YouTube contest

The HP “You on You” project is a contest on YouTube that invites entrants from around the world to create and share videos that express who they are — without showing their faces. The contest uses new video creation tools on YouTube, including improved video remixing and webcam video tools, to allow people of all skill levels to submit videos that run the gamut from comedies to mini-biographies and documentaries, and showcase their individual passions, causes and creative gifts.

Running through August 30, the contest offers the opportunity for contestants to win more than $300,000 in cash and prizes from HP. Contestants should submit their videos on the contest’s website — www.youtube.com/hp. Each week a panel of experts will select the top 20 videos as semifinalists. YouTube users will vote to select the top four videos, which will then be in the running to win the grand prize of $40,000 along with recognition of the video on the YouTube homepage. Get full details of the rules and all the prizes through www.youtube.com/hp.

Simplify shopping for electronics

So you want to buy a digital camera or a high definition TV, but there are so many products out there that it’s very confusing. What to do? That’s where a new online marketplace, Retrevo (www.retrevo.com), can make a big difference. Retrevo is designed to provide consumers with the information they need to confidently decide which electronics to buy.

The Retrevo Marketplace uses artificial intelligence to analyze and visually summarize more than 50 million real-time data points from the Internet to give shoppers comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information.

The Retrevo Marketplace presents shoppers with catalogs for browsing by categories. Once inside a category, the Retrevo Marketplace generates an easy-to-read, interactive Value Map, which compares all of the products in that category based on each product’s features, function and quality — relative to its price. Fact Sheets on each product in the Value Map graphically report in-depth daily analysis covering:

• Lifecycle — whether it’s a new product or soon to be obsolete product.

• Buzz — the level of interest and discussion about the product around the Web.

• Value — whether the product is a good, okay, or poor value for its current price.

• Sentiment — every review on the Web weighted and aggregated into one recommendation.

Another highlight of the Retrevo Marketplace is its community where shoppers can connect with fellow consumer electronics buyers. Retrevo Friends & Fans comprises discussions where users exchange views about their favorite electronics such as cameras and TVs, as well as activities and events where these electronics play a role.

Mobile Internet disappoints

A report from user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) finds that it is neither easy nor pleasant for people to use the Web on their mobile phones. In usability studies conducted in the US and UK, NN/g researchers discovered that the average success rate for users completing tasks on the mobile Internet was 59 percent compared to an average success rate of 80 percent for websites accessed on a regular PC.

“The phrase ‘mobile usability’ is pretty much an oxymoron,” said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group. “Observing users suffer during our user sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994. It was that bad.”

Not counting poor cellular signal, researchers identified four main obstacles that mobile users face to getting a good user experience:

• Small screens: When users see fewer options at any given time, all interactions become harder to do.

• Awkward input: Text entry is particularly slow and error prone, even on phones with mini-keyboards, and it is difficult to operate GUI widgets without a mouse.

• Download delays: Getting to the next screen takes forever, often longer than it would on a dial-up connection.

• Mis-designed websites: Sites optimized for usability under desktop conditions, which means that they don’t follow guidelines for mobile access, and create all kinds of additional obstacles for mobile users.

“The first two problems are inherent to mobile devices, and as for connectivity, it’s going to take many years before mobile connections are as fast as even a modest cable modem. The key opportunity for improving the mobile user experience lies in websites being designed specifically for better mobile usability,” said NN/g user experience specialist Raluca Budiu, lead researcher for the study and co-author of the study, Usability of Mobile Websites.

When test participants used sites designed specifically for mobile devices, their success rates averaged 64 percent compared to the 53 percent success rate they experienced when using “full” sites on their mobile phones, in other words, the same sites offered to PC users. The study noted the user performance could be improved by 20 percent by creating mobile-optimized sites.