Me<-----Mr last minute.... past 2am and I am just finishing my taxes in the final hours of the second day of the two day extension. Now, I have to post to this blog at this ungodly hour even though I had all week. We have a class project due in some weeks to come.... yeah, I'll be 5 mins late to that class printing it. 'Just telllin' ya now Ms. Powers.
While I rush, I notice some UI things working with me and this lifestyle of mine, and some things working to teach me a lesson the hard way. I found the tool bar at the top of blog page very useful as it was very clear how to post a comment and make another post. This interface is simple and clean. I can tell there is a lot of stuff behind all these tabs but I have no time for exploring now. I did have a problem connecting to the internet though since I couldn't remember my VPN password. Is it possible to have a security system interface that doesn't rely on the memorization of codes? Well something like this (go to page 8 for pictures) showed up on the web a long time ago in the dot com days but then I never saw it again. It's just like a virtual keypad but with pictures of stuff. I think my pictorial memory is better than my alpha-numeric-symbolic memory. They have some interesting research that suggests that this might be the case for many people.
In turbo tax, you have pay extra for a better user experience. Yep, forms prefilled with the information it already has in the system (names, addresses, creditcards, employment info) costs extra. And uh you can't understand that accountant jargon? no problem, "help" is only 30 dollars! Giving this to you for free would cost them nothing but someone must have told those business guys how much people hate bad UI design and they hoped we would dish out money for a better experience. I refused to pay this extra dough for a help system. God, I hope I don't get audited.
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the "memorization of codes" issue: yeah! we love it!!! i would appreciate to have a really simple way to get around that stuff on one side... but on the other hand i'm kind of scared as well. i admit, we already have to remember way too many codes and i especially hate sites that force you to come up with crazy passwords that include at least 10 characters...where at least 1 has to be a number, 1 has to be a symbol character... one has to be uppercase... but no spaces allowed... what the ...! i honestly had to create a file that includes all my stupid usernames and passwords... otherwise i wouldn't be able to access my stuff on same pages anymore.
for that i really like the idea of picture- or even color-codes. but that also brought back something i came across the web a couple of months ago: "identity 2.0". the concept behind it is already out there a while but i believe the term was coined by dick hardt, who gave a *very amusing* presentation at the o'reilly open source convention 2005 ( http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/ ) basically identity 2.0 is your digital driver's licence what you don't even need to show anymore. you only verify your identity at one point at a central place on the web and whenever you access websites where you have to verify yourself it happens automatically by pulling your information from the central place to that particular website. hmmm... thinking about it globally - i think it's a bit scary... definately a huuuuge security challenge!... but watch the 14 min presentation and let me know what you think.
and good luck with your tax report ;)
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