Wow, thanks for sharing that observation! What a gem of insight into how easy it is to cross that gray line of usability.

Just a week ago I was watching the Berkely course videos from SIMS 141 on YouTube. This one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYbuDzvWr4s featured Dr. Daniel E. Rose from Yahoo! talking about User Experience Issues in Web Search.

Part of the video, which was recorded 2 years ago, he talks about some of their UI research and how they believe they can improve the interface a lot, primarily focusing on keyword suggestions to help people remember what they were really looking for when they might only remember part of it or something related. Ironically enough a day or two after I watched that video they launched this new feature.

Maybe they should have spent more time observing users. :)

How about those sites that have the underlined key words. Let your mouse stray across one accidentally and wham! There's a little popup advertisement related to the keyword.

That drives me nuts. You know, there's something to be said for a plain vanilla site that does the one thing I want it to do, and nothing more.

That gives me a great idea! What about adding sound clips to those little ad popups? Would that not be the best?

I bet there is going to be a startup sometime that does that...

It could be called: ADnnoyance 2.0

It's been done already and it alienates users.

Better hush up, or somebody will throw development dollars at you. If there's one thing I know that can get funding, it's finding more and more ways to shove advertising dollars down people's throats.

Well, I suppose I could edit the comment but the cat is out of the bag now.

As long as we can get ads for X10 involved somehow, I'm in.

Are you suggesting sending ads through power lines or are you suggesting that another ad could be fit into the cluttered mass that is X10.com?

As far as sending ads through power lines, thats a great idea too. Your toaster could tell you, via prompting by the power company, that Folgers is the best coffee to compliment your current toast selections.

E-gads, man, there's a startup idea straight from heck -- using power lines to transmit advertisements to all the electrical appliances in your home.

Use the toaster and have it sing an advertisement for pop-tarts. The refrigerator would remind you that Jenny Craig was having a sale this week. You electric toothbrush would remind you that your local dentist is having a sale on tooth-whitening, as well as reminding you to floss. Turn the light on in the bedroom and have the lightswitch tell you about Viagra. And you don't even want to know what the bidet is trying to sell.

I think I just lost all desire for smart appliances.

Maybe you don't remember the pop-under x10 web cam ads of the dot-bomb? =)

I agree, those are annoying. Slightly less annoying but still frustrating are the sites now that try to help you by opening a pop-up whenever you select text.

No way.... Tell me that's not true. I'm one of those addicted text selecting text as I read it, that would kill me.

Heh, I thought I was the only one addicted to that. This makes it so much more frustrating to those of us that do that.

NYTimes is one site that does it, see this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/19arctic.html

Oh god, I shiver when I just think of those. Leave the innocent links alone.

Agree 100% on vanilla. Unstyled websites are actually quite sexy.