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Whenever a website doesn't allow me to delete my account, I just change my username to a random sequence of fingerjammed letters and then change my email address to another random sequence. Seems to do the trick for me. But are you also looking to delete any comments or submissions you've made as well?

Moreover, their version of "the cloud" is taking multiple bad photos of your family sitting on a couch and magically turning it into a photo where everyone is smiling. Every time I see that commercial, I just have this look of utter confusion thinking about who produced that idiotic ad. I mean the tech behind it is cool, but what the hell does it mean "to the cloud!"???

I actually do video and After Effects on my Macbook Pro, as well as all of my Photoshop work with huge multi-layered files, and it flies. I have a more powerful Quad-Core tower at work, but it's only a slight improvement in speed, and being mobile with my Macbook far outweights that. In fact, there are tons of people that do video editing on the fly with Macbooks. I wouldn't dare try it with a Macbook Air.

If you explained this concept to me, I would probably have been "meh". But I atually found it incredibly enjoyable! It's like the new tech version of the old spin the globe and stop it by pressing your finger on it to see where your finger lands. Fantastic! I would love if this were somehow self-playing, rotating the view automatically and loading a new view every minute. edit: derp, there is! Love it! I'm going to make this my new screensaver.

The redesign is fantastic! And while I miss having that blue character dude always in the upper left, I think it's the right move for then to move away from the character from a branding perspective. That dude gave a bit of a cool underground underdog type feel, which I loved, but simplifying their brand I think will allow them to step up on a broader plateau.

If I don't have to, why should I choose only one or the other? Ideally, I'd love to have access to both sets of studies for my websites.

I would assume that eye tracking is mainly for looking at content and secondly for looking for next actions, while mouse movement would be primarily for locating next actions and secondarily for interacting with content.

I think designers will just have to compensate going forward with the understanding that touch controls should have a bigger hit area than pixel-precision mouse controls. We're likely far from figuring how and how long this will play out, but I often make the same mistake as you, hitting the wrong link because they are too small or too close together.

That is quite scary. And to dig even deeper would be the ability to predict what a user is just thinking in his or her head. Or reacting or showing customized options based on a user's mood, which could be used for both good and bad purposes. Good if it's a system that's intention is to be purely helpful to a user, such as in that computer in the movie Moon. But bad if it's system meant to manipulate users into doing things they won't necessarily want, such as convincing people that they "need" to have a McDonald's Big Mac.

As a matter of fact, yes, I would. I do get tired of seeing the same ad over and over again. I don't use ad block, as I do want to give website owners their rightful due, and I would rather see a variety of ads than one single one over and over again.

Imagine watching television, and in each commercial slot, it's the same commercial, all day, all week. I think you would get sick of that commercial very quickly, and after a while, you would begin to have negative thoughts about the company in the commercial.

The same thing happens when my wife watches her Korean dramas online. There was a week or so, that there was this one single Virgin Mobile ad that played before and during every episode, the one that has that scene of the woman giving birth while screaming at her mobile phone. Even though I wasn't watching the dramas, I was close enough to have to hear that ad 25 times over the course of a night, and I began to harbor extremely violent thoughts against Virgin Mobile.

Edit: not sure that answers your question directly actually, but what I really mean is that I would like to see a variety of ads rather than the one or two that seem to be stalking me everywhere and of which I have no interest. I'd certainly rather see ads from more companies of higher quality than mesotheleomia or mortagage financing, but in all honesty, having one or two of those sprinkled in would at least lessen the badgering I get from the few ads I constantly see.

Thankfully, as touch screen devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and upcoming palm or windows touch devices come out, hover states will be forced to fade away as it becomes cumbersome to design interfaces for both touch and non-touch computers.

I'm all down for that though. Targetting me on past actions have been a huge fail for the ad servers so far. One example, my wife was thinking about applying for a job at Tom's shoes. I checked out the site to read about their company. Ever since, their banner ads have been following me all over the place, with no interest on my part to ever wear or purchase them. Example two, I was watching a podcast interviewing the CEO of a wine making company. I checked out their site, and again I got followed absolutely everywhere with their banner ads. The problem with their targeting as far as I've experienced is that they have no ability whatsoever to understand the context of my actions, and context is the most valuable part of understanding what would be relevant to me. Without that, all they can do is see that i visited X site, so let's hammer X site's banner at me to perpetuity until I visit Y site, and the cycle continues.

The value of free users is the potential word-of-mouth that can reach other users who could potentially become paying users. Isn't that the point of offering and supporting a free service?

Not in a drag race where he's driving a Yugo and you're driving a Ford GT. Unless you crash of course.

Keep your eye onthe prize! Corny, I know, but maybe just remind yourself every once in a while whats important. When you let your body and mind fall naturally to what it's attracted to, you can end up on a site like this or reddit or the like for a long time, but if you pause for a second and think about what you could be doing instead, you might pass on spending time here and doing some work.

Perhaps not appropriate for your app, but who knows, maybe? But this is my favorite UI that I've seen in a very long time. Just click on any of the content boxes.

http://spacecollective.org/projects/The-Total-Library

Your sample of domains actually look like very good and memorable names. But I'm hesitant to sign up for your newsletter because I'm not currently in need of one, but even if I were, it would be for a specific idea I have in mind, and thus, I'd be looking for a related domain name. I'm not sure if there's anyone who needs a domain name to get inspired to build a website around it, but perhaps there are, though maybe this would be a good service for people that buy and sell domain names, but that just feels like a dirty field to be in.

But good luck with it! Maybe you'll make some discoveries in the near future and implement something to make this more useful for someone searching for a specific related name. There's quite a few out there, and they all help, but I could still see some room for a new form of domain discovery.

That is a fantastic signup form! I just signed-up myself, and I don't even know Ruby. But I've been having a huge itch to learn for a long time, and your newsletter may be just the trick to get me into it. Thanks much!

Agreed, and I think that number will eventually rise as businesses learn what works and what doesn't with Groupon.

"It smacks of a desperate attempt to jump on the trend-wagon and less of a well-thought out marketing move and that is the real crux of the problem."

I wouldn't be so quick to judge if I were the writer. This will just be one of many discoveries as this type of business grows and gains in popularity, and I have no doubt they will learn and react with their best judgment.

I'm curious how you would have gone about it. Would you have tried a more underground path, generating movement slowly with more emotionally invested users? Or withheld the product months or even a year after it was promised to make sure it was beyond peoples expectations?

I don't think it's so much standing versus sitting so much as how much movement one does throughout the day. A person could be standing in a fixed position which would be far more unhealthy than a fixed sitting position. I remember reading a quote from an extremely old man who said the secret was simple to "keep moving". Movement seems pretty clear to me the most important activity, since it keeps your cells active and fluids flowing. Any state of immobility will eventually put strain on whichever body part is taking the most pressure or work.

Even they have to sit down to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then at home, what are they doing between the hours of 6pm to 10 or 11pm that they're not doing some form of sitting with their family? And even at work, the professions you mention, I have to believe are sitting at the very least half an hour throughout their work day, not including lunch. So that plus meals is already one and a half hours minimum, meaning at home at night, every night, they're spending 1.5 out of about 4.5 hours sitting. And remember this is every day. So what is a person, after a full work day doing for those 3 non-sitting hours. And if you say goig to the gym, even gym rats are sitting a considerable amount of time during workouts. And I didn't even include the possibility of sitting while driving, though I guess you could give the possibility they are standing on a bus or train. But really, in all honesty, I cannot imagine but an incredibly rare number of people with an extreme non-sitting lifestyle would exist.

According to the study, there are actually people that sit 3 or less hours in a day? Apologies if I missed a key element in the article, but how is this possible that out of about 16 hours of waking hours that only 3 are sitting? I literally cannot see how a complete 13 hours can be spent otherwise.

Was highly anticipating this for many months when it was announced. But it lost me after a few minutes when A) I had to do a lot of thinking and reading for B) a lack of any sense of "fun" in return. It isn't so much a game as a learning simulation. Very dissapointed, as I felt it had some great potential to be a "smarter" Sim City type game, but just overloaded me with informational decisions straight off the bat.

I kind of prefer their previous design actually, though I'm sure they put plenty of thought and research into the new one.

One thing I find awkward are the rollovers of the 4 buttons with the red arrow pointing me up to read the related description. I found it unnatural for me to look at the buttons, rollover one, and then look up to read the description, and then look back down, rollover another button, and then look back up for the description. My eyes kept going down, then up, then down, then up.

One option I might rather have seen was having the buttons flip around revealing the simple description, while keeping the more detailed description above, perhaps allowing room for screenshots of the products above.

Sorry, I don't care about all the downvotes. I did in fact read your entire article. Your quote:

"It needs to fail. This is not the right way for us to go forward."

You're basically hoping completely that this will in fact fail entirely, without understanding how it could be useful for some people in some scenarios.

Attacking me on a personal level in your comment is also very simple-minded. You have no clue about the kind of person I am, what kind of activities I'm involved in, yet you've already made the assumption that I'm a lazy-ass fat person as portrayed in Wall-E. I'm the exact opposite. I run. I bike. I go to the gym very often. But there are indeed times in some days where I'm tired and want to veg-out, and in those times, I will want to plop on a couch and just watch some television.

Go ahead and downvote me all you want. For your sake, you should at least allow the possibility that you're thinking is wrong. By stating "it needs to fail", you basically hope no one will ever find their product useful, without seeing how people in the real world will react to it in the first place.

If you can, please give me some feedback on the A versus B / A+B thinking that I hope people practice, rather than trying to compare one thing versus another, choose the one that is mostly better, and hope the other goes away. The world is full enough for people to make use of a multitude of products and services to fulfill their needs and desires, and the way you choose to do so isn't the holy grail of how to live one's life.

It seems a better idea would have been to embed them into some form of eyewear, a form factor that currently exists rather than create a new one.

Ugh!!!! This guy is so full of stupid it hurts. Ok, let me not fall into rant mode and just be nice and logical.

The fallacy some people fall into when presented with a new product or service is to make an assumption that this new product or service is meant to replace current methods......entirely. It's a black or white world to these people. What you should be thinking instead is how this service could e utilized in a more useful way than SOME current methods of doing things. This is the same crap I read when augmented reality was coming about. Stop thinking A versus B and start thinking A + B!

Regarding the authors rant, of course a wikipedia type page of text has huge advantages when wanting to learn about a subject. But there can be times when Qwiki's method will be advantageous too! For example, what if Qwiki became embedded into interactive TV products. I'm sitting on the couch, watching Mythbusters, nowhere near my computer, and a term is brought up that I'm unfamiliar with. I could pause the tv and initiate Qwiki through a voice command and, still in my sunken-into-couch-ain't-willing-to-move-an-inch position, I can sit through a quick brief on said term before continuing with the show. That's just one example and there will be many more.

So again, stop it with the this versus that thinking!!!!! It's so simple- and single-minded! See the pluses and minuses with every solution and consider how each can serve in different scenarios!

I actually just commented on this on a recent Kara Swisher article http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100929/exclusive-major-meltdown...

The basic idea started with the idea of completely changing the company name to a name that can play well with their sub-brands, because of the poor connotation or generic feel that the name "Yahoo" brings to some people's mind.

I went on to cite Kraft as an example. They have a jillion products that have their own brands. Oreo Cookies. A1 Steak Sauce. Crystal Light. Cool Whip. Each of those have very different audiences to speak to. Kids, steak-eaters, weight-watchers, sweet-tooths. So each has their own brand that speaks uniquely to those audiences. Kraft has a brand on its own, but it stands in the background, allowing each of their products to act on their own for each product's best interest.

I believe this system could greatly benefit Yahoo. Instead of trying to brand their properties Yahoo so-and-so, allow those properties to break free from the Yahoo brand, so they can serve each of the unique audiences properly. Sports, finance, news, gossip, music etc.

I believe the Kraft example matches them very well. Humongously large company with a huge number of products that serve a wide-range of differing audiences. Kraft doesn't try to sell "Kraft" with each of their products, because that would confuse those products brands. You wouldn't have a commercial that sells "Kraft A1 Steak Sauce." Likewise, I think it's wrong for Yahoo to try to sell "Yahoo" with each of their products.

Flickr is an example of a successful Yahoo property that has no hindrances of the Yahoo brand. They were acquired of course, but Yahoo made the smart decision not to mess with it. But if had grown within Yahoo, then they would have called it something like "Yahoo Photos". How lame would that have been? It's like "Yahoo Music", or "Yahoo Movies." Those names just don't inspire.

So basically, I think it should be an excerside of allowing their properties to diversify, grow, and focus on each of their unique audiences from a branding and marketing perspective, rather than trying to unify the Yahoo brand among them all.

If his article is any indication of what reading his book is like, I'll be staying far faway from it. Leave it to a writer to write 50 pages in what could have been boiled down to one. This seems to be another example of his generation gap, his not understanding that an Internet audience is not so willing to give their precious time to read a wordy and way over long article.