General News (From UsabilityNews)

By James Temple


Shortly after Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of Yahoo Inc. early last year, she met with Prabhakar Raghavan for an overview of the Sunnyvale Web giant's research division. As the head of Yahoo Labs ran through the catalog of computer scientists on staff, Bartz turned to him and asked: "Where are your psychologists?"

Raghavan was stunned the newly installed CEO had so quickly gotten to a question he'd been asking for years. His answer was they didn't have enough.

MouseTrace is a new usability tool that will let bloggers and webmasters determine precisely how to enhance the experience of their visitors. At it most basic level, what MouseTrace does is to record the activity of visitors and create a video that the webmaster or blogger can reproduce as many times as he or she wants.

This service is easy to implement: all you have to do is add one line of HTML for MouseTrace to become fully operative and functional. There is no software to install, nothing to set up or configure, and certainly nothing to update later on.

By Khidr Suleman


Google has made some changes to Gmail designed to make it easier to store and search for contacts. Features added to the Contacts tab include a larger notes field to record information, automatic saving, structured name fields, the ability to undo changes and keyboard shortcuts.

By Issa Sikiti da Silva


The 2010 Tech4Africa conference 'Web and Emerging Technology' kicked off in Bryanston, Johannesburg, yesterday, 12 August 2010 and will run till today, drawing many delegates from various walks of technology business in South Africa and Africa.

By Marisa Peacock


In 2005, Jakob Nielsen shared what he considered to be the top 10 design mistakes of what was once called the ‘weblog.’ Strikingly, five years later, most (if not all) of them still remain true in the world of the engaged web.

How User Friendly is Your Blog?

GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Utah — Todd Braver emerges from a tent nestled against the canyon wall. He has a slight tan, except for a slim pale band around his wrist.

For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Mr. Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says. It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Mr. Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains?