Best results of usability testing can be achieved with only 5 users.

The main reason is that it is better to distribute your budget for user testing across many small tests instead of blowing everything on a single, elaborate study. Let us say that you do have the funding to recruit 15 representative customers and…

A new collaborative study between Google, IBM, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology suggests that users are slower to move between product updates than they should be?especially those using Internet Explorer. The researchers believe that browsers could learn from the food industry, of all things.

The group of researchers includes several of their own suggestions for improving browser security. Firefox and Opera are both credited for including an auto-update feature, but the team notes that "Firefox’s auto-update…

Jebaras creation, Citysense, uses advanced machine learning techniques to number crunch vast amounts of data emanating from thousands of cell-phones, GPS-equipped cabs and other data devices to paint live pictures of where people are gathering. Fed to websites such as Google or Yelp, the data reveals whats happening at any location.

Gaining access to the hottest locales with Citysense involves a trade off for users: information on their own whereabouts is also fed into the system. While all information gathered is anonymous, the data could be a goldmine for marketers and…

Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: “Google.” Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order).

If you guys plan to continue the search research, I have a 1000+ search engines that I have noted and I am sure you guys have more. I would actually like to see someone create a Search Engine Database similar to the functionality of Alexa. It…

Most bloggers would love their content to hit the front page of Digg. Unfortunately, most of those bloggers are never able to experience the huge spike of traffic and the feelings of accomplishment this brings.

The IN route I would suggest is to write an advice post that applies to a very large cross-section of Digg users. One of the reasons I suspect Zen Habits has hit the front page of Digg over 80 times is because of its universal topics…

Researchers make arrays of individually addressable capacitors for high-density storage. It could prove an important development as hard drive densities reach their limits.

As a side note, and possibly more remarkably, the researchers were able to demonstrate that something called substrate clamping exists. These materials, in addition to being ferroelectric, are also piezoelectric—they expand and contract…

According to the report, Eleanor Coner, the SPTC’s information officer, said: “Children are very IT-savvy, but they are rubbish at researching.” She noted that today’s students do the majority of their research online instead of using books or other resources that could be found at the library.

Douglas Adams had this sorted out back in 1999: Because the Internet is so new we still dont really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because thats what were used to. So people complain that…

youre tuning in late to the Canadian copyright reform debate, the Appropriation Art Coalition has created a free comic book that it says will get you up to speed on the issue

As for the IT angle on this issue, shortly after the introduction of Bill C-61, IT security professionals began expressing their concerns over anti-TPM circumvention legislation and its impact security research projects. Brian OHiggins,…

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have plugged in to Flickr to create a database of over 6 million images tagged with geographic and text information. Using their software, they could take a random picture and identify where it was taken, give or take 200km, at a rate 18 times better than chance.

To get a computer to approximate this capability, the authors needed to provide it with a large database of outdoor scenes that have geographic information associated with them. That's where Flickr came in. At the time of the research, it…

Second Life and World of Warcraft are two the most popular multiuser games, but generally require a laptop or desktop computer. Until now. 3D Streaming technology developed by Comverse and Intel allow 2nd Life for mobile platforms by using a powerful backend server, to compute and render scenes, then smartly compress and stream to a mobile phone.

What does this mean for users of Intel platforms? In fact, the Comverse 3D Streaming capability offers a great user experience across all Intel platforms. On the backend, its the opportunity to offer the power of visual computing on…

Bikinis and other sexy stimuli make men more prone to seek immediate gratification. Its not that they’re distracted, rather showed improved cognition and creativity. Very interesting impacts.

A sense of personal wealth depends largely on what we perceive to be the society standard. The researchers manipulated this perception to make male subjects feel relatively rich or relatively poor. When a questionnaire suggested the average income…

Another 2160p TV, if 1080p isn’t enough. Start saving your pennies now.

Taipei (Taiwan) ? Not that you could really take advantage of the resolution of a quad HDTV today, but just in case you want to run a video game in 8.3 megapixel resolution ? four times what current 1080p TVs offer - on a 56'…

Water channels for your computer chips.

Xcor suborbital spacecraft One step closer to space tourism: XCOR to launch in 2010 Intel Atom Processor Intel unveiled at IDF Spring its smallest x86 processor taking aim at the handheld market. >> See all TG Daily slideshows

Cubit is a system that provides fully decentralized approximate keyword search capabilities to Azureus as a standard plugin.

Cubit creates alongside BitTorrent a lightweight peer-to-peer network designed from the ground up to enable rapid and accurate approximate searches. It performs the searches without relying on any centralized components, and therefore is…