My .mac is up for renewal and I’m not going to renew this year. I just received this email:

Thank you for being a member of .Mac! Your .Mac membership is set to renew on October 07, 2006 PDT; however, the credit card information you provided when you joined .Mac may now be invalid or out-of-date. Please check your credit card information in your Account Settings to update it (if you want to renew) or to remove it and uncheck auto-renew (if you do not). We appreciate your attention to this matter.

Now the problem with this is you can’t remove you’re credit card info (like the email says) – and if you can’t remove your credit card info, because then the form won’t validate – you can’t un-check auto-renew either.

So here’s me trying to un-check the auto-renew option…

My Google services in Gmail just got a little longer. What’s next? Word Processor? Files Storage? Media Center? Google, what would I do without you?

Finally, something besides outlook accepts outlook requests, not only that – gCal (aka Google Calendar) one-ups outlook with some great new features. A no-brainer was adding the maps link to the location, but I really like the quick view of “your agenda” where you can see what you have going on before and after the meeting request time.

So far I’m in love with gCal, not sure how the other calendar apps out there in “web 2.0 land” are going to survive.

I thought I would start a series called makeover, where I will try to spend the least amount of time possible making-over a website or UI element. Why “least amount of time”? Because I want to show with just a little time, a designer/IA can greatly improve the usability and over all attractiveness.

Stats:

• makeover: Firefox Software Update Alert
• amount of time: 20 minutes
• tools: PhotoShop
• changes:visual, IA

Quick Notes:
When you first see the pop-up you’re not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. So I added a green “check” icon to indicate this is a positive thing. Next I put more emphasis on the version that is now released, when it was released and what version you are currently running. I also included the “What’s new?” section to give you an idea of why you should upgrade (instead of “we strongly recommend”). The disabling of extensions is a big deal for some users and should be called out more. By added a “alert” icon and adding a little red, you know this is something you should pay attention to. Finally I change the “Later” button to “Not Now” to match the “would you like to save this password” buttons elsewhere in Firefox.

The icons come from the free set at famfamfam (which i’m in love with…).

For a limited time I’m hosting the videos from the 11/10/05 Refresh Dallas meeting.

• View Stephen Anderson’s presentation.
• View Garrett Dimon’s presentation.

Read more about the Refresh Dallas meeting on Garrett’s blog as well as on Stephen’s blog.