Malaysia Airlines offering iPad check-in

Microsoft Looking For A Few Good iPad Users… To Study

Apple’s rival has created a Facebook event calling for iPad owners to come to Microsoft’s Redmond campus between July 16 and July 21 for a study. Specifically, it’s Microsoft’s User Research group and they want people for chunks of two hours to apparently survey how they use the device. A follow-up note indicates that it’s student iPad users that Microsoft is specifically interested in here.

Sounds like a step in the right direction, if you ask me.

My bit to, hopefully, clarify that user experience research isn’t necessarily about opinions and preferences, but of human behaviour:

From a user experience (UX) point of view, it’s an interesting research. I believe Microsoft’s (MS) UX researchers are interested in observing how people use the iPad, and I think the focus on students as the target group of choice merely points to Microsoft’s interest in, perhaps, developing something for the Education arena. Could be an app, could be a device, who knows?

Bottom line: what they’re observing is probably gonna be usage behaviour, which isn’t significantly affected by one’s perception/opinion of a brand. Take for example 2 identical mice and paste a MS logo on one and an Apple logo on the other. Usage behaviour isn’t gonna differ significantly on how we interact with the mice.

Read more: Microsoft Looking For A Few Good iPad Users… To Study

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere

10 lessons:
{1} Go Into Your Cave
{2} It’s Okay to Be King
{3} Transcend Orthodoxy
{4} Just Say No
{5} Serve Your Customer. No, Really
{6} Everything Is Marketing
{7} Kill the Past
{8} Turn Feedback Into Inspiration
{9} Don’t Invent, Reinvent
{10} Play by Your Own Clock

Article here: Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere

Video: iPhone and iPad as a P.O.S. system

The annoying thing about salacious titles (read: Gawker’s Ryan Tate is an ass)

So one morning I got up super grumpy and got on with my usual morning routine of making tea, watering the plants and catching up with what’s new on the web (since the night before).

Lo and behold Ryan Tate’s Gawker post: Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

Now, I had just caught a whiff of the news from Techmeme.com, and had some idea that it wasn’t Apple who caused the leak, but it was AT&T’s website, and the people involved, who were at fault. So you can imagine how pissed I was when I saw the title.

Look, I’m all for great titles that draw readers in so that they would read the article. But stretching the truth and misreporting it completely are as different as night and day.

In an age where IM, SMS and email dominates our conversation, people don’t put the same kind of time and effort into their writing as they used to in order to get their points and intentions across. This leads to miscommunication, and sometimes feelings are hurt. It happens a lot to me. heh..

But in this instance, THAT can’t be an excuse for Ryan Tate. That title was well thought out, malicious and designed to garner readership from the web.

A few paragraphs in, you’ll see this excerpt:

See? Even he admits that it was AT&T’s servers that were breached, not Apple’s. When you buy a consumer electronic, almost all companies would like to know how they can reach you and ask for your email. It makes good business sense. Blaming Apple in this instance is akin to blaming gun manufacturers for murder.

Ryan, if you can hear this, you’re full of shit and it’s disgusting how you whore your reputation, or whatever’s left of it, for a few clicks on the web.