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Sunday, Apr 13 2008

Amazon's lack of font consistency

Amazon is one of the best, if not the best, ecommerce sites on the net. The depth of their offering, their pricing, the amount of content and detailed info about the products, their optimization algorithms serving up relevant products etc. are all very good.

However, they have never been great at a couple things.

1) Organizing all the stuff they sell, and how it's merchandised. The site is a little chaotic with items everywhere, and super busy pages. They make up for it with a really good search engine and reasonable categories, so it's easy to find what you are looking for.

2) They aren't very good either at maintaining a consistent look and feel. They often mix font faces and sizes, which should not happen in today's CSS world. It's like they are still a little stuck in the 1.0 era. I bet they haven't fully revamped their source code for years. Here a little example: I ordered blank DVDs yesterday (I only order Verbatim 2.4x DL DVD+R disks, they maximize the chances of a succesful layer change when burning DVD movies.) The confirmation email mixes Verdana with Times New Roman fonts, tsk, tsk, makes it look a bit unprofessional. Cap below. This is typical, they have issues like this all over.


Amazon lack of font consistency

Sunday in April

Another nice day temperature-wise, not nearly as nice as yesterday, but OK at 57 right now. Spent a good deal of time on the phone with Pep, and then my parents. Picked up a tea earlier and ate a bit.

Last night I had dinner at La Zarza with Nicole. It's a Spanish & Argentinian restaurant in the East Village. Good food, and very nice mojitos .

Pep told me about this Shuttle KPC recently relased. It's a new small factor PC. I've always been a fan of Shuttle's microATX boxes, I bought one as soon as they came out years and years ago, and in fact I have 2 of them at home right now. Looks like it could be a nice little machine, will have to consider as an upgrade.

Saturday, Apr 12 2008

Barca game

I was listening to the Barcelona soccer game on Carrusel Deportivo (Internet radio). Too bad, Barca only managed to tie against Recreativo. I think La Liga is too far away now. I don't know if they have too many chances on their upcoming Champions League game against Manchester...

Sat

And then, as if somebody just flipped a switch, Spring is here. Very warm today, mid 70's in NYC. I started sneezing too .

Went to dinner at Cantina on the East Village for Janet's bday last night. After dinner we ended up at a bar for a while. Didn't get to bed too late.

Got up late today. Laundry. And a rotisserie chicken for launch. Actually, half, and saved the other half. Have to do some cleaning up around the apartment too.

Random comment. When sending a txt on a Blackberry, if you want to send it off a recently sent message (so you don't have to hunt for the person's entry in the address book, or their last response) you can't quite do it easily. It's a usability oversight their interface. You have to actually go into the message then use the full menu to SMS the person, then it defaults to the home phone if you have several stored, and you have to scroll and select their mobile. All in all, a bit of a pain. This issue has existed ever since the very first models. Would be great if you could just hit R to reply, the same way you can on a response.

Friday, Apr 11 2008

Fri

The weekend is here! Great weather today, almost 70, nice. Long day at work, stayed late working on a project, just got home a bit ago. Better get ready for bed, kinda late. I am not tired, though. Had gym class today with Rich, I have a feeling I will be quite sore tomorrow .

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