity of a young Uri Geller.

All went well for the first twenty seconds before the self styled "high chair magician" gave into his animal urges and used his right index finger to pierce the foil with a rapier like movement that was too fast for the many onlookers to see properly.

After using the green spoon to eat the yoghurt in less than a minute, the youngster turned the pot upside down and slammed the tainted spoon onto the bottom of the now empty pot in an attempt to rescue the stunt attempt, but the attendant referees said that this deliberate eating of the props could not be overlooked and called a halt to the spectacle.

Baby Blaine responded by saying "it's been over a minute since I finished my tea of pasta and I needed to eat something sweet to satisfy my appetite".

Gabriel's previous stunts include hiding in a dark, liquid filled sac for nine months and sitting in a tepid bath for over seventeen minutes without peeing in it.

I'm on a Vlog

Simply Google got a mention on the CommandN Vlog last week.

Here are Amber and Mike talking about goo-home.com where they encourage people to set it as their homepage.

And here is the page itself.

CommandN got a mention in Wired this month in their Guide to the Online Video Explosion.

BBC - World Wide Blunderland

[UPDATE 1 May 2005 19:45]

Within an hour of posting this item both of these 404 errors were fixed. Was it just a co-incidence or were the fixes triggered by someone who had read this post?

About three hours ago (5.12pm) I added this item to delicious.
At 6.21pm this post was read by a delicious user who subscribes to items tagged with BBC.
When I checked at 7.10pm the homepage 404 had been fixed and when I checked the News Player 10 minutes ago it had been fixed as well.

The delicious user mentioned also happens to have a blog. Jem Stone works at the BBC and is also involved in the reboot competition.

So, if it was Jem who fixed these 404's. Thanks a lot. It proves that there are a lot of hard working, passionate people behind bbc.co.uk who are willing to put in the effort to make bbc.co.uk something special.

It also shows that the Cluetrain was spot on.

[ORIGINAL POST]

Now don't get me wrong, I love the BBC and think of them as a world leader when it comes to the online experience, but they really need to stop making basic mistakes like this.

What do you do when you get a 404 error while you are surfing the net?

Like 99.99% of all users you will just shrug your shoulders, lose a little bit of respect for the site you are viewing and move on. If someone actually takes the time to report your fault to you then you should fix the problem as quickly as possible and say thank you.

Two days ago I found a broken link at the bottom of the bbc.co.uk homepage. The section on the right is advertising a site about "The Impressionists", which is probably supposed to tie-in with the 3 part factual drama that started on BBC ONE last night.

When you click on the link you see this 404 error page.

It's clear that someone didn't overwrite the last link properly and instead of using /arts/multimedia/impressionism/ they used /ouch/arts/multimedia/impressionism/ instead.

The BBC should not be making these basic mistakes on it's homepage. It should be using a proper content management system that actually checks all links before it puts them live rather than relying on the cut and paste skills of an employee who is probably more worried about their pension rather than the position of their cursor.

I used the contact form on the bbc.co.uk site and gave detailed instructions on which 5 characters would need to be deleted to fix the problem. I did get a standard reply to my e-mail yesterday but the link is still broken three days after being reported.

I have noticed that the quality of the links on bbc.co.uk appears to be getting quite bad lately. Here is an example of another broken link that should never have been published.

You can use the BBC News Player to watch news items on demand. You also have four size options at the bottom of the player that can be selected at any time.

If you choose the NORMAL (VIDEO & TEXT) option you get the following error page.

Instead of putting so much effort into re-branding MyBBCPlayer as iPlayer, and wondering what the world might be like in 2012, Mark Thompson should pay more attention to the basics of getting the quality right on bbc.co.uk.

Here are a few suggestions for the BBC Webmasters that might be useful:

1. Ensure that you have the same custom 404 error handler on each of your servers. The user doesn't care if Ouch is on a different server from News.
2. Either build a content management system that is fool proof or make sure that you test your content before it goes live.
3. Take pride in your content. Every tag, angle bracket and paragraph. If a mistake gets published then fix it as soon as you possibly can and treat it as an opportunity to improve your publishing processes rather than sweeping it under the carpet.
4. Improve how you do things every day. Your sites are constantly changing. So Should you.
5. Don't spend so much time thinking about the future. Get on and create it by Getting Real and Being Simple.