Daily Archives: 2006.12.05

dad proof software

Posted on by

dad
software
installation
easy of use
too many questions
prompts
simpler
allowing new software through the firewall
dad proof

Those are just a few thoughts I had before writing this post about how software companies make software difficult for some fathers out in the world.

After turning on a computer, and logging in, really the only question which should be presented to you should be;
What would you like to do? (Today?)

My Dad isn’t computer savvy, so he doesn’t have a clue how to uninstall software. He just wants to use the computer.

The Security software suite Dell installed on my Dad’s laptop finally got around to expiring on him a few months ago. After finally getting tired of him saying ‘the software subscription has expired’( or what it actually says) every time that he turned his computer
on.

I knew there had to be a better, cheaper way around this. I’m not a big fan of AOL, and all the crap their known for. But what I do like is they’re offering the same software that he had installed on his laptop for free, just for signing up and getting an email address. Unfortunately you cannot just use your AIM account for whatever reason. So I had to create him an account, and got Software and Security Center working for him effortlessly. Now his computer will have the safety he needs, and protect him on a daily basis automagically. All Free.

This is how software needs to work. At least in this case. It needs to stay behind the scenes. Do daily scans, and weekly big scans. Protect the user from spyware. Download updates by itself. And never complain about a broken subscription. It just needs to do its job. The only time you should recieve a prompt is when a new unknown program needs access through the firewall.

Another thing I know he doesn’t care for is all the questions when trying to install something. Yes, No, Install Here, There, Would you like fries with that? How bout an extra Large Shake? Sheesh. Just install the software simply and easily like it should be, hassle free.

Thanks AOL. Hopefully I won’t have to uninstall your software too.

[tags]dad_proof_software, dad, software, easy_to_use, thoughts,AOL, security, freedbacking [/tags]

Change the way you read with a mashup

Posted on by

I was reading my feeds earlier, using Firefox and thought about increasing the font size, so in the menu bar, View-> Text Size, a couple times, and my eyes were happier. The next menu option below Text Size is Page Style, and it had two options, Basic Page Style, and No Style. Choosing no style instantly gave me a rather long River of News style of reading my feeds.

So anyways on to the thought I had while doing this, Google Maps has mashups.

Why not a Google Reader Mashup? I’m no HTML guru but I think all you would really need to change is the first CSS file it calls for in the source using Greasemonkey. Maybe something simple and put the sidebar on the other side? Or change and add more keyboard shortcuts? A search box?

Say pressing control + ? brings up the keyboard shortcuts on the FAQ. using some DHTML goodness or whatever they’re using these days and have it be overlayed on the webpage, like they have on Netflix for when you have the cursor over a movie title.

I was reading something, and later thought about it more and wanted to read it again, but forgot to star it.
I would go and read all the posts, scanning through possibly hundreds of items, but why would I do that. Oh yea I have to.

It honestly feels weird having a page on Google which does not include a Search box. Almost every other page I’ve seen on Google has one. Ideally I wouldn’t mind having the option to perform a Google search on information only posted from my feeds. This would obviously include more logic.

I’m sure there are other things that would be cool to modify the reader to do we just need to think of them.

Maybe Google will soon open up Reader like Maps, and let people do fun things with feed reading.

[tags]freedbacking, google_reader, aggregators, mashups, ideas, searching_feeds, searching, help, keyboard_shortcuts[/tags]