“Three quarters of RAZR users would not buy another Motorola handset because they are difficult to use”. A bad thing for the users becomes a very bad thing for the brand. It’s one thing to work to have an attractive device, such as the RAZR, but if the interface does not live up to the exterior then the whole effort will ultimately fail. A simple lesson, but still one being learnt.

Take a look at the article including results for this Motorola survey by Mobile.

Let’s blackout London from 4.30pm to 7.30pm on 4th November. A great idea to commemorate Guy Fawkes (and make a point about climate change).

A bit late, but to balance out the IE7 post from a few days ago - if you can (your office allows it), it would probably still be best to go with the latest version of Firefox.

Whilst researching evening activities for an upcoming birthday we came across this fabulous site for a private room karaoke bar. Although the over-use of Flash on the web is often and quite correctly criticised, the use of it on this site - coupled with interesting sound effects and bright, vibrant colours - makes for an entertaining and visually satisfying experience. Check it out at www.luckyvoice.co.uk.

If you use Internet Explorer on the PC, please download version 7 as soon as possible. Not only should the general web browsing experience be better and safer for you, it will also make web developer’s lives much easier.

Apple have set up the new iPod nano with pages on Myspace. You too can now count the pink nano as your friend. The pages, inevitably as Apple are involved, are much better looking than the usual Myspace effort. It would be interesting if Apple got a special deal to code the page as they wish. Alternatively, a very smart web designer managed to hack the code to make it look good - which would be impressive if the case. Myspace code is well-known to be painful to contort into attractive shapes.

A new online user-experience design magazine. It looks nice, has interesting content and has some very fine contributors… but it made my web browser crash. Not such a great user experience. Worth a look though.

We love maps, and these are some beautiful ones at Subtopia (via 3QuarksDaily).

Take a look at the Unlimited Spurt website we built, a satirical website aimed at the worst excesses of the aviation industry, backed-up by a national UK newspaper campaign. Working with Provokateur, the campaign is being supported by Greenpeace, Airportwatch and EnoughsEnough.org.

Update: Take a look at the Daily Mirror article, an article in The Times, the Digg article and the comments on YouTube.

The Tories are experimenting with blogs and online video at the newly launched webcameronorg.org.uk. Like their logo, it’s not a bad idea, but the execution is a little strange to say the least. The naming and design is highly reminiscent of the ‘Web 2.0′ style - truncated lower-case words, and hot pinks and pixel-art. The videos are highly self-conscious ‘lo-fi’ films of David Cameron trying to talk about policy and the way the Tories are changing. He’s surrounded by family in an attempt to appear ‘real’ - but instead it appears queasily manipulative of his children and wife - and highly staged.

The new Olivant site has launched today, with help from Wolff Olins. Olivant is a financial services business created by Luqman Arnold (previously CEO of Abbey) and Alan Morgan.

The Conservatives are about to launch their new logo - based around an oak tree. A possibly good idea… done badly. Read about and see it at 30gms.

Stephen Bayley has joined the Guardian as the new architecture writer. His first article discusses how the word ‘design’ and the practice of same has changed its meaning over the years.

Coochi, is a new start-up “inspired by [their] own experiences of first time parenthood”. Their primary product is the Coocoose, a wearable baby bath towel. FoxLand worked on the high-level online branding. Take a look at the website at coochico.com.

Intriguing and often beautiful ‘Infovisuals’ Flickr pool (via Plasticbag).