And Guy Kawasaki's post about it:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/09/winners-of-worl.html

Big Blue brings us a thoughtful article on how to profile AJAX interfaces, with a view to increasing speed, of course.

Toolkit focuses on Firebug and YSlow.

Article

AJAX Resource Center

Penn State researchers have announced an upgraded CAPTCHA approach, based on images.

First, you have to figure out where the overlapping images' borders are, so you can find the center of one of them and click near it. The images have been distorted and pixillated somewhat.
The fact that this is difficult speaks to how hard it is to track photo usage in layered composite images, which we see a lot of every day.


Having done that, you now must associate another image with a term that would logically apply to it. The example shown is a garlic bulb, in case you can't tell - so the term from the list that's most applicable is "vegetable".
Now, this bears a striking resemblance to keywording, which is a workflow challenge for all of us in the graphics industry. So if anyone cracks this (and frankly I hope they can't because I need a working CAPTCHA more than I need automated keywording) I have work for them...

Link

via Slashdot Post

Background on the project and team here

uiGarden.net has this interesting Usability Report on the iPhone.

Apparently texting on your Blackberry (or other device with physical keys for the letters) is more accurate.

Favorite quote:

On feature of the popup keyboard on the iPhone is the drag and lift feature which is said to reduce errors. Unfortunately not one user discovered this feature.

uiGarden.net post

Related evaluation of the iPhone against two other devices

UserCentric, the folks who did the usability testing

As soon as you're done muttering about how severely off-topic this is (actually I put it under "Usability" - so there!) head on over to CNET UK and check out this surprisingly charming collection of off-switches.

Now I just need to figure out how to get one of these on the bandsaw... maybe this one?
CNET article

Well, I admit I'm a sucker for lists. And bad web design is always entertaining... so here goes.

Internet Marketing News offers 10 web design practices that seem to be perennial favorites among online design critics.

Reason #1:

Poor navigation
People visit your website to find information or the product they are looking for. Navigation should be easy to find and use, and always located in the same spot on every page. Make users work too hard on this and they won't hang around. Don't try to reinvent the wheel with your navigation (a common complaint with Flash sites - see reason 4 for more), just make it as straightforward and obvious as possible.

They're not too complimentary about Flash, either.

Follow link for the rest.