ANZ is now providing cutting edge text alerts! You send an SMS to a number and get back your account balance. This is amazing!
No… I’m not that easily impressed.
Anyone with even a slight interest in the evolution of the power and utility of web apps has a duty to check out ANZ MoneyManager.
On the alert front, it provides a much better offering:
Net worth change (% or $)
Deposit exceeds $ threshold
Withdrawal exceeds $ threshold
Balance falls below $ threshold (Win!)
I used to be a major tight arse until I realised it was just making me a major bastard. Now, I still like to know exactly what’s happening with my money. Not out of tight-arsedness, but more out of my innate desire to optimise everything in my life… And to prove wrong the stereotype that Gen Y are hopeless at managing their finances. I’ve never understood this generalisation as I am personally petrifiedof debt.
So these next two features of MoneyManager are worth their own bolded paragraphs.
You can pull transaction history from most bank accounts – even if you’re not with ANZ.
You can categorise every single transaction automatically using filters.
Filter on transaction text
Filter on amount (with error margins)
Add/edit categories
Nested categories (max 5)
Manually classify transactions
Classify both income and expenses
CHARTS! OMG the charts.
Budget stuff (haven’t used yet)
The filtering defaults are crap, e.g. my rent was categorised as “Home Improvement” and CityLink was “Postage and Shipping” – WTF? Creating rules is slightly tedious but fun for the control freaks. The only thing it’s missing is a “filter transactions like this” option.
I will definitely be playing with this for the next few weeks.
ATTENTION: All the apparently ignorant consumers of Australia.
Electronics retailers like JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith, Harvey Norman, etc. are misleading you and will try to sell you HDMI cables for ridiculous prices – anywhere from $49 to $299!!!
Only yesterday, I witnessed a clerk in JB Hi-Fi at Highpoint deceiving his customers saying “You need to spend money to get the best quality”.
OH MY GOD THIS IS A TOTAL MYTH!
HDMI is a DIGITAL signal and even the $8 cables on eBay have HIGH QUALITY SHIELDING. They just wouldn’t work without it. HDMI is not as affected by EM interference, like the “old” kinds of cables. If you are getting interference THE SIGNAL WILL CUT OUT IT WILL NOT GO FUZZY!
As for bandwidth, if you’re using 1080p, you should probably get a cable marked “high speed”. STANDARD CABLES ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR 1080i AND BELOW! Anyway, this is not an issue because YOU CAN GET HIGH SPEED CERTIFIED CABLES OFF EBAY FOR EIGHT DOLLARS!
Please, Australia. Stop buying your HDMI cables in shops. Then, I will stop openly weeping every time I see a salesperson trying to flog a $79.95 cable to a poor defenseless customer.
Privacy seems to be the new “hot topic” for Web 2.0 companies. There is a great opportunity in the market for a company like Google or Facebook to step up and just get privacy right, setting the benchmark for others. So why don’t they?
Google appears simply to lack the ability to anticipate how its actions will be perceived. Or in the case of the recent Wi-Fi scandal, actually has no knowledge of what it’s actions really are.
“Oops, we didn’t read the code! Copy/paste, copy/paste! Coding is fun!”
- Anonymous Google employee (possibly a robot)
And Facebook has the social monopoly. There’s nowhere else for users to go, so there’s no commercial incentive for change. All its users can do is complain. You’re not seriously suggesting that people could ever leave Facebook, right? Don’t be silly.
However, things could be looking up. Last night, when I logged into Google Reader, it asked me whether I wanted my Shared Items to be public or “protected”. I chose the latter, allowing me to share only with selected groups in my Gmail contacts. This can be configured under “Sharing Settings”.
Logging out of Google and visiting my old shared items URL confirms this indeed works.
Then for some reason, I had the fun time of typing in all my friends email addresses one at a time to follow each of them. Thanks Google UI designers.
I just tried Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 (trial version) in the hope that it was a step up from Dw8 which I have been using. I uninstalled immediately because of several quite hilariously epic GUI design failures. Apparently these limitations apply to most CS4 apps on PC but I only tried Dreamweaver.
Above is a graphic showing the menu bar that CS4 uses when maximised. Imagine this spanning the entire top edge of your screen (graphic is cut-down for brevity). Adobe’s design ignores built-in Windows standards, opting to use their own chrome to draw the windows, and thus reinventing the wheel. This alone would not imply failure, but Adobe’s replacement GUI has several consequences for usability, which can be better appreciated after a crash course in Fitt’s Law.
Fitt’s Law is a well-studied and accurate model which is considered fundamental to interface design, with applications extending well beyond GUIs (think TV remotes, light switches). In the context of a user moving a mouse cursor, it states that “the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to, and size of the target”. This seems like common sense, right? Bigger buttons are easier to click. Yet I continue to be amazed at the number of websites and apps which use minuscule buttons and GUI elements. There are a some notable exceptions, such as Microsoft Office 2007/2010 with its chunky ribbon buttons; and Vimeo, which also uses large GUI elements.
Fitt’s Law has a couple of important implications which have influenced GUI designs in popular operating systems. It’s used so effectively that we take for granted the added usability afforded by its application. It’s not until a dismal interface like CS4 comes along that we appreciate how much we depend on Fitt’s Law.
Edges
The edges of your screen are considered to have infinite size in their orthogonal direction. That is, you can shove your mouse to an edge very quickly and it effectively eliminates the vertical targeting dimension. It’s critical that edges are accessible at the outermost pixel (this is a common reason for edge implementation failure). Some examples of well-known GUIs which successfully exploit screen edges are:
Windows Taskbar on bottom edge
Windows minimise and restore buttons on top edge (maximised windows)
Mac OS menu bar on top edge
Mac OS dock on bottom edge (or sides)
Tabs in Google Chrome for Windows on top edge (maximised windows)
Corners
The corners of your screen are considered to have infinite size in BOTH directions. Corners are the holy grail of targeting. This has led to the following innovations:
Windows Start Menu is in the bottom left
Windows close button in top right (maximised widows)
Windows application menu in top left
Windows 7 desktop toggle in bottom right
Mac OS Apple menu in the top left
Mac OS spotlight icon in top right
Adobe Epic Fail
Let’s revisit that menu bar. I’ve added approximate targeting overlays to illustrate how CS4 fails the edge and cornering implementation. Adobe’s complete disregard for Fitt’s Law was an irreconcilable deal breaker for me. For example:
You can’t access any menus or the minimize/restore buttons using the top edge of the screen.
You can’t access the close button using the top right corner pixel.
You can’t double click the top edge of the title bar to restore the window (there is no title bar!).
You can’t access the application menu using the top left pixel.
There are a few other failings not directly related to Fitt’s law, but still fairly epic (via Adobe forum).
In Windows 7 it does not support “throw” gestures for window tiling due to custom chrome.
In Windows 7 it does not support document window grouping and JumpLists due to non-standard implementation of document windows.
It does not change appearance of title bar to indicate application is focused.
Maximising a document window (inside the main app window) puts itself on top of the application window, obscuring access to the application window’s tools and commands.
The ultimate irony is that this is meant to be a suite of applications FOR DESIGNERS. I just don’t get it. So I’m back on trusty old Dreamweaver 8 for now.
I was in need of some fresh pew pew or puzzley action this weekend so I downloaded loads of arcade game demos from Xbox Live. I thought I might as well review them so here are my brief thoughts and knee-jerk reactions. With all games I played until I reached the end of the demo or got sick of it.
Ratings Guide
★★★★★ Impressive. I struggle to find major faults with the game and will probably buy it.
★★★★ Excellent. Not quite epic enough for a 5. I might buy later when I feel like a new game.
★★★ Good. Overall high quality but has a significant shortcoming in one area.
★★ Average. No real reasons to keep me playing beyond trying it out.
★ Poor. Overall bad design or just plain irritating. I would delete to save the space.
PowerUp Forever
★★★★★ Top-down dual-stick space shooter. Really impressive in all areas. Great darkly ambient music that ramps up to upbeat glitch as you advance through the game. Impressive use of stereo sound effects. Has quite a mysterious feel as the game world is a lot bigger than your screen’s viewport at first. You draw out elusive Guardian bosses by destroying their minions and filling their “rage gauge”. When each Guardian is destroyed you absorb its energy, your ship grows and the viewport zooms out so you can see more of the world. A larger ship also makes it harder to dodge enemies. There’s good AI too, for example I saw a Guardian on low health run away and hide behind some obstacles. This game feels quite deep and immersive, much more than any other shooter I’ve played. The graphics may contribute to this, they are colourful but also kind of gritty and not so “fake plastic shiny”. A few minor criticisms though: menus are way too slow and “fadey” (fuck off!); it needs a more epic-sounding name (e.g.”Guardian Rage”); and the first level feels a bit grindey. I’ll probably end up buying this if I can get past level 3. Here is a video.
Mutant Storm Reloaded
★★★★★ Top-down dual-stick shooter. I loved this game on the PC so buying this was a no-brainer. Great shiny graphics, punchy sound effects, and nice ambient music. It’s another fast-paced action shooter to rival Geometry Wars in addictiveness. Checkpoints every 10 levels. Good difficulty curve. Only pain its the pointless 13 second post-death wait while you spam the A button trying to get back to the action.
Galaga Legions
★★★★☆ Space Invaders layout shooter. Highly polished graphics, sound and music. Has good fast-paced action with more strategic gameplay than your average shooter. A nice feature is the enemy paths are traced out onscreen before they arrive so you can strategically place your 2 satellite guns for optimal spammage. Shooting a captured Galaga gives you a swarm of minions which is essential as certain stages seem impossible without this extra help. Never played the original but now I want to. This could fill the void that was created when I bought Star Soldier R on WiiWare.
Mutant Storm Empire
★★★★ I was tempted to buy this game just for the awesome glitchy menu music, but I restrained myself. It seems like the logical adventure progression of Mutant Storm. You explore a maze instead of isolated abstract rooms, with each victory opening up a door to the next room. It will sound stupid but I don’t like the left-to-right progression at the start of the game. It means you’re always holding the right analog stick (shoot) to the right, which is not the most comfortable position to sustain when you’re right handed. I prefer to shoot to the left and in the more “arena” style top-down shooters I position myself to the right of enemies if I can. The game feels a bit more chunky than the original, with fewer larger enemies that take longer to kill, compared to the swarms of babies we’re used to in the original. Instead of bombs, you have a super weapon with limited ammo which you can power on and off. This is handy but I found myself wanting for bombs as I inevitably end up surrounded in these kinds of games.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
★★★☆ This is not groundbreaking stuff as some reviews would have you believe. I consider this to be just a slight variant on Lemmings. Instead of having predefined roles, you record the path of each clone of yourself. It will inevitably be compared to Braid, because the concept is very similar to the game mechanic of Braid’s World 5, where you use your shadow to help solve the puzzles. Winterbottom’s demo puzzles are pretty clever but unlike Braid’s multiple worlds, there probably isn’t enough variety in the game to keep me playing, so I can’t justify a 4-star rating. The graphics are what they are but I found the old film greyscale styling to be quite depressing. Here it has no point, unlike its poignant use in World of Goo.
R-Type Dimensions
★★★ Side scrolling space shooter. This is one of those Monkey Island style remakes where you can switch between classic 2D and redone 3D graphics. I find this choice a bit distracting in any game of the sort. Here, the 3D graphics are really nice and polished, but the music and sound haven’t been redone so when playing the new shiny version, this seems out of place. I expect epic music with bassy dance beats and modern power synth and explosion sounds with depth, not blips and beeps. This reduces immersion and just makes the game feel like a child’s toy version of Gradius V (seriously, the level designs are noticeably similar).
Star Trek D.A.C.
★★★ This is a pretty decent attempt to apply new features to the top-down dual-stick shooter concept (e.g. different ship classes and multiplayer deathmatch etc.). The battles on the trial map were too sparse resulting in most of my time being spent looking for the other enemies (bots). I think you need to be a fan of the franchise or really into the online multiplayer to get into this game. Another gripe is that the maps have “invisible walls” at their edges. I HATE invisible walls with a passion. They point to lack of creative design detract from realism. Make me crash into them or fall off or just make the walls explicit. Anything is better than forcing me to scratch my head while I try to figure out why I’m not moving.
Tempest
★★★ Firstly, the music in this game is top-class. Sound effects and graphics are quite good. But it lost me at the micro gameplay. In Tempest you look down tunnels of varying shapes and move your ship around the perimeter which is quantised into a number of columns. Your ship must be on the exact column to destroy the enemy which is advancing up it. My main frustration is the controls suffer from the old precision/speed power struggle. With sensitivity set to normal, I don’t have the micro skills to select the right column with enough precision so I’m constantly over-correcting. When I turn down the sensitvity, I lose significant speed, meaning I can’t get to the columns when I need to. But perhaps mastering this level of micro is the main point of the game. If it is, that’s not my kind of game.
E4: Every Extend Extra Extreme
★★ Rythym-based top-down shooter. Slow loading/logo screens. Nice LSD graphics and the music is sightly above average but I don’t really get the point of this game. You’re meant to detonate your ship to the beat setting up chain reactions, which I tried… but nothing much happens. A few enemies explode then you wait ages until your ship respawns at a time that’s suboptimal for another on-beat detonation. So it’s just kinda frustrating. There’s another game mode that’s more like geometry wars but it seems equally pointless. The gameplay feels like someone’s half-arsed experiment.
Aces of the Galaxy
★ Third person space shooter. Controls let it down. Primary shoot is A button, meaning you can’t steer and position the aim reticle while shooting. This is why trigger buttons exist! The roaming aim reticle is also very confusing and non-intuitive in this view. Basically, the ship controls weren’t exactly like flying a Banshee in Halo, so I hated it.
Novadrome
★ Arena racing car shoot-out. Shiny graphics but controls are not intuitive and feel really quite sluggish -- this may also be due to the insanely low gravity. Requires excessive use of handbrake to achieve anything resembling a turning circle. Shooting is auto-aim with toggle between enemies. Could have made much better use of right stick for targeting. Basically, these cars didn’t drive like the Warthog in Halo so I hated it.
Space Invaders Extreme
★ This is basically just the original game with a shiny facelift and some Xbox Live features. The creators have made a failed attempt to use “musical” sound effects to make it play a bit more like a rhythm game but the result is they are so fucking annoying to the point where this game is unplayable. I was surprised that Good Game recently had good things to say about this game.
