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Alexander Rehm

Alexander Rehm is a web designer, information architect and usability & accessibility auditor. He's currently working as a Director of Live Operations and has extensive experience of developing large-scale architecture and frameworks for online services, catering for millions of users concurrently. In his blog, Alex shares his musings on all things internet, usability, accessibility and gaming.

Firefox extensions for usability, accessibility and SEO experts

FireFox extensions for Usability, Accessibility and SEO expertsMy day to day work consists of a lot of time spending on the internet, looking at web presences of current clients, prospective clients and their (and our) competition. My tool of the trade being FireFox 3 (especially considering that IE seems to have a little problem). I am using a number of addons which really help my work-flow in the fields of usability, accessibility, SEO and occasionally information architecture.

I was asked by a couple of fellow twitter users to divulge my plugin list, and since I keep track of them myself at times I thought this post would come in handy for everyone.

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The day my Xbox 360 died

So there is me planning a nice evening with friends to watch a film – I get pizza, some drinks, clean up a little, look at my watch. “Plenty of time still, how about I play a round of Gears of War 2 or do a quick mission on Fable 2? Or I could open the (still sealed) copy of Saints Row 2 I bought this week and have a look at that!”

I decide to put Fable 2 on, I know there is a quick quest I wanted to do, so I put in the disc and begin to play. Interesting quest, finding out what lies in a cave near the graveyard. Well, just a few minutes into the game and this happens:

Just kidding, it did not explode, but it froze mid-game, the sound was still playing, but the screen froze and had tearing, gamepad did not work, it would not eject the disc; nothing else I could do but to restart the console forcefully… Keep Reading

Information Architecture for Game Publisher websites (part 1)

It has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about Information Architecture, be it IA and user testing or designing for the mobile web in mind, and I want to talk about a topic today which relates somewhat to a somewhat new-ish step in Information Architecture, namely the integration of user retention and user interaction.

It is not news to anyone that I – like so many – enjoy video games, come on, it is a multi-million pounds industry. Game publishers have sought to expand their marketing influence in a number of new ways, some of them have started using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc to promote their games either via their own channels, or via publicity stunts (Wii Fit girl anyone?). The message is clear – generate interest, generate sales. Since the company I work for has just signed a deal with a UK-based games publisher with Japanese roots and a European charm I have been looking more into the information architecture of this (still rapidly growing) market, which in turn has opened another door or two for additional potential clients.
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Melon Design & Marketing’s new website is live!

I am happy to announce that the new site of Melon Design & Marketing has gone live today!!

screenshot of Melon's new site

Melon Design & Marketing is a creative communication agency based near Milton Keynes, between Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, specialising in a number of sectors such as branding & corporate identity, graphic design, website design & development, advertising and e-marketing, print management, photography and copywriting.

You can read more about all their services here, and about their in-house CMS Engine on this page.

Using twitter for your business – what to look out for

I have been using Twitter for a littlewhile now. It is fast, very entertaining, and you can connect to and with friends, colleagues, business partners and like-minded people in your field.

A few days ago I spoke to a client of mine from a few years ago who wondered why his company was not using twitter for their own business since their RSS subscriber number was not that great (~150). The idea of his was to use twitter as a tool to show the more personal, more human side of the business, being able to interact with its customers and visitors, and engaging with similar companies, suppliers, even competitors. Well, that was the idea at least, and he asked me what I thought about that.

So what does twitter mean to a business? How can you make sure your business looks professional? Keep Reading

A small update – it has been a while…

A lot has happened in the world of information architecture, usability and Flash development…and I have been really slow updating the blog with useful information. For that I apologise. I changed jobs in August and am now a Web Services Development Manager at a lovely company called Melon Design & Marketing (our new website will go live soon!). Obviously, a new job requires new challenges, and these have taken a lot of my personal time to get used to the new climate and to effectively make a difference.

So, a quick update on this blog (thought it might be quite interesting, it certainly is for me!):

  • The blog was set up on February 19th 2008
  • Since then it has attracted over 26,000 views
  • The biggest referrers at the moment are Ubisoft’s forum, Gearbox software forum, WebForumz.com a few magazine sites (due to the BiA post) and Facebook
  • The RSS feed has attracted 67 readers (hey, its a start considering I never expected the blog to take off anyway!)
  • Spam Karma has caught 712 spam messages since February (in your face, spammers!!)

Additionally, I have now joined Twitter, why not say “hi”, I would appreciate it 😉

Thanks and best wishes to all my readers, I’ll continue about IA, Usability and Flash Development soon!