Jakob nielsen’s alertbox
Jakob Nielsen is one of those infuriatingly intelligent people that are always correct. His web site is aesthetically challenged but full of great info for web builders. Meanwhile here’s an excerpt about skipping the boring parts of the Winter Olympics.
“Readers outside the U.S. can count themselves lucky not to be subjected to NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. But even NBC is tolerable when watched on a digital video recorder: I set it to start recording every evening at 8 and then I start watching at 9: this gives me an extra hour to analyze eyetracking data and I can use the DVR to skip over commercials and boring events. It’s easily possible to watch 3 hours of NBC broadcast in 2 hours of viewing.
The entire concept of watching a broadcast at the mercy of the producers’ desire to stretch out the good parts across as much time as possible is getting to be obsolete. The experience from using the Web makes people impatient and forms a desire to control your own experience: to get what you want, when you want it. Non-clickable TV provides a sub-standard user experience for events like the Olympics with multiple components, where different people are interested in different things.”
