Slashdot Mirror
Google Opens U.K. Cybercafe and Testing Lab
sebFlyte writes "Google has launched a new venture in England to go with its London offices. They've set up a free Web cafe style affair at London's Heathrow airport to help travelers claw back some of the many hours they spend aimlessly wandering round airport lounges. They're not doing it entirely selflessly though: they admit the main reason they're doing it is to get as wide and as large a cross section of people through the centre as they can so that they can then watch them interact with Google's Web applications. ZDNet has photos, too."
Not complaining about slashdot, per se, but did anyone else notice the marketing in those pics?
Must be nice to be a company as big as google, you don't even have to pay to advertise any more. Just do something cool and people eat it up.
9 hours a year... Yeesh.
Makes me glad I don't fly.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
From TFA, 3rd Picture Caption
The 10 Samsung laptops in the temporary installation will be manned from 0700 to 1900 by Google employees from across the organisation, with some flown in especially to help out.
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It would appear that Google has been flying in their more attractive employees. (Or maybe if I worked for Google I'd look like that too.)
If encouraging people to use non MS operating systems was a priority for them then their desktop apps would at least be cross-platform.
It clearly isn't for them because they aren't.
As a freelance software engineer, I routinely run into the same problem: I write software to address a niche need - but have no idea what the needs of the users actually are.
Towards this end, it's typical for me to spend 25% of my time on the phone to various people, asking loads of questions, just so I can understand what the expectations are of the end users. What do they think when they see a button titled "Expand"?
I never cease to be amazed at how much difference it can make to end users to change a button or link from "Reports" to "Export", or from "Course" to "Class". Putting a "Save" button at the right location can make the difference between happy customer and pissed off, irate enemy. .
Getting UI stuff rght is much tougher than you'd think. I remember reading about the intense amount of time and money spent making the iPod nano "perfect".
PS: I LOVE the iPod nano - why can't they get the software right? I hvae a rather large MP3 collection on a network drive, and trying to get the iPod to work with the MP3 collection has been very, very, very frustrating... I have a song on a network drive. I can play said song. I double-click, and I hear the song I like. It's in a playlist, and when I double-click the playlist, I still hear said song.
I synchronize the iPod, and I don't get the song. No message explaining why, no errors noted anywhere, I can't drag/drop the file, even though I get a flash when I drag said file over the iPod icon. WTF?!?!
I love the nano - but the software for it SUCKS REAL BAD.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.