Web users form first impressions of web pages in as little as 50 miliseconds (1/20th of a second), according to Canadian researchers. In the blink of an eye, web surfers make nearly instantaneous judgments of a web site’s “visual appeal.” Through the “halo effect” first impressions can color subsequent judgments of perceived credibility, usability, and ultimately influence our purchasing decisions. Creating a fast-loading, visually appealing site can help websites succeed.

As websites have matured from marketing brochures to daily business tools, this “halo effect” should have bearing on user adoption of web applications like Wiredrive. Our goal is to create a visually appealing interface that makes daily use more pleasant.

Johnathan Schartz, a bigwig over at Sun, has written an interesting blog about how software and file distribution is changing big - and will change yet again this week with their new announcement of a web-based version of Office.

So, lots of people are seeing the connection between websites, desktop applications, and interconnected data. Currently, this interconnectedness is best shown with iTunes - largely because the application is already installed on Macs (PC’s have to work harder), it runs locally and uses the Net, and it just feels right. Sun and others are trying to connect up word processing and document sharing, so we all will be bombarded with this new way of working. Just because it is happening doesn’t mean it will be smooth - there is plenty of hand holding along the way, including developing interfaces that non-techies love to use.

So as Volume increases (photos, video, documents meeting with networks, hybrid desktop and web applications), their intrinsic value will increase - BUT only if done right. Lots of projects in the open source world stall out and don’t get adopted - purely because not enough thought or effort went into them in the first place.

As we prepare for this congregation of EVERYTHING, common sense and balance needs to prevail (doesn’t it always). Finding good examples of this still is not too common.