I should first begin with a brief apology. A few weeks ago I posted my thoughts on the KCATA.org website. They weren’t the kindest, and I should have put myself in that designers shoes first. It’s tough designing and developing websites for large organizations; a lot of hands get in the pot and stir things up. I am sure that team did the best they could, and I shouldn’t have criticized the site. That being said, from here on out I shant criticize sites anymore. Flaws are often obvious and don’t need pointing out. If I don’t have something nice to write, I’ll keep it to myself.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: Electra Bikes. Holy moley are these bikes smooth and a complete joy to ride. As this posts headline states, though, it’s more than fantastic bikes that makes Electra great. They are an innovative company that seeks to restore the joy you had riding a bike as a kid.

I started riding my bike to work about three weeks ago. I don’t get to ride every week, but I ride most days. It’s a comfortable four miles each way, although mostly uphill from my office to my home. Before I got the bike in the picture I was riding a Trek 4500 - a great bike for riding trails and such. However, I wanted something more suited for commuting. Enter Jarrod Jarod McBride (twitter.com/concertman), he introduced me to Electra bikes (electrabike.com). The sleek design had me hooked immediately.

It wasn’t long on the site that I was looking for places in Kansas City that sold these bikes. I found a place near me and made my way there (Midwest Cyclery, on Broadway). Fortunately they had one in stock for me to test ride. I knew pretty quickly this was the bike I was looking for and it was in my price range. I still had some questions, though, and decided to ask them directly to Electra if I could.

This is also part of what makes them great, in my humble opinion: on Electra’s website, under the Contact heading you will not find a standard contact form. Instead you will find the names and actual email addresses of the people you may ask questions of. I emailed Elayne, in Marketing, because why not, right? Elayne replied to me within an hour and a half. Perfect. I was even more convinced this would be a company that would stand behind their bikes and offer exceptional service.

Naturally, the lack of contact form got me thinking about web usability. If you are a small business what does it hurt to put a name and email address on your contact page rather than a contact form? Chances are the contact form is just going to go straight to the person you would have the form direct to.

I can see if you need to get technical information from the user, such as browser and OS info, but if you are product oriented, or service oriented, small business like Electra adding a name and email address is a subtle way to build trust with your users and potential customers.

Anyway, I put my scooter up for sale on Craigslist since I had not been riding it and wouldn’t take the time to maintain it properly. Within a few days it sold and I ordered my Townie 21 original in black satin. I also ordered fenders for the tires and the rack on the back. Midwest assembled everything for me and called me yesterday to let me know it was all ready.

If you are looking for a new commuter bike I highly recommend Electra. Spend some time on their site. You will find it informative and full of pictures of their various bikes. Also, if you decide you want one, and you are in the KC area, talk to the guys at Midwest Cyclery, they are cool guys, one dude has a wicked moustache, and they will make sure you are happy with your bike before and after your first ride.

Today started just like any other day: sipping my coffee whilst reading through throngs of fan mail and news feeds. Obama seals the deal, iPhone 3G will kick tail, Comcast mulling net usage cap to discourage ‘excessive’ use (wired.com). Record scratch!

Thoughts raced through my head, “Why does Comcast always suck? What is ‘excessive’ use? This will never fly!” Fortunately the remainder of the article answered those questions.

Turns out, it’s not just Comcast that sucks, Time Warner, Cox and some other provider named Bend are all considering the same thing. In fact, Time Warner is already experimenting with defined bandwidth tiers ranging in price from $24.95 to $54.95 for a monthly bandwidth limit of 10, 20 and 40.

The natural question then is, how much bandwidth do I use?  According to Comcast, the average user consumes about 2gb bandwidth per month. Not bad, and what Comcast deems excessive is actually reasonable (to me, at least). This cropped up because a few handful of Comcast’s users were sending 40 million email, or downloading 50,000 songs a month! I don’t know the gb on that type of usage, but I agree this is excessive.

The rub is that these users were apparently subscribed to unlimited plans. As it turns out, these unlimited plans weren’t void of limitation. A user could use as much as they wanted, but at some point, would get a call from Comcast asking them to curb their usage or face cancellation. Comcast now claims they are looking to create more transparency.

One researcher quoted in the Wired article points out that it is probably to late to change users habits. I’m inclined to agree considering that all the major wireless carriers are now rolling out unlimited talk/text/data plans. If the wireless carriers are going this way, then the ISP’s are clearly moving backwards considering they were the first to roll out unlimited data plans.

In the meantime, if I’m exceeding my bandwidth usage, and Time Warner wants to ask me to cut back, they may politely send their request to my Cox address.

Tonight, while running errands with Jen, we stopped to fill up her car. At $3.40 per gallon it cost $48.00 to fill up her manual transmission Suzuki compact. I felt punched in the gut, slightly sick, and vengeful. I immediately jumped on Kansas City’s transportation website (www.kcata.org) to find the best route from my house to work.

Unfortunately, finding the best route is easier said than done. It took me a good ten minutes of hunting and pecking to finally get a route. That was thanks to a link from KCATA to GoogleTransit. However, turns out the route was for the bus leaving this evening at 9:07pm. What the KCATA site needs is a good dose of simplicity and a UI makeover.

First, get rid of the awful and vague dropdown menus. They read Route #, Name, and Region, respectively. Perhaps these are more for experienced users, and riders of the bus, but for newcomers, they mean nothing. I don’t know my route number. What is meant by name? Finally, what I would consider to be my region is not listed.

Second, provide less options for planning a route. It would greatly benefit potential users to do a study of friendlier transportation sites, then study how a handful of users plan a route. I do mean a handful, there is no need for a massive focus study. This would provide enough information to build a super-simple-to-use route planning web application. Chances are one of these is already built.

Third, and finally, tell the user the value of riding the bus quick and simple. Wouldn’t take much more than a bold headline that reads, Ride the bus for as little as $2. Better yet, link that headline to a brief list of prices as well. Either way, the point is that the user shouldn’t pay $48 two or three times a month when they could ride the bus for much cheaper.

When I was in junior high and high school I hated riding the bus, and rarely did. They were loud, smelled awful, and the diesel fumes gave me headaches. Now it is $150 in gas every month giving me headaches. I should not get a headache from trying to use the bus systems website, also. Who knows, maybe a few simple improvements to the site might yield more than a few more riders.

This, apparently, is a honest-to-goodness internal Microsoft video meant to inspire the Vista sales force. If this is real, and you still buy Vista after this, you are mom jeans.