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User Voice – Hear What Your Customers Are Saying

I spend quite a bit of time developing websites and other applications for a variety of user audiences and groups. The challenge with developing any type of system or user interface is getting an accurate idea of what the user is experiencing and thinking for themselves. The UserVoice website provides the ability to get the answers you need.

uservoice

The UserVoice website gives you the ability to listen to your customers and gather their input and thoughts on just about anything you would need.

On other projects we were left frustrated and overwhelmed when trying to grasp what our users really wanted. Unorganized inboxes and clogged ticket systems ruled the day. Forums were awash with duplication, user support was impossible to determine, and valuable ideas were lost in the shuffle.

UserVoice adds structure to feedback and reduces the overhead of an honest dialog with our users — It creates a market around good ideas so we get more quality than quantity.

If you’re looking for feedback, you need to expect more than just the feedback. You need to also be aware of how you’re going to organize all of that information and make changes and decisions based on that information.

Uncover your user’s feedback with UserVoice

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Fix Microsoft Outlook's Broken HTML Rendering

Not sure if you’ve noticed it or not, but Outlook isn’t the most reliable engine for rendering accurate HTML display in your emails. Microsoft Outlook uses the Microsoft Word rendering engine to both create and display HTML in your emails. It’s for this reason that many people believe that Outlook is seriously broken and they’ve started a campaign to fix it.

fix-outlook

If you’ve ever done any web development, you’ve probably realized that HTML that’s created by Microsoft Word and the old Microsoft Frontpage application was loaded with a lot of junk.

The folks behind fixoutlook.org are hoping that Microsoft will take the opportunity coming with Office 2010 to step away from the Microsoft Word rendering engine from being used for HTML rendering in Outlook.

Microsoft has stated that they don’t believe Outlook is broken and they will continue to use Word because there are no agreeable standards in how HTML code is to be rendered for email.

What do you think? Is HTML in Outlook broken?

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Serious Restrictions Coming to Internet Freedom?

This story has been around for a little while but the question is still out on the impact of these types of decisions. Have you been aware of this pending legislation? Does it worry you? The long-term effects of these changes could be more than you would think initially.

old-handcuffs

The news is regularly peppered with stories of computers and networks being compromised and security being questioned. The new bill introduced as the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 will give the US Government extended reach in shutting down portions of the Internet as they deem necessary, as well as gaining control and access to data previously off limits to government review without due process and legal warrants.

Perhaps more interesting than the article itself is the amount of comments that have now been collected on the article. Read the article to get a better idea of the details of what’s being discussed, but read the comments to start getting colorful representation of how these proposed changes are expected to impact individuals and businesses.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides good overview of the impact to these proposed changes as well.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this legislation as it continues to be discussed.

Image: sxc.hu