Relaunch of Athletics Website

[ben03]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
And what do you think of active steering? [/q]
not a fan ... gimme an unassisted  '91 M3 and i'm happy as a clam :-)

[billhoward]

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:It's the same format as several other schools web pages, and IMO it's not very good.  But you can be sure, they contracted out the web design for a large sum of money so they wouldn't have to employ anyone in Ithaca to do it.[/q]It is offputting to be browsing the Web and see what looks like the Cornell site but halfway across the country in, say, Jayhawk blue-and-crimson. When you run a production line of 150 college sports websites as CSO does, you perhaps get some economies of scale. But you run out of 150 different ways to display the site info.

It's growing on me a bit. I see the poll I missed before. A lot of the ads have been pushed all the way to bottom, but the fly-in keeps coming back. There appears to be more interest in using photos. OTOH: There is currently no home page report on the lacrosse game unless you click first on lacrosse news or overall Cornell Schedule (but not overall Cornell Results); that's probably one of those early teething things.

[billhoward]

Active steering (turns more per 1/4 turn of the wheel at lower speed than high speed) on the new (E90) 3 Series is supposed to be better. Meanwhile a current E46 330i coupe is going to be as fast as a 14-year-old E30 M3, if not anywhere as exclusive, and not as hard on your fillings or wallet. A lot of people who buy M3's (say the ones who cashed in stock options) don't realize that "sport suspension" to Germans means "track suspension" not "rallye stripes" and they stick it out for about three years just so their wife or girlfriend won't yell at them for making a dumb mistake.

Trying to circle back to the topic surrounding us, what do you think of the BMW Owners' Circle part of bmwusa.com?

(Al, it's all your fault to bringing up iDrive. Al and I both have Odysseys as first or second cars and no one argues much about them.)

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
(Al, it's all your fault to bringing up iDrive. Al and I both have Odysseys as first or second cars and no one argues much about them.) [/q]
I'll just point out that in the latest rankings of customer satisfaction among German car owners, Honda is #3, Porsche #8, BMW #11, Audi #26, VW #31, and M-B #32.  Out of 33 (with Land Rover upholding the Brit legacy in the cellar).

[RichH]

I wish designers of these corporate websites would follow one simple rule:
Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The large majority of websites I visit, I do so for one reason: to find information and find it quickly.  This includes quick download and display time, good organization and navigation, and cross-platform compatibility.  I don't care about eye candy.  I don't need to look at shiny objects.  Just because browser technology is becoming more powerful and versitile doesn't mean you have to utilize it all.  

I look at the Athletics and ESPN sites and can only think of Homer Simpson's first website (before he became Mr. X) that was just cluttered with useless, loud, annoying, stolen graphics from other websites.  Dancing Jesus, worms, alarm clocks, bells, disembodied, flapping lips,  toasters all over the place.  That's what espn.com and now cornellbigred.com have become to me.

I put up with the little-by-little noise-addition on espn.com for a while.  Then the breaking point happened after they started intrusively commanding me to download "ESPN Motion" every day.  Screw that.  I resized my browser window for a while to ignore the RHS "content."  I even started regularly using the "Lite" version.  (Currently found at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/lite/index but coded very poorly...many links are broken on the latest changeover).  Then a few months ago, I just went cold turkey.  I get my major sports news from Yahoo!.  They list the news stories without the hype and self-promotion espn has decided to go to.

And while I'm at it, with the expansion of WAP-enabled phones, and wireless PDAs, the sleeker, and smaller format content is delivered, the better.  I checked the QF scores from Reno/Tahoe using eLF on a Handspring Treo.  It was easy.  Good luck pointing a mobile device at the new cornellbigred.com.

[KeithK]

Gosh Rich, what are you saying?  That the web should be about an efficient transfer of information?  What a novel concept!

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

 Gosh Rich, what are you saying?  That the web should be about an efficient transfer of information?  What a novel concept!
[/q]
Hey now, don't go crazy. If the web were supposed to be useful, we wouldn't be on here all day long

[jeh25]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 Once you've spent a couple hundred hours .... it becomes second nature, but that wouldn't be very good for new owners. [/q]

Like unix?

Like keyboards?

Like programing a vcr?

Like installing software in windows?

Like plenty of other consumer products?


Only one interface - the nipple - is intuitive. Everything else is learned.

[jeh25]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:

 [Q2]billhoward Wrote:
(Al, it's all your fault to bringing up iDrive. Al and I both have Odysseys as first or second cars and no one argues much about them.) [/Q]
I'll just point out that in the latest rankings of customer satisfaction among German car owners, Honda is #3, Porsche #8, BMW #11, Audi #26, VW #31, and M-B #32.  Out of 33 (with Land Rover upholding the Brit legacy in the cellar).[/q]

But how much of the poor satisfaction among  VW, Audi and MB owners is due to supply chain problems/bad parts from Bosch.

Audi and VW 1.8Ts both had serious issues with BOSCH coilpacks.

VW TDIs had serious issues with flakey BOSCH mass airflow sensors. Dunno if Audi TDIs had the same problems since they aren't sold here.

Mercedes has had issues with failing BOSCH ignition modules.


Notice a trend? Hint:5 letters, starts with a B?