Author Archives: Tim Cederman-Haysom

Sprixi – useful image search?

It’s trite, but it’s true – the best products to build are those that people want.  Sage words from Paul Graham, yet I’m always surprised at how many products out there are solutions looking for problems.  That’s why I was … Continue reading

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Google continues to disappoint in search quality

At first I thought it was just me who noticed how poor Google has been lately, but happily some folks from Hacker News confirmed I wasn’t going crazy.  Today I had an odd query which got me suitably terrible results. … Continue reading

Posted in Web products | 2 Comments

Will Craigslist’s dominance continue?

One thing has always puzzled me — is Craigslist successful because of its simplicity?  Or is it because it was first? I’ve heard the “you can’t be successful unless you’re first” line bandied about a few times, but have never … Continue reading

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Information overload

One important usability principle is to manage complexity for the user.  This means both the UI itself, and contraining the data to prevent overload.  Brandon Walkin wrote a nice article about managing complex UIs, but didn’t talk about managing complex … Continue reading

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Iconography

I thought this was a very literal (and ugly) choice for an icon, care of my247.com.au (why are there no decent Australian review sites?) Incidentally, Gelateria Cremona has what is easily the best gelato I’ve ever had.  I can only … Continue reading

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Google doesn’t stop iterating

One thing you can say about Google is its search results page has been known for its consistency and simplicity.  The most radical addition was the poorly-received (by bloggers anyway) search wiki.  Most changes have been behind the scenes — … Continue reading

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The Bay Area response to foreclosure

I spotted this article a little while ago, discussing how one man responded to having his house foreclosed. The front yard of Williams’ home is strewn with boxes, furniture and trash cans. There’s even some of the home’s air conditioning … Continue reading

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Microsoft Live Search – trying to increase their referrer percentage artificially?

I’ve noticed a lot of my traffic supposedly is coming from Microsoft Live.  However, looking at the referring URLs, something fishy is obviously going on:   01 May, Fri, 09:10:38    http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=authentication     01 May, Fri, 09:19:00    http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=virgin     01 … Continue reading

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Google doesn’t trust us with our search queries anymore

A trend I’ve noticed lately is that Google selectively ignores and “reimagines” my search terms. (actually, it also habitually drops my search entirely. There are bugs in both the new Google toolbar, and a bug in iGoogle that goes back … Continue reading

Posted in Rants, Web products | 4 Comments

PCMag.com top 20 job sites

PC Magazine listed its top 20 job sites today.  There were three Monster sites on there: Monster (#11), Trovix (#17) and USAJobs (#19, although they don’t appear to be in any particular order). The bit I noticed of course was: … Continue reading

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