Isn't it crazy how time flies? It seems only yesterday that we were sitting around in a comedy bar with John and Pete talking about Flash on the Beach. Well, lots of sweat and tears later, John's pulled it off and we're about to have our first international Flash conference in Brighton. Flash on the Beach is next week!

I'm going to be presenting a session called Memo to the CEO. This is the session I've wanted to present for the longest time but somehow I kept finding myself presenting on some technical aspect of Flash development or other (AS2, AS3, Flex 2, etc.) Don't get me wrong -- I love developing and I love Flash and Flex but there's much more to creating web applications than typing code till it's done. Much more, in fact.

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Buyer beware: Stay away from Abbey National Business!

I've written about Abbey National Business before and tonight all the little drops of discontent added up and the glass finally spilled. I'm moving away from these people ASAP.

Why? Because they can't even manage to change my address without having me write them an old-fashioned letter on letterhead or fax one to them. And then apparently they have a back-log and it takes them "a couple of days" to get to them.

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Why is it when you think you've boxed the last thing, there's always just one more? I can't believe the number of things I'm either donating or that I've trashed and *still* I have more stuff!

Stuff sucks!

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Well, it's official: I'm moving house next week. Funny thing is that my buddies, Dave and Josh, are moving into my current place! Really looking forward to furnishing the new place and even more so to throwing my house warming party. Maybe, I'll make it a combined house-warming/30th birthday (damn, I'm getting old)/Flash on the Beach party at the start of December -- I've already got the Glögg!

Happy World Usability Day!

If anything, it should be painfully obvious to many of you why we need a day like this. Unfortunately, most of our industry still does not understand how to make usable products. Here's a quick five-point Dummy's Guide to Usability:

1. Usability is not rocket science.
2. Usability is not magic.
3. Your product will not be usable because you tell your team it should be.
4. Your product will not be usable if you think really, really, really hard about it.
5. The only way to make usable products is to allocate a budget for it and involve the user throughout the development process.

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