Après avoir passé deux nuits dans une auberge de jeunesse puis deux autres chez l’un des co-fondateurs de la startup où je travaille, me voici enfin établi dans un appartement ! Je suis dans une petite colocation située à l’Est d’Amsterdam, près du parc Rembrandt, que je partage avec un francais de 25 ans, DJ de profession, et deux polonaises de 22 ans que je n’ai pas encore vu et qui seraient là en touristes. Je suis dans la chambre du propriétaire des lieux, DJ-philosophe-écrivain de 40 ans (tout un programme…) qui part pour un peu plus d’un mois au Moyen-Orient. Je mettrai prochainement une photo en ligne.

Côté stage, après avoir passé deux jours à me familiariser avec le travail qui a déjà été effectué sur l’application Android, j’ai enfin commencé à programmer. Vous pouvez voir sur la photo mon tuteur, Joris, m’aidant à débugguer l’application sur laquelle je travaille.

Je n’ai rien de prévu pour ce week-end, si ce n’est de me trouver un vélo, qui est, semble-t-il, plus qu’indispensable à Amsterdam.

(via jakelodwick)

I hope I’ll win…

marco:

This Wednesday (September 9th) is Apple’s annual iPod event, where they’re likely to refresh most or all of the iPod lineup like they’ve done at nearly every fall iPod event.

[…]

And, since very little of this is exciting enough to justify an entire event, I’m assuming that the main focus of the event will be a new version of iTunes and new content accessibility, such as iPhone TV rentals.

I would *love* to see iPhone TV rentals (iTunes TV rentals in general, because it’d be great on desktop and AppleTV too) as well as an international video upgrade for the iTunes Store because there are still a *lot* of countries (including France) that can’t rent or purchase movies throught the iTS.

An AppleTV upgrade would also be welcome, with more iPhone integration.

thijsjacobs:

What if American Airlines’ website had been designed by Google; would it work? I don’t know, which is why I tried designing how a “Googlified” AA.com would look like (always the best way to find out, if something works or not). It doesn’t take a usability genius to know, that there is a lot wrong with today’s flight companies’ websites and American Airlines is no exception.

The entire screen is cluttered with options and features hardly any customer would ever use; yet they are there! I especially dislike all of the promotional banners, which are odd considering I’ve already landed (pun intended) on their website. Stunningly, one must wonder if the invention of eye-tracking and data analytics hasn’t reached one of the largest e-commerce markets (travel).

A couple of notes on the redesign.

• One huge “Where to?” entry field, isn’t that what we really need?
• Prepopulated the “Fly from” field, as GEO location, or simple IP detection for that matter, has been around for some time now
• Hid lots of advanced options including the selection of travel dates. The reason here for hiding the travel dates is a bit more complex to explain, but I’ve found that when selecting tickets based on price at a later stage in the booking process, a calendar layout works best to show the lowest fair available, so why go through the date selection process twice?
• Highlighted “Sign in” or “Join today and receive instant benefits” at the top right corner of the page. Any truly smart company wants to build a relationship with their customers
• Included a phone number, which took me 10 minutes to find on the current AA website by the way
• Made the title more inviting by changing it from: “Airline Tickets and Airline Reservations from American Airlines | AA.com” (poor SEO - doesn’t comply with Google’s standard title length) to “American Airlines - Book your flight”. Obviously, this could be improved by adding “lowest fares” or other inviting copy in the title

American Airlines, your move!

Also check the AA redesign by Dustin Curtis, and while we’re at it the Wired article about Craigslist’s redesign.