Month: July 2007 (Page 2 of 3)

This article Magnetic Wobbles Cause Disk Failure may be a good way to improve our hard drive diagnostics, especially as drives get larger. It did get me to thinking that the conventional wisdom that hard drive defects will tend to cluster radially under the head as seen in a head crash may not be the whole picture. Perhaps spiraling outward from a defect is another good approach.

UCSC Press Release on Wobbly Polarity

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Typical Crash:

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As reported by Foxnews.com, a Swedish woman, age 75, has the world’s fastest broadband internet connection. In less than 2 seconds Sigbritt Lothberg can download a full-length movie. How does she do it? She’s tapped into a 40 gigabit-per-second connection in Karlstad, Sweden. Seriously! Me and my puny 5 Mbps connection sit in awe and envy. Sure, I can get upwards of 10 Mbps if I want to pay for it. What’s even more disturbing is that she’s not utilizing the connection, only using it to view online newspapers. Sad, very sad.

“The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between.” This does raise a question. What’s the deal with American ISPs? Broadband coverage throughout America still isn’t what it should be and speeds for the most part are no where near what’s available throughout Europe and parts of Asia. According to a CWA survey, and as reported by Ars Technica, the average broadband speed is a mere 1.9 Mbps. Consider this, it’s 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, and 17 Mpbs in France.

It’s no secret, I’m not an advocate of big government and government regulation, but when it comes to R&D and advances in technology, I’m typically all for it. As an example, there was legislation introduced this year titled the Broadband Census of America Act. Here’s what the bill would do:

1. Define “high-speed” Internet access as 2 megabits per second for downloading and 1 megabit per second for uploading. Currently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines high-speed as 200 kilobits per second.
2. Discontinue the FCC practice of claiming an entire US zip code has broadband access if just one resident in that zip code has access.
3. Require the FCC to compare broadband deployment with that of other nations.

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4. Requite the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to provide a comprehensive nationwide inventory of existing broadband service and infrastructure.
5. Allow the NTIA to make grants to states and local governments to assist the NTIA in collecting the data needed for the broadband availability map.
6. Direct the FCC to conduct surveys on the prices, advertised and actual speeds, and availability of broadband services.
7. Authorize twelve million dollars per year in fiscal years 2008, 2009 and 2010 to carry out the provisions of this legislation. No less than eight million dollars per year would be reserved for the grants to state and local governments.

This sounds like a great start, but I’d still like to see more. What about the price gouging that American ISPs are inflicting on Americans every year for what they like to tag as “broadband”? We pay more for slower speeds than many other countries. How can America compete in the global economy and in R&D if our networks and infrastructure simply aren’t up to snuff?

Larry Cohen, CWA President, has it right:

“Speed Matters on the Internet. It determines what is possible; whether we will have the 21st century networks we need to grow jobs and our economy, and whether we will be able to support innovations in telemedicine, education, public safety, and public services to improve our lives and communities. High speed Internet could even help address the global warming crisis by allowing people to get things done without getting into their car.”

With all this in mind we’re approaching an election year with many items on the agenda to focus our attention on; a war on terror/Iraq war (arguably the same thing), Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea’s nuclear program, immigration, health care, social security reform, foreign oil dependency, budget deficits, trade gaps, and so on. All of those things listed are extremely important issues that we must face as a nation. However, we must not lose site of what was once a nation capable of great innovation such as the Industrial Revolution. Congress and our next presidential candidate must be one that can help re-invigorate old school American Research & Development. We need to put ourselves back on the map of innovation. This new innovation will help foster solutions to many of the other problems that I previously mentioned.

The phrase usability testing gets thrown around a lot. It sounds great when you’re planning a project. If you say you’ll do some usability testing, then people get a warm feeling about your project plan.

After discussing it with a few people, I’ve concluded that there are a lot of myths out there about usability testing. I’ll outline all of them that I’ve either heard from someone or thought to myself.

First let me explain what it is.

No. I lied. That’s a huge topic, and I’m going to bypass it here. Instead, I’ll refer you to the best summary I’ve read on the subject: Dumas and Redish, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. It’s a bit old, and there are likely better summaries out there, but linking it nicely lets me avoid explaining what usability testing is.

I will, however, explain what the goals of usability testing are:

The idea is to watch your users interact with your product (or something similar to your product) in a way that allows you to see how well the product works for the users. In addition to finding problems, usability testing also tries to gather data that the testers can use to figure out how the problems should be corrected.

That description is designed to shoot down several of the bigger myths that I’ve run into.

Myth: Usability testing gathers statistical evidence that you can use to make decisions about solving a usability problem.

Running a good usability test on a single user is expensive and time consuming. There’s a lot of data that gets analyzed, and I’ve found it to be a heck of a lot more useful to get more data about a single user than it is to test multiple users.

You end up running tests on very small numbers of people. I generally spend a fair amount of time before and after a single test preparing the test and analyzing the results. The test will find some problems, but you correct those problems before you analyze how bad the problems were. If a problem is bad, then you’re likely to run into it. If a problem is small, you’re not likely to be bothered by it again. It’s much better to just assume that all problems you run into are large enough that they should be solved.

All forms of usability testing that I’ve done follow this formula: Watch a single user use your product. For every problem that user runs into, figure out what caused the problem, and decide if and how you need to fix it. All problems a user runs into are considered real problems until proven otherwise.

Myth: Usability testing requires a lot of fancy equipment.

I hear this sometimes after people read about what large software companies use when they do usability testing. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard rumors about rooms filled with hidden cameras, one-way mirrors, and eye tracking devices. It sounds like fun, but it’s really not needed.
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When I do some usability testing, I try to understand the user as well as possible. I want to know what they’re thinking when they click the wrong menu item. I tend to be in their face a lot more than someone standing behind one-way mirrors would be, but, for a lot of problems, a user being in an artificial environment with a couple of engineers breathing down their neck isn’t as bad of a problem as it sounds. Certainly, a lot can be done this way.

Myth: Any old user will work.

The background of your user has a huge impact on how they view your product.

In the early stages of testing, I like to use coworkers as much as possible. They’re easy to sucker into these tests; the first few times you do it, they even think it’s fun! However, the data you generate from these tests requires so much interpretation that you can quickly get to the point where it’s not worth your time. (They’re great for the early tests, though. If nothing else, they can help test your testing procedure!)

Myth: Usability testing has to take a long time.
Myth: Usability testing can be done very quickly.

These myths are different, but the answer is the same. Usability testing can take as long as you need it to. It’s fairly difficult to anticipate how long you’ll need, however. Unexpected usability problems frequently come up. They need to be fixed in code, and if you’re not lucky, that might take time.

If the dialog box or web page that you’re testing isn’t all that important, then it’s possible to run tests that will fail to catch smaller problems. This can greatly speed things up, and it is possible to test something quickly and get away with it.

One of my favorite easy test to run is one that tries to decide between a small number of completely different approaches. This can be quick, but it’s also possible that none of the approaches tried works all that well. I haven’t been great at predicting the time required for usability tests that I’ve done, and I claim that it’s a problem with usability testing rather than my own shortcoming.

One of the more dangerous forms of this myth is the belief that a large, complex product can be tested comprehensively in an amount of time that management will be happy with. Usability testing of a significant amount of UI code is a major project, and it really needs to be done continuously over the entire lifecycle of the product.

Myth: There aren’t any other myths.

As I find some more time, I’ll come back and address some more issues that I’ve run into. I think I’ve gotten the biggest ones that I’ve seen, though.

It’s been one week since my new PC arrived, replete with Windows Vista. If my experience is any indication, it’s still not ready for prime time.

Here’s the score:

Reboots = 8
Blue screen = 1
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I have no weird applications installed. It was set up by our IT guy (and I’ll stand behind him all day long). The hardware is good.

Some of the folks in the lab are calling it the Windows ME of the 21st century. I think that sounds pretty harsh . to Windows ME.

This is a simple iPhone pixel test; black, white, red, green, and blue screens. Verify that each color is solid, unbroken, and with no stuck pixels. Scroll down to see each color.

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