UN news: Strapline Competition Winner gets Bubbly, etc

A small but perfectly formed series of strapline entries arrived on the Usability News desktop throughout September. The one that stood out was from Oliver Lewis of Imetrix (biography below). He submitted:

* At the frontline of the frontend

which the team of judges found immediately appealing. It may well be used as part of UN publicity in the future. Meanwhile, Oliver has been furnished with a bottle of champagne to celebrate UN's first birthday.

Other entries worthy of notable mention included:

* All your usability needs under one url

* Making usable information easy to find

and the UN team is still grateful to FreePint whose June 2002 edition inadvertently offered us:

* Does what the URL says

as part of a (favourable) review of the site and which has since been adopted as:

* Does what it says in the URL

by the designer of our new publicity flier (appearing at all events near you soon and available free of charge for distribution should you wish to promote UN anywhere we've not thought of).

The last thing to mention in connection with the promotion of UN, is the sponsorship that is to appear on the regularly emailed newsletter to which readers can subscribe. This will take the form of short, focussed messages of relevance to readers. We hope you will support this endeavour as it will be key to UN's long-time survival.

Biography of the strapline winner
Oliver Lewis is a director of Imetrix Ltd, a new media consultancy specialising in usability and brand trust. After training in journalism in the early '90s he went on to edit two regional newspapers for Newsquest and sub-edit consumer lifestyle magazines. In 1997 he moved into Web content development and analysis on the Newsquest-owned Fish4.co.uk brands and in 1999 become an independent creative consultant specialising in new media. In 2001 Oliver co-founded Imetrix, and since then has been contracted to perform usability and accessibility tests and related research projects by several public and private sector organisations including Daily Mail Group, The Department of Health, Essex County Council and the Guardian Media Group.

Study: Mobile Web sites need Improvement
Source: CNET, 13 October 2008
 
A new study suggests that the usability of many mobile Web sites still needs improvement.

Better Usability makes Online Backup more Appealing
Source: UN, 11 October 2008
 
Repeat after me: "Backup via the Internet is for everybody."

IBM Task Modeler version 6 now Available
Source: Unknown, 10 October 2008
 
The latest release of IBM Task Modeler is now available for download. This includes many new features to support efficient and collaborative task analysis and synthesis.

Caroline's Corner: Design to Read - Designing for People who do not Read easily
Source: Caroline Jarrett, 9 October 2008
 
Reading is a skill many of us take for granted. Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’re one of the lucky ones who read easily.

Bill Buxton to change Microsoft from within
Source: The Register, 8 October 2008
 
"Last year Steve Ballmer said to 85,000 employees 'If you don’t change and you don’t go in this direction, we’re dead, and I don’t want to die.' I wanted to go hug him when he said that."

New Report: Innovative Marketing in the Digital World
Source: E-consultancy, 7 October 2008
 
A new report from E-consultancy provides a distillation of ideas and suggestions provided by digital marketing experts.

Linking Industry with Academia
Source: unknown, 6 October 2008
 
Customer experience research consultancy, fhios, based in London, has just launched an innovative internship programme, aimed primarily at postgraduate students.

Online Travel Booking: What influences Consumers?
Source: Webcredible, 4 October 2008
 
What influences consumers when booking a holiday? How can travel companies offer the best user experience?

Getting the Word out
Source: UN, 3 October 2008
 
I SAID, I'M ON THE TRAIN... Voice recognition technology can now translate all those pesky garbled voicemails into manageable text messages.

Mobile hardware outpaces Software and User Capabilities
Source: ComputerWorld, 2 October 2008
 
The main issue dissuading users from employing all the capabilities of their mobile devices is the complexity involved in operating them.