I’ve recently been unsubscribing from newsletters and other irrelevant email.

It’s surprising how many website have completely broken systems for unsubcribing from their email communications.  One particular annoyance is having to sign in and click through several screens to change email preferences.

Here’s a completely broken message I came across recently when unsubscribing.

“If the box below is unticked then you are unsubscribed. If it is ticked then you are subscribed. To change your subscription please tick/untick as appropriate and click the Update button below.”

These types of messages show completely disregard for the user experience. There’s much easier and user-friendly ways of implementing email unsubscription, and if you need to include a paragraph of instructions to explain when to check or uncheck the box, it’s broken.

Don’t make me think: A common sense approach to web usability is a great book discussing these types of errors and how to avoid making them.

This Sprint commercial is very cool.

It tells us 233,000 people just posted something on Twitter… It seems like Twitter is unstoppable, though it’s been very slow the past few days, and I’ve been seeing the famous fail whale a lot more. Thought their scaling and performance issues were behind them, but apparently not.

As for Sprint… I’m not planning to leave AT&T anytime soon. Love my iPhone too much, though I’m keen to see if the Palm Pre lives up to the hype.

Smarta.com has a great interview with Theo Paphitis.  I’m not sure if I believe the story about trying out the parachute idea with a sack of potatoes first, but he makes a good point about taking calculated risks.

Unfortunately, Smarta.com doesn’t offer any way to embed the video, so you’ll have to visit the site to watch it.