You may have received an email about how US Postal Service is trying to push through a bill that would allow them to charge 5 cents per email. I can understand why people would think that it's true. The Postal Service had nothing to do with email being sent and they aren't going to give you anything for 5 cents. Sure sounds like a government agency.

The email is a hoax. What's amazing to me is that it started in 1999 and is still making its way around Internet. If you haven't seen email, you can see an example of email and more information about it on Urban Legends Reference Page (http://www.snopes.com/business axes/bill602p.asp).

I wouldn't be surprised by Postal Service wanting to do something like this, which is one of reasons this email has been mistaken by so many people as being real. The U.S. Postal Service currently has an electronic postmark available to businesses who want to use it. You send your email through Postal Services servers and they put a postmark on it for a price. It works similar to snail mail - you send email to their server and it may or may not make it to your recipient. USPS website (http://www.usps.com).

User-Lab to host International Design for Engagability Conference (iDeC)

Birmingham Institute of Art and Design’s User-Lab to host International Design for Engagability Conference (iDeC)

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The Birmingham Institute of Art and Design’s User-Lab http://www.user-lab.com will host host International Design for Engagability Conference (iDeC) in July 2004.

User-Lab is a unique facility in art, design and media education, based in Birmingham, West Midlands. The lab aims to facilitate knowledge transfer between designers, businesses and technologists in growing area of experience design. The first iDeC will bring together, researchers, designers and organisations and focus on issues in providing accessible, usable and engaging products and services.

iDeC will take place on 6-7th July 2004 in Birmingham, West Midlands, comprising of presentations and keynote speakers from commercial and research organisations. The aim of conference is to bring together a wide range of practitioners with their own unique insights into understanding user experience.

"Engagability is how companies can add value to customers. Old school usability ensured that user could operate products but did little to address why people value some products and not others. This conference will bring together researchers at cutting edge of engagabilty and demonstrate methods for increasing user satisfaction", adds John Knight Usability Engineer at User-Lab.

Pleasure, enjoyment, positive emotions, hedonic values have recently been applied to user experience. The emphasis on positive leads to some interesting questions about user experience: For example, Should education experience be a joy? Is pleasure important in game playing? What happens when all products are pleasurable? If computer is a theatre, is it a tragedy or comedy? Is self-actualisation less rewarding, if it is easy to attain? Is familiarity or unfamiliarity pleasurable? Can pleasure be guaranteed? Is pursuit of pleasure, rewarding or healthy? Is one person’s pleasure another person’s pain?

The conference will address aforementioned and be of interest to those involved in researching, designing and manufacturing user-centred products and services (usability and accessibility) and are areas that will be addressed at iDeC.

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Registration to conference is free to speakers (and up to three colleagues), press and students, but excludes cost of catering and proceedings.