Technology Fail!!! CNN’s t-shirts of tragedy.

The power of technology is to use it when it is needed. If you have the ability to make t-shirts from text headlines… coolness. That is a nice tech feature if you are the Onion. Then there is CNN. You are freakin’ CNN, a “real” news source. You shouldn’t be pawning off t-shirts on your news site that say headlines such as “Teen Knife Killings Rise in London.” Really??? They should really take that down and just sell that technology and code to the Onion. I would buy a t-shirt that says “EPA Didn’t Know Anybody Was Still Drinking Water” way more than one that says ”Teen Knife Killings Rise in London.” Failshirt!!!

 

CNN tshirt failure

 

CNN tshirt failure in multiple colors!!! SWEET!!!

Manscaping Products Review Part 4

Once again, an update with some grooming products reviews.

G7 Power Scrub
I bought this on sale from the GAP. It is a volcanic ash face scrub. It is terrible. It smells like old people and if playdough could go sour. I threw it away. Maybe that is why it was on clearance.

 

G7 Deodorant Spray: Mixed
I also bought this from the GAP. It is a deodorant body spray. It is actually pretty good. The scent dies off rather quickly, but still smells rather good. It costs $10 which is a little more than I wanted to pay, but it is potentially worth it.

 

Travel sized items
I also just went on a short trip and wanted to bring some travel-sized items. I bought: Gillette Fusion Hydra Gel, Crest Pro Health Mouthwash, Pantene Pro-V Daily Moisture Renewal Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Daily Moisture Renewal Conditioner, Gillette Oil Control Face + Body Wash. All of them worked great. The only bad item was the lid for the Gillette body wash. It was difficult to get the cap back on once you had soap in your hands.

RiverSpan Sculpture Exhibition and Show 2008

This past weekend I stumbled onto the RiverSpan Sculpture Exhibition and Show that took place on the Purple People bridge that links Cincinnati to Newport, Kentucky. I had my new camera with me so I paid the slightly pricey $15 to go to the showing on Sunday afternoon. There were about 75 sculptors showing and some of them were very impressive. My favorite was probably the sculptures by Gordon Becker. His sculptures were of carved dancers in dramatic and expressive poses that were made from wood. I should have pictures up tomorrow on my flickr page so check them out if you are interested.
  

Cincinnati.com redesign. A Failure, Plain and Simple.

Cincinnati.com just completed their redesign of their site. My review: It is a travesty to user interfaces and news sites everywhere. I tried to send a helpful critique to them during their beta testing, but alas, nothing was changed on their beta, at least visually.

Where to begin. First with the color. Why did they go dark. A news site should be clean and easily navigable. The grey and black darken the news and add too much of a “mood”. As a lot of news anymore is news because it is a negative event, this color scheme does not help.

Second is the terrible navigation. Not the inter-page navigation, but the header-based site navigation. There are now five major navigational sections in the header alone (SEE EXAMPLE A), excluding the search and the two advertisements. This is way too much. The New York Times website did it right in my opinion (not completely, as there are still problems with their site). They have it rather clean and navigable. They actually let the stories become the draw to the site, and they let the site be a housing for it. The new Cincinnati.com is demanding that the site is noticed first and that the news comes second… or third… or at least after the ads so maybe fourth/fifth-ish. And this leads me into my next point. The size and position of the news content area on the site is too small for a news site (SEE EXAMPLE B). The majority of the homepage is taken up by ads, special features, or navigation. It is a waste. You could make a widget for the site and get a larger quantity of news stories to the public. That is a little sad.

Next is the column structure of the site (SEE EXAMPLE C). The site’s feature bar is too dark and separates the site in half. Column 1 is a banner ad column that is empty below the first ad. Columns 2 and 3 are poorly arranged content areas, and column 4 is a video/staff/blog/forum/ads column.

Should I go on… should I mention the poorly placed ads on the secondary article pages, should I mention that the email links to the writers aren’t actually links, I could go on. To not totally destroy this failure of a redesign, they did however make a good comment/recommend/email navigation bar on each article. Yeah for the tiny victories. Maybe they can make the new site skin an option so I don’t have to find a new local news site for Cincinnati. We will see.

Canon PowerShot SD750: My New Camera Reviewed.

Yesterday I bought my new digital camera at Best Buy. It is a 7.1 megapixel Canon PowerShot SD 750 Digital Elph to replace my old 3.2 megapixel Canon PowerShot S230 Digitla Elph. My old camera just recently died so it was time to splurge for an update.

The Canon PowerShot SD750 was on sale and was at the top of the price range that I was looking for. I bought it and I have not been disappointed yet. It has a huge bright display, great features and seems to be taking great pictures so far. Awesome!!!

Usability Out the Window. How www.giftcardbalance123.com Neglects the Mac Crowd.

http://www.giftcardbalance123.com

What is it? It is a site for registering prepaid gift cards.

How do I use it? It is only compliant with Internet Explorer on a PC. Bummer for the almost 8% of the market that uses an Apple computer. It will not work on my Mac on Safari, Firefox, or even my old IE (version 5.2). Trust me, I tried. I am glad to see that this site hasn’t been updated to work across multiple browsers on different platforms.

This is a user experience failure. Way to go VISA/Mastercard and RBS Citizens (the company that issues the VISA prepaid cards). This is a flaw in your public facing portal and should be fixed. My card worked correctly when it came down to it. It is just frustrating to not be able to use the given site to check balances, etc..

Lavomatic Café Review

On Monday I got the opportunity to eat at the Lavomatic Café in Over the Rhine in Downtown Cincinnati. I was joined my my wife and my mother-in-law for dinner. Lavomatic is Jean-Robert’s newish restaurant done in an old french laundromat style on Vine Street in Over the Rhine. The interior is very nice looking… cork floors, large front windows and exposed brick walls.

Dinner was at 6:30 pm for us. We parked conveniently across the street from the restaurant. We started with two appetizers from the washboard menu, the charcuterie plate and the Tarte Flambé (bacon and cheese flatbread pizza-esque tart). Both were delicious. Between the three of us we got the chicken, the scallops and the rainbow trout for our entrées. The entrées were good, but didn’t wow me as much as the appetizers from the washboard menu. Dinner was accompanied by a bottle of the Kinkead Ridge 05 cab which was great. Dessert was chocolate pudding… not for me though as I am not a fan of chocolate, so I am reporting second hand that it was absolutely delicious.

It was a fun experience and a good dinner. Next time I am going to order my whole dinner off of the the washboard menu though as it was the best part of the meal. I would love to try the grilled cheese from this menu and I would love to see what else this washboard menu has to offer. Overall I was only semi-impressed.

Manscaping Products Review Part 3

This is a small review of products as I have been a bit busy lately, but here it is:

 

Redken For Men Grip Tight

I got this new hair gel recently. Now let me preface this with the fact that I have been a pretty loyal user of my Crew gel for quite a while. I now have to say that I have been converted to a better-smelling, better-holding and non-flaking hair gel. Redken has done it again. I like this stuff. It is, of course, in keeping with all of the other Redken products not cheap… but quite possibly worth it.

 

Every Man Jack Pre-Shave Face Scrub

This pre-shave face scrub is alright. I bought this from Target the other day. It has an extremely light grit to it, no smell (very neutral), and lathers onto your face easily. Not a bad purchase.

 

Edge Eclipse Shave Gel

I will admit, I was drawn in by their commercials so I wanted to try it. It is an average “buy it at any drug store” kind of shave gel. It does smell nice though and foams well.

 

Gillette Clinical Strength Advanced Solid Deodorant (All Day Fresh scent)

I tried the new Clinical Strength deodorant. It works wonders and I never thought that I would say that about deodorant. It is a white sort of chalky deodorant so you have to be careful when you put it on to not touch your shirt with it. Other than that, awesome!

 

Crest Pro Health Alcohol Free Mouthwash (Refreshing Clean Mint)

I know that this is not in the normal realm of what I usually try out, but I enjoyed the new non-alcohol mouth rinse. I know that there are few people that are suing them because they lost their sense of taste or something crazy like that, but I have not had any problems and it has been pretty good.