Populi

We’re currently hard at work on our upcoming release, which will focus mainly on back-end improvements to how Populi handles Academics. At the same time, we’re also gonna be rolling out our improved navigation scheme to more of the program, starting with Admissions. Here’s a video that takes a brief look at what we’re doing with our navigation… and which gives you an idea of how we like to constantly re-evaluate our design decisions in pursuit of something better.

Improved Navigation in Admissions from Populi on Vimeo.

The App Store just approved the updated Populi iPhone app and it’s available right now.

Though anyone with a Populi user account can use it, the app is primarily aimed at students and instructors. The general idea is to give you access to the Populi stuff you’d want to see on a phone—calendars, contacts, and courses—and link it up to some of the neat stuff iPhone lets you do. For instance, you can look up your Populi contacts—and tap to make a call, send an email, or map their address. Instructors who take attendance on the iPhone get to use one of the simplest, most intuitive interfaces out there. Anything you update using the App shows up in Populi in real-time, and vice-versa.

The updated app includes support for iOS4 and the Retina Display, access to your To-Dos, and the inclusion of Lessons with your Courses. Go get it! It works on all iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad). And if you want more out of your mobile Populi experience, the built-in Safari browser apps on those devices can access the whole program. What’s more, our last major update introduced a new, more mobile-friendly layout that we’ll be rolling out to the rest of the program in an upcoming release.

A friend’s email account was compromised, and this morning it sent out the following to everyone in his address book:

hi!
I find a good website： www.icbcshop12..com
On this website ,you can find many new and origianl electronic products .Now they are holding sales promotion activity, all the product are sold at a
low cost and good quality ,and the delivery is on time .
It is a good chance that you should not lose.
If you need some, visit this website .
Let us enjoy the happiness of shopping.
Greetings!

Now, before you run off to that website looking for great deals, please note that something about this seems, uh, shady. Spam usually attempts to look somewhat legitimate, but this one doesn’t even try. And even if you’re one of those people—presumably such folks exist—who compulsively clicks whatever blue text you see, that double-dotted .com would crash your party real fast, perhaps giving you time to think about what you’re doing. This really is a stupendous piece of work.

But it got me to wondering… does this stuff work? Now, this isn’t the Federal government, which freely spends money it doesn’t have on things that don’t get results. Somewhere behind this email there’s some sleazy organization or business or… something… that’s paying people to write this stuff, hack email accounts, and put some kind of site or malware on the other end of that sloppy URL—and, oddly enough, is turning some sort of profit. True, avarice motivates some strange and cynical doings, and the kind of undiscerning malice at the heart of most internet scams could care less about looking attractive. Still—somehow, someone is getting something out of this, and it’s probably money.

All that spam in your junk e-mail folder, all those Viagra/Acai Berry/Weight-loss pop-ups, all those dodgy animated loan offers—those most hated and reviled features of the internet, loathed by everyone we know of (including, especially, us)—they’re of a piece with this poor little email because, for some reason, people will go for it. It’s a depressing thought, but something about spam… is working.

Baffling.

Here at Popli, we painstakngly craft the user experince, subjectng it to constnt refinment and imprvement. You could say we’re never satsfied with it—we’re always wrking to make it bettr.

With our last updte, we added a lnk to the Trms of Service right on the logn page as a servce to our users. There was even a minr debat on how to word teh notic, becuse every little bit of txt works to create usr expecttions and form crtain habits. Settlng on the simplest ntice, we then put it on every one of our dozns and dzens of login pages.

All we didnt do was spll-check the stupd thnig.