Best and worst on The uber geeks

Chris Fehnel
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Sameer Barkawi
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Colin Devroe
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Amazon.com is good but not smart

It’s safe to say that Amazon.com is a behemoth when it comes to online shopping. It has been around seemingly forever and everyone I know uses it over all of the competing websites. Just because of those facts it seems like Amazon is focusing too much on the big things and not enough on the little details that would make the Amazon experience so much better.

Just today I was updating my wishlists and Amazon told me that my address in my address book had changed. Since I was the person that changed my address I was well aware of the fact. Amazon went on to let me know that I should update my wishlist address as well or I might not receive the items purchased from said list. What?! Why should I have to go through all of my wishlists and update them again?

Begrudgingly I caved to the system’s demands and was shocked to see that the address showing was not even in my address book at all. Amazon needs to create either a preference or checkbox when customers are updating their address books so the changes are applied universally. In my opinion it should be automatic that the new address is set as your wishlist address.

The other area Amazon needs to improve is how it deals with permissions. By that I mean instead of having to log in 5 times to adjust different aspects of your profile/wishlist/etc., you should only have to log in once and the site should remember who you are and what you can edit.

It’s these little things that take good websites and make them great. The smarter you can make your online system the easier it will be for your clients and customers to use. We all know that a happy customer is the most valuable aspect of or businesses.

How many ways can you search Google?

By Colin Devroe with 6 reader comments

Obviously, I’m a fan of widgets. Although I only use a select few, on the whole I really do think that a large percentage of widgets are neat and fun.

Going beyond neat and fun, are useful widgets. Each time a widget is released there is the question of usefulness. Once it is determined that the widget is useful, is the widget a convenient way to “get to” that usage. Boy that was a confusing sentence.

In short, how many ways can we search Google? The Google widget (pictured below), is extremely useful. Type in a search term, hit enter, boom - millions of pages of content dealing with that topic.

The Google Widget

However, is the Google widget the most convenient way to search Google? Is it the best means to the end result? I don’t think so. The Google Widget is probably the least convenient way to search Google unless you’re actually inside of Dashboard. The obvious “winner” for convenience is searching from within the browser.

But, I think there is an even faster way - context menus. Right (or control) clicking on a word within the browser, an email message, and almost any Macintosh native application will give you the ability to “Search in Google”. That is an extremely quick way to search Google, since you don’t even need to type in the search term. It’s even faster than copy/paste. I’d like to see widgets adding this ability via a single click. Term searching, instead of a widget that just ends up opening the browser anyway.

Today’s moment of zen

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

Here is my moment of zen for the day.

Darth Vader plays in the park

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

Darth Vader on a swing

Even evil dark Lords need to take a break once and awhile. And with hundreds of cloned troopers to do your bidding and the force at your disposal, you have no issues of pushing yourself on the swing.

Charlize Theron gets her butt kissed on Leno

By Colin Devroe with 4 reader comments

Dane Cook is the man

Just by reading the title, I can guarantee most of you said “That’s probably Dane Cook”.

The man living in a van down by the river

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

I miss him, I really do

Some of the worst things happen to what appear to be the best people. I can’t even count on both hands how many people that I do not feel deserved the bitter end they were dealt. We’ll always have the SNL archives and his movies I suppose.