Category Archives: Web products

Products I like and wish I actually used

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

Sometimes you see something that looks so cool that you want to use it, but quickly realise you don’t have any actual compelling need or interest. I’ve raved a few times about products I’m using at the moment and really … Continue reading →

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Sprixi – useful image search?

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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 →

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Will Craigslist’s dominance continue?

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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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Google doesn’t stop iterating

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

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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The difficulty of simple design – part 2

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Tim Cederman-Haysom

In my last post about design simplicity, I touched on the difficulties involved in what does and doesn’t make the cut for a design. Recently I noticed a forum post where one of the developers behind Plex (a really amazing … Continue reading →

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